sang Frances, “and I’ve just simply got to go up on deck and see what it looks like when we are going. Is it all right for me to go up now, Mabel?”
Just then Mr. Wing and Jack settled the question by sticking their heads down the hatch and demanding the presence of the girls on deck. Charlie was at the wheel and Breck was mopping up the slime that the anchor chain had made on deck.
“Mabel, will you take the wheel?” asked Charlie in coaxing tones. “I want to catch a smoke and it’s against the rules for the man at the wheel to smoke.”
“Give that buoy a good berth, daughter,” advised her father.
Mabel smiled her assent, for she knew the little harbor as well as her father, and though she had piloted the “Boojum” out some dozen times she always got exactly the same warning about the bobbing red buoy.
The “Boojum” slipped gracefully through the water, with all her sails pulling. Smaller sail boats crossed her bow and their occupants gaily waved handkerchiefs and hands to the little group on the “Boojum.”
Jack’s lazy length was stretched on a striped deck mattress, while Ellen, seated near him on a cushion, watched him with thoughtful and admiring eyes, for in Frances’ breezy western slang, Jack was “easy to look at.” Charlie talked to his fiancée and Mr. Wing pored over a chart, mapping out a course from New London to Newport. Jane and Frances, the two irrepressibles, unhampered by being in love, had elected to sit as far out on the bow as they could without actually straddling the bowsprit. They liked the sting of the salt spray on their faces. Frances pointed to where Mr. Wing was reading the chart and then she and Jane began in chorus:
Mr. Wing laughed and, not to be outdone, went on with the ridiculous tale:
But Mabel interrupted him:
“And now Daddy you come on and take your wheel because here comes a tug and it has three tows. It always scares me to death to meet one of those old tugs,” Mabel explained to Jane and Frances as she flopped down beside them. “They are absolutely unscrupulous—just like road hogs—always running into yachts on the sound. Whew! it’s good to see you kids again. Wouldn’t it be terrible if there would ever be a summer when some of us wouldn’t see each other?” she paused solemnly.
“You talk exactly as though you weren’t going to marry your fat Charlie in November,” teased Frances. “You will live in Lexington near Jane and that won’t be so bad, but how about me away out on the ranch? And it looks as if, in the course of time, that Ellen will come and live reasonably near Jane, too.”
“Well, my good spinster friend, Frances,” laughed Jane, “I reckon that as long as we are in the same boat we will have to start a tea-room or a poultry farm or some other stupid thing that unloved old maids do. Oh! the tragedy of being an old maid at twenty, and the pain made more terrible by the fact that we see the happiness of our friends so plainly.”
“And it will be ever thus, Plain Jane, for where could we ever find a man worthy of our splendid selves?” asked Frances. “They all fall for me, of course, but I can’t give them any encouragement, knowing my own value as I do.”
“If we get to Lloyd’s Harbor in time for a swim to-night, I am going to duck you both,” threatened Mabel, who was a veritable fish. “In the meantime, I’ll just get Charlie to make a cat o’ nine tails for me. Poor child, he will need the protection as much I do.”
“Who needs protection?” asked Charlie, who had come forward to sheet in the staysail.
“You,” Frances promptly replied, getting a sharp dig from Mabel’s elbow in reward for her truthfulness. “Wow! Mabel, I thought you were too well cushioned to hurt.”
“Push their noses in, Mabel,” advised Charlie, “and when you have finished, bring Jack and Ellen down to earth and tell them to go below and put on their bathing suits. Lloyd’s Harbor is just around that point and we will make it in about fifteen minutes. Soon as we drop anchor, we all want to go over the side. This harbor is a dandy place to swim.”
The girls dashed below, scrambled into their suits and returned to their place forward to find that the “Boojum” was nosing its way into one of the loveliest little harbors on the eastern coast. One side of the mouth of the harbor was marked by a high bit of wooded land that sloped gently down to the curved sandy beach.
“The wonderful smell that is in the air,” Ellen whispered to Jack. “I imagine lotus flowers are like that. The land where it is always afternoon. Why, I could stay here forever and ever.”
“And I would have to be with you, for lotus-eaters forget all the past and dream and dream away their lives, and I don’t want to be forgotten for one little minute.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that, Jack. I couldn’t forget you for an instant, not if I ate lotus for years and years.”
“Hey, you Jack, stop talking sweet nothings. Mr. Wing has called you three times to see that the anchor is ready to heave over,” and Jane gave her brother a shove in the direction of the anchor.
“For heaven’s sake, Jane, I wish you would look at Breck! What on earth can he be doing?” Frances pointed to where Breck was leaning over the hand-rail earnestly spitting, with Mr. Wing eagerly watching.
“Mr. Wing,” called Jane, “is there anything I can do for Breck? Lemon is awfully good for seasickness, Aunt Min says.”
Mr. Wing’s fat face turned purple with the effort not to laugh and Breck finally chuckled.
“Ridiculous, Jane,” said the “Boojum’s” owner, “that is the sailor’s best method of telling whether a ship has lost her way or not. You see, you don’t want to drop anchor while the ship is still moving, and if you spit over the side you can tell easily how fast you are going.”
“Well, no wonder I didn’t understand! Who would?” demanded Jane.
“It was a perfectly natural mistake, Miss Pellew,” said Breck.
“Jane, as a Camp Fire Girl, you should thoroughly approve of the infinite resources of nature,” teased Frances.
“I do think it is an awfully good idea, but, didn’t it look funny?” agreed Jane.
“Breck, you better let out a little more chain,” ordered Mr. Wing. “And Jane, I’m going to show you and Frances how to let down the dinghy from the davits, so you girls can be independent of Charlie and Jack. There is not much chance of getting those two to do anything for any girls except Mabel and Ellen and there might be a time when you would want to take the boat when Breck and I were ashore.”
Frances and Jane lowered away at the ropes, taking care, in accordance with Mr. Wing’s advice, to let the stern hit the water before the bow so as not to ship any water.
“Watch me, Plain Jane, and profit by my courage,” cried Frances, grabbing a rope and sliding down it into the water.
“Rather get my head in first,” said Jane; and her body shot out from the hand-rail, describing an arc before she sank into the water, leaving barely a ripple.
“Great stuff, you kids, but I am too fat and have to wend my middle-aged way down the sea-ladder,” and Mr. Wing did it.
Soon all of them were in, Frances, Mabel and Jane, romping around like young seals, Mabel pursuing the other two, round and round the “Boojum” in her efforts to duck the two teasers.
“It’s terrible just to be able to do this silly little side stroke,” wailed Ellen to Mr. Wing and Jack, “when all the other girls swim the trudgeon, double overarm and Australian crawl just like professionals.”
“Come on, Jack, let’s teach her,” said the father of one of the envied ducks.
The two men started teaching Ellen the difficult feat of breathing with the head on one side when the arm comes up for the stroke and exhaling with the head under water. Ellen strangled and spluttered about for a while, as beginners do, time after time, reversing the order and breathing in under water and choking when she came up for the breath she was unable to take. After patience on the part of the pupil and teachers, she began making noble attempts to combine the breathing with the actual stroke.
Jane and Frances had clambered up over the stern of the dinghy which had been made fast at the end of the lowered boat-boom and were engaged in a spirited discussion of the value of salt water swimming and the value of fresh water swimming.
“Frances, look! Did you ever see such a beauty in your life?” Jane gasped as she watched a tall, broad-shouldered, slender-hipped figure in a maroon swimming suit poise itself on the extreme end of the bowsprit before making the most perfect jack-knife dive either of the girls had ever seen.
“Whew! the brown of his legs and shoulders against that dark red of his suit was just too beautiful to be true,” asserted Frances. “And Jane, do you know who it was? Well, it was Breck and he has no right to be so gorgeous looking.”
“He uses perfectly good English, whenever he speaks, which is seldom. What in the world do you suppose he is?” Jane asked.
“I think he is awfully interesting, and I wish I knew something about him. He makes such a point of being just one of the men employed by Mr. Wing that I can’t help feeling that he isn’t an ordinary sailor, Jane.”
“Well, probably if we hadn’t seen him make that peach of a jack-knife and he hadn’t had that maroon bathing suit but some old faded grey one, we would probably never have given him a second thought, so let’s don’t anyway. Come on and get dressed, I am hungry as a shark.” Jane lightly dismissed the subject that interested her a great deal more than she cared to admit.
CHAPTER V
AT THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS
“I feel just exactly like the Pilgrim Fathers, don’t you, Mr. Wing?” Jane said as she and Frances climbed up the wharf ladder from the dinghy.
These two girls and Mr. Wing had grown to be the closest of friends and it had become a habit for them to take the little dinghy when the party went ashore, leaving the tender for the others. Mr. Wing had proved himself a delightful companion. In fact, as Frances said: “He is every bit as crazy as we are.”
“You will love Plymouth, and then I want to sail you over to Provincetown, too. It is not nearly so charming as Plymouth, but it is interesting at that. Primarily, it is a fishing village but a lot of artists summer there and, sometimes, they have rather good exhibitions.”
Twilight had just settled over the little town as the three started up the hill from the water front. There was a great peace about the streets and a gentle quietness over all the houses. The pilgrims walked along without speaking, taking in the simple beauty of the white houses, guarded by tremendous elms.
“And we have the nerve to talk about the Southern homes as if they were the only homes worth mentioning,” said Jane suddenly. “Of course these are very different but I like them.”
Mr. Wing smiled. “You know,” he said, “that these houses are to me very much like the New England people, strong, simple and dignified and infinitely beautiful.”
“It would be a wonderful place to come and grow very old in and a wonderful place to have had as your childhood home, but somehow I can’t imagine it for schoolboys and girls, can you?” mused Frances.
“Well, Jane,” said Mr. Wing, as they neared the center of town, “Frances and I have a bunch of telegrams and letters to send and, if you don’t want to bore yourself by waiting around for us, why don’t you go up to the top of that hill where the graveyard is and look around—it is very lovely—and then meet us and our daughters and brothers and friends at the Samoset House in an hour. I thought it would be kind of fun to have dinner there to-night. It is famous for its food.”
“That will be dandy, if Frances will promise to send Daddy a telegram for me saying that Jack and I are still alive and kicking. I have been having too wonderful a time to write as much as I should and I know he will want to know what has become of me,” and Jane started up the hill to the cemetery.
Looking around, she was rather pleased to find that she was the only person in sight. She went over to a great tree and sank down into the deep soft grass, leaning her head back against the tremendous trunk. Jane thought it was a great pity that most people had such a morbid distaste for the resting place of the dead. She had never seen anything more beautiful than this high hill covered with old tombstones and trees whose spreading branches arched above her. A faint wind rustled among the many leaves and the warm air was filled with a delicate fragrance.
Suddenly the base of the hill shone with misty lights and an involuntary exclamation of wonder fell from her lips as she gazed at the beauty of the scene that stretched before her. Even the realization that the sudden change had come with the turning on of the town’s electric street lights failed to mar the enchantment she felt.
“It would make a perfect illustration for Dunsany’s tale ‘The Edge of the World,’” announced a man’s voice close beside her.
Jane turned her head with a peculiar feeling that nothing was unusual with this strange setting. It was Breck.
“Yes, and I would like to see a real artist do a huge canvas of it, wouldn’t you?” she said.
“If he could get that unreal light that just burst forth,” Breck said.
There was the clang-clang of a passing trolley car and the spell was broken. Jane’s thoughts came crashing back to reality. What in the world did Breck know about Dunsany and art? And if he did know about them, as it was evident that he did, what could be his object in being a paid sailor on a rich man’s yacht?
However, it was Breck’s business and, if he did not wish to throw any light on the subject, she would not pry into his affairs but she felt that he was conscious of the slip he made. Breck’s confusion was evident, so the girl casually asked what time it was and told him that she had to meet her friends for dinner and so was going. She smiled good-bye and walked off down the hill.
Jane left Breck rapt in admiration for a girl who was alive and interested in everything and thoroughly feminine, but had tact enough to keep from trying to divine some one else’s secret.
He thought that he couldn’t imagine his sister or any of her friends refraining in so quietly sympathetic a manner from rushing in where angels feared to tread. All of these girls had a breezy out-doorsy way with them that he liked and he wished that that same sister of his might have joined a Camp Fire organization before she made her very successful debut. All of which thoughts were strange thoughts for an ordinary deck-hand to be entertaining in a mystic cemetery when he ought—if he was to stay in character—to be guzzling a plate of beans at a “Quick and Dirty.”
The others were waiting for Jane at the Samoset when she got there, rather out of breath from her fast walk.
“Jane looks so mysterious, I am sure she must have had a million adventures,” teased Frances.
“You might tell us about them if you did,” Ellen said. “We made a very ordinary trip from the boat to shore, landing as usual.”
“Well, you know I went to the cemetery and it is almost traditional that strange things happen in graveyards,” was all that could be forced from Jane.
“If she won’t divulge the horrid secret, let’s feed. My appetite is straining on the leash,” suggested Charlie.
Mabel giggled. “Charlie, I didn’t even know you had a leash for it.”
The little party entered the beautifully simple dining room that was typical of the Samoset and began one of the most delicious dinners in the history of the cruise.
On the way back to the “Boojum,” Jack said to Ellen, “In all my life I never tasted anything as good as that duckling.”
And much to his delight she answered, “Yes it was good and it is cooked by just the recipe my grandmother taught me. I believe you will like my duckling just as much as you liked the Samoset’s.”
“I’ll adore yours, Ellen.”
Again on deck, Mr. Wing looked at the sky with the searching glance of a seaman. “We just did make it in time. In about five minutes we are going to have an awful big rain. Looks like she was coming up to blow, too. Hope we won’t drag. This is a poor harbor.”
Before the girls had got into their bunks, the rain Mr. Wing had foreseen was beating in through the open portholes and down the hatch.
Jack and Charlie went rushing about closing portholes and shutting the hatch. “It is going to be one stuffy night; I never can sleep without plenty of air,” observed Charlie.
“Stop putting on airs, Charlie; you could sleep if there wasn’t any air in the whole universe, and you know it,” Jack corrected him.
Jane and Frances, overcome by giggles as usual, were trying to twist the ventilators in their room so the rain didn’t trickle in on them.
Mabel opened her stateroom door and peered through the crack. “Children and Daddy, I hate to be horrid, but you have simply got to stop smoking and go to bed and, if you go to sleep right away, you won’t miss not smoking. You see, without any air in the place, the smoke can’t get out and it all seems to come through my door some way. Anyhow, Ellen and I are simply gasping for breath.”
Moved by the pitiful picture of Ellen and Mabel clutching their soft throats and writhing on the floor in the agonies of suffocation, Charlie and Jack immediately put out their cigarettes.
“Greater love than this has no man, that he put out his cigarette to please a girl,” paraphrased Mr. Wing. “I am going up on deck to see if they are holding all right. I hear Breck up there and I can finish my cigar in all the wind and rain. Do you hear that, Mabel? We are going to have a lively night.”
Frances was almost asleep when Jane asked her, “Do you know whether Breck has a slicker or not? It must be horrid on deck in all this wet.”
“Why Jane, how funny! How should I know about what clothes Breck has? This is the first bad weather we have had.”
In the other cabin Ellen was saying to Mabel, “Ugh! listen to the wind, and the groaning of the rigging, and the plash, plash of the water slopping against the poor old ‘Boojum’s’ sides.”
Soon they were all asleep, the wind and rain unheeded. The steward snored with a series of really interesting variations, with such carrying powers that it was fortunate that all the seafarers were good sleepers. The waves had become choppy and hit the “Boojum’s” sides with angry little smacks. In spite of the lashings on the pilot wheel, the rudder thudded to and fro.
Suddenly Mabel waked to find herself gouging into the bunk with her fingernails in much the attitude of some one climbing a steep clay bank, and her legs entirely out of the bunk. Ellen had slipped down on top of her and would surely have been on the floor had not Mabel’s bulk stopped her.
“Daddy,” Mabel called in the purely conversational tone in which one might say, “Will you have cream or lemon?” “Is this boat right?”
“Why, of course it is. It is the rightest little boat in the Eastern Yacht Club.” Even when half asleep Mr. Wing was the proud possessor of “the best little schooner that ever set sail.”
“Wake up quick and see!” commanded Mabel. “Something is the matter with the boat or my bed is broken and you have to do something in either case.”
By this time, everybody aft was more or less awake.
“Did you ever hear such fascinating sounds as the steward is making? I would adore to arrange the orchestration for them and call it ‘Nocturnal Arabesques’ or something,” Jane said to Frances. “But isn’t it funny, I am sleeping on the side of the ship instead of in my bunk and the rail around my little bunk is like a ceiling over my head and my bunk is like a wall! What do you suppose is the matter?”
“I’m just the same way,” giggled Frances. “And I know we ought to feel excited and be running around with streaming fists and clenched hair and we just lie here upside down and giggle and talk nonsense. We have probably hit a rock or something and we will all be drowned like rats.”
Mr. Wing crawled in their cabin with much the same method a fly walks along the ceiling. He came in just in time to hear the end of Frances’ speech. “You don’t seem to be making much effort to save yourself,” he laughed. “But I’ll save you the anxiety you don’t seem to feel and tell you that nothing serious is the matter. We just anchored in too shallow water. While the tide was in, it was all right, but the tide is out now and we are turning turtle and are lying in the mud on our beam ends. There is no danger; it just means that we will be a bit upset till the tide comes in. Then we will beat it over to Provincetown.”
“You girls put on kimonos and come into the saloon. I stuck my head down the galley hatch and found Breck prying the steward out from behind the stove where he slipped when we did our flip. I told him to make some coffee and it will be here in a minute,” Jack announced thrusting a wet and tousled head into the cabin.
“When I was a kid, I used to wonder how the heathen Chinee could walk upside down on the other side of the world, but I see now that it was quite simple compared to this,” Charlie said as he landed the girls on the least perilous of the transoms.
“You certainly bruised us enough doing it. The last time Mabel slipped, you steadied yourself by grabbing my left ear,” said Frances ruefully.
“And my poor head,” laughed Ellen. “Charlie reminded me of the Bellman, don’t you remember?—
“You kids are certainly peaches,” and Mr. Wing literally beamed. “Here you are quoting ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ and laughing and chatting just as if you weren’t cold and upside down and everything.”
Just then Breck came in with a steaming coffee pot, in some mysterious way maintaining his equilibrium.
“Fortunately the steward didn’t hear your remark about the orchestration of his snores, or I don’t believe you would have got your coffee so soon,” Breck said in an undertone to Jane as he handed her her cup.
Jane thought, as she sipped her coffee, that perhaps gray eyes were better suited for twinkling than any other eyes.
CHAPTER VI
BETTY WYNDHAM, ACTRESS
With the incoming tide, the “Boojum” had righted herself and was soon under way. The tremendous rain had ceased as abruptly as it had begun and the sun shone valiantly as if to make up to the little party for the trick the tide, vassal of the moon, had played on them the past night. The winds had churned the water into choppy little waves that foamed against the “Boojum’s” eager bow.
“I just adore this jerky motion,” Jane confided to Frances. “But I wonder how long I’ll adore it. It reminds me of the time I went on a hunt on a Standard-bred trotter. I got there in time to see the dogs nab the poor fox, but I’m here to say I took an oath that that was the last time I would ride anything but a saddle horse.”
“I like this too,” agreed Frances. “It’s the most exciting sail we have had yet. We are certainly scooting along. Whee! look at the spray come flying up over the bowsprit. Let’s go and get on the grating. I don’t believe either one of us is going to be sick, ’specially if we stay up on deck.”
These two were nearly always to be found lying flat on the grating in the bow when they were sailing. As a concession to Mr. Wing, they had agreed to hold on to each other with one hand and on to the grating with the other.
“Are you two young tars feeling fit still!” Mr. Wing asked them. “Ellen and Jack are below looking pretty miserable and, of course, no power on earth will drag them up in the air. Ellen said that, if she saw the waves, she knew it would be all over with her.”
“Yes, we saw them, when we went below to get extra sweaters. I believe Jack would like to come up, but he doesn’t want to leave Ellen. Ellen would be much better off by herself, but she doesn’t like to hurt Jack’s feelings. There is nothing to do with people like that so we might as well forget them. It won’t be so long before we fetch Provincetown and then they will be all right.” And Jane dismissed the tragedy of the seasick lovers with a grin.
Mr. Wing had been watching a fast little schooner ahead of them. “Hey you, Charlie!” he called to the man at the wheel. “You stop talking to Mabel, and watch what you are about. We are pointing lots higher than that white schooner. Mabel, you come up here and play with these kids and Charlie and I will see if we can’t overhaul that boat on our next tack.”
Obediently Mabel slid and skidded along the slippery, slanting deck, and sat down with one arm around the mast.
“Daddy is so funny,” she said. “We would have got there just as quickly if we had gone on as we were. We are a little off our course now, but Daddy likes to use every puff of wind.”
“And I am going to as long as I sail a yacht. If I ever get to running a steamboat or a ferry to Jersey, I might change, but as long as I run the ‘Boojum’ she sails.”
“Well hush your fuss and run along now. You can sail backward if you want to,” giggled Mabel, who always had the attitude that her father was her kid brother.
“Honestly, Mabel, this is the most wonderful day of all, but then it seems that every day is better than the last,” said Jane.
“And won’t it be fun to see old Betty Wyndham? We ought to have some kind of Camp Fire party. The only thing that I have against the ‘Boojum’ is that we can’t have a camp fire on her.”
“But s’pose Betty has got too grown-up to like that sort of thing,” ventured Frances.
Jane shook her head at this. “I had a letter from her just before we left and she told me that she had just been to a clambake with some of the players, and, if she likes that, I know she will like to have a regular old-timer with us.”
“She will be surprised to see us. Can’t you just see her eyes widening behind those big bone glasses?” Mabel stretched her own eyes wide. “And look, I can just see the monument to the Pilgrim Fathers now. We will be there soon.”
“Oh!” Frances sighed. “Much as I want to see Betty I wish this sail would never end. I get so excited I can hardly stand it and, when the spray lands on me, I want to shout.”
“You are just a modern pagan,” said Mabel looking at Frances’ vivid color and sparkling eyes, “and a mighty pretty one too.”
“Away, thou perfidious flatterer. And me freckled as a guinea egg! Jane, pinch her for me.”
“You young’uns get the anchor free. We are going to drop it soon as we lose our way,” called Mr. Wing.
Jane jumped up from her place and took off the ropes that held the anchor, and, balancing it with one hand in a thoroughly professional manner, began spitting over the side in the way she had found so ridiculous in Breck and Mr. Wing a few days since.
“All the way is lost now,” Jane cried in semi-nautical tones that made Breck smile as he pushed the anchor over the side.
Little fishing boats were moored and anchored all around the “Boojum” and soon men had come up on all the decks after the fashion of sailors to see what the latest ship looked like.
Jane and Frances were at the davits, letting down the dinghy as Jack and Ellen came up from below, looking as Frances said rather “pale and pellucid.”
“Now, gents,” began Mabel bouncing up to the little group at the davits, “we girls are going ashore and see Betty and we are going to have a regular reunion of the Camp Fire Girls and we don’t want any of you, much as we love you separately and collectively, to bother us. We’ll take the dinghy and spend the night with Betty if there is room and if there isn’t we’ll take her to a hotel for, goodness knows, there isn’t room on board for another thing.”
“And Jane and I are the ablest little seawomen in the bunch so we are going to row you and Ellen, Mabel,” and Frances steadied the dinghy with a far-reaching foot and leg, while Jane dropped over the side and put in the rowlocks. These two had long since waived the formality of the sea-ladder.
“Breck!” called Jane to the sailor, “you put over the sea ladder and we’ll row around to starboard and take on our middle-aged passengers.”
“Middle-aged passengers nothing,” shrieked Mabel. “You just hold the dinghy steady and we’ll get over here. As if I wasn’t doing this long before you were born!”
“Well, doesn’t that prove your middle age?” teased Frances.
“I’d drop this little grip on your head, Captain Kidd, if I wasn’t afraid I’d upset my fellow sufferer, Mabel,” announced Ellen, as she handed the little grip that held their nighties down to Frances. “I am so thoughtful, none of you remembered that you ought to have toothbrushes and combs if we are going to stay on shore tonight. How would you get on in this world without useful me to think about everything for you?”
“Be sure to allow enough rope for the drop in the tide,” Jane cautioned Frances as she made the painter fast to a big iron ring sunk in the dock.
“Plain Jane, now you just hush up. I’d like to know who it was that tied the dinghy at Newport the time we came back from the movies and found the poor thing standing on its stern with its nose up in the air?”
“Let’s go to the post office first, and see if there is any mail for us at general delivery,” suggested Ellen. “Then we can set about the search for our little pal Betty.”
Just as the girls were going into the post office, a hurrying girl ran into them. “Pardon—well of all things!” she cried.
“Why, Betty, what luck. Why didn’t you knock us down?”
“What fun to see you again,” they all said at once and drew amused smiles from the group in the post office.
“Come on to my room. I’m staying with the dearest little old lady in the world. Several of the other players have rooms with her too and we tear off a lot of fun when we aren’t working,” Betty told them as they went along the street.
“What ducky little houses these are,” Jane said to Frances. “But not as charming as Plymouth do you think, Betty?”
“I think that the Greenwich Villagers, who come here for the summer, leave their mark just as they do everywhere. It is really more attractive in the winter when just the natives themselves are here,” explained Betty.
Soon they were all in Betty’s neat room, lolling about on the bed, eating chocolates, and examining Betty’s new snapshots and possessions and exchanging adventures. After Betty had been duly told of the upset at Plymouth, they all began to plan how they were to hold their reunion. At last, they decided on a clambake as the best.
The little old lady who owned the house agreed to let them have a room with a double bed in it and by doubling up in one room and tripling up in the other they thought they could pass the night ashore.
As soon as the sun set, the five friends trooped down to the beach and, gathering driftwood enough to bake all the clams in the world, started a huge campfire.
“Um, I think baked clams are the most delicious things in the world,” said Jane as she ate her last one.
“Honestly, children, I am just too glad that you came by to see me. I was wondering how I was going to get through the summer without seeing at least some of the Camp Fire Girls,” Betty smiled at the girls.
“I wish you had time to go for a few days’ sail with us. Don’t you suppose you could?” Mabel begged.
“It is dear of you to ask me and you know there is nothing in the world I would like better, but I really am too busy. You know I am working particularly hard so I can get to New York to hear Emmeline sing.”
“We will see you then at any rate, ’cause we are going to be back in time for that too,” and Mabel gave Betty a clammy hug.
“Doesn’t that driftwood make the most gorgeously colored flame?” Ellen asked dreamily. “I always wonder about driftwood, what it was before it was cast up on the beach.”
“It is rather terrible to think how much of it was once ships, and by the way, would you mind if I said you a piece I ran across the other day? It isn’t exactly cheerful but I like it,” and Betty began a weird minor wail in her rich deep voice—
“Whew! what a blood curdler!” interrupted Jane. “Stop it! stop it! It gives me the creeps.”
“Let’s save it until a sunny day and have something soothing to go to bed on,” suggested Ellen, shivering. “Why don’t we end this reunion by singing some of our own Camp Fire songs?”
The five Camp Fire Girls began their favorite Good Night song:
CHAPTER VII
EXPLORING GLOUCESTER
“Gloucester! Oh, Jane, isn’t it great?” Frances said to Jane as they stood on either side of the mast while the “Boojum” was picking her way into the harbor.
Both sides of the harbor were lined with schooners. The sky was barely perceptible through the rigging of the ships, so tightly were they wedged in around the docks. At Provincetown the cruisers had learned of the fishermen’s strike but they had not realized that it meant that the entire fishing fleet of Gloucester would be riding at anchor in the harbor.
“Gloucester’s sky line isn’t anything but masts, is it?”
“No, but look Jane! They just let the sails go any way and they are all spilling in the water and look at all those Irishman’s pennants,” and Frances pointed out innumerable ropes let to drag in the water.
“The crews must have dropped anchor and dashed ashore without doing a single thing towards snugging ship. I suppose there is lots to be said for the fishermen, but I don’t see how they could bear to leave those dandy schooners all messy like that. And whew! smell the fishy smell.”
Jane and Frances had learned really to love the sea and to have deep feeling for the ships. It actually hurt them to see these sturdy fishing boats so deserted.
“Why, do you know, Frances, it seems just as cruel to me as if I had given Atta Boy a hard run and turned him into his stall and left his saddle and bridle on and rushed off without rubbing him down and forgotten to feed him and everything. It doesn’t seem human,” Jane grew quite indignant.
“Did you notice that long black schooner, the ‘Josephine R,’ how she was pulling on her anchor chain, looked as if she wasn’t going to stick around much longer and stand for this careless treatment? I’ll bet she is an imperious lady.”
There was no sign of life on any of the many boats riding at anchor. The sun had set and each one should have shown a riding light, but none did, nor did it seem likely that they would. Yet it seemed that each boat was in itself alive and indignantly complaining to its neighbor of the careless treatment it had received at the hands of the crew. As Frances said, the “Josephine R” looked as though she had no intention of putting up with such inconsideration.
Jane had been at the wheel all afternoon with Breck near enough and ready to help her if she got off her course or if she wanted any of the sails hauled in. Mr. Wing had said that Jane was farther advanced in her nautical education than any of the other girls because she had come to the stage where she not only knew when something was wrong about the sails but she knew just what to do to make it right and could get almost as much out of the “Boojum” as its owner could.
The silent Breck had become quite talkative, responding to Jane’s naturalness as everyone else always did. He had told her about Gloucester and some of the amusing tales about the sportiness of the Gloucester fishermen even while they were hard at work off the Grand Banks. They had both read Kipling’s “Captains Courageous” and Jane was eager to know more of the delightful little town, and the sturdy independent people who lived in it.
“They know the sailing game better than anybody else in the world and you can tell a Gloucester crew and ship a long ways off just by the way she sails. And the risks they take! When most captains give order to put in a reef or two these Gloucester chaps just crack on more canvas and walk away. And they know all these waters like you would know your own top drawer,” he had told her.
And she had laughed at this last and answered that that showed how little he knew about her, because neither she nor anyone, not even a Gloucester fisherman, could sail through the conglomerate mess in her uncharted top drawer.
Then she had asked how he happened to know so much about Gloucester and had bitten her lip the minute she had said it, for that was the one thing she had meant not to do, question him about himself.
But Breck had answered her with a smile and a vague “Oh, I stayed here once.”
As she stood beside Frances, she mentally ran over the little talks she had had with Breck and realized more acutely how clever he was, how quick his perception, and keen his observation of people were. How she would have loved to have him take her through Gloucester and show her all the narrow little streets that ran back from the water, and which he had pictured so vividly to her. “Why are things as they are?” she asked herself. “I know Breck would like to ask me to go ashore with him tonight because he almost said so and yet he won’t because he is in Mr. Wing’s employ as a deck hand. As if that would make any difference, and anyway, I know he isn’t just an ordinary deck hand! He is twice as nice as anybody I have ever known and if he doesn’t ask me, I’ve a good mind to ask him to take me myself.”
“Jane! Jane! do stop dreaming, and let’s go below and get supper. That’s the second time Mabel has called us,” said Frances, giving her a little shake. “If I didn’t know you weren’t I would certainly say you were in love. Anyway you have all the symptoms.”
During supper, Jane determined that she would not let ridiculous little conventionalities prevent the promoting of her new found friendship with Breck. Clandestine meetings and common intrigue were entirely foreign to her straightforward self and so she decided that she would just tell the others that she was going to ask Breck to set her ashore and go with her to telegraph Aunt Min her next post office address.
“And Breck has been to Gloucester before and, while we are ashore, I am going to come right out and ask him if he won’t take me through some of those little narrow streets on the water front,” she confided to Mr. Wing up on deck directly after supper.
“Yes, I would if I were you,” Mr. Wing advised her. “I think Breck is thoroughly interesting, and to be bromidic, he is one of ‘nature’s gentlemen’ if not one of society’s. Besides, from little things he let drop one night when we were on the same watch, I believe he took this job for some definite reason other than for self-support. Often I have wished he would mix a bit more with us. You are the only one of the girls he even notices. Sometimes I think he isn’t awfully happy—anything you can do with him or for him, Plain Jane, will be heartily approved by the skipper, I can assure you.”
Their conversation was stopped by the appearance of Breck through the galley hatch. “If you are ready, Miss Pellew, I will be very glad to take you to the Western Union,” he said very formally.
“Heavens!” thought Jane, “he is all stiff again. How can I unbend him so he will be limber as he was this afternoon. I will begin with some clever, original remark about the weather.”
But Breck anticipated her by saying politely, “When we get up as far north as Portland, I expect we will see some northern lights.” Then warming to his subject he continued, “I believe you said you had never been north before. I do hope we have a chance to see the lights then, because I know you would love them.”
“Unswallowing his poker already,” mentally commented Jane. “This trip will no doubt turn out all right.” Aloud she said frankly, “Breck, I love to talk to you. You always sound as if you had knocked about such a lot—just what I always wanted to do and would have done, no doubt, if I hadn’t been born Jane instead of John.”
Breck smiled at this open compliment and again compared her with his blasé sister and her group of friends suffering from a heavy boredom. “A bit too much, according to some people’s way of thinking,” he answered rather grimly.
“Well, of course, half of the world doesn’t approve of what the other half does and disapproval makes an almost impassable barrier against understanding, but let’s hurry to the telegraph office and then you will poke around this funny little place with me, won’t you?” Jane demanded as they clambered up the wharf ladder.
“I am hoping for several replies to messages I sent at the last port,” Breck told her as they walked along the narrow sidewalk that went past old and battered warehouses and sail lofts.
“Everything even on land at Gloucester has got to do with sea, ships or sailors in some way,” Jane said as she observed the different signs in the shop windows, advertising sailors’ outfits, slickers, rubber boots reaching to the hip and sou’westers.
At the Western Union office, Jane sat down to write her message to Aunt Min and Breck went to the desk. Jane heard him ask if any telegrams for Allen Breckenridge had been received. The clerk gave him two after the usual frantic search through the files. Over the first one he read Jane saw him knot his brows into a frown and she was much relieved when the frown changed into a broad grin at the perusal of the second message.
“Allen Breckenridge,” Jane thought, “what a peach of a name. I always thought Breck was a mighty little name for such a big man. I wish to goodness he would tell me why he is doing what he is. And I wish I wasn’t so awfully much interested in him.”
“Are you finished now?” he smiled down at her, “because if you are, let’s get out on the street. All the men off the boats are wandering around, looking at the barometers in the different shop windows, just as if they were interested in the weather now as when on board their schooners. Poor chaps, I reckon they are at a loss for something to do. These New Englanders don’t know the gentle art of loafing like the Southerners do.”
“Why Breck,” laughed Jane. “How can you, when you know I am from old Kentuck’? Aren’t you ashamed?”
“But you are different, you know, certainly different from my notion of the southern girl. I had always thought of them as lying around in hammocks and eating chocolates during the day and refusing heartbroken young men’s proposals most of the night.”
“But they don’t refuse all the young men apparently because I had to give exactly nine wedding presents this spring. And, besides, I eat an awful lot of candy,” Jane objected.
“Anyway, I’ll say it again. You are different. Do you mind if I compliment you in rather a horsy way? You handle yourself better than any girl I ever saw. I would give a lot to see you on a horse too, by the way.”
“Thanks, Breck! That is one of the nicest things I ever had said to me and, of course, I don’t mind, why should I?”
“Oh, just the difference in our positions,” Breck answered, looking at her very keenly with his clear gray eyes.
“That is the first thing I have heard you say that I didn’t like. ‘Position’ is a ridiculous word and one I don’t choose to recognize. And, in the second place, you know perfectly well that I was obliged to hear you ask for messages for Allen Breckenridge, so you evidently aren’t exactly what you seem, not that it is anything either for or against you.”
“Forgive me, I knew you would feel like that, but I just wanted to be sure. Allen Breckenridge is my name, but it seems an awful lot of name to sail under so I just chopped it off to suit me. Wonder what the family would say to the mutilation of the name.” Breck chuckled at the thought.
“If they are at all like the Kentucky Breckenridges, I can tell you. They would dilate their nostrils and pinch in their lips and say, ‘Really, it doesn’t seem possible that anyone could do such a ridiculous thing!’” Jane imitated the family hauteur.
“I can see that you know them all right,” Breck said. “They are a funny bunch, aren’t they?” His face took on the grave look that it so often wore and that had caused Mr. Wing to confide in Jane that he did not believe Breck was very happy.
It was a look that Jane hated to see there because she was so powerless to help him. She could not comfort him in ignorance of his trouble and her dread of intruding in his private affairs kept her from trying to discover it. Jane put her arm through his and said, “It’s getting late, Breck, we had better go back.”
Not until they were again on board the “Boojum” did either of them realize that, after all, they had seen very little of Gloucester.
CHAPTER VIII
WHAT FRANCES FOUND
“Portland harbor is so beautiful that I hate to leave it,” Ellen said to the other girls as they were getting under way.
“So do I,” agreed Mabel. “There never was anything so lovely as that harbor with the lighted bridge running across it.”
“And it just seemed too wonderful to be true for those northern lights to appear on top of everything else. I would have given anything if the rest of you had been up on deck to see them too. I didn’t know what had happened till Breck stuck his head up through the galley hatch and told me,” Jane said.
“Speaking of Breck,” Frances put in, “have you ever seen anything like the change in that gentleman? When we first came on board, he was silent as the grave and solemn as any owl, and now he works around on deck, whistling and he talks a lot more. And,” she added, “he knows how to talk remarkably well too.”
“But have you noticed to whom he talks?” inquired Mabel with a teasing glance at Jane.
“Why no, come to think of it, I hadn’t noticed particularly.”
“As if you would notice anything, Ellen, with Jack anywhere near you. If I ever get so wrapped up in my fat Charlie, will you all promise to drown me?” begged Mabel.
“You are both of you unbearable. But promise to drown you? No, it would hasten your death too much,” and Frances laughed at Mabel’s pleading face. “The disease is just as bad in you as in Ellen. The only difference is in the way it affects you. It makes Ellen a little quieter than usual and you a little noisier.”
The “Boojum” had gathered speed and was roaring along with the spray coming over the bow and drenching the girls to such an extent that they were forced to go and sit tamely in the cockpit, a thing that was distasteful to them all, but particularly to Frances and Jane.
“If our wind and luck hold, we can easily make Vinal Haven tonight,” said Charlie, looking up from the chart he and Jack had been reading.
“For my part,” announced Frances, “I hope it doesn’t. We have been too lucky, always doing just what we set out to do. With the exception of turning over at Plymouth, everything has happened according to Hoyle.”
“Well, we will see if we can’t arrange a little shipwreck for the bloodthirsty lady from the wild and woolly west,” laughed Jack.
At sunset the “Boojum” was nosing her way through a little group of islands, lying purple on the dark water. To port lay the largest, its rocky cliffs taking on weird lights from the sinking sun.
Jane caught her breath in a little gasp of admiration. Reaching for the chart, she quickly found their whereabouts. “Mr. Wing,” she called excitedly, “this is just too lovely a spot to pass. The chart says it’s Hurricane Island and dead ahead is Old Harbor. Can’t we stop here tonight instead of going on to Vinal Haven. Old Harbor ought to be a good anchorage. It is protected on three sides by these islands.”
“Why Plain Jane, as far as I am concerned, we can. The others are an easy-going bunch and generally want to do whatever anybody suggests. Let me see the chart.”
Jane hung over him until he nodded his head in approval of the harbor’s description on the chart and then dashed forward to free the anchor.
“Oh! Breck, did you ever in your life see anything quite as beautiful as that big island with the sun slipping down back of it?” she asked him as he leaned against the foremast, looking out for buoys.
“I am mighty glad you asked Mr. Wing to anchor here tonight. I was just thinking that was just what I would do if I were on my own boat.”
“Can you tell whether those purplish humps on the island are houses or just huge boulders? It seems a funny place for a settlement and, besides, there isn’t a single light in any of the windows if they are houses and not rocks,” asked Jane, peering into the fast-gathering darkness.
“Tomorrow, if you say so and there is time, I’ll row you over and we can find out. I don’t believe I ever heard of Hurricane Island before. It’s a nice adventurous kind of name though.”
Mabel came bouncing along the deck in the way peculiar to her and broke in with, “Everybody is raving about the beauty of this place and, of course, I know it is really lovely but nobody will listen to me and my material thoughts. I have seen one million lobster pots, I know and, Breck, please try and see tomorrow if you can’t get some for us. Where there are so many lobster pots, there must be some people to take the lobsters out.”
The next morning directly after breakfast Jane and Frances took the dinghy and rowed over to explore a small island running up into a high peak. Mr. Wing had promised to let the little party stay at this interesting spot for as long as they liked. The original plan had been to cruise on to Bar Harbor and then come leisurely back to New York. With one accord, it had been decided that it would be more fun to stop at Old Harbor for a few days than to go on to Bar Harbor for, as Mabel said, “there is nothing at Bar Harbor but clothes and silly little men,” and Charlie had said, “What about the fluffy little girls?”
Jack and Ellen and Mabel and Charlie had gone out in the tender to follow some fishermen and make arrangements for getting Mabel the coveted lobsters. Mr. Wing, the steward, and Breck had stayed aboard the “Boojum” to keep ship, which meant for Mr. Wing, lying on the deck mattress and dozing in the sun; for the steward, a general galley cleaning, and for Breck the filling of many sheets of white paper with his surprisingly small writing.
“Now that we are here,” Frances said to Jane as she jumped out on the rocky beach of the island, “I don’t see what in the world we are going to tie the dinghy to.”
“Why not lug one of these rocks down and set it on the rope? That ought to hold it,” suggested Jane.
Assuring themselves that the dinghy was made fast, the two friends set out to see the island. It was literally covered with blueberries, as they had so often found to be the case in the other little islands they had seen during the trip.
After eating her fill, Jane announced that she was going to lie down and go to sleep in the sun.
“Lazy Jane, no sleep for me. I am going to climb to the very top of the hill and to the very top of the huge rock on top of the hill. Excelsior! It will be a gorgeous view up there. You ought to come.” Frances started out with many flourishes of a long stick she had found.
The warmth of the sun and the sound of the water beating against the rocks that bordered the island soon sent Jane into a delicious sleep.
Frances clambered up the hill, stopping now and again to look out over the water, the panorama becoming more beautiful as she climbed higher. It was difficult climbing too, for there were many loose rocks and she started several miniature land slides.
On the extreme top of the hill was a rocky plateau, in the center of which lay a shallow pool of stagnant water. As she drew near, two huge black crows cawed and flew from its edge.
“Ugh!” she said. “How very gruesome, and how silly for me to be talking out loud.” Then she heard a little sound as of a sharp, intaken breath, coming from behind a big, flat rock to the left of where she stood. She went quickly and leaned over the rock. At the sight of a man’s prostrate figure she involuntarily drew back.
“Dern the luck,” said the figure in a rather weak voice.
“If you would ask me I would say ‘bless the luck’,” contradicted Frances, coming forward to see what was the trouble.
At the sound of her voice, the man tried to raise himself on an elbow but, making a wry face, he gave it up.
“I am in luck now somebody has come, but I have been here since yesterday afternoon,” he said.
“What in the world happened to you?”
“Slipped on a rock. Think I must have broken my thigh bone; anyway I can’t move my left leg.”
“It would hurt terribly to move you without a stretcher, wouldn’t it?”
“One thing certain, it couldn’t hurt me any more than just staying here.”
“Well, then I will go down and get Jane,” announced Frances.
“What good will a Jane do? I don’t want to be rude, but this thing hurts like the devil.”
“Say whatever you want to; you might be allowed that. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” Frances shot down the hill with lightning speed. She pounced on Jane and woke her with a little shake.
Jane rubbed sleepy eyes and raised a critical eyebrow.
“Broken-legged man—up on top—by himself—how in the world can we get him down?” panted Frances.
“Have to improvise a stretcher,” said Jane, wide awake at once. “Thank heavens for the blessed old Camp Fire organization. We can take the oars and slip our skirts on them and that will make a dandy stretcher.”
“Jane, you are a perfect peach! I never would have thought of that,” Frances told her friend as they ran down to where they had left the dinghy.
To their dismay they found that the tide had gone out and the constant tugging had slipped the rope out from under the rock and the dinghy was slipping along on the tide about a hundred yards from shore. Quickly the girls got out of their skirts and, in their jersey silk bloomers and flannel blouses, waded out into the water toward the rapidly receding boat.
Giggling a little with excitement, Frances said, “Goodness, but I am glad we left our shoes on. These rocks would have simply killed our feet.”
Soon they were in deep water and they struck out with the strong double over arm that had been the envy of Ellen. In no time, they had wriggled over the side of the dinghy and were pulling for the island. This time the two girls dragged the dinghy clear of the receding tide to be sure that they would have no further misadventures.
Each one taking an oar and a skirt, they started the uphill climb.
“Suppose you hadn’t found him, Frances. Wouldn’t it have been awful?” and Jane shuddered a little at the thought. “What does he look like?”
“I didn’t have time to notice much but that he had on a heavy gray sweater and fearfully dirty white duck trousers. I don’t even know whether he is big or little.”
On reaching the rocky plateau, Jane exclaimed, “Frances, this is the most moving-picturey place to discover an injured gent I ever saw!”
Frances led her around the big rock and she looked down at the man. “How much do you weigh?” Jane asked by way of greeting.
The man smiled a little at this and answered, “One hundred and eighty, but, after no dinner or breakfast, I suppose I have wasted away to a mere nothing.”
“Well, Frances, that means each of us carries ninety pounds down the hill. But we can do it as long as we don’t have to do it every day.”
“Of course, I couldn’t think of letting you do such a thing,” objected the man.
“I would like to know how you are going to help it. To be sure, we could go back to the boat and get one of the boys, but that would just delay the game and I know you ought to get that leg set as soon as possible. Besides, I don’t believe men are any better in an emergency than girls, ’specially Camp Fire Girls; do you, Jane?”
The girls slipped the skirts on the oars and laid the improvised stretcher close beside the man. He was able to help them a little and, without causing him too much pain, they at last had him on the stretcher.
“I am awfully sorry for you; it will be hard on you going down this hill, but we will try not to bump you,” Jane promised him.
The man on the stretcher had not lost a bit of his hundred and eighty pounds, the girls decided as they lifted their load. Both of them were thankful for their hard muscles and good wind. After what seemed ages, they reached the beach and set the stretcher in the dinghy. Then both of them threw themselves flat on the seaweed that the tide had left and rested and caught their wind. The man had lost consciousness from the painful journey down and from lack of food.
“No use bringing him to till we get on the boat. It will hurt him horribly getting him over the side. Another thing, Jane, there won’t be room enough for both you and me in the dinghy now. You pull a better oar than I do, so you get in and row the man out and I’ll swim along out in a minute. I’ll get there soon after you do.”
“But I could come back for you,” objected Jane. “You must be dead tired.”
“Of course I don’t feel ‘fresh as a daisy,’ but it is no harder for me to swim out to the boat than it is to row out.”
There was no one on deck of the “Boojum” as Jane brought the dinghy carefully alongside. She called to Breck and he came up from the galley.
At his surprised look she said, “Frances found this broken-legged man up on the top of the hill on that island and we brought him down. He has fainted or something and I don’t see how we can get him over the side of the ‘Boojum’.”
“How in the world you two kids did it is beyond me, but I will ask questions later. Mr. Wing and I can rig up a bosun’s chair and get him on board all right.”
Breck waked Mr. Wing and they set to work to rig the bosun’s chair and soon had the man lying on one of the transoms in the saloon.
“Now,” said Mr. Wing, “it yet remains for us to get a doctor to him.”
“Mr. Wing,” said Breck in an embarrassed way, “it wouldn’t do for me not to tell you this. I have had three years of medicine at Harvard and was with an ambulance corps in France during the first two years of the war. What I mean is that I can set the leg and I think I had better do it before it swells any more. Jane, you get some waste from the locker to the right of the engine and pack some long planks for the splints. If it is necessary, we can get him into a cast at Portland.”
With deft hands Breck got off the man’s shoe and cut away the duck trousers. Jane, with her head in a whirl, found two suitable boards in the galley, evidently parts of a box in which provisions had come, and she mechanically began to pad them with waste. “That makes him about thirty,” she thought, “because it has been two years since the war. I hope he doesn’t think of me as a perfect kid. I will be twenty-one in a month, anyway.”
A wet and bedraggled Frances clambered over the side and appeared in the saloon just in time to get a weary, grateful smile from the man as he came to.