Joe
Cone
Cambridge,
Mass.
The Waybacker
Stories.
By Joe Cone,
Author of “The Waybackers.”
A HARD BLOW.
“Purty
hard blow, this,” remarked Hen Billings, as he unwound his long, red scarf and
dropped into his favorite chair by the side of Jones’s stove.
Cap’n
Joe Peters looked up from his paper for an instant, then resumed his reading.
“Purty fair,” he replied, turning over a page.
“I
s’pose you’ve seen wuss,” advanced Henry, not to be sidetracked; “bein’ as how
you wuz a sea-goin’ man.”
Cap’n
Joe failed to make a reply instantly, whereupon Jake Bartlett, the man from
Long Island, jumped to the rescue.
“This
here is only a baby blow,” he began. “You never put in much time over on the
Islan’, did you?”
The
fisherman from Four Corners admitted that he had never had that pleasure. Jake
made sure that his pipe was chock full and working satisfactorily, then
continued:
“If
you wanter see blows that’s the place to go, where blows blow. They ain’t none
of your little zephyrs about them gales they hev over on the Islan’ now I tell
you. The wust one I remember happened ’long about eight years ago comin’ March.
If you hev never b’en over there of course you don’t know about Sid Blake’s
sharpie bein’ thirty-foot high up on Sandy P’int. Well, she’s there, an’ that
blow put her there, an’ it warn’t no tidal wave, neither. She was anchored jest
inside the P’int, an’ was weatherin’ out a stiff nor’wester all right. We all
thought it was blowin’ some durin’ the forenoon, but when the tide begun to set
in ’long ’bout two o’clock was when the wind really meant bizniz. It seemed as
though she come frum ev’ry p’int of the compass. A feller stickin’ his head out
of the door would be blowed fust one way an’ then the other till he was in
danger of hevin’ his neck broke. There was a terrible commotion out on the
water. It looked as though the hull of Long Islan’ Sound was standin’ on end,
an’ purty soon the sand an’ pebbles ’long shore begun to fly an’ heap up in a
sartin place, an’ fust thing we knowed, right ’fore our very eyes, Sid Blake’s
sharpie was doin’ stunts in mid-air, an’ finally landed high an’ dry on top of
a sand hill thirty-foot above high water mark. If that ain’t blowin’,”
concluded Jake, pausing long enough to catch his breath and keep his pipe
going, “then I don’t know what blowin’ is.”
“It’s
blowin’ all right; I guess they ain’t no trouble about that,” responded Jed
Martin, a tinge of irony in his voice.
Cap’n
Joe had laid down his paper, apparently lost in deep thought as Jake finished
his story.
“I
hev seen that sharpie up there on the sand,” he began, “but I allus s’posed she
was hauled up there for a summer residence.”
“Well,”
ventured Jed Martin again, “mebbie it’s true; I guess mebbie them Long Islan’
blows could put most anything anywhere they wanted to.”
Jed
was the doubting one of the circle, and yet when he was in a story-trilling
mood himself he was hard to match. It was evident that Cap’n Joe had something
on his mind and a respectful silence ensued. The little white goatee on his
chin bobbed a few times and he began:
“That
was a purty hard blow, Jake, they’s no rubbin’ that out, an’ I reckylect it
well. I was tryin’ to run a three-master down the Sound light. We hed got a few
miles beyend New Haven when the wust of it struck us. I see it warn’t no use so
we lowered ev’rything and dropped the hook. About this time the sky off to the
east’ard darkened so I though a reg’lar cyclone was comin’, but it turned out
to be birds, mostly ducks, comin’ like skyrockets ahead of the gale. Some of
them begun to strike the fo’mast an’ fall dead on the deck. After a few dozen
had heaped up there I got an idee. I says to the mate, ‘Bill,’ says I, ‘if we
kin git her broadside we kin git jest three times as many.’ ‘You can’t do it,
Cap’,‘ says he. ‘Easy,’ says I. I hed a big Swede aboard an’ I says to him, ‘John,’
says I, ‘you take the dinky an’ a line an’ see if you kin pull the starn of
this clipper broadside to the wind!’ He looked at me for a secunt as though he
thought I’d gone daffy, but John never disobeyed orders, an’ he was the
strongest man I ever hed aboard ship. The ducks was comin’ thicker an’ faster,
an’ when John got the craft swung ’round an’ the three masts got to playin’
short stop the dead ducks begun to fall onto the deck about as fast as we could
handle ’em. I never hed such huntin’ afore or sence. I wouldn’t say how many
ducks we hed piled up there, but I know that when we reached New York the next
day an’ sold ’em off that it paid better than any deck load of freight I ever
steered up or down the Sound.”
“Yes,”
concluded Cap’n Joe, looking the man from Long Island straight in the eye, “you
was right. That was a real blow, an’ you warn’t wholly mistook in your
jedgement. * It was a
real breeze out there in the Sound, but o’ course, it was subdued some by the
time it reached the Island.”
* “Bill, said he, turning to
the groceryman, “put me up a quarter pound of peppermints for Rachel.”
No comments:
Post a Comment