“i feel just exactly like the pilgrim fathers, don’t you, mr. wing?” jane said as she and frances climbed up the wharf ladder from the dinghy.
these two girls and mr. wing had grown to be the closest of friends and it had become a habit for them to take the little dinghy when the party went ashore, leaving the tender for the others. mr. wing had proved himself a delightful companion. in fact, as frances said: “he is every bit as crazy as we are.”
“you will love plymouth, and then i want to sail you over to provincetown, too. it is not nearly so charming as plymouth, but it is interesting at that. primarily, it is a fishing village but a lot of artists summer there and, sometimes, they have rather good exhibitions.”
twilight had just settled over the little town as the three started up the hill from the water front. there was a great peace about the streets and a gentle quietness over all the houses. the pilgrims walked along without speaking, taking in the simple beauty of the white houses, guarded by tremendous elms.
“and we have the nerve to talk about the southern homes as if they were the only homes worth mentioning,” said jane suddenly. “of course these are very different but i like them.”
mr. wing smiled. “you know,” he said, “that these houses are to me very much like the new england people, strong, simple and dignified and infinitely beautiful.”
“it would be a wonderful place to come and grow very old in and a wonderful place to have had as your childhood home, but somehow i can’t imagine it for schoolboys and girls, can you?” mused frances.
“well, jane,” said mr. wing, as they neared the center of town, “frances and i have a bunch of telegrams and letters to send and, if you don’t want to bore yourself by waiting around for us, why don’t you go up to the top of that hill where the graveyard is and look around—it is very lovely—and then meet us and our daughters and brothers and friends at the samoset house in an hour. i thought it would be kind of fun to have dinner there to-night. it is famous for its food.”
“that will be dandy, if frances will promise to send daddy a telegram for me saying that jack and i are still alive and kicking. i have been having too wonderful a time to write as much as i should and i know he will want to know what has become of me,” and jane started up the hill to the cemetery.
looking around, she was rather pleased to find that she was the only person in sight. she went over to a great tree and sank down into the deep soft grass, leaning her head back against the tremendous trunk. jane thought it was a great pity that most people had such a morbid distaste for the resting place of the dead. she had never seen anything more beautiful than this high hill covered with old tombstones and trees whose spreading branches arched above her. a faint wind rustled among the many leaves and the warm air was filled with a delicate fragrance.
suddenly the base of the hill shone with misty lights and an involuntary exclamation of wonder fell from her lips as she gazed at the beauty of the scene that stretched before her. even the realization that the sudden change had come with the turning on of the town’s electric street lights failed to mar the enchantment she felt.
“it would make a perfect illustration for dunsany’s tale ‘the edge of the world,’” announced a man’s voice close beside her.
jane turned her head with a peculiar feeling that nothing was unusual with this strange setting. it was breck.
“yes, and i would like to see a real artist do a huge canvas of it, wouldn’t you?” she said.
“if he could get that unreal light that just burst forth,” breck said.
there was the clang-clang of a passing trolley car and the spell was broken. jane’s thoughts came crashing back to reality. what in the world did breck know about dunsany and art? and if he did know about them, as it was evident that he did, what could be his object in being a paid sailor on a rich man’s yacht?
however, it was breck’s business and, if he did not wish to throw any light on the subject, she would not pry into his affairs but she felt that he was conscious of the slip he made. breck’s confusion was evident, so the girl casually asked what time it was and told him that she had to meet her friends for dinner and so was going. she smiled good-bye and walked off down the hill.
jane left breck rapt in admiration for a girl who was alive and interested in everything and thoroughly feminine, but had tact enough to keep from trying to divine some one else’s secret.
he thought that he couldn’t imagine his sister or any of her friends refraining in so quietly sympathetic a manner from rushing in where angels feared to tread. all of these girls had a breezy out-doorsy way with them that he liked and he wished that that same sister of his might have joined a camp fire organization before she made her very successful debut. all of which thoughts were strange thoughts for an ordinary deck-hand to be entertaining in a mystic cemetery when he ought—if he was to stay in character—to be guzzling a plate of beans at a “quick and dirty.”
the others were waiting for jane at the samoset when she got there, rather out of breath from her fast walk.
“jane looks so mysterious, i am sure she must have had a million adventures,” teased frances.
“you might tell us about them if you did,” ellen said. “we made a very ordinary trip from the boat to shore, landing as usual.”
“well, you know i went to the cemetery and it is almost traditional that strange things happen in graveyards,” was all that could be forced from jane.
“if she won’t divulge the horrid secret, let’s feed. my appetite is straining on the leash,” suggested charlie.
mabel giggled. “charlie, i didn’t even know you had a leash for it.”
the little party entered the beautifully simple dining room that was typical of the samoset and began one of the most delicious dinners in the history of the cruise.
on the way back to the “boojum,” jack said to ellen, “in all my life i never tasted anything as good as that duckling.”
and much to his delight she answered, “yes it was good and it is cooked by just the recipe my grandmother taught me. i believe you will like my duckling just as much as you liked the samoset’s.”
“i’ll adore yours, ellen.”
again on deck, mr. wing looked at the sky with the searching glance of a seaman. “we just did make it in time. in about five minutes we are going to have an awful big rain. looks like she was coming up to blow, too. hope we won’t drag. this is a poor harbor.”
before the girls had got into their bunks, the rain mr. wing had foreseen was beating in through the open portholes and down the hatch.
jack and charlie went rushing about closing portholes and shutting the hatch. “it is going to be one stuffy night; i never can sleep without plenty of air,” observed charlie.
“stop putting on airs, charlie; you could sleep if there wasn’t any air in the whole universe, and you know it,” jack corrected him.
jane and frances, overcome by giggles as usual, were trying to twist the ventilators in their room so the rain didn’t trickle in on them.
mabel opened her stateroom door and peered through the crack. “children and daddy, i hate to be horrid, but you have simply got to stop smoking and go to bed and, if you go to sleep right away, you won’t miss not smoking. you see, without any air in the place, the smoke can’t get out and it all seems to come through my door some way. anyhow, ellen and i are simply gasping for breath.”
moved by the pitiful picture of ellen and mabel clutching their soft throats and writhing on the floor in the agonies of suffocation, charlie and jack immediately put out their cigarettes.
“greater love than this has no man, that he put out his cigarette to please a girl,” paraphrased mr. wing. “i am going up on deck to see if they are holding all right. i hear breck up there and i can finish my cigar in all the wind and rain. do you hear that, mabel? we are going to have a lively night.”
frances was almost asleep when jane asked her, “do you know whether breck has a slicker or not? it must be horrid on deck in all this wet.”
“why jane, how funny! how should i know about what clothes breck has? this is the first bad weather we have had.”
in the other cabin ellen was saying to mabel, “ugh! listen to the wind, and the groaning of the rigging, and the plash, plash of the water slopping against the poor old ‘boojum’s’ sides.”
soon they were all asleep, the wind and rain unheeded. the steward snored with a series of really interesting variations, with such carrying powers that it was fortunate that all the seafarers were good sleepers. the waves had become choppy and hit the “boojum’s” sides with angry little smacks. in spite of the lashings on the pilot wheel, the rudder thudded to and fro.
suddenly mabel waked to find herself gouging into the bunk with her fingernails in much the attitude of some one climbing a steep clay bank, and her legs entirely out of the bunk. ellen had slipped down on top of her and would surely have been on the floor had not mabel’s bulk stopped her.
“daddy,” mabel called in the purely conversational tone in which one might say, “will you have cream or lemon?” “is this boat right?”
“why, of course it is. it is the rightest little boat in the eastern yacht club.” even when half asleep mr. wing was the proud possessor of “the best little schooner that ever set sail.”
“wake up quick and see!” commanded mabel. “something is the matter with the boat or my bed is broken and you have to do something in either case.”
by this time, everybody aft was more or less awake.
“did you ever hear such fascinating sounds as the steward is making? i would adore to arrange the orchestration for them and call it ‘nocturnal arabesques’ or something,” jane said to frances. “but isn’t it funny, i am sleeping on the side of the ship instead of in my bunk and the rail around my little bunk is like a ceiling over my head and my bunk is like a wall! what do you suppose is the matter?”
“i’m just the same way,” giggled frances. “and i know we ought to feel excited and be running around with streaming fists and clenched hair and we just lie here upside down and giggle and talk nonsense. we have probably hit a rock or something and we will all be drowned like rats.”
mr. wing crawled in their cabin with much the same method a fly walks along the ceiling. he came in just in time to hear the end of frances’ speech. “you don’t seem to be making much effort to save yourself,” he laughed. “but i’ll save you the anxiety you don’t seem to feel and tell you that nothing serious is the matter. we just anchored in too shallow water. while the tide was in, it was all right, but the tide is out now and we are turning turtle and are lying in the mud on our beam ends. there is no danger; it just means that we will be a bit upset till the tide comes in. then we will beat it over to provincetown.”
“you girls put on kimonos and come into the saloon. i stuck my head down the galley hatch and found breck prying the steward out from behind the stove where he slipped when we did our flip. i told him to make some coffee and it will be here in a minute,” jack announced thrusting a wet and tousled head into the cabin.
“when i was a kid, i used to wonder how the heathen chinee could walk upside down on the other side of the world, but i see now that it was quite simple compared to this,” charlie said as he landed the girls on the least perilous of the transoms.
“you certainly bruised us enough doing it. the last time mabel slipped, you steadied yourself by grabbing my left ear,” said frances ruefully.
“and my poor head,” laughed ellen. “charlie reminded me of the bellman, don’t you remember?—
“‘just the place for a snark!’ the bellman cried,
as he landed his crew with care;
supporting each man on the top of the tide
by a finger entwined in his hair.”
“you kids are certainly peaches,” and mr. wing literally beamed. “here you are quoting ‘the hunting of the snark’ and laughing and chatting just as if you weren’t cold and upside down and everything.”
just then breck came in with a steaming coffee pot, in some mysterious way maintaining his equilibrium.
“fortunately the steward didn’t hear your remark about the orchestration of his snores, or i don’t believe you would have got your coffee so soon,” breck said in an undertone to jane as he handed her her cup.
jane thought, as she sipped her coffee, that perhaps gray eyes were better suited for twinkling than any other eyes.
