CHAPTER IX
INTRODUCING “OLD KITE ROBERSON”
Captain Duff was not visible when Phil reached the Seamew; but the mate received him, and in answer to his inquiry as to the whereabouts of his friend, pointed to the forecastle. There our lad found Serge, from whom he was desirous of obtaining some information concerning the schooner’s master, in whose power he had so deliberately placed himself. Having had no experience in shipping as one of the crew of a vessel, Phil did not realize how fully he had done this; but he had seen enough of Captain Duff’s peculiar manner to render him rather nervous now that the irrevocable step was taken.
Serge could only say that while the subject of their conversation was almost as much of a mystery to him as to Phil, he had at least proved himself a capital seaman. Also that while his frequent outbursts of temper were frightful to witness, no serious consequences had thus far resulted from them. No one had, however, ventured to thwart his will in the slightest, and all hands regarded him with more or less of fear.
While the two lads were thus talking there came a sudden call for all hands to up anchor and make sail, whereupon they tumbled up on deck and turned to with a will, Phil working with the rest to the best of his limited knowledge concerning what was to be done.
Before a light off-shore breeze the trim schooner slipped out of the cove, and, as the sun was sinking behind the snow-capped Olympic mountains, gained the waters of the Strait of Fuca, through which she would reach the open sea.
While Phil stood gazing at the fast-fading land, feeling a little homesick and lonely, Jalap Coombs informed him that the captain wished him to bring his things aft into the cabin.
As the lad had not seen his recently acquired outfit since coming aboard, he had nothing to carry, and so entered the cabin with empty hands.
“Where is your rifle?” demanded the captain, as soon as he appeared.
“I left it behind, sir.”
“What!” roared the other, springing to his feet with every appearance of violent rage. “Left it behind? Cheated me out of a first-class rifle? Never mind; it shall be charged to your account.” Then, working himself into an increase of passion, he bellowed: “You young villain! I’ve a mind to brain you for this,” and seizing a stool from the floor, he lifted it threateningly, at the same time taking a step forward.
Phil’s first impulse was to fly from the presence of one whom he had every reason to believe a madman. On second thoughts he turned, and, with a very pale face but a steady voice, said: “You don’t dare do it. You are a coward, and you know it as well as I do.”
For the first time in all his sea-going life big, red-faced, bullying Captain Duff was bearded in his own den, and that by a mere slip of a boy, as he regarded the lad now so boldly confronting him. He was a coward at heart, and he knew it. His very air of bluster and bravado, assumed so long ago that it had become a second nature, was worn solely for the purpose of misleading his associates, and hiding from them his true character. This manner was so well borne out by his size and his ferocious expression that until this time he had succeeded in inspiring awe merely by noise and aspect. Now his true character was known, the fraud he had perpetrated so successfully and so long was discovered, and like a great gorgeous soap-bubble his inflated wind-bag of bravery had been pricked and dissipated.
The collapse of this roaring pretence was so sudden and complete as to be staggering. For a moment the man stood motionless, with the stool still uplifted, but with every vestige of color fled from his ordinarily crimson face. Then the stool dropped to the floor with a crash, and he tottered limply backward into the huge arm-chair that he had occupied when Phil entered the cabin. His eyes rolled, his breath came in gasps, and a hoarse rattling issued from his throat.
During this extraordinary scene Phil stood his ground, outwardly calm and resolute, but wondering whether he was to be eaten or skinned alive for his audacity. At length, realizing that the enemy was powerless for the time being, he left the cabin, and reported to the mate on deck that he believed Captain Duff was having a fit, and needed attention.
Upon this Jalap Coombs cautiously approached the sky-light, and peered down into the cabin. Then he as cautiously tiptoed back to where Phil was standing. “I ruther guess we’d best leave him alone to fight it out,” he said. “He’s a born fighter, Cap’n Duff is, an’ he’s had ’em afore. As my friend old Kite Roberson uster say consarning fits: ‘When a ordinary seaman takes a notion to indulge in ’em, roll him on deck, douse him with buckets of salt-water, and otherwise wrastle ’em out of him, fer he ’ain’t no business with any such luxuries. With a cap’n, though, it’s diffrunt. He’s a priverleged character, and when he feels inclined fer a fit, he wants to enjoy it, and have it out without interference, same as ef it war a glass o’ grog. So never interrupt a cap’n’s fits ef you want to have peace and quietness aboard ship.’ That’s what old Kite uster say, and he must er knowed, ’cause he’d had more millions of experience than most.”
“Who was this Mr. Robinson?” asked Phil.
“Who! Kite—old Kite Roberson? ’Tain’t likely now that ye never heerd of him? Why, he was one of the best-known men. By his own ’count he’d been ’round the world more times than there is parallels of latitood, and some of his charts looked like spider-webs, they war kivered so thick with his tracks. Why, he come from the same place as me, old Kite did, and sometimes it makes me feel prouder’n a mere mortal man orter feel to think that him and me was fashioned outer the same clay, as it war, and brung up on the same air.”
“It must be a great satisfaction,” remarked Phil, politely. Then, to show his interest in the subject, he asked: “But where is your native place, Mr. Coombs? You are a down-Easter, are you not?”
“Sartain I am,” replied the mate. “A genuine down-Easter is the one thing on this watery earth I can surely claim to be. But whether I’m a Britisher or a Yankee is the problem I’m wearing my life out trying to solve.”
“That seems queer,” said Phil, reflectively.
“Queer ain’t no name fer it. It’s simply redickerlous. Ye see, when they settled the boundary ’twixt Maine and the Provinces, they run it plumb through my father’s house, and as nigh as I can figger I was born straddle of the line. After that I was brung up fust on one side, and then on t’other; so that ef one man says I’m a Britisher and another says I’m a Yank, they ain’t nuther of ’em lying, nor yet they ain’t telling the truth. Sometimes I feel as ef I war a British subjeck, and again like a full-blown American citizen. It depends mostly on the weather. When it’s damp and foggy, like it is now, I ginerally feels like a subjeck. Old Kite Roberson he uster say—”
Just then came the note of a siren fog-horn over the waters from dead ahead. A dense mist had rolled in from the sea, obscuring the light on Race Island, the most southerly of the few light-stations maintained on the coast of British Columbia. All the time that he was talking with Phil, Jalap Coombs had also been keeping a sharp lookout for this light. Now, at the first note of its siren, he sprang up, transformed in an instant from a shambling, garrulous “subjeck,” as he called himself, into an alert and thoroughly capable Yankee sailor.
“Ready about!” he shouted, in clear, crisp tones. “Hard a-lee!” And a minute later, as the lively craft spun round to a deafening accompaniment of rattling blocks and slatting canvas, “Draw away!” With this the schooner settled comfortably down on her new course, and bending gracefully over before a damp sea-breeze, sped swiftly away from the threatened dangers of Race Island rocks.
About this time Ebenezer, the black cook, announced that supper was ready in the cabin, and the mate, after a long careful look both to windward and leeward, suggested to Phil that they might as well go below and “stow a cargo of chuck.”
In the cabin, which was fairly roomy and well ventilated, stood a table on which supper was spread, a small stove for heating purposes only, the captain’s big arm-chair, several stools, and a short bench. On two sides were single tiers of comfortable-looking bunks, five in all. On the starboard side was a closed door that evidently opened into a small state-room, and on the port side was a narrow passage leading to the galley, an unusual luxury of appointment in schooners of the Seamew’s class, and one that assured the safe and speedy transmission of food from the stove on which it was cooked.
Captain Duff was nowhere to be seen when Phil and the mate entered the cabin, and in answer to Phil’s inquiring glance, the latter pointed significantly with his thumb towards the closed state-room door. There were, however, two other occupants of the cabin, both young men. They were already seated at the table, and eating with silence and despatch. They did not speak to Phil nor he to them, and as the mate also ate in silence the meal was uninterrupted save by the steady clatter of knives, forks, and spoons against that peculiarly thick and indestructible form of china known as stone-ware.
The two young men finished first, pushed back from the table, lighted their pipes, and left the cabin.
“Who are they?” asked Phil, after they had disappeared.
“Hunters,” was Mr. Coombs’s laconic answer.
Then he too pushed back from the table, and Phil hastened to ask him before he could leave the cabin where he should find his bag, as he wished to get a pea-jacket from it.
The mate merely pointed to an end berth on the port side, in which, sure enough, Phil spied a new canvas bag that he now recognized as his own.
“Am I to bunk in here?” he asked, in some surprise.
“Sartain,” replied Mr. Coombs, and then he too vanished up the companion-way.