Harper's Round Table, September 24, 1895 Part 2

ITS MEANING.

(_Tommy loq._)

Upon the quiet river, Enamelled and serene, Great flakes of oil are floating In blue and pink and green.

"They look like maps all colored In my geography, Blue China, and green Ireland, And pink Algiers I see.

"And still I think the meaning Of all this oil I've found; It's this--a school of sardines Right here is swimming round."

R. K. M.

THE WATERMELON TIDE.

BY EARLE TRACY.

The great still tide that comes from the Gulf when no one is expecting it reached up through the marshes one summer night, and spread itself over the banks of the bayou, and found numberless things in places of safety, and when it was ready to go out again it took them along.

Among its discoveries was a schooner-load of watermelons, about which Captain Lazare and the boss of the big farm had disagreed so radically that the melons had been left in a pile on the landing to wait for other transport. The tide charged itself with them, and when morning broke they were on their way to New Orleans.

Bascom had been tossing in his sleep as the little _Mystery_ did when the tide went in one direction along Potosi Channel and the wind went in the other. With the first glimmer of light he was up and down at the beach.

"Me, but it's been high," he gasped, coming up from his first plunge and leaning back in the water as if it were a steamer-chair. "It would be beautiful to run out with in the _Mystery_--an' me goin' to pick figs all day in them dumb ole trees! I wish the canning factory would bust!"

Bascom was ready for the hardest kind of work at sea, but things on sh.o.r.e were unutterably lifeless to him, and how Captain Tony could have contracted to sell his figs instead of letting the birds take care of them was past Bascom's understanding.

While he was floating and thinking mournfully of the figs, one of the watermelons struck him softly on the cheek. He bounded clear out of the water with fright, and as he made for sh.o.r.e another melon came up under him and sent him pelting through the shoals. He was not followed, and when he felt gra.s.s under his feet, and realized that he had fled sh.o.r.eward for safety and that he had not been hurt at all, he felt very queer.

"If they was pop.u.s.s.es they'd be a-splas.h.i.+n'," he reasoned; "an' if they was sharks they'd have eaten me--least-ways they wouldn't have been so polite about lettin' me excuse myse'f. I wonder what they is?"

He moved gingerly into the deep water again, and at last swam out to investigate. He could see two or three dark round surfaces letting the tide sway them easily away from sh.o.r.e. At his approach they neither dived nor turned to attack him. "They mighty tame," said Bascom, laying his hand on one. "They--_they's watermelons_!"

"Where did you come from?" he asked, taking the nearest in his arms.

"What po' dumb idiot let you get away like this? Did you ax permission to come here visitin' me? I'm mighty glad to see you, anyways. You's jus' who I was a-thinkin' of."

He capered round them for a while, then gathered them all in a line within his arm. They were too many for him, but the wrestle to keep them from bobbing over or under and getting away was sheer delight. "Three melons!" he repeated; "cooled in this high tide! Three of 'em! What'll Captain Tony say?"

He was so interested in thinking of Captain Tony's surprise that the outside melon escaped from him, and he could not get it again without losing the other two.

"I'll come back for you," he promised; "you can't go far 'thouten your fins grow." He took the other two and put them under a clump of palmettoes, where they would make no new acquaintances while he was gone. "Don't know as anybody else is up," he said; "but they might be.

It was a terrible hot night."

As he waded out again over the sharp oyster-sh.e.l.ls the sky had grown blue instead of gray, and a brightness sprang across the water, touching hundreds and hundreds of glistening green watermelons undulating with the falling tide.

Bascom's heart stood still. He stopped right where he was, and his brown face grew tense with round-eyed wonder. The water lapped against his breast. He almost let it take him off his feet. "I knowed they was called watermelons," he said, slowly, "but I never caught 'em growing in the water by night before. How's we goin' to get 'em in.'"

He looked from the melons toward the sh.o.r.e, where Captain Tony's long seine hung on the poles beside the submerged pier. "Usses can haul 'em in," he said.

Although it was exceedingly early there was no time to lose. It would take two good hours to get the melons in, and the people on the bay would be only too glad to help in the rescuing as soon as they woke up.

"Folkses is always so interested in what I find," Bascom grumbled; but for once no one troubled him. He roused Captain Tony, and they hitched the net between two boats and, rowing apart, circled around the melons with it, gathering them in, until they were fairly rafting them before it toward the sh.o.r.e. The net bulged in a great crescent, and Bascom could hardly keep his boat abreast of the Captain's. The weight they were towing made it seem as if his oars were pulling through stiff clay.

No net on all the coast had ever had such a full haul before. Bascom and the Captain exulted in it, even while their faces grew scarlet.

"We can'd take in anoder one," the Captain declared; "de net can'd stan'

de strain." And closing together as much as the ma.s.s between them would permit, they pulled ash.o.r.e and rolled the melons out in a line upon the beach. The tide was going out so fast that each haul made a separate rank farther and farther out from the high drift-mark in the gra.s.s.

It was glorious hard work, and before it was finished the sun had turned the water violet, then red, then gold and blue, and yet no one had come to take a share in the salvage, and no one had come to claim the melons.

"I tell you," said Bascom, as he wheeled the last barrow-load up from the beach--"I tell you they's mascots, and they's come right in from the deep sea. Do you reckon they's too many of 'em for usses to eat?"

The Captain straightened himself, and measured the heap of cracked melons, which he had left out as he piled the good ones symmetrically under one of the live-oaks. "Yo' boy," he said, "if yo' jus' made way wid de busted ones I'd be paintin' a black ring roun' de mas' of de little _Mystery_ 'fo' sunset, an' w'ad would I do 'boud pickin' de figs faw de cannin' factory?"

"O-h-h," groaned Bascom, "I'd forgot about the figs. Can't they wait till we take these melons off in the _Mystery_ and sell 'em?"

"De melons can wait, ya-as, now we got dem all safe," said the Captain.

"De cracked ones will not keep noway, an' de good ones will las' bettah dan de figs. An' w'ad is mo' to de point, dere is de ownah of de melons to consult."

"But he isn't here," Bascom said, "an' we don't know where he is. They didn't bring his address with 'em when they come in on the tide."

"I reckon I know his address," the Captain answered, "an' maybe yo'

would, also, if yo' let yo'se'f t'ink 'boud id. De big tide washed dem off de landin' up de bayou. Lazare was a-tellin' me yestahday dat he an'

de boss ad de big fahm had a quahl boud de price o' melons, an' Lazare, who was to have take dem in de _Alphonsine_, he go off mad, an' de melons dey stay in a pile on de landin', an' I was t'inkin' boud goin'

up to see de boss me aftah de figs was pick'. I reckon now de bes' way is faw me to go ad once while yo' pick de figs."

"But we ought to start right now while the tide is goin' out," objected Bascom.

"Dere will be oder tides, an' dey is waitin' faw de figs ad de factory,"

said the Captain, "so I fink yo' bettah go to pickin', boy"; and without stopping for further persuasion from Bascom he got into his skiff and headed toward the mouth of Bayou Porto.

As Bascom carried the last of the melons to add to the heap it slipped from his hands accidentally, and split into rich red pieces on the sand.

"U-m," he said; "lucky it was a cracked one." He took it up to eat it in the shade of the live-oak. "Too bad," he added, "after you was so enterprisin' to start out by yourse'f that me an' Captain Tony couldn't agree to take you right along. Queer how folkses can't agree 'bout you.

If it wasn't for them dumb ole figs! S'pose when I'm done eatin' I _got_ to go up an' go to pickin'. Seems like such a sailor as Captain Tony hadn't ought to fuss with things on sh.o.r.e."

His arms were aching from the heavy pull, and they did not feel drawn toward the sticky figs, and mud daubers were sure to be in the trees ready to sting interfering people, and he had not finished with the melon when Peter Pierre, or Peter _Peer_, as the Creoles p.r.o.nounce it, came hopping leisurely along the beach, with one leg wrapped around the other like a stork's. He was a neighbor's boy, and had been sent to borrow Captain Tony's axe. There would be no morning coffee at his house until Captain Tony's axe had chopped wood enough to build a fire.

"H-o!" said Peter Peer.

"H-o!" replied Bascom.

"Whose is dose melons?" cried Peter Peer. "Wheah did dey come from?"

"Came down the bayou," said Bascom. "They's mine. Mine an' Captain Tony's."

"Gimme one?"

"Nop," said Bascom.