cap’n smiley, young joe sayre, and jim mapes went back with mrs. biggles. it was a clear night with many stars but the moon had not yet risen. the fresh, damp southeast wind was playing great chords upon the organ of the surf. eight minutes’ tramping over the dunes brought the four persons to the biggles house—a fisherman’s shack of two rooms, but tight and dry. the lamp’s glow came through window panes. after circling the house cap’n smiley moved to one of the[16] windows. he came back immediately and said to the others with a low chuckle:
“whoever he is, he’s hungry. mrs. biggles, he’s eating your provender!”
all fear left the bayman’s wife. with an exclamation she advanced before the others could restrain her. they followed her through the door in time to hear her exclaim:
“you good-for-nothing, what are you doing eating my henry’s cold samp porridge!”
the man choked on a mouthful. swiftly he rose and tried to slip by her. she gave him a heavy box on the head and the men at the door caught and held him.
“who are you? what are you doing here?” asked cap’n smiley, sharply, though amazed mirth at the transformation of mrs. biggles caused his eyes to twinkle. the sailor stood quietly enough. his english was poor. he was, he said, one of the crew of the wrecked ship. he had been washed ashore unconscious on the night of the disaster but had recovered his senses before dawn, creeping into the sandhills. there he had hidden in bushes and slept. he had slept all day and at night he had prowled about. breaking into one of the few summer cottages on the beach he had found a little food and on that he had subsisted. he hadn’t approached the coast guard station nor made himself known to any one because of a fight in san francisco in[17] which he had killed a man. a boarding-house keeper had sheltered him and put him on the mermaid, but the captain knew who he was and he had expected to be arrested when the ship made new york. the wreck had seemed to offer him a miraculous chance of escape, and he had somehow escaped with his life. was he to survive in the face of such odds only to lose his life ashore? but now, half-starved and plainly feverish, he could struggle no longer; he would confess and take his chances. his eye remained with a fixed fascination on the food that lay on the table. he wriggled feebly in cap’n smiley’s hard grasp to reach it; then sank down limply with delirious mutterings.
the keeper and joe sayre picked him up and carried him, as men on shipboard carry a lighter sail, to the station. mrs. biggles, entirely reassured, they left in her cabin. at the station a bed was made on the floor in the living room, not far from the stove. the keeper got out his medicine chest and prepared to spend a wakeful night.
the man was evidently in a very bad state. sedatives seemed to have no effect on him. he tossed about on the floor as if he felt a heaving deck under him. he talked almost continuously. his exchanges with the boarding-house keeper and with the skipper of the mermaid were on his lips; and interspersed with cringing entreaties were sentences that must have been uttered in a quarrel with the man he had killed. cap’n smiley listened patiently, but he could not make much of it.
[18]the man killed in the fight had not been a sailor but a landsman, that was evident, and he had had something to do with a woman—no, a girl. then came the words, “six years old,” and the keeper suddenly realized that all this might relate to the child sleeping in his bed. he bent down and waited for her name, but it never came. most likely the speaker did not know it. there was something about a “captain king,” but the name of the mermaid’s captain had been jackson.... this captain king had had something to do with the six-year-old girl.... she was not his child but another’s.... he had arranged to send her back ... keeping himself out of it.... child ... cap’n smiley’s thoughts travelled to the letter found with the body of the mermaid’s skipper. it must have been from this captain king. but to whom was he returning this child who was not his? and who were her parents? all this sick man knew he had learned from an agent of captain king who had brought the child to the master of the mermaid, and who had been drinking with the money someone, presumably king, had paid him.... the keeper, with a beating heart, gave heed to the sailor’s talking. much of it was irrelevant and not a little was unclean; once the man sang part of a chantey, and once he cursed a fellow working beside him aloft on a yard. it was a long and strained vigil that the coast guardsman kept, and when, toward morning, the poor wretch on the floor sank into[19] a coma and died, he had an intolerable sense of being cheated, first by a dead man who should have kept his papers in oilskin packets, and then by a dying man whose tongue should either have wagged a few hours longer or never have wagged at all.
