Cap\'n Eri

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CAP'N ERI


By Joseph Crosby Lincoln




CONTENTS


I. A LAMB FOR THE SACRIFICE

II. THE TRAIN COMES IN

III. THE "COME-OUTERS'" MEETING

IV. A PICTURE SENT AND A CABLE TESTED

V. THE WOMAN FROM NANTUCKET

VI. THE SCHOOLHOUSE BELL RINGS

VII. CAPTAIN ERI FINDS A NURSE

VIII. HOUSEKEEPER AND BOOK AGENT

IX. ELSIE PRESTON

X. MATCHMAKING AND LIFE-SAVING

XI. HEROES AND A MYSTERY

XII. A LITTLE POLITICS

XIII. CAPTAIN JERRY MAKES A MESS OF IT

XIV. THE VOYAGE OF AN "ABLE SEAMAN"

XV. IN JOHN BAXTER'S ROOM

XVI. A BUSINESS CALL

XVII. THROUGH FIRE AND WATER

XVIII. THE SINS OF CAPTAIN JERRY

XIX. A "NO'THEASTER" BLOWS

XX. ERI GOES BACK ON A FRIEND

XXI. "DIME-SHOW BUS'NESS"




CAP'N ERI




CHAPTER I

A LAMB FOR THE SACRIFICE


"Perez," observed Captain Eri cheerfully, "I'm tryin' to average up with
the mistakes of Providence."

The Captain was seated by the open door of the dining room, in the
rocker with the patched cane seat. He was apparently very busy doing
something with a piece of fishline and a pair of long-legged rubber
boots. Captain Perez, swinging back and forth in the parlor rocker with
the patch-work cushion, was puffing deliberately at a wooden pipe, the
bowl of which was carved into the likeness of a very rakish damsel with
a sailor's cap set upon the side of her once flaxen head. In response
to his companion's remark he lazily turned his sunburned face toward the
cane-seated rocker and inquired:

"What on airth are you doin' with them boots?"

Captain Eri tied a knot with his fingers and teeth and then held the
boots out at arm's length.

"Why, Perez," he said, "I'm averagin' up, same as I told you. Providence
made me a two-legged critter, and a two-legged critter needs two boots.
I've always been able to find one of these boots right off whenever I
wanted it, but it's took me so plaguey long to find the other one that
whatever wet there was dried up afore I got out of the house. Yesterday
when I wanted to go clammin' I found the left one on the mantelpiece, no
trouble at all, but it was pretty nigh high water before I dug the other
one out of the washb'iler. That's why I'm splicin' 'em together this
way. I don't want to promise nothin' rash, but I'm in hopes that even
Jerry can't lose 'em now."

"Humph!" grunted Captain Perez. "I don't think much of that plan. 'Stead
of losin' one you'll lose both of 'em."

"Yes, but then I shan't care. If there ain't NO boots in sight; I'll
go barefoot or stay at home. It's the kind of responsibleness that goes
with havin' one boot that's wearin' me out. Where IS Jerry?"

"He went out to feed Lorenzo. I heard him callin' a minute ago. That cat
ain't been home sence noon, and Jerry's worried."

A stentorian shout of "Puss! puss! Come, kitty, kitty, kitty!" came from
somewhere outside. Captain Eri smiled.

"I'm 'fraid Lorenzo's gittin' dissipated in his old age," he observed.
Then, as a fat gray cat shot past the door, "There he is! Reg'lar
prodigal son. Comes home when the fatted ca'f's ready."

A moment later Captain Jerry appeared, milk pitcher in hand. He entered
the dining room and, putting the pitcher down on the table, pulled
forward the armchair with the painted sunset on the back, produced his
own pipe, and proceeded to hunt through one pocket after the other with
a troubled expression of countenance.

"Where in tunket is my terbacker?" he asked, after finishing the round
of pockets and preparing to begin all over again.

"I see it on the top of the clock a spell ago," said Captain Perez.

"Was that yours, Jerry?" exclaimed Captain Eri. "Well, that's too bad! I
see it there and thought 'twas mine. Here 'tis, or what's left of it."

Captain Jerry took the remnant of a plug from his friend and said in an
aggrieved tone:

"That's jest like you, Eri! Never have a place for nothin' and help
yourself to anything you happen to want, don't make no odds whose 'tis.
Why don't you take care of your terbacker, same's I do of mine?"

"Now see here, Jerry! I ain't so sure that is yours. Let me see it.
Humph! I thought so! This is 'Navy Plug' and you always smoke 'Sailor's
Sweetheart.' Talk about havin' a place for things!"

"That's MY terbacker, if you want to know," observed Captain Perez.
"I've got yours, Eri. Here 'tis."

"Well, then, where IS mine?" said Captain Jerry somewhat snappishly.

"Bet a dollar you've got it in your pocket," said Captain Eri.

"Bet ten dollars I ain't! I ain't quite a fool yit, Eri Hedge. I guess
I know--well, I snum! I forgot that upper vest pocket!" and from the
pocket mentioned Captain Jerry produced the missing tobacco.

There was a general laugh, in which Captain Jerry was obliged to join,
and the trio smoked in silence for a time, while the expanse of water
to the eastward darkened, and the outer beach became but a dusky streak
separating the ocean from the inner bay. At length Captain Perez rose
and, knocking the ashes from his pipe, announced that he was going to
"show a glim."

"Yes, go ahead, Jerry!" said Captain Eri, "it's gittin' dark."

"It's darker in the grave," observed Captain Perez with lugubrious
philosophy.

"Then for the land's sake let's have it light while we can! Here, Jerry!
them matches is burnt ones. Try this, 'twon't be so damagin' to the
morals."

Captain Jerry took the proffered match and lit the two bracket lamps,
fastened to the walls of the dining room. The room, seen by the
lamplight, was shiplike, but as decidedly not shipshape. The chronometer
on the mantel was obscured by a thick layer of dust. The three gorgeous
oil paintings--from the brush of the local sign painter--respectively
representing the coasting packet Hannah M., Eri Hedge, Master, and the
fishing schooners, Georgie Baker, Jeremiah Burgess, Master, and the
Flying Duck, Perez Ryder, Master, were shrouded in a very realistic fog
of the same dust. Even the imposing gilt-lettered set of "Lives of Great
Naval Commanders," purchased by Captain Perez some months before, and
being slowly paid for on an apparently never-ending installment plan,
was cloaked with it. The heap of newspapers, shoved under the couch to
get them out of the way, peeped forth in a tell-tale manner. The windows
were not too clean and the floor needed sweeping. Incidentally the
supper table had not been cleared. Each one of the three noted these
things and each sighed. Then Captain Eri said, as if to change the
subject, though no one had spoken:

"What started you talkin' about the grave, Perez? Was it them clam
fritters of Jerry's?"

"No," answered the ex-skipper of the Flying Duck, pulling at his
grizzled scrap of throat whisker and looking rather shamefaced. "You
see, M'lissy Busteed dropped in a few minutes this mornin' while you
fellers was out and--"

Both Captain Eri and Captain Jerry set up a hilarious shout.

"Haw! haw!" roared the former, slapping his knee. "I wouldn't be so
fascinatin' as you be for no money, Perez. She'll have you yit; you
can't git away! But say, I don't wonder you got to thinkin' 'bout the
grave. Ten minutes of M'lissy gits me thinkin' of things way t'other
side of that!"

"Aw, belay there, Eri" protested Captain Perez testily. "'Twan't my
fault. I didn't see her comin' or I'd have got out of sight. She was
cruisin' 'round the way she always does with a cargo of gabble, and, she
put in here to unload. Talk! I never heard a woman talk the way she can!
She'd be a good one to have on board in a calm. Git her talkin' abaft
the mains'l and we'd have a twenty-knot breeze in a shake."

"What was it this time?" asked Captain Jerry.

"Oh, a little of everything. She begun about the 'beautiful' sermon that
Mr. Perley preached at the last 'Come-Outers'' meetin'. That was what
started me thinkin' about the grave, I guess. Then she pitched into
Seth Wingate's wife for havin' a new bunnit this season when the old one
wan't ha'f wore out. She talked for ten minutes or so on that, and then
she begun about Parker's bein' let go over at the cable station and
about the new feller that's been signed to take his place. She's all for
Parker. Says he was a 'perfectly lovely' man and that 'twas outrageous
the way he was treated, and all that sort of thing."

"She ain't the only one that thinks so," observed Captain Jerry.
"There's a heap of folks in this town that think Parker was a mighty
fine feller."

"Yes," said Captain Eri, "and it's worth while noticin' who they be.
Perez' friend, M'lissy, thinks so, and 'Squealer' Wixon and his gang
think so, and 'Web' Saunders thinks so, and a lot more like them. Parker
was TOO good a feller, that's what was the matter with him. His talk
always reminded me of washday at the poorhouse, lots of soft soap with
plenty of lye in it."

"Well, M'lissy says that the men over to the station--all except
Langley, of course--are mad as all git-out because Parker was let
go, and she says somebody told somebody else, and somebody else told
somebody else, and somebody else told HER--she says it come reel
straight--that the men are goin' to make it hot for the new feller when
he comes. She says his name's Hazeltine, or somethin' like that, and
that he's goin' to get here to-morrer or next day."

"Well," said Captain Eri, "it's a mercy M'lissy found it out. If that
man should git here and she not know it aforehand 'twould kill her sure
as fate, and think what a blow that would be to you, Perez."

He took his old-fashioned watch from his pocket and glanced at the dial.

"I mustn't be settin' round here much longer," he added. "John Baxter's
goin' to have that little patch of cranberry swamp of his picked
to-morrer, and he's expectin' some barrels down on to-night's train.
John asked me to git Zoeth Cahoon to cart 'em down for him, but I ain't
got nothin' special to do to-night, so I thought I'd hitch up and go
and git 'em myself. You and Jerry can match cents to see who does the
dishes. I did 'em last night, so it's my watch below."

"Well, _I_ shan't do 'em," declared Captain Perez. "Blessed if I'd do
the durn things to-night if the President of the United States asked me
to."

"Humph!" sputtered Captain Jerry. "I s'pose you fellers think I'll do
'em all the time. If you do you're mistook, that's all. 'Twan't last
night you done 'em, Eri; 'twas the night afore. I done 'em last night,
and I'm ready to take my chances agin if we match, but I'm jiggered if
I let you shove the whole thing off onto me. I didn't ship for cook no
more 'n the rest of you."

Neither of the others saw fit to answer this declaration of independence
and there was a pause in the conversation. Then Captain Jerry said
moodily:

"It ain't no use. It don't work."

"What don't work?" asked Captain Eri.

"Why, this plan of ours. I thought when we fellers give up goin' to
sea reg'lar and settled down here to keep house ourselves and live
economical and all that, that 'twas goin' to be fine. I thought I
wouldn't mind doin' my share of the work a bit, thought 'twould be kind
of fun to swab decks and all that. Well, 'twas for a spell, but 'tain't
now. I'm so sick of it that I don't know what to do. And I'm sick of
livin' in a pigpen, too. Look at them dead-lights! They're so dirty that
when I turn out in the mornin' and go to look through 'em, I can't tell
whether it's foul weather or fair."

Captain Eri looked at the windows toward which his friend pointed and
signed assent.

"There's no use talkin'," he observed, "we've got to have a steward
aboard this craft."

"Yes," said Captain Perez emphatically, "a steward or a woman."

"A WOMAN!" exclaimed Captain Eri. Then he shook his head solemnly and
added, "There, Jerry! What did I tell you? M'lissy!"

But Captain Perez did not smile.

"I ain't foolin'," he said; "I mean it."

Captain Jerry thought of the spick-and-span days of his wife, dead these
twenty years, and sighed again. "I s'pose we might have a housekeeper,"
he said.

"Housekeeper!" sneered Captain Eri. "Who'd you hire? Perez don't,
seemin'ly, take to M'lissy, and there ain't nobody else in Orham that
you could git, 'less 'twas old A'nt Zuby Higgins, and that would be
actin' like the feller that jumped overboard when his boat sprung a
leak. No, sir! If A'nt Zuby ships aboard here I heave up MY commission."

"Who said anything about A'nt Zuby or housekeepers either?" inquired
Captain Perez. "I said we'd got to have a woman, and we have. One of us
'll have to git married, that's all."

"MARRIED!" roared the two in chorus.

"That's what I said, married, and take the others to board in this
house. Look here now! When a shipwrecked crew's starvin' one of 'em has
to be sacrificed for the good of the rest, and that's what we've got to
do. One of us has got to git married for the benefit of the other two."

Captain Eri shouted hilariously. "Good boy, Perez!" he cried. "Goin' to
be the first offerin'?"

"Not unless it's my luck, Eri. We'll all three match for it, same as we
do 'bout washin' the dishes."

"Where are you goin' to find a wife?" asked Captain Jerry.

"Now that's jest what I'm goin' to show you. I see how things was goin',
and I've been thinkin' this over for a consid'rable spell. Hold on a
minute till I overhaul my kit."

He went into the front bedroom, and through the open door they could see
him turning over the contents of the chest with P. R. in brass nails
on the lid. He scattered about him fish-lines, hooks, lead for sinkers,
oilcloth jackets, whales' teeth, and various other articles, and at
length came back bearing a much-crumpled sheet of printed paper. This he
spread out upon the dining table, first pushing aside the dishes to make
room, and, after adjusting his spectacles, said triumphantly:

"There! There she is! The Nup-ti-al Chime. A Journal of Matrimony. I
see a piece about it in the Herald the other day, and sent a dime for
a sample copy. It's chock-full of advertisements from women that wants
husbands."

Captain Eri put on his spectacles and hitched his chair up to the table.
After giving the pages of the Nuptial Chime a hurried inspection, he
remarked:

"There seems to be a strong runnin' to 'vi-va-ci-ous brunettes' and
'blondes with tender and romantic dispositions.' Which of them kinds are
you sufferin' for, Perez? Oh, say! here's a lady that's willin' to
heave herself away on a young and handsome bachelor with a income of ten
thousand a year. Seems to me you ought to answer that."

"Oh, hush up, Eri! 'Tain't likely I'd want to write to any of them in
there. The thing for us to do would be to write out a advertisement of
our own; tell what sort of woman we want, and then set back and wait for
answers. Now, what do you say?"

Captain Eri looked at the advocate of matrimony for a moment without
speaking. Then he said: "Do you really mean it, Perez?"

"Sartin I do."

"What do you think of it, Jerry?"

"Think it's a good idee," said that ancient mariner decisively. "We've
got to do somethin', and this looks like the only sensible thing."

"Then Eri's GOT to do it!" asserted Captain Perez dogmatically. "We
agreed to stick together, and two to one's a vote. Come on now, Eri,
we'll match."

Captain Eri hesitated.

"Come on, Eri!" ordered Captain Jerry. "Ain't goin' to mutiny, are you?"

"All right!" said Captain Eri, "I'll stick to the ship. Only," he added,
with a quizzical glance at his companions, "it's got to be settled
that the feller that's stuck can pick his wife, and don't have to marry
unless he finds one that suits him."

The others agreed to this stipulation, and Captain Perez, drawing a long
breath, took a coin from his pocket, flipped it in the air and covered
it, as it fell on the table, with a big hairy hand. Captain Eri did
likewise; so did Captain Jerry. Then Captain Eri lifted his hand and
showed the coin beneath; it was a head. Captain Jerry's was a tail.
Under Captain Perez' hand lurked the hidden fate. The Captain's lips
closed in a grim line. With a desperate glance at the others he jerked
his hand away.

The penny lay head uppermost. Captain Jerry was "stuck."

Captain Eri rose, glanced at his watch, and, taking his hat from the
shelf where the dishes should have been, opened the door. Before he went
out, however, he turned and said:

"Perez, you and Jerry can be fixin' up the advertisement while I'm gone.
You can let me see it when I come back. I say, Jerry," he added to the
"sacrifice," who sat gazing at the pennies on the table in a sort of
trance, "don't feel bad about it. Why, when you come to think of it,
it's a providence it turned out that way. Me and Perez are bachelors,
and we'd be jest green hands. But you're a able seaman, you know what it
is to manage a wife."

"Yes, I do," groaned Captain Jerry lugubriously. "Durn it, that's jest
it!"

Captain Eri was chuckling as, lantern in hand, he passed around the
corner of the little white house on the way to the barn. He chuckled
all through the harnessing of Daniel, the venerable white horse. He was
still chuckling as, perched on the seat of the "truck wagon," he rattled
and shook out of the yard and turned into the sandy road that led up to
the village. And an outsider, hearing these chuckles, and knowing what
had gone before, might have inferred that perhaps Captain Eri did not
view the "matching" and the matrimonial project with quite the deadly
seriousness of the other two occupants of the house by the shore.



CHAPTER II

THE TRAIN COMES IN


There is in Orham a self-appointed committee whose duty it is to see the
train come in. The committeemen receive no salary for their services;
the sole compensation is the pleasure derived from the sense of duty
done. Rain, snow, or shine, the committee is on hand at the station--the
natives, of course, call it the "deepo"--to consume borrowed tobacco
and to favor Providence with its advice concerning the running of the
universe. Also it discusses local affairs with fluency and more or less
point.

Mr. "Squealer" Wixon, a lifelong member of this committee, was the first
to sight Captain Eri as the latter strolled across the tracks into the
circle of light from the station lamps. The Captain had moored Daniel to
a picket in the fence over by the freight-house. He had heard the clock
in the belfry of the Methodist church strike eight as he drove by that
edifice, but he heard no whistle from the direction of the West Orham
woods, so he knew that the down train would arrive at its usual time,
that is, from fifteen to twenty minutes behind the schedule.

"Hey!" shouted Mr. Wixon with enthusiasm. "Here's Cap'n Eri! Well, Cap,
how's she headin'?"

"'Bout no'theast by no'th," was the calm reply. "Runnin' fair, but with
lookout for wind ahead."

"Hain't got a spare chaw nowheres about you, have you, Cap'n?" anxiously
inquired "Bluey" Batcheldor. Mr. Batcheldor is called "Bluey" for the
same reason that Mr. Wixon is called "Squealer," and that reason has
been forgotten for years.

Captain Eri obligingly produced a black plug of smoking tobacco, and Mr.
Batcheldor bit off two-thirds and returned the balance. After adjusting
the morsel so that it might interfere in the least degree with his vocal
machinery, he drawled:

"I cal'late you ain't heard the news, Eri. Web Saunders has got his
original-package license. It come on the noon mail."

The Captain turned sharply toward the speaker. "Is that a fact?" he
asked. "Who told you?"

"See it myself. So did Squealer and a whole lot more. Web was showin' it
round."

"We was wonderin'," said Jabez Smalley, a member of the committee whose
standing was somewhat impaired, inasmuch as he went fishing occasionally
and was, therefore, obliged to miss some of the meetings, "what kind of
a fit John Baxter would have now. He's been pretty nigh distracted ever
sence Web started his billiard room, callin' it a 'ha'nt of sin' and a
whole lot more names. There ain't been a 'Come-Outers' meetin' 'sence
I don't know when that he ain't pitched into that saloon. Now, when he
hears that Web's goin' to sell rum, he'll bust a biler sure."

The committee received this prophecy with an hilarious shout of approval
and each member began to talk. Captain Eri took advantage of this
simultaneous expression of opinion to walk away. He looked in at the
window of the ticket-office, exchanged greetings with Sam Hardy, the
stationmaster, and then leaned against the corner of the building
furthest removed from Mr. Wixon and his friends, lit his pipe and puffed
thoughtfully with a troubled expression on his face.

From the clump of blackness that indicated the beginning of the West
Orham woods came a long-drawn dismal "toot"; then two shorter ones. The
committee sprang to its feet and looked interested. Sam Hardy came out
of the ticket office. The stage-driver, a sharp-looking boy of about
fourteen, with a disagreeable air of cheap smartness sticking out all
over him, left his seat in the shadow of Mr. Batcheldor's manly form,
tossed a cigarette stump away and loafed over to the vicinity of the
"depot wagon," which was backed up against the platform. Captain Eri
knocked the ashes from his pipe and put that service-stained veteran in
his pocket. The train was really "coming in" at last.

If this had been an August evening instead of a September one, both
train and platform would have been crowded. But the butterfly summer
maiden had flitted and, as is his wont, the summer man had flitted after
her, so the passengers who alighted from the two coaches that, with
the freight car, made up the Orham Branch train, were few in number and
homely in flavor. There was a very stout lady with a canvas extension
case and an umbrella in one hand and a bulging shawl-strap and a
pasteboard box in the other, who panted and wheezed like the locomotive
itself and who asked the brakeman, "What on airth DO they have such high
steps for?" There was a slim, not to say gawky, individual with a chin
beard and rubber boots, whom the committee hailed as "Andy" and welcomed
to its bosom. There were two young men, drummers, evidently, who nodded
to Hardy, and seemed very much at home. Also, there was another young
man, smooth-shaven and square-shouldered, who deposited a suit-case on
the platform and looked about him with the air of being very far from
home, indeed.

The drummers and the stout lady got into the stage. The young man with
the suit-case picked up the latter and walked toward the same vehicle.
He accosted the sharp boy, who had lighted another cigarette.

"Can you direct me to the cable station?" he asked.

"Sure thing!" said the youth, and there was no Cape Cod twist to his
accent. "Git aboard."

"I didn't intend to ride," said the stranger.

"What was you goin' to do? Walk?"

"Yes, if it's not far."

The boy grinned, and the members of the committee, who had been staring
with all their might, grinned also. The young man's mention of the cable
station seemed to have caused considerable excitement.

"Oh, it ain't too FAR!" said the stage-driver. Then he added: "Say,
you're the new electrician, ain't you?"

The young man hesitated for a moment. Then he said, "Yes," and
suggested, "I asked the way."

"Two blocks to the right; that's the main road, keep on that for four
blocks, then turn to the left, and if you keep on straight ahead you'll
get to the station."

"Blocks?" The stranger smiled. "I think you must be from New York."

"Do you?" inquired the youthful prodigy, climbing to the wagon seat.
"Don't forget to keep straight ahead after you turn off the main road.
Git dap! So long, fellers!" He leaned over the wheel, as the stage
turned, and bestowed a wink upon the delighted "Squealer," who was
holding one freckled paw over his mouth; then the "depot wagon" creaked
away.

The square-shouldered young man looked after the equipage with an odd
expression of countenance. Then he shrugged his shoulders, picked up the
suitcase, and walked off the platform into the darkness.

Mr. Wixon removed the hand from his mouth and displayed a mammoth
grin, that grew into a shriek of laughter in which every member of the
committee joined.

"Haw! haw!" bellowed "Bluey," "so that's the feller that done Parker out
of his job! Well, he may be mighty smart, but if that Joe Bartlett ain't
smarter then I'm a skate, that's all! Smartest boy ever I see! 'If you
keep on straight ahead you'll git to the station!' Gosh! he'll have to
wear rubbers!"

"Maybe he's web-footed," suggested Smalley, and they laughed again.

A little later Captain Eri, with a dozen new, clean-smelling cranberry
barrels in the wagon behind him, drove slowly down the "depot road." It
was a clear night, but there was no moon, and Orham was almost at its
darkest, which is very dark, indeed. The "depot road"--please bear in
mind that there are no streets in Orham--was full of ruts, and although
Daniel knew his way and did his best to follow it, the cranberry barrels
rattled and shook in lively fashion. There are few homes near the
station, and the dwellers in them conscientiously refrain from showing
lights except in the ends of the buildings furthest from the front.
Strangers are inclined to wonder at this, but when they become better
acquainted with the town and its people, they come to know that front
gates and parlors are, by the majority of the inhabitants, restricted in
their use to occasions such as a funeral, or, possibly, a wedding. For
the average Orham family to sit in the parlor on a week evening would be
an act bordering pretty closely on sacrilege.