Vesty of the Basins Part 26

"P'litical centre o' the United States of Ameriky?"

"Why, yes."

"An' you don't know what ructions be!"

Loud laughter greeted this sally; only the man who had been in California sat moody, his basilisk eye fixed upon me.

"Then I'll tell ye what ructions be," proceeded Captain Pharo, breathing stertorously through his pipe; "it's repealin' all our optional acts, for one thing! We can't inst.i.toot an optional act down here, but what you go an' repeal it!"

"Oh, stuff!" said the high and hot-headed young man, quite taken off his level by the laughter round him; "I don't either!"

"I say ye do!" said Captain Pharo, waxing more and more wroth; "ye sets some feller t' work there, 't never see salt water, t' make our laws for us; 'lows us to ketch all the sp.a.w.n lobsters and puts injunctions onter the little ones: like takin' people when they gits to be sixteen or twenty year old, 'n' choppin' their heads off--yer race is goin' to multiply almighty fast, ain't it?"

"I hadn't observed any lack of increase in your amiable race, sir."

"Ye hadn't, hadn't yer?" said Captain Pharo, in the voice of a smouldering volcano, laying a fresh match to his pipe.

"Moderation," liquidly pealed in the voice of Captain Leezur--"moderation 's the rewl----"

"'N' I'll tell ye of another optional act o' ourn 't ye repeals; but ye can tell 'em 't we git it jest the same--though it 's racktified 'tell it 's p'ison."

"Ye can't all'as git it, even racktified," said Shamgar: "onct when the boat wa'n't in for a couple o' weeks, I got kind o' desp'rit over a pain in my chist; hadn't nothin' but two bottles o' 'Lightnin' External Rheumatiz Cure,' so I took 'em straight. They said 't for a spell thar' I was the howlin'est case o' drunk they ever see."

"The wu'st case o' 'nebr'ancy this State 's ever known," said Captain Dan Kirtland, "was a man up to Callis jail, 't had been 'bleedged to take a spree on 'lemon extract;' he sot fire t' everything he could lay his hand to."

"Look a' that, will ye?" said Captain Pharo to the haughty Was.h.i.+ngtonian; "yit you don't know nothin' 'bout ructions. You can repeal every optional act 't a man makes, but you ain't got no idee o'

ructions----"

Captain Pharo's voice had now reached such a pathetic and eloquent pitch that Captain Judah left his trumpet in the ball-room and joined us, in time to mingle with the cheers that were still further discomfiting the high and hot-headed young man.

"What you talkin' about?" retorted the latter through his dazzling white teeth. "I'm not in politics."

"Why didn't ye say so, then?" said Captain Pharo calmly, "and not keep me standin' here wastin' my breath on ye?"

"Moderation," sweetly chimed in the voice of Captain Leezur--"moderation in all things, even as low down as pa.s.snips."

The man who had been in California had been constantly drawing near me, but Captain Judah, antic.i.p.ating him, was already at my side.

"You're a stranger," said he: "perhaps you never heard any of Angie Fay--Angie Fay Kobbe's poetry?"

He had a rosy face: in spite of former long sea-wear, not blowzed, but delicately tinted; he snuffled when he talked in a way which I could only define as cla.s.sical; and it was admitted that his nosegay vest and blue coat, as far as tender refinement went, far surpa.s.sed anything in the room.

"That's Angie Fay Kobbe, my wife, at the organ. Ten years ago, when I was still cruising, I found and rescued her from a southern cyclone!"

I murmured astonishment, though in truth something of a cyclonic atmosphere still hovered about Mrs. Kobbe, not only in her method of performance on the organ, but in her sparkling features, young and beautiful, her wide-flowing curled hair.

"How old does she seem to you to be, sir?"

"She looks to me," I said, with honesty, "to be eighteen or twenty--twenty-five at the most."

"Sir, she is forty!" said Captain Judah proudly. Angie Fay shot him a bewitching glance through the open door.

"She is not only a skilled performer on the keys, as you see, but she is a wide-idead thinker. If it would not detain you, sir, against previous inclination to the ball-room, I should like to read you some of her poetry."

Glances too oppressed by awe to contain envy were cast upon me by my former companions from afar; even the man who had been in California was retreating in baffled dismay.

"This first," said Captain Judah, drawing a roll from his pocket, "though brief, has been called by many wide-idead thinkers a 'rounded globe of pathos:' men, strong men, have wept over it. It has had a yard built around it; in other words, it has been framed, and hung in many a bereaved household; let me read:

"'Farewell, my husband dear, farewell!

Adieu! farewell to you.

And you, my children dear, adieu!

Farewell! farewell to thee!

Adieu! farewell! adieu!'

"Were you looking for your handkerchief, sir?"

"Yes," said I, accidentally swallowing whole a nervine lozenge which Captain Leezur had given me.

"This," said Captain Judah, with an expressive smile, as he opened another roll, "if you will excuse the egotism, refers to an experience of my own. I was once, when master of a whaler, nearly killed in a conflict with a whale; in fact, I am accustomed to speak of it paradoxically--or shall I say hyperbolically--as 'The time when I was killed!' My account of it made a great impression upon Angie; but I will read:

"'Upon the deep and foaming brine, My Judah's blood was spilled.

The anguished tears gush from my eyes.

O Judah, wast thou killed?

"'Had I beheld that awful scene, I should have turned me pale, My eyes were mercifully hence, When Judah killed the whale.'

"It was I, so to speak, that was killed," said Captain Judah, with his peculiar smile; "the whale escaped. But for the sake of symphony, Angie has used that poetic license, familiar, as you know, to wide-idead thinkers. Or let me read you this----"

Dimmer and dimmer grew the faces of my former jovial company; but I had one friend, stout, even for this emergency.

I heard a voice coming--

[Ill.u.s.tration: Music fragment: "'Or as the morn-ing flow'r, The blight--']

Judah! Judah! Judah! drop 'er, I say, an' come along!" Captain Pharo winked.

"On some other occasion, sir," said Captain Judah, returning the roll to his pocket with cheerful haste, "I shall be happy."

Almost before I was aware that I was liberated, the s.h.i.+fty spectre, whose basilisk eye had not released me, stood at my side.

"You oughter have seen," he began, "the time 't I was killed in Californy----"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Music fragment: "'The blighting wind sweeps o'er, she with-']

Major! major! major! drop 'er, I say, an' come along, by clam!"