Keziah Coffin Part 52

The parish committee was to meet. Captain Elkanah had announced his intention of moving that John Ellery be expelled from the Regular church. There was to be no compromise, no asking for a resignation; he must be discharged, thrown out in disgrace. The county papers were full of the squabble, but they merely reported the news and did not take sides. The fight was too even for that.

Captain Zeb chuckled. "It's all right, Keziah," he said. "We know what's what and who's who. The Rev. Mr. Ellery can preach here for the next hundred year, if he lives that long and wants to, and he can marry whoever he darn pleases, besides. Elkanah's licked and he knows it. He ain't got enough backers to man a lobster dory. Let him holler; noise don't scare grown folks."

One afternoon a few days before the date set for the meeting Elkanah and two or three of his henchmen were on the piazza of the Daniels home, discussing the situation. They were blue and downcast. Annabel was in the sitting room, shedding tears of humiliation and jealous rage on the haircloth sofa.

"Well," observed her father, "there's one thing we can do. If the vote in committee goes against us, I shall insist on the calling of a congregational meeting. Hum--ha! Yes, I shall insist on that."

"Won't be no good, cap'n," sniffed Beriah Salters dolefully. "The biggest part of the congregation's for Ellery, and you know it. They're as sot on him as if he was the angel Gabriel. If you'd only told what you knew afore this smallpox business, we'd have been able to give him and his Come-Outer woman what b'longs to 'em. But not now."

Captain Daniels s.h.i.+fted uneasily in his chair.

"Hum--ha!" he barked, to cover confusion. "Hum--ha! It seemed to me more--er--charitable to give the misguided young man another chance, and I did it. But--What's that?"

Some one was talking excitedly on the sidewalk beyond the lilac bushes at the border of the Daniels property. Voices answered. Didama Rogers darted out of her yard and past the house in the direction of the sounds. Salters rose and walked down to the gate.

"Hey!" he shouted. "Halloo! Ahoy there! You, Em'lous, what is it?"

Emulous Sparrow, the fish peddler, was seated in his cart, which was surrounded by men and women, neighbors of the Danielses. There was a perfect storm of questionings and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns. Salters opened the gate and joined the group. A moment later he came running back, up the walk toward the piazza.

"Cap'n," he shouted. "Cap'n Elkanah, here's news! What do you think? A telegram's just come from Nat Hammond. He's safe and sound in New York, and he'll be here day after to-morrow."

They could not believe it and rushed out to hear more. Emulous, glowing with importance, affirmed that it was so. He had seen the telegram at the store. It was for Grace Van Horne and they were just going to send a boy over to the shanty with it.

"No details nor nothin'," he declared. "Just said 'Am all right.

Arrived to-day. Will be in Trumet Thursday.' And 'twas signed 'Nathaniel Hammond.' There!"

"Well, by thunder!" exclaimed Salters. "If that don't beat all. I wonder what's happened to him? Two year gone and give up for dead, and now--What do you cal'late it means?"

Captain Elkanah seized him by the arm and led him out of the group.

The old man's face was alight with savage joy and his voice shook with exultation.

"I'll tell you one thing it means," he whispered. "It means the end of Ellery, so far as his marrying her is concerned. She gave her word to Hammond and she'll keep it. She's no liar, whatever else she is. He may be minister of the Regular church, though I'LL never set under him, but he'll never marry her, now."

CHAPTER XIX

IN WHICH A RECEPTION IS CALLED OFF

Far out on the Pacific coast there are two small islands, perhaps a hundred miles distant from one another. The first of these is uninhabited. On the other is a little colony of English-speaking people, half-breed descendants of native women and the survivors of a crew from a British vessel cast away there in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

On the first of these islands, the smaller one, the Sea Mist had been wrecked. Driven out of her course by a typhoon, she staggered through day after day and night after night of terrific wind and storm until, at last, there was promise of fair weather. Captain Nat, nearly worn out from anxiety, care, and the loss of sleep, had gone to his stateroom and the first mate was in charge. It was three o'clock, the wind still blowing and the darkness pitchy, when the forward lookout shrieked a warning, "Breakers under the lee!" Almost the next instant the s.h.i.+p was on a coral reef, full of water, and the seas breaking over her from stem to stern.

Morning came and showed a little patch of land, with palm trees and tropical vegetation waving in the gusts and green in the suns.h.i.+ne.

Captain Nat ordered the boats to be lowered. Much as he hated the thought, he saw that the Sea Mist had made her last voyage and must be abandoned. He went to the cabin, collected papers and charts and prepared to leave. The s.h.i.+p's money, over ten thousand dollars in gold belonging to the owner and to be used in trade and speculation among the East Indies, he took with him. Then the difficult and dangerous pa.s.sage through the opening in the reef was begun.

Only the captain's boat reached the sh.o.r.e. The mate's was caught by a huge breaker, dashed against the reef and sunk. Captain Nat, his second mate and five of his men were all that was left of the Sea Mist's company. And on that island they remained for nearly two weeks.

Provisions they had brought ash.o.r.e with them. Water they found by digging. Nat hid the gold at night, burying it on the beach below high-water mark.

Then, having made sure of his location by consulting the chart, he determined to attempt a voyage to the second island, where he knew the English colony to be. Provisions were getting short, and to remain longer where they were was to risk starvation and all its horrors. So, in the longboat, which was provided with a sail, they started. Charts and papers and the gold the skipper took with them. None of the crew knew of the existence of the money; it was a secret which the captain kept to himself.

A hundred miles they sailed in the longboat and, at last, the second island was sighted. They landed and found, to their consternation and surprise, that it, too, was uninhabited. The former residents had grown tired of their isolation and, a trading vessel having touched there, had seized the opportunity to depart for Tahiti. Their houses were empty, their cattle, sheep, goats, and fowl roamed wild in the woods, and the fruit was rotting on the trees. In its way the little island was an Eyeless Eden, flowing with milk and honey; but to Captain Nat, a conscientious skipper with responsibilities to his owners, it was a prison from which he determined to escape. Then, as if to make escape impossible, a sudden gale came up and the longboat was smashed by the surf.

"I guess that settles it," ruefully observed the second mate, "another Cape Codder, from Hyannis. Cal'late we'll stay here for a spell now, hey, Cap'n."

"For a spell, yes," replied Nat. "We'll stay here until we get another craft to set sail in, and no longer."

"Another craft? ANOTHER one? Where in time you goin' to get her?"

"Build her," said Captain Nat cheerfully. Then, pointing to the row of empty houses and the little deserted church, he added, "There's timber and nails--yes, and cloth, such as 'tis. If I can't build a boat out of them I'll agree to eat the whole settlement."

He did not have to eat it, for the boat was built. It took them six months to build her, and she was a curious-looking vessel when done, but, as the skipper said, "She may not be a clipper, but she'll sail anywhere, if you give her time enough." He had been the guiding spirit of the whole enterprise, planning it, laying the keel, burning buildings, to obtain nails and iron, hewing trees for the largest beams, showing them how to spin ropes from cocoa-nut fiber, improvising sails from the longboat's canvas pieced out with blankets and odd bits of cloth from the abandoned houses. Even a strip of carpet from the church floor went into the making of those sails.

At last she was done, but Nat was not satisfied.

"I never commanded a s.h.i.+p where I couldn't h'ist Yankee colors," he said, "and, by the everlastin'! I won't now. We've got to have a flag."

So, from an old pair of blue overalls, a white cotton s.h.i.+rt, and the red hangings of the church pulpit, he made a flag and hoisted it to the truck of his queer command. They provisioned her, gave her a liberal supply of fresh water, and, one morning, she pa.s.sed through the opening of the lagoon out to the deep blue of the Pacific. And, hidden in her captain's stateroom under the head of his bunk, was the ten thousand dollars in gold. For Nat had sworn to himself, by "the everlasting"

and other oaths, to deliver that money to his New York owners safe and, necessary expenses deducted of course, untouched.

For seven weeks the crazy nondescript slopped across the ocean. Fair winds helped her and, at last, she entered the harbor of Nukahiva, over twelve hundred miles away. And there--"Hammond's luck," the sailors called it--was a United States man-of-war lying at anchor, the first American vessel to touch at that little French settlement for five years. The boat they built was abandoned and the survivors of the Sea Mist were taken on board the man-of-war and carried to Tahiti.

From Tahiti Captain Nat took pa.s.sage on a French bark for Honolulu.

Here, after a month's wait, he found opportunity to leave for New York on an American s.h.i.+p, the Stars and Stripes. And finally, after being away from home for two years, he walked into the office of his New York owners, deposited their gold on a table, and cheerfully observed, "Well, here I am."

That was the yarn which Trumet was to hear later on. It filled columns of the city papers at the time, and those interested may read it, in all its details, in a book written by an eminent author. The tale of a Cape Cod sea captain, plucky and resourceful and adequate, as Yankee sea captains were expected to be, and were, in those days.

But Trumet did not hear the yarn immediately. All that it heard and all that it knew was contained in Captain Nat's brief telegram. "Arrived to-day. Will be home Thursday." That was all, but it was enough, for in that dispatch was explosive sufficient to blow to atoms the doctor's plans and Keziah's, the great scheme which was to bring happiness to John Ellery and Grace Van Horne.

Dr. Parker heard it, while on his way to Mrs. Prince's, and, neglecting that old lady for the once, he turned his horse and drove as fast as possible to the shanty on the beach. Fast as he drove, Captain Zebedee Mayo got there ahead of him. Captain Zeb was. .h.i.tching his white and ancient steed to the post as the doctor hove in sight.

"By mighty!" the captain exclaimed, with a sigh of relief, "I'm glad enough you've come, doctor. I hated to go in there alone. You've heard, of course."

"Yes, I've heard."

"Say, ain't it wonderful! I'm tickled all up one side and sorry all down t'other. Nat's a true-blue feller, and I'm glad enough that he ain't shark bait; but what about the minister and her? She's promised to Nat, you know, and--"

"I know. Don't I know! I've been going over the affair and trying to see a way out ever since I heard of the telegram. Tut! tut! I'm like you, mighty glad Hammond is safe, but it would have spared complications if he had stayed wherever he's been for a few months longer. We would have married those two in there by that time."

"Sartin we would. But he didn't stay. Are you goin' to tell Mr. Ellery?"

"Certainly not. And I hope he hasn't been told. He's getting well fast now, but he mustn't be worried, or back he'll go again. We must see Mrs.

Coffin. Keziah is our main hold. That woman has got more sense than all the rest of us put together."

But it was Grace, not Keziah, who opened the shanty door in answer to their knock. She was pale and greeted them calmly, but it was evident that her calmness was the result of sheer will power.

"Won't you come in, doctor?" she asked. "Good afternoon, Captain Mayo."