Читать книгу Partners Three - Ralph Henry Barbour - Страница 3

Table of Contents

The Crystal Spring nosed her way out of Herrick’s Cove, caught the southeasterly breeze on her big sail and moved lazily along past the end of Greenhaven Neck. The Crystal Spring was not built for speed. She was snub-nosed and square-sterned and wide in the beam. The mast was stepped well forward and a short bowsprit made room for a jibsail that was seldom used. Abaft the mast was a small hatch nearly flush with the deck. Amidship was a second hatch, larger than the first. Coiled over it, like a gray snake, was a length of two-inch hose attached at one end to a rusty pump set into the deck. The Crystal Spring was not a beauty, no matter how you looked at her. She was painted black, as to hull, and gray as to deck and hatches. Her mast needed scraping and her patched mainsail was grayer than her deck. On the stern was the inscription “Crystal Spring, Greenhaven.” She sat low in the water and moved sluggishly. To be sure a three-mile breeze isn’t conducive to speed, but even in a gale the Crystal Spring wouldn’t have shown her heels to anything that sailed out of Greenhaven.

With his feet in the shallow cockpit sat the skipper and crew of the Crystal Spring, one arm draped over the long tiller. The skipper and crew was sixteen years of age, had a good-looking weather-tanned face, a sturdy body and was named John Herrick—and called Jack. He had a pair of nice brown eyes, a straight nose well freckled, a fairly wide mouth and a square and rather aggressive chin. Just at present his mouth was puckered up, for Jack was whistling—I almost said a tune. Let’s simply remark that he was whistling and let it go at that, for the fact is that Jack could no more whistle a tune than he could sing one; and if you ever heard him try to sing you’d understand. As he whistled, his gaze roamed from the sail to the shore and thence out to sea. Seaward there was little to look at—only a smudge of smoke like a narrow cloud trailing above the horizon. Shoreward was the end of the Neck and the squat white lighthouse agleam in the sunlight of a late June morning. Behind the lighthouse was the keeper’s little cottage with its weathered roof and green blinds, and its tiny garden of sweet peas and nasturtiums, making a spot of bright color against the yellow-green of beach-grass and the gray of boulders. The tiller moved a little, the sail flapped for an instant and then filled again and the sloop slowly turned to pass Popple Head and run along close to the granite breakwater, seeking the harbor entrance.

With the breeze behind him Jack found the canvas cap he wore uncomfortable and dropped it into the cockpit, revealing a somewhat touselled head of brown hair. I call Jack’s hair brown for want of a better word. As a matter of fact it was of some indescribable shade between brown and the color of oakum, and, at that, it had lighter streaks in it. I think that nature had intended him to have quite respectable and commonplace brown hair, but as his cap was usually just where it was now—that is, off his head—the sun and the winds and salt spray and the fogs had worked their wills. On the whole, the result, especially when the sun was on it, was rather pleasing. The rest of Jack’s attire was quite simple. A white canvas blouse, clean if not altogether guiltless of stains, covered the upper part of his body and a pair of old gray trousers did for the rest. He wore no shoes, although two brown canvas “sneakers,” in each of which a brown cotton stocking was tucked, reposed in the cockpit.

A man in khaki overalls and a red flannel shirt emerged from the door of the lighthouse and waved a hand. Jack waved back. The man was Captain Horace Tucker, the lighthouse keeper. Captain Horace was a distant relation of Jack’s on his mother’s side, and Jack called him uncle, although the relationship was not really as close as that term implied. The lighthouse fell astern and the long, gray wall of the breakwater stretched away beside him. Jack scrambled to his feet, placed one bare foot on the tiller and craned his head. As the tide was almost at flood he could just see over the top of the breakwater. For a minute he scanned the harbor. Then, with a shake of his head, he jumped back into the cockpit.

“Not much doing today, I guess,” he muttered.

Half-way along the breakwater a man was fishing for perch. Jack headed the sloop further away so as not to interfere with him. As the Crystal Spring drew abreast, however, the fisherman called across.

“Much obliged, but there wa’n’t no call to do it. I ain’t had nary nibble so far. I cal’ate Friday’s storm’s driv all the fish out to sea.”

“Try down by the beacon,” called Jack. “The water’s deeper there.”

He pointed ahead of him and the fisherman nodded and pulled up his pole and line. Down the shore, beyond the little rocky island called The Lump, a hand-liner was coming in with all sails set.

“That’s Desco Benton,” murmured Jack. “I guess I can sell to him if that plaguey chug-boat don’t get to him first.” He eyed his sail anxiously, eased the sheet a bit and watched for the end of the breakwater with its red beacon light set up on a tripod of timbers, for all the world like a little fat man with three legs. The sunlight shone dazzlingly on the ruby glass as Jack swung the sloop around the end of the granite barrier and across the bar. Before him lay the big round harbor, with Gull Island almost in the center, and innumerable boats lining the fish wharves or anchored in the channels. At the left the old town of Greenhaven ambled away up the hill, its white houses and crooked streets elbowing and jostling each other at every turn. Straight ahead, at the end of the mile-long basin, across what is known as the Neck Marsh, a second cluster of roofs showed where Cove Village lay along the edge of Lobster Cove.

It was a busy scene even at nine o’clock in the morning. Over at the Eastern Halibut Company’s wharves two schooners were unloading; Jack could see the sunlight glinting on the white bellies of the big fish as they were pitched from deck to wharf; on Gull Island, a short distance ahead, Abner Lacy’s Esmeralda, which had been in collision with a steamer trawler off White Face Bar a few days before, was being winched up the railway for repairs; the ring of the mallets on the blocks and the clicking of the windlass came loudly across the quiet water. Half-way between island and Neck the ferryboat was churning its way; Jack could see Captain Trufitt edging along the narrow deck taking fares. On the town side of the harbor a whale-back was unloading coal and the rattle and hum of the hoisting engine beat incessantly across. An Italian salt bark, her battered red hull deep in the water, had berthed in the broad channel and a lighter was sidling up to her. They would unload until she drew less water and then take her over to one of the wharves. At the Folsom Company’s docks a dozen schooners were fitting for their summer trips to the Banks. Small sailboats and rowboats dotted the blue expanse and just beyond the inner end of Gull Island a neat steam-yacht, resplendent in white paint and mahogany and brass, awaited her turn on the marine railway.

Over on the Neck side they were launching a sloop at Davis’s boat-yard where, hauled up on the shore and covered from the weather with canvas or boards, half a dozen sailing craft of various descriptions awaited their owners’ orders. There was a distinct odor of drying fish in the air—in almost any direction you could catch a glimpse of the “flakes” behind the fish houses—which, mingling with the odors of lumber and pitch and paint from the yards, of seaweed from the shallow beach and of the soft, salty breeze from the ocean, constituted a fragrance that was as much a part of Greenhaven as the granite hill on which it was built. Jack knew that odor well and loved it. He breathed it gratefully now as, guiding the Crystal Spring toward the broad channel, he saw Desco Benton’s Hetty and Grace rush past him near shore, shortening sail as she went. Jack cast an anxious gaze up the harbor.

“I guess that chug-boat will beat me again,” he muttered, “though I don’t see her anywhere yet. Likely she’s at the landing. Get on, you old sea-crab!”

The latter command was addressed to the Crystal Spring, which, now in the lee of the breakwater, was moving more leisurely than ever. Down the harbor the Hetty and Grace came about into the wind and Jack saw the anchor splash. It would take him ten minutes, maybe, to reach her, for he would have to tack in a moment and stand over toward the shore. And then what he feared and expected happened. Out of the press of boats around the town landing a cat-rigged boat driven by a gasoline motor chugged its way. It was painted buff, with a black strip, and to the bare mast was fixed a white placard with the word “Water” on it in black letters. Straight across to the Hetty and Grace it went and Jack sighed and shrugged his shoulders.

“Either I’ll have to rig up an engine or go out of business,” he muttered. “Well, I’ll try the steam-yacht.”

But when, five minutes later, the sloop wallowed up to within hailing distance of the handsome Sea Mist, a man in blue coat and brass buttons informed him shortly that her tanks were full.

“I’ve got the best water around these parts,” persisted Jack, as the Crystal Spring drifted by. “It’s spring water right out of the ground this morning.”

The man grinned. “That’s what they all say,” he jeered. “And it all tastes like bilge, too.”

“Mine don’t. Better try some. Let me fill up a tank for you, sir.”

“All full, I tell you.” The man turned away, Jack swung the helm over and the Crystal Spring began her day’s cruise in and out of the shipping. It was almost eleven before Jack made his first sale. A Portuguese fisherman bargained a good ten minutes. Then the Crystal Spring was made fast, the hose was lifted to the schooner’s deck and pulled down a forward hatchway and Jack, attaching the long handle to the pump, began his labor. It wasn’t easy work, but Jack’s muscles were used to it, and, as the fisherman had only one butt to fill, it was soon done. Then Jack took his pay, recoiled his hose, cast loose and went on again. What breeze there had been earlier in the day had almost died away and the sloop’s progress was slower than ever. Now and then Jack caught sight of the Morning Star, as the rival water boat was poetically named, chugging its way about the harbor. But even the Morning Star wasn’t doing much business today. At noon Jack made fast to the stern of a lumber schooner near the coal wharf and ate his lunch. It was pleasant enough there in the sun with so much to watch, and the lunch that Aunt Mercy had put up tasted awfully nice, just as it always did, but Jack wished that trade was brisker in his line of business. And just when he was thinking that there was a hail across the basin.

“Water boat, ahoy!” came a voice.