Just Sixteen Part 8

"I wish I could be a.s.sured of that," remarked her father in a tone of weary resignation. "What I am afraid of is that she will come, or try to come, another day, and then there will be all this to do over again."

He indicated by a gesture the door of the dining-room, from which queer m.u.f.fled sounds were heard just then.

"Peter seems as much afflicted by this disappointment as you are, Otillie," he added. "Come, my child, don't cry over the matter. It can't be helped. Wind and waves oblige n.o.body, not even kings and queens."

"There are compensations for all our troubles," said Miss Niffin in her primmest tone. "We must bear up, and try to feel that all is for the best." Miss Niffin seemed to find it quite easy to be morally consoled for her share of loss in the giving up of the Queen's visit.

"How can you talk in that way!" cried Otillie, who was not in the least in awe of Miss Niffin. "If I had broken my comb, you would have said exactly the same, I know you would! There isn't any compensation at all for this trouble, and it's no use my trying to feel that it's for the best,--it isn't."

"We never know," replied Miss Niffin piously.

"Come," said Mr. Le Breton, desiring to put an end to the altercation, "I don't know why we should go hungry because her Majesty won't come and eat our luncheon. Take my arm, Miss Niffin, and let us have something to eat. Marie will break her heart if all her trouble and pains are not appreciated by somebody."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The peac.o.c.ks, tired of waiting for their morning meal, and finding the windows open, had entered and helped themselves.--_Page 107._]

He gave his arm to Miss Niffin as he spoke, and moved forward to the dining-room. Otillie followed, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief, and feeling that the dainties would stick in her throat if she tried to swallow them, she was so very, very, dreadfully disappointed.

But when Mr. Le Breton reached the dining-room door he stopped suddenly as if shot, and gave a sort of shout! No one could speak for a moment.

There was the feast, so prettily and tastefully arranged only an hour before, a ma.s.s of ruins! The flowers were upset, the fruit, tumbled and mashed, stained the cloth and the floor. Wine and lemonade dripped from the table's edge. The pink and yellow jellies, the forms of Charlotte Russe and blanc-mange and the frosted cakes and tarts were reduced to smears and crumbs. Where the gigantic pasty had stood remained only an empty dish, and above the remains, rearing, pecking, clawing, gobbling, appeared six long blue-green necks, which dipped and rose and dipped again!

The peac.o.c.ks, tired of waiting for their morning meal, and finding the windows open, had entered and helped themselves! There was Lorenzo the Magnificent with a sponge-cake in his beak, and Peri gobbling down a lump of blanc-mange, and the Grand Panjandrum with both claws embedded in a pyramid of macaroons. Their splendid tails were draggled with cream and crumbs, and sticky with jelly; altogether they presented a most greedy and disreputable appearance! The strangest part of the whole was that while they stuffed themselves they preserved a dead silence, and did not express their enjoyment by one of their usual noisy screams. It was evident that they felt that the one great opportunity of their lives was going on, and that they must make the most of it.

At the sound of Mr. Le Breton's shout the peac.o.c.ks started guiltily.

Then they gathered up their tails as best they might, and, half flying, half running, scuttled out of the windows and far across the lawn, screaming triumphantly as they went, while Otillie tumbled into a chair and laughed till she cried.

"Oh! didn't they look funny?" she gasped, holding her sides.

"Rather expensive fun," replied the Seigneur ruefully. "But it is one comfort that we have it to ourselves." Then the humor of the situation seized on him also, and he sat down and laughed almost as hard as Otillie.

"Dear me! what a mercy that her Majesty didn't come!" remarked Miss Niffin in an awe-struck tone.

"Good gracious," cried Otillie with sudden horror at the thought, "suppose she had! Suppose we had all walked in at that door and found the peac.o.c.ks here! And of course we should! Of course they would have done it just the same if there had been fifty queens to see them! How dreadful it would have been! Oh, there are compensations, Miss Niffin; I see it now."

So Otillie was reconciled to her great disappointment, though the Queen never has tried to land at Sark again, and perhaps never will. For, as Otillie sensibly says, "It is a great deal better that we should be disappointed than that the Queen should be; for if she had been very hungry, and most likely she would have been after sailing and all, she would not have thought the Grand Panjandrum with his feet in the macaroons half so funny as we did, and would have been truly and really vexed."

So it was all for the best, as Miss Niffin said.

THE s.h.i.+PWRECKED COLOGNE-BOTTLE.

It seemed the middle of the night, though it was really only three o'clock in the morning, when little Davy Crocker was wakened by a sudden stamping of feet on the stoop below his window, and by a voice calling out that a s.h.i.+p was ash.o.r.e off the Point, and that Captain Si, Davy's uncle, must turn out and help with the life-boat.

Davy was a "landlubber," as his cousin Sam Coffin was wont to a.s.sert whenever he wanted to tease him. He had lived all his short life at Townsend Harbor, up among the New Hamps.h.i.+re hills, and until this visit to his aunt at Nantucket, had never seen the sea. All the more the sea had for him a great interest and fascination, as it has for everybody to whom it has not from long familiarity become a matter of course.

Conversation in Nantucket is apt to possess a nautical and, so to speak, salty flavor. Davy, since his arrival, had heard so much about s.h.i.+ps which had foundered, or gone to pieces on rocks, or burned up, or sprung leaks and had to be pumped out, that his mind was full of images of disaster, and he quite longed to realize some of them. To see a s.h.i.+pwreck had become his great ambition. He was not particular as to whether the s.h.i.+p should burn or founder or go ash.o.r.e, any of these would do, only he wanted all the sailors to be saved.

Once he had gone with his cousins to the South Sh.o.r.e on the little puffing railroad which connects Nantucket town with Siasconsett, and of which all the people of the island are so justly proud; and there on the beach, amid the surf-rollers which look so soft and white and are so cruelly strong, he had seen a great piece of a s.h.i.+p. Nearly the whole of the bow end it appeared to be. It was much higher than Davy's head, and seemed to him immense and formidable; yet this enormous thing the sea had taken into its grasp and tossed to and fro like a plaything and at last flung upon the sand as if it were a toy of which it had grown weary. It gave Davy an idea of the great power of the water, and it was after seeing this that he began to long to witness a s.h.i.+pwreck. And now there was one, and the very sound of the word was enough to make him rub open his sleepy eyes and jump out of bed in a hurry!

But when he had groped his way to the window and pulled up the rattling paper shade, behold! there was nothing to be seen! The morning was intensely dark. A wild wind was blowing great dashes of rain on the gla.s.s, and the house shook and trembled as the blasts struck it.

Davy heard his uncle on the stairs, and hurried to the door. "Mayn't I go to the s.h.i.+pwreck with you, Uncle Si?" he called out.

"Go to what? Go back to bed, my boy, that's the place for you. There'll be s.h.i.+pwreck enough in the morning to satisfy all of us, I reckon."

Davy dared not disobey. He stumbled back to bed, making up his mind to lie awake and listen to the wind till it was light, and then go to see the s.h.i.+pwreck "anyhow." But it is hard to keep such resolutions when you are only ten years old. The next thing he knew he was rousing in amazement to find the room full of brilliant sunlight. The rain was over, though the wind still thundered furiously, and through the noise it made, the sea could be heard thundering louder still.

Davy jumped out of bed, dressed as fast as he could, and hurried downstairs. The house seemed strangely empty; Aunt Patty was not in the kitchen, nor was cousin Myra in the pantry skimming milk, as was usual at this hour of the day. Davy searched for them in woodshed, garden, and barn. At last he spied them on the "walk" at the top of the house, and ran upstairs to join them.

Do any of you know what a "walk" is? I suppose not, unless you have happened to live in a whaling-town. Many houses in Nantucket have them.

They are railed platforms, built on the peak of the roof between the chimneys, and are used as observatories from which to watch what is going on at sea. There the wives and sweethearts of the whalers used to go in the old days, and stand and sweep the ocean with spy-gla.s.ses, in hopes of seeing the s.h.i.+ps coming in from their long cruises each with the signals set which told if the voyage had been lucky or no, and how many barrels of oil and blubber she was bringing home. Then they used to watch the "camels," great hulls used as floats to lighten the vessels, go out and help the heavy-laden s.h.i.+p over the bar. And when that was done and every rope and spar conned and studied by the experienced eyes on the roofs, it was time to hurry down, hang on the welcoming pot, trim the fire and don the best gown, so as to make a bright home-coming for the long-absent husband or son.

Aunt Patty had a spy-gla.s.s at her eyes when Davy gained the roof. She was looking at the wrecked s.h.i.+p, which was plainly in view, beyond the little sandy down which separated the house from the sea. There she lay, a poor broken thing, stuck fast on one of the long reaches of sandy shoal which stretch about the island and make the navigation of its narrow and uncertain channels so difficult and sometimes so dangerous.

The heavy seas dashed over the half-sunken vessel every minute; between her and the sh.o.r.e two lifeboats were coming in under closely-reefed sails.

"Oh, do let me look through the gla.s.s!" urged Davy. When he was permitted to do so he uttered an exclamation of surprise, so wonderfully near did it make everything seem to be.

"Why, I can see their faces!" he cried. "There's Uncle Si! There's Sam!

And there's a very wet man! I guess he's one of the s.h.i.+pwrecked sailors!

Hurrah!" and Davy capered up and down.

"You unfeeling boy!" cried Myra, "give me the gla.s.s--you'll let it fall.

He's right, mother, father and Sam are coming ash.o.r.e as fast as they can sail, and they'll be wanting their breakfasts, of course. I'd better go down and mix the corn bread." She took one more look through the gla.s.s, announced that the other boat had some more of the s.h.i.+pwrecked men on board, she guessed, and that Abner Folger was steering; then she ran down the ladder, followed by her mother, and Davy was left to watch the boats in.

When he too went down, the kitchen was full of good smells of boiling coffee and frying eggs, and his uncle and Sam and the "very wet man"

were just entering the door together. The wet man, it appeared, was the captain of the wrecked vessel; the rest of the crew had been taken home by other people.

The captain was a long, brown, sinewy Maine man. He was soaked with sea-water and looked haggard and worn, as a man well might who had just spent such a terrible night; but he had kind, melancholy eyes, and a nice face, Davy thought. The first thing to be done was to get him into dry clothes, and Uncle Si carried him up to Davy's room for this purpose. Davy followed them. He felt as if he could never see enough of this, his first s.h.i.+pwrecked sailor.

When the captain had been made comfortable in Uncle Silas's flannel s.h.i.+rt and spare pea-jacket and a pair of Sam's trousers, he hung his own clothes up to dry, and they all went down to breakfast. Aunt Patty had done her best. She was very sorry for the poor man who had lost his s.h.i.+p, and she even brought out a tumbler of her best grape jelly by way of a further treat; but the captain, though he ate ravenously, as was natural to a man who had fasted so long, did not seem to notice what he was eating, and thus disappointed kind Aunt Patty. She comforted herself by thinking what she could get for dinner which he would like. Uncle Si and Sam were almost as hungry as the Maine captain, so not much was said till breakfast was over, and then they all jumped up and hurried out, for there was a deal to be done.

Davy felt very dull after they had gone. He had never heard of such a thing as "reaction," but that was what he was suffering from. The excitement of the morning had died out like a fire which has no more fuel to feed it, and he could not think of anything that he wanted to do. He hung listlessly round, watching Aunt Patty's brisk operations about the kitchen, and at last he thought he would go upstairs and see if the captain's clothes were beginning to dry. Wet as they were, they seemed on the whole the most interesting things in the house.

The clothes were not nearly dry, but on the floor, just below where the rough pea-jacket hung, lay a little s.h.i.+ning object. It attracted Davy's attention, and he stooped and picked it up.

It was a tiny bottle full of some sort of perfume, and set in a socket of plated filagree shaped like a caster, with a filagree handle. The bottle had a piece of white kid tied over its cork with a bit of blue ribbon. It was not a thing to tempt a boy's fancy, but Davy saw that it was pretty, and the idea came into his head that he should like to carry it home, to his little sister Bella. Bella was fond of perfumes, and the bottle had cologne in it, as Davy could smell without taking out the cork. He was sure that Bella would like it.

Davy had been brought up to be honest. I am sure that he did not mean to steal the cologne-bottle. The idea of stealing never entered his mind, and it would have shocked him had it done so. He was an imaginative little fellow, and the tiny waif seemed to him like a sh.e.l.l or a pebble, something coming out of the sea, which any one was at liberty to pick up and keep. He did not say to himself that it probably belonged to the captain, who might have a value for it, he did not think about the captain at all, he only thought of Bella. So after looking at the pretty toy for a while, he put it carefully away in the drawer where he kept his things, pus.h.i.+ng it far back, and drawing a pair of stockings in front of it, so that it might be hidden. He did not want anybody to meddle with the bottle; it was his now, or rather it was Bella's. Then he went up to the walk once more, and was so interested in watching the wreck and the boats, which, as the wind moderated, came and went between her and the sh.o.r.e, picking up the barrels and casks which were floated out of her hold, that he soon forgot all about the matter.

It was nearly dark before the two captains and Sam came back to eat the meal which had been ready for them since the middle of the afternoon.

Aunt Patty had taken off her pots and saucepans more than once and put them on again, to suit the long delay; but nothing was spoiled and everything tasted good, which showed how cleverly she had managed. The Maine captain--whose name it appeared was Joy--seemed more cheerful than in the morning, and more inclined to talk. But after supper, when he had gone upstairs and put on his own clothes, which Aunt Patty had kept before the fire nearly all day and had pressed with hot irons so that they looked almost as good as ever, his melancholy seemed to come on again. He sat and puffed at his pipe till Aunt Patty began to ask questions about the wreck. Captain Joy, it appeared, was part owner of the s.h.i.+p, whose name was the "Sarah Jane."

"She was called after my wife's sister," he told them, "and my little girl to home has the same name, 'Sarah Jane.' She is about the age of that boy there, or a mite older maybe,"--nodding toward Davy. "She wanted to come with me this vy'age, but her mother wouldn't hear of it, and I'm mighty thankful she wouldn't, as things have turned out. No child could have stood the exposure of such a night as we had and come out alive; and Sarah Jane, though she's as spry as a cricket and always on the go, isn't over strong."

The captain took a long pull at his pipe and looked dreamily into the fire.