Читать книгу Mermaid - Grant M. Overton - Страница 5

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There was in the crew of the Lone Cove Coast Guard Station a man named Hosea Hand and called Ho Ha, partly because these were the first letters of his first and last names, partly because of the presence among the crew of another man called Ha Ha. Ha Ha’s name was Harvey Hawley and he was a silent, sorrowful, drooping figure. He resembled a gloomy question mark and not a joyful exclamation point. Ho Ha, however, was merry; Ho Ha was blithe and gay. Ha Ha, in the week of the six-year-old child’s existence at Lone Cove, had hardly done more than eye her with misgiving. But Ho Ha had picked her up a dozen times a day for little journeys down to the surf, back to the station, over to the bay, and up on the dunes. He had her now, pick-a-back, at the end of the little pier that stuck out into the bay shallows. The chugging of the keeper’s launch grew louder every minute.

“Wave to the Cap’n,” Ho Ha urged her. Mermaid answered his smile with a smile of her own. The afternoon sun struck her coppery hair and framed the smile in a halo.

Of a sudden the chug-chugging stopped, the launch came about neatly, and Ho Ha, hastily setting Mermaid down on the pier, caught the rope end Cap’n Smiley tossed him. Then he laid hold of the keeper’s bundles while John Smiley picked up the little girl and carried her to the station.

Spring had not conquered the chill of nightfall yet. The big stove in the long living room of the station gave forth a happy warmth, and the front lids were red. In the kitchen, through which arrivals passed into the living room, Warren Avery, Surfman No. 4, was working, apron-clad, at the task of dinner. It was his week to cook and he thanked God the agony would soon be over. Cake! He had never been able to make cake with confidence since the day when he had put in salt instead of saleratus. The cake had not risen but his fellows had.

“What you trying to do, Avery?” Ha Ha had demanded. “This might have been made by Lot’s wife.”

In the living room sat the other members of the crew, all except Tom Lupton who was forth on the east patrol. All smoked pipes except the youngest, Joe Sayre, Surfman No. 7. Joe was eighteen and Cap’n Smiley suffered great anxiety lest cigarettes impair the physique inherited from generations of bay-going ancestors.

All smoked; at the word that dinner was ready all would cease to smoke and begin to eat. At the conclusion of dinner they would light up again. All were hungry, all were hardy. Seven nights before, drenched to the skin, blinded by rain and hail and braced against a full gale, they had battled all night to save men from a ship smashing to pieces on the outer bar. Not one of them showed a sign of that prolonged and terrible struggle.

Cap’n Smiley drew up his chair at one end of the table, which thus became the head. Mermaid was seated beside him. For her there was mush and milk, the latter supplied by the only cow on the beach, which belonged to Mrs. Biggles. For the others huskier fare: corned beef and cabbage, hardtack and butter, bread pudding and coffee. Each waited on himself and on the others. There must be conversation; Cap’n Smiley valued certain amenities as evidence of man’s civilized state and table conversation was one of them. It devolved on him to start it. He said:

“Has the beach been gone over to-day for wreckage?”

It appeared it had. Jim Mapes and Joe Sayre, aided somewhat by Mrs. Biggles’s husband, had walked east and west almost to the stations on either side of Lone Cove. There was much driftwood from the lost ship. Some tinned provisions had come ashore but seemed hopelessly spoiled. And one body.

“Found it well up on the beach about two miles east,” Jim Mapes told the keeper. “That of the captain. Biggles took it over to Bellogue. I kept the papers he had on him. Put ’em on your desk, Cap’n.”

“Look ’em over later,” the keeper remarked. “Did Biggles take off that fo’c’s’le scum?”

“He did.”

“And a good riddance,” declared the keeper. “Evil-looking fellow, if I ever saw one. A squarehead, too. Some Dutch name or other—Dirk or Derrick or just plain Dirt. The owners said to let him go. But the curious thing is they couldn’t tell me what I wanted to know.”

He glanced at the small girl beside him. She had finished her supper and sat back in her chair, looking a little timidly and a little sleepily at the men. Cap’n Smiley interrupted his meal to carry her to his room whence, after an interval, he returned grinning happily.

“Eyes closed as soon as she was in bed,” he informed his crew. Then his forehead wrinkled again as he sat down.

“The owners,” he explained, “say that the captain was unmarried. The mate had a wife but no children. The second was a youngster and single. There was no passenger, not even one signed on as ‘medical officer’ or anything like that. The ship was direct from San Francisco, 130 days out. The child must have come aboard before she sailed, but there is no record to show who she is. Have any of you talked to her?”

“I have,” Ho Ha answered. “Easy-like, you know, Cap’n. She says she hasn’t any name. The captain looked after her and she lived in a spare cabin. The steward she remembers because he was kind to her and because he was lame. She had never seen any one aboard before she came on the ship. Doesn’t know how she got there. Woke up to find herself in the cabin and the ‘bed rocking.’ Before being on the boat she lived with ‘a tall lady’ whom she called Auntie. Just Auntie, nothing else. It was in the country, some place near Frisco, maybe. On shipboard the captain and the steward called her ‘little girl’ when they called her anything. None of the others spoke to her.”

Most of the men had finished eating. Cap’n Smiley got up and went to his desk. He picked up the papers that had been washed ashore with the body of the Mermaid’s skipper. There were certain of the ship’s papers, a little memorandum book with no entries, and a personal letter. The ink had run badly on the soaked documents and the letter was illegible except for a few words. These were far apart and decipherable after much pains.

“ ‘Only child … return her … precautions … do not want my whereabouts … so no message … forgiveness’ ” puzzled out the keeper. From hand to hand the letter went to confirm these conjectural readings. The keeper scratched his head. His forehead showed little vertical lines. His blue eyes were thoughtful, and the wrinkles that converged at their corners, the result of much sea gazing, showed up like little furrows of light and shadow under the rays of the big oil lamp hanging overhead. The sense of so much as he had read was clear enough, but the story was woefully incomplete. What were a few words in a couple of sentences of a long letter? Four large sheets had been covered by that shaky and rather small handwriting; and for the fourteen words he could make out there were at least four hundred lost.

Footfalls sounded on the boardwalk outside the door, not the steady tramp of Tom Lupton returning from the easterly stretch of the beach but lighter steps of someone running. The door opened quickly and Mrs. Biggles appeared among them, white and breathless.

“Cap’n,” she panted. “There’s a stranger on the beach. My Henry hasn’t got back yet—he maybe’ll be staying over to Bellogue till morning. I heard a noise at a window and there was a man’s face. He disappeared quick. I was so frightened I couldn’t run and I couldn’t stay; so finally I run over here. ’Twasn’t any face I ever saw before. It’s—it’s a sailor like the one Henry took off. And—oh, have mercy on us!—they’re all drowned!”