Part 16 (1/2)
”I promise,” she said softly, ”I promise you that I will never do anything that will hurt him. I promise you that I will never let him do anything that may harm him. He has given me my chance. I promise before you and G.o.d that he shall not be sorry, ever, that he has raised me out of the dust.”
She stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to the gla.s.s which covered the photograph.
The wind held fair, a quartering offsh.o.r.e blow, and the schooner, having discharged her cargo, just past noon spread her upper sails, caught a gentle breeze of old Boreas, and shot out of the harbor and so to the southward with a following wind which brought her to the mouth of Big Wreck Cove long before nightfall.
Upon the bluff of Wreckers' Head was to be dimly seen the sprawling Ball homestead. Tunis pointed it out to the pa.s.senger.
”That is where you are going to be happy, Ida May,” he said to her softly.
”I wonder,” murmured the girl.
He looked down into her rapt face. The violet eyes were fixed upon the old house and the brown-and-green fields immediately surrounding it. Perhaps Cap'n Ira and Prudence were out there now, watching from the front yard the white-winged _Seamew_ threading so saucily the crooked pa.s.sage into the cove, the sand bars on one hand and the serried teeth of the Lighthouse Point Reef on the other.
Inside the cove the schooner's canvas was reduced smartly to merely a topsail and jib, the wind in which carried her close enough to Luiz Wharf for a line to be cast ash.o.r.e. Tier upon tier of barrels of clams were stored under the open sheds, ready to be packed away in the _Seamew's_ hold. Orion loudly acclaimed against a malign fate.
”Hi golly! Ain't we goin' to have no spare time at all? This running in a coasting packet is plain slavery; that's what it is! A man don't have a chance even to go home and change his socks 'tween trips.”
”Have a clean pair in your duffel bag; then you won't have to go home for 'em, 'Rion,” advised Tunis. ”We've got to make hay while the sun s.h.i.+nes. There'll be loafing enough to cut into the profits by and by when bad weather breaks.”
Orion grunted pessimistically. Little in this world ever just suited Orion.
”She's a hoodooed packet. I said it from the first,” he muttered to Horry. ”You know well enough what she was before they gave her a lick of paint and a new name. We'll all pay high yet for sailin' in her.”
”I wouldn't let Cap'n Tunis hear me say that 'nless I was seekin' a new berth,” rejoined the old mariner.
Tunis left the mate and Horry to carry on while he took the pa.s.senger ash.o.r.e, meaning to spend the night himself at home with Aunt Lucretia. He stopped to get Eunez Pareta's father to harness up his old horse and transfer Miss Bostwick's trunk and bag to the Ball homestead. Eunez was in evidence--as she always was when Tunis came by--a bird of paradise indeed. Her languis.h.i.+ng glances at Tunis flashed in their change to suspicious glares at the girl waiting in the roadway.
”You have a guest, Tunis Latham?” she asked with a composure which scarcely hid her jealousy and doubt.
”I'm taking her up to the b.a.l.l.s'. She's Mrs. Ball's niece, Eunez,”
Tunis said good-naturedly. He was always friendly with these Portygees. That was why he got along so well with them and they liked to work for him. Many of the Big Wreck Cove folk looked upon them even now as ”furriners” who had to be shouted at if one would make them understood.
”What does she come for?” asked Eunez sharply.
”They need her up there. Mrs. Ball is feeble and so is the captain.
She is going to live with them right along.”
”Ah-ha!” whispered Eunez, as he pa.s.sed her to step outside the house again. She seized his arm and swung him around to face her, for she was strong. ”You think she is pretty, Tunis?” she demanded.
”Eh? What's eating on you, Eunez? I never stopped to think whether she was or not?”
But he flushed, and she saw it. Eunez smiled in a way which might have puzzled Tunis Latham had he stopped to consider it. But he joined the girl who was waiting for him, and they went on up the road and out of the town without his giving a backward glance or thought to the fiery Portygee girl.
When they mounted to the windswept headland the visitor looked about with glowing eyes, breathing deeply. The flush of excitement rose in her cheek. He knew that as far as the physical aspect of the place went, she was more rejoiced than ever she had expected to be.
”Beautiful--and free,” she whispered.
”You've said it, now, Ida May,” he agreed. ”From up here it looks like the whole world was freer and a whole lot brighter. It is a great outlook.”