The Merry Anne 2

The Merry Anne 2

"All right. I wish you would. And say, Pete, you take Pink and see that

everything is down solid. I don't care to distribute those two-by-fours

all down the east coast."

 

Roche went out, and the others got up one by one and took shelter in the

lee of a lumber pile on the wharf. A little later, when he saw the tug

steaming up the river, Roche shook the rain from his eyes and looked

long at the black cloud billows that were rolling up from the northwest,

then he slipped below and took a strong pull at his flask. The tug came

alongside, and then Roche sought Dick.

 

"Cap'n, what's the use?" he said in an agitated voice. "Don't you

see we're runnin' our nose right into it? Why, if we was a

three-hundred-footer, we'd have our hands full out there. I don't like

to say nothin', but--"

 

Smiley, his hat jammed on the back of his head, his shirt, now dripping

wet, clinging to his trunk and outlining bunches of muscle on his

shoulders and back, his light hair stringing down over his forehead,

merely looked at him curiously.

 

"You see how it is, Cap'n, I--"

 

"What are you talking about? All right, Pink, make fast there! Who's

running this schooner, you or me?"

 

"Oh, I don't mean nothin', Cap'n; but seein' there ain't no particular

hurry--"

 

"No hurry! Why, man, I've got to lay alongside the Lakeville pier by

Wednesday night, or break something. What's the matter with you, anyhow?

Lost your nerve?"

 

"No, I ain't lost my nerve. And you ain't got no call to talk that way

to me, Dick Smiley."

 

"Here, here, Pete, none of that. We're going to pull out in just about

two minutes. If you aren't good for it, I 'll wait long enough to tumble

your slops ashore. Put your mind on it now--are you coming or not?"

 

"Oh, I'm cornin', Cap'n, of course, but--"

 

"Shut up, then."

 

The idlers on the wharf had not heard what was said, but they saw Roche

change color and duck below for another pull at his flask.

 

The tug swung out into the stream; the _Merry Anne_ fell slowly away

from the wharf.

 

"Call up those loafers, Pete," shouted Smiley, as he rested his hands

on the wheel. The two sailors, roused by a shake and an oath, scrambled

drowsily upon the deck with red eyes and unsettled nerves, and were

set to work raising the jib and double-reefing foresail and mainsail.

Captain Peters sounded three blasts for the first bridge, and headed

down-stream.

 

Passing on through the narrow draws of the bridges and between the

buildings that lined the river, the _Merry Anne_ drew near to the long

piers that formed the entrance to the channel. And Roche, standing with

flushed face by the foremast, looked out over the piers at the angry

lake, now a lead-gray color, here streaked with foam, there half

obscured by the driving squalls. His eyes followed the track of one

squall after another as they tore their way at right angles to the surf.

 

Already the _Anne_ had begun to stagger. At the end of the towing hawser

the tug was nosing into the half-spent rollers that got in between the

piers, and was tossing the spray up into the wind.

 

One of the life-saving crew, in shining oilskins, was walking the pier;

he paused and looked at them--even called out some words that the wind

took from his lips and mockingly swept away. Roche looked at him with

dull eyes; saw his lips moving behind his hollowed hands; looked out

again at the muddy streaks and the whirling mist, out beyond at the two

barges laboring on the horizon, gazed at the white and yellow surf. Then

his eye lighted a little, and he made his way back to the wheel.

 

"Don't be a fool, Dick," he shouted. "Just look a' that and tell me

you can make it. I know better. I'm an old friend, Dick, and I like you

better'n anybody, but you mustn't be a dam' fool. Ain't no use bein' a

dam' fool."

 

"Who are you talking to?"

 

"Lemme blow the horn, Dick.'Taint too late to stop 'em. We can get back

all right--start in the mornin'. Don't you see, Dick--"

 

Smiley's eyes were fixed keenly on him for a moment; then they swept

to the windward pier. He snatched the horn from Roche's hand and blew a

blast.

 

The sailors up forward heard it, and shouted and waved their arms. A tug

hand, seeing the commotion, though he heard nothing, finally was made

to understand, and Captain Peters slowed his engines. Smiley, meanwhile,

was steering up close to the windward pier.

 

"Tumble off there, Pete," he ordered. "Quick, now."

 

"What you going to do to me? Ain't goin' to put me off there, are you?"

 

"Get a move on, or I 'll throw you off. There's no room for you here."

 

"Hold on there, Dick; I ain't got no clothes or nothin'. And you owe me

my pay--"

 

"You 'll have to go to Cap'n Stenzenberger about that. Here, Pink, heave

him off. Quick, now!"

 

"Don't you lay your hand on me, Pink Harper--"

 

But the words were lost. The young sailor in the red shirt fairly

pitched him over the rail. The life saver, running alongside, gave him

a hand. Captain Peters was leaning out impatiently from his wheel-house

door, and now at the signal he dove back and hurriedly rang for full

steam ahead; it was no place to run chances. And as the schooner passed

out into the open lake, leaving the lighthouse behind her, and soon

afterward casting off the tug, there was no time to look back at the

raging figure on the pier. Though once, to be sure, Dick had turned with

a laugh and shouted out a few lines of a wild parody on the song of the

day, "Baby Mine."

 

The song proved so amusing that, when they were free of the tug and

were careening gayly off to the southwest with all fast on board and

a boiling sea around them, he took it up again. And braced at a sharp

angle with the deck, one eye on the sails, another cast to windward, his

brown hands knotted around the spokes of the wheel, he sang away at the

top of his lungs:--

 

"He is coming down the Rhine.

 

With a bellyful of wine,"

 

Young Harper worked his way aft along the upper rail. His eye fell on

the figure of his captain, and he laughed and nodded.

 

"Lively goin', Cap'n."

 

Lively it certainly was.

 

"Guess there ain't no doubt about _our_ makin' it!"

 

"Doubt your uncle!" roared the Captain. And he winked at his young

admirer.

 

"Guess Mr. Roche didn't like the looks of it."

 

"Guess not."

 

Harper crept forward again. And Smiley, with a laugh in his eye, squared

his chest to the storm, and thought of the necklace stowed away in the

cabin; and then he thought of her who was to be its owner day after

to-morrow, and "I wonder if we will make it," thought he; "I wonder!"

 

And make it they did. Sliding gayly up into a humming southwest wind,

with every rag up and the sheets hauled home, with the bluest of skies

above them and the bluest of water beneath (for the Lakes play at April

weather all around the calendar), Wednesday afternoon found them turning

Grosse Pointe.

 

The bright new paint was prematurely old now, the small boat was missing

from the stern davits, the cabin windows had been crushed in, and

one sailor carried his arm in a sling, but they had made it. Harper,

hollow-eyed, but merry, had the wheel; Smiley was below, snatching his

first nap in forty-eight hours, with the red corals under his head.

 

"Ole," called Harper, "wake up the Cap'n, will you? I can't leave the

wheel. He said we was to call him off Grosse Pointe."

 

So Ole called him, and was soon followed back on deck by another

hollow-eyed figure.

 

"Guess it's just as well Mr. Roche didn't come along," observed the

boy, as he relinquished the wheel. "_He'd_'a' had all he wanted, and no

mistake."

 

"He had enough to start with. There wasn't any room for drunks this

trip."

 

As he spoke, Smiley was running his eye over the familiar yellow bluffs,

glancing at the lighthouse tower, at the stack of the water works

farther down the coast, at the green billows of foliage with here and

there a spire rising above them, and, last and longest, at the two piers

that reached far out into the Lake,--one black with coal sheds, the

other and nearer, yellow with new lumber.

 

Between these piers, built in the curve of the beach and nestling under

the bluff, was a curious patchwork of a house. Built of odds and ends of

lumber, even, in the rear, of driftwood, perched up on piles so that the

higher waves might run up under the kitchen floor, small wonder that the

youngsters of the shore had dubbed it "the house on stilts."

 

Old Captain Fargo (and who was not a "Captain" in those days!) had built

it with his own hands, just as he had built every one of the sailboats

and rowboats that strewed the beach, and had woven every one of the nets

that were wound on reels up there under the bluff.

 

A surprisingly spacious old house it was, too, with a room for Annie

upstairs on the Lake side, looking out on a porch that was just large

enough to hold her pots and boxes of geraniums and nasturtiums and forget-me-nots.