Mermaid. Grant M. Overton
the cook were left.
“The cook came along all right, and then we hauled the buoy back for the skipper.
“At the signal—jerks on the line—we pulled. The buoy came along for maybe fifteen feet and then checked. Dead stop. We couldn’t budge it a foot farther. We hauled back and tried over again. Came just so far and then stuck, immovable.
“You couldn’t see, you couldn’t hear. There was nothing to do but to haul back and forward, back and forward about a hundred times. We wore ourselves all out, though probably the work was all that kept us from freezing to death. Some of us had frostbites. After a while a faint light appeared. Dawn, frightened by that merciless gale. Dawn, and then daylight; and at last we could see. The ocean went down; wind had gone down in the night. What we saw was the body of the captain of the Farallone hanging stiffly in the buoy.
“The line had been made fast to the mast too near the deck. As we hauled away each man, coming to the ship’s bulwark, had to lift his body over it. The last man had been able to get into the buoy, but in the minute or two before he reached the bulwark he had frozen helpless; and when he came to it he couldn’t lift himself over.”
There was a silence in which men drew on their pipes. The hand of young Joe Sayre, Surfman No. 7, rolling a cigarette, shook slightly. Mermaid saw the scene. She burned to ask her Dad if he, or any of the others, had seen the Duneswoman that night in the fearful storm. Had she walked abroad on the waters, passing unharmed through the great breakers of inky-black water with invisible crests of white and curling foam? Her face—did no one see it beside the staring form of the dying skipper? Did none see her arm about him? Why had she not lifted him over the rail? See. … Dad had said no one could see anything. But you could always: see the Duneswoman when she was about, however black the night. Who was she? The little girl lost herself in a timid reverie.
“Lemons,” Uncle Ho was saying. “Oranges, onions—fine big Spanish onions from Valencia; pineapples and pomegranates, even Havana see-gars but mostly spoiled by salt water. Once, army blankets; we slept warm that winter. Cocoanuts every little while. The next cocoanut I find I’ll carve a mask out of for Mermaid.”
Her cheeks flushed and she tossed her hair and looked at him with dancing eyes. Wasn’t Uncle Ho good! And he was wonderfully skillful with a knife; a full rigged ship carved in a great glass bottle lay in the keeper’s room to witness his craftsmanship. He did marvellous things with bits of rope. He had promised to make her a hammock and with some fine white rope he was braiding a mat to adorn the little shelf which was her dressing table. Rose knots, diamond knots; knots and hitches and splices without number—Uncle Ho was master of them all. Mermaid listened to his further talk about the things that ships jettison and the things that wash ashore.
“Even little girls come ashore,” said Uncle Ho with great seriousness and nodding his head many times. “Not to speak of animals. We brought a Shetland pony to land in the breeches buoy and, Mermaid, you should have heard him squeal!” Mermaid gave a little squeal of her own. “Not like that,” corrected Ho Ha. “He said, ‘Nay-ay-ay. Nay-yay-yay-yay!’ That means ‘No!’ Why, a Dutch ship, named the Dutch for good luck, had a cow in the afterhold to provide the skipper with fresh milk every morning. And lots of ships have pigs aboard ’em. Sheep, too. You might get wool enough for a new suit of homespun.
“But the strangest thing was the animal ship. Mind I don’t say it was Noah’s Ark, Mermaid. The skipper was a youngish man, not old enough to be Noah. Maybe one of his sons. Now this Ark of Noah & Sons came ashore in fine weather, but very thick. So much fog young Noah couldn’t tell where he was. He couldn’t shoot the sun at noon. Well——
“He had pairs of almost all kinds of animals aboard. They were a consignment to the big Zoo in New York. There was a pair of camels and a pair of leopards and a pair of lions and pairs of snakes and two beautiful giraffes with necks so long that they could see as well as a man in the topgallant rigging. The Ark came on in fine weather but it didn’t stay fine. Bad southeasterly storm blew up and when it abated the Ark was so leaky that the skipper—young Noah—put the animals over the side thinking they’d drown. He hated to do it, but the ship was all going to pieces. But you know, Mermaid, that all animals can swim. And most of these critters swam ashore. Little girl, you should have seen them! But, no! I’m glad you weren’t here. Life wasn’t safe on the beach here then with those pairs of animals ranging about. Finally we had to shoot them all with the little brass cannon.”
Mermaid had been listening, at first doubtfully and with enchanted pleasure; but now something about the story itself joined to some oddity of expression in the faces of her other uncles caused her to say:
“Uncle Ho, that isn’t so, is it?”
“Not so, but so-so,” replied Ho Ha, persuasively. “If you mean, is it true, why——”
“Oh, I don’t mind it’s not being true,” explained the little girl, twisting her fingers. “It spoils things to have them true—just a little—doesn’t it?”
The smile left Ho Ha’s face.
“By gracious! I believe that’s a fact!” he exclaimed.
IX
Keturah Smiley stopped digging potatoes and walked briskly back to her house. She washed her hands, but did not change her shabby old man’s coat. Keturah’s everyday attire was preponderantly masculine. She refrained, however, from wearing trousers. But a man’s soft hat was generally pinned to her head, a man’s coat was usually on her back, and her low-heeled, heavy-soled walking shoes were number eights.
She dried her hands, put them in the coat pockets and started up the lane to the centre of the village. On the way she met Sim Jenkins, and told him sharply that if he didn’t pay the interest on his mortgage more promptly she would demand the principal. Sim looked frightened. He knew that Keturah would not hesitate to foreclose.
At the principal street intersection of Blue Port stood the postoffice and the few clustered shops. There was one two-story structure which constituted Blue Port’s only office building. On the ground floor were a real estate agent, a milliner, and a store where cigars and soft drinks, magazines and writing paper could be bought. Up the flight of stairs were a doctor’s office and the places of business of Blue Port’s lawyers. Blue Port had one saloon, two churches, and three lawyers, one of whom was a justice of the peace. To this functionary, Judge Hollaby, Miss Smiley made her way.
The Judge was sitting in his office with his feet on the desk and his hat on his head, reading Seneca on old age. He had not enjoyed a plate of oysters the evening before with his usual relish, and this had profoundly depressed him. He was therefore reading; Judge Hollaby found in reading the consolation that some men find in drink, although he was by no means a teetotaler.
Miss Smiley opened the door without knocking. As she entered rapidly Judge Hollaby put down his feet with an almost youthful spryness, and hastily removed his hat. His visitor, to his pain, picked up the half-smoked cigar that lay extinguished on a corner of his desk and threw it in the cuspidor. The name of it was La Coloratura and it had cost 13 cents straight.
Judge Hollaby knew better than to waste breath in formal greetings. Keturah Smiley seated herself and said:
“Don’t beat around the bush but tell me in words I understand just the disposition of the property my aunt left me.”
The lawyer felt momentarily flurried. He really had forgotten the provisions of old Keturah Hawkins’s will. However, it would not do to say so—wouldn’t do at all.
“Entailed, Miss Smiley, entailed,” he said with what he intended to be a retrospective and thoughtful air. To his client it seemed merely absent-minded.
“Please put your mind on this, Judge Hollaby!” she commanded in a tone that reminded the lawyer of several schoolma’ams