The Isle of Seven Moons

Front matter

left block|offset=3em|fine block|By Robert Gordon Anderson

The Isle of Seven Moons

For Children

Chapter 1

The Isle of Seven Moons

CHAPTER I

THE PORT

The island was there, yet it has gone. The seas have been scoured to every point of the compass by the scientifically or morbidly curious, by those lustful of blood or gold, yet no keel has sailed between its Twin Horns under the Seven Moons since that memorable year. One would swear that the very seas which the island jeweled were uncharted. Real enough, however, they were to the voyagers in that mad venture, for, after all, there is nothing quite so astounding and bewildering, nothing so romantic or so heavily veiled in illusion, as stark, naked Truth.

Reverse your camera, Time; flash back over the years; unreel your myriad little pictures on the silver screen; turn your long finger of light upon the protagonists—no, not that crazy New York crowd—not yet—but on those simpler folk who from childhood curled their fingers in the manes of the wild seahorses, who knew what it meant to sail out into the white shroud of the sea.

They are vanishing fast, these types, like the lone horsemen from the plains of the West, but they were more than types—vital enough, God knows. In 1910 the last of the riders of the watery plains were still faring forth from Salthaven, but far more had gone down under the white hoofs of their own steeds, or else were drawn up on the beach like battered hulks, useful at best for mere rowboat voyages between house and wharf or the post-office on Preble Square, their cargoes,—a weekly newspaper, a spool of thread. However, for a last port there could have been no more peaceful, no lovelier spot than Salthaven.

To the North, the superb lines of the Lighthouse upspring into the blue; under it, Challenge Rock shatters the league-long, rolling green walls into an eternal snowfall. The landscape to the West, undulating too, back from the rocky shore in sandy billows, is covered with fish-rod-jointed "mare's-tail," and, inland, clumps of cedar, feathery pine, and silver birch, and here and there a solitary hunchback of a house, white and gray against the silver and green. To the South stretches a narrow tongue of land, buff and very barren, and between the two capes, the crescent shoreline and the village,—roofs and chimneys, masts and ropes, a delightful jumble of dark lines, arcs, and angles against the gold and blue of a summer sky.

But the great half of the picture always to the East—tumbling, tossing, wallowing, shambling, raging, sleeping, thundering, whispering; blue or gray or green, all gold or black infinitely lipped with white—the vast, multitudinously-mooded chameleon of an ocean.

Just a mile and a half from the foot of Challenge Rock, the visitor, skirting the crescent of the smoother shore-line, encounters the first of the weather-steeped shacks, which increase in number as they improve in appearance until, by the deeper part of the harbour, Salthaven comprises a fair number of cottages, clambering up the gently-sloping hill to the more pretentious homes at the top, perhaps eighty feet above the roadstead.

In the narrow streets at the foot of the hill, a few ancient buildings, ship-chandleries, storehouses, and sail-lofts, clus ter around the wharves, huddling together like old cronies in the sun. But the thick forest of masts has been felled, leaving only the humbler second growth,—the naked topmasts and less intricate cordage of schooners, plying between the port and the Banks or engaged in the coastwise lumber trade.

Still, though a little out at elbow here, the town is not at all forlorn. Many of its respected citizens are retired skippers and shipowners, rich in health and salty vernacular, with pensions and incomes sufficient for all necessities and even those luxuries which the good folk of the place deem Christian. But the younger men—that is the more ambitious of them—one by one are drifting away, some to ships that clear from larger ports, others, detouring from the straight line of their inheritance, to Boston or Providence, becoming mere genuflecting shoe-clerks, or automobile-mechanics forever lying prone under graceless iron hulks instead of walking good decks manwise, with their hands on the tiller and their eyes on the stars.

At about four bells, or two o'clock of June sixth, a group of ancient fishermen, gnarled like apple-trees, had caught a glimpse of the old glory that sometimes lingered around the port when the last of the "square-riggers" came home. That morning, the North Star had stalked into the harbour like a white ghost of the old days. They were alternately watching her "standing to" out in the harbour, and a queer-hatted fellow who was sitting before a tripod, making odd passes with a brush and meticulous pats with his thumb—incomprehensible way of making a living.

"Chunks of atmosphere, gobs of it," he murmured, raising his eyes from the bedaubed lily-pad board to the stertorous little tug, pushing and shoving and boosting the tall bark between the wharves. "Good Lord! if I could only get that smell of brine and bilge-water, the swish o' that cutwater, rattle o' block and tackle, shuffle o' feet, creak o' winch, and the crunch of her sides against the straining piles—it all ought to go in—not a discord, just close-shaved harmony, like Rachmaninoff—but you can't put it down in colour.

"'A thing of beauty'," he hummed, then outlined something rapidly on the canvas, not the tall beauty of trim spars but another in the line of his vision—seated on an upturned cask. "H'm! good line there," and he sketched in the middy, navy blue, and the skirt—even in the breeze it billowed modestly. "Didn't believe they ever cut 'em that way—good lines under it, too,—ankles, like the wrists, a bit sharply-boned but all right—thoroughbred, in fact—and a sapling figure" (she had risen from the cask as the snorting tug backed water) "but strong, perfect co-ordination. Can't get that wave in the black thatch, though—sort of a sea marcel."

The hawser thumped on the wharf; the gangplank slid to within a yard of the unconscious model. She had gauged it perfectly. Down they came, captain and mate, one sixty, the other, say twenty- four, both well-muscled, the younger without the seasoning.

"The old, old story of the sea, trite, commonplace, and yet not so commonplace, after all," sentimentalized the queer-hatted one. "The women waiting for 'their men,' but oh Lord!"—and he busily plied his crumbly eraser again.

"I've turned that brow into a regular movie Madonna's—Madonna's suggested, but, Man, put in the common sense! The nose, don't snub it—threatens to turn up but—for Heaven's sake! what does it do?—just—doesn't. And those features to which I've given a detestable movie cuteness—now she's three-quarters, I can see it—escape the 'diminutive'—by a fraction—chin, too, the 'fragile.'

"Now, steady there, Little Lady, ple-a-ase—I must get those lines—those fine, faintly-twitching, little lines, around your black eyes, and so delicately traced from the base of your nose. They mean a lot, and they crinkle like tiny ripples in a pond as you shiver yourself with excitement—like a silver birch in the breeze."

He drew back, surveyed the girl near the gangpank, the result on the canvas, then swore in disgust.

"I can mix paints—but not that mixture—and, top to toe, it's knit into the line,—delicacy and strength, same as the birch, the racehorse, that bird out there."

Almost "out of drawing," too, seemed that possessive, "their men." Father, uncle, godfather, the old one perhaps, but the boy? The painter caught it all,—the full cordiality for the captain, then the half-turn, the flicker of a glance at his companion, the shy constraint, the convulsive handclasp, and the sudden release of it.

"Hello, Ben!" and "Hello, Sally," that was all that was left of the greetings, so carefully conned-over for many nights, on the quarter-deck under the stars, and in the little white house up the hill.

The older man was evidently observant of more signs than those of the weather, for, after a few inquiries, and two or three playful tweaks of her ear, quite "in character" with the captain-and-god father rôle, correctly allotted him by the sentimental stranger, he said something about "supper, later at the house," and "tell your father to stow away that temper of his, and close down the hatches," then he walked briskly up the gangplank.

With the waning sun, the queer-hatted one folded up his tripod and kit, and walked off the pier—landward of course,—and quite out of Sally Fell's life. She never saw him or his picture, which didn't matter much, either, for, though it has been shown a number of times at exhibitions, it was an ideal, lukewarm sort of thing, therefore not Sally at all.

They were gone before him, the boy and girl, past the dingy warehouses, up Water Street, and Jeliffe, and Farragut, to Preble Square, where the silent soldier stood at his post, his rifle over his arm, as it had lain ever since the famous Brigadier Bartlett had taken the flag from his visored cap, over fifty years ago.

They zigzagged slowly over the climbing pavements, at a pace that finally slackened to a snail's, although she was sure she could hear the impatient "tamp, tamp, tamp," of an old man's cane on a porch, two turns to the right and three to the left up the hill.

She was shy, he inarticulate. But she did not resent his muteness, as she turned and measured him fondly.

No, six months hadn't changed him—just the same old Ben, hands fumbling at hips for pockets that never were there. But those broad powerful hands were very deft at furling sails and repairing winches. And those blue eyes which lighted his rather heavy features, even saving for them a sort of distinction, though they fell before hers, could hold a mutinous crew. Oh, "Captain Harve" had told her, called him "a man!"

Suddenly they both laughed—over nothing at all—but quite as suddenly hers trailed away.

"Tamp, tamp, tamp!" That cane was forever pricking the bubble of her happiness.

"Tamp, tamp, tamp, tamp!" It formed the heavy motif of her life, full time and double forty.

She slackened the pace still more, at the same time conversationally "going about," to get away as far as possible from that motif.

"You haven't told me the latest, Ben."

"Latest what?"

"Oh the most wonderful thing you saw on the voyage. You always tell me, you know."

"Well," he thought for a moment. "Oh, yes,—a vanishing island."

"An island that vanishes!"

"Yes, now it's here—hills and trees and rainbow bays—and then all-of-a-sudden it drops out of sight."

"Over the edge of the world?"

"I suppose."

"But you don't believe that?"

"Not exactly."

"And you haven't seen it?"

"Not exactly."

"Now you're jollying me."

"No, honest, Sally, I've met a lot of men you wouldn't call fools who swore they'd seen it."

"It's too spooky to be true."

"Of course."

"But you told me men you believed swore they'd seen it!"

"So they did, but I wouldn't worry about it. It's nice enough here."

"But it's more beautiful there, isn't it?"

"Where? In those vanishing islands? I haven't seen them."

"But the ones you have."

"Yes, it's beautiful enough, but it suits me here."

But Sally, though complimented, was straining at her anchor.

"Tell me about it."

"Well it's warm, and the people are dirty, and there isn't much plumbing2"

"That isn't the way you told it before."

Well, how did I begin?"

"It's prettier than any play or Heaven2"

"Yes2"

"And there are royal palms2"

"Yes2"

"And wonderful shells and—oh, Ben, don't be mean, please."

"And sands as pink as coral," he started flood-tide to appease her, "and tangled forests full of birds that squawk horribly yet have the most scrumptious feathers—classier colours than any of the summer boarders sport. And the ocean is deep but clear as a spring, and in it are fish so queer they look like little jokes of God."

"That's it, Ben, the way you used to tell it! But does it seem real? Isn't it all like a dream?"

He thought a moment, his eyes many leagues south. But they had taken her with him, the black, star-pointers for the blue, the small hand resting in the big as on a trusty tiller.

"It does seem too pretty to be real, but it's real enough—the storms are anyway, and the fevers. When you go there, you're in another world as beautiful as Heaven. You come back home, and it seems far away—then you'd swear it was all a dream. You see it's pretty here but—like life." They had turned and were gazing down the hill over the sloping roofs which descended, each like the step in a staircase, to the sea.

"Look at the Light, now, and the harbour. You can put your finger on everything—pick it all out like a geometry problem. Down there it's just as clear, but it's kind of—," he groped for the word, "vague—so rich with the perfumes, and flowers, and air like opium—and a feeling like there was years and years all a-callin' to you that it's no use a-worryin'—or a-hurryin'."

"They say men forget very easily, there."

"Without much trouble," he answered.

"Did you?"

"Me? No! It's the drifters, the derelicts, not fellows with anchors."

All the allure suddenly came back for Sally, and she exclaimed, "How I'd like to go!"

"Tamp, tamp," again2

"But I never can," she despairingly finished.

"Stranger things have happened."

"Than that? No, Ben."

"You see—someday I ll take you."

She went a little vivid at this, but the inarticulate boy had come back.

It was time, for they were at the Fell gate, and Captain Bluster was hard by.

Chapter 2

CHAPTER II

"FAIRWINDS" AND "BLUSTER"

As trim and as trig as a homeward-bound ship—for then, as all sailors will tell you, above the water-line at least, they are cleanest—was the Fell place. Clapboards, cobbles, and conch-shells around the walks and flower-beds, were glistening white; so also the fence and the trunks of the trees. For colour-relief there were green shutters; the moss-grey of a pleasantly-sloping roof; the maroon of hollyhocks and marigold yellow against the walls; and, over towards the orchard, an old skiff, green-painted, with a cargo of old-fashioned flowers, foaming in myriad hues over oarlocks and gunwales.

Captain Fell, or "Ole Cap'n Bluster," to use the villagers' soubriquet, was seated—or rather "set"—on the porch. Sighting his daughter's convoy, he tossed "The Salthaven Log, Founded in 1809," in the corner, and puffed down the path like an ineffectual gale upon a ship cleared for rough weather.

"Good-day, sir"—it was a dismissal, not a greeting. The white hair bristled under the slightly-askew visored cap; the Adam's apple swelled like a turkey-cock's; his choleric face purpled; the grey whiskers stood out in the blast of his wrath like two sails wing-and-wing; and the cane and square-toed shoes scrunched the gravel ominously.

As he bore down upon them, nautical similes fairly oozed from his paunchy blue figure, like pitch and oakum from the blistering seams of a ship in the tropics.

"I told you to keep clear o' my place, and here you are no sooner'n you reach port, alongside o' my gate," he boomed at Ben, "you sheer off …" The bombardment died in a spluttered chortle.

"But, Captain Fell. I2"

"Stow your gab, sir!"

The girl's hand was pleadingly laid on her father's. He wasn't an awesome or impressive personage to her, just an unreasonable old man, a spoiled old man. She was angry, but of late a new note—apoplectic, threatening—had crept into that full roaring boom of his—and sometimes, what was more touching, a quaver.

"Father, Ben's my oldest friend and2"

"Belay that, daughter, I'm skipper o' this ship, and on my own quarter-deck." And he drew her within the gate, closing it with a bang over-pettish for so dignified an officer, but a hint sufficiently explicit for Ben. He laughed disgustedly and turned towards the street as Sally marched, her shoulders up in what would have seemed mock obedience to any but the Captain's eyes. The old man planted his feet sturdily enough now, and the quaver wasn't at all apparent. The doctor had said that one of these fits might carry him off. Sally was beginning to doubt that doctor—there had been so many.

Over her shoulders the boy caught a glimpse of the black eyes. They signalled something. From old custom he could read that signal, and answered in code.

Half way up the cathedral aisle into which the nobly groined elms transformed the street, he met Captain Brent, on his way to supper—at Sally's.

"Why so down in the mouth, Mr. Boltwood?" This formality of the handle, off-ship, was suspicious.

"He's turned me down again," the boy muttered—in love and therefore out of sorts and "out of character."

"Point just a little closer to the wind, boy, Hiram's mostly blow." And his chief whistled a meditative stave or two, then as if he had found a solution in the melody, explained:

"It isn't that fool grudges against your dad—so much—he's afraid of losing her— And that," he added a bit wistfully, if a man, two-handed and upstanding still at sixty, ever suggests such a thing, "I can understand !"

But Ben, blinded by the selfishness of all young love, couldn't understand.

"He's always throwing it up to me," he grumbled on, "it's getting past a joke."

The Captain looked at him; whistled sharply.

"By the great Lord Harry, I thought you had sand!"

The first mate looked sheepish, and scanned the horizon…rattling good officer but boy after all. The older man smiled in amusement, then drove the barb in a bit deeper:

"And it takes that to win women as well as ships—including fathers-in-law," he added as necessary after-thought.

The boy straightened.

"Didn't know nerve went with them," referring to the first, presumably.

"You didn't! Well, think it over." And the captain, too, closed the barring gate.

But the whimsical wrinkles at the corners of his eyes belied the curtness of his retort. However, at the fifth conch-shell they had quite disappeared, as he ruminated half aloud.

"What was it that wench Portia said—about teaching? If I'd followed mine I wouldn't have lost her mother, and he wouldn't have won her." The whistling stopped altogether. "He didn't know it but he wore her out—killed her. It mustn't happen twice." Then he added a strange yet not illogical non-sequitur, "Poor Hiram! But that was long ago—and—by Jupiter! she lives again in the girl!"

"Cap'n Bluster" was goutily recouched on the porch, his broad back to the gate as a further expression of his resentment. At that slight distance, the two old sea-dogs resembled the twin stone lions that flank the gateways to great estates, or old andirons before a fire. A little nearer—and they seemed like pieces purchased by a short-sighted person in different shops, and which, when brought home, are found not quite to match. Neither did they in figure or temperament, but they were one in their quaint old oaths and their old blue uniforms, and in their love for the Sea and Salthaven and Sally. Over the handling of the first and third there was constant dissension; in fact, the friendship had been cemented by a feud of some fifty years standing, a constant guerilla warfare of repartee, with reasonableness on one side, violent illogic on the other.

"Cap'n Fairwinds," for he, too, had been aptly nicknamed by the salty gossips of the place, was square-set but not too square—very fit, in fact, with a beard still brown; above it, a complexion all red and leather. The full lips could tauten on the bridge in a nor'-easter, but off-watch they frequently puckered in a whistle, which for Sally always echoed the wind singing through the rigging, quite as the eyes reflected the colour of the waters they had gazed on so long. That they were well aware of all that was going on, even when she was not their target, she could testify. Around their corners were those little marks, like the tracks of game-birds at a spring, sure trails of shrewdness and humour—like Sally's, too, but hers were mere wraiths of wrinkles, his, leathery creases, deeply indented.

She was on the top steps now and, hard at her heels, the gnarled parent trunk of which she seemed so strange a shoot.

"Well, you old barnacled tramp!" merely the Bluster way of saying that he was very glad to see an old friend, but Sally's greeting quite made up for it.

After reminiscing for a half-hour or so, by way of strategy, on the ports and events of the voyage, all of which a retired and gouty sea-captain devoured greedily, Captain Fairwinds proffered some excellent tobacco, a custom they had, "of swapping," like Jerry Reb and Johnny Yank between hostilities.

Puff, puff, puff, he watched the other s signal-fires. All seemed quiet along the Potomac, so he broached the dangerous subject:

"What's this I hear about young Boltwood?"

"No good, I'll warrant," blared the other, dropping his jaw and pipe in suspicion.

"It's too fine weather to be unreasonable, Hiram." He looked around. Sally was at the other end of the porch, trying, this way and that, the new scarf which he had brought her as the tribute which all returning captains must render. It was from the Argentine and, as usual, bright red—in fact, as Sally afterwards remarked to plump Stella Appleby, "It's funny how men always choose crimson or scarlet—never lavender, or mauve, or any of the softer tints. I guess they're just barbarians after all." Anyway the combination,—scarlet, and black hair and eyes, was bewitching enough, and it quite satisfied the godfather. He bent forward confidentially. "He's a good boy, he'd take care of her, and—" he nodded towards the pirouetting scarlet and black again, "he'd keep her that way. We're not as young as we once were, you know."

"Don't interfere there, Harvey Brent. I tell you I don't like the Boltwood timber—it don't build good ships."

"What are you trying, anyway? A little play all your own—nursing a grudge against an old man, and turning his only son from your door, and all the time spillin' your fool sailor's lingo all over the stage. Just throw in a few 'Shiver-me-timbers,' and you could charge admission. I thought you were a real sailor, Hiram, not a play actor!"

The wing-and-wing whiskers were luffing agitatedly, and under the shaking wattles the Adam's apple worked convulsively, like a floater jerked up and down by a freshly-hooked fish. Captain Fairwinds continued, though a little more gently:

"If we hadn't weathered so many storms together, my old friend, I'd2"

"If you want to weather any more, you'll not give me any more opinions on this head, Captain Brent."

Now the latter's own formality with Benjamin had been merely jocular, this was ominous. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth snapped to bob-stay tautness. The argument had always ended that way, Hiram was hopeless!

All women attached to domineering men very early learn patience and tact, also its first principle,—that the sure Northwest Passage to the sunny Orient of a man's "cussed nature" lies directly through an old canal, called the Alimentary.

She said something about "supper," aiming a wink at Captain Harve—a maneuver quite significant of her difference in attitude towards the two old men. It was further noticeable when she placed an affectionate hand on a shoulder of each. With her father, as with Ben, she seemed almost maternal; when she leaned against her godfather she at once slipped back into the child.

Meanwhile he had obeyed that wink and was helping the delightful suspense by exclaiming:

"Hiram, I'll play you a rubber of Pitch for the second helping. And I'll bet you a package of Honest Long Cut' that it's2"

"Gingerbread!" roared Cap'n Bluster.

"Spongecake!" the other.

"With elderberry pie on the side!"

"Ris'n biscuit, you mean!"

It was evidently an old game and a very childish one for two old salts who had outridden nor'-easters and rounded the Horn, but Sally smiled on them quite maternally again as she fixed the backgammon board across her father's lap and adjusted the hassock under his tender foot.

They were shuffling the cards when Captain Harve called through the window—

"Ho, Sally, if it's 'Floating' Island,' use the big bowl, and I'll tell you about some I sighted, tonight."

At the naïve pun the girl smiled, then frowned meditatively.

"Ben with his vanishing islands, and Uncle Harve with his that float!" She sighed and went over to the table where stood the delectable dish.

Wonderingly, yet wondering why she wondered, she bent over the blue bowl. It rimmed a creamy, yellow sea, and in it floated seven tiny islands, all snowy-white and delicately peaked and whorled.

An enchanted region—uncharted seas—and her own horizon had been so limited. It wasn't that the sound little cells of her perfectly-functioning system clamoured to react to the titillating shocks of city-life. Her routine was varied enough. Never had she tucked a yellow pay-envelope into the treasure cave of her blouse, but many times over she had earned it. And technique it does need to run a home on the neatly-spliced ends of a captain's pension, and as much subtle strategy to take dictation from a testy old man as from any tired baron in Wall Street. Her life was too full of quiet drama ever to be sluggish. No existence can be, that is made up of farewells and waitings and welcomings-home again, quite as that odd fellow Queer-Hat had observed. Oh, she loved it all and there was Ben, and she wouldn't have changed it, but2

"Tamp, tamp, tamp!" It came through the window, and, "I've won. Ho! Cookee, can't you hustle that grub?"

She didn't obey the summons at once, but bent over the bowl again. And before her eyes it seemed for the moment to expand, until it became the blue, ever-widening, ever-retreating horizon of the ocean itself, rimming a golden sea. And before her eyes swam the peaks, all snow and rose, of fairy-like, ethereal islands, floating, vanishing, beckoning, on that golden, sun-smitten sea.

Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

THE RED BALDWIN

It was the fifth Sunday, or Sabbath (for it was always that in Salthaven) since Ben's return. The sun was coppery. Even the landward breeze had expired, and the lightest leaf seemed to weight the swooning air. Captain Fell sat, jelled on the porch and quivering with heat.

At last he opened his eyes. He hadn't been asleep, just slyly cogitating a plan, as Sally knew from the next question:

"Sally, will you swap a promise with me?"

"Oh, Father, do you mean it?"

"Yes, even if it's the worst fool contraption ever a female wanted, you can have it."

"Cross your heart?"

Now if frequently he talked to her as a child, it was because he thought she was one, while she kept her conversation in kind because she knew he was. So with a maternal tolerance, her eyes followed the puffy fingers as they registered the vow.

"Now, do you know what it is?"

"Of course, haven't you asked me often enough the past six months? A little benzine gig to throw dust in the eyes of honest people that walk, and spoil the wash on Mondays." And how his sea-salted soul hated them! Like him, thought Sally. Wherever was he to get the money for an automobile? It was lucky he had a woman(!) to handle what he had! But there was a method in his madness, also one in hers.

"No, it's permission for Ben to come and see me," she returned demurely, but triumphantly.

His mouth fell open.

"You little fox!" he sputtered in admiration, then he stormed "I—will—not!"

"But you promised!"

"I said the thing—you wanted permission to see a fool boy isn't a thing. It's got to be something you can feel, handle, touch. See my girl?"

It was his turn to be triumphant, and the cane stamped victoriously into the house.

However he must have relented in part, for the red-wattled face again appeared in the doorway.

"Changed your mind, Daughter? Shall I order that dod-gasted devil's gig?"

"No thank you."

She looked up at the tree. Her eyes blinked rapidly, though the big Baldwin gave plenty of shade.

Suddenly they were focussed on that gate, which somehow seemed to have a personality of its own. To strangers its click might always be in one key, but she could distinguish many changes in pitch, and varying intimations. It always served as a sort of wooden butler announcing new arrivals.

Phil Huntington slammed it boldly. He always did every- thing with that air of smiling audacity which from time immemorial has been reputed to charm the feminine heart. And he was good to look at,—brown, slender, and wiry, with a straight-enough, posturesque profile, challenging feminine admiration, likewise sometimes the equally ardent masculine desire to despoil it, and in his gait a perfect blending of two philosophies,—the classical "carpe diem" and the more synchronistic "pep."

However, opinions differed about him. To nervous Salthaven mothers "that Philip Huntington" was a cogent reason for adding to their prayers for "those that go down to the sea in ships," another for "those that go down to big cities in trains." Cap'n Bluster approved him—or his prospects; Cap'n Fairwinds disliked him cordially. And even silent Ben had been known to allude—rather witheringly—to "the dude."

As for Sally, she was sure she detected a little over-consciousness and pride in two things, one in the fact that his father owned the large ship-building plant at New Bedford, as well as the pretentious home on the hill, the other, in that fatal facility which his room-mate had once described as "getting away with murder." He had just achieved a master-stroke in this fine art,—nothing less than the interception of both the Dean's and Registrar's letters which were to announce his ignominious and ultimate flunking at Yale. His allowance therefore secure for the summer, he was as triumphant as her father, and needed a taking down, "comeuppance," the villagers would have called it.