Sheila of Big Wreck Cove by James A. Cooper

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SHEILA OF BIG WRECK COVE
_A Story of Cape Cod_

By JAMES A. COOPER

AUTHOR OF
_"Tobias o' the Light," "Cap'n Jonah's Fortune"
"Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper," etc._

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
R. EMMETT OWEN

A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York

Published by arrangement with George Sully & Company
Printed in U.S.A.

COPYRIGHT, 1921 (AS A SERIAL)

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY

[Frontispiece: "Come here and look at this craft, Prudence."
Page 11 (_Sheila of Big Wreck Cove._)]

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. CAP'N IRA AND PRUE
II. THE CAPTAIN OF THE SEAMEW
III. THE QUEEN OF SHEBA
IV. AT THE LATHAM HOUSE
V. LOOKING FOR IDA MAY
VI. AN UNSATISFACTORY INTERVIEW
VII. AT THE RESTAURANT
VIII. SHEILA
IX. A GIRL'S STORY
X. THE PLOT
XI. AT BIG WRECK COVE
XII. A NEW HAND AT THE HELM
XIII. SOME YOUNG MEN APPEAR
XIV. THE HARVEST HOME FESTIVAL
XV. AN INVITATION ACCEPTED
XVI. MEMORIES--AND TUNIS
XVII. AUNT LUCRETIA
XVIII. IDA MAY THINKS IT OVER
XIX. THE ARRIVAL
XX. THE LIE
XXI. AT SWORDS' POINTS
XXII. A WAY OUT
XXIII. A CALL UNANNOUNCED
XXIV. EUNEZ PARETA
XXV. TO LOVE AND BE LOVED
XXVI. ELDER MINNETT HAS HIS SAY
XXVII. CAP'N IRA SPEAKS OUT
XXVIII. GONE
XXIX. ON THE TRAIL
XXX. THE STORM
XXXI. BITTER WATERS
XXXII. A GIRL TO THE RESCUE
XXXIII. A HAVEN OF REST

CHAPTER I

CAP'N IRA AND PRUE

Seated on this sunshiny morning in his old armchair of bent hickory,
between his knees a cane on the head of which his gnarled hands
rested, Captain Ira Ball was the true retired mariner of the old
school. His ruddy face was freshly shaven, his scant, silvery hair
well smoothed; everything was neat and trig about him, including his
glazed, narrow-brimmed hat, his blue pilot-cloth coat, pleated shirt
front as white as snow, heavy silver watch chain festooned upon his
waist-coat, and blue-yarn socks showing between the bottom of his
full, gray trouser legs and his well-blacked low shoes.

For Cap'n Ira had commanded passenger-carrying craft in his day, and
was a bit of a dandy still. The niceties of maritime full dress were
as important to his mind now that he had retired from the sea to
spend his remaining days in the Ball homestead on Wreckers' Head as
when he had trod the quarter-deck of the old _Susan Gatskill_, or
had occupied the chief seat at her saloon table.

"I don't know what's to become of us," repeated Cap'n Ira, wagging a
thoughtful head, his gaze, as that of old people often is, fixed
upon a point too distant for youthful eyes to see.

"I can't see into the future, Ira, any clearer than you can,"
rejoined his wife, glancing at his sagging, blue-coated shoulders
with some gentle apprehension.

She was a frail, little, old woman, one of those women who, after a
robust middle age, seem gradually to shrivel to the figure of what
they were in their youth, but with no charm of girlish lines
remaining. Her face was wrinkled like a russet apple in February,
and it had the colorings of that grateful fruit. She sat on the
stone slab which served for a back door stoop peeling potatoes.

"I swan, Prue, you cut me in two places this mornin' when you shaved
me," said Cap'n Ira suddenly and in some slight exasperation. "And I
can't handle that dratted razor myself."

"Maybe you could get John-Ed Williams to come over and shave you,
Ira."

"John-Ed's got his work to do. Then again, how're we going to pay
him for such jobs? I swan! I can't afford a vally, Prue. Besides,
you need help about the house more than I need a steward. I can get
along without being shaved so frequent, I s'pose, but there's times
when you can't scurce lift a pot of potatoes off the stove."

"Oh, now, Ira, I ain't so bad as all that!" declared his wife
mildly.

"Yes, you be. I am always expecting you to fall down, or hurt
yourself some way. And as for looking out for the Queen of Sheby--"

"Now, Ira, Queenie ain't no trouble scurcely."

"Huh! She's more trouble than all our money, that's sure. And she's
eating her head off."

"Now, don't say that," urged his wife in that soothing tone which
often irritated Cap'n Ira more than it mollified him.

He tapped the metal top of the huge knob of his cane and the spring
cover flew open. Ira took a pinch of snuff, inhaled it, closed the
cover of the box, delicately brushed a few flecks of the pungent
powder from his coat lapel and shirt front, and then, burying his
nose in a large silk handkerchief, vented a prodigious:

"_A-choon!_"

Prudence uttered a surprised squeak, like a mouse being stepped on,
jerked herself to a half-standing posture, and the potatoes rolled
to every point of the compass.

"Goodness gracious gallop!" she ejaculated, quite shaken out of her
usual calm. "I should think, Ira, as many times as I've told you
that scares me most into a conniption, that you'd signal me when
you're going to take snuff. I--I'm all of a shake, I be."

"I swan! I'm sorry, Prue. I oughter fire a gun, I allow, before
speakin' the ship."

"Fire a gun!" repeated the old woman, panting as she scrambled for
the potatoes. "That's what I object to, Ira. You want to speak
_this_ ship 'fore you shoot that awful noise. I never can get used
to it."

"There, there!" he said, trying to poke the more distant potatoes
toward her with his cane. He could not himself stoop; or, if he did,
he could only sit erect again after the method of a ratchet wheel.
"I won't do so again, Prudence. I be an onthoughtful critter, if
ever there was one."

Prudence had recovered the last potato. She stopped to pat his ruddy
cheek, nor was it much wrinkled, before she returned to peeling the
potatoes.

"I know you don't mean to, Iry," she crooned. Married couples like
the Balls, where the man has been at home only for brief visits
between voyages, if they really love each other, never grow weary of
the little frills on connubial bliss usually worn shabby by other
people before the honeymoon is past. "I know you don't mean to. But
when you sneeze I think it's the crack o' doom."

"I'm sorry about them potatoes," repeated Cap'n Ira. "I make you a
lot of extry work, Prue. Sometimes I feel, fixed as I be in health,
I oughter be in the Sailors' Snug Harbor over to Paulmouth. I do,
for a fact."

"And what would become of me?" cried the old woman, appalled.

"Well," returned Cap'n Ira, "you couldn't be no worse off than you
be. We'd miss each other a heap, I know."

"Ira!" cried his wife. "Ira, I'd just _die_ without you now that
I've got you to myself at last. Those long years you were away so
much, and us not being blessed with children--"

Ira Ball made a sudden clucking sound with his tongue. That was a
sore topic of conversation, and he always tried to dodge it.

"It did seem sometimes," pursued Prudence, wiping her eyes with a
bit of a handkerchief that she took from her bosom, "as though I
wasn't an honestly married woman. I know that sounds awful"--and she
shook her head--"but it was so, you only getting home as you did
between voyages. But I was always looking forward to the time when
you would be home for good."

"Don't you s'pose I looked forward to casting anchor?" he demanded
warmly. "Seemed like the time never would come. I was always trying
to speculate a little so as to make something besides my skipper's
pay and share. That--that's why I got bit in that Sea-Gold
proposition. That feller's prospectus did read mighty reasonable,
Prudence."

"I know it did, Ira," she agreed cordially. "I believed in it just
as strong as you did. You warn't none to blame."

"Well, I dunno. It's mighty nice of you to say so, Prue. But they
told me afterward that I might have knowed that a feller couldn't
extract ten dollars' wuth of gold from the whole Atlantic Ocean, not
if he bailed it dry!"

"We've got enough left to keep us, Ira."

"Just about. Just about. That is just it. When I was taken down with
this rheumatiz and the hospital doctors in New York told me I could
never think of pacing my own quarter no more, we had just enough
left invested in good securities for us to live on the int'rest."

"And the old place, here, Ira," added his wife cheerfully.

"Which ain't much more than a shelter," he rejoined rather bitterly.
"And just as I say, it isn't fit for two old folks like us to live
alone in. Why, we can't even raise our own potatoes no more. And I
never yet heard of pollack swimmin' ashore and begging to be split
and dried against winter. No, sir!"

"The Lord's been good to us, Ira. We ain't never suffered yet," she
told him softly.

"I know that. We ain't suffering for food and shelter. But, I swan,
Prue, we be suffering for some young person about the house. Now,
hold on! 'Twarn't for us to have children. That warn't meant. We've
been all through that, and it's settled. But that don't change the
fact that we need somebody to live with us if we're going to live
comfortable."

"Oh, dear, if my niece Sarah had lived! She used to stay with me
when she was a gal and you was away," sighed Prudence.

"But she married and had a gal of her own. She brought her here that
time I was home after my first v'y'ge on the _Susan Gatskill_. A
pretty baby if ever there was one."

"Ida May Bostwick! Bostwick was Sarah's married name. I heard
something about Ida May only the other day."

"You did?" exclaimed Cap'n Ira, much interested.

"Yes, Ira. Annabell Coffin, she who was a Cuttle, was visiting his
folks in Boston, and she learned that Sarah Bostwick's daughter was
working behind the counter in some store there. She has to work for
her livin', poor child."

"I swan!" ejaculated the captain.

Much as he had been about the world, Cap'n Ira looked upon most
mundane affairs with the eyes of the true Cape man. Independence is
bred in the bone of his tribe. A tradesman or storekeeper is, after
all, not of the shipmaster caste. And a clerk, working "behind the
counter" of any store, is much like a man before the mast.

"It does seem too bad," sighed Prudence. "She was a pretty baby, as
you say, Ira."

"Sarah was nice as she could be to you," was the old man's
thoughtful comment.

"Yes. But her husband, Bostwick, was only a mechanic. Of course, he
left nothing. Them city folks are so improvident," said Prudence. "I
wish't we was able to do something for little Ida May, Ira. Think of
her workin' behind a counter!"

"I am a-thinkin'," growled the old captain. "See here, Prue. What's
to hinder us doin' something for her?"

Prudence looked at him, startled.

"Why, Iry, you say yourself we can scurce help ourselves."

"It's a mighty ill wind that don't blow fair for some craft,"
declared the ancient mariner, nodding. "We do need help right here,
Prudence, and that gal of Sarah Bostwick's could certainly fill the
bill. On the other hand, she'd be a sight better off here on the
Cape, living with us, getting rosy and healthy, and having this old
place and what we've got left when we die, than she would be slavin'
behind a counter in any city store. What d'you think?"

"Ira!" exclaimed his wife, clasping her hands, potato knife and all.
"Ira! I think that's a most wonderful idea. It takes you to think up
things. You're just wonderful!"

Cap'n Ira preened himself like the proud old gander he was. He
heaved himself out of the chair by the aid of his cane, a present
from one grateful group of passengers that had sailed in his charge,
on the _Susan Gatskill_.

"Well, well!" he said. "Let's think of it. Let's see, where's my
glass? Here 'tis."

He seized the old-fashioned collapsible spyglass, which he favored
rather than the newer binoculars, and started off to "pace the
quarter," as he called the path from the back door to the grassy
cart track which joined the road at the lower corner of the Ball
premises. This highway wandered down from the Head into the fishing
village along the inner beach of Big Wreck Cove. Prudence watched
Ira with fond but comprehending eyes. She saw how broken he was, how
stumbling his feet when he first started off, and the swaying
locomotion that betrayed that feebleness of both brain and body that
can never be denied.

Somewhere on the Head in the old days the wreckers had kept their
outlook for ships in distress. Those harpies of the coast had
fattened on the bones of storm-racked craft. It was one of those
battered freighters that, nearly two centuries before, had been
driven into the cove itself, to become embalmed in Cape history as
"the big wreck."

The Balls and the Lathams, the Honeys and the Coffins of that
ancient day had "wracked" the stranded craft most thoroughly. But
they had not overlooked the salvation of her ship's company of
foreigners. She had been a Portuguese vessel, and although the Cape
Codder, then, as now, was opposed to "foreigners," refuge was
extended to the people saved from the big wreck.

Near the straggling settlement at the cove a group of shacks had
sprung up to shelter the "Portygees" from the stranded-vessel. As
her bones were slowly engulfed in the marching sands, through the
decades that passed, the people who had come ashore from the big
wreck had waxed well to do, bred families of strong, handsome, brown
men and black-eyed, glossy-haired women who flashed their white
teeth in smiles that were almost startling. Now one end of "the
port," as the village of Big Wreck Cove was usually called by the
natives, was known as Portygee Town.

Wreckers' Head boasted of several homes of retired shipmasters and
owners of Cap'n Ira's ilk. These ancient sea dogs, on such a day as
this, were unfailingly found "walking the poop" of their front
yards, or wherever they could take their diurnal exercise,
binoculars or spyglass in hand, their vision more often fixed
seaward than on the land.

Cap'n Ira had scarcely put the glass to his eye for a first squint
at his "position" when he exclaimed:

"I swan! That's a master-pretty sight. I ain't seen a prettier in
many a day. Come here and look at this craft, Prudence."

She hurried to join him. Her motions when she was on her feet were
birdlike, yet there was the same unsteadiness in her walk as in
Cap'n Ira's. Only, at the moment, he did not see it, for his eye was
glued to the telescope.

"What do you see, Ira?" she asked.

"Clap this glass to your eye," said her husband. He steadied the
telescope, having pointed it for her. "See that suit of sails? Ain't
they grand? And the taper of them masts? She's a bird!"

"Why, what schooner is it?" asked Prudence. "I never saw her before,
did I? She's bearing in for the cove."

"I cal'late she is," agreed Cap'n Ira. "And I cal'late by the
newness of that suit of sails and her lines and all that she's Tunis
Latham's new craft that he went up to Marblehead last week to bring
down here and put into commission."

"The _Seamew!_" cried Prudence, in a pleased voice. "Isn't she a
pretty sight?"

"She's a sightly craft. Looks more like a racing yacht than a cargo
boat. Still and all, Tunis has got judgment. And he's put nigh every
cent he's got, all Peke Latham left him, into this schooner. And she
not new."

"I hope Tunis has made no mistake," sighed Prudence, releasing the
glass for Ira to look through once more. "There has been trouble
enough over Peleg Latham's money."

"More trouble than the money amounted to. Split the family wide
open. 'Rion Latham was saying to me he believed Peke never meant the
money should go all one way. The Medway Lathams, them 'Rion belongs
to, is all as sore as carbuncles about Tunis getting it. But I tell
Tunis as long as the court says the money should be his, let 'Rion
and all them yap like the hungry dogs they be. Tunis has got the
marrer bone."

"Does seem a pity," the old woman said, still watching the white
splotch against the background of gray and blue. "Families ought to
be at peace."

"Peace! I swan!" snorted Cap'n Ira. "'Rion Latham is about as much
given to peace as a wild tagger. But he knows which half of his
biscuit's buttered. He'll sail with Tunis as long as Tunis pays him
wages."

The captain continued to study the approaching schooner while
Prudence went back to her household tasks.

CHAPTER II

THE CAPTAIN OF THE SEAMEW

Tunis Latham's _Seamew_, tacking for the channel into Big Wreck
Cove, wings full-spread, skimming the heaving blue of the summer
sea, looked like a huge member of the tern family. From Wreckers'
Head and the other sand bluffs guarding this roadstead from the
heave of the Atlantic rollers, the schooner with her yachtlike lines
was truly a picture to please the most exacting mariner.

On her deck paced the young captain whose personal affairs had been
a subject of comment between Cap'n Ira Ball and his wife. He was a
heavy-set, upstanding, blue-jerseyed figure, lithe and as spry on
his feet as a cat. Tunis Latham was thirty, handsome in the bold way
of longshore men, and ruddy-faced. He had crisp, short, sandy hair;
his cheeks, chin, and lip were scraped as clean as his palm; his
eyes were like blue-steel points, but with humorous wrinkles at the
outer corners of them, matched by a faint smile that almost always
wreathed his lips. Altogether he was a man that a woman would be
sure to look at twice.

The revelation of the lighter traits of his character counteracted
the otherwise sober look of Tunis Latham. His sternness and fitness
to command were revealed at first glance; his softer attributes
dawned upon one later.

As he swayed back and forth across the deck of the flying _Seamew_,
rolling easily in sailor gait to the pitching of the schooner, his
sharp glance cast alow and then aloft betrayed the keen perception
and attentive mind of the master mariner, while his surface
appearance merely suggested a young man pridefully enjoying the
novelty of pacing the deck of his first command. For this was the
maiden trip of the _Seamew_ under this name and commanded by this
master.

She was not a new vessel, but neither was she old. At least, her
decks were not marred, her rails were ungashed with the wear of
lines, and even her fenders were almost shop-new. Of course, any
craft may have a fresh suit of sails; and new paint and gilding on
the figurehead or a new name board under the stern do not bespeak a
craft just off the builder's ways. Yet there was an appearance about
the schooner-yacht which would assure any able seaman at first
glance that she was still to be sea-tried. She was like a maiden at
her first dance, just venturing out upon the floor.

An old salt hung to the _Seamew's_ wheel as the bonny craft sped
channelward. Horace Newbegin was a veritable sea dog. He had sailed
every navigable sea in all this watery world, and sailed in almost
every conceivable sort of craft. And he had sailed many voyages
under Tunis Latham's father, who had owned and commanded the
four-master _Ada May_, which, ill-freighted and ill-fated at last,
had struck and sunk on the outer Hebrides, carrying to the bottom
most of the hands as well as the commander of the partially insured
ship.

This misfortune had kept Tunis Latham out of a command of his own
until he was thirty; for Cape Cod boys that come of masters'
families and are born navigators usually tread their own decks years
before the age at which Tunis was pacing that of the _Seamew_ on
this summer day.

"How does she handle now, Horry?" asked the skipper, wheeling
suddenly to face the old steersman.

"Thar's still that tug to sta'bo'd, Captain Tunis," growled the old
man.

"But you keep her full on her course."

"Spite o' that? In course. But I can feel her tuggin' like a big
bluefish trying to bolt with hook and sinker. Never did feel that
same tug to sta'bo'd but once before on any craft. I told you that."

Tunis Latham nodded. The old man's keen eyes tried to read the
skipper's face. He could scan the signs in sea and sky at a glance,
but he confessed that the captain of the _Seamew_ revealed no more
of his inner thoughts than had the mahogany countenance of the older
Captain Latham with whom Horry Newbegin had so long sailed.

"Well," the steersman said finally, "I've told ye all I can tell ye.
That other schooner that had a tug to sta'bo'd like this, the
_Marlin B._, got a bad name from the Georges to Monomoy P'int. You
know that."

"Cat's foot!" ejaculated Tunis cheerfully. "The _Marlin B._ was sold
for a pleasure yacht and taken half around the world. A Chilean
guano millionaire bought her the year after the Sutro Brothers took
her off the Banks."

"Ye-as. That's what Sutro Brothers says," and the old man wagged his
head doubtfully. "But there's just as much difference in ships, as
there is in men. Ain't never been two men just per_zact_-ly alike.
No two craft ever sailed or steered same as same, Captain Tunis. I
steered the _Martin B._ out o' Salem on her second trip, without
knowing what she'd been through, you can believe, on her first."

"Well, well!" Tunis broke in sharply. "Just keep your mind on what
you are doing now, Horry. You're supposed to be steering the
_Seamew_ into Big Wreck Cove. Don't undertake to shave a piece off
the Lighthouse Point reef."

The steersman did not answer. From long experience with these
Lathams, Horace Newbegin knew just how much interference or advice
they would stand.

"And, by gum, that ain't much!" he growled to himself.

He took the beautifully sailing schooner in through the channel in a
masterly manner. He knew that more ancient skippers than Cap'n Ira
Ball, up there on Wreckers' Head, would be watching the _Seamew_
make the cove, and old Horry Newbegin wanted them to say it was well
done.

Half an hour later the anchor was dropped fifty yards off Portygee
Town. Captain Tunis ordered the gig lowered to take him ashore and,
after giving the mate some instructions regarding stowage and the
men's shore leave, he was rowed over to Luiz Wharf. 'Rion Latham, a
red-headed, pimply faced young man, sidled up to Horace Newbegin.

"Well, what do you think of the hoodoo ship, Horrors?" he hoarsely
whispered.

Newbegin stared at him unwaveringly, and the red-haired one repeated
the question. The old salt finally batted one eye, slowly and
impressively.

"D'you know what answer the little boy got that asked the quahog the
time o' day?" he drawled. "Not a word. Not a derned word, 'Rion."

Landing at the fish wharf, Tunis Latham walked up the straggling
street of the district inhabited for the most part by smiling brown
men and women. Fayal and Cape Cod are strangely analogous,
especially upon a summer's day. The houses he passed had one room;
they were little more than shacks. But there were gay colors
everywhere in the dress of both men and women. It was believed that
these Portygee fishermen would have their seines dyed red and yellow
if the fish would swim into them.

A young woman sitting upon a doorstep, nursing a little, bald,
brown-headed baby, dropped a gay handkerchief over her bared bosom
but nodded and smiled at the captain of the _Seamew_ with right good
fellowship. He knew all these people, and most of them, the young
women at least, admired Tunis; but he was too self-centered and
busied with his own thoughts and affairs to comprehend this.

At the corner of one of the houses a girl stood--a tall,
lean-flanked, but deep-bosomed creature, as graceful as a well-grown
sapling. Her calico frock clung to the lines of her matured figure
as though she had just stepped up out of the sea itself. Around her
head she had banded a crimson bandanna, but it allowed the escape of
glossy black hair that waved prettily. Her lips were as red as
poppies, full, voluptuous; her eyes were sloe-black and as soft as a
cow's. Fortunately for the languishing girl's peace of mind--she had
placed herself there at the corner of the house to wait for Tunis
since the moment the _Seamew_ had dropped anchor--she did not know
that the young captain had noticed her only as "that cow" as he
swung by on his way to the road that wound up the slope of Wreckers'
Head.

Neither Eunez Pareta--nor any other girl of the port, Portygee or
Yankee--had ever made Tunis Latham's heart flutter. He was not
impervious to the blandishments of all feminine beauty. As Cap'n Ira
Ball would have said, Tunis was "a general admirer of the sect." And
as the young man passed the languishing Eunez with a cheerful nod
and smile there flashed into his memory an entirely different
picture, but one of a girl nevertheless. Somehow the memory of that
girl in Scollay Square kept coming back to his mind.

He had gone up by train for the _Seamew_ and her crew, and naturally
he had spent one night in Boston. Coming up out of the North End
after a late supper, he had stopped upon one side of the square to
watch the passing throng, some hurrying home from work, some
hurrying to theaters and other places of amusement, but all
hurrying. Nowhere did he see the slow, but carrying, stride of a man
used to open spaces. And the narrow-skirted girls could scarcely
hobble.

A narrow skirt, however, had not led Tunis Latham to give particular
note to one certain girl in the throng. She had stepped through the
door of a cheap but garish restaurant. Somebody had thrown a peeling
on the sidewalk, and she had slipped on it. Tunis had leaped and
caught her before she measured her length. She looked up into his
face with startled, violet eyes that seemed, in that one moment, to
hold in them a fascination and power that the Cape man had never
dreamed a woman's eyes could possess.

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