Читать книгу Kit of Danger Cove - H.R. Langdale - Страница 6

A FREE AFTERNOON

IT WAS not until Kit had been for several days an employee at the Glass Works that he picked up any further information about the young man who insisted his name was just plain Andrew, and then the source was not the Shop, but his great-aunt. He had not, for one thing, wanted to put direct questions to those he did not know, and John Sprague, the one person he might have queried, had, after establishing Kit at his post beside the Arch, disappeared into that part of the building where the finished glass articles were packed in salt hay for shipment, and Kit had not had a glimpse of him since.

For another thing, he had resolved that as soon as he could he would visit Danger Cove to investigate that strange address, “Third sand dune on the right from the farther end.” He hoped it would prove some sort of joke, not liking the idea of anyone really living in what he had believed a deserted spot, where he could roam as he willed.

Finally, he had found so much going on around him to watch that for hours at a time he forgot all about Danger Cove. It was true that his job had proved as monotonous in itself as he had foreseen, and that, except for brief periods when the shearers demanded fresh wheelbarrow loads of dry wood and Kit had to replace what was taken away, he had nothing to do but stand with folded arms. Nevertheless, he was constantly entertained.

Sometimes his attention was held by the pouring of the “metals” into the molds, there to be pressed into intricate shapes and designs by plungers. Again his eyes were glued to a delicate and lacy pattern of leaf or flower unfolding under the expert wheel of the engraver. Always, however, his glance returned to the blowers, and it was in connection with them, during the afternoon of his third day on the job, that something happened.

Kit noted an undercurrent of mild excitement soon after the lunch hour. Bits of conversation came to him. “I’m betting on the Frenchman!” — “Red Dexter will get my money!” — “You’re crazy, man! I’ll still go whole hog on Old Jim!” Old Jim, Kit had learned, was the oldest blower in the factory, having come with Deming Jarves in 1825 from the New England Glass Company in Boston to the Sandwich Manufacturing Company — a few months later to be incorporated as the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company — just founded by Mr. Jarves on the Cape. The blower was an old man then, and had grown no younger since, but, in spite of failing eyesight and a hand which sometimes shook, he was still top man when it came to turning out a rare specimen of fine glass at the end of a blowpipe.

And now, as work slowed down, and shearers and servitors, blacksmiths and toolmakers, mixers and founders, gathered in a ring around the three blowers and their assistants, and the superintendent himself came out of his office to stand with one hand lifted and the other holding his watch, it was Old Jim’s name which Kit heard oftenest.

What was it all about? Sam, standing near Kit, caught his bewildered look and enlightened him. “’Tis another practice blowing contest. Getting ready for the celebration for the Great Man.”

Kit was about to ask who the Great Man was when he saw the superintendent’s lifted hand cut the air and drop.

Instantly each blower picked up his gather from the nearest pot, rolled it rapidly, briefly on the “marver” — a low table with a polished metal slab for top — and, sitting down in his own special chair, began to blow, inflating only slightly at first the molten glass at the end of his pipe, then expanding it, while his assistant waited close at hand with battledore, tongs, shears, pucella, punty, and other tools which were sure to be needed in quick succession by him or the blower.

Under Kit’s very eyes, and at incredible speed, each of the three blowers shaped a pitcher from the gather, steadied it while his assistant attached it to the punty, whetted it from the blowpipe, trimmed the top with shears at a proper angle and lipped it, fastened and bent and tooled the handle, supported it with tongs while being knocked from the punty, and held it up completed — except for annealing — at exactly the same second as his two rivals.

The superintendent laughed and threw up both hands, while the spectators shrugged their shoulders and put their money back in their pockets.

“I still maintain Old Jim could have won out, had he liked,” Kit heard someone insisting as, with a bit of grumbling, they returned to work.

That night Kit put a question to his aunt across the red-checkered tablecloth. “What great man is the Glass Works getting a celebration ready for?”

Aunt Thany looked surprised. “My goodness, Christopher! Have you been working there three whole days and don’t know that? ’Tis no other than Dan Webster. He comes here every fall to go duck hunting on the marshes. This time all sorts of contests are to be held in a special program in his honor, and he’s to be presented with a bowl ’tis taking six months to make the mold for. Mr. Webster is well-liked down here. Friendly and common-like, for all he earns three to four dollars a day pleading cases in Boston.”

A question framed itself in Kit’s mind. If Aunt Thany knew so much about a person in whom he wasn’t especially interested, perhaps she would know something about one in whom he was.

He laid down his knife and fork. “Aunt Thany,” he asked earnestly, “do you know anyone around here by the name of Andrew?”

Aunt Thany nodded so vigorously all her little white ringlets bobbed in unison. “Indeed I do, Christopher. Andrew Kern, Andrew Chipman, Andrew Moody, Andrew ——”

“He calls himself just plain ‘Andrew,’ ” said Kit doubtfully, afraid that among so many Andrews that fact would offer little help.

But Aunt Thany, who had started to count on her small thin fingers all the persons named Andrew she knew, dropped her hands to the table. “Oh, that one!” she exclaimed. “He’s a scatterbrain, Christopher. Paints pictures, and not even the sort a body’d hang on the wall. Just sights around home here. Works only when he wants money to buy his painting stuff with.”

“Where does he live, Aunt Thany?” asked Kit, wondering if he and Andrew didn’t have something in common.

It seemed Aunt Thany had the answer to that too. “He’s got a step-uncle right here in town — lives next to the Academy on School Street — but I hear he spends most of his time in a shack he built somewheres near the Great Marshes.”

“At Danger Cove?”

“I expect so, and no good ever came to anyone hanging around the Cove,” added his aunt severely.

Once more, reflected Kit, he was being warned against Danger Cove. First by Skipper Barney, and now by his aunt. Yet the more he heard of its unsavory reputation, the more resolved he was to uncover the cause.

His next remark, however, did not arouse his aunt’s suspicions, as far as Kit could see. “I wish,” he said, “I owned a sailboat.”

“Perhaps,” she replied, “someday you will. Most Cape folks do.”

On pay day Kit turned over and over the silver — to his surprise there had turned out to be three of them — dollars handed him by the paymaster, and wondered just how long it would be before he had enough of them to go boat hunting. Not that he knew either where to go or even how much a boat would cost!

He had urged his aunt to accept a part of his wages in return for his board, but she would have none of it. “You’re still a-visiting me, Christopher, and when the visiting is over, the chores you do and the errands you run are enough to pay for your keep.”

So Kit hoarded his money against the day when it would amount to a worthwhile sum, and meanwhile waited for the free afternoon which would be his with which to do as he liked. When it came at last he lost no time in setting out for Danger Cove.

The day was warm, and the sunshine shimmered above the vivid green of the marshes. Meandering creeks, slack in full tide, wound toward the Bay. Seagulls screeched overhead, and once Kit fancied he heard a pair of quawks, although their breeding season was over.

His road wound toward the Great Marshes and West Barnstable village, some seven or eight miles away. Long before he came to the village, however, Kit turned toward the head of the Cove, following a dim trail that disappeared once the scrub pines vanished and the dunes were reached. From that point on he made his way through valleys and over hills of clear white sand spotted with thin wisps of beach grass.

Not until he came to the highest of all the dunes did he eat the lunch Aunt Thany had packed for him that morning, not knowing, as Kit himself had not known until he reached the factory, that he was to be given his free afternoon that very day. Scrambling to the top of the dune, he sat down and went to work on bread and cheese and raspberry tarts.

As he ate he gazed about him. As far as he could see stretched dunes, scrub pines, and the blue waters of the Bay. The slender white steeple of the Meeting House looked very far away, as did the curling smoke from the Glass Works chimneys. There was no sign of life anywhere, save for a few screaming gulls and a sail that cut the horizon of the Bay.

Below him, the surface of the Cove lay with scarcely a ripple, the harbor itself looking smaller to Kit than when he had stood on the beach at its edge. What could those deep waters hold of menace to any who ventured on them? Did they really hold anything at all? Had Skipper Barney with his serious manner and tall tale of three damaged craft merely been playing on his eagerness to swallow a mystery made especially fascinating by its aroma of piracy, lawlessness, and the supernatural?

Wondering if he had been a victim, both of an old man’s idea of a joke and his own gullibility, Kit descended the dune and headed toward what he supposed could be considered the farther end of this dune barrier. It was slow, disagreeable plodding through the heavy sand and as going around or between the dunes was easier than going over them, the distance was twice or three times as long.

There was no definite break in the line of dunes until Kit had reached a much farther point on the eastern shore of the Cove than he had ever reached before. Gradually, however, although he could see more dunes beyond, those about him decreased in height until they came to at least a temporary stop at the beginning of the long curving sandy spit which formed one tip of the crescent that was the Cove.

It was not until then that Kit turned and looked over the way he had come. As he did so, he caught the first glimpse he had ever had of anything connected with a human being near the Cove. It was unmistakably a small, weathered, wooden shack, backed tipsily against a dune. Its foundations were buried in drifted sand, and something resembling a porch extended across the front. On that porch stood a fingure.

Kit was not near enough to see exactly what the figure was doing, but it seemed to be painting at an easel.

“Andrew!” said Kit to himself, uncertain whether to be glad or sorry he had found him.