CHAPTER XVI
ARRIVALS
I was sometimes a sharp race for the bus drivers from the Old Harbour to the New Harbour and return, when the two regular boats came in. But on Thursday the boat due to make the breach of the Great Salt Pond and disembark her passengers at the New Harbour landing, was sighted almost an hour before the boat from Newport came into view. So there was plenty of time for Captain Littlefield to drive over with Worry and Trouble to meet the new clerk of the Truefelt House and his family; and the captain took Carolyn and Prince on the driver's seat with him.
"I'm so excited!" said Carolyn May, fairly bounding up and down on the slippery cushion. "To think that my pale lady and her baby are really, truly coming here to Block Island for the summer! Do you know, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield, this island is a very nice place and the folks on it are awfully nice—most of them, anyway; but there's not anybody just like my pale lady. You'll see!"
It was quite true that Captain Littlefield had never seen many people like Baby Laird's mother, as Carolyn insisted upon calling her friend when her husband helped her off the boat and into the hotel bus. And the poor little baby! They were both at the point of exhaustion.
"Dear little Carolyn May," murmured the pale lady, snuggling the little girl beside her upon the seat of the bus. "It was so dear of you to remember us. I feel already that I shall get better—Baby Laird, too."
Even her husband seemed to think that Carolyn had much to do with opening the way for their coming to the island. He shook hands gravely with the little girl.
"I fancy your father is right, Carolyn," he said. "You are prone to interfere in everybody's affairs, but always to a good end. I thank you for recalling me to Ben Truefelt's mind."
"Oh, but I didn't do that!" cried the little girl honestly. "He 'membered you his own self. Mr. Cap'n Littlefield says the crew mutinied, includin' the supercargo, and Mr. Ben just hates to talk to folks—"
"Yes. I know he always was a regular quahaug," observed the pale lady's husband, smiling.
"Why!" murmured the little girl; "not a reg'lar quahaug, you know. That's a clam; and Mr. Ben's got legs like any other party—'ceptin' Mr. Cap'n Littlefield and his Cousin Oly. They both have wooden sticks on one side for legs."
Motherly Mrs. Truefelt welcomed the pale lady and her baby very kindly indeed. A room for the little family was found for that night. Mrs. Cameron, too, greeted Carolyn's friend warmly. "Mr. Laird," as Carolyn insisted upon calling the new clerk, went to work at once, to Mr. Ben Truefelt's open satisfaction.
The next morning the wooden-legged man drove the pale lady and her little one over to Barzilla Ball's place in the two-seated buckboard; and of course Carolyn May and Prince went, too.
"It's got so," said Captain Littlefield to the baby's mother, "that I dunno as I could steer a proper course about this island 'nless I had this young 'un with me—an' the dog. They are gre't comp'ny, for a fact."
"Carolyn May is the friendliest little soul alive," replied the pale lady, her wan countenance lighting with appreciation.
"Ain't she, jest?" agreed the wooden-legged man. "I dunno but if she had a chance't she might cure Cousin Oly of the megrums—an' Oly's some settled in his ways! Dunno how poor old Sue-Betsey ever got along with him all the ten year they was married and livin' together. But they do say," and his eyes began to twinkle, "that when Oly got too much upsot for even her to stand, she useter steal his wooden leg and go out to the neighbours to get shet of Oly's tongue."
"Then," said the pale lady in some wonderment, "you are not the only member of your family that has the misfortune to need an artificial limb?"
"Tell ye what," chuckled the captain, "wooden laigs do run in our family, an' no mistake. There air Littlefields that have a full suit o' limbs; but Oly an' me—Wal, it does seem as though we'd been mighty careless, or sumpin'. Both on us air shy a laig. But we manage to git on purt' well considerin', as the feller said."
Carolyn listened with stretched ears to the wooden-legged man's speech; but not a hint did he drop about the catastrophe that cost him—and Cousin Oly—the missing limb. It was a mystery!
The ride across the island was just as delightful as it had been before, and they were as warmly welcomed at the Ball cottage. Besides Molly Icivilla, her brother was present. He was a tall, pleasant, good looking young man, dressed in brown sea boots and a blue guernsey, with a tarpaulin pushed back from his sea-browned face. He sat in the sun mending a seine.
While his sister ushered the pale lady into the little house on the edge of the bluff, Captain Littlefield and Barzilla talked, Carolyn and her dog standing by with much interest in the net-mending.
"How ye makin' out with the Snatch It, this season, Barzilla?" asked the wooden-legged man. "They tell me swordfish is leavin' the island waters an' gettin' to be as scurce as hen's teeth."
"I dunno, Ozy," said the younger man. "Swordfish made our livin' in my father's time an' in poor old gran'ther's time. They were both swordfishers; and I would be sorry to change, myself. Seems as though what was good enough for them ought to be good enough for me."
"Times is changed, Barzilla—and fashions with it," said the captain.
"True as you're born!" agreed Mr. Ball. "But swordfish don't change none. They are still to be found sleepin' on top of the water, and can be come upon in the same old way as when the first double-ender ever put out o' this port.
"While them fellers from Nantucket and the Cape go out to the Georges in their steam tugs and put out dories an' crews to fight for the swordfish, I can take one man in the old Snatch It, creep up on a fish like I was shown by my father, an' put an iron in him from the pulpit nine times out o' ten. Them noisy tugs scare off the fish half the time, and the dories lose 'em. Change of fashion ain't always an improvement, Ozy."
"No. You'm right there," agreed Captain Littlefield. "But them rattle-de-bang motor boats and sech seem to be drivin' all the fish off shore."
"I can foller 'em, Ozy. I can foller 'em in the Snatch It. Let them furriners with their motor boats go after the tunny fish if they want. They're nothin' more than blackfish, an' we didn't use to think blackfish was wuth more'n pilot-whales. But for swordfish there's always a market."
"Yes, yes. You'm right, Barzilla," agreed the wooden-legged man again. "But it's a short season."
"'Twouldn't be a short season if I had capital," said Mr. Ball, nodding his head with confidence. "I guess you are right on one point, Ozy. Fashions do change. If I could salt down swordfish like they do mack'rel—Wal! no use talkin' 'bout it. They do so at New London, and make money on't. No reason why we couldn't do it here. We're nearer the banks. The fish are out there. I ain't satisfied to be just a fisherman, I admit, and live all my life on potatoes and pollock."
"Uh-huh! But 'taters and pollock are a sight better than nothing," chuckled Captain Littlefield. "That's a dish that no true islander will deny, Barzilla. Well, we'd better be gettin' home, leetle gal. I 'spect ye'll be over here to see Molly I. and Barzilla often enough, now't your friends have come here to stop."
"Oh, yes, sir, if I may," said Carolyn, shaking hands with the young fisherman. But it was to Captain Littlefield she addressed the question that was troubling her mind. She asked it before the buckboard rattled out of the lane:
"Mr. Cap'n Littlefield, do swordfishes have real swords?"
"You'd think so," he responded. "An' purt' average savage with 'em they be, too."
"But swords are kept in scabbards. Mr. Price, Edna's father, has got one. He b'longs to the Knights of Pythias. And if the swordfish's sword is in a scabbard, how does he manage to draw it? Not with his fin?"
"My cracky, what a young 'un!" chuckled Captain Littlefield. "No. 'Tain't rigged jest that way. Ye see, he has his sword on his nose."
"Oh! Mis-ter—Cap'n—Littlefield!" gasped Carolyn May, shocked by this statement, for it seemed utterly impossible.
"Sure thing," he said. "Why, that isn't so wonderful, is it? Look at an elephant's trunk. Ain't that spliced on to his nose? Wal, a swordfish's sword is spliced on same way. And it's some sword, too! I've seen 'em two-three feet long."
"Dear me! Isn't that funny?" gasped Carolyn. "Fishes with swords! Do any of 'em have guns, I wonder?"
"Wal, I ain't never seen 'em myself. But they do say that in Australia there's a fish that shoots drops of water like bullets and knocks down little birds an' insects along the banks of the streams. And of course," he added, ruminatively, "there's whales. They shoot a stream of spray right up through their blowholes. I've been near enough in a whaleboat more'n once to git showered by that—an' with blood, too, in a death waller."
Carolyn May thought all this, of course, very wonderful; and in her estimation Captain Ozias Littlefield was a very entertaining man. So different from his cousin!
She saw the cockatoo-looking old fellow down in the Old Harbour more than once. He usually carried a cane and a basket, and he always shook the former threateningly at Prince.
"But don't you and your dog pay Oly a mite of attention," Captain Ozias advised. "His bark is a whole lot worse than his bite, in any case. And after all, I shouldn't wonder if he'd be glad to be friends with ye, only he's stuffy and won't play."
For it did fret Carolyn that anybody should not like her—and Prince. She was happiest when she could temper all about her with her own sunniness. She felt that Mr. Oliver Littlefield, like his cousin, must be a very interesting man to be friends with—if only for the reason that he, too, had a wooden leg!
The excitement of the coming of the pale lady and her family to the island, and she and the baby being settled on Friday at the Ball cottage on the West Side, was merely the forerunner of greater excitement for Carolyn May. She had not seen Papa Cameron for almost three weeks, and now he was expected to arrive on the Saturday boat that connected with the Long Island train at Sag Harbour.
They walked over to the New Harbour landing, for the Shinnecock was late, and Captain Littlefield, with Worry and Trouble, was detained at the other dock. The sparkling blue waters of the Great Salt Pond were dotted with the fishing boats and pleasure craft at their moorings.
Barzilla Ball came ashore in a dory from his Snatch It that lay at her moorings in the well protected harbour—almost the last double-ender to be built at the island and still in commission. As her description implied, she was as sharp at one end as she was at the other.
Barzilla halted to speak to Carolyn and Prince, and thereby became acquainted with Mrs. Cameron. He was a pleasant young man with more than ordinary intelligence.
"You'll be coming over to the West Side to see us, you and the little girl, now your friends are with my sister," the fisherman said. "We'll be proud to have you come."
"Thank you, Mr. Ball. I shall find some means of getting to your house, I have no doubt. Carolyn considers it quite the nicest house she has ever seen, and wants to live in one situated just like it—right over the ocean."
"Yes. Great-gran'ther Ball built it so's he'd be sure to hear the surf and know when the wind changed at night. I wonder if he wasn't hard o' hearing?" said Barzilla, smiling. "Sometimes the sea cuts up so we can't hear ourselves think."
"But, dear me!" said Carolyn May, "how handy it is to go bathing. All you have to do, I guess, Mamma, is to jump out of the window in your bathing suit, and there you are!"
"There you would be, or thereabout," chuckled the fisherman. "So, your daddy is coming on the Shinnecock today, is he?"
The gaze of Carolyn's eyes scarcely left the steamboat that was now coming through the breach. She nodded joyfully.
"Oh, yes!" she said. "He is coming. And he will bring us things. And we'll go walking. And he'll buy picture post-cards. Why, there's just loads and loads of folks I want to send them to."
There were a number of summer people gathered at the dock when the boat made her landing. The hotel vehicles came racing over from the Old Harbour where the Newport boat had already landed her passengers.
Mr. Cameron had been waving to Carolyn and her mother, and to Prince, from the upper deck with his paper, and he was now one of the first ashore. He carried a good-sized hamper, as well as his bag. And how glad Carolyn was to see him!
"Dear me, Papa Cameron," she declared, "it seems almost as though I'd grown up since I saw you. Don't I look different?"
"I would scarcely have known you, Snuggy, if you had not been with mamma and Prince," he told her with gravity. "And my! you look almost like a red Indian. Are you sure, mamma, that you haven't changed our Carolyn May for an Indian papoose?"
"'Papoose!' How very ridiculous!" laughed the little girl. "Why, a papoose is an Indian baby, and they keep them strapped to a board and carry them on their backs like soldiers do knapsacks. And they never cry."
"Who never cry? The knapsacks or the soldiers?" demanded her father, looking very much surprised.
"The papooses never cry. You know soldiers don't cry, Papa Cameron," admonished Carolyn May.
She was very eager to introduce him to her particular friend, the wooden-legged Captain Littlefield; but there was so much confusion and so many passengers for the Truefelt House bus, that the Camerons decided to ride over in one of the carryalls. So Mr. Cameron's introduction to Ozias was postponed.
With their bags they got into a rather creaking old vehicle driven by a boy whom Carolyn already knew as Tommy Trivett, and who was about the age—and almost the gangling length—of Chet Gormley at Sunrise Cove. She begged the privilege of having Prince with her on the front seat, and he finally managed to scramble in by himself over the front wheel and squat down between his little mistress and Tommy Trivett.
"Old Oly Littlefield," drawled the youthful driver, "says this dog o' yourn oughter be shot."
"Oh—ee! he wouldn't be so wicked, would he?" gasped Carolyn.
"Says he's dang'rous to be runnin' at large. Says he'll carry the marks of the dog's teeth to his grave. And if he gits hydrophoby the Town of New Shoreham'll hafter pay damages to his heirs an' assigns, for ever an' ever, amen!"
"My!" said Carolyn, "you sound just like you were in church, don't you? But if Mr. Oly Littlefield runs mad 'cause Prince bit his wooden leg, do you s'pose he'll be much diff'rent from what he us'ally is? Mr. Captain Littlefield says his Cousin Oly is most always mad."
"He! he!" chuckled Tommy Trivett. "Ozy ought to know. Ozy has summered and wintered him now a good many years. If I'd been your dog, I'd ha' nipped a piece out o' Oly's sound laig—that's what I'd've done."
Carolyn May looked sideways at the not altogether prepossessing Tommy.
"Well," she said, with evident relief in her tone, "you're not my dog, are you?"