Chapter 7

"You needn't fear," was the cheering assurance. "They are fine, strapping fellows, and a touch of sailor life won't harm them; though it's plain them two big chaps and little Polly's boys are used to softer quarters. But for a long voyage I'd ship Mate Danny before any of them."

"Ye would?" asked Brother Bart.

"Aye," answered Captain Jeb, decisively. "Don't fly no false colors, sticks to his job, ready to take hold of anything from a lobster pot to a sheet anchor,--honest grit straight through. Lord, what a ship captain he would make! But they don't teach navigation at your school."

"I don't know," answered Brother Bart. "I'm not book-learned, as I've told ye; but there's little that isn't taught at St. Andrew's that Christian lads ought to know; to say nothing of God's holy law, which is best of all; but of navigation I never hear tell. I'm thinking it can't be much good."

"No good!" repeated the Captain, staring. "Navigation no good! Lord! You're off your reckoning thar sure, Padre. Do you know what navigation means? It means standing on your quarter-deck and making your ship take its way over three thousand miles of ocean straight as a bird flies to its nest; it means holding her in that ar way with the waves a-swelling mountain high and the wind a-bellowing in your rigging, and a rocky shore with all its teeth set to grind her in your lee; it means knowing how to look to the sun and the stars when they're shining, and how to steer without, them when the night is too black to see. Where would you and I be now, Padre, if a navigator that no landlubbers could down had not struck out without map or chart to find this here America of ours hundreds of years ago?"

"I'm sure I don't know," answered Brother Bart. "But there seems to be sense and truth in what you say. It's a pity you haven't the light of Faith."

"What would it do for me!" asked Captain Jeb, briefly.

"What would it do for you?" repeated Brother Bart. "Sure it's in the black darkness you are, my man, or ye wouldn't ask. It's sailing on the sea of life ye are without sun or stars, and how ye are to find the way to heaven I don't know. Do ye ever say a prayer, Jeroboam?"

"No," was the gruff answer. "That's your business, Padre. The Lord don't expect no praying from rough old salts like me."

"Sure and He does,--He does," said Brother Bart, roused into simple earnestness. "What is high or low to Him? Isn't He the Lord and Maker of the land and sea? Doesn't He give ye life and breath and strength and health and all that ye have? And to stand up like a dumb brute under His eye and never give Him a word of praise or thanks! I wonder at ye, Jeroboam,--I do indeed! Sure ye'd be more dacent to any mortal man that gave ye a bit and sup; but what ye're not taught, poor man, ye can't know. Listen now: ye're to take us to church to-morrow according to your bargain."

"Yes," said the Captain, gruffly; "but thar warn't no bargain about preaching and praying and singing."

"Sure I don't ask it," said Brother Bart, sadly. "You're in haythen darkness, Jeroboam, and I haven't the wisdom or the knowledge or the holiness to lade ye out; but there's one prayer can be said in darkness as well as in light. All I ask ye to do is to stand for a moment within the church and turn your eyes to the lamp that swings like a beacon light before the altar and whisper the words of that honest man in the Bible that didn't dare to go beyant the holy door, 'O God, be merciful to me a sinner!' Will ye do that?"

"Wal, since that's all ye ask of me, Padre," said Captain Jeb, reflectively, "I can't say no. I've thought them words many a time when the winds was a-howling and the seas a-raging, and it looked as if I was bound for Davy Jones' Locker before day; but I never knew that was a fair-weather prayer. But I'll say it as you ask; and I'll avow, Padre, that, for talking and praying straight to the point, you beat any preacher or parson I ever heard yet."

"Preach, is it!" exclaimed Brother Bart. "Sure I never preached in my life, and never will. But I'll hold ye to your word, Jeroboam; and, with God's blessing, we'll be off betimes to-morrow morning.--Here come the boys: and, Holy Mother, look at the boatful of clawing craythurs they have with them!"

"Lobsters, Brother Bart!" shouted Freddy, triumphantly. "Lobsters, Captain Jeb! Fine big fellows. I'm hungry as three bears."

XIII.--AT BEACH CLIFF.

Brother Bart and his boys were up betimes for their Sunday journey. Breakfast was soon dispatched, and four sunburned youngsters were ready for their trip to town. Dud and Jim, who had been lounging around Killykinick in sweaters and middies, were spruced up into young gentlemen again. Freddy's rosy cheeks were set off by a natty little sailor suit and cap; while Dan scarcely recognized himself in one of the rigs presented by Brother Francis, that bore the stamp of a stylish tailor, and that had been sponged and pressed and mended by the kind old wardrobian until it was quite as good as new.

The day was bright and beautiful, sky and sea seemed smiling on each other most amicably. The "Sary Ann" was in the best of spirits, and the wind in the friendliest of moods.

"Sit steady, boys, and don't be philandering!" warned Brother Bart, anxiously. "It looks fair and aisy enough, but you can drown in sun as well as storm. Keep still there, laddie, or ye'll be over the edge of the boat. Sure it's an awful thing to think that there's only a board between ye and the judgment-seat of God."

And Brother Bart shook his head, and relapsed into meditation befitting the peril of his way; while the "Sary Ann" swept on, past rock and reef and shoal, out into the wide blue open, where the sunlit waves were swelling in joyous freedom, until the rocks and spires of Beech Cliff rose dimly on the horizon; white-winged sails began to flutter into sight; wharves and boat-houses came into view, and the travellers were back in the busy world of men again.

"It feels good to be on God's own earth again," said Brother Bart, as he set foot on the solid pier, gay just now with a holiday crowd; for the morning boat was in, and the "Cliff Dwellers," as the residents of the old town were called at livelier seaside resorts, were out in force to welcome the new arrivals.

"This is something fine!" said Dud to Jim, as they made their way through the chatting, laughing throng, and caught the lilt of the music on the beach beyond, where bathers, reckless of the church bells' call, were disporting themselves in the sunlit waves. "It's tough, with a place like this so near, to be shut up on a desert island for a whole vacation. I say, Jim, let's look up the Fosters after Mass, and see if we can't get a bid to their house for a day or two. We'll have some fun there."

"I don't know," answered easy Jim. "Killykinick is good enough for me. You have to do so much fussing and fixing when you are with girls. Still, now we are here, we might as well look around us."

So when Mass in the pretty little church was over, and Brother Bart, glad to be back under his well-loved altar light, lingered at his prayers, the boys, who had learned from Captain Jeb that they had a couple of hours still on their hands, proceeded to explore the quaint old town, with its steep, narrow streets, where no traffic policemen were needed; for neither street cars nor automobiles were allowed to intrude.

In the far long ago, Beach Cliff had been a busy and prosperous seaport town. The great sailing vessels of those days, after long and perilous voyage, made harbor there; the old shipmasters built solid homes on the island shores; its merchants grew rich on the whaling vessels, that went forth to hunt for these monsters of the great deep, and came back laden with oil and blubber and whalebone and ambergris. But all this was changed now. Steam had come to supplant the white wings that had borne the old ships on their wide ocean ways. As Captain Jeb said, "the airth had taken to spouting up ile," and made the long whale hunts needless and unprofitable. But, though it had died to the busy world of commerce and trade, the quaint old island town had kept a charm all its own, that drew summer guests from far and near.

Dud and Jim made for the resident streets, where old Colonial mansions stood amid velvety lawns, and queer little low-roofed houses were buried in vines and flowers. But Dan and Freddy kept to the shore and the cliff, where the old fishermen had their homes, and things were rough and interesting. They stopped at an old weather-beaten house that had in its low windows all sorts of curious things--models of ships and boats, odd bits of pottery, rude carvings, old brasses and mirrors,--the flotsam and jetsam from broken homes and broken lives that had drifted into this little eddy.

The proprietor, a bent and grizzled old man, who stood smoking at the door, noticed the young strangers.

"Don't do business on Sundays; but you can step in, young gentlemen, and look about you. 'Twon't cost you a cent: and I've things you won't see any-whar else on this Atlantic coast,--brass, pottery, old silver, old books, old papers, prints of rare value and interest. A Harvard professor spent two hours the other day looking over my collection."

"Is it a museum?" asked Freddy politely, as he and Dan peered doubtful over the dusky threshold.

"Wal, no, not exactly; though it's equal to that, sonny. Folks call this here Jonah's junk-shop,--Jonah being my Christian name. (I ain't never had much use for any other.) I've been here forty years, and my father was here before me,--buying and selling whatever comes to us. And things do come to us sure, from copper kettles that would serve a mess of sixty men, down to babies' bonnets."

"Babies' bonnets!" laughed Dan, who, with Freddy close behind him, had pushed curiously but cautiously into the low, dark room, from which opened another and another, crowded with strangely assorted merchandise.

"You may laugh," said the proprietor, "but we've had more than a dozen trunks and boxes filled with such like folderols. Some of 'em been here twenty years or more,--shawls and bonnets and ball dresses, all frills and laces and ribbons; baby bonnets, too, all held for duty and storage or wreckage and land knows what. Flung the whole lot out for auction last year, and the women swarmed like bees from the big hotels and the cottages. Got bits of yellow lace, they said, for ten cents that was worth many dollars. The men folks tried to 'kick' about fever and small-pox in the old stuff, but not a woman would listen. Look at that now!" And the speaker paused under a chandelier that, even in the dusky dimness, glittered with crystal pendants. "Set that ablaze with the fifty candles it was made to hold, and I bet a hundred dollars wouldn't have touched it forty years ago. Ye can buy it to-morrow for three and a quarter. That's the way things go in Jonah's junk-shop."

"And do you ever really sell anything?" asked Dan, whose keen business eye, being trained by early bargaining for the sharp needs of life, could see nothing in Jonah's collection worth a hard-earned dollar. Mirrors with dingy and broken frames loomed ghost-like up in the dusky corners; tarnished epaulets and sword hilts told pathetically of forgotten honors; there were clocks, tall and stately, without works or pendulum.

"Sell?" echoed the proprietor. "Of course, sonny, we sell considerable, specially this time of year when the rich folks come around,--folks that ain't looking for stuff that's whole or shiny. And they do bite curious, sure. Why, there was some sort of a big man come up here in his yacht a couple of years ago that gave me twenty-five dollars for a furrin medal,--twenty-five dollars cash down. And it wasn't gold or silver neither. Said he knew what it was worth, and I didn't."

"Twenty-five dollars!" exclaimed the astonished Freddy,--"twenty-five dollars for a medal! O Dan, then maybe yours is worth something, too."

"Pooh, no!" said Dan, "what would poor old Nutty be doing with a twenty-five dollar medal?"

The dull eyes of the old junk dealer kindled with quick interest.

"Hev you got a medal?" he asked. "Where did you get it?"

"From a batty old sailor man who thought I had done him some good turns," answered Dan. "Where he got it he didn't say. I don't think he could remember."

And Dan, whose only safe deposit for boyish treasures was his jacket pocket, pulled out the gift that Freddy had refused, and showed it to this new acquaintance, who, holding it off in his horny hand, blinked at it with practised eye.

"Portugee or Spanish, I don't know which it says on that thar rim. Thar ain't much of it silver. I'd have to rub it up to be sure of the rest. Date, well as I can make out, it's 1850."

"It is," said Dan. "I made that much out myself."

Old Jonah shook his head.

"Ain't far enough back. Takes a good hundred years to make an antique. Still, you can't tell. The ways of these great folks are queer. Last week I sold for five dollars a bureau that I was thinking of splitting up into firewood; and the woman was as tickled as if she had found a purse of money. Said it was Louey Kans. Who or what she was I don't know; mebbe some kin of hers. I showed her the break plain, for I ain't no robber; but she said that didn't count a mite,--that she could have a new glass put in for ten dollars. Ten dollars! Wal, thar ain't no telling about rich folks' freaks and foolishness; so I can't say nothing about that thar medal. It ain't the kind of thing I'd want to gamble on. But if you'd like to leave it here on show. I'll take care of it, I promise you; and mebbe some one may come along and take a notion to it."

"Oh, what's the good?" said Dan, hesitating.

"Dan, do--do!" pleaded Freddy, who saw a chance for the vacation pocket money his chum so sorely lacked. "You might get twenty-five dollars for it, Dan."

"He might," said old Jonah; "and then again he mightn't, sonny. I ain't promising any more big deals like them I told you about. But you can't ever tell in this here junk business whar or when luck will strike you. It goes hard agin my old woman to hev all this here dust and cobwebs. She has got as tidy a house as you'd ask to see just around the corner,--flower garden in front, and everything shiny. But if I'd let her in here with a bucket and broom she'd ruin my business forever. It's the dust and the rust and the cobwebs that runs Jonah's junk-shop. But it's fair and square. I put down in writing all folks give me to sell, and sign my name to it. If you don't gain nothing, you don't lose nothing."

Dan was thinking fast. Twenty-five dollars,--twenty-five dollars! There was only a chance, it is true; and a very slim chance at that. But what would twenty-five dollars mean to him, to Aunt Winnie? For surely and steadily, in the long, pleasant summer days, in the starlit watches of the night, his resolution was growing: he must live and work for Aunt Winnie; he could not leave her gentle heart to break in its loneliness, while he climbed to heights beyond her reach; he could not let her die, while he dreamed of a future she would never see. Being only a boy, Dan did not put the case in just such words. He only felt with a fierce determination that, in spite of the dull pain in his heart at the thought, he must give up St. Andrew's when this brief seaside holiday was past, and work for Aunt Winnie. And a little ready cash to make a new start in Mulligan's upper rooms would help matters immensely. Just now he had not money enough for a fire in the rusty little stove, or to move Aunt Winnie and her old horsehair trunk from the Little Sisters.

"All right!" he said, with sudden resolve. "Take the medal and try it."

And old Jonah, who was not half so dull as, for commercial purposes, he looked, turned to an old mahogany desk propped up on three legs, and gave the young owner a duly signed receipt for one silver-rimmed bronze medal, date 1850, and the business was concluded.

"Suppose you really get twenty-five dollars, Dan," said Freddy, as they bade old Jonah good-bye and kept on their way. "What will you do with it?"

"I'm not saying," replied Dan, mindful of his promise to Father Mack. "But I'll start something, you can bet, Freddy!"

And then they went on down to the wharf, where the "Sary Ann" lay at her moorings, and Brother Bart was seated on a bench in pleasant converse with the Irish sexton of the little church, who had been showing the friendly old Brother some of the sights of the town.

"Here come my boys now. This is Dan Dolan, and this is my own laddie that I've been telling ye about, Mr. McNally. And where--where are the others?" questioned Brother Bart, anxiously.

"I don't know," answered Dan, after he had reciprocated Mr. McNally's hearty hand-shake. "Dud said something about going to the Fosters."

"Sure and that isn't hard to find," said Mr. McNally. "It's one of the biggest places on Main Street, with hydrangeas growing like posies all around the door. Any one will show ye."

"Go back for them, Danny lad. Ye can leave laddie here with me while ye bring the others back; for the day is passing, and we must be sailing home."

XIV.--POLLY.

Main Street was not hard to find, neither seemed the Fosters. A corner druggist directed Dan without hesitation to a wide, old-fashioned house, surrounded by lawns and gardens, in which the hydrangeas--blue, pink, purple--were in gorgeous summer bloom. But, though the broad porch was gay with cushions and hammocks, no boys were in sight; and, lifting the latch of the iron gate, Dan was proceeding up the flower-girdled path to the house, when the hall door burst open and a pretty little girl came flying down the steps in wild alarm.

"Bobby!" she cried. "My Bobby is out! Bobby is gone! Oh, somebody catch Bobby, please,--somebody catch my Bobby!"

A gush of song answered the wail. Perched upon the biggest and pinkest of the hydrangeas was a naughty little canary, its head on one side warbling defiantly in the first thrill of joyous freedom. Its deserted mistress paused breathlessly. A touch, a movement, she knew would send him off into sunlit space beyond her reach forever.

Quick-witted Dan caught on to the situation. A well-aimed toss of his cap, and the hydrangea blooms were quivering under the beat of the captive's fluttering wings. Dan sprang forward and with a gentle, cautious hand grasped his prisoner.

"Oh, oh, oh!" was all the little lady could cry, clasping her hands rapturously. "Don't--don't hurt him, please!"

"I won't," was the answer. "But get his cage quick; for he's scared to death at my holding him."

Bobby's mistress darted into the house at the word, and reappeared again in a moment with a gilded palace that was surely all a bird could ask for.

"O Bobby, Bobby!" she murmured reproachfully, as Dan deposited his subdued and trembling captive behind the glittering bars. "When you had this lovely new cage and everything you wanted!"

"No, he hadn't," said Dan, conscious of a sudden sympathy with his feathered prisoner. "He has wings and wants to use them."

"But he couldn't find seed or chickweed for himself, and the cats and hawks would have had him before morning. Oh, I'm so glad to get him back safe I don't know how to thank you for catching him for me!" And the little lady lifted a pair of violet eyes, that were still sparkling with tears, to her benefactor's face.

"Pooh! It wasn't anything," said Dan, shyly.

"Yes, it was. You threw your cap fine. My brothers couldn't have done it, I know. They would have just laughed and teased, and let Bobby fly away forever. You are the nicest boy I ever saw," continued Bobby's mistress, who was at the age when young ladies speak their mind frankly. "What is your name?"

"Dan Dolan," was the reply, with the smile that showed Aunt Winnie's boy at his best. "Let me carry your bird cage to the house for you. It is too heavy for a little girl."

"Oh, thank you! But I'm not such a little girl as you think: I am nearly ten years old," said the young lady, as Dan took up Bobby and his cage, and they proceeded up the broad gravelled path to the house; "and my name is Polly Forester, and--"

"Forester!" blurted out Dan. "Then I'm on the wrong track. They told me this was the Foster house."

"Oh, no!" Miss Polly shook her head, that, with its golden brown ringlets, looked very much like a flower itself. "This has been our house for more than a hundred years. My grandfather lived here, and my great-grandfather and all my grandfathers. One of them fought with George Washington; we've got his sword. Would you like to see it?" asked Miss Polly, becoming graciously hospitable as they approached the porch.

"I'm afraid I haven't time," answered Dan. "You see, I'm looking for two of our fellows. We're a lot of St. Andrew's boys off for the summer, and the boat is waiting to take us back to Killykinick."

"Oh, are you staying there?" asked the young lady, with wide-eyed interest. "I've passed it often in dad's yacht."

"Polly dear!" called a sweet voice, and a grown-up image of that young person came hurriedly out on the porch,--a lovely lady, all in soft trailing white and blue ribbons. "What is the matter? Your cry woke me out of a sound sleep and put me all in a flutter."

"O mamma dear, I'm sorry! But it was Bobby. He flew out of his cage when I was trying to teach him to perch on my hand, and got away. He would have gone forever if this nice boy had not caught him for me! His name is Dan Dolan, mamma, and he is staying at Killykinick with a lot of college boys. Dan is looking for the other boys, who are at the Fosters; and some one told him this was the house, and he came just in time to catch my Bobby under his cap, and--"

"The Fosters?" interrupted mamma, who was used to clearing up things for Polly. "Probably you are looking for Colonel Foster, who came down last week," she continued, turning a smiling face to Dan. "They have rented the Pelham cottage for the summer. You know where that is, Polly?"

"Oh, yes!" answered the little lady, cheerfully. "You take care of Bobby, mamma, and I'll show Dan the short cut through our garden."

And she darted ahead through an old-fashioned maze, where tall box hedges were clipped into queer shapes around beds of gay blooming flowers. Then, swinging open a vine-wreathed gate, Dan's little guide led into a steep narrow way paved with cobblestones.

"Pelham cottage is just up there," she said, "at the top of Larboard Lane."

"And here the boys come now!" exclaimed Dan, as the sound of familiar voices reached his ear, and down the lane came a laughing, chattering group,--Minna Foster, and her sister Madge and brother Jack gleefully escorting Jim and Dud back to the boat, and claiming the promises of speedy return to Beach Cliff.

Dan hailed his schoolmates, explained his search and his mistake, and they were all taking their way down the stony path together,--Polly being of the sort to make friends at once with every nice boy or girl within reach.

"Isn't she the cutest thing?" said Minna Foster, who had fallen behind with Dud. "We have just been dying to know them; but her mother is an invalid, and doesn't go out much, though they are the finest people in Beach Cliff, mamma says. They have lots of money, and the loveliest old home filled with all sorts of beautiful things, and horses and carriages and a big yacht."

"And Dan Dolan has struck it with them," said Dud, watching Miss Polly's dancing along loyally by her nice boy's side. "Dan Dolan! Can't you give them a tip about him."

"A tip?" echoed Minna, puzzled.