Sheila of Big Wreck Cove. James A. Cooper

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СКАЧАТЬ families of strong, handsome, brown men and black-eyed, glossy-haired women who flashed their white teeth in smiles that were almost startling. Now one end of "the port," as the village of Big Wreck Cove was usually called by the natives, was known as Portygee Town.

      Wreckers' Head boasted of several homes of retired shipmasters and owners of Cap'n Ira's ilk. These ancient sea dogs, on such a day as this, were unfailingly found "walking the poop" of their front yards, or wherever they could take their diurnal exercise, binoculars or spyglass in hand, their vision more often fixed seaward than on the land.

      Cap'n Ira had scarcely put the glass to his eye for a first squint at his "position" when he exclaimed:

      "I swan! That's a master-pretty sight. I ain't seen a prettier in many a day. Come here and look at this craft, Prudence."

      She hurried to join him. Her motions when she was on her feet were birdlike, yet there was the same unsteadiness in her walk as in Cap'n Ira's. Only, at the moment, he did not see it, for his eye was glued to the telescope.

      "What do you see, Ira?" she asked.

      "Clap this glass to your eye," said her husband. He steadied the telescope, having pointed it for her. "See that suit of sails? Ain't they grand? And the taper of them masts? She's a bird!"

      "Why, what schooner is it?" asked Prudence. "I never saw her before, did I? She's bearing in for the cove."

      "I cal'late she is," agreed Cap'n Ira. "And I cal'late by the newness of that suit of sails and her lines and all that she's Tunis Latham's new craft that he went up to Marblehead last week to bring down here and put into commission."

      "The Seamew!" cried Prudence, in a pleased voice. "Isn't she a pretty sight?"

      "She's a sightly craft. Looks more like a racing yacht than a cargo boat. Still and all, Tunis has got judgment. And he's put nigh every cent he's got, all Peke Latham left him, into this schooner. And she not new."

      "I hope Tunis has made no mistake," sighed Prudence, releasing the glass for Ira to look through once more. "There has been trouble enough over Peleg Latham's money."

      "More trouble than the money amounted to. Split the family wide open. 'Rion Latham was saying to me he believed Peke never meant the money should go all one way. The Medway Lathams, them 'Rion belongs to, is all as sore as carbuncles about Tunis getting it. But I tell Tunis as long as the court says the money should be his, let 'Rion and all them yap like the hungry dogs they be. Tunis has got the marrer bone."

      "Does seem a pity," the old woman said, still watching the white splotch against the background of gray and blue. "Families ought to be at peace."

      "Peace! I swan!" snorted Cap'n Ira. "'Rion Latham is about as much given to peace as a wild tagger. But he knows which half of his biscuit's buttered. He'll sail with Tunis as long as Tunis pays him wages."

      The captain continued to study the approaching schooner while Prudence went back to her household tasks.

CHAPTER II

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THE CAPTAIN OF THE SEAMEW

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      Tunis Latham's Seamew, tacking for the channel into Big Wreck Cove, wings full-spread, skimming the heaving blue of the summer sea, looked like a huge member of the tern family. From Wreckers' Head and the other sand bluffs guarding this roadstead from the heave of the Atlantic rollers, the schooner with her yachtlike lines was truly a picture to please the most exacting mariner.

      On her deck paced the young captain whose personal affairs had been a subject of comment between Cap'n Ira Ball and his wife. He was a heavy-set, upstanding, blue-jerseyed figure, lithe and as spry on his feet as a cat. Tunis Latham was thirty, handsome in the bold way of longshore men, and ruddy-faced. He had crisp, short, sandy hair; his cheeks, chin, and lip were scraped as clean as his palm; his eyes were like blue-steel points, but with humorous wrinkles at the outer corners of them, matched by a faint smile that almost always wreathed his lips. Altogether he was a man that a woman would be sure to look at twice.

      The revelation of the lighter traits of his character counteracted the otherwise sober look of Tunis Latham. His sternness and fitness to command were revealed at first glance; his softer attributes dawned upon one later.

      As he swayed back and forth across the deck of the flying Seamew, rolling easily in sailor gait to the pitching of the schooner, his sharp glance cast alow and then aloft betrayed the keen perception and attentive mind of the master mariner, while his surface appearance merely suggested a young man pridefully enjoying the novelty of pacing the deck of his first command. For this was the maiden trip of the Seamew under this name and commanded by this master.

      She was not a new vessel, but neither was she old. At least, her decks were not marred, her rails were ungashed with the wear of lines, and even her fenders were almost shop-new. Of course, any craft may have a fresh suit of sails; and new paint and gilding on the figurehead or a new name board under the stern do not bespeak a craft just off the builder's ways. Yet there was an appearance about the schooner-yacht which would assure any able seaman at first glance that she was still to be sea-tried. She was like a maiden at her first dance, just venturing out upon the floor.

      An old salt hung to the Seamew's wheel as the bonny craft sped channelward. Horace Newbegin was a veritable sea dog. He had sailed every navigable sea in all this watery world, and sailed in almost every conceivable sort of craft. And he had sailed many voyages under Tunis Latham's father, who had owned and commanded the four-master Ada May, which, ill-freighted and ill-fated at last, had struck and sunk on the outer Hebrides, carrying to the bottom most of the hands as well as the commander of the partially insured ship.

      This misfortune had kept Tunis Latham out of a command of his own until he was thirty; for Cape Cod boys that come of masters' families and are born navigators usually tread their own decks years before the age at which Tunis was pacing that of the Seamew on this summer day.

      "How does she handle now, Horry?" asked the skipper, wheeling suddenly to face the old steersman.

      "Thar's still that tug to sta'bo'd, Captain Tunis," growled the old man.

      "But you keep her full on her course."

      "Spite o' that? In course. But I can feel her tuggin' like a big bluefish trying to bolt with hook and sinker. Never did feel that same tug to sta'bo'd but once before on any craft. I told you that."

      Tunis Latham nodded. The old man's keen eyes tried to read the skipper's face. He could scan the signs in sea and sky at a glance, but he confessed that the captain of the Seamew revealed no more of his inner thoughts than had the mahogany countenance of the older Captain Latham with whom Horry Newbegin had so long sailed.

      "Well," the steersman said finally, "I've told ye all I can tell ye. That other schooner that had a tug to sta'bo'd like this, the Marlin B., got a bad name from the Georges to Monomoy P'int. You know that."

      "Cat's foot!" ejaculated Tunis cheerfully. "The Marlin B. was sold for a pleasure yacht and taken СКАЧАТЬ