Читать книгу Kit of Danger Cove - H.R. Langdale - Страница 5

“THIRD SAND DUNE ON THE RIGHT”

“STRIKES ME,” said Aunt Thany, bustling about the sunny kitchen as she gave Kit the hearty breakfast she insisted he should eat before setting out for the Glass Works, “you must have been plagued with nightmares from the time you went to bed till you got up this morning. Such tossing and turning I never did hear!”

“Reckon I was,” admitted Kit, seeming to recall a jumble of queer dreams in which one moment he was diving from the Polly’s bowsprit into the dark waters of the Cove and the next was racing over the sand dunes in pursuit of a person who looked like Skipper Barney but insisted he was Captain Kidd.

“Well, forget ’em,” said Aunt Thany briskly. “Eat your hominy ’n herring, and hustle down to the Works. The superintendent — he hates latecomers.”

“But I’m not working there yet,” protested Kit. “I don’t even know if he’ll have a place for me!”

Aunt Thany, who was nearer eighty than seventy and wore her hair in long white ringlets which bobbed incessantly with her quick movements, sat down in the chair on the opposite side of the red-checkered tablecloth.

“I reckon he will, Christopher,” she said earnestly. “Folks tell me the Sandwich Glass Works has never been so busy and prosperous as ’tis right now, since Mr. Jarves brought in this new pressed glass. ’Tis being sent all over the world, even a shipment to Queen Victoria. You’d stand a better chance, of course, going in as a ’prentice, but ’tis likely your ma and pa will be sending for you soon. Anyhow, better be off, and show you do get up bright and early. Take this lunch I packed, and, if you’re hired, do just as you’re told.”

Kit drew a deep breath as he went through the gate. After being as free as a seagull since the return of his parents to Boston, he found it a bit disconcerting to be given so many directions all at once, even by such a kindly person as Aunt Thany. And this superintendent he was on his way to apply to for a job didn’t sound very agreeable. In spite of his acceptance last night of this opportunity for earning money with which to buy a boat, right now Kit was beginning to wonder if he really did want a job after all.

The early May morning was soft and sweet and fragrant with mingled odors of honeysuckle, wild roses, salt marshes, and pine woods, all blending into what Aunt Thany called the “good old Cape smell.” Overhead, pushed around by a cool northwest wind, white puffs of cloud billowed in the blue sky. A perfect day, thought Kit ruefully, to spend at Danger Cove!

He was following the advice given him last night by Aunt Thany when he told her what his father had written. “Best see about it right away, Christopher. Your Pa’ll be waiting to hear, and it’s my guess he’s more likely not to send for you, if he knows you’ve carried out his instructions.”

Nearing the factory, Kit saw that the tide was low, with only a trickle of water left in the Creek. Skipper Barney must have sailed around sunrise on his return trip to Boston, and suddenly Kit knew in his heart just how glad he was not to be aboard the sloop.

There was no one, not even Sam or Ben, to be seen outside the building, but from the tall chimneys rose columns of smoke which spoke of huge fires below, and the very instant Kit pushed open the door and stepped over the threshold, he knew that never before had he viewed a scene of such intense activity.

Everywhere men were exceedingly busy. Some walked round and round the huge furnace, throwing in thin strips of dried-out, coffee-colored wood. Others drew measures of chemicals from huge bins which released automatically the correct amounts to be added to mixtures already waiting in great kettles. Here and there sat engravers at their lathes, working on pieces of glass with tiny wheels at such an angle they were quite unable to see what they were doing, yet making exquisite designs by what seemed to Kit mere guesswork. Apart from the rest, seated in a special sort of chair, a man with a tube several feet in length blew through it, creating an oval bubble of molten glass which grew and grew in size until its creator gave an expert twist of his wrist, made a clip with a pair of shears, and turned the bubble into a long-necked bottle.

Kit, fascinated by all that was going on, had completely forgotten his errand, and not until he felt a tap on his arm and heard a voice say, “Looking for somebody, young man?” did he remember it.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “The superintendent.”

The speaker, an oldish man who wore a leather apron that came nearly to his feet and carried his spectacles high on his forehead, limped toward a partition which bore above an open doorway the words, “Superintendent’s Office.” He disappeared inside to return a moment later.

“Sit ye down,” he said, pointing to a long bench beside the partition. “He’ll see ye just as soon as he’s through with the young man he’s closeted with.”

Kit sat down, only to rise immediately as someone, undoubtedly the young man in question, burst out of the doorway almost, Kit couldn’t help thinking, as if he had been helped by some force in his rear. Furthermore, the young man seemed in passing to throw him a look that was distinctly inquiring, although Kit was sure he had never seen him before in his life.

However, he straightway forgot all about the entire incident when the old man in the leather apron gave him a nod and a gesture to go into the office.

Within, at a swivel chair in front of a big roll-top desk sat a stout gentleman with a round face and side whiskers, who was brushing his hands and breathing a bit hard.

“Hm,” he said. “Sit down.”

Kit sat down, but on the very edge of the chair. The roof of his mouth felt suddenly as dry as a herring right out of the barrel.

“John Sprague said you wanted to see me.”

“Yes, sir, I do. My father told me — I have a letter — I mean I’d like a job.”

“Like a job. What can you do?”

“Not anything special.” Suddenly he remembered the man with the long tube. “I think I could blow glass.”

The other nodded. “Blow glass. I see you are a young man who believes in starting at the top.”

Kit could feel even the tips of his ears redden. Evidently there was more to blowing glass than he suspected. “Oh, no — I didn’t know. I thought — well, it did look easy to do ——”

“Can you dry wood?”

Kit was considerably less sure of himself than he had been a moment ago. “I — I think so,” he said doubtfully.

“Very good. Tell John Sprague you’re on the payroll. You’re hired to fill the place of the young man I just threw out of here for unpunctuality, idleness, unreliability, incompetence, dawdling, defiance, and impudence. And now, who is your father?”

“Henry Freeman, sir.”

The superintendent stood up and held out his hand. “How do you do! Glad to make the acquaintance of Hank Freeman’s son.” Suddenly his gray eyes twinkled. “Stay with us long enough and you may get to blow glass at that.”

Kit, as he left the office, could not help wondering guiltily just what the superintendent would think if he knew that he planned to stay only long enough to earn sufficient money with which to buy a boat.

He found John Sprague waiting outside. “I am to be put on the payroll,” said Kit.

The old man grunted. “I heerd him,” he said testily. “But what we need is ’prentices. We get plenty of these come-and-go lads. However, seein’ as you’re Hank Freeman’s boy ——”

“Do you know my father?” asked Kit eagerly.

“’Course I know your father. ’Twas he got my brindle cow stuck on the belfry stairs o’ the Meeting House one Fourth o’ July. Had to come arter me to help get her down again.”

Kit made a mental note to ask his father about this incident of which he had never heard, and right now he would have liked to know further details. But the old man had changed the subject. “Suppose you’d like to be shown around a bit afore ye start in on your job.”

For the next hour Kit saw more strange sights than he had ever seen at any one time in all his life before. He heard expressions used and directions given of whose meaning he had no idea whatever. He heard familiar words spoken in unfamiliar accents. He heard odd words which he suspected were but the beginning of an entirely new vocabulary.

He learned that the hollow iron tube — it was all of four feet in length — used by the blower to make his glass bubble was the “blow pipe,” that the long rod held by an assistant or “servitor” to support the bubble while it was being shaped into a bottle or a flask or a goblet was the “punty” or “punter,” and that the master blower was a “gaffer” and head of the “shop”; that in addition to the massive furnace with the eight pots arranged around it there was a small furnace used when a bit of glass needed re-heating and known as the “glory-hole”; that the blob of molten glass picked up by the blower for his bubble was the “gather,” and that the molten glass itself was called “metal,” although it really wasn’t metal at all but a mixture of sand and “cullet” and chemicals, the latter taken from various bins and comprising, Kit fancied, the nitrates and saltpeter and pearlash filling the sacks on the sloop Polly.

It was when he stopped for a moment to watch Sam and Ben collecting bits of broken glass from the floors, especially around the chairs of the blowers, that he found out what “cullet” was.

“Can’t make new glass without old glass,” explained John Sprague. “The glass being picked up by these young-uns is first cleaned and than dumped into the cullet box, from which a mess or so is added to every fresh mix.”

But Kit’s ear tips had to redden again exactly as they had in the superintendent’s office. He had paused to look at a heap of sand. The sand looked to him precisely like any handful of ordinary beach sand. Just a collection of tiny shiny white particles which could burn like the sting of a hundred wasps when blown against one’s bare legs.

“It’s very lucky there’s so much sand around here,” he said. “I guess it takes plenty of sand to make all this glass!”

It was John Sprague’s quick, scornful snort which once more brought the scarlet to Kit’s ear tips. “Local sand? Local sand used here? Local sand’s no good. Got too much iron in it. D’ye see any black specks in this here silica, which is by way o’ being just a fancy-like word for plain, everyday sand? This sand was brung, partly by overland ox haul, partly by boat, from the beds o’ the Berkshire and Maurice Rivers in Western Massachusetts. Oh, sometimes we’ve used sand from Plymouth shore for low-grade ware, but local sand — why, we wouldn’t use that in a paper weight!”

“But I thought ——”

“You thought that was why the Works was built here? Lots o’ folks do. No, siree. ’Twas built here — ye’ve got Mr. Jarves’s own say so — on account o’ the abundance o’ virgin timber for fuel. Twenty-two thousand acre he bought. Mostly pine ’n oak. There’s a sample on it.”

Not far from the sand a great archway, with iron doors at its back, had been constructed, and it was toward this that John Sprague pointed a thin finger. “That,” he said, “should give a notion how much wood is being burned Besides, ’tis that will be your job. A-dryin’ of it.”

Kit saw that piles of long strips, similar to those he had watched being fed into the furnace, had been thrown on a brick floor and were being heated, without being burned, by flames that leaped across above them. Unlike the other strips which were coffee-colored, these were green and unseasoned, except for a few which had evidently been drying for a longer time. Near at hand were heaped more strips to replace any that were removed.

So this was to be his job. Replenishing one stick of wood after another. It would not be hard work, but it would be very monotonous. And it certainly ought to give a fellow plenty of time to think, and to make plans for what he would do with a boat once he had bought it with the money paid him for doing such monotonous work.

He felt John Sprague’s hand on his shoulder. “Go back to your great-aunt’s — you do be staying with Thany Lapham, I take it? — and get on proper clothes. I’ll expect ye back in less ’n hour. Got to take over your job myself till ye get here.”

Kit was half way to town on a steady dog trot when he heard a shrill whistle which seemed to be meant for his ears. He stopped short.

Sitting on a high stone wall covered with woodbine was the very same young man he had seen coming in such a great hurry out of a superintendent’s office. He was holding a jack-knife in one hand, a piece of wood in the other, and was looking calmly at Kit, who wondered what he could possibly want with him.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what your name is,” said the young man, “and am not especially interested. Mine happens to be Andrew. Just Andrew. I can see you’ve taken on my job?”

Kit saw no use in evading an answer to words which had been put as a question rather than a statement. “Yes,” he admitted, “I have.”

“Don’t think I mind,” said the other. “Very boring job. I’ve been fired from it enough times to know. I just want to make a little suggestion.”

He paused to examine more closely the article — it seemed to be a boat — which he had been whittling, while Kit, anxious to be on his way, waited impatiently.

“Next time you’re over Danger Cove way,” went on the young man, presently, “look me up. Third sand dune on the right from the farther end.” Leaping agilely over the stone wall, he loped across the meadows in the direction of Danger Cove.