Chapter 7

"Nobody but Crump with my baggage," I cried back. "What's the matter?"

"Oh, Mr. Pendarves, haven't you seen them? They are both gone! I've looked everywhere about the house. They were gone when I got up, and I can't find them high or low!"

"You mean Captain Pendarves--and the other?"

She nodded, with terror-struck eyes on me; then, raising on tiptoe, screamed painfully, with her mouth close to my ear (it was almost impossible to hear otherwise): "He--your grandfather--has done it before. He's always restless in a storm. He goes down to the shore sometimes. I'm so afraid----" her look said the rest.

"Ask him--ask Crump; maybe he's seen them," she added in a shriek, as I started to the carrier's help. It was but a few steps to the gate, yet I reached it wet through, half blinded by sheets of water driven slantwise in my face, and with the breath nearly beaten out of me. In the open, thus, the storm seemed to increase tenfold in violence; it filled the vast cloudy hollow of the sky with reverberating din; and I felt, or fancied I felt, the solid ground shiver with the pounding of the waves on the ledges along the Cat's Mouth.

Crump greeted me with a cheerful grin; he had all the seaman's tolerance for the vagaries of the weather.

"Coming on to blow some, ain't it?" he remarked at the top of his lungs. "Your old apple-tree's carried away--that one in the corner of the orchard, I mean. I could see it as I came along by the upper road."

"Have you seen my grandfather anywhere about?" I shouted.

He could not have understood the question, for he answered, squinting up at me knowingly as he stooped over his end of my chest: "I see you got rid of _him_, Mr. Nick, and in short order, too. I spoke him a little way back, bound for Sidmouth with all sails set--at least, he was laying a course that way. Come on board, ma'am!" He pulled his forelock and made a leg respectfully before Mary (albeit eying her with no small interest) as we shoved our burden through the door. The girl clapped it shut, with a sharp struggle against the draught, and in the momentary silence that followed we stood awkwardly and apprehensively surveying one another, while the hurricane rumbled outside.

"I asked you if you had seen my grandfather," I said to Crump, at last.

"Seen the cap'n? Why, no, sir," he said, surprised. "I was telling you I saw----" He stopped, with a glance at Mary.

"Yes, go on. You saw _him_? Where? What was he doing?" she said sharply.

"I was saying he crossed my bows laying his course for Sidmouth, or that way," said Crump, evidently striving for a witness-box exactness. "He didn't answer my hail. Looked like he was in too much of a hurry."

Mary cast a troubled look about. "Did he have anything with him? A portmanteau, or carpet-bag, or anything to carry clothes?"

"Not that I noticed," said Crump carefully. "Looked as if he was going out in ballast--except his pockets; there was something in his pockets, I should say."

I stared at Mary in some perplexity. What the fat man did, or what should become of him, were, indeed, matters of indifference to me, except so far as they concerned her. I was well enough pleased that he should go, but there was something unusual in the manner of his going; it was a headlong flight. To tell the truth, I had looked for further trouble with him. What would the girl do now? And where was Captain Pendarves? She met me with eyes at once frightened and resolute.

"First of all we must find Captain Pendarves--we must go look for him," she said, answering my thought and making up my mind for me in a trice. (She has a way of doing this, displaying the most unerring accuracy at it any time these twenty years!) And, in the turn of a hand, she had kilted up her skirts, tied a shawl, over her head, and was making for the kitchen door.

"Lord love you, miss, you can't go out in this!" said Crump, aghast.

"Why not? I've been out in it once already."

"But, Mary!" I cried, and tried to withhold her. "What good can you do? Here is Crump, and here am I. We'll find them both. This is no work for a woman. You are wet, you may get hurt----"

"And you?" she retorted. Then, in a lower voice, "Don't stop me, Mr. Pendarves; don't try to keep me from going. I can't stay quietly here, and wait, and wait, and not know what's happened. I think I should go mad. I _must_ go. You are wasting time; your grandfather--oh, can't you understand?"

I understood only that she was frantic with anxiety, and might have offered further remonstrance had it not been for the sudden defection of Crump. He edged a little nearer, and gently jogged my elbow.

"I'm with ye, miss," he announced, with startling alacrity; and, as we followed her out, he explained to me in a hoarse and perfectly audible whisper behind one hand: "I'm always with 'em when they get that look on, Mr. Nicol. Catch me adrift on a lee shore! I've learned a lot since I signed with Sarah."

The breakfast-table had been laid, and the empty chairs stood around it in their places, under the smiling supervision of the admiral's portrait. In the kitchen, Mary had a bright fire going, her neat towels hanging to dry. She opened the door, and the next instant this pretty and comforting picture was shut behind us, and there we were crouching in the rain under the eaves, with the wind bellowing overhead.

Mary stood on tiptoe again to scream: "I've been all over except in the orchard--you can see the shore from there."

I took her hand within my arm, and we struggled forward. As we drew nearer the cliff, the loud and awful noise of breakers in the Cat's Mouth silenced the storm; yet the wind was no whit diminished. A man could hardly have kept his feet, I think, along the cliff path. Before we reached the corner where the ancient tree that had weathered so many gales lay prostrate, uprooted at last, although we had as yet no view of the immediate shore, we could see a white aureole of spray hang, vanish, and return in a breath, yards in air above the Brown Cow. We fetched a compass around the orchard, stumbling and staggering among stumps and matted weeds and half-hidden logs without finding my grandfather, or any trace of him; and Crump having dropped behind, we had lost sight of him when that eery screech he adopted to make himself heard traveled to us down the wind. He was kneeling by the dislodged roots of our old tree, and, as he caught my eye, began an uncouth pantomime of surprise and wonder; then stooped, grasped a handful of something, and held it aloft with extravagant gestures. He bawled again, and, having got closer by this time, I heard the words:

"Doubloons, Mr. Nick! Pieces-of-eight! Spanish dollars! Doubloons!"

"Heaven help us all!" went through me, "Here's another gone mad."

The spectacle put our search momentarily from my mind. I knew Crump's head to be none of the strongest, and I should never have guessed what had actually happened--for surely this was a strange place and way in which to stumble upon old Admiral Pendarves' treasure!

Yet that was what the carrier had done; he was never saner in his life. It lay before us, a considerable heap of gold and silver coins, tarnished but recognizable, in a rotting wooden keg sunk into the ground at the foot of the tree and partly meshed in its roots. Crump plowed among the coins with his hand.

"There's a mort of money here, Mr. Nicol," he said, "and there's been more. Look, here's some of it scattered out in the grass; it couldn't have got away out there of itself. And here's a footprint in the mud." He looked up thoughtfully. "Likely some of it's on its way to Sidmouth now," said he. "I thought his pockets bulged."

"Well, I wish him joy of it!" said I.

"Lord, you could have the law on him for that, Mr. Nicol. Ain't you going to?"

"Not I!" said I, holding Mary's hand.

Something in this attitude must have moved Crump to his next remark. He looked us both over with an impartial and dispassionate air, cast a calculating eye on the treasure; then, "Enough left to get married and set up on, anyway," he said weightily. "There's worse things in the world than being married--though you'd hardly believe it. That's what I often says to Sarah!"

At that Mary Smith snatched her hand suddenly from mine and moved toward the edge of the cliff, crying out that we must continue our search. I climbed the orchard wall and looked along the shore. Here the cliff dropped away almost sheer, and the narrow strip of shingle at its base was lost in the surf. Farther to the north it widened a little with the curve of the shore, and through a swaying curtain of rain I could follow it to a point we called the Notch, near the entrance of the Cat's Mouth; of late years they have dredged the channel and moored a bell-buoy off this headland. There was nothing alive in sight; some prone black objects I saw, with a start, were only a few fisher-boats drawn up on the sand, and none too safe. I looked out to sea; the tide was making, and, where the strait drew in toward the Cat's Teeth, the waves fought and clamored with a horrid vigor, like living monsters. Their huge voices outdid the winds, and, as one after another made forward, towered, and broke upon the reefs, the Teeth disappeared in a welter of foam. Hereabout we found the old man at last.

Where he had got a boat, or with what madman's strength he had launched it, we could not guess. It was midway of the Cat's Mouth that I first caught sight of him, at no great distance measured by feet and inches, but as far beyond human aid as if the wide Atlantic had separated us. He was standing up in the stern, with folded arms, in something the posture he may have maintained on the poop of his ship in old days--where, perhaps, he fancied himself at this moment. I trust that reason was withheld from him in the utter hour; and certainly, although I could not discern his features, I saw him make no gesture either to invite help or to indicate that he had any understanding of his position. If mad, I thought (right or wrong) his death thus less ignoble than his life had become; if sane, he held a strong and steadfast heart, and bore himself well on his last voyage. By some strange chance, the boat spun and tossed among the breakers, yet kept an even keel, and boat and man together made a viking end. For, so standing, unconscious or unmoved, he went down, before our eyes, between the white and pointed reefs of the Cat's Teeth.

BOB, DEBUTANT

BY HENRY GARDNER HUNTING

ILLUSTRATIONS BY DENMAN FINK

Of course, Bob knew that, as an abstract ethical principle, it is wrong to fight. His mother had been endeavoring to impress that idea upon him, from the moment it was first decided that he should go to public school till his books and his lunch-box were packed and he was on his way thither; and she had succeeded fairly well, for she had exacted a promise from him faithfully to avoid personal encounters as wholly sinful and unbecoming.

As a matter of fact, Bob knew only so much about fighting as he had learned through round-eyed, somewhat frightened observation of a very few entirely bloodless encounters among older boys; and, inasmuch as he had found himself consistently excluded from nearly all other, more peaceful pursuits and interests of these older ones, it was not unnatural that he should feel merely a spectator's interest in their fistic battles also, and that he should look upon them as he would have looked upon any other natural phenomenon--with some excitement, perhaps, but with no personal concern.

Bob admired his mother. To him, she was the most beautiful and the most resourceful woman in the world. He had found her judgment upon many subjects so wise that he was quite prepared to believe her position in this matter (which did not appear to be vital) completely and unquestionably correct, and to promise accordingly.

But conditions which exist on the big, bare public-school playgrounds, away alike from parental restraint and parental protection, are quite different from those in the home door-yard, and the code which obtains in the ward-school world is not an open book to all mothers of chubby-fisted sons who are called upon to observe it. It seems difficult for mothers to comprehend that a normal boy's standing on the school-ground is, like that of a young cock in a barn-yard, simply a matter of mettle and muscle.

So it was as early as Bob's second day at school--on the first Papa Jack had gone with him--that a revelation came both to him and to his mother. To him it was a painful revelation, first because he had this new code to learn, and afterward because of his promise; and it was the latter thing that made the real difficulty. When you are a small boy you can easily adapt yourself and your habits of mind to new conditions and environment; but when you have some one else to think of, and when you are bound by a promise, that complicates matters.

Now, one "Curly" Davis--who was said to have been christened Charles, but whose astonishingly spiral locks surely constituted better authority for a name than any possible application of baptismal water--was, by right of reputed might, dictator of the Vine Street Primary. Curly was alleged to be of pugnacious disposition, and had not been bred to appreciation of the Golden Rule. He had the outward bearing of one who has reason for confidence in his personal prowess. He was popularly believed to have fought many fights and fierce,--just when and where his admirers seemed not to consider important,--and he had a reputation for ferocity rather disproportionate to his stature. He had a way of glaring at you, too, if you happened to be a new boy at school, which was sufficiently suggestive of a sanguinary temperament to overawe the average youngster and to render quite unnecessary any more active demonstration.

Like all despots who rule through fear, Curly had a following. It was made up of lesser lights of like tastes and ambitions, who toadied to and imitated the tyrant simply to avoid the unpleasant necessities which the alternative involved. These followers, numbering some six or eight, through their unity of aim and Curly's leadership, had gained a certain ascendency over the far greater, but unorganized, body of would-be independents who, chafe as they might under the yoke, dared not attempt to throw it off; and these loyal retainers were zealous in service of their lord's interests and pleasure.

On that beautiful fall morning when Bob first went alone to school, he had not been ten minutes on the playground, standing upon its outer edge, school-bag and lunch-box in hand, to gaze upon its novelties, before a satellite of Curly's, one Percy Emery, espied him. Instantly it was as though Percy had discovered some new quarry, unearthed a fresh specimen of some genus, edible and choice.

"Hi, Curly," he yelled, with the eager loyalty of his kind, "come 'ere. 'Ere's a new one. Look at the school-bag to 'im."

Curly, who was at the moment engaged in the pleasing pastime of hectoring a scared little five-year-old who ought still to have been in the kindergarten, pricked up his ears at the cry and, like a hungry bird of prey leaving a mouse for a lamb, promptly swooped down upon the new game. His movement was the signal for the gathering of a crowd, and, before Bob was fairly aware that he was the object of attention, he had become the center of a curious group whose interest, if not wholly hostile, was in the main certainly not friendly. The dictator himself confronted him with unmistakably bellicose intentions.

"New shoes!" said Curly contemptuously, selecting the first obviously vulnerable point open to a shaft of insult. "New shoes! Spit on 'em!" He suited the action to the word, and immediately word and act alike were imitated by two or three of his more ardent admirers.

"Stop!" said Bob. He did not know what it meant. He backed away from his persecutors.

"Aw, stop, eh?" mocked Curly. "Who are _you_? What's yer name?"

"Bob McAllister."

"Bob! Bob-tail! Bob-cat!" chanted Curly, in gratuitous insult of which only bantam shamelessness is capable. "Stop, will I? Who'll make me? You? You want to fight?"

He danced about Bob's quiet little figure, snapping his fingers in the new boy's eyes. Then, suddenly, he swung his wiry body and swept a stinging blow in Bob's face.

A yell of delight from the despot's own drowned a weaker chorus of protest. Curly backed and squared, ready for some show of retaliation or resistance, a scornful little grin on his face.

"Come on, now. Fight! Stop me!" he cried.

But Bob did not move. Curly's blow had landed fair on the tender little red lip, and it had cut against the teeth behind; a tiny scarlet stream flowed down Bob's smooth little chin. In his eyes the dizziness of the first jar gradually gave way to slow amazement. Then the tears welled up, hot tears which overflowed the lids and ran scalding down the cheeks, but they did not conceal or quench a glitter which grew to a bright flame behind them.

Bob's school-bag and lunch-box dropped from his hands. The pudgy fists which had never before been clinched with belligerent purpose, but which were, nevertheless, a boy's fists, doubled themselves into hard little knots; but still he stood quiet.

So far as his whirling little mind could think, he thought thus: So this was fighting; this was what he had promised mother not to do; what he had promised--had promised--promised. He was not so big, this boy who had struck him, not so big. Bob was not afraid. But that a promise is a thing to be kept inviolate he had learned, oh, years ago, from Papa Jack, along with all the other _of-course-ities_ of life, like telling the truth, keeping your troubles to yourself, and not being a cry-baby or a telltale. And a promise to mother--well, nothing could be more sacred. Yet here was a new condition which he had never met before, a new situation which suddenly made him see in an altogether different aspect a question supposedly settled--this question of to fight or not to fight. It made his sweeping promise to mother suddenly seem to have been very ill-advised indeed. He wondered if his mother could have known that he would meet this kind of thing at school. In that first instant after Curly's blow was struck, instinct told him that fists were made to be used, and reason added that self-defense is right; and now something else was stirring in his heart--something which might not, perhaps, be wholly unexpected, under such circumstances, to stir in the heart of a boy whose grandfather had carried a musket at Gettysburg and whose father had worn khaki at San Juan. He wondered if his mother could have known.

But Bob's fists only clinched; they did not strike. All the sturdy little muscles in his small body stiffened, and he stood with head up and eyes blazing, but he did not strike. And then the school-bell suddenly began to ring, and the group about him broke away; and Curly Davis started off, shouting back something about fixing _him_ after school, and--he was alone.

Bob stood still. He realized that the last bell for school had rung. He knew that he should have gone in with the others. That was what he had been sent to school for, certainly. But he stood still.

The tears had dried upon his face, and so had the thin little line of red on his chin. His lip was swelling, and felt as if a hazelnut or a big bean had been pushed up under it and were sticking to and stinging the skin. He stooped and picked up his school-bag and lunch-box, stood still again for a moment, and then walked away. He was not going to school, and, naturally, as there was nowhere else to go, he was going home.

But a great, heavy weight seemed to have settled down upon his breast and pressed in upon it, and it was hard to breathe. His thoughts were still confused, but he was wondering--wondering. Why was it? Why had they treated him so? Why had they singled him out to attack him? Why had that boy with the curly hair struck him? Why had the others laughed? Didn't they like him? Didn't any one like him? Why, what had he done? His heart swelled with sudden misery and wretchedness. Why was such an unkind thing permitted in the world? And then again returned that something which stirred inside him, something hot and hard, which made his cheeks and eyes burn and his fingers clinch once more. And then again the question, "Could mother have known?"

Mrs. McAllister saw him coming a block away, and she ran down to the gate to meet him as he trudged in. Bob looked up into his mother's face. The quick concern in her eyes, as she saw the battered little lip and the stained chin, came nearer to making him sob than Curly's blow had done; but, though the tears would well up and his throat felt very tight, he only swallowed and carefully wet the puffed lip with his tongue.

"Why, Bobbie, Bobbie, what is the matter?" cried his mother, dropping down on her knees on the walk beside him. She put both her hands on his shoulders and turned his face toward her; and Bob looked straight into her troubled blue eyes, and suddenly began to feel better--began to feel, indeed, that he did not have to care so much, after all.

"Oh, Bobbie, _have_ you been fighting?"

Bob shook his head.

"How did you get your lip hurt so? Did you fall down?"

Again he shook his head. He didn't know just how to tell her. It wasn't fighting. At least, _he_ didn't fight; it had been that other boy. But, somehow, he did not want to say that; he did not want to tell; he wanted something, but he did not know just what it was. He found himself forgetting how he had felt a moment before, and then he discovered that he was not thinking about what he wanted at all. He was thinking what a very _blue_ blue his mother's eyes were when she looked at him so, and, all at once, he felt more sorry for her than for himself, because she looked so troubled; and he kissed her quickly, and hurt his lip.

Mrs. McAllister led him into the house. "Won't you tell mother, Bob?" she asked.

But he couldn't. He was feeling better--much better--but he couldn't tell. There was another reason now, that he hadn't thought of before: it would make her feel more sorry. And after all, it didn't matter so much; that is, it didn't if-- He looked up at her with a new thought.

"But, Bob, you must tell mother all about it," she was saying, as she carefully bathed his chin and lip, and so he had to shake his head again.

"Then you must tell papa this noon, Bob."

Bob considered. No, he couldn't tell Papa Jack, either. He felt pretty sure father himself wouldn't tell about such a thing if he were a boy. He was silent.

Mrs. McAllister began to move about her work, though she still looked at him frequently and anxiously. Bob went away to the window, and stood looking out. He remembered how he had started out that morning, with school-bag and lunch; he remembered how he had approached the school-grounds, and how big and strange and attractive a place it had seemed to him at first, and what a good time all those boys had been having; and then he remembered how, suddenly, he had found them all around him, summoned by the call of that boy with the hateful grin, and how Curly Davis had sneered and spat and struck. Suddenly he found himself tingling all over, and pressing a burning forehead against the cool glass, and digging his knuckles into the corner of the sash till they ached. Then he went into the library, and lay down on father's big leather couch, and thought and thought.

Papa Jack came home for lunch at noon, and mother told him. Bob heard them in the hall.