Part 1

Chapter 14,291 wordsPublic domain

UNDER ROCKING SKIES

BY L. FRANK TOOKER

AUTHOR OF "THE CALL OF THE SEA," ETC.

NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1905

_Published October, 1905_

_COLONIAL PRESS Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, U.S.A._

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

"THERE WAS A TWINKLE IN CAPTAIN MARCH'S EYES" _Frontispiece_

"THE BRIG WAS SLIDING DOWN THE SEAS LIKE A BOY LET LOOSE FROM SCHOOL" 63

"'_YOU_ WILL NEED THE PATIENCE,' SHE SAID" 113

"THEY HEARD HIM WHISTLING FOR A WIND" 141

"THERE CAME A 'SMOOTH,' AND THE BOAT SHOT IN" 195

"'KEEP 'EM GOING! DON'T LET 'EM SLACK UP A BIT!'" 255

UNDER ROCKING SKIES

For a quarter of an hour Thomas Medbury had been standing at the east window of his mother's parlor, gazing out across his neighbor's yard with an eager intentness that betrayed a surprising absorption in a landscape without striking features and wholly lacking in any human interest. The low-studded room in which he stood was closely shut and darkened, having about it the musty smell peculiar to old houses. There were sea-fans before the fireplace, flanked on each side by polished conch-shells. On the wall hung an oil-painting of the brig _North Star_, with all sail set, and at her foretruck a white burgee, with her name in red letters, standing straight out in half a gale of wind. Family portraits in oval gilt frames were ranged with mathematical precision along the remaining wall-spaces, and on the mantelpiece stood a curious collection of objects brought from far lands--carved ivories and strange ware from China, peculiar shells, a Japanese short sword, and a South Pacific war-club. No one would have needed to be told that it was the home of a sailor.

Indeed, a keen observer might have guessed it from the young man himself. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and bronzed to the color of overripe wheat. His eyes had the steady, far-seeing look of the seaman, but were not yet marked about by the crow's-feet that the glare of the sun on the sea brings early in life. It was, moreover, a strong face, straightforward and pleasant, and irradiated by an almost boyish eagerness.

Suddenly he leaned forward with quickened interest as the door of his neighbor's house opened, and there stepped forth a short, stout man of sixty, who stood a moment for a last word and then hurried down the boxwood-lined path. He, too, was clearly a sailor: he walked with his feet far apart, like a man so habituated to the rolling deck that it seemed a waste of time and energy to alter his gait on the rare occasions when he trod the firm ground. Medbury perceived that his face wore a look of placid satisfaction, and with the tightening of the lines of his own to an unspoken resolution, he hurried through the house and across the yard, and, vaulting the low dividing fence, approached his neighbor's back door.

He lifted the latch without knocking, and at once came face to face with a wet-eyed young woman standing at a table and listlessly cutting out sugar-cookies with a tin mold. A child of four, leaning against her, reached eagerly for the cutter, and a boy of ten sat near the stove, softly crying.

"Annie," said Medbury, abruptly, "where's Bob? I want to see him."

"He's up-stairs, packing. He's going out with Cap'n Joel March," said the young woman, tragically. The boy by the stove broke into a wail, and she turned sharply toward him.

"Do stop it, Bobbie!" she exclaimed. Then she walked toward the door to call her husband.

She returned at once, her husband, tall, brown, and wiry, walking behind her with the subdued step of a culprit who feels that by stepping softly, smiling unobtrusively, and gainsaying no man, he may escape, through his humility, what he deserves for his misconduct. His good-natured face lighted up at sight of Medbury.

"Bob," said Medbury, without other prelude than a nod, "I want you to do me a favor: don't go out this trip with Cap'n Joel."

The other smiled uncertainly and seated himself.

"Why, that's a funny thing to ask, Tom," he said wonderingly. "Annie's been at me, of course; but I don't see what odds it makes to you. It's a good berth, and it don't seem right to let the chance go by. Besides, I've promised the old man. I can't back out now."

"But he promised _me_ he'd stay home a spell," broke in his wife. "He thinks that's nothing. He's just got home, after being away eleven months. Why, baby didn't know him!"

Under the concentrated gaze of her elders, the child contemplated her father as a blinking puppy might have looked at an object that, from being unfamiliar and terrifying, had gradually become an accepted but still unexplained phenomenon. But presently she turned to Medbury.

"Him gived me a pen-n-y," she said, with a serene gravity that seemed to concern itself with the fact as a historical statement rather than as a personal gratification.

Medbury seized her and tossed her, giggling, in his arms.

"He did, did he?" he exclaimed. "Well, he doesn't deserve to have another if he can't stay home and get acquainted with you." He seated himself, and, with the child snuggling against him, turned to her father again.

"It's a shame, Bob, after promising Annie. Mother says she hasn't talked about anything for six months except your coming home for a while. She said you were going to paint the house and fix things up, and she's been running around asking everybody about the best kind of paint, and planning where to set out shrubs and make flower-beds, and dig up a little garden for the children. And now you run off at the first chance!"

"Why, I don't see why you take it so to heart, Tom," said Bob, smiling, but a little grieved. He felt they ought to feel that he did it only for the best.

"Well, I'll tell you why: I want to go myself. I asked Cap'n Joel to take me, but he wouldn't hear to it. Now, if he can't get anybody else, he's bound to let me go in the end."

Bob looked at him in amazement.

"Why, you're going to have the new bark! What do you care for--" Then all at once his face broke into a comprehending grin. "Oh, I see," he added. He sat for a moment smiling down at the floor. "All right, Tom," he said, looking up at last. "I'll do it. I wouldn't for anybody else. I really didn't want to go, but I felt I ought to. But what I'm going to say to the old man--" He looked at them with a troubled face.

"Nothing," replied Medbury, promptly. He turned to the boy, who was listening eagerly, the new hope of keeping his father at home brightening his tear-stained cheeks. "Bobbie, go over and tell my mother you want my fish-lines; then run up to Cap'n March's and tell him your father can't go, after all. And hurry right back; your father's going to take you fishing."

The boy went out of the door and over the fence with a wild whoop of unrestrained joy. Medbury caught up a hat and put it on his friend's head.

"You'll find my boat under Simeon's shop; everything's in her," he told him. "We'll send Bobbie right down. And hurry; the tide's right for fishing now. You want to get right off." He laughed boyishly. Then he gently pushed Bob toward the door and watched him going down the street.

"Well, that's done," he said to Annie, and stepped outside, with his hand still holding the latch. Suddenly he looked back. "Annie," he said, "tell Bob I want him to go out with me as mate when the bark's finished. Of course that's six months away; but tell him to keep it in mind." With that he hurriedly closed the door.

The boy returned, and followed his father, and five minutes later Captain March turned in at the gate. His face was no longer placid, but wore a look of annoyance. Medbury, watching him, saw him go away a moment later, hurrying toward the harbor, taking shorter steps than usual, and biting his bearded under lip in his perplexity.

"Seems kind o' mean to bother the old fellow," Medbury said to himself, looking troubled. He shook the feeling off as he added: "I guess it's for his good. Now he'll look up Davis; he's the only man he can get."

As he passed out of his gate, Annie called to him from her doorway. She was smiling.

"I wish you good luck, Tom."

"Thank you, Annie," he replied. "Don't tell about this."

She shook her head and laughed.

"Not till it comes out all right," she promised.

John Davis was sitting in the shipyard watching the carpenters setting up a stern-post for a new vessel, and there the captain found him. Medbury, watching them, saw them go away together; but at the corner of the Shore Road and Main street they separated.

Half-way up High street, Medbury caught up with Davis.

"You're walking fast, John," he said.

"Just shipped with Cap'n Joel," Davis replied, not slacking his gait, but rather increasing it, as befitted a little man, sensitive as to his size, when walking with a long-legged companion.

"That's what I wanted to see you about," Medbury told him. "You're not going." He smiled, but he glanced uneasily at Davis out of the corners of his eyes.

Davis stopped and looked at him. He was a middle-aged man with a red beard and an uncertain temper, and now he stared at Medbury with flushing face. Then he broke into a laugh.

"I ain't, eh?" he demanded good-naturedly. "I'd like to know why not."

Medbury smiled and laid his hand on the other's shoulder.

"Because I want to go myself, John," he replied. "I've _got_ to go."

Davis stared at him with dropping jaw.

"You!"

"That's what I said," Medbury replied.

For a moment Davis stood grinning uncertainly; then he looked up.

"Where's the joke?" he asked. "Blamed if I see it."

"It's no joke," said Medbury, patiently. "I've _got_ to go. I can't tell why--just now; but some day I may."

Davis gazed up and down the street with an abstracted air; but all at once he drew himself together and exclaimed:

"Well, I'll be--" He broke off suddenly, and, turning sharply, began to walk back to the village.

"Where are you going?" asked Medbury, still standing in the road.

Over his shoulder Davis answered laconically:

"To tell the ol' man I can't go." He did not stop.

"It's mighty good of you, John," Medbury called humbly. "I'll make it up to you somehow--see if I don't."

"Make it up!" cried Davis, stopping in the road. "I don't want nothin' made up. You made it up, years ago, when you got me out of that affair in Para. You didn't ask no questions that night; nor when you run across our bar in that no'theaster to fish up my boy when his boat capsized. I don't know what you're up to, and I don't care. It's all right." He waved his hand lightly, as if to dismiss all obligations, and departed in search of Captain March.

But half a dozen steps away, Medbury heard him laugh, and turned to see him standing in the road, looking back.

"Just this minute saw what you was aimin' at," he called to Medbury. "Well, good luck to you!" And, grinning to himself, he went his way.

"Now," thought Medbury, "if Cap'n March'll only keep his eyes open for the rest of the day, I guess he's not going to miss seeing me. I shall be near, but not too near. Only I wish I knew of something to hurry him up before too many people laugh and wish me luck."

Fate, in the hands of a woman, was to do that for him.

With something of the serene imperturbability that was a part of his habitual attitude toward life, the Rev. Robert Drew sat in a rocking-chair on the little porch of his house and, slowly rocking, looked out across the waters of the placid bay while he awaited Captain March's summons. For twenty-four hours he had scarcely stirred from home, that he might be in instant readiness for departure on the coming of the captain's messenger; but the messenger still tarried, and the _Henrietta C. March_, lying quietly at anchor off the harbor with her mainsail up, seemed no nearer to sailing than she had been the day before.

It was early in March--March that had come in like a lamb and now lay drowsing under a sun that hourly reddened the buds and gleamed white on the salt-meadows and the shining boles of trees. There were bird-calls at intervals; barnyard fowls sunned themselves in garden spaces and sent up cloudy veils of dust: the life of the earth was awakening. Drew could see dark specks about the harbor's mouth: he knew that the boats had begun to go out for flatfish. The thought of even that mild activity moved him to impatience, and, getting to his feet, he walked to an open window and looked in.

"Mother," he said, "I'm going to find Captain March and get some reason from him why he doesn't sail. He can get a good mate, I hear; I don't understand his delaying. I'm tired of it. If he isn't going, I wish to know it, and arrange for a vacation elsewhere."

"Very well, Robert." His mother looked up brightly. Her son as an instrument of strenuous aggressiveness amused her. She had the sense of humor, which he had not inherited, and it was this sense that lured her on to add: "Don't say anything that you may regret."

"Oh, no," he answered gravely, and went away, leaving her to the silent laughter that always seemed to him, whenever he was a witness of it, as something peculiarly elusive and almost pagan.

In all Blackwater there was no cooler spot than Myron Beckwith's boat-shop. Facing the Shore Road, and standing on piles, with big sliding doors opening at each end, on a hot summer afternoon one could always find a cool breeze drawing through it and hear the water lapping about the piles beneath the floor. The panorama of village life passed by on the Shore Road, and at the back doors one could sit and watch all the activity of harbor and wharves and see the vessels going up and down the sound. To sailors ashore and to idlers in general it was an attractive spot. Here Drew found Captain March standing in a little group near the rear doors, ruminating on life.

"No," he was saying, "things go best by contraries. A sailor ought to marry a girl from the inboard, who doesn't know a scow from a full-rigged ship and is just a little scart at sight of salt water. A man like the dominie here," he added, as Drew halted by the group, "ought to marry a girl who's never been under conviction and has got a spice of old Satan in her. That's what gives 'em variety and keeps 'em interested. When you know just what you're going to have for your meals every day, you kind o' lose interest in your eating."

"Dominie," said Jehiel Dace, "you ought to get the cap'n to supply your pulpit while you're off on your vacation. He's a good deal of a preacher."

"I have other uses for him," said Drew, with a smile.

"'Twouldn't be a bad notion if we'd all change places now and then," replied the captain. "We'd appreciate each other better. I don't know but I could preach about as well as the dominie could run the _Henrietta C._ I ain't so sure about the prayers. One thing, there's several in that congregation I'd like to talk at."

"Nothin' to hender you from freein' your mind as it is," suggested Dace, brightening at the prospect. "You don't need no pulpit for that."

There was a twinkle in Captain March's eyes, but he shook his head.

"No," he said with an air of finality, "it wouldn't be official. Wisdom has got to have authority to give it weight. Otherwise it's just blamed impudence."

"That's so," admitted Dace; "that's a good deal so. See what a man will take from his wife without--"

Captain March turned suddenly.

"There he comes!" he exclaimed, and gazed steadily through the open window.

All eyes, turning in the same direction, saw a horseman galloping down the Mount Horeb road. He descended the hill, was lost to sight behind the rigging-loft, flashed past a bit of the Shore Road, and was hidden again for a moment while they heard the thunder of his horse's feet on the mill-creek bridge. Captain March seated himself and, with knees wide apart, faced the land-side door.

In front of the shop a boy threw himself from a panting horse. He walked straight up to Captain March, and in much the same manner that a courier might announce defeat to a king, said:

"He can't come. His wife's sick, he says. He can't come."

"That settles it," said the captain. "I heard Simeon Macy was ashore, and I thought maybe I could get him for mate. Now I've got to go to the city this afternoon and look one up."

No one spoke, but every man in the group except the captain and Drew thought of Thomas Medbury, and wondered how far a man might be justified in letting personal reasons override necessity when his vessel was loaded and ready for sea.

Dace was the first to break the silence.

"As I was sayin'," he remarked, "speakin' of wives--"

Some one touched Drew on the shoulder and he turned quickly. It was Deacon Taylor, anxious to talk over again the debated subject of a new heater for the church. When Drew was again free the captain was gone.

"Where did the captain go?" he asked.

"My wisdom touchin' wives reminded him that his had sent him on an errant," answered Dace. "He went to the market. I suppose by now he's tryin' to explain to his wife how he happened to be three hours late with the meat for dinner."

At the market Drew was told that Captain March had gone home. When, after a momentary hesitation, Drew had gone thither, it was only to find Mrs. March sitting by a window, apparently watching for her recreant husband.

"And he wanted roast beef for dinner," sadly remarked that good lady after she had told the minister that she knew no more about her husband's whereabouts than she knew where Moses was buried. She turned her face from him for an instant.

"It is twelve o'clock, lacking seventeen minutes," she added in a tone that suggested the tragic stage. Drew hurried away.

When, after a hopeless search for the missing mariner, he wended his way homeward half an hour later, he smiled to himself as he wondered if it was not just as well: he could not for his life tell what he could have said to urge the captain to sail. At his gate he came face to face with a breathless small boy.

"Mr. Drew," he gasped, "Cap'n March he says--he says--you be at--Myron's boat-shop--boat-shop by half-past one--yes, sir. He's goin' to sail." Then he disappeared.

In wonder Drew hastened up to his house, to find his mother kneeling on the floor and strapping a satchel.

"I've just put some crullers and a glass of jelly in your bag," she told him, without turning. "I don't suppose you'll get a thing that tastes like real cooking. And I put your winter flannels in, too. It will be cold nights, and you will sit out on deck and get chilled through. Now come to dinner."

"I don't understand this sudden haste," said Drew, as he took his seat at the table. "I saw the captain an hour ago, and he showed no signs of any impatience to be off. It seems too good to be true."

Mrs. Drew laughed.

"He says the same of you," she told him. "But if you really get away you owe it to your mother. I am the god out of the machine--I. I was tying up the flowering-currant bush by the fence, and Captain March came by. He was hurrying, my dear. I never saw him hurry before. What do sailors say--rolling both scuppers under? Yes; it was like that. I called to him and asked him if he had seen my son. Yes, he had. Then I told him that if he didn't sail soon you would need a second vacation to recover from the nervous strain of waiting for this one to begin. I let him know how you had done nothing for two days but sit by your baggage and start at every sound. I told him, too, that you were constantly worrying lest something should happen to keep you at home at the last minute; so the sooner you got away the better."

"Oh, mother! mother!" protested Drew, smiling.

"Oh, I put it strongly--trust me for that. He said he had seen you, but you had said nothing. I knew it would be like that. Oh, you were two Buddhas sitting under the sacred Bo-tree, contemplating eternity. Isn't that what the Buddha is supposed to do? You were like that, you two, anyway. Well, he explained everything. He told me that two men had promised to go out with him as mate, but changed their minds. He thought it queer. Another asked to go, but, for personal reasons, he didn't want him. But as soon as he knew just how you felt he said he'd go right off for this man. I thought it very good of him. I hope the man isn't a rough character. But, Robert, you didn't tell me that his wife and daughter are going." She looked at her son reproachfully.

"Whose wife and daughter? I can't follow you," he said.

"The captain's, of course."

"I believe he did mention the fact that his wife and little girl were going, but it made no impression on me," Drew told her. "I have scarcely thought of it since."

"His little girl! Robert, haven't you ever seen her?"

"No, mother."

"Well, I suppose you knew of her, though they don't attend your church." Then she changed the subject with an abruptness that was so characteristic that Drew's thoughts slipped away from the question he had been about to ask. "But, do you know," she said, "I think he decided to go partly because he forgot his meat for dinner and he's afraid of that round, good-natured-looking little wife of his. His hurry to get away now looks as if he'd been too busy finding a mate to get home earlier. He told me about it with an intimate chuckle that seemed to take me right into his family closet and introduce me to the skeleton."

As Drew made his way through Beckwith's boat-shop half an hour later and stopped at the wide sliding doors at the rear, a large yawl was lying at the float. Three sailors sat on the thwarts, leaning forward with the characteristic rounded shoulders and relaxed look of idle seamen. Up the long plank walk from the boat hurried a tall, beardless young man of twenty-eight or thirty. He walked with a swinging gait, his shoulders were well back, and his face wore the look of one whose thoughts were pleasant.

He glanced from Drew to his baggage, then back to Drew again, and smiled, showing firm white teeth.

"Mr. Drew?" His voice suggested a query, but went on again immediately, without waiting for an answer: "Tumble in. The old man's gone aboard. He wouldn't wait."

He paused while Drew gathered up his baggage, but did not offer to assist. The American seaman is no burden-bearer for other men.

The sailors in the boat turned incurious faces as they heard the two draw near, then quickly rose and held the yawl to the float till they were seated in the stern-sheets. In silence the oarsmen then took their places, shipped their oars, and at Medbury's word sped away.

Drew looked at his watch as they pulled away from the float.

"It's not yet the hour Captain March set for leaving," he said. "I hope I did not misunderstand it."

"Oh, that's the old man's way," replied the other, lightly. "Now that he's really off, he can't hurry fast enough--had to get Myron to take him out in a sailboat while I was to wait for you."

"Are you a Blackwater man?" asked Drew, later.

"Born here, and my father and grandfather before me. I guess that makes me a Blackwater man, all right. My name's Medbury. You know my mother; she goes to your church."

Drew's face brightened.

"Yes, indeed. Now I understand why I've never seen you," he said. "Your mother told me that you had not been home for more than two years. I've not been here so long. She is very cheerful in her loneliness; I often stop in to talk to her."

"Yes," answered Medbury, soberly; "she told me. It does her lots of good. She thinks a great deal of you." He paused a moment, and then said: "I've promised her to take no more long voyages. She's getting old, and I'm all she's got."