Part 3 (1/2)

”If it hadn't been for you taking that dose of snuff when I was expecting nothing of the kind, I wouldn't have dove into that feed box, Ira, and you know it very well.”

”I swan!” admitted her husband in a feeble voice. ”I forgot again, didn't I?”

”I don't know as you forgot, but I know you mighty near sneezed your head off. You'll be the death of me some day, Ira, blowin' up that way. I wonder I didn't jump clean through the bottom of that feed box when I was just reaching down to get a measure of oats.”

”Aunt Prue,” Tunis interposed, ”why do you keep the little tad of feed you have to buy for Queenie in this big old chest?”

”There!” Cap'n Ira hastened to rejoin, glad likewise to turn the trend of conversation. ”That's all that dratted boy's doings, little John-Ed Williams. Who else would have ever thought of dumping a two-bushel bag of oats into a twenty-bushel bin? We always put feed in that covered can yonder, so as to keep shet of the rats. But that boy, when he brought the oats, dumped 'em into the box before I could stop him. He's got less sense than his father; and you know, Tunis, John-Ed himself ain't got much more wit than the law allows.”

”But if you hadn't sneezed--” began Prudence again.

”You take her into the house, Cap'n Ira,” said Tunis. ”I'll feed Queenie. What do you give her--this measure full of oats? And a hank of that hay?”

”And a bunch of fodder. Might as well give her a dinner while you're about it,” grumbled the old man, leading his tottering wife toward the door. ”As I say, that old critter is eatin' her head off.”

”Well, she long ago earned her keep in her old age,” Tunis said, laughing.

He could remember when the Queen of Sheba had come to the Ball barn as a colt. Many a clandestine bareback ride had he enjoyed. He fed the mare and petted her as if she were his own. Then he sc.r.a.ped the oats out of the bin and poured them into the galvanized-iron can, so that Cap'n Ira could more easily get at the mare's feed.

He went to the house afterward to see if there was any other little ch.o.r.e he could do for the old couple before going on to his own home.

”You can't do much for us, Tunis, unless you can furnish me a new pair of legs,” said Cap'n Ira. ”I might as well have timber ones as these I've got. What Prue and me needs is what you've got but can't give away--youth.”

”You ought to have somebody living with you to help, Cap'n Ira,”

said the young man.

”I cal'late,” said the other dryly, ”that we've already made that discovery, Tunis. Trouble is, we ain't fixed right to increase the pay roll. I'd like to know who you'd think would want to sign up on this craft that even the rats have deserted?”

”Never mind, Ira. Don't be downhearted,” Prudence said, now recovered from her excitement. ”Perhaps the Lord has something good in store for us.”

Cap'n Ira pursed his lips.

”I ain't doubting the Lord's stores is plentiful,” he returned rather irreverently. ”The trouble is for us poor mortals to get at 'em. Well, Tunis, I certainly am obliged to you.”

The flurry of excitement was over. But Ira Ball was a determined man. It was in his mind that the trouble of taking care of the old mare was too great for Prudence, and he could not do the barn ch.o.r.es himself. They really had no use for the gray mare, for nowadays the neighbors did all their errands in town for them, and the few remaining acres of the old farm lay fallow.

Nor, had he desired to sell the mare, would anybody be willing to pay much for the twenty-two-year-old Queenie. In truth, Ira Ball was too tender-hearted to think of giving the Queen of Sheba over to a new owner and so sentence her to painful toil.

”She'd be a sight better off in the horse heaven, wherever that is,” he decided. But he was careful to say nothing like this in his wife's hearing. ”Women are funny that way,” he considered. ”She'd rather let the decrepit old critter hang around eatin' her head off, like I say, than mercifully put her out of her misery.”

Stern times call for stern methods. Cap'n Ira Ball had seen the tragic moment when he was forced to separate a bridegroom from his bride with a sinking deck all but awash under his feet. What had to be done had to be done! Prudence could no longer be endangered by the stable tasks connected with the old mare. He could not relieve her. They could scarcely afford a hired hand merely to take care of Queenie.

He remained rather silent that evening, and even forgot to praise Prue's hot biscuit, of which he ate a good many with his creamed pollack. The sweet-tempered old woman chatted as she knitted on his blue-wool hose, but she scarcely expected more than his occasional grunted acknowledgment that he was listening. She always said it was ”a joy to have somebody besides the cat around to talk to.” The loneliness of s.h.i.+pmasters who sail the seven seas is often mentioned in song and in story; the loneliness of their wives at home is not usually marked.

They went to bed. Old men do not usually sleep much after second c.o.c.k-crow, and it was not far from three in the morning when Cap'n Ira awoke. Like most mariners, he was wide awake when he opened his eyes. He lay quietly for several moments in the broad bed he occupied alone. The half-sobbing breathing of the old woman sounded from her room, through the open door.

”It's got to be done,” Cap'n Ira almost audibly repeated.

He got out of the bed with care. It was both a difficult and a painful task to dress. When he had on all but his boots and hat he tiptoed to a green sea chest in the corner, unlocked it, and from beneath certain tarpaulins and other sea rubbish drew out something which he examined carefully in the semidarkness of the chamber. He finally tucked this into an inner pocket of the double-breasted pilot coat he wore. It sagged the coat a good deal on that side.

He crept out of the chamber, crossed the sitting room, and went into the ell-kitchen with his shoes in his hand. When he opened the back door he faced the west, but even the sky at that point of the compa.s.s showed the glow of the false dawn. Down in the cove the night mist wrapped the s.h.i.+pping about in an almost opaque veil. Only the lofty tops of craft like the _Seamew_ were visible, black streaks against the mother-of-pearl sky line.