Chapter 6

"Yes," growled Captain Jeb, his leathery face darkening. "Why they wanted to set up that consarned thing just across from Killykinick, I don't know. Hedn't we been showing a light thar for nigh onto fifty years? But some of these know-alls come along and said it wasn't the right kind; it oughter blink. And they made the old captain pull down the light that he had been burning steady and true, and the Government sot up that thar newfangled thing a flashing by clockwork on Numbskull Nob. It did make the old man hot, sure. 'Shet the window, mate,' he said to me when he was dying and wanted air badly. 'I can't go off in peace with that devilish thing of Numbskull Nob a winking at me.' Duck Agin, all hands! 'Sary Ann' swings around here. Thar's Killykinick to starboard!"

And all hands "ducked" as rope and canvas rattled under Captain Jeb's guiding hand; and the "Sary Ann" swept from her dancing course to the boundless blue towards the shadowy line and dim pencil point now growing into graceful lighthouse and rocky shore. Numbskull Nob, jutting up from a hidden reef, over which a line of white-capped breakers was booming thunderously, seemed to justify the presence of the modern light that warned off closer approach to the island; for the stretch of water that lay between was a treacherous shoal where many a good ship had stranded in years gone by, when Killykinick was only a jagged ledge of rock where the sea birds nested and man had no place. But things had changed now. A rude but sturdy breakwater made a miniature harbor in which several small boats floated at their moorings; a whitewashed wharf jutted out into the waves; the stretch of rocky shore beyond had been roughly terraced into easy approach.

"Easy now, boys,--easy!" warned Brother Bart anxiously, as the "Sary Ann" grated against her home pier, and Captain Jeroboam proceeded to make fast. "Don't be leaping off till you know the way."

But Brother Bart might have called to the dashing waves. This Killykinick was very different from the desert they had expected; and, with shouts of delight from Jim, Dud and Dan, even little Freddy sprang ashore. Shrubs and trees of strange growth nodded and waved amid the rocks; here and there in sheltered crannies were beds of blooming flowers; and in the lee of a towering rock that kept off the fury of storm and wind stood the very queerest house the young explorers had ever seen.

XI.--AT KILLYKINICK.

It was a ship,--a ship with its keel settled deep in the sand, and held immovable against wind and storm by a rudely built foundation wall of broken rock. The sunlight blinked cheerfully from the dozen portholes; the jutting prow bore the weather-worn figurehead of the "Lady Jane,"--minus a nose and arm, it is true, but holding her post bravely still. Stout canvas, that could be pegged down or lifted into breezy shelter, roofed the deck, from which arose the "lookout," a sort of light tower built around a mast that upheld a big ship lantern; while the Stars and Stripes floated in glory over all.

For a moment the four young travellers stared breathless at this remarkable edifice, while Freddy eagerly explained:

"It's my Great-uncle Joe's ship that was wrecked here on Killykinick. He had sailed in her for years and loved her, and he didn't want to leave her to fall to pieces on the rocks; and so he got a lot of men, with chains and ropes and things, and moved her up here and made her into a house."

And a first-class house the "Lady Jane" made, as all the boys agreed when they proceeded to investigate Great-uncle Joe's legacy. True, there was a lack of modern conveniences. The sea lapping the sands to the right was the only bath-room, but what finer one could a boy ask? There was neither dining room nor kitchen; only the "galley," as Captain Jeb, who came up shortly to do the honors of this establishment, explained to his guests. The "galley" was a queer little narrow place in the stern, lined with pots and pans and dishes scoured to a shine, and presided over by another old man more crooked and leathery-visaged than Captain Jeb, and who seemed too deep in the concoction of some savory mixture simmering on his charcoal stove to give look or word to the newcomers who crowded around him.

"That is Neb," said his brother, in brief introduction. "He don't hev much to say, but you mustn't mind that. It ain't been altogether clear weather in his upper deck since he shipped with a durned pirate of a captain that laid his head open with a marline spike; but for a cook, he can't be beat by any steward afloat or ashore. Jest you wait till he doses out that clam-chowder he's making now!"

Then there was the long, low cabin that stretched the full length of the "Lady Jane," and that--with its four cosy bunks made up shipshape, its big table, its swinging lamp, its soft bulging chairs (for Great-uncle Joe had been a man of solid weight as well as worth)--was just the place for boys to disport themselves in without fear of doing damage. All about were most interesting things for curious young eyes to see and busy fingers to handle: telescope, compass, speaking trumpet, log and lead and line that had done duty in many a distant sea; spears, bows and arrowheads traded for on savage islands; Chinese ivories and lacquered boxes from Japan. A white bearskin and walrus tusk told of an early venture into the frozen North, when bold men were first drawn to its darkness and mystery; while the Buddha from an Eastern temple, squatting shut-eyed on a shelf, roused good old Brother Bart into holy horror.

"I never thought to be under the same roof with a haythen idol. Put it away, my man,--put it out of sight while I'm in yer house; for I can't stand the looks of it. I'll be after smashing it into bits if ye lave it under me eyes."

And his indignation was appeased only by the sight of the Captain's room, which had been respectfully assigned to the "Padre," as Captain Jeb persisted in calling his older guest.

Here Great-uncle Joe had treasures rare indeed in the good Brother's eye: a wonderful crucifix of ivory and ebony; the silver altar lamp of an old Spanish monastery; a Madonna in dull tints that still bore traces of a master hand; a rosary, whose well-worn beads made Brother Bart's pious heart warm.

"Indeed he was a God-fearing man, I'm sure, this uncle of laddie's."

"He was," agreed Captain Jeb; "a little rough-talking sometimes, but all sailors are."

"Well, it's a rough life," said Brother Bart, recalling his own late experience. "It's little chance it gives you to think or pray. But the old man ye talk of prayed; I am sure of that. The beads here bear token of it."

"Aye," answered Captain Jeb. "He held to them to the last as tight as if they was an anchor chain,--why I don't know."

"That's yer ignorance, poor man!" said Brother Bart, compassionately. "Ye should pray morning and evening for light, and perhaps ye'll be given the grace to know what the hould of blessed beads is to a dying hand. Now, if ye don't mind, I'll rest a bit in this quiet place, and try to say me own prayers that I missed last night; for it was a sore trying time to me, both body and soul. There's no harm can come to the boys, now that they are safe here."

"I wouldn't swear to four younkers like them anywhere," was the grim answer. "But ye can rest easy, Padre: I'll keep an eye on them, never fear." And, closing the old Captain's door on his anxious guest, Captain Jeb proceeded to "keep an eye" on the boys who were exploring Killykinick in every direction.

As it had little more than half a mile of visible surface, the exploration was naturally limited; but there was a "deal more below," as Captain Jeb assured them,--reefs and shoals stretching out in every direction, and widening every year with the silt carried down from the shore. There were one or two wide hollows between the rocks, where that same silt, top-dressed with richer earth imported from more favored spots by Captain Jeb, served as kitchen garden, in which beans, cabbages and potatoes made a promising show. On another sheltered slope, green with coarse grass, brown Betty was pasturing peacefully; while in a henhouse beyond there was clucking and cackling, cheerfully suggestive of chickens and eggs.

"We used to hev mostly ship rations," said Captain Jeb. "But the old man got sort of picky and choosy these last years, and turned agin the hard-tack and old hoss meat that had been good enough for him before. So I got a few boat-loads of good earth and took to growing things. And things do grow here for sure, if you only give them a chance. All they want is root hold; the sun and the air and the soft mists do the rest."

Then there was the pump house; for even the toughest of old "salts" must have fresh water. And it had cost many a dollar to strike it in these rocks; but strike it at last the well-borers did, and the pump was roofed and walled in as Killykinick's greatest treasure.

"Stick round here, younkers, along by the 'Lady Jane' and the wharf and the garden beds, and down by the 'Sary Ann' and the boats to the south beach, and you'll be pretty safe. But I'm going to show you a place whar you can't do no monkey shining, for it ain't safe at all."

And as Captain Jeb spoke he turned to the high wall of rock that had backed and sheltered the "Lady Jane" for nearly fifty years; and, bending his thin form, he pushed through a low, narrow opening, with, it is needless to say, four wide-eyed boys scrambling breathlessly behind him,--Dan, as usual, in the lead, pulling Freddy on.

For a moment they stumbled in darkness, through which came a thunderous sound like the swell of some mighty organ under a master hand; and then they were out in light and space again, with the ocean cliff of Killykinick arching above and around them in a great cave hollowed by the beating waves out of solid rock. Wall and roof were rough and jagged, broken into points and ledges; but the floor was smoothed by the tide into a shining, glittering surface, that widened out to meet the line of breakers thundering white-foamed beyond, their sprays scattering in light showers far and near.

"Jing! Golly! Hooray!" burst from the young explorers; and they would have dashed off into bolder investigation of this new discovery, but Captain Jeb's sudden trumpet tone withheld them.

"Stop,--stop thar, younkers! Didn't I tell you this warn't no play-place? How far and how deep these caves stretch only the Lord knows; for the sea is knawing them deeper and wider every year. And thar's holes and quicksands that would suck you down quicker than that whale in the Good Book swallowed Jonah. And more than that: in three hours from now these here rocks whar we are standing will be biling with high tide. This ain't no play-place! I'm showing it to you so you'll know; for thar ain't no reefs and shoals to easy things here. It's deep sea soundings that no line can reach, this nor'east shore. Them waves hev a clean sweep of three thousand miles before they break here. And thar ain't to be no ducking nor swimming nor monkey shining around here unless me or Neb is on watch. Neb ain't much good for navigating since he got that hit with the marline spike, but for a watch on ship or shore he is all right. So them 'orders' is all I hev to give: the Padre, being a bit nervous, may hev some of his own; but thar ain't nothing to hurt four strapping younkers round Killykinick except right _here_. And now, I reckon, it's about time for dinner. I'm ready for some of Neb's clam-chowder, I know; and I guess you are, too."

"Jing! but this is a great place of yours, Freddy!" said Dan, as they turned back to the ship house. "We could not have found a better."

"That's all you know," scoffed the lordly Dud. "I mean to keep on the right side of the old duffer," he added _sotto voce_, "and get over to Beach Cliff in that tub of his whenever I can. Minnie Foster asked me to come; they've taken a fine house down on the shore, and have all sorts of fun--dances, picnics, boat races. I'll get sick of things here pretty soon; won't you, Jim?"

"I don't know about that," was the lazy answer. "About as good a place to loaf as you'll find."

"Loaf?" put in Dan. "There isn't going to be any loafing at Killykinick for me. I'm for boating and fishing and clamming and digging up those garden beds. I don't know what those others are paying," said Dan, who had fallen behind with Captain Jeb; "but I've got no money, and am ready to earn my board and keep."

"You are?" said the Captain, in surprise. "As I took it, the Padre bunched you all together for as fair a figure as I could ask."

"Not me," replied Dan. "These other chaps are plutes, and can pay their own way; so cut me out of your figures and let me work for myself."

"Well, that's sort of curious talk for a younker with a high-class schooling," said Captain Jeb, dubiously. "You mean you want to hire out?"

"Yes," said Dan, remembering Aunt Winnie and how doubtful his claim was upon St. Andrew's.

"Thar will be considerable stirring round, I'll allow," was the reflective answer. "I was thinking of getting Billy Benson to lend a hand, but if you'd like the job of sort of second mate--"

"I would," said Dan. "What is a second mate's work?"

"Obeying orders," answered Captain Jeb, briefly.

"That's dead easy," said Dan, with a grin.

"Oh, is it?" was the grim rejoinder. "Jest you wait, younker, till you've stood on a toppling deck in the teeth of a nor'easter, with some dunderhead of a captain roaring cuss words at you to cut away the mast that you know is all that's keeping you out of Davy Jones' Locker, and then you'll find what obeying orders means. But if you want the job here, it's yours. What will you take?"

"My board and keep," answered Dan.

"That ain't no sort of pay," said the other, gruffly.

"Wait till you see me eat," laughed Dan; "besides, I was never a second mate before. Maybe I won't make good at it."

"Mebbe you won't," said Captain Jeb, his mouth stretching into its crooked smile. "You're ruther young for it, I must admit. Still, I like your grit and pluck, younker. Most chaps like you are ready to suck at anything in reach. What's your name?"

"Dan--Dan Dolan," was the answer.

"Good!" said Captain Jeb. "It's a square, honest name. You're shipped, Dan Dolan. I guess thar ain't no need for signing papers. This little chap will bear witness. You're shipped as second mate in the 'Lady Jane' now and here."

XII.--THE SECOND MATE.--A CONFAB.

Then Neb's bell clanged out for dinner, that was served on the long table in the cabin, shipshape, but without any of the frills used on land. There was a deep earthen dish brimming with chowder, a wonderful concoction that only old salts like Neb can make. It had a bit of everything within Killykinick reach--clams and fish and pork and potatoes, onions and peppers and hard-tack,--all simmering together, piping hot, in a most appetizing way, even though it had to be "doused" out with a tin ladle into yellow bowls. There was plenty of good bread, thick and "filling"; a platter of bacon and greens, and a dish of rice curried after a fashion Neb had learned cruising in the China Sea. Last of all, and borne in triumphantly by the cook himself, was a big smoking "plum duff" with cream sauce. There is a base imitation of "duff" known to landsmen as batter pudding; but the real plum duff of shining golden yellow, stuffed full of plums like Jack Horner's pie, is all the sailor's own.

Dan plunged at once into his new duties of second mate. Both Jeb and Neb were well past seventy, and, while still hale and hearty, were not so nimble as they had been forty years ago; so a second mate, with light feet and deft hands, proved most helpful, now that the "Lady Jane" had taken in a double crew.

Dan cleared the table and washed the dishes with a celerity bewildering to the slow brain dulled by the marline spike. He swabbed up the galley under Neb's gruff direction; he fed the chickens and milked the cow. For a brief space in two summers of his early life, Dan had been borne off by an Angel Guardian Society to its Fresh Air Home, a plain, old-fashioned farmhouse some miles from his native city; and, being a keen-eyed youngster even then, he had left swings and seesaws to less interested observers, and trudged around the fields, the henhouse, the dairies, the barns, watching the digging and the planting, the feeding and the milking; so that the ways of cows and chickens were not altogether beyond his ken.

"Sure and yer board and keep was to be paid for with the rest, lad," said Brother Bart, kindly.

"I don't want it paid, Brother," replied Dan. "St. Andrew's does enough for me. I'd a heap rather work for myself out here."

"Whether that is decent spirit or sinful pride I'm not scholar enough to tell," said the good Brother in perplexity. "It takes a wise man sometimes to know the differ; but I'm thinking" (and there was a friendly gleam in the old man's eyes) "if I was a strapping lad like you, I would feel the same. So work your own way if you will, Danny lad, and God bless you at it!"

Even heartier was the well-wishing of Captain Jeb after his first day's experience with his second officer.

"You're all right, matie!" he said, slapping Dan-on the shoulder. "There will be no loafing on your watch, I kin see. You're the clipper build I like. Them others ain't made to stand rough weather; but as I take it, you're a sort of Mother Carey chicken that's been nested in the storm. And I don't think you'll care to be boxed up below with them fair-weather chaps. Suppose, being second mate, you swing a hammock up on the deck with Jeb and me?"

"Jing! I'd like that first rate," was the delighted answer.

And, as Brother Bart had no fear of danger on the "Lady Jane," Dan entered on all the privileges of his position. While Freddy and Dud and Jim took possession of the sheltered cabin, and the dignity of the Padre (so it seemed to Captain Jeb) demanded the state and privacy of the Captain's room, Dan swung his hammock up on deck, where it swayed delightfully in the wind, while the stout awnings close-reefed in fair weather gave full view of the sea and the stars.

He slept like a child cradled in its mother's arms, and was up betimes to plunge into a stretch of sheltered waves, still rosy with the sunrise, for a morning bath such as no porcelain tub could offer; and then to start off with old Neb, who, like other wise householders, began the day's work early. Neb might be deaf and dull, and, in boyish parlance, a trifle "dippy"; but he knew the ways of fish, from whales to minnows. He had a boat of his own, with its nets and seines and lines, that not even the sturdy old Captain in the days of his command dared touch.

That Dan was allowed to handle the oars this first morning proved that the second mate had already established himself firmly in Neb's favor. But, as Wharf Rat, Dan had gained some knowledge of boats and oars; and he was able to do his part under the old salt's gruff direction. They went far out beyond shoal and reef; beyond Numskull Nob (whose light was still blinking faintly in the glow of the sunrise), into deep waters, where the fishing fleet could be seen already at work in the blue distance hauling up big catches of cod, halibut, and other game.

"That ain't fishing!" growled old Neb. "It's durned mean killing."

"And isn't all fishing killing?" asked Dan, as they flung out their own lines.

"No," said Neb. "When you cast a line, or a harpoon even, you give critters a chance; but them durned pirates thar don't give a fish no chance at all."

"Did you ever cast a harpoon?" asked Dan, with interest.

For a moment the dull eyes kindled, the dull face brightened, as some deadened memory seemed to stir and waken into life; then the shadow fell heavy and hopeless again.

"Mebbe I did, sonny; I don't know. It's so far back I've most forgot."

But old Neb's wits worked in their own way still. It took less than an hour to catch dinners for the whole Killykinick crew; and the fishermen came home to find that Captain Jeb had been doing duty during their absence, and breakfast was ready on the long table in the cabin,--a breakfast such as none of the white-coated waiters in their late journey could beat.

Captain Jeb knew nothing of cereals, but he had a big bowl of mush and a pitcher of golden cream; he had bacon and eggs frizzled to a charm; he had corndodgers and coffee that filled the air with fragrance,--such coffee as old sailors look for about break of day after a middle watch. Altogether, the crew of the "Lady Jane" found things very pleasant, and the first week at Killykinick had all the interest of life in a newly discovered land. Even Brother Bart was argued by the two old salts out of his "nervousness," and laddie was allowed to boat and fish and swim in safe waters under Dan's care; while Jim and Dud looked out for themselves, as such big fellows should.

"Thar's nothing to hurt them off thar," said Captain Jeb, as Brother Bart watched his navigators with anxious eyes pushing out over a stretch of dancing waves. "'Twixt here and Numskull Nob you could 'most walk ashore. Jest keep them out of the Devil's Jaw, that's all."

"The Lord between us and harm!" ejaculated Brother Bart, in pious horror. "Where is that at all?"

"The stretch of rock yonder," replied Captain Jeb, nodding to the northeast.

"And isn't that an awful name to give to a Christian shore?" asked Brother Bart.

"No worse than them ar suck-holes of waves deserves," was the grim answer. "When the high tide sweeps in thar, it kerries everything with it, and them caves guzzle it all down, nobody knows whar."

"Ah, God save us!" said Brother Bart. "It's the quare place to choose aither for life or death. I wonder at the laddie's uncle, and ye too, for staying all these years. Wouldn't it be better now, at yer time of life, for ye to be saving yer soul in quiet and peace, away from the winds and the storms and the roaring seas that are beating around ye here?"

"No," was the gruff answer,--"no, Padre. I couldn't live away from the winds and the storms and the waves. I couldn't die away from them either. I'd be like a deep sea-fish washed clean ashore. How them landlubbers live with everything dead and dull around them, I don't see. I ain't been out of sight of deep water since I shipped as cabin boy in the 'Lady Jane' nigh onto sixty years ago. I've been aloft in her rigging with the sea beating over the deck and the wind whistling so loud ye couldn't hear the cuss words the old man was a-roaring through his trumpet below. I've held her wheel through many a black night when no mortal man could tell shore from sea. I stood by her when she struck on this here reef, ripped open from stem to stern; and I'm standing by her now, 'cording to the old Captain's orders, yet."

"Ye may be right," said Brother Bart, reflectively. "It's not for me to judge ye, Jeroboam." (Brother Bart never shortened that Scriptural title.) "But I bless the Lord day and night that I was not called to the sea.--What is it the boys are after now!" he added, with an anxious glance at the boat in which laddie and Dan had ventured out beyond his call.

"Lobsters," replied Captain Jeb. "Them's Neb's lobster pots bobbing up thar, and they've got a catch that will give us a dinner fit for a king."

"It's all to your taste," said Brother Bart. "Barrin' fast days, of which I say nothing, I wouldn't give a good Irish stew for all the fish that ever swam the seas. But laddie is thrivin' on the food here, I must say. There's a red in his cheeks I haven't seen for months; but what with the rocks and the seas and the Devil's Jaw foreninst them, it will be the mercy of God if I get the four boys safe home."