Sheila of Big Wreck Cove Part 16

"I promise," she said softly, "I promise you that I will never do anything that will hurt him. I promise you that I will never let him do anything that may harm him. He has given me my chance. I promise before you and G.o.d that he shall not be sorry, ever, that he has raised me out of the dust."

She stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to the gla.s.s which covered the photograph.

The wind held fair, a quartering offsh.o.r.e blow, and the schooner, having discharged her cargo, just past noon spread her upper sails, caught a gentle breeze of old Boreas, and shot out of the harbor and so to the southward with a following wind which brought her to the mouth of Big Wreck Cove long before nightfall.

Upon the bluff of Wreckers' Head was to be dimly seen the sprawling Ball homestead. Tunis pointed it out to the pa.s.senger.

"That is where you are going to be happy, Ida May," he said to her softly.

"I wonder," murmured the girl.

He looked down into her rapt face. The violet eyes were fixed upon the old house and the brown-and-green fields immediately surrounding it. Perhaps Cap'n Ira and Prudence were out there now, watching from the front yard the white-winged _Seamew_ threading so saucily the crooked pa.s.sage into the cove, the sand bars on one hand and the serried teeth of the Lighthouse Point Reef on the other.

Inside the cove the schooner's canvas was reduced smartly to merely a topsail and jib, the wind in which carried her close enough to Luiz Wharf for a line to be cast ash.o.r.e. Tier upon tier of barrels of clams were stored under the open sheds, ready to be packed away in the _Seamew's_ hold. Orion loudly acclaimed against a malign fate.

"Hi golly! Ain't we goin' to have no spare time at all? This running in a coasting packet is plain slavery; that's what it is! A man don't have a chance even to go home and change his socks 'tween trips."

"Have a clean pair in your duffel bag; then you won't have to go home for 'em, 'Rion," advised Tunis. "We've got to make hay while the sun s.h.i.+nes. There'll be loafing enough to cut into the profits by and by when bad weather breaks."

Orion grunted pessimistically. Little in this world ever just suited Orion.

"She's a hoodooed packet. I said it from the first," he muttered to Horry. "You know well enough what she was before they gave her a lick of paint and a new name. We'll all pay high yet for sailin' in her."

"I wouldn't let Cap'n Tunis hear me say that 'nless I was seekin' a new berth," rejoined the old mariner.

Tunis left the mate and Horry to carry on while he took the pa.s.senger ash.o.r.e, meaning to spend the night himself at home with Aunt Lucretia. He stopped to get Eunez Pareta's father to harness up his old horse and transfer Miss Bostwick's trunk and bag to the Ball homestead. Eunez was in evidence--as she always was when Tunis came by--a bird of paradise indeed. Her languis.h.i.+ng glances at Tunis flashed in their change to suspicious glares at the girl waiting in the roadway.

"You have a guest, Tunis Latham?" she asked with a composure which scarcely hid her jealousy and doubt.

"I'm taking her up to the b.a.l.l.s'. She's Mrs. Ball's niece, Eunez,"

Tunis said good-naturedly. He was always friendly with these Portygees. That was why he got along so well with them and they liked to work for him. Many of the Big Wreck Cove folk looked upon them even now as "furriners" who had to be shouted at if one would make them understood.

"What does she come for?" asked Eunez sharply.

"They need her up there. Mrs. Ball is feeble and so is the captain.

She is going to live with them right along."

"Ah-ha!" whispered Eunez, as he pa.s.sed her to step outside the house again. She seized his arm and swung him around to face her, for she was strong. "You think she is pretty, Tunis?" she demanded.

"Eh? What's eating on you, Eunez? I never stopped to think whether she was or not?"

But he flushed, and she saw it. Eunez smiled in a way which might have puzzled Tunis Latham had he stopped to consider it. But he joined the girl who was waiting for him, and they went on up the road and out of the town without his giving a backward glance or thought to the fiery Portygee girl.

When they mounted to the windswept headland the visitor looked about with glowing eyes, breathing deeply. The flush of excitement rose in her cheek. He knew that as far as the physical aspect of the place went, she was more rejoiced than ever she had expected to be.

"Beautiful--and free," she whispered.

"You've said it, now, Ida May," he agreed. "From up here it looks like the whole world was freer and a whole lot brighter. It is a great outlook."

"And is that the house?" the girl asked, for in approaching the Ball homestead from this angle it looked different from its appearance as viewed standing on the deck of the inbound _Seamew_.

"That is the Ball house, and Aunt Prue taking in her wash," Tunis replied. "I suppose she had John-Ed Williams' wife over to wash for her, but Myra will have gone home before this to get the supper.

Tus.h.!.+ Aunt Prue ought not to try to do that."

The fresh wind blowing over the headland filled every garment on the lines like ballooning sails. The frail, little old woman had to stand on tiptoe to get each article unpinned from the line. The wind wickedly sought to drag the linen from her grasp.

Cap'n Ira, hobbling around from the front of the house, hailed his wife in some rancor:

"I don't see why you have to do that. Don't we pay that woman for was.h.i.+ng them clothes? And ain't she supposed to take 'em down off'n the halyards? I swan! You'll be inter that basket headfirst, yet, like ye was inter the grain chist. Look out!"

"They wasn't all dry when Myra Williams went home, Ira. And I don't dare leave 'em out all night. Half of 'em would blow over the edge of the bluff. The wind is terrible strong."

It was much too strong for her frail arms, that was sure. The captain turned in anger to look for help about the open common. He saw the two figures briskly moving up the road toward the house.

"I swan! Who's this here?" he exclaimed. "Tunis Latham, and--and Ida May!"

His face broadened into a delighted smile. He had seen the _Seamew_ come in, and had prayerfully hoped her master had brought the girl that he believed would be their salvation. This person with the captain of the _Seamew_ could only be Ida May Bostwick!

At the moment Prudence was taking down her own starched, blue house dress from the line. It was hung like a pirate in chains by its sleeves, was blown out as round as a barrel, and was as stiff as a board. Just as the pins came out an extra heavy puff of wind shrieked around the corner of the house, as though it had been lying in wait for just this opportunity.

The dress was whipped out of Aunt Prue's hands. She herself, as Cap'n Ira had warned her, was cast, face downward, into the half-filled clothes basket. The blue dress was whirled high in the air, skirt downward. Before the old man was warned by Prudence's m.u.f.fled scream that something had gone wrong, the starched dress plumped down over his head and shoulders, and he was bound fast and blinded in its folds.

"Drat the thing! What did I tell ye?" bawled Cap'n Ira. "Take this here thing off'n me! Want to make me more of an old Betty than I be a'ready--a-dressin' me in women's clothes? I swan!"

CHAPTER XII

A NEW HAND AT THE HELM

Tunis ran to the old man's rescue, but it was the girl who lifted Prudence from out the laundry-basket.

"Drat the thing!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Cap'n Ira, fighting off the starched dress. "Feel like I was being smothered by a complete suit of sails.

That you, Tunis?"

"Yes, Cap'n Ira. You're all right now. Hold on! Don't let's mess up Aunt Prue's wrapper more than can be helped. 'Vast there!"

"I swan! Don't it beat all what a pickle we get into? We ain't no more fit to be alone, me an' Prue, than a pair o' babies. For the lan's sake, Tunis! Who is that?"

He was staring at the girl, who led forward the trembling old woman, her strong, young arms about the thin shoulders. Prudence was tearful but smiling.

"This is the girl you sent me for," said the captain of the _Seamew_.

The girl was smiling, too. To the delight of the young man there was no suspicion of fear or shyness in her expression. Her eyes were luminous. Her smile he thought would have ravished the heart of a misogynist.

"I swan!" murmured Cap'n Ira, almost prayerfully.