Part 3

Having come, at last, to a doubtful lane, sparsely spread with ice, Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl were halted. They were then not more than half a mile from the rocks of Scalawag. From the substantial ground of a commodious block, with feet spread to brace themselves against the pitch of the pan as a man stands on a heaving deck, they appraised the chances and were disheartened. The lane was like a narrow arm of the sea, extending, as nearly as could be determined in the dusk, far into the floe; and there was an opposite shore--another commodious pan. In the black water of the arm there floated white blocks of ice. Some were manifestly substantial: a leaping man could pause to rest; but many--necessary pans, these, to a crossing of the lane--were as manifestly incapable of bearing a man up.

As the pan upon which Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl stood lay near the edge of the floe, the sea was running up the lane in almost undiminished swells--the long, slow waves of a great ground swell, not a choppy wind-lop, but agitated by the wind and occasionally breaking. It was a thirty-foot sea in the open. In the lane it was somewhat less--not much, however; and the ice in the lane and all round about was heaving in it--tumbled about, rising and falling, the surface all the while at a changing slant from the perpendicular.

Rowl was uneasy.

"What you think, Tommy?" said he. "I don't like t' try it. I 'low we better not."

"We can't turn back."

"No; not very well."

"There's a big pan out there in the middle. If a man could reach that he could choose the path beyond."

"'Tis not a big pan."

"Oh, 'tis a fairish sort o' pan."

"'Tis not big enough, Tommy."

Tommy Lark, staggering in the motion of the ice, almost off his balance, peered at the pan in the middle of the lane.

"'Twould easily bear a man," said he.

"'Twould never bear two men."

"Maybe not."

"Isn't no 'maybe' about it," Rowl declared. "I'm sure 'twouldn't bear two men."

"No," Tommy Lark agreed. "I 'low 'twouldn't."

"A man would cast hisself away tryin' t' cross on that small ice."

"I 'low he might."

"Well, then," Rowl demanded, "what we goin' t' do?"

"We're goin' t' cross, isn't we?"

"'Tis too parlous a footin' on them small cakes."

"Ay; 'twould be ticklish enough if the sea lay flat an' still all the way. An' as 'tis----"

"'Tis like leapin' along the side of a steep."

"Wonderful steep on the side o' the seas."

"Too slippery, Tommy. It can't be done. If a man didn't land jus' right he'd shoot off."

"That he would, Sandy!"

"Well?"

"I'll go first, Sandy. I'll start when we lies in the trough. I 'low I can make that big pan in the middle afore the next sea cants it. You watch me, Sandy, an' practice my tactics when you follow. I 'low a clever man can cross that lane alive."

"We're in a mess out here!" Sandy Rowl complained. "I wish we hadn't started."

"'Tisn't so bad as all that."

"A loud folly!" Rowl growled.

"Ah, well," Tommy Lark replied, "a telegram's a telegram; an' the need o' haste----"

"'Twould have kept well enough."

"'Tis not a letter, Sandy."

"Whatever it is, there's no call for two men t' come into peril o' their lives----"

"You never can tell."

"I'd not chance it again for----"

"We isn't drowned yet."

"Yet!" Rowl exclaimed. "No--not yet! We've a minute or so for prayers!"

Tommy Lark laughed.

"I'll get under way now," said he. "I'm not so very much afraid o' failin'."

* * * * *

There was no melodrama in the situation. It was a commonplace peril of the coast; it was a reasonable endeavor. It was thrilling, to be sure--the conjunction of a living peril with the emergency of the message. Yet the dusk and sweeping drizzle of rain, the vanishing lights of Scalawag Harbor, the interruption of the lane of water, the mounting seas, their declivities flecked with a path of treacherous ice, all were familiar realities to Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl. Moreover, a telegram was not a letter. It was an urgent message. It imposed upon a man's conscience the obligation to speed it. It should be delivered with determined expedition. Elsewhere, in a rural community, for example, a good neighbor would not hesitate to harness his horse on a similar errand and travel a deep road of a dark night in the fall of the year; nor, with the snow falling thick, would he confront a midnight trudge to his neighbor's house with any louder complaint than a fretful growl.

It was in this spirit, after all, touched with an intimate solicitude which his love for Elizabeth Luke aroused, that Tommy Lark had undertaken the passage of Scalawag Run. The maid was ill--her message should be sped. As he paused on the brink of the lane, however, waiting for the ice to lie flat in the trough, poised for the spring to the first pan, a curious apprehension for the safety of Sandy Rowl took hold of him, and he delayed his start.

"Sandy," said he, "you be careful o' yourself."

"I will that!" Sandy declared. He grinned. "You've no need t' warn me, Tommy," he added.

"If aught should go amiss with you," Tommy explained, "'twould be wonderful hard--on Elizabeth."

Sandy Rowl caught the honest truth and unselfishness of the warning in Tommy Lark's voice.

"I thanks you, Tommy," said he. "'Twas well spoken."

"Oh, you owes me no thanks," Tommy replied simply. "I'd not have the maid grieved for all the world."

"I'll tell her that you said so."

Tommy was startled.

"You speak, Sandy," said he in gloomy foreboding, "as though I had come near t' my death."

"We've both come near t' death."

"Ay--maybe. Well--no matter."

"'Tis a despairful thing to say."

"I'm not carin' very much what happens t' my life," young Tommy declared. "You'll mind that I said so. An' I'm glad that I isn't carin' very much any more. Mark that, Sandy--an' remember."

Between the edge of Tommy Lark's commodious pan and the promising block in the middle of the lane lay five cakes of ice. They varied in size and weight; and they were swinging in the swell--climbing the steep sides of the big waves, riding the crests, slipping downhill, tipped to an angle, and lying flat in the trough of the seas. In respect to their distribution they were like stones in a brook: it was a zigzag course--the intervals varied. Leaping from stone to stone to cross a brook, using his arms to maintain a balance, a man can not pause; and his difficulty increases as he leaps--he grows more and more confused, and finds it all the while harder to keep upright. What he fears is a mossy stone and a rolling stone. The small cakes of ice were as slippery as a mossy stone in a brook, and as treacherously unstable as a rolling stone; and in two particulars they were vastly more difficult to deal with; they were all in motion, and not one of them would bear the weight of a man. There was more ice in the lane. It was a mere scattering of fragments and a gathered patch or two of slush.

Tommy Lark's path to the pan in the middle of the lane was definite: the five small cakes of ice--he must cover the distance in six leaps without pause; and, having come to the middle of the lane, he could rest and catch his breath while he chose out the course beyond. If there chanced to be no path beyond, discretion would compel an immediate return.

"Well," said he, crouching for the first leap, "I'm off, whatever comes of it!"

"Mind the slant o' the ice!"

"I'll take it in the trough."

"Not yet!"

Tommy Lark waited for the sea to roll on.

"You bother me," he complained. "I might have been half way across by this time."

"You'd have been cotched on the side of a swell. If you're cotched like that you'll slip off the ice. There isn't a man livin' can cross that ice on the slant of a sea."

"Be still!"

The pan was subsiding from the incline of a sea to the level of the trough.

"Now!" Sandy Rowl snapped.

When the ice floated in the trough, Tommy Lark leaped, designing to attain his objective as nearly as possible before the following wave lifted his path to an incline. He landed fairly in the middle of the first cake, and had left it for the second before it sank. The second leap was short. It was difficult, nevertheless, for two reasons. He had no time to gather himself for the impulse, and his flight was taken from sinking ground. Almost he fell short. Six inches less, and he would have landed on the edge of the cake and toppled back into the sea when it tipped to the sudden weight. But he struck near enough to the center to restrain the ice, in a few active steps, from sinking by the edge; and as the second cake was more substantial than the first, he was able to leap with confidence for the third, whence he danced lightly toward the fourth.

The fourth cake, however, lay abruptly to the right. A sudden violent turn was required to reach it. It was comparatively substantial; but it was rugged rather than flat--there was a niggardly, treacherous surface for landing, and as ground for a flight the cake furnished a doubtful opportunity. There was no time for recovery. When Tommy Lark landed, the ice began to waver and sink. He had landed awkwardly, his feet in a tangle; and, as there was no time for placing his feet in a better way, he must leap awkwardly--leap instantly, leaving the event to chance. And leap he did. It was a supreme effort toward the fifth cake.

By this time the ice was fast climbing the side of a swelling wave. The crest of the sea was higher than Tommy Lark's head. Had the sea broken it would have fallen on him--it would have submerged and overwhelmed him. It did not break. The wind snatched a thin spindrift from the crest and flung it past like a squall of rain. That was all. Tommy Lark was midway of the sea, as a man might be on the side of a steep hill: there was the crest above and the trough below; and the fifth cake of ice was tipped to an increasingly perilous angle. Moreover, it was small; it was the least of all--a momentary foothold, to be touched lightly in passing on to the slant of the wide pan in the middle of the lane.

All this was clear to Tommy Lark when he took his awkward leap from the fourth cake. What he feared was less the meager proportions of the fifth cake--which would be sufficient, he fancied, to give him an impulse for the last leap--than the slant of the big pan to which he was bound, which was precisely as steep as the wave it was climbing. And this fear was justified by the event. Tommy Lark touched the little cake with the toe of his seal-hide boot, with the sea then nearing its climax, and alighted prostrate on the smooth slant of the big pan. He grasped for handhold: there was none; and, had not the surface of the pan been approaching a horizontal on the crest of the sea, he would have shot over the edge. Nothing else saved him.

Tommy Lark rose and established his balance with widespread feet and waving arms.

"'Tis not too bad," he called.

"What's beyond?"

"No trouble beyond."

There was more ice beyond. It was small. Tommy Lark danced across to the other side of the lane, however, without great difficulty. He could not have paused on the way. The ice, thick though it was, was too light.

"Safe over!" he shouted.

"I'm comin'."

"Mind the leap for the big pan. 'Tis a ticklish landin'. That's all you've t' fear."

* * * * *

Sandy Rowl was as agile as Tommy Lark. He was as competent--he was as practiced. Following the same course as Tommy Lark, he encountered the same difficulties and met them in the same way; and thus he proceeded from the first sinking cake through the short leap to the second more substantial one, whence he leaped with confidence to the third, landed on the rugged fourth, his feet ill placed for the next leap, and sprang awkwardly for the small fifth cake, meaning to touch it lightly on his course to the big pan.

But he had started an instant too soon. When, therefore, he came to the last leap, with the crest of the wave above him and the trough below, the pan was midway of the side of the sea, its inclination at the widest. He slipped--fell; and he rolled off into the water and sank. When he came to the surface, the ice was on the crest of the sea, beginning its descent. He grasped the edge of it and tried to draw himself aboard. In this he failed. The pan was too thick--too high in the water; and the weight of his boots and clothes was too great to overcome. In the trough of the sea, where his opportunity was best, he almost succeeded. He established one knee on the pan and strove desperately and with all his strength to lift himself over the edge. But the pan began to climb before he succeeded, leaving him helpless on the lower edge of the incline; and the best he could do to save himself was to cling to it with bare, striving fingers, waiting for his opportunity to renew itself.

To Tommy Lark it was plain that Sandy Rowl could not lift himself out of the water.

"Hang fast'" he shouted. "I'll help you!"

Timing his start, as best he was able, to land him on the pan in the middle of the lane when it lay in the trough, Tommy Lark set out to the rescue. It will be recalled that the pan would not support two men. Two men could not accurately adjust their weight. Both would strive for the center. They would grapple there; and, in the end, when the pan jumped on edge both would be thrown off.

Tommy Lark was aware of the capacity of the pan. Had that capacity been equal to the weight of two men, it would have been a simple matter for him to run out, grasp Sandy Rowl by the collar, and drag him from the water. In the circumstances, however, what help he could give Sandy Rowl must be applied in the moment through which he would remain on the ice before it sank; and enough of the brief interval must be saved wherein to escape either onward or back.

Rowl did not need much help. With one knee on the ice, lifting himself with all his might, a strong, quick pull would assist him over the edge. But Rowl was not ready. When Tommy Lark landed on the pan, Sandy was deep in the water, his hands gripping the ice, his face upturned, his shoulders submerged. Tommy did not even pause. He ran on to the other side of the lane. When he turned, Rowl had an elbow and foot on the pan and was waiting for help; but Tommy Lark hesitated, disheartened--the pan would support less weight than he had thought.

The second trial failed. Rowl was ready. It was not that. Tommy Lark landed awkwardly on the pan from the fifth cake of ice. He consumed the interval of his stay in regaining his feet. He did not dare remain. Before he could stretch a hand toward Rowl, the pan was submerged, and he must leap on in haste to the opposite shore of the lane; and the escape had been narrow--almost he had been caught.

Returning, then, to try for the third time, he caught Rowl by the collar, jerked him, felt him rise, dropped him, sure that he had contributed the needed impulse, and ran on. But when he turned, confident that he would find Rowl sprawling on the pan, Rowl had failed and dropped back in the water.

For the fourth time Tommy essayed the crossing, with Rowl waiting, as before, foot and elbow on the ice; and he was determined to leap more cautiously from the fifth cake of ice and to risk more on the pan that he might gain more--to land more circumspectly, opposing his weight to Rowl's weight, and to pause until the pan was flooded deep. The plan served his turn. He landed fairly, bent deliberately, caught Rowl's coat with both hands, dragged him on the pan, leaped away, springing out of six inches of water; and when, having crossed to the Scalawag shore of the lane, he turned, Rowl was still on the ice, flat on his back, resting. It was a rescue.

Presently Sandy Rowl joined Tommy Lark.

"All right?" Tommy inquired.

"I'm cold an' I'm drippin'," Sandy replied; "but otherwise I'm fair enough an' glad t' be breathin' the breath o' life. I won't thank you, Tommy."

"I don't want no thanks."

"I won't thank you. No, Tommy. I'll do better. I'll leave Elizabeth t' thank you. You've won a full measure o' thanks, Tommy, from Elizabeth."

"You thinks well o' yourself," Tommy declared. "I'm danged if you don't!"

* * * * *

An hour later Tommy Lark and the dripping Sandy Rowl entered the kitchen of Elizabeth Luke's home at Scalawag Harbor. Skipper James was off to prayer meeting. Elizabeth Luke's mother sat knitting alone by the kitchen fire. To her, then, Tommy Lark presented the telegram, having first warned her, to ease the shock, that a message had arrived, contents unknown, from the region of Grace Harbor. Having commanded her self-possession, Elizabeth Luke's mother received and read the telegram, Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl standing by, eyes wide to catch the first indication of the contents in the expression of the slow old woman's countenance.

There was no indication, however--not that Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl could read. Elizabeth Luke's mother stared at the telegram; that was all. She was neither downcast nor rejoiced. Her face was blank.

Having read the brief message once, she read it again; and having reflected, and having read it for the third time, and having reflected once more, without achieving any enlightenment whatsoever, she looked up, her wrinkled face screwed in an effort to solve the mystery. She pursed her lips, she tapped the floor with her toe, she tapped her nose with her forefinger, she pushed up her spectacles, she scratched her chin, even she scratched her head; and then she declared to Tommy Lark and Sandy Rowl that she could make nothing of it at all.

"Is the maid sick?" Tommy inquired.

"She is."

"I knowed it!" Tommy declared.

"She says she's homesick." Elizabeth's mother pulled down her spectacles and referred to the telegram. "'Homesick,' says she," she added.

"What else?"

"I can't fathom it. I knows what she means when she says she's homesick; I've been that myself. But what's this about Squid Cove? 'Tis the queerest thing ever I knowed!"

Tommy Lark flushed.

"Woman," he demanded, eager and tense, "what does the maid say about Squid Cove?"

"She says she's homesick for the cottage in Squid Cove. An' that's every last word that she says."

"There's no cottage in Squid Cove," said Sandy.

"No cottage there," Elizabeth's mother agreed, "t' be homesick for. 'Tis a very queer thing."

"There's no cottage in Squid Cove," said Tommy Lark; "but there's lumber for a cottage lyin' there on the rocks."

"What about that?"

"'Tis my lumber!" Tommy roared. "An' the maid knows it!"

* * * * *

II

THE SIREN OF SCALAWAG RUN

* * * * *

II

THE SIREN OF SCALAWAG RUN

Scalawag Run suspected the sentimental entanglement into which Fate had mischievously cast Dickie Blue and pretty Peggie Lacey and there abandoned them; and Scalawag Run was inclined to be more scornful than sympathetic. What Dickie Blue should have done in the circumstances was transparent to every young blade in the harbor--an instant, bold behavior, issuing immediately in the festive popping of guns at a wedding and a hearty charivari thereafter; and those soft devices to which pretty Peggy Lacey should have resorted without scruple in her own relief, were not unknown, you may be sure, to the wise, whispering maids of the place. It was too complacently agreed that the situation, being left to the direction and mastery of Time, would proceed to a happy conclusion as a matter of course. There would be a conjunction of the light of the moon, for example, with the soft, love-lorn weather of June--the shadows of the alders on the winding road to Squid Cove and the sleepy tinkle of the goats' bells dropping down from the slopes of The Topmast into the murmur of the sea. There had been just such favorable auspices of late, however--June moonlight and the music of a languorous night, with Dickie Blue and pretty Peggy Lacey meandering the shadowy Squid Cove road together; and the experience of Scalawag Run was still defied--no blushes and laughter and shining news of a wedding at Scalawag Run.

Dickie Blue, returning from the Squid Cove road, found his father, Skipper John, waiting at the gate.

"Well?" Skipper John demanded.

"'Tis I, sir."

"I knows that. I been waitin' for you. How'd ye get along the night?"

"I got along well enough."

"How far did yer get along?"

"I--I proceeded."

"What did ye do?"

"Who, sir?" Dickie replied. "Me?"

"Ay, you! Who else?"

"I didn't do nothin' much," said Dickie.

"Ha!" Skipper John snorted. "Nothin' much, eh! Was you with the maid at all on the roads?"

"Well, yes, sir," Dickie replied. "I was with her."

Skipper John spoke in scorn. "You was with her!" said he. "An' you didn't do nothin' much! Well, well!" And then, explosively: "Did you do nothin' at all?"

"I didn't go t' no great lengths with her."

"What lengths?"

"Well," Dickie drawled, "I----"

Skipper John broke in impatiently. "What I wants t' know," said he, "is a very simple thing. Did you pop?"

"Me?"

Skipper John was disgusted.

"Ecod!" he ejaculated. "Then you didn't!"

"I didn't pop," said Dickie. "That is--not quite."

"Did you come into peril o' poppin'?"

"Well," Dickie admitted, "I brooded on it."

"Whew!" Skipper John ejaculated. "You brooded on it, did you? An' what happened then?"

"I--I hesitated."

"Well, well! Now that was cautious, wasn't it? An' why did you--hesitate?"

"Dang it!" Dickie complained, "t' hear you talk, a man might think that Peggy Lacey was the only maid in Scalawag Run. I'm willin' an' eager t' be wed. I jus' don't want t' make no mistake. That's all. Dang it, there's shoals o' maids hereabouts! An' I isn't goin' t' swallow the first hook that's cast my way. I'll take my time, sir, an' that's an end o' the matter."

"You're nigh twenty-one," Skipper John warned.

"I've time enough yet. I'm in no hurry."

"Pah!" Skipper John snorted. "'Tis a poor stick of a man that's as slow as you at courtin'! No hurry, eh? What ye made of, anyhow? When I was your age----"

"Have done with boastin', sir. I'll not be driven. I'll pick and choose an' satisfy my taste."

"Is Peggy Lacey a wasteful maid?" Skipper John inquired.

"No; she's not a wasteful maid."

"Is she good?"

"She's pious enough for me."

"Is she healthy?"

"Nothin' wrong with her health that anybody ever fetched t' my notice. She seems sound."

"Is she fair?"

"She'll pass."

"I'm not askin' if she pass. I'm askin' you if she isn't the fairest maid in Scalawag Run."

"'Tis a matter o' taste, father."

"An' what's your taste--if you have any?"

"If I was pickin' a fault," Dickie replied, "I'd say that she might have a touch more o' color in her cheeks t' match my notion o' beauty."

"A bit too pallid t' suit your delicate notion o' beauty!" Skipper John scoffed. "Well, well!"

"I knows rosier maids than she."

"I've no doubt of it. 'Tis a pity the good Lord's handiwork can't be remedied t' suit you. Mm-mm! Well, well! An' is there anything else out o' the way with God Almighty's idea o' what a fair maid looks like?"

"Dang me!" Dickie protested again. "I isn't denyin' that she's fair!"

"No; but----"

"Ah, well, isn't I got a right t' my notions? What's the harm in admirin' rosy cheeks? Isn't nothin' the matter with rosy cheeks, is there?"

"They fade, my son."

"I knows that well enough, sir," Dickie declared; "but they're pretty while they last. An' I'd never be the man t' complain, sir, when they faded. You'd not think so ill o' me as all that, would you?"

"You'd not--complain when they faded?"

"I'd not shame my honor so!"