When the Cock Crows. Waldron Baily
been a fool shipwreck on my oyster rocks. The captain of the ship an' his mate air at the shack this very minute. He's batty as a toad arter swallerin' shot. An' she's outter her haid—leastways she ain't got sense 'nough left ter talk."
In answer to questions, Ichabod gave a full narrative of what had occurred, telling all the events in his own quaint fashion, to all of which Doctor Hudson listened with the closest attention.
His comment was crisp.
"It sounds like whisky—more likely, morphia. I reckon it's my duty to go." As a matter of fact, the physician's curiosity had been aroused. He was professionally anxious to get at a solution of the mystery. He hurriedly changed his clothes in preparation for the rough voyage to Ichabod's Island, and equipped himself with the old, worn leather bag stocked with medicines, which, for years, had been a familiar sight throughout the whole region in every household where disease came to terrify and destroy.
"Hurry, Ichabod," the Doctor cried. "We'll shake a leg, or the tide'll be running against us."
Ichabod's skiff was tailed to the physician's little launch. The motor power made the voyage to the Island swift, although it was rough, even to the point of danger on account of the storm-driven waters. When they had made fast at the landing, the two hurried to the shack. The door was swinging wide. But to their amazement and dismay not even Shrimp was there to give them welcome. The place was utterly deserted. The visitors so strangely cast up from the sea had vanished as mysteriously as they had come. There was the bed on which the girl had been lying—now it was empty. Not even a vestige of her clothing remained to prove that she was more than the figment of a crazed brain. Ichabod stared about him with distended eyes. He could make no guess as to the meaning of the strange thing that had befallen. Then, abruptly, his dazed mind was aroused to a new calamity. … Shrimp, too, was gone!
Presently, Ichabod looked for the yacht's tender, and found it likewise gone. He was able to understand in some measure what had occurred. The batteries had been dried by the hot stove in the shack, and—the little craft thus restored to running condition—the man had undoubtedly fled with the girl. And with them Shrimp had voyaged. A sudden overwhelming desolation fell on the old man. He had been through much that day. He had been strained to the utmost resources of his energies. And he was an old man. He had small reserves of force with which to meet the unexpected. Now, he felt himself bewildered over all the strange happenings. And there was something more. The one constant companion of his lonely life was Shrimp—and Shrimp, too, had fled from him.
The Doctor, very much puzzled over this absence of an expected patient, started to leave the shack. He halted at the head of the steps, and looked down in a bewilderment touched with pity.
For Ichabod was on his knees before the steps of his own house, and his form was shaken with the sobbings of despair.
CHAPTER IV
Under the After Awning
Sidewalks along Fifth Avenue were packed with persons of all nationalities, representatives of every variety of industrial activity in the life of the City. There was a reviewing stand erected in front of the massive library that displayed its lines of architectural beauty in place of the sloping, age-gray walls of the old reservoir at Bryant Square. City officials and families of officers in the troops soon to pass were assembled there to witness this march of soldiers on their way to entrain for the Mexican border. They were filled with the zeal of patriots, because their comrades had been foully killed on that same border by a treacherous foe, and they were being sent to avenge that insult against the life and dignity of their nation.
Came the rhythmic beat of feet on the pavement; came the blare of the band. The two swung together into a harmony of marching. These boys, ordered to the front, were going, steadfastly, as in duty bound. They loved this "send-off." They marched with vigor in their steps, because ten thousand handkerchiefs waved from the windows along the line of march.
On the sidewalks was assembled a strange crowd. There were the stenographers taking their noonday outing. Many were carefully over-powdered and perfumed. They were dressed after the latest fashion—a long way after it!
But the Midinettes were a very small proportion of those wild to see the real soldiers.
All New York had heard the troops were to march that day. And all New York turned out to see the regiments.
There are a myriad phases of metropolitan life. Those phases were illustrated that day in the crowds along the line of march. The bulk of those clustering at the curb were of a sort eager for a free show. In the countless loft buildings bordering the avenue were hordes of men and women too busy in earning a pitiful wage to think of anything so frivolous as a procession, with banners waving and bands playing. But while these had no thought of marching troops, there were innumerable others. For New York is a city gigantic. Within it are hosts. Some of these always are idle. Some, always eager for the free show of the streets.
So, to-day, when the troops are to march by with shrill of fife and blatant noise of band, the multitude comes scurrying, curious to see, patriotic with the emotional patriotism of one just become a citizen of a free country, where before he was the unrecognized and unhonored subject of despotism, from which he fled in search of liberty.
New York is a city of millions. It is the biggest city on earth. It is the melting pot of nations. The crowd that lines the curb is of one sort. There is another sort marching the length of the avenue. And this is a mixture to bewilder any beholder. A countryman from New Jersey, with his wife and children comes to-day for this splendid free show of the troops that are to march; the countrymen from the reaches of New York along the Hudson, with the same purpose; his fellows from Long Island, from Connecticut. With these alien figures, treading the principal city street of the world, are others. Those who walk there daily walk there again to-day. The clubman, coated, hatted, gloved to perfection, takes his accustomed stroll on the avenue, and looks with contemptuous disgust on the crowd that forces him to walk gingerly where usually he struts as a master. He, too, is a patriot and he means to see the march of the troops, and to applaud it—but from his club window, if ever he is able to make his way there through the perspiring congestion of the motley crowd.
There is a crew of money-makers, busy along the avenue on an occasion such as this. These are hordes of itinerant merchants moving up and down with things to sell to the crowd. They offer canes and instruments of noise that by a twist of the wrist make a horrible din. Especially, they offer American flags—bigger or smaller according to the purchaser's taste and purse. These are bought with eagerness by the crowd, and the fakers reap a harvest from the enthusiasm of those assembled to witness the marching soldiers.
The boy with a box is dominant. Wherever a short, but eager watcher stands to look, the boy comes, with his offer of a box to stand on, a box to sit on, as the purchaser may please, for the nominal cost of ten cents. Always, one finds at hand this boy, with the box that he offers for your sitting or for your feet, as you will. One box bought, he shows another, offering it for sale. Whence he comes with boxes so multitudinous none may guess. But he goes away with nickles and dimes enough perhaps to provide an income that will continue over until another day of parade.
In the reviewing stand, there was seated a girl who watched the marching troops with an intentness that had in it something of desperation, something of despair. Yet, as the soldiers passed, she gave them little heed. She was always looking toward those advancing, as if in search for something that meant more to her than this moving mass of troops.
A band passed. Behind it, at the head of his men, rode Colonel Marion. As he came opposite the reviewing stand, his eyes swept over the crowd seated on the tiers of benches. They rested on the face of the girl, who had been so anxiously watching. He smiled and saluted. The girl—his daughter Ethel—waved her handkerchief