Part 5

The spirit of the doughty mariner seemed broken at last. He looked down at himself, at the mud-clogged buckets and his unspeakable bedragglement.

"I've only got one word to say to you right here and now, Cap'n," went on Todd, meekly, "and it's this, that no man ever gits jest where he wants to git, unless he has a ree-li'ble hoss. I've tried to tell you so before, but--but, well, you didn't listen to me the way you ought to." He continued to scrape, and the Cap'n stared mutely down at the foot that was encased in a muddy slipper.

"Now, there's a hoss standin' there--" pursued Todd.

"What will you take for that team jest as it stands?" blurted the mariner, desperately. The fire, the smoke of which was rolling up above the distant tree-tops, and his duty there made him reckless. As he looked down on Todd he hadn't the heart to demand of that meek and injured person that he should forget and forgive sufficiently to take him in and put him down at Ide's. It seemed like crowding the mourners. Furthermore, Cap'n Aaron Sproul was not a man who traded in humble apologies. His independence demanded a different footing with Todd, and the bitter need of the moment eclipsed economy. "Name your price!"

"A hundred and thutty, ev'rything throwed in, and I'll drive you there a mile a minit," gasped Todd, grasping the situation.

With muddy hands, trembling in haste, the Cap'n drew his long, fat wallet and counted out the bills. Brackett eyed him hungrily.

"You might jest as well settle with me now as later through the law," he cried.

But the Cap'n butted him aside, with an oath, and climbed into the wagon.

"You drive as though the devil had kicked ye," he yelled to Todd. "It's my hoss, and I don't care if you run the four legs off'm him."

Half-way to Ide's, a man leaped the roadside fence and jumped up and down before them in the highway. He had a shotgun in his hands.

"It's my brother--Voltaire," shouted Marengo, pulling up, though Cap'n Sproul swore tempestuously. "You've got to take him on. He b'longs to your fire comp'ny."

"I was out huntin' when I heard the bell," bellowed the new passenger, when he had scrambled to a place behind the wagon-seat, his back toward them and his legs hanging down. "I'm fu'st hoseman, and it's lucky you came along and giv' me a lift." He set his gun-butt down between his knees, the muzzle pointing up.

Cap'n Sproul had his teeth set hard upon a hank of his grizzled whiskers, and his eyes on the smoke ahead. Todd ran his wheezing horse up the ridge, and when they topped it they beheld the whole moving scene below them.

Men were running out of the burning house, throwing armfuls of goods right and left. The "Hecla" was a-straddle of the well, and rows of men were tossing at her brake-beams.

"Give her tar, give her tar!" yelled the man behind, craning his thin neck. Todd lashed at the horse and sent him running down the slope. At the foot of the declivity, just before they came to the lane leading into Ide's place, there was a culvert where the road crossed a brook.

The boarding in the culvert made a jog in the road, and when the wagon struck this at top speed its body flipped behind like the tongue of a catapult.

The man with the gun, having eyes and senses only for the fire and his toiling fellow-Ancients, was unprepared. He went up, out, and down in the dust, doggedly clinging to his gun. He struck the ground with it still between his knees. The impact of the butt discharged both barrels straight into the air.

Flanked by a roaring fire and howling crowd, and bombarded in the rear, even a horse with a bone spavin and the heaves will exhibit the spirit of Bucephalus. One of the rotten reins broke at Marengo's first terrified tug. In less time than it takes to tell, Cap'n Aaron Sproul, desperate and beholding only one resource--the tail flaunting over the dasher--seized it and gave a seaman's sturdy pull. The tail came away in his hands and left only a wildly brandishing stump. Even in that moment of horror, the Cap'n had eyes to see and wit to understand that this false tail was more of Marengo Todd's horse-jockey guile. The look that he turned on the enterprising doctor of caudal baldness was so perfectly diabolical that Marengo chose what seemed the lesser of two evils. He precipitated himself over the back of the seat, dropped to the ground as lightly as a cat, ran wildly until he lost his footing, and dove into some wayside alders. Cap'n Aaron Sproul was left alone with his newly acquired property!

When he hove in sight of his own house he saw Louada Murilla on the porch, gazing off at the smoke of the fire and evidently luxuriating in the consciousness that it was her husband who was that day leading the gallant forces of the Ancients.

As he stared wildly, home seemed his haven and the old house his rock of safety. He did not understand enough about the vagaries of horses and wagons to appreciate the risk. One rein still hung over the dasher.

"Only one jib down-haul left of all the riggin'," he groaned, and then grabbed it and surged on it.

The horse swung out of the road, the wagon careering wildly on two wheels. Sproul crossed the corner of some ploughed land, swept down a length of picket-fence, and came into his own lane, up which the horse staggered, near the end of his endurance. The wagon swung and came to grief against the stone hitching-post at the corner of the porch. Cap'n Sproul, encumbered still with buckets and bag and trumpet, floundered over the porch rail, through a tangled mass of woodbine vines, and into the arms of his distracted wife.

For five minutes after she had supported him to a chair she could do nothing but stare at him, with her hands clasped and her eyes goggling, and cry, "Aaron, Aaron, dear!" in crescendo. His sole replies to her were hollow sounds in his throat that sounded like "unk!"

"Where have you been?" she cried. "All gurry, and wet as sop? If you are hurt what made 'em let their Chief come home all alone with that wild hoss? Aaron, can't you speak?"

He only flapped a muddy hand at her, and seemed to be beyond speech. There was a dull, wondering look in his eyes, as though he were trying to figure out some abstruse problem. He did not brighten until a team came tearing up to the gate, and a man with a scoop fireman's hat on came running to the porch. The man saluted.

"Chief," he said, with the air of an aide reporting on the field of battle, "that house and barn got away from us, but we fit well for 'em--yas s'r, we fit well! It is thought queer in some quarters that you wasn't there to take charge, but I told the boys that you'd prob'ly got good reasons, and they'll git over their mad, all right. You needn't worry none about that!"

The Cap'n's sole reply was another of those hollow "unks!"

"But the boys is pretty well beat out, and so I've run over to ask if you'll let us use your ten-dollar fine for a treat? That will help their feelin's to'ards you a good deal, and--"

The Cap'n, without taking his eyes from the smug face of the man, swung one of the buckets and let drive at him. It missed. But he had got his range, and the next bucket knocked off the scoop hat. When the Cap'n scrambled to his feet, loaded with the bed-wrench for his next volley, the man turned and ran for his team. The bed-wrench caught him directly between the shoulders--a masterly shot. The trumpet flew wild, but by that time the emissary of the Ancients was in his wagon and away.

"Aaron!" his wife began, quaveringly, but the Cap'n leaped toward her, pulled the mouth of the puckering-bag over her head, and hopped into the house. When at last she ventured to peer in at the sitting-room window, he was tearing the book of "Rules of the Smyrna Ancient and Honorable Firemen's Association," using both his hands and his teeth, and worrying it as a dog worries a bone.

That was his unofficial resignation. The official one came as soon as he could control his language.

And for a certain, prolonged period in the history of the town of Smyrna it was well understood that Cap'n Aaron Sproul was definitely out of public affairs. But in public affairs it often happens that honors that are elusive when pursued are thrust upon him who does not seek them.

VII

The moderator of the Smyrna town meeting held his breath for just a moment so as to accentuate the hush in which the voters listened for his words, and then announced the result of the vote for first selectman of Smyrna:

"Whole number cast, one hundred thutty-two; necessary for a choice, sixty-seven; of which Colonel Gideon Ward has thutty-one."

A series of barking, derisive yells cut in upon his solemn announcement, and he rapped his cane on the marred table of the town hall and glared over his spectacles at the voters.

"And Cap'n Aaron Sproul has one hundred and--"

The howl that followed clipped his last words. Men hopped upon the knife-nicked settees of the town house and waved their hats while they hooted. A group of voters, off at one side, sat and glowered at this hilarity. Out of the group rose Colonel Gideon, his long frame unfolding with the angularity of a carpenter's two-foot rule. There were little dabs of purple on his knobby cheek-bones. His hair and his beard bristled. He put up his two fists as far as his arms would reach and vibrated them, like a furious Jeremiah calling down curses.

Such ferocious mien had its effect on the spectators after a time. Smyrna quailed before her ancient tyrant, even though he was dethroned.

"Almighty God has always wanted an excuse to destroy this town like Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed," he shouted, his voice breaking into a squeal of rage; "now He's got it."

He drove his pointed cap onto his head, gave a parting shake of his fists that embraced moderator, voters, walls, floor, roof, and all appurtenances of the town house, and stalked down the aisle and out. The silence in town meeting was so profound that the voters heard him welting his horse as he drove away.

After a time the moderator drew a long breath, and stated that he did not see Cap'n Aaron Sproul in the meeting, and had been informed that he was not present.

"I come past his place this mornin'," whispered Old Man Jordan to his neighbor on the settee, "and he was out shovelin' snow off'm the front walk, and when I asked him if he wa'n't comin' to town meetin', he said that a run of the seven years' itch and the scurvy was pretty bad, but he reckoned that politics was wuss. I should hate to be the one that has to break this news to him."

"And seein' how it's necessary to have the first selectman here to be sworn in before the meetin' closes this afternoon," went on the moderator, "I'll appoint a committee of three to wait on Cap'n Aaron Sproul and notify him of the distinguished honor that has been done him this day by his feller townsmen."

He settled his spectacles more firmly upon his nose, and ran his gaze calculatingly over the assembled voters. No one of those patriotic citizens seemed to desire to be obtrusive at that moment.

"I'll appoint as chairman of that notifying committee," proceeded the moderator, "Entwistle Harvey, and as--"

"I shall have to decline the honor," interrupted Mr. Entwistle Harvey, rising promptly. The voters grinned. They thoroughly understood the reason for Mr. Harvey's reluctance.

"It ain't that I'm any less a reformer than the others that has to-day redeemed this town from ring rule and bossism," declared Mr. Harvey, amid applause; "it ain't that I don't admire the able man that has been selected to lead us up out of the vale of political sorrow--and I should be proud to stand before him and offer this distinguished honor from the voters of this town, but I decline because I--I--well, there ain't any need of goin' into personal reasons. I ain't the man for the place, that's all." He sat down.

"I don't blame him none for duckin'," murmured Old Man Jordan to his seat companion. "Any man that was in the crowd that coaxed Cap'n Sproul into takin' the foremanship of Heckly Fire Comp'ny has got a good excuse. I b'lieve the law says that ye can't put a man twice in peril of his life."

Cap'n Sproul's stormy relinquishment of the hateful honor that had been foisted upon him by the Smyrna fire-fighters was history recent enough to give piquant relish to the present situation. He had not withheld nor modified his threats as to what would happen to any other committee that came to him proffering public office.

The more prudent among Smyrna's voters had hesitated about making the irascible ex-mariner a candidate for selectman's berth.

But Smyrna, in its placid New England eddy, had felt its own little thrill from the great tidal wave of municipal reform sweeping the country. It immediately gazed askance at Colonel Gideon Ward, for twenty years first selectman of Smyrna, and growled under its breath about "bossism." But when the search was made for a candidate to run against him, Smyrna men were wary. Colonel Ward held too many mortgages and had advanced too many call loans not to be well fortified against rivals.

"The only one who has ever dared to twist his tail is his brother-in-law, the Cap'n," said Odbar Broadway, oracularly, to the leaders who had met in his store to canvass the political situation. "The Cap'n won't be as supple as some in town office, but he ain't no more hell 'n' repeat than what we've been used to for the last twenty years. He's wuth thutty thousand dollars, and Gid Ward can't foreclose no mo'gidge on him nor club him with no bill o' sale. He's the only prominunt man in town that can afford to take the office away from the Colonel. What ye've got to do is to go ahead and elect him, and then trust to the Lord to make him take it."

So that was what Smyrna had done on that slushy winter's day.

It did it with secret joy and with ballots hidden in its palms, where the snapping eyes of Colonel Ward could not spy.

And now, instead of invoking the higher power mentioned as a resource by Broadway, the moderator of the town meeting was struggling with human tools, and very rickety human tools they seemed to be.

Five different chairmen did he nominate, and with great alacrity the five refused to serve.

The moderator took off his glasses, and testily rapped the dented table.

"Feller citizens," he snapped, "this is gittin' to be boys' play. I realize puffickly that Cap'n Aaron Sproul, our first selectman-elect, has not been a seeker after public office since he retired as foreman of the Hecla Fire Company. I realize puffickly that he entertained some feelin' at the time that--that--he wasn't exactly cal'lated to be foreman of an engine company. But that ain't sayin' that he won't receive like gentlemen the committee that comes to tell him that he has been elected to the highest office in this town. I ain't got any more time to waste on cowards. There's one man here that ain't afraid of his own shadder. I call on Constable Zeburee Nute to head the committee, and take along with him Constables Wade and Swanton. And I want to say to the voters here that it's a nice report to go abroad from this town that we have to pick from the police force to get men with enough courage to tell a citizen that he's been elected first selectman. But the call has gone out for Cincinnatus, and he must be brought here."

The moderator's tone was decisive and his mien was stern. Otherwise, even the doughty Constable Nute might have refused to take orders, though they were given in the face and eyes of his admiring neighbors. He gnawed at his grizzled beard and fingered doubtfully the badge that, as chief constable of the town, he wore on the outside of his coat.

"Gents of the committee, please 'tend promptly to the duties assigned," commanded the moderator, "and we will pass on to the next article in the town warrant."

Mr. Nute rose slowly and marched out of the hall, the other two victims following without any especial signs of enthusiasm.

In the yard of the town house Mr. Nute faced them, and remarked:

"I have some ideas of my own as to a genteel way of gittin' him interested in this honor that we are about to bestow. Has any one else ideas?"

The other two constables shook their heads gloomily.

"Then I'll take the brunt of the talk on me and foller my ideas," announced Mr. Nute. "I've been studyin' reform, and, furthermore, I know who Cincinnatus was!"

The three men unhitched each his own team, and drove slowly, in single file, along the mushy highway.

It was one of Cap'n Aaron Sproul's mentally mild, mellow, and benign days, when his heart seemed to expand like a flower in the comforts of his latter-life domestic bliss. Never had home seemed so good--never the little flush on Louada Murilla's cheeks so attractive in his eyes as they dwelt fondly on her.

In the night he had heard the sleet clattering against the pane and the snow slishing across the clapboards, and he had turned on his pillow with a little grunt of thankfulness.

"There's things about dry land and the people on it that ain't so full of plums as a sailor's duff ought to be," he mused, "but--" And then he dozed off, listening to the wind.

In the morning, just for a taste of rough weather, he had put on his slicker and sea-boots and shovelled the slush off the front walk. Then he sat down with stockinged feet held in the radiance of an open Franklin stove, and mused over some old log-books that he liked to thumb occasionally for the sake of adding new comfort to a fit of shore contentment.

This day he was taking especial interest in the log-books, for he was again collaborating with Louada Murilla in that spasmodic literary effort that she had termed:

FROM SHORE TO SHORE

LINES FROM A MARINER'S ADVENTURES

_The Life Story of the Gallant Captain Aaron Sproul_

_Written by His Affectionate Wife_

"You can put down what's true," he said, continuing a topic that they had been pursuing, "that boxin' the compass and knowin' a jib down-haul from a pound of saleratus ain't all there is to a master mariner's business, not by a blamed sight. Them passuls of cat's meat that they call sailormen in these days has to be handled,--well, the superintendent of a Sunday-school wouldn't be fit for the job, unless he had a little special trainin'."

Louada Murilla, the point of her pencil at her lips, caught a vindictive gleam in his eyes.

"But it seems awful cruel, some of the things that you--you--I suppose you had to do 'em, Aaron! And yet when you stop and think that they've got immortal souls to save--"

"They don't carry any such duffle to sea in their dunnage-bags," snapped the skipper. "Moral suasion on them would be about like tryin' to whittle through a turkle's shell with a hummin'-bird's pin-feather. My rule most generally was to find one soft spot on 'em somewhere that a marlin-spike would hurt, and then hit that spot hard and often. That's the only way I ever got somewhere with a cargo and got back ag'in the same year."

"I suppose it has to be," sighed his wife, making a note. "It's like killing little calves for veal, and all such things that make the fond heart ache."

The Cap'n was "leaving" the grimy pages of a log-book. He paused over certain entries, and his face darkened. There was no more vindictiveness in his expression. It was regret and a sort of vague worry.

"What is it, Aaron?" asked his wife, with wistful apprehensiveness.

"Northin'," he growled.

"But I know it's something," she insisted, "and I'm always ready to share your burdens."

Cap'n Sproul looked around on the peace of his home, and some deep feeling seemed to surge in his soul.

"Louada Murilla," he said, sadly, "this isn't anything to be written in the book, and I didn't ever mean to speak of it to you. But there are times when a man jest has to talk about things, and he can't help it. There was one thing that I've been sorry for. I've said so to myself, and I'm goin' to say as much to you. Confession is good for the soul, so they say, and it may help me out some to tell you."

The horrified look on her face pricked him to speak further. 'Tis a titillating sensation, sometimes, to awe or shock those whom we love, when we know that forgiveness waits ready at hand.

"There was once--there was one man--I hit him dretful hard. He was a Portygee. But I hit him too hard. It was a case of mutiny. I reckon I could have proved it was mutiny, with the witnesses. But I hit him hard."

"Did he--?" gasped his wife.

"He did," replied the Cap'n, shortly, and was silent for a time.

"The thing for me to have done," he went on, despondently, "was to report it, and stood hearin'. But it was six weeks after we'd dropped him overboard--after the funeral, ye know--before we reached port. And there was a cargo ashore jest dancin' up and down to slip through the main hatch as soon as t' other one was over the rail--and freights 'way up and owners anxious for results, and me tryin' for a record, and all that, ye know. All is, there wa'n't nothin' said by the crew, for they wa'n't lookin' for trouble, and knowed the circumstances, and so I lo'ded and sailed. And that's all to date."

"But they say 'murder will out.'" Her face was white.

"It wa'n't murder. It was discipline. And I didn't mean to. But either his soft spot was too soft, or else I hit too hard. What I ought to have done was to report when my witnesses was right handy. Since I've settled and married and got property, I've woke up in the night, sometimes, and thought what would happen to me if that Portygee's relatives got track of me through one of the crew standin' in with 'em--blabbin' for what he could git out of it. I have to think about those things, now that I've got time to worry. Things looks different ashore from what they do aflo't, with your own ship under you and hustlin' to make money." He gazed round the room again, and seemed to luxuriate in his repentance.

"But if anything should be said, you could hunt up those men and--"

"Hunt what?" the Cap'n blurted. "Hunt tarheels once they've took their dunnage-bags over the rail? Hunt whiskers on a flea! What are you talkin' about? Why, Louada Murilla, I never even knowed what the Portygee's name was, except that I called him Joe. A skipper don't lo'd his mem'ry with that sculch any more'n he'd try to find names for the hens in the deck-coop.

"I made a mistake," he continued, after a time, "in not havin' it cleaned up, decks washed, and everything clewed snug at the time of it. But ev'ry man makes mistakes. I made mine then. It would be God-awful to have it come down on me when I couldn't prove nothin' except that I give him the best funeral I could. There ain't much of anything except grit in the gizzard of a United States court. They seem to think the Govumment wants every one hung. I remember a captain once who--"

He paused suddenly, for he caught sight of three muddy wagons trundling in procession into the yard. In the first one sat Constable Zeburee Nute, his obtrusive nickel badge on his overcoat.

Cap'n Sproul looked at Louada Murilla, and she stared at him, and in sudden panic both licked dry lips and were silent. The topic they had been pursuing left their hearts open to terror. There are moments when a healthy body suddenly absorbs germs of consumption that it has hitherto thrown off in hale disregard. There are moments when the mind and courage are overwhelmed by panic that reason does not pause to analyze.

VIII

Louada Murilla opened the front door when the chief constable knocked, after an exasperatingly elaborate hitching and blanketing of horses. She staggered to the door rather than walked. The Cap'n sat with rigid legs still extended toward the fire.