With this thought uppermost in her mind she took the letter from her desk, and stirring the smouldering embers, laid it upon the coals. The sheet blazed and fell into ashes.
"No one will ever know," she said with a sigh.
CHAPTER XIII
SCOOTSY"S EPITHET
Lying on Barnegat Beach, within sight of the House of Refuge and Fogarty"s cabin, was the hull of a sloop which had been whirled in one night in a southeaster, with not a soul on board, riding the breakers like a duck, and landing high and dry out of the hungry clutch of the surf-dogs. She was light at the time and without ballast, and lay stranded upright on her keel. All attempts by the beach-combers to float her had proved futile; they had stripped her of her standing rigging and everything else of value, and had then abandoned her. Only the evenly balanced hull was left, its bottom timbers broken and its bent keelson buried in the sand. This hulk little Tod Fogarty, aged ten, had taken possession of; particularly the after-part of the hold, over which he had placed a trusty henchman armed with a cutla.s.s made from the hoop of a fish barrel. The henchman--aged seven--wore knee-trousers and a cap and answered to the name of Archie. The refuge itself bore the t.i.tle of "The Bandit"s Home."
This new hulk had taken the place of the old schooner which had served Captain Holt as a landmark on that eventful night when he strode Barnegat Beach in search of Bart, and which by the action of the ever-changing tides, had gradually settled until now only a hillock marked its grave--a fate which sooner or later would overtake this newly landed sloop itself.
These Barnegat tides are the sponges that wipe clean the slate of the beach. Each day a new record is made and each day it is wiped out: records from pa.s.sing ships, an empty crate, broken spar or useless barrel grounded now and then by the tide in its flow as it moves up and down the sand at the will of the waters. Records, too, of many footprints,--the lagging steps of happy lovers; the dimpled feet of joyous children; the tread of tramp, coast-guard or fisherman--all scoured clean when the merciful tide makes ebb.
Other records are strewn along the beach; these the tide alone cannot efface--the bow of some hapless schooner it may be, wrenched from its hull, and sent whirling sh.o.r.eward; the shattered mast and crosstrees of a stranded ship beaten to death in the breakers; or some battered capstan carried in the white teeth of the surf-dogs and dropped beyond the froth-line. To these with the help of the south wind, the tides extend their mercy, burying them deep with successive blankets of sand, hiding their bruised bodies, covering their nakedness and the marks of their sufferings. All through the restful summer and late autumn these battered derelicts lie buried, while above their graves the children play and watch the ships go by, or stretch themselves at length, their eyes on the circling gulls.
With the coming of the autumn all this is changed. The cruel north wind now wakes, and with a loud roar joins hands with the savage easter; the startled surf falls upon the beach like a scourge. Under their double lash the outer bar cowers and sinks; the frightened sand flees. .h.i.ther and thither. Soon the frenzied breakers throw themselves headlong, tearing with teeth and claws, burrowing deep into the hidden graves.
Now the forgotten wrecks, like long-buried sins, rise and stand naked, showing every scar and stain. This is the work of the sea-puss--the revolving maniac born of close-wed wind and tide; a beast so terrible that in a single night, with its auger-like snout, it bites huge inlets out of farm lands--mouthfuls deep enough for ships to sail where but yesterday the corn grew.
In the hull of this newly stranded sloop, then--sitting high and dry, out of the reach of the summer surf,--Tod and Archie spent every hour of the day they could call their own; sallying forth on various piratical excursions, coming back laden with driftwood for a bonfire, or hugging some bottle, which was always opened with trembling, eager fingers in the inmost recesses of the Home, in the hope that some tidings of a lost ship might be found inside; or with their pockets crammed with clam-sh.e.l.ls and other sea spoils with which to decorate the inside timbers of what was left of the former captain"s cabin.
Jane had protested at first, but the doctor had looked the hull over, and found that there was nothing wide enough, nor deep enough, nor sharp enough to do them harm, and so she was content. Then again, the boys were both strong for their age, and looked it, Tod easily pa.s.sing for a lad of twelve or fourteen, and Archie for a boy of ten. The one danger discovered by the doctor lay in its height, the only way of boarding the stranded craft being by means of a hand-over-hand climb up the rusty chains of the bowsprit, a difficult and trousers-tearing operation. This was obviated by Tod"s father, who made a ladder for the boys out of a pair of old oars, which the two pirates pulled up after them whenever an enemy hove in sight. When friends approached it was let down with more than elaborate ceremony, the guests being escorted by Archie and welcomed on board by Tod.
Once Captain Holt"s short, st.u.r.dy body was descried in the offing tramping the sand-dunes on his way to Fogarty"s, and a signal flag--part of Mother Fogarty"s flannel petticoat, and blood-red, as befitted the desperate nature of the craft over which it floated, was at once set in his honor. The captain put his helm hard down and came up into the wind and alongside the hulk.
"Well! well! well!" he cried in his best quarterdeck voice--"what are you stowaways doin" here?" and he climbed the ladder and swung himself over the battered rail.
Archie took his hand and led him into the most sacred recesses of the den, explaining to him his plans for defence, his armament of barrel hoops, and his ammunition of sh.e.l.ls and pebbles, Tod standing silently by and a little abashed, as was natural in one of his station; at which the captain laughed more loudly than before, catching Archie in his arms, rubbing his curly head with his big, hard hand, and telling him he was a chip of the old block, every inch of him--none of which did either Archie or Tod understand. Before he climbed down the ladder he announced with a solemn smile that he thought the craft was well protected so far as collisions on foggy nights were concerned, but he doubted if their arms were sufficient and that he had better leave them his big sea knife which had been twice around Cape Horn, and which might be useful in lopping off arms and legs whenever the cutthroats got too impudent and aggressive; whereupon Archie threw his arms around his grizzled neck and said he was a "bully commodore," and that if he would come and live with them aboard the hulk they would obey his orders to a man.
Archie leaned over the rotten rail and saw the old salt stop a little way from the hulk and stand looking at them for some minutes and then wave his hand, at which the boys waved back, but the lad did not see the tears that lingered for an instant on the captain"s eyelids, and which the sea-breeze caught away; nor did he hear the words, as the captain resumed his walk: "He"s all I"ve got left, and yet he don"t know it and I can"t tell him. Ain"t it h.e.l.l?"
Neither did they notice that he never once raised his eyes toward the House of Refuge as he pa.s.sed its side. A new door and a new roof had been added, but in other respects it was to him the same grewsome, lonely hut as on that last night when he had denounced his son outside its swinging door.
Often the boys made neighborly visits to friendly tribes and settlers.
Fogarty was one of these, and Doctor Cavendish was another. The doctor"s country was a place of b.u.t.tered bread and preserves and a romp with Rex, who was almost as feeble as Meg had been in his last days.
But Fogarty"s cabin was a mine of never-ending delight. In addition to the quaint low house of clapboards and old ship-timber, with its sloping roof and little toy windows, so unlike his own at Yardley, and smoked ceilings, there was a sc.r.a.p heap piled up and scattered over the yard which in itself was a veritable treasure-house. Here were rusty chains and wooden figure-heads of broken-nosed, blind maidens and tailless dolphins. Here were twisted iron rods, fish-baskets, broken lobster-pots, rotting seines and tangled, useless nets--some used as coverings for coops of restless chickens--old worn-out rope, tangled rigging--everything that a fisherman who had spent his life on Barnegat beach could pull from the surf or find stranded on the sand.
Besides all these priceless treasures, there was an old boat lying afloat in a small lagoon back of the house, one of those seepage pools common to the coast--a boat which Fogarty had patched with a bit of sail-cloth, and for which he had made two pairs of oars, one for each of the "crew," as he called the lads, and which Archie learned to handle with such dexterity that the old fisherman declared he would make a first-cla.s.s boatman when he grew up, and would "shame the whole bunch of "em."
But these two valiant buccaneers were not to remain in undisturbed possession of the Bandit"s Home with its bewildering fittings and enchanting possibilities--not for long. The secret of the uses to which the stranded craft bad been put, and the attendant fun which Commodore Tod and his dauntless henchman, Archibald Cobden, Esquire, were daily getting out of its battered timbers, had already become public property. The youth of Barnegat--the very young youth, ranging from nine to twelve, and all boys--received the news at first with hilarious joy. This feeling soon gave way to unsuppressed indignation, followed by an active bitterness, when they realized in solemn conclave--the meeting was held in an open lot on Sat.u.r.day morning--that the capture of the craft had been accomplished, not by dwellers under Barnegat Light, to whom every piece of sea-drift from a tomato-can to a full-rigged ship rightfully belonged, but by a couple of aliens, one of whom wore knee-pants and a white collar,--a distinction in dress highly obnoxious to these lords of the soil.
All these denizens of Barnegat had at one time or another climbed up the sloop"s chains and peered down the hatchway to the sand covering the keelson, and most of them had used it as a shelter behind which, in swimming-time, they had put on or peeled off such mutilated rags as covered their nakedness, but no one of them had yet conceived the idea of turning it into a Bandit"s Home. That touch of the ideal, that gilding of the commonplace, had been reserved for the brain of the curly-haired boy who, with dancing eyes, his st.u.r.dy little legs resting on Tod"s shoulder, had peered over the battered rail, and who, with a burst of enthusiasm, had shouted: "Oh, cracky! isn"t it nice, Tod! It"s got a place we can fix up for a robbers" den; and we"ll be bandits and have a flag. Oh, come up here! You never saw anything so fine," etc., etc.
When, therefore, Scootsy Mulligan, aged nine, son of a ship-caulker who worked in Martin Farguson"s ship-yard, and Sandy Plummer, eldest of three, and their mother a widow--plain washing and ironing, two doors from the cake-shop--heard that that French "spad," Arch Cobden what lived up to Yardley, and that red-headed Irish cub, Tod Fogarty--Tod"s hair had turned very red--had pre-empted the Black Tub, as the wreck was irreverently called, claiming it as their very own, "and-a-sayin"
they wuz pirates and b.l.o.o.d.y Turks and sich," these two quarrelsome town rats organized a posse in lower Barnegat for its recapture.
Archie was sweeping the horizon from his perch on the "p.o.o.p-deck" when his eagle eye detected a strange group of what appeared to be human beings advancing toward the wreck from the direction of Barnegat village. One, evidently a chief, was in the lead, the others following bunched together. All were gesticulating wildly. The trusty henchman immediately gave warning to Tod, who was at work in the lower hold arranging a bundle of bean-poles which had drifted insh.o.r.e the night before--part of the deck-load, doubtless, of some pa.s.sing vessel.
"Ay, ay, sir!" cried the henchman with a hoist of his knee-pants, as a prelude to his announcement.
"Ay, ay, yerself!" rumbled back the reply. "What"s up?" The commodore had not read as deeply in pirate lore as had Archie, and was not, therefore, so ready with its lingo.
"Band of savages, sir, approaching down the beach."
"Where away?" thundered back the commodore, his authority now a.s.serting itself in the tones of his voice.
"On the starboard bow, sir--six or seven of "em."
"Armed or peaceable?"
"Armed, sir. Scootsy Mulligan is leadin" "em."
"Scootsy Mulligan! Crickety! he"s come to make trouble," shouted back Tod, climbing the ladder in a hurry--it was used as a means of descent into the shallow hold when not needed outside. "Where are they? Oh, yes! I see "em--lot of "em, ain"t they? Sat.u.r.day, and they ain"t no school. Say, Arch, what are we goin" to do?" The terminal vowels softening his henchman"s name were omitted in grave situations; so was the pirate lingo.
"Do!" retorted Archie, his eyes snapping. "Why, we"ll fight "em; that"s what we are pirates for. Fight "em to the death. Hurray! They"re not coming aboard--no sir-ee! You go down, Toddy [the same free use of terminals], and get two of the biggest bean-poles and I"ll run up the death flag. We"ve got stones and sh.e.l.ls enough. Hurry--big ones, mind you!"
The attacking party, their leader ahead, had now reached the low sand heap marking the grave of the former wreck, but a dozen yards away--the sand had entombed it the year before.
"You fellers think yer durned smart, don"t ye?" yelled Mr. William Mulligan, surnamed "Scootsy" from his p.r.o.nounced fleetness of foot.
"We"re goin" to run ye out o" that Tub. "Tain"t yourn, it"s ourn--ain"t it, fellers?"
A shout went up in answer from the group on the hillock.
"You can come as friends, but not as enemies," cried Archie grandiloquently. "The man who sets foot on this ship without permission dies like a dog. We sail under the blood-red flag!" and Archie struck an att.i.tude and pointed to the fragment of mother Fogarty"s own nailed to a lath and hanging limp over the rail.
"Hi! hi! hi!" yelled the gang in reply. "Oh, ain"t he a beauty! Look at de cotton waddin" on his head!" (Archie"s cropped curls.) "Say, sissy, does yer mother know ye"re out? Throw that ladder down; we"re comin" up there--don"t make no diff"rence whether we got yer permish or not--and we"ll knock the stuffin" out o" ye if ye put up any job on us. H"ist out that ladder!"
"Death and no quarter!" shouted back Archie, opening the big blade of Captain Holt"s pocket knife and grasping it firmly in his wee hand.
"We"ll defend this ship with the last drop of our blood!"
"Ye will, will ye!" retorted Scootsy. "Come on, fellers--go for "em!
I"ll show "em," and he dodged under the sloop"s bow and sprang for the overhanging chains.
Tod had now clambered up from the hold. Under his arm were two stout hickory saplings. One he gave to Archie, the other he kept himself.
"Give them the sh.e.l.ls first," commanded Archie, dodging a beach pebble; "and when their hands come up over the rail let them have this," and he waved the sapling over his head. "Run, Tod,--they"re trying to climb up behind. I"ll take the bow. Avast there, ye lubbers!"
With this Archie dropped to his knees and crouched close to the heel of the rotting bowsprit, out of the way of the flying missiles--each boy"s pockets were loaded--and looking cautiously over the side of the hulk, waited until Scootsy"s dirty fingers--he was climbing the chain hand over hand, his feet resting on a boy below him--came into view.
"Off there, or I"ll crack your fingers!"
"Crack and be--"
Bang! went Archie"s hickory and down dropped the braggart, his oath lost in his cries.