Killykinick by Mary T. Waggaman (ebook reader 8 inch .txt) 📕

for dinner. I'm ready for some of Neb's clam-chowder, I know; and I guess you are, too."

"Jing! but this is a great place of yours, Freddy!" said Dan, as they turned back to the ship house. "We could not have found a better."

"That's all you know," scoffed the lordly Dud. "I mean to keep on the right side of the old duffer," he added _sotto voce_, "and get over to Beach Cliff in that tub of his whenever I can. Minnie Foster asked me to come; they've taken a fine house down on the shore, and have all sorts of fun--dances, picnics, boat races. I'll get sick of things here pretty soon; won't you, Jim?"

"I don't know about that," was the lazy answer. "About as good a place to loaf as you'll find."

"Loaf?" put in Dan. "There isn't going to be any loafing at Killykinick for me. I'm for boating and fishing and clamming and digging up those garden beds. I don't know what those others are paying," said Dan, who had fallen behind with Captain Jeb; "but I've got no money, and am ready to earn my board and keep."

"You are?" said the Captain, in surprise. "As I took it, the Padre bunched you all together for as fair a figure as I could ask."

"Not me," replied Dan. "These other chaps are plutes, and can pay their own way; so cut me out of your figures and let me work for myself."

"Well, that's sort of curious talk for a younker with a high-class schooling," said Captain Jeb, dubiously. "You mean you want to hire out?"

"Yes," said Dan, remembering Aunt Winnie and how doubtful his claim was upon St. Andrew's.

"Thar will be considerable stirring round, I'll allow," was the reflective answer. "I was thinking of getting Billy Benson to lend a hand, but if you'd like the job of sort of second mate--"

"I would," said Dan. "What is a second mate's work?"

"Obeying orders," answered Captain Jeb, briefly.

"That's dead easy," said Dan, with a grin.

"Oh, is it?" was the grim rejoinder. "Jest you wait, younker, till you've stood on a toppling deck in the teeth of a nor'easter, with some dunderhead of a captain roaring cuss words at you to cut away the mast that you know is all that's keeping you out of Davy Jones' Locker, and then you'll find what obeying orders means. But if you want the job here, it's yours. What will you take?"

"My board and keep," answered Dan.

"That ain't no sort of pay," said the other, gruffly.

"Wait till you see me eat," laughed Dan; "besides, I was never a second mate before. Maybe I won't make good at it."

"Mebbe you won't," said Captain Jeb, his mouth stretching into its crooked smile. "You're ruther young for it, I must admit. Still, I like your grit and pluck, younker. Most chaps like you are ready to suck at anything in reach. What's your name?"

"Dan--Dan Dolan," was the answer.

"Good!" said Captain Jeb. "It's a square, honest name. You're shipped, Dan Dolan. I guess thar ain't no need for signing papers. This little chap will bear witness. You're shipped as second mate in the 'Lady Jane' now and here."


XII.--THE SECOND MATE.--A CONFAB.


Then Neb's bell clanged out for dinner, that was served on the long table in the cabin, shipshape, but without any of the frills used on land. There was a deep earthen dish brimming with chowder, a wonderful concoction that only old salts like Neb can make. It had a bit of everything within Killykinick reach--clams and fish and pork and potatoes, onions and peppers and hard-tack,--all simmering together, piping hot, in a most appetizing way, even though it had to be "doused" out with a tin ladle into yellow bowls. There was plenty of good bread, thick and "filling"; a platter of bacon and greens, and a dish of rice curried after a fashion Neb had learned cruising in the China Sea. Last of all, and borne in triumphantly by the cook himself, was a big smoking "plum duff" with cream sauce. There is a base imitation of "duff" known to landsmen as batter pudding; but the real plum duff of shining golden yellow, stuffed full of plums like Jack Horner's pie, is all the sailor's own.

Dan plunged at once into his new duties of second mate. Both Jeb and Neb were well past seventy, and, while still hale and hearty, were not so nimble as they had been forty years ago; so a second mate, with light feet and deft hands, proved most helpful, now that the "Lady Jane" had taken in a double crew.

Dan cleared the table and washed the dishes with a celerity bewildering to the slow brain dulled by the marline spike. He swabbed up the galley under Neb's gruff direction; he fed the chickens and milked the cow. For a brief space in two summers of his early life, Dan had been borne off by an Angel Guardian Society to its Fresh Air Home, a plain, old-fashioned farmhouse some miles from his native city; and, being a keen-eyed youngster even then, he had left swings and seesaws to less interested observers, and trudged around the fields, the henhouse, the dairies, the barns, watching the digging and the planting, the feeding and the milking; so that the ways of cows and chickens were not altogether beyond his ken.

"Sure and yer board and keep was to be paid for with the rest, lad," said Brother Bart, kindly.

"I don't want it paid, Brother," replied Dan. "St. Andrew's does enough for me. I'd a heap rather work for myself out here."

"Whether that is decent spirit or sinful pride I'm not scholar enough to tell," said the good Brother in perplexity. "It takes a wise man sometimes to know the differ; but I'm thinking" (and there was a friendly gleam in the old man's eyes) "if I was a strapping lad like you, I would feel the same. So work your own way if you will, Danny lad, and God bless you at it!"

Even heartier was the well-wishing of Captain Jeb after his first day's experience with his second officer.

"You're all right, matie!" he said, slapping Dan-on the shoulder. "There will be no loafing on your watch, I kin see. You're the clipper build I like. Them others ain't made to stand rough weather; but as I take it, you're a sort of Mother Carey chicken that's been nested in the storm. And I don't think you'll care to be boxed up below with them fair-weather chaps. Suppose, being second mate, you swing a hammock up on the deck with Jeb and me?"

"Jing! I'd like that first rate," was the delighted answer.

And, as Brother Bart had no fear of danger on the "Lady Jane," Dan entered on all the privileges of his position. While Freddy and Dud and Jim took possession of the sheltered cabin, and the dignity of the Padre (so it seemed to Captain Jeb) demanded the state and privacy of the Captain's room, Dan swung his hammock up on deck, where it swayed delightfully in the wind, while the stout awnings close-reefed in fair weather gave full view of the sea and the stars.

He slept like a child cradled in its mother's arms, and was up betimes to plunge into a stretch of sheltered waves, still rosy with the sunrise, for a morning bath such as no porcelain tub could offer; and then to start off with old Neb, who, like other wise householders, began the day's work early. Neb might be deaf and dull, and, in boyish parlance, a trifle "dippy"; but he knew the ways of fish, from whales to minnows. He had a boat of his own, with its nets and seines and lines, that not even the sturdy old Captain in the days of his command dared touch.

That Dan was allowed to handle the oars this first morning proved that the second mate had already established himself firmly in Neb's favor. But, as Wharf Rat, Dan had gained some knowledge of boats and oars; and he was able to do his part under the old salt's gruff direction. They went far out beyond shoal and reef; beyond Numskull Nob (whose light was still blinking faintly in the glow of the sunrise), into deep waters, where the fishing fleet could be seen already at work in the blue distance hauling up big catches of cod, halibut, and other game.

"That ain't fishing!" growled old Neb. "It's durned mean killing."

"And isn't all fishing killing?" asked Dan, as they flung out their own lines.

"No," said Neb. "When you cast a line, or a harpoon even, you give critters a chance; but them durned pirates thar don't give a fish no chance at all."

"Did you ever cast a harpoon?" asked Dan, with interest.

For a moment the dull eyes kindled, the dull face brightened, as some deadened memory seemed to stir and waken into life; then the shadow fell heavy and hopeless again.

"Mebbe I did, sonny; I don't know. It's so far back I've most forgot."

But old Neb's wits worked in their own way still. It took less than an hour to catch dinners for the whole Killykinick crew; and the fishermen came home to find that Captain Jeb had been doing duty during their absence, and breakfast was ready on the long table in the cabin,--a breakfast such as none of the white-coated waiters in their late journey could beat.

Captain Jeb knew nothing of cereals, but he had a big bowl of mush and a pitcher of golden cream; he had bacon and eggs frizzled to a charm; he had corndodgers and coffee that filled the air with fragrance,--such coffee as old sailors look for about break of day after a middle watch. Altogether, the crew of the "Lady Jane" found things very pleasant, and the first week at Killykinick had all the interest of life in a newly discovered land. Even Brother Bart was argued by the two old salts out of his "nervousness," and laddie was allowed to boat and fish and swim in safe waters under Dan's care; while Jim and Dud looked out for themselves, as such big fellows should.

"Thar's nothing to hurt them off thar," said Captain Jeb, as Brother Bart watched his navigators with anxious eyes pushing out over a stretch of dancing waves. "'Twixt here and Numskull Nob you could 'most walk ashore. Jest keep them out of the Devil's Jaw, that's all."

"The Lord between us and harm!" ejaculated Brother Bart, in pious horror. "Where is that at all?"

"The stretch of rock yonder," replied Captain Jeb, nodding to the northeast.

"And isn't that an awful name to give to a Christian shore?" asked Brother Bart.

"No worse than them ar suck-holes of waves deserves," was the grim answer. "When the high tide sweeps in thar, it kerries everything with it, and them caves guzzle it all down, nobody knows whar."

"Ah, God save us!" said Brother Bart. "It's the quare place to choose aither for life or death. I wonder at the laddie's uncle, and ye too, for staying all these years. Wouldn't it be better now, at yer time of life, for ye to be saving yer soul in quiet and peace, away from the winds and the storms and the roaring seas that are beating around ye here?"

"No," was the gruff answer,--"no, Padre. I couldn't live away from the winds and the storms and