The meeting served to rouse the professor. He stared searchingly over the group of rescued men.

"Where's the man who cut my lashings and helped me down to the deck? I don't see him," he said. "Louise, my dear, this is a very, very strange homecoming. And all my summer's work gone for nothing! But that man——"

"Cap'n Amazon Silt," said Lawford. "He stayed behind. There wasn't room in the boat."

"Cap'n Am'zon!" exclaimed several excited voices. But only one—and that Louise Grayling's—uttered another name:

"Cap'n Abe! Isn't he with you? Didn't you bring him ashore?"

"By heaven! that's so, Louise!" groaned Lawford. "They must both be out there. The two brothers are marooned on that rotten wreck!"

Already the kindly neighbors were hurrying the castaways in groups of twos and threes to the nearer dwellings. Anscomb was getting foot after foot of "the real stuff." The moving picture actors and the cottagers hung on the outskirts of the throng of natives, wide-eyed and marveling. They had all, on this day, gained a taste of the stern realities of life as it is along the shore.

Louise was desirous of getting her father to the store, for he was exhausted. Lawford turned back toward the group of life-saving men standing about the beached boat.

"If they can get her launched again they'll need me," he shouted back over his shoulder. "Poor Cap'n Abe and Cap'n Amazon———"

"You've done enough, boy," his father declared, clinging to the sleeve of Lawford's guernsey. "Don't risk your life again."

"Don't worry, dad. A fellow has to do his bit, you know."

Betty Gallup came to the assistance of Louise and helped support the professor. The woman's countenance was all wrinkled with trouble.

"He must be out there, too," she murmured to Louise. "Ain't none o' these chaps off the Curlew jest right yet—scar't blue, or suthin'. They don't seem to rightly sense that Cap'n Abe was with 'em all the time aboard that schooner."

"Poor Cap'n Abe!" groaned Louise again.

"And that old pirate's with him," said Betty. But her tone lacked its usual venom in speaking of Cap'n Amazon. "Who'd ha' thought it? I reckoned he was nothing but a bag o' wind, with all his yarns of bloody murder an' the like. But he is a Silt; no gettin' around that. And Cap'n Abe allus did say the Silts were proper seamen."

"Poor, poor Cap'n Abe!" sobbed Louise.

"Now, now!" soothed Betty. "Don't take on so, deary. They'll get 'em both. Never fear."

But the rising gale forbade another launching of the lifeboat for hours. The night shut down over the wind-ridden sea and shore, and by the pallid light fitfully playing over the tumbling waters the watchers along the sands saw the stricken Curlew being slowly wrenched to pieces by the waves that wolfed about and over her.



CHAPTER XXXII

ON THE ROLL OF HONOR

Stretched upon the couch in the living-room behind the store, with Diddimus purring beside him, Professor Grayling heard that evening the story of Cap'n Abe's masquerade. Betty Gallup had gone back to the beach and Louise could talk freely to her father.

"And he saved me, for your sake!" murmured the professor. "He gave me his place in the lifeboat! Ah, my dear Lou! there is something besides physical courage in this world. And I don't see but that your uncle has plenty of both kinds of bravery. Really, he is a wonderful man."

"He was a wonderful man," said Louise brokenly.

"I do not give up hope of his ultimate safety, my dear. The gale will blow itself out by morning. Captain Ripley is so badly hurt that he is being taken to Boston to-night, and the crew go with him. But if there is interest to be roused in the fate of the last man left upon the wreck——"

"Oh, I am sure the neighbors will do everything in their power. And Lawford, too!" she cried.

"The schooner is not likely to break up before morning. The departure of her crew to-night will make it all the easier for Mr. Abram Silt's secret to be kept," the professor reminded her.

"Yes. We will keep his secret," sighed Louise. "Poor Uncle Abram! After all, he can gain a reputation for courage only vicariously. It will be Cap'n Amazon Silt who will go down in the annals of Cardhaven as the brave man who risked his life for another, daddy-prof."

Aunt Euphemia did not leave The Beaches on this evening, as she had intended. Even she was shaken out of her usual marble demeanor by the wreck and the incidents connected with it. She came to the store after dinner and welcomed her brother with a most subdued and chastened spirit.

"You have been mercifully preserved, Ernest," she said, wiping her eyes. "I saw young Lawford Tapp bring you ashore. A really remarkable young man, and so I told Mrs. Perriton just now. So brave of him to venture out in the lifeboat as a volunteer.

"I have just been talking to his father. Quite a remarkable man—I. Tapp. One of these rough diamonds, you know, Ernest. And he is so enthusiastic about Louise. He has just pointed out to me the spot on the bluff where he intends to build a cottage for Lawford and Louise."

"What's this?" demanded Professor Grayling, sitting up so suddenly on the couch that Diddimus spat and jumped off in haste and anger.

"I—I was just going to tell you about Lawford," Louise said in a small voice.

"Oh, yes! A little thing like your having a lover slipped your mind, I suppose?" demanded her father.

"And a young man of most excellent character," put in the surprising Mrs. Conroth. "Perhaps his family is not all that might be desired; but I. Tapp is e-nor-mously wealthy and I understand he will settle a good income upon Ford. Besides, the young man has some sort of interest in the manufacturing of candies."

Trust the Lady from Poughkeepsie to put the best foot forward when it became necessary to do so. The professor was gazing quizzically at the flushed face of his daughter.

"So that is what you have been doing this summer, is it?" he said.

"That—and looking after Cap'n Abe," confessed Louise.

"I'll have to look into this further."

"Isn't it terrible?" interrupted Mrs. Conroth. "They say the two brothers are out on that wreck and they cannot be reached until the gale subsides. And then it will be too late to save them. Well, Louise, that old sailor was certainly a brave man. I am really sorry I spoke so harshly about him. They tell me it was he who put your father in the boat. I hope there is some way you can fittingly show your appreciation, Ernest."

"I hope so," said Professor Grayling grimly.

Lawford came to the store before bedtime—very white and serious-looking. He had tried with the patrol crew to launch the boat again and go to the rescue of the two old men supposed to be upon the wreck. But the effort had been fruitless. Until the gale fell and the tide turned they could not possibly get out to Gull Rocks.

"A brave man is Cap'n Amazon," Lawford Tapp said. "And if Cap'n Abe was in the schooner's crew——Why, Professor Grayling! surely you must remember him? Not a big man, but with heavy gray beard and mustache—and very bald. Mild blue eyes and very gentle-spoken. Don't you remember him in the crew of the Curlew?"

"It would seem quite probable that he was aboard," Professor Grayling returned, "minding his p's and q's," as Louise had warned him. "But you see, Mr. Tapp, being only a passenger, I had really little association with the men forward. You know how it is aboard ship—strict discipline, and all that."

"Yes, sir; I see. And, after all, Cap'n Abe was a man that could easily be overlooked. Not assertive at all. Not like Cap'n Amazon. Quite timid and retiring by nature. Don't you say so, Louise?"

"Oh, absolutely!" agreed the girl. "And yet, when you come to think of it, Uncle Abram is a wonderful man."

"I don't see how you can say so," the young man said. "It's Cap'n Amazon who is wonderful. There were other men down on the beach better able to handle an oar than he. But he took the empty seat in the lifeboat when he was called without saying 'yes or no'! And he pulled with the best of us."

"He is no coward, of that I am sure," said Professor Grayling. "He gave me his place in the boat. We can but pray that the lifeboat will get to him in the morning."

That hope was universal. All night driftwood fires burned on the sands and the people watched and waited for the dawn and another sight of the schooner on the reef.

The tide brought in much wreckage; but it was mostly smashed top gear and deck lumber. Therefore they had reason to hope that the hull of the wreck held together.

It was just at daybreak that the wind subsided and the tide was so that the lifeboat could be launched again. Wellriver station owned no motor-driven craft at this time, or Cap'n Jim Trainor and his men would have been able to reach the wreck at the height of the gale.

It was no easy matter even now to bring the lifeboat under the lee of the battered schooner. Her masts and shrouds were overside, anchoring her to the reef. Not a sign of life appeared anywhere upon her.

One of the crew of the lifeboat leaped for the rail and clambered aboard. Down in the scuppers, in the wash of each wave that climbed aboard the wreck, he spied a huddled bundle.

"Here's one of 'em, sure 'nough!" he sang out.

Making his way precariously down the slanting deck, he reached in a minute the spot where the unfortunate lay. The man had washed back and forth in the sea water so long that he was all but parboiled. The rescuer seized him by the shoulders and drew him out of this wash.

He was a very bald man with gray hair, a stubble of beard on his cheeks, and a straggling gray mustache.

"Why, by golly!" yelled the surfman. "This here's Cap'n Abe Silt!"

"Ain't his brother Am'zon there?"

"No, I don't see his brother nowhere."

"Take a good look."

"Trust me to do that," answered the surfman.

But the search was useless. Nobody ever saw Cap'n Amazon again. He had gone, as he had come—suddenly and in a way to shock the placid thoughts of Cardhaven people. A stone in the First Church graveyard is all the visible reminder there remains of Cap'n Amazon Silt, who for one summer amazed the frequenters of the store on the Shell Road.

The life-savers brought Cap'n Abe, the storekeeper, back from the wreck, the last survivor of the Curlew's crew. He was in rather bad shape, for his night's experience on the wreck had been serious indeed.

They put him to bed, and Louise and Betty Gallup took turns in nursing him, while Cap'n Joab Beecher puttered about the store, trying to wait on customers and keep things straight.

At first, as he lay in his "cabin," Cap'n Abe did not have much to say—not even to Louise. But after a couple of days, on an occasion when she was feeding him broth, he suddenly sputtered and put away the spoon with a vexed gesture.

"What's the matter, Uncle Abram?" she asked him. "Isn't it good?"

"The soup's all right, Niece Louise. 'Tain't so fillin' as chowder, I cal'late, but it'll keep a feller on deck for a spell. That ain't it. I was just a-thinkin'."

"Of what?"

"Hi-mighty! It's all over, ain't it?" he said in desperation. "Can't never bring forward Cap'n Am'zon again, can I? I got to be Cap'n Abe hereafter, whether I want to be or not. It's a turrible dis'pointment, Louise—turrible!

"I ain't sorry I went out there in that boat. No. For I got your father off, an' he'd been carried overboard if he'd been let stay in them shrouds.

"But land sakes! I did fancy bein' Cap'n Am'zon 'stead o' myself. And the worst of it is, Niece Louise, I can't have nothin' new to tell 'bout Cap'n Am'zon's adventures. He's drowned, an' he can't never go rovin' no more."

"But think of what you've done, Cap'n Abe," Louise urged. "You feared the sea—and you overcame that fear. All your life you shrank from venturing on the water; yet you went out in that lifeboat and played the hero. Oh, I think it is fine, Cap'n Abe! It's wonderful!"

"Wonderful?" repeated Cap'n Abe. "P'r'aps 'tis. Mebbe I've been too timid all my life. P'r'aps I could ha' been a sailor and cruised in foreign seas if I'd just had to.

"But mother allus was opposed. She kept talkin' against it when I was a boy—and later, too. She told how scar't she was when Cap'n Josh and the Bravo went down in sight of her windows. And mebbe I ketched it more from her talkin' than aught else.

"But I never realized that stress of circumstances could push me into it an' make a man of me. I had a feelin' that I'd swoon away an' fall right down in my tracks if I undertook to face such a sea as that was t'other day.

"And see! Nothing of the kind happened! I knew I'd got to make good Cap'n Am'zon's character, or not hold up my head in Cardhaven again. I don't dispute I've been a hi-mighty liar, Niece Louise. But—but it's sort o' made a man o' me for once, don't ye think?

"I dunno. Good comes out o' bad sometimes. Bitter from the sweet as well. And when a man's got a repertation to maintain——There was that feller Hanks, on the Lunette, out o' Nantucket. I've heard Cap'n Am'zon tell it——"

"Cap'n Abe!" gasped Louise.

"Hi-mighty! There I go again," said the storekeeper mournfully. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks—nor break him of them he's l'arned!"

Louise and her father remained at the store on the Shell Road until Cap'n Abe was up and about again. Then they could safely leave him to the ministrations of Betty Gallup.

"Somehow," confessed that able seaman, "he don't seem just like he used to. He speaks quicker and sharper—more like that old pirate, Am'zon Silt, though I shouldn't be sayin' nothin' harsh of the dead, I s'pose. I don't dispute that Cap'n Am'zon was muchly of a man, when ye come to think on't.

"But Cap'n Abe's more to my taste. Now the place seems right again with him in the house. Cap'n Abe's as easy as an old shoe. And, land sakes! I ain't locked out o' his bedroom when I want to clean!

"One thing puzzles me, Miss Lou. I thought Cap'n Abe would take on c'nsiderable about Jerry. But when I told him the canary was dead he up and said that mebbe 'twas better so, seem' the old bird couldn't see no more. Now, who would ha' told him Jerry was blind?"

There were a few other things about the returned Cap'n Abe that might have amazed his neighbors. He seemed to possess an almost uncanny knowledge of what had happened during the summer. Besides, he seemed to have achieved Cap'n Amazon's manner of "looking down" a too inquisitive inquirer into personal affairs and refusing to answer.

Because of this, perhaps, nobody was ever known to ask the storekeeper why he had filled his sea chest with bricks and useless dunnage when he shipped it to Boston. That mystery was never explained.

Before Louise and her father were ready to leave Cardhaven most of the summer residents along The Beaches, including Aunt Euphemia, had gone. And the moving picture company had also flown.

With the latter went Gusty Durgin, bravely refusing to have her artistic soul trammeled any longer by the claims of hungry boarders at the Cardhaven Inn.

"I don't never expect to be one of these stars on the screen," she confided to Louise. "But I can make a good livin', an' ma's childern by her second husband, Mr. Vleet, has got to be eddicated.

"I'm goin' to make me up a fancy name and make a repertation. They ain't goin' to call me 'Dusty Gudgeon' no more. Miss Louder tells me I can 'bant'—whatever that is—to take down my flesh, and mebbe you'll see me some day, Miss Lou, in a re'l ladylike part. An' I can always cry. Even Mr. Bane says I'm wuth my wages when it comes to the tearful parts."

The Tapps were flitting to Boston, Mrs. Tapp and the girls sure of "getting in" with the proper set at last. Their summer's campaign, thanks to Louise, had been successful to that end.

Louise and Lawford walked along the strand below the cottages. The candy cutting machine had proved a success and Lawford was giving his attention to a new "mechanical wrapper" for salt water taffy that would do away with much hand labor.

On the most prominent outlook of Tapp Point were piles of building material and men at work. The pudgy figure of I. Tapp was visible walking about, importantly directing the workmen.

"It's going to be a most, wonderful house, Louise dear," sighed Lawford. "Do you suppose you can stand it? The front elevation looks like a French chateau of the Middle Ages, and there ought to be a moat and a portcullis to make it look right."

"Never mind," she responded cheerfully. "We won't have to live in it—much. See. We have all this to live in," with a wide gesture. "The sea and the shore. Cape Cod forever! I shall never be discontented here, Lawford."

They wandered back to the store on the Shell Road. There was a chill in the fall air and Cap'n Abe had built a small fire in the rusty stove. About it were gathered the usual idlers. A huge fishfly droned on the window pane.

"It's been breedin' a change of weather for a week," said Cap'n Joab.

"Right ye air, sir," agreed Washy Gallup, wagging his head.

"I 'member hearin' Cap'n Am'zon tell 'bout a dry spell like this," began Cap'n Abe, leaning his hairy fists upon the counter. "Twas when he was ashore once at Teneriffe——"

"Don't I hear Mandy a-callin' me?" Milt Baker suddenly demanded, making for the door.

"I gotter git over home myself," said Cap'n Joab apologetically.

"Me, too," said Washy, rising. "'Tis chore time."

Cap'n Abe clamped his jaws shut for a minute and his eyes blazed. Only the mild and inoffensive Amiel was left of his audience.

"Huh!" he growled. "Ain't goin' to waste my breath on you, Amiel Perdue. Go git me a scuttle of coal."

Then, when the young fellow had departed, the storekeeper grinned ruefully and whispered in his niece's ear:

"Hi-mighty! Cap'n Amazon's cut the sand out from under my feet. They think he told them yarns so much better'n I do that they won't even stay to hear me. Hard lines. Niece Louise, hard lines. But mebbe I deserve it!"

THE END