for the birthday party they had mrs. biggles and her henry as guests, and a great cake made by ho ha from a recipe supplied by mrs. biggles. it carried seven candles—one for each of mermaid’s years and one, the same ones, to be sure, for each of her seven uncles. dad, as cap’n smiley desired her to call him, blew them all out with one vasty breath, whereat mrs. biggles cried out that this was mermaid’s privilege. but the little girl could not extinguish her seven candles all at once any more than she could kiss her seven uncles collectively, so she gave individual attention to each candle and each uncle. mrs. biggles must have a kiss, too, and returned it several times over; and became so excited that she kissed her henry in his and the public eye, but then, as she observed, his whiskers left her hardly any other[27] region and her surroundings left her hardly any other choice. there was much jesting and even a drinking of healths in some cider mrs. biggles’s henry had contributed, the chief toast being cap’n smiley’s “to my seven surfmen and one surfwoman” with a pinch of mermaid’s soft pink cheek.
spring swept into summer; the green meadows were set off by great blooms of pink marsh mallow; the sun, shining down vertically on the white sand of the beach, caused a brilliant glare that changed, at the horizons, to a blue haze of heat. white-sailed boats moved over the five-mile width of great south bay, taking to and fro men in white trousers and gaily-clad women and children who might wish to spend a day at the tavern to the westward of the station, a place of ragtime music, clicking billiard balls, “shore” dinners, and home-prepared lunches. the clean sand was daily littered with empty shoeboxes and crumpled paper napkins by these family groups who picnicked between dips in the surf. except for a few inevitable “fine swimmers” they clung, laughing and shrieking, to a line of rope tethered to a barrel just beyond the break of the waves.
with the children of these beach parties mermaid could play the day long and sometimes did; many of the visitors were summer residents of the south shore of long island, but not many of them had heard the little girl’s story; if they gave her any thought they[28] accepted her as a child of one of the coast guardsmen. strollers who came to the station to look at the apparatus of life saving—the breeches buoy, the life car which travelled to and from a distressed ship and the shore, the surf boat resting on its truck, and ready to be hauled laboriously through a mile or more of sand, the gun—these people would see mermaid, but never think to ask her history. why should they, indeed, even suppose she had one? and in telling of wrecks along the beach cap’n smiley generally omitted any mention of one; if he was asked about the time the mermaid came ashore he would answer quite willingly, but a specific question was necessary to elicit the most romantic and still mysterious part of that story.
the keeper had many other tales unusual enough to satisfy the craving of the casual caller for a picturesque yarn. out of his thirty years at the station he could supply episodes ranging from the ridiculous to the horrible, and many rehearsals, joined to some natural gift as a narrator, enabled him to tell his stories well. in pleasant summer weather, however, they lost much of their possible effectiveness; to appraise them at their true worth you had to hear them in winter, sitting and smoking or dreaming by the blazing stove in the station’s long living room, a lamp swinging overhead, the wind shaking the building while the sound of the not-distant surf came in to you as a thunderous and unbroken roar. on a[29] summer’s night with all the stars shining, the wind whispering and bringing coolness from the leagues of ocean, the surf merely murmuring and—yes, the mosquitoes biting moderately—on such a night you could form no just conception of the setting in which these tales belonged.
with fall, came the question of mermaid and school. after a severe mental struggle cap’n smiley decided that this could go over for a year. he could teach the child her letters; as a matter of fact, she already knew most of them from the weekly practice at wigwagging with the red and white flags. the keeper knew of no one on “the mainland” to whom he felt willing to entrust the child; he was inclined to consider his sister out of the question; in another year some satisfactory arrangement might present itself. besides, both he and the men, but he himself particularly, would be loath to part with mermaid. she was a big thing in their lives, and in cap’n smiley’s the biggest. mrs. biggles had said lately that she and her henry were getting along; they contemplated giving up life on the beach except for a short while in summer. they would take a house in blue port and live there ten months out of the twelve. should they do this mermaid would have a good home while she was getting her schooling; cap’n smiley and the crew would miss her sorely, but their minds would be easy, and every one of them on his twenty-four hours’ leave could[30] look in on her and see how she was.... when the time should be ripe to carry this general scheme into execution it was cap’n smiley’s intention legally to adopt mermaid, although, as he said to himself, mermaid smiley would not do as a name. it had altogether too strong a flavour of the portraits on certain pages of the sunday newspapers. he would adopt her as mary smiley ... though in all likelihood she would always be called mermaid. the name well befitted her, dancing about down there on the beach and slipping in and out of the water in the bathing suit mrs. biggles had made for her from some old dress of pale green with silver edgings. musing over the name cap’n smiley burst into such laughter that ha ha the gloomy, peeling potatoes in the kitchen, gave a start and cut his finger.
“i was just thinking of henry biggles’s father,” the keeper explained. “’member him? lived here on the beach. eighteen children. old jacob biggles hadn’t much education; in fact, he couldn’t read and write. named most of the children after vessels that came ashore on the beach. one was monarch biggles—you’ve heard of mon biggles?—and another was siamese prince biggles—that’s si biggles. then along came a lot of boys and a lot of wrecks named the queen, the merry maid, and other unsuitable things. poor jacob was in despair. some of the boys had to wait eight years to get a handle.”
[31]“he could have got names out of the bible,” ha ha pointed out.
“he could get ’em but he couldn’t pronounce ’em.”
