Part 21 (2/2)
”Hum.... Ain't heard that he's any sicker, nor nothin' like that, have you?”
”No.”
”I see.... Yus, yus.... Just goin' to make a--er--sort of--what you might call a--er--a call, I presume likely.”
”I shouldn't wonder.”
”Um-hm.... I see.... Yus, yus, I see.... Um-hm.... Well, I suppose we might as well--er--start now as any time, eh?”
”Better, I should say, Judah. Whenever you and the Foam Flake are ready, I am.”
The Foam Flake was the name with which Judah had rechristened the old horse. The animal's name up to the time of the rechristening had been Pet, but this, Mr. Cahoon explained, he could _not_ stand.
”'Whatever else he is,' says I to young Minot, 'he ain't no pet--not of mine. The only way I ever feel like pettin' that oat barrel,' I says, 'is with a rope's end.' 'Well, why don't you give him a new name?' says he. 'What'll I call him?' says I. 'Anything you can think of,' he says.
'By Henry,' says I. 'I have called him about everything I can think of, already.' Haw, haw! That was a pretty good one, wan't it Cap'n Sears?”
”But where did you get 'Foam Flake' from?” the captain had wanted to know.
”Oh, it just come to me, as you might say, same as them things do come sometimes. I was tellin' the Methodist minister about it one day and he said 'twas a--er--one of them--er--inflammations. Eh? Don't seem as if it could have been 'inflammation,' but 'twas somethin' like it.”
”Inspiration, maybe.”
”That's the ticket, inspiration's what 'twas. Well, I was kind of draggin' a seine through my head, so to speak, tryin' to haul aboard a likely name for the critter, and fetchin' the net in empty every time, when one day that--er--what-d'ye-call-it?--inflammation landed on me.
I'd piloted 'Pet' and the truck wagon over to Harniss--and worked my pa.s.sage every foot of the way--and over there to Brett's store I met Luther Wixon, who was home from a v'yage to the West Indies. Lute and me had been to sea together half a dozen times, and we got kind of swappin' yarns about the vessels we'd been in.
”'Have you heard about the old _Foam Flake_?' says Lute. 'She was wrecked on the Jersey coast off Barnegat,' he says, 'and now they've made a barge out of her hull and she's freightin' hay in New York harbor,' he says.
”Well, sir, I hauled off and fetched the broadside of my leg a slap you could have heard to Jericho. 'By the creepin', jumpin',' says I. 'I've got it!' 'Yes,' he says, 'you act as if you had. But what do you take for it?' 'I wouldn't take a dollar note for it right now,' I told him.
And I wouldn't have, nuther. The old _Foam Flake_--maybe you remember her, Cap'n Sears--was the dumdest, lop-sidedest, crankiest old white tub of a bark that ever carried sail. When I was aboard of her she wouldn't steer fit to eat, always wanted to go to port when you tried to put her to starboard, walloped and slopped along awkward as a cow, was the slowest thing afloat, and all she was ever really fit for was what they are usin' her for now, and that was to stow hay in. If that wan't that old horse of Minot's all over then I hope I'll never smoke a five-cent cigar again. 'You ain't ”Pet” no more,' says I to the critter; 'your name's ”Foam Flake!”' Haw, haw! See now, don't you, Cap'n Sears?”
Foam Flake and the truck-wagon landed the captain at the Knowles gate and, a few minutes later, Kendrick was, rather shamefacedly, announcing to the judge his acceptance of the superintendency of the Fair Harbor.
The invalid, as grimly sardonic and indomitable as ever, chuckled between spasms of pain and weakness.
”Good! Good!” he exclaimed. ”I thought you wouldn't say no if you once saw how things were over there. Congratulations on your good sense, Kendrick.”
Sears shook his head. ”Don't be any more sarcastic than you can help, Judge,” he said.
”No sarcasm about it. If you hadn't stepped in to help that girl I should have known you didn't have any sense at all. By the way, I didn't praise her too highly when we talked before, did I? She is considerable of a girl, Elizabeth Berry, eh, Cap'n?”
The captain nodded.
”She is,” he admitted. ”And she was so confoundedly plucky, and she stood up against that crowd of--of----”
”Mariners' women. Yes. Ho, ho! I should like to have been there.”
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