Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper: A Story of Cape Cod

CAP'N ABE, STOREKEEPER

A Story of Cape Cod

by

JAMES A. COOPER

1917

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. A CHOICE II. CAP'N ABE III. IN CAP'N ABE'S LIVING-ROOM IV. THE SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS V. WHAT HAPPENED IN THE NIGHT VI. BOARDED BY PIRATES VII. UNDER FIKE VIII. SOMETHING ABOUT SALT WATER TAFFY IX. SUSPICION HOVERS X. WHAT LOUISE THINKS XI. THE LEADING MAN XII. THE DESCENT OF AUNT EUPHEMIA XIII. WASHY GALLUP'S CURIOSITY XIV. A CHOICE OF CHAPERONS XV. THE UNEXPECTED XVI. A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS XVII. THE ODDS AGAINST HIM XVIII. SOMETHING BREAKS XIX. MUCH ADO XX. THE SUN WORSHIPERS XXI. DISCOVERIES XXII. SHOCKING NEWS XXIII. BETWEEN THE FIRES XXIV. GRAY DAYS XXV. AUNT EUPHEMIA MAKES A POINT XXVI. AT LAST XXVII. SARGASSO XXVIII. STORM CLOUDS THREATEN XXIX. THE SCAR XXX. WHEN THE STRONG TIDES LIFT XXXI. AN ANCHOR TO THE SOUL XXXII. ON THE ROLL OF HONOR

CHAPTER I

A CHOICE

"Of course, my dear, there is nobody but your Aunt Euphemia for you to go to!"

"Oh, daddy-professor! Nobody? Can we rake or scrape up no other relative on either side of the family who will take in poor little me for the summer? You will be home in the fall, of course."

"That is the supposition," Professor Grayling replied, his lips pursed reflectively. "No. Dear me! there seems nobody."

"But Aunt Euphemia!"

"I know, Lou, I know. She expects you, however. She writes——"

"Yes. She has it all planned," sighed Louise Grayling dejectedly.
"Every move at home or abroad Aunt Euphemia has mapped out for me. When
I am with her I am a mere automaton—only unlike a real marionette I can
feel when she pulls the strings!"

The professor shook his head. "There's—there's only your poor mother's half-brother down on the Cape."

"What half-brother?" demanded Louise with a quick smile that matched the professor's quizzical one.

"Why——Well, your mother, Lou, had an older half-brother, a Mr. Silt. He keeps a store at Cardhaven. You know, I met your mother down that way when I was hunting seaweed for the Smithsonian Institution. Your grandmother was a Bellows and her folks lived on the Cape, too. Her family has died out and your grandfather was dead before I married your mother. The half-brother, this Mr. Silt—Captain Abram Silt—is the only individual of that branch of the family left alive, I believe."

"Goodness!" gasped the girl. "What a family tree!"

Again the professor smiled whimsically. "Only a few of the branches.
But they all reach back to the first navigators of the world."

"The first navigators?"

"I do not mean to the Phoenicians," her father said. "I mean that the world never saw braver nor more worthy sailors than those who called the wind-swept hamlets of Cape Cod their home ports. The Silts were all master-mariners. This Captain Abe is a bachelor, I believe. You could not very well go there."

Louise sighed. "No; I couldn't go there—I suppose. I couldn't go there——" Her voice wandered off into silence. Then suddenly, almost explosively, it came back with the question: "Why couldn't I?"

"My dear Lou! What would your aunt say?" gasped the professor.

He was a tall, rather soldierly looking man—the result of military training in his youth—with a shock of perfectly white hair and a sweeping mustache that contrasted clearly with his pink, always cleanly shaven cheeks and chin. Without impressing the observer with his muscular power. Professor Grayling was a better man on a long hike and possessed more reserve strength than many more beefy athletes.

His daughter had inherited his springy carriage and even the clean pinkness of his complexion—always looking as though she were fresh from her shower. But there was nothing mannish about Lou Grayling—nothing at all, though she had other attributes of body and mind for which to thank her father.

They were the best of chums. No father and daughter could have trod the odd corners of the world these two had visited without becoming so closely attached to each other that their processes of thought, as well as their opinions in most matters, were almost in perfect harmony. Although Mrs. Euphemia Conroth was the professor's own sister he could appreciate Lou's attitude in this emergency. While the girl was growing up there had been times when it was considered best—usually because of her studies—for Lou to live with Aunt Euphemia. Indeed, that good lady believed it almost a sin that a young girl should attend the professor on any of his trips into "the wilds," as she expressed it. Aunt Euphemia ignored the fact that nowadays the railroad and telegraph are in Thibet and that turbines ply the headwaters of the Amazon.

Mrs. Conroth dwelt in Poughkeepsie—that half-way stop between New York and Albany; and she was as exclusive and opinionated a lady as might be found in that city of aristocracy and learning.

The college in the shadow of which Aunt Euphemia's dwelling basked, was that which had led the professor's daughter under the lady's sway. Although the girls with whom Lou associated within the college walls were up-to-the-minute—if not a little ahead of it—she found her aunt, like many of those barnacles clinging to the outer reefs of learning in college towns, was really a fossil. If one desires to meet the ultraconservative in thought and social life let me commend him to this stratum of humanity within stone's throw of a college. These barnacles like Aunt Euphemia are wedded to a manner of thought, gained from their own school experiences, that went out of fashion inside the colleges thirty years ago.

Originally, in Lou Grayling's case, when she first lived with Aunt Euphemia and was a day pupil at an exclusive preparatory school, it had been drilled into her by the lady that "children should be seen but not heard!" Later, although she acknowledged the fact that young girls were now taught many things that in Aunt Euphemia's maidenhood were scarcely whispered within hearing of "the young person," the lady was quite shocked to hear such subjects discussed in the drawing-room, with her niece as one of the discussers.

The structure of man and the lower animals, down to the number of their ribs, seemed no proper topic for light talk at an evening party. It made Aunt Euphemia gasp. Anatomy was Lou's hobby. She was an excellent and practical taxidermist, thanks to her father. And she had learned to name the bones of the human frame along with her multiplication table.

However, there was little about Louise Grayling to commend her among, for instance, the erudite of Boston. She was sweet and wholesome, as has been indicated. She had all the common sense that a pretty girl should have—and no more.

For she was pretty and, as well, owned that charm of intelligence without which a woman is a mere doll. Her father often reflected that the man who married Lou would be playing in great luck. He would get a mate.

So far as Professor Grayling knew, however (and he was as keenly observant of his daughter and her development as he was of scientific matters), there was as yet no such man in sight. Lou had escaped the usual boy-and-girl entanglements which fret the lives of many young folk, because of her association with her father in his journeys about the world. Being a perfectly normal, well-balanced girl, black boys, brown boys, yellow boys, or all the hues and shades of boys to be met with in those odd corners of the earth where the white man is at a premium, did not interest Lou Grayling in the least.

Without being ultraconservative like Aunt Euphemia, she was the sort of girl whom one might reckon on doing the sensible—perhaps the obvious—thing in almost any emergency. Therefore, after that single almost awed exclamation from the professor—his sole homage to Mrs. Grundy—he added:

"My dear, do as you like. You are old enough and wise enough to choose for yourself—your aunt's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. Only, if you don't mind——"

"What is it, daddy-prof?" she asked him with a smile, yet still reflective.

"Why, if you don't mind," repeated the professor, "I'd rather you didn't inform me where you decide to spend your summer until I am off. I—I don't mind knowing after I am at sea—and your aunt cannot get at me."

She laughed at him gaily. "You take it for granted that I am going to
Cape Cod," she cried accusingly.

"No—o. But I know how sorely I should be tempted myself, realizing your aunt's trying disposition."

"Perhaps this—this half-uncle may be quite as trying."

"Impossible!" was the father's rather emphatic reply.

"What?" she cried. "Traitor to the family fame?"

"You do not know Cape Cod folk. I do," he told her rather seriously. "Some of them are quaint and peculiar. I suppose there are just as many down there with traits of extreme Yankee frugality as elsewhere in New England. But your mother's people, as I knew them, were the very salt of the earth. Our wanderings were all that kept you from knowing the old folk before they passed away."

"You tempt me," was all Louise said. Then the conversation lapsed.

It was the day following that the professor was to go to Boston preparatory to sailing. At the moment of departure his daughter, smiling, tucked a sealed note into his pocket.

"Don't open it, daddy-prof, till you are out of sight of Cohasset Rocks," she said. "Then you will not know where I am going to spend the time of your absence until it is too late—either to oppose or to advise."

"You can't worry me," he told her, with admiration in his glance. "I've every confidence in you, my dear. Have a good time if you can."

She watched him down the long platform between the trains. When she saw him assisted into the Pullman by the porter she turned with a little sigh, and walked up the rise toward Forty-second Street. She could almost wish she were going with him, although seaweed and mollusk gathering was a messy business, and the vessel he sailed in was an ancient converted coaster with few comforts for womenkind. Louise Grayling had been hobbled by city life for nearly a year now and she began to crave new scenes.

There were some last things to do at the furnished apartment they were giving up. Some trunks were to go to the storehouse. Her own baggage was to be tagged and sent to the Fall River boat.

For, spurred by curiosity as well as urged by a desire to escape Aunt Euphemia for a season, Louise was bent upon a visit to Cape Cod. At least, she would learn what manner of person her only other living relative was—her mother's half-brother, Captain Abram Silt.

In the train the next day, which wandered like an erratic caterpillar along the backbone of the Cape, she began to wonder if, after all, she was displaying that judgment which daddy-professor praised so highly. It was too early in the season for the "millionaire's special" to be scheduled, in which those wealthy summer folk who have "discovered" the Cape travel to and from Boston. Lou was on a local from Fall River that stopped at every pair of bars and even hesitated at the pigpens along the right of way.

Getting aboard and getting off again at the innumerable little stations, were people whose like she had never before seen. And their speech, plentifully sprinkled with colloquialisms of a salt flavor, amused her, and sometimes puzzled her. Some of the men who rode short distances in the car wore fishermen's boots and jerseys. They called the conductor "skipper," and hailed each other in familiar idioms.

The women were not uncomely, nor did they dress in outlandish manner. Great is the sway of the modern Catalogue House! But their speech was blunt and the three topics of conversation most popular were the fish harvest, clamming, and summer boarders.

"Land sakes! is that you, Em'line Scudder? What sent you cruisin' in these waters? I thought you never got away from the Haven."

"Good-day, Mrs. Eldredge. You're fairin' well? I just had to come over to Littlebridge for some fixin's. My boarders will be 'long and I got to freshen the house up a little."

"You goin' to have the same folks you had last year, Em'line?"

"Oh, yes. They're real nice—-for city people. I tell Barzillai——"

"How is Barzillai?"

"Middlin'. His leg ain't never been just right since he was helpin' ice the Tryout, come two summers ago. You know, one o' them big cakes from the ice fact'ry fell on him. . . . I tell Barzillai the city folks are a godsend to us Cape Codders in summer time, now that sea-goin' don't seem so pop'lar with the men as it useter be."

"I dunno. Some of these city folks don't seem to be sent by the Lord, but by the other feller!" was the grim rejoinder. "I had tryin' times with my crowd last summer; and the children with 'em was a visitation—like the plagues of Egypt!"

Louise was an amused yet observant listener. She began thus early to gain what these good people themselves would call a "slant" upon their characters and their outlook on life.

Aside from her interest in her fellow-travelers, there were other things to engage the girl's attention. New places always appealed to her more than unfamiliar human beings; perhaps because she had seen so many of the latter in all quarters of the globe and found so little variety in their characters. There were good people and bad people everywhere, Louise had found. Greedy, generous, morose, and laughing; faithful and treacherous, the quick and the stupid; those likable at first meeting as well as those utterly impossible. Of whatever nation and color they might be, she had learned that under their skins they were all just human beings.

But Nature—ah! she was ever changing. This girl who had seen so much of the world had never seen anything quite like the bits of scene she observed from the narrow window of the car. Not beautiful, perhaps, but suggestive and provocative of genre pictures which would remain in her memory long afterward. There were woods and fields, cranberry bogs and sand dunes, between the hamlets; and always through the open window the salt tang of the air delighted her. She was almost prepared to say she was glad she had ventured when she left the train at Paulmouth and saw her trunks put off upon the platform.

A teetering stage, with a rack behind for light baggage, drawn by a pair of lean horses, waited beside the station. The stage had been freshened for the season with a thin coat of yellow paint. The word "Cardhaven" was painted in bright blue letters on the doors of this ancient coach.

"No, ma'am! I can't possibly take your trunks," the driver said, politely explanatory. "Ye see, miss, I carry the mail this trip an' the parcel-post traffic is right heavy, as ye might say. . . . Belay that, Jerry!" he observed to the nigh horse that was stamping because of the pest of flies. "We'll cast off in a minute and get under way. . . . No, miss, I can't take 'em; but Perry Baker'll likely go over to the Haven to-night and he'll fetch 'em for ye. I got all the cargo I can load."

Soon the horses shacked out of town. The sandy road wandered through the pine woods where the hot June sunshine extracted the scent of balsam until its strength was almost overpowering. Louise, alone in the interior of the old coach, found herself pitching and tossing about as though in a heavy sea.

"It is fortunate I am a good sailor," she told herself, somewhat ruefully.

The driver was a large man in a yellow linen duster. He was not especially communicative—save to his horses. He told them frankly what he thought of them on several occasions! But "city folks" were evidently no novelty for him. As he put Louise and her baggage into the vehicle he had asked:

"Who you cal'latin' to stop with, miss?"

"I am going to Mr. Abram Silt's," Louise had told him.

"Oh! Cap'n Abe. Down on the Shell Road. I can't take ye that fur—ain't allowed to drive beyond the tavern. But 'tain't noways a fur walk from there."

He expressed no curiosity about her, or her business with the Shell Road storekeeper. That surprised Louise a little. She had presumed all these people would display Yankee curiosity.

It was not a long journey by stage, for which she was thankful. The noonday sun was hot and the interior of the turnout soon began to take on the semblance of a bake-oven. They came out at last on a wind-swept terrace and she gained her first unobstructed view of the ocean.

She had always loved the sea—its wideness, its mystery, its ever changing face. She watched the sweep of a gull following the crested windrow of the breakers on a near-by reef, busy with his fishing. All manner of craft etched their spars and canvas on the horizon, only bluer than the sea itself. Inshore was a fleet of small fry—catboats, sloops, dories under sail, and a smart smack or two going around to Provincetown with cargoes from the fish pounds.

"I shall like it," she murmured after a deeper breath.

They came to the outlying dwellings of Cardhaven; then to the head of Main Street that descended gently to the wharves and beaches of the inner harbor. Halfway down the hill, just beyond the First Church and the post-office, was the rambling, galleried old structure across the face of which, and high under its eaves, was painted the name "Cardhaven Inn." A pungent, fishy smell swept up the street with the hot breeze. The tide was out and the flats were bare.

The coach stopped before the post-office, and Louise got out briskly with her bag. The driver, backing down from his seat, said to her:

"If ye wait till I git out the mail I'll drive ye inter the tavern yard in style. I bait the horses there."

"Oh, I'll walk," she told him brightly. "I can get dinner there, I suppose?"

"Warn't they expectin' you at Cap'n Abe's?" the stage driver asked. "I want to know! Oh, yes. You can buy your dinner at the tavern. But 'tain't a long walk to Cap'n Abe's. Not fur beyond the Mariner's Chapel."

Louise thanked him. A young man was coming down the steps of the post-office. He was a more than ordinarily good-looking young fellow, deeply tanned, with a rather humorous twist to his shaven lips, and with steady blue eyes. He was dressed in quite common clothing: the jersey, high boots, and sou'wester of a fisherman.

He looked at Louise, but not offensively. He did not remove his hat as he spoke.

"I heard Noah say you wished to go to Cap'n Abe's store," he observed with neither an assumption of familiarity nor any bucolic embarrassment. "I am bound that way myself."

"Thank you!" she said with just enough dignity to warn him to keep his distance if he chanced to be contemplating anything familiar. "But I shall dine at the hotel first."

A brighter color flooded into his cheeks and Louise felt that she might have been too sharp with him. She mended this by adding:

"You may tell me how to get to the Shell Road and Mr. Silt's, if you will be so kind."

He smiled at that. Really, he was an awfully nice-looking youth! She had no idea that these longshore fishermen would be so gentlemanly and so good looking.

"Oh, you can't miss it. Take the first left-hand street, and keep on it.
Cap'n Abe's store is the only one beyond the Mariner's Chapel."

"Thank you," she said again and mounted the broad steps of the Inn. The young fellow hesitated as though he were inclined to enter too. But when Louise reached the piazza and glanced quickly down at him, he was moving on.

The cool interior of a broad hall with a stairway mounting out of it and a screened dining-room at one side, welcomed the girl. A bustling young woman in checked gingham, which fitted her as though it were a mold for her rather plump figure, met the visitor.

"How-do!" she said briskly. "Goin' to stop?"

"Only for dinner," Louise said, smiling—and when she smiled her gray eyes made friends.

"Almost over. But I'll run an' tell the cook to dish you up something hot. Come right this way an' wash. I'll fix you a table where it's cool. This is 'bout the first hot day we've had."

She showed the visitor into the dressing-room and then bustled away. Later she hovered about the table where Louise ate, the other boarders having departed.

"My name's Gusty Durgin," she volunteered. "I reckon you're one o' them movin' picture actresses they say are goin' to work down to The Beaches this summer."

"What makes you think so?" asked Louise, somewhat amused.

"Why—you kinder look it. I should say you had 'screen charm.' Oh! I been readin' up about you folks for a long time back. I subscribed to The Fillum Universe that tells all about you. I'd like to try actin' before the cam'ra myself. But I cal'late I ain't got much 'screen charm,'" the waitress added seriously. "I'm too fat. And I wouldn't do none of them comedy pictures where the fat woman always gets the worst of it. But you must take lovely photographs."

"I'm not sure that I do," laughed Louise.

"Land sakes! Course you do. Them big eyes o' yourn must just look fetchin' in a picture. I don't believe I've ever seen you in a movie, have I, Miss———?"

"Grayling."

"'Grayling'! Ain't that pretty?" Gusty Durgin gave an envious sigh. "Is it your honest to goodness, or just your fillum name?"

"My 'honest to goodness,'" the visitor confessed, bubbling with laughter.

"Land sakes! I should have to change mine all right. The kids at school useter call me 'Dusty Gudgeon.' Course, my right name's Augusta; but nobody ever remembers down here on the Cape to call anybody by such a long name. Useter be a boy in our school who was named 'Christopher Columbus George Washington Marquis de Lafayette Gallup.' His mother named him that. But everybody called him 'Lafe'—after Lafayette, ye see.

"Land sakes! I should just have to change my name if I acted in the pictures. Your complexion's real, too, ain't it?" pursued this waitress with histrionic ambitions. "Real pretty, too, if 'tis high colored. I expect you have to make up for the pictures, just the same."

"I suppose I should. I believe it is always necessary to accentuate the lights and shadows for the camera."

"'Accentuate'—yep. That's a good word. I'll remember that," said Gusty. "You goin' to stay down to The Beaches long—-and will you like it?"

"The Beaches?"

"That's where you'll work. At the Bozewell house. Swell bungalow. All the big bugs live along The Beaches."

"I am not sure just how long I shall stay," confessed Louise Grayling; "but I know I am going to like it."

CHAPTER II

CAP'N ABE

"I see by the Globe paper," Cap'n Abe observed, pushing up from his bewhiskered visage the silver-bowed spectacles he really did not need, "that them fellers saved from the wreck of the Gilbert Gaunt cal'late they went through something of an adventure."

"And they did," rejoined Cap'n Joab Beecher, "if they seen ha'f what they tell about."

"I dunno," the storekeeper went on reflectively, staring at a huge fishfly booming against one of the dusty window panes. "I dunno. Cap'n Am'zon was tellin' me once't about what he and two others went through with after the Posy Lass, out o' Bangor, was smashed up in a big blow off Hat'ras. What them fellers in the Globe paper tell about ain't a patch on what Cap'n Am'zon suffered."

There was an uncertain, troubled movement among Cap'n Abe's hearers. Even the fishfly stopped droning. Cap'n Beecher looked longingly through the doorway from which the sea could be observed as well as a strip of that natural breakwater called "The Neck," a barrier between the tumbling Atlantic and the quiet bay around which the main village of Cardhaven was set.

All the idlers in the store on this June afternoon were not natives. There were several young fellows from The Beaches—on the Shell Road to which Cap'n Abe's store was a fixture. In sight of The Beaches the wealthy summer residents had built their homes—dwellings ranging in architectural design from the mushroom-roofed bungalow to a villa in the style of the Italian Renaissance.

The villa in question had been built by I. Tapp, the Salt Water Taffy
King, and Lawford Tapp, only son of the house, was one of the audience in
Cap'n Abe's store.

"Cap'n Amazon said," boomed the storekeeper a good deal like the fishfly—"Cap'n Amazon said the Posy Lass was loaded with lumber and her cargo's 'bout all that kep' her afloat as fur as Hat'ras. Then the smashin' big seas that come aboard settled her right down like a wounded duck.

"The deck load went o' course; and about ev'rything else was cleaned off the decks that warn't bolted to 'em. The seas rose up and picked off the men, one after t'other, like a person'd clean off a beach plum bush."

"I shouldn't wonder," spoke up Cap'n Beecher, "if we seen some weather 'fore morning."

He was squinting through the doorway at an azure and almost speckless sky. There was an uneasy shuffling of boots. One of the boys from The Beaches giggled. Cap'n Abe—and the fishfly—boomed on together, the storekeeper evidently visualizing the scene he narrated and not the half-lighted and goods-crowded shop. At its best it was never well illumined. Had the window panes been washed there was little chance of the sunshine penetrating far save by the wide open door. On either hand as one entered were the rows of hanging oilskins, storm boots, miscellaneous clothing and ship chandlery that made up only a part of Cap'n Abe's stock.

There were blue flannel shirts dangling on wooden hangers to show all their breadth of shoulder and the array of smoked-pearl buttons. Brown and blue dungaree overalls were likewise displayed—grimly, like men hanging in chains. At the end of one row of these quite ordinary habiliments was one dress shirt with pleated bosom and cuffs as stiff as a board. Lawford Tapp sometimes speculated on that shirt—how it chanced to be in Cap'n Abe's stock and why it had hung there until the flies had taken title to it!

Centrally located was the stove, its four heavily rusted legs set in a shallow box which was sometimes filled with fresh sawdust. The stovepipe, guyed by wires to the ceiling, ran back to the chimney behind Cap'n Abe.

He stood at the one space that was kept cleared on his counter, hairy fists on the brown, hacked plank—the notches of the yard-stick and fathom-stick cut with a jackknife on its edge—his pale eyes sparkling as he talked.

"There she wallered," went on the narrator of maritime disaster, "her cargo held together by rotting sheathing and straining ribs. She was wrung by the seas like a dishrag in a woman's hands. She no longer mounted the waves; she bored through 'em. 'Twas a serious time—to hear Cap'n Am'zon tell it."

"I guess it must ha' been, Abe," Milt Baker put in hastily. "Gimme a piece o' that Brown Mule chewin' tobacker."

"I'll sell it to ye, Milt," the storekeeper said gently, with his hand on the slide of the cigar and tobacco showcase.

"That's what I mean," rejoined Milt boldly, fishing in his pocket for the required nickel.

"For fourteen days while the Posy Lass was drivin' off shore before an easterly gale, Cap'n Am'zon an' two others, lashed to the stump o' the fo'mast, ex-isted in a smother of foam an' spume, with the waves picklin' 'em ev'ry few minutes. And five raw potaters was all they had to eat in all that endurin' time!"

"Five potatoes?" Lawford Tapp cried. "For three men? And for fourteen days? Good-night!"

Cap'n Abe stared at him for a moment, his eyes holding sparks of indignation. "Young man," he said tartly, "you should hear Cap'n Am'zon himself tell it. You wouldn't cast no doubts upon his statement."

Cap'n Joab snorted and turned his back again. Young Tapp felt somewhat abashed.

"Yes, sir!" proceeded Cap'n Abe who seldom lost the thread of one of his stories, "they was lashed to that stump of a mast and they lived on them potaters—scraping 'em fine with their sheath-knives, and husbandin' 'em like they was jewels. One of 'em went mad."

"One o' the potaters?" gasped Amiel Perdue.

"Who went crazy—your brother, Cap'n Abe?" Milt asked cheerfully. He had squandered a nickel in trying to head off the flow of the storekeeper's story, and felt that he was entitled to something besides the Brown Mule.

Cap'n Abe kept to his course apparently unruffled: "Cap'n Am'zon an' the other feller lashed the poor chap—han's an' feet—and so kep' him from goin' overboard. But mebbe 'twarn't a marciful act after all. When they was rescued from the Posy Lass, her decks awash and her slowly breakin' up, there warn't nothing could be done for the feller that had lost his mind. He was put straightaway into a crazy-house when they got to port.

"Now, them fellers saved from the Gilbert Gaunt didn't go through nothin' like that, it stands to reason. Cap'n Am'zon——"

Lawford Tapp was gazing out of the door beside Cap'n Joab, whose deeply tanned, whisker-fringed countenance wore an expression of disgust.

"I declare! I'd love to see this wonderful brother of his. He must have
Baron Munchausen lashed to the post," the young man whispered.

"Never heard tell of that Munchausen feller," Cap'n Joab reflected. "Reckon he didn't sail from any of the Cape ports. But you let Abe tell it, Cap'n Am'zon Silt is the greatest navigator an' has the rip-snortin'est adventoors of airy deep-bottom sailor that ever chawed salt hoss."

"Did you ever see him?" Lawford asked.

"See who?"

"Cap'n Amazon?"

"No. I didn't never see him. But I've heard Cap'n Abe talk about him—standin' off an' on as ye might say—for twenty year and more."

"Odd you never met him, isn't it?"

"No. I never happened on Cap'n Am'zon when I was sea-farin'. And he ain't never been to Cardhaven to my knowledge."

"Never been here?" murmured Lawford Tapp more than a little surprised.
"Wasn't he born and brought up here?"

"No. Neither was Cap'n Abe. The Silts flourish, as ye might say—or, useter 'fore the fam'ly sort o' petered out—down New Bedford way. Cap'n Abe come here twenty-odd year back and opened this store. He's as salt as though he'd been a haddocker since he was weaned. But he's always stuck mighty close inshore. Nobody ever seen him in a boat—'ceptin' out in a dory fishin' for tomcod in the bay, and on a mighty ca'm day at that."

"How does it come that he is called captain, then?" Lawford asked, impressed by Cap'n Beecher's scorn of the storekeeper.

The captain reflected, his jaws working spasmodically. "It's easy 'nough to pick up skipper's title longshore. 'Most ev'ry man owns some kind of a boat; and o' course a man's cap'n of his own craft—or 'doughter be. But I reckon Abe Silt aimed his title honest 'nough."

"How?" urged Lawford.

"When Abe fust come here to Cardhaven there was still two-three wrecking comp'nies left on the Cape. Why, 'tain't been ten years since the Paulmouth Comp'ny wrecked the Mary Benson that went onto Sanders Reef all standin'. They made a good speck out o' the job, too.

"Wal, Abe bought into one o' the comp'nies—was the heaviest stockholder, in fac', so nat'rally was cap'n. He never headed no crew—not as I ever heard on. But the title kinder stuck; and I don't dispute Abe likes it."

"But about his brother—this Captain Amazon?" The line of Cap'n Joab Beecher's jaw, clean shaven above his whisker, looked very grim indeed, and he wagged his head slowly. "I don't know what to make of all this talk o' Cap'n Abe's," was his enigmatical reply.

Lawford turned to gaze curiously at the storekeeper. He certainly looked to be of a salt flavor, did Cap'n Abe Silt, though so many of his years had been spent behind the counter of this gloomy and cluttered shop. He was not a large man, nor commanding to look upon. His eyes were too mild for that—save when, perhaps, he grew excited in relating one of his interminable stories about Cap'n Amazon.

Cap'n Amazon Silt, it seemed, had been everything on sea and land that a mariner could be. No romance of the sea, or sea-going, was too remarkable to be capped by a tale of one of Cap'n Amazon's experiences. Some of these stories of wild and remarkable happenings, the storekeeper had told over and over again until they were threadbare.

Cap'n Abe's brown, gray-streaked beard swept the breast of his blue jersey. He was seldom seen without a tarpaulin on his head, and this had made his crown as bare and polished as a shark's tooth. Under the bulk of his jersey he might have been either thin or deep-chested, for the observer could not easily judge. And nobody ever saw the storekeeper's sleeves rolled up or the throat-latch of his shirt open.

Despite the fact that he held a thriving trade in his store on the Shell Road (especially during the summer season) Cap'n Abe lived emphatically a lonely life. Twenty years' residence meant little to Cardhaven folk. Cap'n Abe was still an outsider to people who were so closely married and intermarried that every human being within five miles of the Haven (not counting the aristocrats of The Beaches) could honestly call each of the others cousin in some degree.

The house and store was set on a lonely stretch of road. It was unlighted at night, for the last street lamp had been fixed by the town fathers at the Mariner's Chapel, as though they said to all mundane illumination as did King Canute to the sea, "Thus far shalt thou come and no farther."

Betty Gallup came cross lots each day to "rid up" Mr. Silt's living-room, which was behind the store, the chambers being overhead. She was gone home long before he put out the store lights and turned out the last lingering idler, for Cap'n Abe preferred to cook for himself. He declared the Widow Gallup did not know how to make a decent chowder, anyway; and as for lobscouse, or the proper frying of a mess of "blood-ends," she was all at sea. He intimated that there were digestive reasons for her husband's death at the early age of sixty-eight.

Milt Baker had successfully introduced another topic of conversation, far removed it would seem from any adventurous happening connected with Cap'n Amazon Silt's career.

"I hear tell," said Milt, chewing Brown Mule with gusto, "that them folks cavortin' down on The Beaches for a week past is movin' picture actors. That so, Lawford?"

"There's a camera man and a director, and several handy men arrived," the son of the Salt Water Taffy King replied. "They are going to use Bozewell's house for some pictures. The Bozewells are in Europe."

"But ain't none of the actorines come?" demanded Milt, who was a sad dog—let him tell it! He had been motorman on a street car in Providence for a couple of winters before he married Mandy Card, and now tried to keep green his reputation for sophistication.

"I believe not," Lawford answered, with reflection. "I presume the company will come later. The director is taking what he calls 'stills' of the several localities they propose using when the films are really made."

"One of 'em told me," chuckled Amiel Perdue, "that they was hopin' for a storm, so's to get a real wreck in the picture."

"Hoh!" snorted Cap'n Joab. "Fine time o' year to be lookin' for a no'theaster on the Cape."

"And do they reckon a craft'll drift right in here if there is a storm an' wrack herself to please 'em?" piped up Washy Gallup—no relation to Betty save through interminable cross-currents of Card and Baker blood.

"Sometimes them fillum fellers buy a boat an' wreck it a-purpose. Look what they did to the old Morning Star," Milt said. "I read once of a comp'ny putting two locomotives on one track an' running 'em full-tilt together so's to get a picture of the smashup."

"Crazy critters!" muttered Cap'n Joab.

"But wait till ye see the fillum actresses," Milt chuckled. "Tell ye what, boys, some of 'em 'll make ye open your eyes!"

"Ye better go easy. Milt, 'bout battin' your eyes," advised Amiel
Perdue. "Mandy ain't lost her eyesight none either."

Washy's thin whine broke through the guffaw: "I seen a picture at
Paulmouth once't about a feller and a girl lost in the woods o' Borneo.
It was a stirrin' picture. They was chased by headhunters, and one o'
these here big man-apes tackled 'em—what d'ye call that critter now?
Suthin' like ringin' a bell."

"Orang-outang," suggested Lawford.

"That's it. Sounds jest like the Baptist Meetin' House bell. It's cracked."

"Them orang-outangs don't sound like no bell—not when they holler," put in Cap'n Abe, leaning on his counter and staring at the tireless fishfly again. "Cap'n Am'zon Silt, when he was ashore once't in Borneo, met one o' them critters."

"Gosh all fishhooks!" ejaculated Milt. "Ain't there no place on this green airth that brother o' yourn ain't been, Cap'n Abe?"

"He ain't never been in jail, Milt," said the storekeeper mildly, and the assembly broke into an appreciative chuckle. It was well known that on the last Fourth of July Milt Baker had been shut into the calaboose at Paulmouth to sober up.

"As I was sayin'," pursued Cap'n Abe reflectively, "Cap'n Amazon went up country with a Dutchman—a trader, I b'lieve he said the man was—and they got into a part where the orang-outangs was plentiful."

"Jest as thick as sandpipers along The Beaches, I shouldn't wonder," put in Cap'n Joab, at last tempted beyond his strength.

"No; nor like mackerel when ye get a full seine-haul," responded the storekeeper, unruffled, "but thicker'n you'd want sand fleas to be if the fleas measured up to the size of orang-outangs."

Lawford Tapp burst into open laughter. "They can't catch you, can they, Cap'n Abe?" he said. "If that brother of yours has gone through one-half the perils by land and sea I've heard you tell about, he's beat out most sailors from old Noah down to Admiral Dewey."

Cap'n Abe's brows came together in pronounced disapproval. "Young man," he said, "if Cap'n Am'zon was here now ye wouldn't darst cast any aspersions on his word. He ain't the man to stand for't."

"Well, I'd like to see Cap'n Amazon," Lawford said lightly, "if only for the sake of asking him a question or two."

"You'll likely get your wish," returned the storekeeper tartly.

"What d'ye mean?" drawled Milt Baker, who always bobbed up serenely. "Ye don't say Cap'n Am'zon's likely to show up here at Cardhaven after all these years?"

There was barely a second's hesitation on Mr. Silt's part. Then he said: "That's exactly what I mean. I got a—ahem!—a letter from Cap'n Am'zon only lately."

"And he's comin' to see ye?" gasped Cap'n Joab, turning from the door to stare like the others at the storekeeper.

"Yes," the latter confessed. "And he's likely to stay quite a spell when he does come. Says suthin' 'bout settlin' down. He's gettin' along in years like the rest of us. Mebbe I'll let him keep store for me this summer whilst I take a vacation," added Cap'n Abe more briskly, "like I been wantin' to do for a long spell back."

"You took a vacation of a week or more about—was it ten year ago?" demanded Cap'n Joab. "I looked after the place for ye then."

"Ahem! I mean a real vacation," Cap'n Abe declared, still staring at the fishfly now feebly butting its head against the pane. "That week was when I went to the—'hem—buryin' of my a'nt, Joab. I'll go this time mebbe for two-three months. Take a v'y'ge somewhere, I've always wanted to."

"Land sakes!" exploded Cap'n Joab. "I know ye been talkin' 'bout
cruisin' around—to see your folks, or the like—for the longest spell.
But I didn't s'pose ye re'lly meant it. And your brother comin', too!
Well!"

"If he can tell of his adventures as well as you relate them," laughed Lawford, "Cap'n Amazon should be an addition to the Cardhaven social whirl."

"You take my advice, young man," Cap'n Abe said, with sternness, "and belay that sort o' talk afore Cap'n Am'zon when he does come. He's lived a rough sort o' life. He's nobody's tame cat. Doubt his word and he's jest as like as not to take ye by the scruff of the neck and duck ye in the water butt."

There was a general laugh. Almost always the storekeeper managed to turn the tables in some way upon any doubting Thomas that drifted into his shop. Because of his ability in this particular he had managed to hold his audience all these years.

Lawford could think of no reply with which to turn the laugh. His wit was not of a nimble order. He turned to the door again and suddenly a low ejaculation parted his lips.

"There's that girl again!"

Milt Baker screwed his neck around for a look. "See who's come!" he cackled. "I bet it's one o' them moving picture actresses."

Lawford cast on the ribald Milt a somewhat angry glance. Yet he did not speak again for a moment.

"Tidy craft," grunted Cap'n Joab, eying the young woman who was approaching the store along the white road.

"I saw her get out of Noah's ark when he landed at the post-office this noon," Lawford explained to Cap'n Joab. "She looks like a nice girl."

"Trim as a yacht," declared the old man admiringly.

She was plainly city bred—and city gowned—and she carried her light traveling bag by a strap over her shoulder. Her trim shoes were dusty from her walk and her face was pink under her wide hat brim.

Lawford stepped out upon the porch. His gaze was glued again to this vision of young womanhood; but as he stood at one side she did not appear to see him as she mounted the steps.

The heir of the Salt Water Taffy King was twenty-four, his rather desultory college course behind him; and he thought his experience with girls had been wide. But he had never seen one just like Louise Grayling. He was secretly telling himself this as she made her entrance into Cap'n Abe's store.

CHAPTER III

IN CAP'N ABE'S LIVING-ROOM

Louise came into the store smiling and the dusty, musty old place seemed actually to brighten in the sunshine of her presence. Her big gray eyes (they were almost blue when their owner was in an introspective mood) now sparkled as her glance swept Cap'n Abe's stock-in-trade—the shelves of fly-specked canned goods and cereal packages, with soap, and starch, and half a hundred other kitchen goods beyond; the bolts of calico, gingham, "turkey red," and mill-ends; the piles of visored caps and boxes of sunbonnets on the counter: the ship-lanterns, coils of rope, boathooks, tholepins hanging in wreaths; bailers, clam hoes, buckets, and the thousand and one articles which made the store on the Shell Road a museum that later was sure to engage the interest of the girl.

Now, however, the clutter of the shop gained but fleeting notice from Louise. Her gaze almost immediately fastened upon the figure of the bewhiskered old man, with spectacles and sou'wester both pushed back on his bald crown, who mildly looked upon her—his smile somehow impressing Louise Grayling as almost childish, it was so kindly.

Cap'n Joab had dodged through the door after Lawford Tapp. The other boys from The Beaches followed their leader. Old Washy Gallup and Amiel Perdue suddenly remembered that it was almost chore time as this radiant young woman said:

"I wish to see Mr. Abram Silt—Captain Silt. Is he here?"

"I'm him, miss," Cap'n Abe returned politely.

Milt Baker surely would have remained of all the crowd of idlers, gaping oilily at the visitor across the top of the rusty stove, had not a shrill feminine voice been heard outside the store,

"Is Milt Baker there? Ain't none o' you men seen him? Land sakes! he's as hard to hold as the greased pig on Fourth o' July—an' jest 'bout as useful."

"Milt," said Cap'n Abe suggestively, "I b'lieve I hear Mandy callin' you."

"I'm a-comin'!—I'm a-comin', Mandy!" gurgled Milt, cognizant of the girl's gay countenance turned upon him.

"What did you want, miss?" asked Cap'n Abe, as the recreant husband of the militant Mandy stumbled over his own feet getting out of the store.

Louise bubbled over with laughter; she could not help it. Cap'n Abe's bearded countenance broke slowly into an appreciative grin.

"Yes," he said, "she does have him on a leadin' string. I do admit
Mandy's a card."

The girl, quick-witted as she was bright looking, got his point almost at once. "You mean she was a Card before she married him?"

"And she's a Card yet," Cap'n Abe said, nodding. "Guess you know a thing or two, yourself. What can I do for you?"

"You can say: 'Good-evening, Niece Louise,'" laughed the girl, coming closer to the counter upon which the storekeeper still leaned.

"Land sakes!"

"My mother was a Card. That is how I came to see your joke, Uncle Abram."

"Land sakes!"

"Don't you believe me?"

"I—I ain't got but one niece in the world," mumbled Cap'n Abe.
"An'—an' I never expected to see her."

"Louise Grayling, daughter of Professor Ernest Grayling and Miriam Card—your half-sister's child. See here—and here." She snapped open her bag, resting it on the counter, and produced an old-fashioned photograph of her mother, a letter, yellowed by time, that Cap'n Abe had written Professor Grayling long before, and her own accident policy identification card which she always carried.

Cap'n Abe stretched forth a hairy hand, and it closed on Lou's as a sunfish absorbs its prey. The girl's hand to her wrist was completely lost in the grip; but despite its firmness Cap'n Abe's handclasp was by no means painful. He released her and, leaning back, smiled benignly.

"Land sakes!" he said again. "I'm glad to see little Mirry's girl. An' you do favor her a mite. But I guess you take mostly after the Graylings."

"People say I am like my father."

"An' a mighty nice lookin' man—an' a pleasant—as I remember him," Cap'n
Abe declared.

"Come right in here, into my sittin'-room, Niece Louise, an' lemme take a look at you. Land sakes!"

He lifted the flap in the counter to let her through. The doorway beyond gave entrance to a wide hall, or "entry," between the store and the living-room. The kitchen was in a lean-to at the back. The table in the big room was already spread with a clean red-and-white checked tablecloth and set with heavy chinaware for a meal. A huge caster graced the center of the table, containing glass receptacles for salt, red and black pepper, catsup, vinegar, and oil. Knives, forks, and spoons for two—all of utilitarian style—were arranged with mathematical precision beside each plate.

In one window hung a pot with "creeping Jew" and inchplant, the tendrils at least a yard long. In the other window was a blowzy-looking canary in a cage. A corpulent tortoise-shell cat occupied the turkey-red cushion in one generous rocking chair, There was a couch with a faded patchwork coverlet, several other chairs, and in a glass-fronted case standing on the mantlepiece a model of a brigantine in full sail, at least two feet tall.

"Sit down," said Cap'n Abe heartily. "Drop your dunnage right down there," as Louise slipped the strap of her bag from her shoulder. "Take that big rocker. Scat, you, Diddimus! and let the young lady have your place."

"Oh, don't bother him, Uncle Abram. What a beauty he is," Louise said, as the tortoise-shell—without otherwise moving—opened one great, yellow eye.

"He's a lazy good-for-nothing," Cap'n Abe said mildly. "Friends with all the mice on the place, I swan! But sometimes he's the only human critter I have to talk to. 'Cept Jerry."

"Jerry?"

"The bird," explained Cap'n Abe, easing himself comfortably into a chair, his guest being seated, and resting his palms on his knees as he gazed at her out of his pale blue eyes. "He's a lot of comfort—Jerry. An' he useter be a great singer. Kinder gittin' old, now, like the rest of us.

"Does seem too bad," went on Cap'n Abe reflectively, "how a bird like him has got to live in a cage all his endurin' days. Jerry's a prisoner—like I been. I ain't never had the freedom I wanted, Miss———?

"Louise, please. Uncle Abram. Lou Grayling," the girl begged, but smiling.

"Then just you call me Cap'n Abe. I'm sort o' useter that," the storekeeper said.

"Of course I will. But why haven't you been free?" she asked, reverting to his previous topic. "Seems to me—down here on the Cape where the sea breezes blow, and everything is open——"

"Yes, 'twould seem so," Cap'n Abe said, but he said it with hesitation. "I been some hampered all my life, as ye might say. 'Tis something that was bred in me. But as for Jerry———

"Jerry was give to me by a lady when he was a young bird. After a while I got thinkin' a heap about him bein' caged, and one sunshiny day—it was a marker for days down here on the Cape, an' we have lots on 'em! One sunshiny day I opened his door and opened the window, and I says: 'Scoot! The hull world's yourn!'"

"And didn't he go?" asked the girl, watching the rapt face of the old man.

"Did he go? Right out through that window with a song that'd break your heart to hear, 'twas so sweet. He pitched on the old apple tree yonder—the August sweet'nin'—and I thought he'd bust his throat a-tellin' of how glad he was to be free out there in God's sunshine an' open air."

"He came back, I see," said Louise thoughtfully.

"That's just it!" cried Cap'n Abe, shaking his head till the tarpaulin fell off and he forgot to pick it up. "That's just it. He come back of his own self. I didn't try to ketch him. When it grew on toward sundown an' the air got kinder chill, I didn't hear Jerry singin' no more. I'd seen him, off'n on, flittin' 'bout the yard all day. When I come in here to light the hangin'-lamp cal'latin' to make supper, I looked over there at the window. I'd shut it. There was Jerry on the window sill, humped all up like an old woman with the tisic."

"The poor thing!" was Lou's sympathetic cry.

"Yes," said Cap'n Abe, nodding. "He warn't no more fit to be let loose than nothin' 'tall. And I wonder if I be," added the storekeeper. "I've been caged quite a spell how.

"But now tell me, Niece Louise," he added with latent curiosity, "how did you find your way here?"

"Father says—'Daddy-professor,' you know is what I call him. He says if we had not always been traveling when I was not at school, I should have known you long ago. He thinks very highly of my mother's people."

"I wanter know!"

"He says you are the 'salt of the earth'—that is his very expression."

"Yes. We're pretty average salt, I guess," admitted Cap'n Abe. "I never seen your father but once or twice. You see, Louise, your mother was a lot younger'n me an' Am'zon."

"Who?"

"Cap'n Am'zon. Oh! I ain't the only uncle you got," he said, watching her narrowly. "Cap'n Am'zon Silt——"

"Have I another relative? How jolly!" exclaimed Louise, clasping her hands.

"Ye-as. Ain't it? Jest," Cap'n Abe said. "Ahem! your father never spoke of Cap'n Am'zon?".

"I don't believe daddy-prof even knew there was such a person."

"Mebbe not. Mebbe not," Cap'n Abe agreed hastily. "And not to be wondered at. You see, Am'zon went to sea when he was only jest a boy."

"Did he?"

"Yep. Ran away from home—like most boys done in them days, for their mothers warn't partial to the sea—and shipped aboard the whaler South Sea Belle. He tied his socks an' shirt an' a book o' navigation he owned, up in a handkerchief, and slipped out over the shed roof one night, and away he went." Cap'n Abe told the girl this with that far-away look on his face that usually heralded one of his tales about Cap'n Amazon.

"I can remember it clear 'nough. He walked all the way to New Bedford. We lived at Rocky Head over against Bayport. Twas quite a step to Bedford. The South Sea Belle was havin' hard time makin' up her crew. She warn't a new ship. Am'zon was twelve year old an' looked fifteen. An' he was fifteen 'fore he got back from that v'y'ge. Mebbe I'll tell ye 'bout it some time—or Cap'n Am'zon will. He's been a deep-bottom sailor from that day to this."

"And where is he now?" asked Louise.

"Why—mebbe!—he's on his way here. I shouldn't wonder. He might step in at that door any minute," and Cap'n Abe's finger indicated the store door.

There was the sound of a footstep entering the store as he spoke. The storekeeper arose. "I'll jest see who 'tis," he said.

While he was absent Louise laid aside her hat and made a closer inspection of the room and its furniture. Everything was homely but comfortable. There was a display of marine art upon the walls. All the ships were drawn exactly, with the stays, spars, and all rigging in place, line for line. They all sailed, too, through very blue seas, the crest of each wave being white with foam.

Flanking the model of the brigantine on the mantle were two fancy shell pieces—works of art appreciated nowhere but on the coast. The designs were ornate; but what they could possibly represent Louise was unable to guess.

She tried to interest the canary by whistling to him and sticking her pink finger between the wires of his cage. He was ruffled and dull-eyed like all old birds of his kind, and paid her slight attention. When she turned to Diddimus she had better success. He rolled on his side, stuck all his claws out and drew them in again luxuriously, purring meanwhile like a miniature sawmill.

When Cap'n Abe came back the girl asked:

"Wasn't your customer a young man I saw on the porch as I came in?"

"Yep. Lawford Tapp. Said he forgot some matches and a length o' ropeyarn. I reckon you went to that young man's head. And his top hamper ain't none too secure, Niece Louise."

"Oh, did I?" laughed the girl, understanding perfectly. "How nice."

"Nice? That's how ye take it. Lawford Tapp ain't a fav'rite o' mine."

"But he seemed very accommodating to-day when I asked him how to reach your store."

"So you met him up town?"

"Yes, Uncle Abe."

"He's perlite enough," scolded the storekeeper. "But I don't jest fancy the cut of his jib. Wanted to know if you was goin' to stop here."

"Oh!" exclaimed Louise. "That is what I want to know myself. Am I?"

CHAPTER IV

THE SHADOW OF COMING EVENTS

Cap'n Abe reached for his spectacles and pulled them down upon his nose to look at his guest through the lenses. Not that they aided his sight in the least; but the act helped to cover the fact that he was startled.

"Stop here?" he repeated. "Where's your father? Ain't he with you up to the Inn?"

"No, Cap'n Abe. He is in Boston to-day. But he will sail to-morrow for a summer cruise with a party for scientific research. I am all alone. So I came down here to Cape Cod."

Louise said it directly and as simply as the storekeeper himself might have spoken. Yet it seemed really difficult for Cap'n Abe to get her meaning into his head.

"You mean you was intendin' to cast anchor here—with me?"

"If it is agreeable. Of course I'll pay my board if you'll let me.
You have a room to spare, haven't you?"

"Land sakes, yes!"

"And I am not afraid to use my hands. I might even be of some slight use," and she smiled at him till his own slow smile responded, troubled and amazed though he evidently was by her determination. "I've roughed it a good deal with daddy-prof. I can cook—some things. And I can do housework——"

"Bet Gallup does that," interposed Cap'n Abe, finally getting his bearings. "Hi-mighty, ye did take me aback all standin', Niece Louise! Ye did, for a fac'. But why not? Land sakes, there's room enough, an' to spare! Ye don't hafter put them pretty han's to housework. Betty Gallup'll do all that. An' you don't have to pay no board money. As for cookin'——That remin's me. I'd better git to work on our supper. We'll be sharp for it 'fore long."

"And—and I may stay?" asked Louise, with some little embarrassment now. "You are sure it won't inconvenience you?"

"Bless you, no! I cal'late it's more likely to inconvenience you," and Cap'n Abe chuckled mellowly. "I don't know what sort o' 'roughin' it' you've done with your pa; but if there's anything much rougher than an ol' man's housekeepin' down here on the Cape, it must be pretty average rough!"

She laughed gayly. "You can't scare me!"

"Ain't a-tryin' to," he responded, eying her admiringly. "You're an able seaman, I don't dispute. An' we'll git along fine. Hi-mighty! there's Am'zon!"

Louise actually turned around this time to look at the door, expecting to see the mariner in question enter. Then she said, half doubtfully: