The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ were any tricks of navigation that the boy did not learn, or anything about the mysterious doings of the sea, it was only because the captain himself fell short of complete knowledge.

      In everything the captain had indulged him. Yet even though he had never inflicted punishment, and even though young Hal had grown up to have pretty much his own way, the captain had denied spoiling him.

      “Only poor material will spoil,” he had always said. “You can’t spoil the genuine, thoroughbred stuff. No, nor break it, either. I know what I’m doing. Whose business is it, but my own?”

      Sharing a thousand interests in common with Hal, the captain’s love and hope had burned ever higher and more steadily. As the violent and grief-stricken past had faded gradually into a vague melancholy, the future had seemed beckoning with ever clearer cheer. The captain had come to have dreams of some day seeing Hal master of the biggest ship afloat. He had formed a hundred plans and dreamed a thousand dreams, all more or less enwoven with the sea. And though Hal, when he had finished school and had entered college, had begun to show strange aptitude for languages—especially the Oriental tongues—still the old man had never quite abandoned hope that some day the grandson might stand as captain on the bridge of a tall liner.

      For many years another influence had had its part in molding Hal—the influence of Ezra Trefethen, whereof now a word or two. Ezra, good soul, had lived at Snug Haven ever since Hal’s birth, less as a servant than as a member of the household. Once he had cooked for the captain, on a voyage out to Japan. His simple philosophy and loyalty, as well as his exceeding skill with saucepans, had greatly attached the captain to him—this being, you understand, in the period after the captain’s marriage had made of him another and a better man.

      When Hal’s mother had died, the captain had given Ezra dominion over the “galley” at Snug Haven, a dominion which had gradually extended itself to the whole house and garden, and even to the upbringing of the boy.

      Together, in a hit-or-miss way that had scandalized the good wives of South Endicutt, Briggs and Trefethen had reared little Hal. The captain had given no heed to hints that he needed a house-keeper or a second wife. Trefethen had been a powerful helper with the boy. Deft with the needle, he had sewed for Hal. He had taught him to keep his little room—his little “first mate’s cabin,” as he had always called it—very shipshape. And he had taught him sea lore, too; and at times when the captain had been abroad on the great waters, had taken complete charge of the fast-growing lad.

      Thus the captain had been ever more and more warmly drawn towards Ezra. The simple old fellow had followed the body of the captain’s son up there to the grave on the hill, and had wept sincerely in the captain’s sorrow. Together, Briggs and Ezra had kept the cemetery lot in order. Evenings without number, after little Hal had been tucked into bed, the two ageing men had sat and smoked together.

      Almost as partners in a wondrous enterprise, they two had watched Hal grow. Ezra had been just as proud as the captain himself, when the sturdy, black-haired, blue-eyed boy had entered high school and had won his place at football and on the running-track. When “Hal” had become “Master Hal,” for him, on the boy’s entering college, the old servitor had come to look upon him with something of awe, for now Hal’s studies had lifted him beyond all possible understanding. Old Ezra had thrilled with pride as real and as proprietary as any Captain Briggs had felt.

      Thus, the belovèd idol of the two indulgent old sea-dogs, Hal had grown up.

      CHAPTER XIV

      A VISITOR FROM THE LONG AGO

      As the captain sat there expectantly on the piazza, telescope across his knees, dog by his side, a step sounded in the hallway of Snug Haven, and out issued Ezra, blinking in the sunshine, screwing up his leathery, shrewd, humorous face, and from under a thin palm squinting across the harbor.

      “Ain’t sighted him yit, cap’n?” demanded he, in a cracked voice. “It’s past six bells o’ the aft’noon watch. You’d oughta be sightin’ him pretty soon, now, seems like.”

      “I think so, too,” the captain answered. “He wrote they’d leave Boston this morning early. Seems as if they should have made Endicutt Harbor by now.”

      “Right, cap’n. But don’t you worry none. They can’t of fell foul o’ nothin’. Master Hall, he’s an A1 man. He’ll make port afore night, cap’n, never you fear. He’s gotta! Ain’t I got a leg o’ lamb on to roast, an’ ain’t I made his favorite plum-cake with butter-an’-sugar sauce? Aye, he’ll tie up at Snug Haven afore sundown, never you fear!”

      The captain only grunted; and old Trefethen, after careful but fruitless examination of the harbor, went back into the house again, very much like those figures on toy barometers that come out in good weather and retire in bad.

      Left alone once more, the captain drew deeply at his pipe and glanced with satisfaction at his cozy domain. A pleasant place it was, indeed, and trimly eloquent of the hand of an old seafaring man. The precision wherewith the hedge was cut, the whitewashed spotlessness of the front gate—a gate on the “port” post of which was fastened a red ship’s-lantern, with a green one on the “starboard”—and even the sanded walks, edged with conch-shells, all spelled “shipshape.”

      Trailing woodbine covered the fences to right and left, and along these fences grew thrifty berry bushes. Apple-trees, whereon green buttons of fruit had already set, shaded the lawn, interspersed with flower-beds edged with whitewashed rocks—flower-beds bright with hollyhocks, peonies and poppies.

      Back of the house a vegetable-garden gave promise of great increase; and in the hen-yard White Leghorns and Buff Orpingtons pursued the vocations of all well-disposed poultry. A Holstein cow, knee-deep in daisies on the gentle hill-slope behind Snug Haven, formed part of the household; and last of all came the bees, denizens of six hives not far from the elm-shaded well.

      But the captain’s special pride centered in the gleaming white flagpole, planted midway of the front lawn—a pole from which flew the Stars and Stripes, together with a big blue house-flag bearing a huge “B” of spotless white. This flag and a little cannon of gleaming brass, from which on every holiday the captain fired a salute, formed his chief treasures; by which token you shall read the heart of the old man, and see that, for all his faring up and down the world, a certain curious simplicity had at the end developed itself in him.

      Thus that June afternoon, sitting in state amid his possessions, the captain waited. Waited, dressed in his very best, for the homecoming of the boy on whom was concentrated all the affection of a nature now powerful to love, as in the old and evil days it had been violent to hate. His face, as he sat there, was virile, patriarchal, dignified with that calm nobility of days when old age is “frosty but kindly.” With placid interest he watched a robin on the lawn, and listened to the chickadees’ piping monotone in the huge maple by the gate. Those notes seemed to blend with the metallic music of hammer and anvil somewhere down the village street. Tunk-tunk! Clink-clank-clink! sang the hammer from the shop of Peter Trumett, as Peter forged new links for the anchor-chain of the Lucy Bell, now in port for repairs. Then a voice, greeting the captain from the rock-nubbled roadway, drew the old man’s gaze.

      “How do, cap’n?” called a man from the top of a slow-moving load of kelp. “I’m goin’ up-along. Anythin’ I kin do fer you?”

      “Nothing, Jacob,” answered Briggs. “Thank you, just the same. Oh, Jacob! Wait a minute!”

      “Hoa, s-h-h-h-h!” commanded the kelp-gatherer. “What is it, cap’n?”

      The old man arose, placed his telescope carefully СКАЧАТЬ