It was a small incident, of course; scarcely to be noted at all when it was over. Yet the impression left upon Sheila's mind was that Orion Latham was deliberately endeavoring to injure his cousin's business with the Seamew. If he talked like this before the more or less superstitious Portygees, how long would Tunis manage to keep a crew to work the schooner?
Had she dared she would have taken Orion to task there and then for his unfaithfulness. The fellow was, as Cap'n Ira had once observed, one of those yapping curs always envious of the braver dog's bone.
To the girl's disgust, too, Orion Latham showed plainly that he considered that he, as an older acquaintance of the girl, could presume upon that fact. He clung to her throughout the evening like a mussel to duck grass. Of all the Big Wreck Cove youth, he was the only one that she could not put in his place.
She did not think it wise to snub him so openly that Orion would take offense. This course might do the captain of the Seamew harm. She foresaw trouble in the offing for Tunis, in any case, and she did not wish to do anything that would spur Orion to further and more successful attempts to harm his cousin's business.
There was another matter troubling Sheila's mind after Orion had come to the harvest-home festival. Mason Chapin likewise appeared at the church. But Tunis did not come. He knew, of course, of the festival, and he had known when he sailed last for Boston that the Balls and Ida May intended to go. It did seem as if Tunis might have come, if for only a little while, before going home.
These thoughts made Sheila rather inattentive to other proposals, and she found herself obliged to go down to supper with Orion, since he had outsat and outtalked all the other young men who had hovered about her. She was nice to Orion; the girl could scarcely be otherwise, even to those she disliked, unless some very important matter arose to disturb her, but she did not enjoy the remainder of the evening, and she was glad when Cap'n Ira and Prudence were ready to go home. It was full time, the girl thought.
Even then Orion Latham assumed altogether too much authority. Sheila had been about to send little John-Ed around for Queenie and the carryall, but Orion put the boy aside with a self-assured grin.
"Nobody ain't going to put you in the carriage, Ida May, but me," he declared. "I'll get the old mare."
He seized his cap and went out. In a few minutes they had said good-bye, and the old couple and the girl went out on the church steps. Sheila saw the carryall standing before the door. A figure stood at the old mare's head which she presumed to be Orion's.
"The chariot is ready, I cal'late," said Cap'n Ira. "Come on, Prudence."
Sheila helped the old woman into the rear seat and then aided Cap'n Ira as well. She got in quickly in front, but as she was about to gather up the reins the man holding Queenie's head came around swiftly and stepped in beside her to the driver's place.
"I swan! That you, Tunis?" exclaimed Cap'n Ira.
"Looks like it," the captain of the Seamew said gravely. "All clear aft?"
"You can pay off, Tunis," returned the old man. "Tuck that robe around your knees, Prudence. This night air is as chill as a breath off the ice barrens."
Orion loafed into the lamplight by the steps before Queenie got into action. His scowl was unseen, but his voice was audible—as it was meant to be—to Sheila's ears.
"There he is—hoggin' everything, same as usual. How did I know he was hanging around outside here, waiting to drive her home? Just as though he owned her! Huh! He may be skipper aboard that dratted schooner, but that gives him no right to boss me ashore. I won't stand it."
"Sit down to it, then, 'Rion," snickered one of the other young fellows. "I cal'late Tunis has got the inside course on all of us."
The girl said nothing to the captain of the Seamew at first. It was Prudence who asked him why he had not been in the church.
"I could not get over here until just now," Tunis replied quietly.
Sheila wondered if he really had been detained on the schooner. Perhaps he had refrained from coming to the festival for fear the good people of Big Wreck Cove would notice his attentions to her. He had never been publicly in her company since he had brought her down from Boston. Orion Latham's outburst there at the church door was the first cue people might have gained of anything more than a passing acquaintanceship between the captain of the Seamew and the girl who had come to live with the Balls.
These thoughts bore down the girl's spirits tremendously. The simple pleasure of the evening was quite erased from her memory. She remained speechless while old Queenie climbed the hill to the Head.
The desultory conversation between Cap'n Ira, Prudence, and the young shipmaster scarcely attracted the girl's attention. If Tunis looked at her curiously now and then, she did not see his glances. And she merely nodded her understanding of his statement when Tunis said, speaking directly to her:
"The Seamew's going to lie here over Sunday this time, Ida May."
"That'll be nice for you, Tunis," Aunt Prue put in. "You can go to church. You don't often have that privilege. Seafarin' is an awful godless life."
Queenie sprang ahead gallantly at the sound of a hearty sneeze from Cap'n Ira, just then, and they were soon at home. Tunis jumped out and aided the old woman and then the captain to alight. Sheila got out on the other side of the carriage. She would have preferred to run on into the house, but she could not really do that. Queenie must be unharnessed and put in her stable and given a measure of oats to munch. Of course, Tunis would offer to do this, but she could not leave him to attend to it without a word.
"I'll help you with Queenie, Ida May," said the captain of the Seamew.
That settled it. She had to remain outside while Cap'n Ira and Prudence went into the house. Tunis led the old mare toward the barn. A lantern, burning very dimly, was in a box just outside the big door, and Sheila got this and held it while Tunis busied himself with the buckles.
"I didn't mean to interfere," the man said, suddenly breaking the silence between them. "But as I was coming this way, of course, I expected to ride along with you. So—"
"What do you mean, Captain Latham?" the girl asked wonderingly.
"Orion said you sent him out to get Queenie."
"Why, I—"
"Of course, you didn't know I was there. I had just reached the church. But 'Rion is so fresh—"
"He took it upon himself to go," said the girl calmly. "I did not send him. I guess you know how your cousin is."
"He is too fresh. I'd like to punch him," growled Tunis, to the girl's secret delight. It sounded boyish, but real. "I don't know that I can stand him aboard the Seamew much longer. He attends to everybody's business but his own."
"He means you no good, Captain Latham," she said frankly. "To-night he was repeating that silly story about the Seamew being haunted."
"Cat's-foot!" ejaculated Tunis. "I wish I'd fired old Horry Newbegin for starting that."
"But 'Rion keeps it up."
"If he believed she was hoodoed, you wouldn't get him aboard with a wire cable," growled Tunis.
"It would be better for you and for the success of your business, Captain Latham, if 'Rion was really afraid of going aboard the Seamew," she said with confidence.
"Well, I don't see how I can fire him. He's my cousin—in a way. And there is enough ill feeling in the family now. Gran'ther Peleg left all his money to me, and it made Orion and his folks as sore as can be."
"You are inclined to be too kind. I am not sure it is always wise to be too easy."
"Like chopping off the dog's tail an inch at a time, so's not to hurt him so much, eh?" he chuckled.
"Something like that."
"Well, I'm almost tempted to give 'Rion his walking ticket. I've reason enough. He can't even keep a manifest straight."
"Does he even try?"
"And that also is in my mind," acknowledged Tunis. "I'm pretty well fed up on 'Rion, I do allow. But I don't know what Aunt 'Cretia would say." Then he laughed again. "Just about what she usually says, I guess; nothing at all. But she abhors family squabbles.
"That reminds me, Ida May. This being the first Sunday I've been home since you came here, I want you should go over with me after church to-morrow and have dinner at our house."
"Oh, Captain Latham! I—"
"And don't you guess you could employ some other term when speaking to me, Ida May?" he interrupted. "I get 'captained' almost enough aboard the schooner and up to Boston. Just plain 'Tunis' for those that are my friends suits me a sight better."
"I shall call you 'Tunis,' if you like," she said composedly. "But about taking dinner with you—I am not so sure."
"Why not?" he demanded.
"Your aunt has never called here since I have been on the Head."
"She don't call anywhere. She never did that I can remember. She goes to church on Sunday sometimes. Occasionally she has to go to town to buy things. Once in a dog's age she leaves anchor and gets as far as Paulmouth. But other times she's never off the place."
"I—I feel hesitant about doing what you ask, Captain—Tunis, I mean."
"Why?"
"You know well enough," said Sheila. "If anything should turn up—if the truth should come out—"
"Now, are you still worrying about that, Ida May?"
"Don't you think of it—Tunis?"
"Not a bit! We're as safe as a church. That girl will never show up here on Wreckers' Head. Of course not!"
He seemed absolutely confident. In the dim illumination of the lantern she looked very closely into his face. Then it was not fear of exposure that kept Tunis Latham silent. She moved closer to him, looking up into his countenance, holding the lantern so that her own face was in the shadow.
"Who suggested my coming to dinner, Tunis? You, or your Aunt Lucretia?"
"If you knew my aunt! Well! She seldom says a word. But when I have anything to say, I talk along just as though she answered back like an ordinary person would. I can tell if she's interested."
"Yes?"
"She's been interested in you from the start, I know. She showed it in her look the very first time I spoke of you—that day I brought you here to Wreckers' Head."
"But—but you have never spoken of this before. She did not come to call."
"I'll tell you," said Tunis earnestly. "I wanted to be sure. Aunt 'Cretia knew your—er—Sarah Honey very well."
"Oh."
"Just about as well as Mrs. Ball did. When she was staying here with Aunt Prue, she used to run over to our place a lot.
"You don't remember it," continued Tunis, grinning suddenly; "but you were taken over there when you were a baby."
"Oh, don't! Don't!" cried the girl. "Let us not speak so lightly—so carelessly. Suppose—suppose—"
"Suppose nothing!" exclaimed Tunis. "Don't have any fears. She wanted to know just how you looked—every particular. Oh, she has ways of showing what she wants without getting what you'd call voluble! I told her about your hair—your eyes—everything. I know from the way she looked that she accepts the fact of your being the real Ida May without more question than Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue."
She was silent, thinking. Then she sighed.
"I will accept the invitation, Tunis. But I feel—I feel that all is not for the best. But what must be must be. So—oh, I'll go!"
The benison of that most beautiful season of all the year, the autumn, lay upon Wreckers' Head and the adjacent coast on that Sunday morning. Alongshore there is never any sad phase of the fall. One reason is the lack of deciduous trees. The brushless hills and fields are merely turned to golden brown when the frosts touch them.
The sea—ever changing in aspect, yet changeless in tide and restraint—was as bright and sparkling as at midsummer. Along the distant beaches the white ruffle of the surf seemed to have just been laundered. The green of the shallows and the blue of the deeper sea were equally vivid.
When she first arose Sheila Macklin looked abroad from that favorite north window of her bedroom, and saw that all the world was good. If she had felt secret misgivings and the tremor of a nervous apprehension, these feelings were sloughed away by this promising morning. The fear she had expressed to Tunis Latham the evening before did not obsess her. She continued placid and outwardly cheerful. Whatever threatened in the immediate future, she determined to meet it with as much composure as she could summon.
Nobody but Sheila Macklin knew wholly what she had endured since leaving her childhood's home. When Tunis Latham had come so dramatically into her life she had been almost at the limit of her endurance. To him, even, she had not confessed all her miseries. To escape from them she would have embraced a much more desperate expedient than posing as Ida May Bostwick.
The ethics of the situation had not really impressed her at first. The desire to get away from her unfortunate environment, from the city itself, and to go where nobody knew her history, not even her name, was the main thought at that time in the girl's mind. Tunis Latham's confident assurances that she would be accepted without question by Cap'n Ball and Prudence caused her to put aside all fear of consequences at the moment. It was a desperate stroke, but she had been in desperate need, and she had carried the matter through boldly.
Now that she seemed so securely established in the Ball household and was accepted by all the community of Big Wreck Cove as the real Ida May, it seemed foolish to give way to anxiety. Discovery of the imposture was remote.
Yet, as she had hinted to Tunis, she had an undercurrent of feeling—a more-than-faint apprehension—that all was not right. Something was lurking in the shadows of the future which menaced their peace and security.
She was ever mindful of the fact that Tunis had gone sponsor for her identity as Ida May. Should her imposture be revealed, her first duty would be to protect him. How could she do this? What tale could she concoct to make it seem that he was as much duped as were Cap'n Ball and Prudence?
This seemed impossible. She saw no way out. He had met the real Ida May Bostwick, and then had deliberately introduced Sheila Macklin as the girl he had been sent for! If the truth were revealed, what explanation could be offered?
Had she allowed her mind to dwell upon this phase of the affair she would surely have revealed to those about her, unobservant as they might be, that she had a secret cause for worry. She must drive it into the back of her mind—ignore it utterly.
And this she did on this beautiful Sabbath morning. When Tunis came up to the Head to accompany the Balls to church—Aunt Lucretia did not attend service on this day—a very close observer would have seen nothing in the girl's look or manner to suggest that so keen an anxiety had touched her.
This should have been Sheila's happy day—and it was. For the first time, the young captain of the Seamew linked his interest with her in a deliberate public appearance. Although she feared in secret the result of that appearance at church with Tunis Latham, it nevertheless thrilled her.
He harnessed Queenie after giving that surprised animal such a curry-combing and polishing as she had not suffered in many a day. Sheila rode with Prudence on the rear seat of the carryall.
"I'm berthed on the for'ard deck along o' you, Tunis," said the old man, hoisting himself with difficulty into the front seat. "If the afterguard is all ready, I be. Trip the anchor, boy, and set sail!"
As they passed down through Portygee Town the denizens of that part of Big Wreck Cove were streaming to their own place of worship. It was a saint's day, and the brown people—both men and women, ringed of ears and garbed in the very gayest colors—gave way with smiles and bows for the jogging old mare and the rumbling carryall. Some of the Seamew's crew were overtaken, and they swept off their hats to Prudence and the supposed Ida May, grinning up at Tunis with more than usual friendliness.
"Ah!" exclaimed Eunez Pareta to Johnny Lark, the Seamew's cook. "So you know she of the evil eye, eh?"
"What do you mean?" asked Johnny. "That pretty girl who rides behind Captain Latham?"
"Si!"
"She has no evil eye," declared the cook stoutly.
"It is told me that she has," said the smiling girl. "And she has put what you call the 'hoodoo' on that schooner. She come down in her from Boston."
"What of it?" retorted the cook. "She is a fine lady—and a pretty lady."
"So Tunis Latham think—heh?" demanded Eunez fiercely.
"And why not?" grinned Johnny.
"Bah! Has not all gone wrong with that Seamew ever since she sail in the schooner?" demanded the girl. "An anchor chain breaks; a rope parts; you lost a topmast—yes? How about Tony? Has he not left and will not return aboard the schooner for a price? Do you not find calm where other schooners find fair winds? Ah!"
"Pooh!" ejaculated Johnny Lark. "Old woman's talk!"
"Not!" cried the girl hotly. "It is a truth. The saints defend us from the evil eye! And Tunis Latham is under that girl's spell."
Johnny Lark tried to laugh again, but with less success. Many little things had marred the fair course of the Seamew and her captain's business. He, however, shook his head.
"Not that pretty girl yonder," he said, "has brought bad luck to the Seamew. No, no!"
"What, then?" asked Eunez, staring sidewise at him from eyes which seemed almost green.
"See!" said Johnny, seizing her wrist. "If the Seamew is a Jonahed schooner, it is because of something different. Yes!"
"Bah!" cried Eunez, yet with continued eagerness. "Tell me what it may be if it is not that girl with the evil eye?"
"Ask 'Rion Latham," whispered Johnny. "You know him—huh?"
The Portygee girl looked for a moment rather taken aback. Then she said, tossing her head:
"What if I do know 'Rion?"
"Ask him," repeated Johnny Lark. "He is cousin of our captain. He knows—if anybody knows—what is the trouble with the Seamew." And he shook his head.
Eunez stared at him.
"You know something you do not tell me, Juan?"
"Ask 'Rion Latham," the cook said again, and left her at the door of the church.
Those swains who had been "cluttering the course"—to quote Cap'n Ira—did not interfere in any way with the Balls' equipage on this Sunday at the church. There was none who seemed bold enough to enter the lists with Tunis Latham. He put Queenie in the shed and backed her out again and brought her around to the door when the service was ended without having to fight for the privilege.
'Rion Latham, however, was the center of a group of young fellows who were all glad to secure a smile and bow from the girl, but who only sheepishly grinned at Tunis. 'Rion was not smiling; there was a settled scowl upon his ugly face.
"I cal'late," said Cap'n Ira, as they drove away, "that 'Rion must have eat sour pickles for breakfast to-day and nothing much else. Yet he seemed perky enough last night at the sociable. I wonder what's got into him."
"I'd like to get something out of him," growled Tunis, to whom the remark was addressed.
"What's that?"
"Some work, for one thing," said the captain of the Seamew. "He's as lazy a fellow as I ever saw. And his tongue's too long."
"Trouble is," Cap'n Ira rejoined, "these trips you take in the schooner are too short to give you any chance to lick your crew into shape. They get back home too often. Too much shore leave, if ye ask me."
"I'd lose Mason Chapin if the Seamew made longer voyages. And I have lost one of the hands already—Tony."
"I swan! What's the matter with him?"
"His mother says Tony is scared to sail again with the Seamew. Some Portygee foolishness."
"I told you them Portygees warn't worth the grease they sop their bread in," declared Cap'n Ira.
The two on the rear seat of the carryall paid no attention to this conversation.
"I'm real pleased," said the old woman, "that you are going to dinner with Lucretia Latham, Ida May. Your mother thought a sight of her, and 'Cretia did of Sarah Honey, too. Sarah was one of the few who seemed to understand Lucretia. She's so dumb. I declare I can't never get used to her myself. I like folks lively about me, and I don't care how much they talk—the more the better.
"Lucretia Latham might have got her a good man and been happily married long ago, if it hadn't been that when a feller dropped in to call on her she sat mum all the evening and never said no more than the cat.
"I remember Silas Payson, who lived over beyond the port, took quite a shine to Lucretia, seeing her at church. Or, at least, we thought he did. Silas began going down to Latham's Folly of an evening, now and then, and setting up with Lucretia. But after a while he left off going and said he cal'lated he'd join the Quakers over to Seetawket. Playing Quaker meeting with just one girl to look at didn't suit, noway." And the old woman laughed placidly.
"Tunis says he understands his aunt," ventured the girl.
"Tunis has had to put up with her. But he can say nothing a good deal himself, if anybody should ask ye. That's the only fault I've found with Tunis. I've heard Ira talk at him for a straight hour in our kitchen, and all the answer Tunis made was to say 'yes' twice."
The girl did not find the captain of the Seamew at all inarticulate later, as they crossed the old fields of the Ball place and walked down the slope into the saucerlike valley where lay Latham's Folly. She had never known Tunis to be more companionable than on this occasion. He seemed to have gained the courage to talk on more intimate topics than at any time since their acquaintanceship had begun.
"I guess you know," he observed, "that most all the money Uncle Peke left me—after what the lawyers got—I put into that schooner. There's a mortgage on her, too. You see, although the old place will come to me by and by, Aunt Lucretia has rights in it while she lives. It's sort of entailed, you know. I could not raise a dollar on Latham's Folly, if I wanted to. So I am pretty well tied up, you see.
"But the schooner is doing well. That is, I mean, business is good, Ida May. Other things being equal, I will make more money with her the way I am doing now than I could in any other business. My line is the sea; I know that. I am fitted for it.
"And if I had invested Uncle Peke's legacy and kept on fishing, or tried for a berth in a deep bottom somewhere, I would not get ahead any faster or make so much money. Besides, long voyages would take me away from home, and, after all, Aunt Lucretia is my only kin and she would miss me sore."
"I am sure she would," said the girl with sympathy.
"But all ain't plain sailing," added the young skipper wistfully. "I am running too close to the reefs right now to crow any."
"But I am sure you will be successful in the end. Of course you will!"
"That's mighty nice of you," he said, smiling down into her vivid face. "With you and Aunt Lucretia both pulling for me, I ought to win out, sure enough.
"You can't fail to like her," he added. "If you just get the right slant on her character, I mean, Ida May. Hers has been a lonely life. Not that there has not almost always been somebody in the house with her. But she has lived with her own thoughts. She reads a great deal. There is not one topic I can broach of which she has not at least a general knowledge. I was sent away to school, but when I came home vacations I brought my books and she read them all.
"And she is a splendid listener." He laughed. "You'll find that out for yourself, I fancy. And I know she likes people to talk to her—when they have anything to say. Tell her things; that is what she enjoys."
In spite of his assurances, Sheila Macklin approached the old, brown house behind the cedars with much secret trepidation. Although Aunt Lucretia had a neighbor's girl come in to help her almost daily, she had preferred to prepare the dinner on this occasion with her own hands. And, perhaps, she did not care to have the neighbor's child around when the supposed Ida May came to the house for the first time.
They saw her watching from the side door—a tall, angular figure in a black dress. Her hair was done plainly and in no arrangement to soften the gaunt outline of her face, but there was much of it, and Sheila longed to make a change in that grim coiffure.
The woman smiled so warmly when she saw the two approach that almost instantly the girl forgot the grim contour of Aunt Lucretia's face. That smile was like a flash of sunshine playing over one of those barren, brown fields through which they had passed so quickly on the way down from the Ball house.
"This is Ida May, Aunt Lucretia," said Tunis, as they reached the porch.
The smiling woman stretched forth a hand to the girl. Her eyes, peering through the spectacles, were very keen, and when their gaze was centered upon the girl's face it seemed that Aunt Lucretia was suddenly smitten by some thought, or by some discovery about the visitor, which made her greeting slow.
Yet that may have been her usual manner. Tunis did not appear to observe anything extraordinary. But Sheila thought Aunt Lucretia had been about to greet her with a kiss, and then had thought better of it.
There was nothing thereafter in Aunt Lucretia's manner—surely not in her speech—to lead Sheila to fear the woman did not accept her at face value. Why should she suspect a masquerade when nobody else did? The girl took her cue from Tunis and placidly accepted his aunt's manner as natural.
Aunt Lucretia put the dinner on the table at once. They ate, when there was special company, in the dining room. The meal was generous in quantity and well cooked. It was evident that, like most country housewives, Lucretia Latham took pride in her table. Had the visitor come for the meal alone she would have been amply recompensed.
But the woman seldom uttered a word, and then only brief questions regarding the service of the food. She listened smilingly to the conversation between Tunis and the visitor, but did not enter into it. It was difficult for the girl to feel at ease under these circumstances.
Especially was this so after dinner, when she asked to help Aunt Lucretia clear off the table and wash and dry the dishes. The woman made no objection; indeed, she seemed to accept the girl's assistance placidly enough. But while they were engaged in the task—a time when two women usually have much to chatter about, if nothing of great importance—Aunt Lucretia uttered scarcely a word, preferring even to instruct her companion in dumb show where the dried dishes should be placed.
Yet, all the time, the girl could not trace anything in Aunt Lucretia's manner or look which actually suggested suspicion or dislike. Tunis seemed eminently satisfied with his aunt's attitude. He whispered to Sheila, when they were alone together:
"She certainly likes you, Ida May."
"Are you sure?" the girl asked.
"Couldn't be mistaken. But don't expect her to tell you so in just so many words."
Later they walked about the dooryard and out-buildings—Tunis and the visitor—and Aunt Lucretia watched them from her rocking-chair on the porch. What her thoughts were regarding her nephew and the girl it would be hard to guess, but whatever they were, they made her face no grimmer than usual, and the light in her bespectacled eyes was scarcely one of dislike or even of disapproval. Yet there was a strange something in the woman's look or manner which suggested that she watched the visitor with thoughts or feelings which she wished neither the girl nor Tunis to observe.
Late in the afternoon the two young people started back for the Ball house, taking a roundabout way. They did not even follow the patrol path, well defined along the brink of Wreckers' Head as far as the beach. Instead, they went down by the wagon track to the beach itself, intending to follow the edge of the sea and the channel around to a path that led up the face of the bluff to the Ball homestead. It was a walk the girl had never taken.
The reaction she experienced after having successfully met and become acquainted with Aunt Lucretia put Sheila in high spirits. Tunis had never seen her in quite this mood. Although she was always cheerful and not a little gay about the Ball homestead, she suddenly achieved a spirit of sportiveness which surprised the captain of the Seamew. But he wholly liked and approved of this new mood.
She had made herself a new fall frock and a pretty, close-fitting hat—something entirely different, as he had noticed, from the styles displayed by the other girls of Big Wreck Cove. And he was observant enough to see that this outfit was more like what the girls in Boston wore.
She ran ahead to pick up a shell or pebble that gleamed at the water's edge from a long way off. She escaped a wetting from the surf by a scant margin, and laughed delightedly at the chance she took. Back against the foot of the bluff certain brilliant flowers grew—fall blossoms that equaled any in Prudence Ball's garden—and the girl gathered these and arranged them in an attractive bouquet with a regard for color that delighted her companion.
They came, finally, in sight of a cabin back under the bank on the far side of the little cove, where once Tunis had reaped clams while Cap'n Ira and the Queen of Sheba made their unfortunate slide down the face of the bluff. The sea was so low now that Tunis could aid the girl across the mouth of the tiny inlet on the sand bar which defended it from the sea. There was but one channel over which she need leap with his help.
The cabin captivated Sheila, especially when she learned it was no longer occupied. It had a tight tin roof and a cement-pipe chimney with a cap to keep the rain out. The window sashes had been carried away and the door hung by a single hinge. However, the one-roomed cabin was otherwise tight and dry.
"Sometimes fishing parties from the port come around here and camp for a day or two," explained Tunis. "But Hosea Westcott used to live here altogether. Even in the winter. He caught his own fish and split and dried them; he dug clams and picked beach plums and sold them in town, or swapped them for what he needed. Sometimes the neighbors gave him a day's work."
"An old and lonely man, Tunis?" the girl murmured.
"That is what he was. All his immediate family was gone. So, when he fell ill one winter and one of the coast guards found him here almost starved and helpless, they took him away to the poor farm."
They went on around the end of the headland and walked up the beach toward the port. Before they reached the path by which they intended to mount to the summit of Wreckers' Head, they observed another couple going in the same direction, following the edge of the water on the firm strand. The woman was dressed in such brilliant hues that she could be mistaken for nobody but a resident of Portygee Town.
"That is the daughter of Pareta, who brought up your trunk when you came here, Ida May," said Tunis carelessly.
"But do you see who the man is?" she said, with some surprise. "It is your cousin."
"'Rion? So it is. Well," he added rather scornfully, "no accounting for tastes. She's a decent-enough girl, I guess, but we don't mix much with the Portygees. Although most of them are all right folks, at that. But fooling around those girls sometimes starts trouble, as 'Rion ought to know by this time."
As they climbed the path, Tunis aiding his companion at certain places, the girl, looking down, thought they were being closely watched by the other couple on the beach. There was nothing in this to disturb her mind; a feeling of confidence had overcome her since her experience with Aunt Lucretia. Her present environment was so far from the scenes of her old pain and misery that it seemed nothing actually could disturb her again.
The peacefulness of the scene impressed Tunis as well. When they came up finally upon the brink of the headland they saw a spiral of smoke rising from one of the chimneys of the distant Ball homestead. The man pointed to it and, smiling down upon her, repeated a verse he had read somewhere which he knew expressed the hope she held:
"I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled
Above the green elms that a cottage was near;
And I said, 'if there's peace to be found in the world,
A heart that was humble might hope for it here.'"
"That is pretty near right, don't you think, Ida May?"
"It is, indeed! Oh, it is!" she cried. "And my heart is humble, Tunis. I feel that God has been very good to me—and you," she added softly.
"I've been mighty good to myself," he responded. "Ida May, there never was a girl just like you, I guess. Anyway, I never saw such a one. I—I don't know just how to put it, but I feel that you are the only girl in the world I can ever feel the same toward."
"Tunis!"
He took her hand, looking so hungrily into her face that she, blushing, if not confused, could not bear his gaze, and the long lashes drooped to veil the violet eyes.
"You understand me, Ida May?" whispered the captain of the Seamew eagerly. "I don't know, fixed as I am, that I've any right to talk to you like this. But—but I can't wait any longer!"
She allowed her hand to remain in his warm clasp, and now she looked up at him again.
"Have you thought of what all this may mean, Tunis?" she asked.
"You bet I have. I haven't been thinking of much else—not since the first time I saw you."
"What? You felt—felt that you could like me that night when we sat on the bench so long on the Common?"
"My Godfrey, Ida May!" he exclaimed. "Since that time you slipped on the sidewalk in front of that restaurant and I caught you. That's when I first knew that you were the most wonderful girl in the world!"
"Oh, Tunis! Do you mean that?"
"I certainly do," he said stoutly.
"That—that you thought that? At very first sight?"
"I couldn't get you out of my mind. I went about in a sort of dream. Why, Ida May, when Cap'n Ira and Aunt Prue talked so much about wanting that other girl down here, all I could think of was you! I half believed it must be you that they sent me for—until I came face to face with that other girl."
Her face dimpled suddenly; her eyes shone. The look she gave him passed through Tunis Latham like an electric shock. He trembled. He would have drawn her closer.
"Not here, Tunis," she whispered. "But if you dare take me—knowing what and who I am—I am all yours. Whenever you feel that you can take me I shall be ready. Can I say more, Tunis?"
He looked at her solemnly. "I am the happiest man alive. I am the happiest man alive, Ida May!" he breathed.
The Seamew sailed next day, short-handed. Not only had Tony, the boy, left, but one of the foremast hands did not put in an appearance. A grinning Portygee boy came to the wharf and announced that "Paul, he iss ver' seek."
Tunis knew it would be useless to go after the man, just as it had been useless to go after Tony. He had been unable to ship another boy in Tony's place, and when he let it be known among the dock laborers and loungers about Luiz Wharf that there was a berth open in the Seamew's forecastle, nobody applied for it.
"What is the matter with those fellows?" the skipper asked Mason Chapin. "They were tumbling over each other a few weeks ago to join us, and now there isn't an offer."
"Some Portygee foolishness," grumbled the mate.
"I wonder," muttered Tunis.
"You wonder if it's so?" queried the mate. "You know how silly these people are once they get a crazy notion in their heads."
"What's the crazy notion, Mr. Chapin?"
The mate flung up his hands and shrugged his shoulders.
"A haunt—a jinx—something. The Lord knows!"
"I wonder if it is a Portygee notion or something else," said Tunis Latham, his eyes fixed on the back of Orion, busy, for once, at the other rail.
"Whatever it is, Captain Latham," said Mason Chapin with gravity, "I suggest you fill your berths at Boston."
"Guess I'll have to. But the offscourings of the city docks! They will be worse than these Portygees."
It was not a prospect he welcomed. He well knew the sort of dock rats he must put up with if he wished to make up his crew with city hands for a short trip. The sea tramps who are within reach of coasting skippers are the same kind of worthless material that shiftless farmers must depend upon in harvest time.
Even the lack of one man forward, to say nothing of the cook's boy, made a considerable difference in the working of the schooner. 'Rion Latham loudly proclaimed that he was being imposed upon when he was forced to work with the captain's watch. He had shipped as supercargo and clerk, he had! This treatment was an imposition.
"You know what you can do about it, 'Rion, if you like," the skipper said to him calmly, but aside. "I wouldn't want to feel that I was holding you to a job that you did not like. You can leave the Seamew any time you want."
"Huh! The rats will be doing that soon enough," growled 'Rion.
But he did not say this where Captain Latham could hear. It was Horry Newbegin who heard him.
"It strikes me, young feller, that if I quarreled with my victuals and drink the way you do, I'd get me another berth and get shet of all this." And the old salt wagged his head. "I don't get you at all, 'Rion."
"You wait," growled the younger man. "I'll leave at the right time. And if things go as I expect, everybody else will leave him flat, too."
"You're taking a chance talking that way," admonished the old man. "It's just as much mutiny as though you turned and hit the skipper or the mate."
"It is, is it? I'll show him!"
"Show who?" asked Horry, in some wonder at the other's spitefulness.
"That dratted cousin of mine. Thinks he owns the earth and sea, as well as this hoodooed tub of a schooner. Gets the best of everything. But he won't always. He never ought to have got the money to buy this old tub."
"You said you wouldn't have her for a gift," chuckled the old man.
"But that don't make it any the more right that he should have her. And she is hoodooed. You know she is, Horry."
The old mariner was silent. 'Rion craftily went on:
"Look what a number of things have happened since he put this derned schooner into commission. We broke an anchor chain in Paulmouth Harbor, didn't we? And the old mud hook lies there to this day. Did you ever see so many halyards snap in your life, and in just a capful of wind? Didn't we have a tops'l carried away—clean—in that squall off Swampscott? And now the hands are leaving her."
"Guess you know something about that," growled Horry.
'Rion grinned.
"Maybe I do. I don't say 'no' and I don't say 'yes.' However, we've all got to work like dogs to make up for being short-handed."
"Nobody is kicking much but you," said the older man.
"That's all right. I've got pluck enough not to stand being imposed upon. Them Portygees—well, there's no figuring on what they will do."
"I can see you are bent on making them do something that will raise trouble," Newbegin said, shaking his head once more.
"What do you expect? You know the Seamew is hoodooed. Huh! Seamew! That ain't no more her rightful name than it is mine."
"I wouldn't say that."
"I would!" snapped 'Rion. "She's the Marlin B., out o' Salem. No matter what he says, or anybody else. She's the murder ship. If he sailed her over that place outside o' Salem Harbor where those poor fellows was drowned, they'd rise again and curse the schooner and all aboard her."
The old man shuddered. He turned his face away and spat reflectively over the rail. The tug of the steering chains to starboard was even then thrilling the cords of his hands and arms with an almost electric shock. 'Rion watched him slyly. He knew the impression he was making on the old man's superstitious mind. He played upon it as he did upon the childish minds of some of the Portygee seamen.
So Captain Tunis Latham did not arrive in Boston in a very calm frame of mind. Although he had no words with 'Rion, and really no trouble with the crew in general, he felt that trouble was brewing. And the worst of it was, it was trouble which he did not know how to avert.
It was not so easy to fill the empty berth in the forecastle, even from the offscourings of the docks. It was a time when dock labor was at a premium. And short voyages never did interest good sailormen. In addition, knowing that the Seamew sailed from her home port, decent seafarers wanted to know what was the matter with her that the captain could not fill his forecastle at that end.
These men wondered about Captain Latham, too. They judged that infirmities of temper must be the reason his men did not stay with the schooner. He was, perhaps, a driver—too quick with his fist or the toe of his boot. Questions along this line were bound to breed answers—and answers from those members of the Seamew's crew who were not friendly to the skipper.
In some little den off Commercial Street 'Rion Latham had forgathered with certain dock loiterers, and, after that, word went to and fro that the Seamew was haunted. If she ever sailed off Great Misery Island, the crew of a run-under Salem fishing smack would rise up to curse the schooner's company. And that curse would follow those who sailed aboard her—either for'ard or in the afterguard—for all time. In consequence of this the only man who applied for the empty berth aboard the Seamew was more than a little drunk and so dirty that Captain Latham would not let him come over the rail.
Nor could the young shipmaster give much time to looking up hands. He had freight ready for his return trip. It must be got aboard, stowed properly, and advantage taken of the tide and a fair wind to get back to the Cape. He had not been in the habit of going up into the city at all of late. If that girl behind the lace counter of Hoskin & Marl's had expected to see Tunis Latham again, she had been disappointed. Her warm invitation to him to call on her—possibly to take her again to lunch—had borne only Dead Sea fruit. He had accepted her decision regarding the Balls and Cape Cod as final and irrevocable. At least, he had had no intention of ever going back and discussing the suggestion again.
The possibility of the real Ida May Bostwick changing her mind and reconsidering her refusal to communicate with the Balls or visit Wreckers' Head never once entered Tunis' mind, if it had Sheila Macklin's. He had seen how scornfully the cheap little shop-girl had refused the kind offer extended to her by her old relatives. He could not have imagined her thinking of the old people and their home and Big Wreck Cove in any different way.
He was quite right in this. Ida May Bostwick never would have looked upon these several matters differently. The thing was settled. Born and bred in the city, she could not conceive of any sane girl like herself deliberately burying herself down on the Cape, to "live on pollock and potatoes," as she had heard it expressed, and be the slave of a pair of old fogies.
Not for her! She would not think of it. Indeed, this phase of the offer Tunis had brought her really made Ida May Bostwick angry. What did he think she was, anyway? In fact, she was inclined to think that that seafaring person had almost insulted her. Although she had deliberately spoken of him as her "Cousin Tunis" to the girls who were her confidantes in the store and to her landlady, who was likewise curious about him, Ida May Bostwick was much pleased by the thought of him.
Then she began to compare Tunis with the young men she knew in Boston. She knew that the young men she got acquainted with were either very light minded or downright objectionable. If any of them contemplated marriage at all, they knew it could not be undertaken upon the meager salaries they were paid. Marriage meant teamwork, with the girl working down-town just as hard as ever, and then working at night when she went home, and on Sundays, even if she and her bridegroom lived only in a furnished room and did light housekeeping.
Ida May Bostwick had a brain explosion one day when she considered these all-too-evident facts. She said:
"I bet that fellow wouldn't expect his wife to stand behind a lace counter and take the sass of floorwalkers and buyers, as well as lady customers, all day long. Not much! He's a regular guy, if he is a hick. My gracious! Don't I wish he'd come back! If I ever get my claws on him again—"
Just what she might do to Tunis under those circumstances she did not even explain to herself. But she began to think of Tunis a good deal. He was a good-looking man, too. And he spent freely. Ida May Bostwick remembered the lunch at Barquette's.
It was true that Sarah Honey had been all Prudence Ball and Aunt Lucretia Latham and other Wreckers' Head folk believed her to be. But she died when Ida May was small, and the girl had been brought up wholly under the influence of the Bostwicks. That family had lacked refinement and breeding and graciousness of manner to a degree that would have amazed and shocked Sarah Honey's relatives down on the Cape.
Not that the girl thought of Tunis Latham's refinement with any wistfulness. She thought of his well-filled wallet, that he was something more than a common sailor, that he undoubtedly owned a good home, even if it was down at Big Wreck Cove, and that he seemed "soft" and "easy."
"A girl might wind him right around her finger, if she went at it right," Ida May Bostwick finally decided. "Some girl will. I wonder how long it would take to get him to sell out down there and live up here in town? My mother came from that awful hole, and she caught a city fellow. I bet I could do this, if it was worth my while. My goodness! Why not?
"There's property there, too. I wonder how much those old creatures are worth. And how long they will live. He spoke like they needed somebody because they were sick. Ugh! I don't like folks when they are sick. Ma was awful. I can remember it. And there was pa, when he was cripped with rheumatism before he died."
This phase of the matter fairly staggered Ida May Bostwick. She put the faint glimmerings of the idea out of her mind—or tried to. Yet that summer she kept delaying her vacation until all the other girls had come back and related all their adventures—those that had actually happened and those that they had imagined.
"Ain't you going to take any time off, Ida May?" they asked.
At last she said she expected to visit her folks "down on the Cape."
"You remember that nice-looking farmer that came in to speak to me that time and took me to lunch at Barquette's?" she asked Miss Leary.
"I know you said he took you there."
"Well, he did, smarty! He's my cousin—of course, not too close." And Ida May giggled. "Well, we've been corresponding."
"I hope it's all perfectly proper," grinned Miss Leary.
Ida May Bostwick stuck out her tongue. But she laughed.
"I've got a good mind," she said to her friend, "to go down and see that fellow's folks. They're well fixed, I guess. And the store pays you for one week of your vacation. I wouldn't lose much, even if it did turn out to be a dead-and-alive hole."