AN UNANSWERED QUERY

Carolyn could scarcely wait in patience for Thursday to come and the pale lady and her baby to arrive at the island. But meanwhile there were many things to occupy her time and to interest her.

She and mamma went to the bathing beach every afternoon, donning their bathing suits in their room and riding over to the beach with other hotel guests in the bus, driven by Captain Littlefield. He waited and drove them back to the Truefelt House if the bathers did not linger too long. The hotel bus must never miss the boats at both the Old and the New Harbour.

Carolyn had been to the Coney Island beaches several times and was familiar with the surf. But this Block Island beach was never crowded, all the people on it were always kindly, friendly people, and the water was free from any kind of rubbish.

Prince was having the time of his life. He was in and out of the water, racing on the sands, barking at the waves that chased him up the strand, plunging into the rough little seas to bring out bits of wood that were thrown in for him to retrieve, and otherwise behaving as though the sea had been made particularly for him.

Of course he got into trouble. He almost always did. Prince never could learn anything save through experience.

Once there were little schools of pinky-white jelly-fish in the surf, and the surfman who was so wonderfully brown all over his body, and who went without a hat no matter how hot the sun was, told everybody to keep away from the pests because they stung all flesh that they touched.

Of course Carolyn knew enough to mind what he said; but would Prince keep away from those very innocent looking, helpless appearing things? No, indeed! Prince had to dash right in and try to nose the jelly-fish out of the way. He couldn't bite them, for the moment he tried to shut his jaws on them they slid right out from between his teeth; he could not step on them and hold them down; and he could not easily drag them ashore.

"That dog of yours will be sorry enough, little lady," warned the surfman, speaking to Carolyn May.

Carolyn and her mother really had to cut their bath short that day so as to take the dog away. By and by his muzzle was hot and feverish and he pawed at it in a way to show that it smarted. He was a very miserable looking dog indeed all that evening, and Carolyn went down and begged cracked ice for him. She improvised an icebag out of her bathing cap and tried to fix it on Prince's muzzle.

But, sting as his cheeks and lips undoubtedly did, the cracked ice did not please the dog and he did not take kindly to the bathing cap.

"There! He always did hate a muzzle," Carolyn sighed. "He thinks this is some kind of a muzzle. I guess I'll have to sit right here by him all night, Mamma Cameron, and sponge off his poor nose with the ice water."

She fell asleep doing this, and her mother picked her up and put her into bed. Prince was all right in the morning; but he was wary thereafter of anything floating in the surf.

One morning Carolyn rode over to the West Side with Captain Littlefield, who went to make arrangements for the boarding of the pale lady and her baby when they should arrive. Captain Littlefield drove Worry alone on this journey, attached to a single-seated buckboard. Carolyn sat beside the wooden-legged man on the seat and Prince crouched between them, clinging on "with teeth and toenails," as the captain said, when the buckboard bumped more than usual over the rough road.

During the journey across the hilly island Carolyn and Captain Littlefield became good friends. And yet, the important query that fretted the little girl's mind was hard to come at. It seemed so very illbred, as she had been taught, to remark upon the personal peculiarities of "grown-ups."

Finally the subject was fairly jolted to the surface. As the buckboard went over a particularly rugged "thank-you-ma'am" in the road, the wooden-legged man was all but thrown off the seat and his artificial limb waved wildly before he got his balance again.

"Oh!" cried Carolyn.

"Purt' near went overboard that time, didn't I?" he chuckled. "Tell the truth, a feller with a wooden laig ought to be lashed with a lubber line in a rough sea like this."

"Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield!" burst forth the little girl, unable to hold in the question any longer, "how do people get wooden legs?"

"How do they get 'em? Why, they buy 'em," said he, his eyes suddenly twinkling.

"Oh! But I mean, why do they have to wear them?"

"To keep 'em from listin' to stab'board or port, as the case may be—whichever side they need the timber-toe on."

"Yes. I know. But I mean," Carolyn desperately tried to explain, "how do they come to lose their real legs so's to have to buy wooden ones?"

"Oh! Ah! I see," Captain Littlefield said with much gravity. "There's sev'ral ways a feller might lose a laig. Why, I did see a man once't—he was in a show at New York—that was born without laigs. They forgot, an' just attached his ankles to his waist, as ye might say. But he was what they call a freak."

"Yes, sir," said Carolyn, breathlessly. "But you an' Mr. Oliver Littlefield didn't get born that way, did you?"

"Me an' Oly? I sh'd say not! Why, Oly, when he was a kid no older than you, was the fastest runner of his age on the island. Yes-sir-ree-sir! He didn't sport no timber-toe then. An' me—Why! when I was apprenticed in the Navy I could go up the shrouds quicker'n a cat. I was always first top-man on a sailing craft. Yes, indeedy! I was some spry, leetle gal."

"Git up, Worry!"

He seemed to consider the subject closed. But Carolyn's appetite for information was only whetted.

"Oh! But how do they lose legs, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield?" she begged.

"Wal, now! Not like lobsters lose their claws. Ye know, lobsters git to fightin' an' shed a claw now and then. But new ones grow on. Ye often see lobsters with one big foreclaw and a little one on t'other side."

"I'm not much acquainted with lobsters," admitted Carolyn May. "Only I saw that big dog take one home on his tail the other day."

"Oh, yes," chuckled Captain Ozias. "That was Tulliver Hicks' lobster. And he went over to Dave-Ed Mott's, that owns that dog, and tried to collect for the lobster. Couldn't collect the lobster itself, for it got battered to smash on the stones 'fore the dog fetched his moorings.

"They had quite an argument, Tulliver Hicks and Dave-Ed did, as to whether Dave-Ed owed Tulliver for the lobster, or Tulliver owed Dave-Ed for damage to the dog. The dog got under the barn floor and ain't come out since; and he was a right sassy dog afore that lobster got a holt on him."

"The poor dog!" the little girl murmured. But she was not at all satisfied. Captain Littlefield had not given her the information she so very much desired. She ventured again: "I didn't really s'pose folks could lose legs and have 'em grow on again like lobsters. But how do they lose 'em?"

"I knew a feller once't," said the captain ruminatively, "that got his mudhook caught so't the chain parted when he tried to git it up again. He'd anchored, ye see, right over a sunken reef. This here was down in the Caribbean Sea and he had oughter knowed better than to go overboard in them waters. 'Tain't safe for nobody but niggers to go over the side thereabout. Sharks will nose right in among niggers, but they'll take a white man ev'ry time.

"Wal, this feller counted his anchor wuth more to him than his body was to his fam'ly, and he dropped a weighted line overboard and skinned off his clo'es and slid down to the rocky bottom with a jackbar in his hand. Jest as he thought, a fluke of the anchor was squeezed in under a big scale of the reef, and he started to pry it out.

"Whilst he was workin'—and, mind you, he had to work mighty fast, for a minute and a ha'f without air was his limit—he seen a shadow overhead. For a second he thought 'twas the schooner driftin' over him. But when he glanced around he seen it was a shark—a big, blunt-nosed critter that was slantin' right down toward him, and was a'ready turned on his side, and opening his jaws."

"Oh!" gasped Carolyn May, her eyes big with that delightful horror that is always roused by such tales of adventure.

"Yep. Reg'lar shark, he was," said Captain Littlefield, pursing his lips and nodding his head. "And he come down at this feller I tell ye of, with a full head o' steam.

"Warn't no use to fight. A feller can't use a ten-pound steel bar, under five fathom o' blue water, to punch out the teeth of a man-eatin' shark. Nos-sir!"

Carolyn May did not understand all this. But the thrill of the story held her just the same.

"And did he eat him?" she asked.

"Did that schooner skipper eat the shark?" responded Captain Littlefield, his eyes twinkling. "Nop. He'd been too much of a mouthful for the skipper. Nor the shark didn't eat all of that skipper. The skipper dropped his bar and sprung up'ard on a slant, tryin' to go over the head of the shark.

"But the tarnal critter whirled over and took a nip at the man as he shot up to the surface. Crunch! Jest one bite was all that was needed. That feller was foreshortened on one side just like 'twas done with a pair o' sheers."

"Oh, dear me!" murmured Carolyn May. "What a wicked, wicked shark!"

"You'm right, leetle gal," agreed Captain Littlefield. "He was some wicked. He likely swum with a school of other sharks; but 'twarn't no Sunday School," and the sailor chuckled. "If that feller hadn't come right up in the bight of a rope that trailed overboard, he'd never escaped as he did. His mates hauled him in, they trimmed his laig off neater than the shark done it, tied the arteries, an' he got over it. 'Twarn't a method of amputation that the doctors would recommend, I guess. Anyway, that's how come of the way that feller lost his laig."

Carolyn was a good deal puzzled as well as interested.

"That wasn't you, was it, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield?" she asked. "You didn't have your leg bit off by a shark, did you?"

"Oh, bless you, no!" said the captain. "No, indeedy."

"Was it your cousin, Mr. Oly Littlefield?"

"Oh, no!" again the sailor assured her. "Oly never seen a shark unless it was caught in the pound nets at Dorris Cove. Ah! Well, here we be," he added, turning Worry in at a long lane that wound up between rocky pastures fenced with stone, toward a little house that was set at the very edge of the bank against which the Atlantic surf moaned. "Here's Barzilla Ball's place, and I cal'late that's Molly Icivilla herself out in her bean patch. If your friends—the lady and the baby—can get to stay here, they'll be treated fine, for Molly I. Ball is as good a cook as they make on this island, and she's well tempered."

The young woman in the sunbonnet saw the visitors coming, and left her hoe in the garden and came up toward the house. It was a low-roofed cottage with a great chimney in the middle of the roof which itself sloped down almost to the top of the doorframe. The walls were of unhewn stone quarried from the island. The house was evidently very low ceiled, and most of the rooms were on the first floor, which was but a step up from the ground. There was no cellar, and the loft was lighted by one small window in either peak of the end walls.

There was a small barn, a shed, a chicken house, and drying racks for fish in the grassy yard. Everything was very clean and neat, the grass was the greenest grass in the world, Carolyn May thought, and the contrast between it and the white-washed buildings was startling.

Green and white, with the blue, tumbling sea beyond and the white froth dashing over the can-buoy half-way to Montauk Point—as Captain Littlefield pointed out to his small passenger—and with the blue of the sky overhead, made almost a poster-picture of the land and sea-scape. The fresh gale with the strong tang of salt in it expanded the little girl's lungs. Her eyes shone and her cheeks were delightfully flushed. Miss Ball, looking at her, lost her heart to Carolyn May at once.

"Where'd you get that little girl, Ozy Littlefield?" she asked. "She's an off child, I warrant."

"She's stoppin' over to Truefelt's," said the captain. "How be ye, Molly I.?"

"Fair to middlin'. How's the rheumatics in your wooden leg, Ozy?"

"I get a kink in it now and then," said the captain with gravity. "Get any boarders yet, Molly I.?"

"No. Them folks I had last summer, the children got the measles, so they can't travel. And I certain sure was glad. Children are all right; but measly ones—How are you, little girl? What's your name?" and she came closer to the buckboard to smile at Carolyn.

She was a broad-faced, stocky, good-natured girl, "rising thirty," as the islanders would say. She was unfreckled because of the shelter of the blue-checked sunbonnet. She had a strong, uncorseted figure and wore a pair of men's brogans to work in. She smiled so warmly at Carolyn May that the little girl could not help returning it with interest, as she politely replied:

"I'm Carolyn May Cameron, and I am living with my mamma at Mrs. Truefelt's house, and my papa is coming here Saturday to see us."

"I want to know!" was Miss Ball's observation.

"Say!" said the captain. "Ann Truefelt wants to know if you'll take in a woman and a baby, Molly I.? The man is going to clerk for us—be our new supercargo, as ye might say."

"I declare! Is that what you come for, Ozy? I thought you was looking for Barzilla, and he's out in the Snatch It today."

"Swordfishin'?"

"Yes. If them auxilary engines folks so favour now don't scare all the swordfish as far as the Georges. Now, are you sure Miz Truefelt wants I should take these folks?"

"You got the room and the time to do it, ain't you?" demanded Captain Littlefield.

"I s'pose so. What kind o' folks are they?"

"Oh," put in Carolyn, unable longer to keep still, "if you only would just take the pale lady and her baby! I know they'd get well and strong here. And you'd like 'em, too, Miss Eyeball. The baby's just as cute."

"Huh!" fairly grunted the island girl, her black eyes flashing an accusing glance at the amused captain. "So you had to tell even this little girl that poor joke, did you? I'm most tempted to marry the first man that comes along so's to get shet of it. Can't understand what my mother an' father were thinking of to put that 'I' in the middle of my name. They were right sensible people in other ways, too. 'Peared to be, anyway."

"I cal'late," agreed Captain Littlefield, still grinning. "But how 'bout them folks to board, Molly I.?"

"When they comin'?" demanded Miss Ball, more briskly.

"Thursday."

"And you know 'em, do you, little girl?" she asked Carolyn, smiling again.

"Oh, yes'm. And you will just love the baby!"

"Shouldn't wonder. Well, you bring 'em over, Ozy. I'll have the place rid up and ready for 'em." Then she said to Carolyn: "Don't you want a drink of milk, little girl? And a slice of warm loaf with sweet butter on it?"

It was mid-forenoon, and it seemed a long time since breakfast and a longer time still to lunch.

"Oh, yes, ma'am," the little girl cried, and she hopped down gaily from the buckboard, with Prince leaping and barking beside her.

"I don't know about that dog," said Miss Ball. "Does he bite?"

"Only other dogs if they pitch on him—and his food," declared Carolyn earnestly. "He never eats humans."

"Well, I sh'd hope not!" chuckled Miss Ball.

She led the little girl (and of course, Prince) into the kitchen. Out of this opened a small milk-room with shelves of rough-hewn stone. She skimmed a pan of milk by drawing the leathery sheet of yellow cream together with two spoons and lifting it bodily into the waiting cream jar. Then she poured the milk into a tall glass pitcher where it almost foamed over.

It was cool and sweet when Carolyn put her lips to the glass Molly Ball handed her. On the corner of the kitchen table the island girl set the great steamed brown "loaf," a slice of which she buttered and placed before her little guest. Bakery brown bread was well enough known to the little city girl; but this was made of windmill ground cornmeal and rye meal, and had a flavour that she had never tasted before.

Prince likewise approved of Miss Ball's cooking, for he sampled a well buttered piece of the loaf.

"I see he only acts savage at his food," said the island girl, complacently feeding Prince bits of buttered loaf with her fingers. "He's a nice dog."

Naturally Carolyn's heart warmed toward her for that opinion. Miss Molly "Eyeball" seemed a very delightful acquaintance indeed. She was one of those persons, like the pale lady, to whom Carolyn May was immediately drawn.

The little girl peeped out of the kitchen door at Captain Littlefield smoking his pipe, shrugged far down in the seat of the buckboard, with his wooden leg sticking almost straight up into the air. She whispered to the island girl:

"Oh, say! Do you know how Mr. Cap'n Littlefield lost his leg? Say! do you?"

"Why, no. I don't know that. When he came home here to the island to settle down he had that wooden leg and he'd had it, they say, some years. He's told enough yarns about it to fill a book; but I don't b'lieve anybody ever got the rights of it from him. Ozy Littlefield can be as close-mouthed as a clam if he wants to be."

"Oh, dear!" sighed the disappointed little girl. "And don't you know how the other Mr. Littlefield lost his leg?"

"Oly Littlefield? Land's sake! He says he was powder-monkey with Farragut, runnin' the Mississippi blockade in the Civil War, and lost it then. That would make him 'bout eighty years old, if he was a day," said Miss Ball. "But anybody can see he ain't more'n sixty or so. I guess Oly Littlefield is a dog-awful story-teller—that's what I guess. But everybody on the island seems to have forgot—if they ever knew—just when and how Oly come by that wooden laig.

"I can't remember when Oly didn't have it, 'cept the time he lay down an' fell asleep over on Dicken's Point, and some of the West Side school children stole the laig and Oly stayed there all night before he was found. He roared for help half the night, but the folks at Dickenses thought it was a seal roarin' on the rocks, and paid no 'tention to him till daybreak."

Carolyn May shook her head in much disappointment. The mystery of the wooden legs seemed just as puzzling—and quite as unlikely to be solved—as ever.