Just Sixteen.

by Susan Coolidge

  THE SHIPWRECKED COLOGNE-BOTTLE.

  It seemed the middle of the night, though it was really only threeo'clock in the morning, when little Davy Crocker was wakened by a suddenstamping of feet on the stoop below his window, and by a voice callingout that a ship was ashore off the Point, and that Captain Si, Davy'suncle, must turn out and help with the life-boat.

  Davy was a "landlubber," as his cousin Sam Coffin was wont to assertwhenever he wanted to tease him. He had lived all his short life atTownsend Harbor, up among the New Hampshire hills, and until this visitto his aunt at Nantucket, had never seen the sea. All the more the seahad for him a great interest and fascination, as it has for everybody towhom it has not from long familiarity become a matter of course.

  Conversation in Nantucket is apt to possess a nautical and, so to speak,salty flavor. Davy, since his arrival, had heard so much about shipswhich had foundered, or gone to pieces on rocks, or burned up, or sprungleaks and had to be pumped out, that his mind was full of images ofdisaster, and he quite longed to realize some of them. To see ashipwreck had become his great ambition. He was not particular as towhether the ship should burn or founder or go ashore, any of these woulddo, only he wanted all the sailors to be saved.

  Once he had gone with his cousins to the South Shore on the littlepuffing railroad which connects Nantucket town with Siasconsett, and ofwhich all the people of the island are so justly proud; and there on thebeach, amid the surf-rollers which look so soft and white and are socruelly strong, he had seen a great piece of a ship. Nearly the whole ofthe bow end it appeared to be. It was much higher than Davy's head, andseemed to him immense and formidable; yet this enormous thing the seahad taken into its grasp and tossed to and fro like a plaything and atlast flung upon the sand as if it were a toy of which it had grownweary. It gave Davy an idea of the great power of the water, and it wasafter seeing this that he began to long to witness a shipwreck. And nowthere was one, and the very sound of the word was enough to make him rubopen his sleepy eyes and jump out of bed in a hurry!

  But when he had groped his way to the window and pulled up the rattlingpaper shade, behold! there was nothing to be seen! The morning wasintensely dark. A wild wind was blowing great dashes of rain on theglass, and the house shook and trembled as the blasts struck it.

  Davy heard his uncle on the stairs, and hurried to the door. "Mayn't Igo to the shipwreck with you, Uncle Si?" he called out.

  "Go to what? Go back to bed, my boy, that's the place for you. There'llbe shipwreck enough in the morning to satisfy all of us, I reckon."

  Davy dared not disobey. He stumbled back to bed, making up his mind tolie awake and listen to the wind till it was light, and then go to seethe shipwreck "anyhow." But it is hard to keep such resolutions when youare only ten years old. The next thing he knew he was rousing inamazement to find the room full of brilliant sunlight. The rain wasover, though the wind still thundered furiously, and through the noiseit made, the sea could be heard thundering louder still.

  Davy jumped out of bed, dressed as fast as he could, and hurrieddownstairs. The house seemed strangely empty; Aunt Patty was not in thekitchen, nor was cousin Myra in the pantry skimming milk, as was usualat this hour of the day. Davy searched for them in woodshed, garden, andbarn. At last he spied them on the "walk" at the top of the house, andran upstairs to join them.

  Do any of you know what a "walk" is? I suppose not, unless you havehappened to live in a whaling-town. Many houses in Nantucket have them.They are railed platforms, built on the peak of the roof between thechimneys, and are used as observatories from which to watch what isgoing on at sea. There the wives and sweethearts of the whalers used togo in the old days, and stand and sweep the ocean with spy-glasses, inhopes of seeing the ships coming in from their long cruises each withthe signals set which told if the voyage had been lucky or no, and howmany barrels of oil and blubber she was bringing home. Then they used towatch the "camels," great hulls used as floats to lighten the vessels,go out and help the heavy-laden ship over the bar. And when that wasdone and every rope and spar conned and studied by the experienced eyeson the roofs, it was time to hurry down, hang on the welcoming pot, trimthe fire and don the best gown, so as to make a bright home-coming forthe long-absent husband or son.

  Aunt Patty had a spy-glass at her eyes when Davy gained the roof. Shewas looking at the wrecked ship, which was plainly in view, beyond thelittle sandy down which separated the house from the sea. There she lay,a poor broken thing, stuck fast on one of the long reaches of sandyshoal which stretch about the island and make the navigation of itsnarrow and uncertain channels so difficult and sometimes so dangerous.The heavy seas dashed over the half-sunken vessel every minute; betweenher and the shore two lifeboats were coming in under closely-reefedsails.

  "Oh, do let me look through the glass!" urged Davy. When he waspermitted to do so he uttered an exclamation of surprise, so wonderfullynear did it make everything seem to be.

  "Why, I can see their faces!" he cried. "There's Uncle Si! There's Sam!And there's a very wet man! I guess he's one of the shipwrecked sailors!Hurrah!" and Davy capered up and down.

  "You unfeeling boy!" cried Myra, "give me the glass--you'll let it fall.He's right, mother, father and Sam are coming ashore as fast as they cansail, and they'll be wanting their breakfasts, of course. I'd better godown and mix the corn bread." She took one more look through the glass,announced that the other boat had some more of the shipwrecked men onboard, she guessed, and that Abner Folger was steering; then she randown the ladder, followed by her mother, and Davy was left to watch theboats in.

  When he too went down, the kitchen was full of good smells of boilingcoffee and frying eggs, and his uncle and Sam and the "very wet man"were just entering the door together. The wet man, it appeared, was thecaptain of the wrecked vessel; the rest of the crew had been taken homeby other people.

  The captain was a long, brown, sinewy Maine man. He was soaked withsea-water and looked haggard and worn, as a man well might who had justspent such a terrible night; but he had kind, melancholy eyes, and anice face, Davy thought. The first thing to be done was to get him intodry clothes, and Uncle Si carried him up to Davy's room for thispurpose. Davy followed them. He felt as if he could never see enough ofthis, his first shipwrecked sailor.

  When the captain had been made comfortable in Uncle Silas's flannelshirt and spare pea-jacket and a pair of Sam's trousers, he hung his ownclothes up to dry, and they all went down to breakfast. Aunt Patty haddone her best. She was very sorry for the poor man who had lost hisship, and she even brought out a tumbler of her best grape jelly by wayof a further treat; but the captain, though he ate ravenously, as wasnatural to a man who had fasted so long, did not seem to notice what hewas eating, and thus disappointed kind Aunt Patty. She comforted herselfby thinking what she could get for dinner which he would like. Uncle Siand Sam were almost as hungry as the Maine captain, so not much was saidtill breakfast was over, and then they all jumped up and hurried out,for there was a deal to be done.

  Davy felt very dull after they had gone. He had never heard of such athing as "reaction," but that was what he was suffering from. Theexcitement of the morning had died out like a fire which has no morefuel to feed it, and he could not think of anything that he wanted todo. He hung listlessly round, watching Aunt Patty's brisk operationsabout the kitchen, and at last he thought he would go upstairs and seeif the captain's clothes were beginning to dry. Wet as they were, theyseemed on the whole the most interesting things in the house.

  The clothes were not nearly dry, but on the floor, just below where therough pea-jacket hung, lay a little shining object. It attracted Davy'sattention, and he stooped and picked it up.

  It was a tiny bottle full of some sort of perfume, and set in a socketof plated filagree shaped like a caster, with a filagree handle. Thebottle had a piece of white kid tied over its cork with a bit of blueribbon. It was not a thing to tempt a boy's fancy, but Davy saw that itwas pretty, and the idea came into his head th
at he should like to carryit home, to his little sister Bella. Bella was fond of perfumes, andthe bottle had cologne in it, as Davy could smell without taking out thecork. He was sure that Bella would like it.

  Davy had been brought up to be honest. I am sure that he did not mean tosteal the cologne-bottle. The idea of stealing never entered his mind,and it would have shocked him had it done so. He was an imaginativelittle fellow, and the tiny waif seemed to him like a shell or a pebble,something coming out of the sea, which any one was at liberty to pick upand keep. He did not say to himself that it probably belonged to thecaptain, who might have a value for it, he did not think about thecaptain at all, he only thought of Bella. So after looking at the prettytoy for a while, he put it carefully away in the drawer where he kepthis things, pushing it far back, and drawing a pair of stockings infront of it, so that it might be hidden. He did not want anybody tomeddle with the bottle; it was his now, or rather it was Bella's. Thenhe went up to the walk once more, and was so interested in watching thewreck and the boats, which, as the wind moderated, came and went betweenher and the shore, picking up the barrels and casks which were floatedout of her hold, that he soon forgot all about the matter.

  It was nearly dark before the two captains and Sam came back to eat themeal which had been ready for them since the middle of the afternoon.Aunt Patty had taken off her pots and saucepans more than once and putthem on again, to suit the long delay; but nothing was spoiled andeverything tasted good, which showed how cleverly she had managed. TheMaine captain--whose name it appeared was Joy--seemed more cheerful thanin the morning, and more inclined to talk. But after supper, when he hadgone upstairs and put on his own clothes, which Aunt Patty had keptbefore the fire nearly all day and had pressed with hot irons so thatthey looked almost as good as ever, his melancholy seemed to come onagain. He sat and puffed at his pipe till Aunt Patty began to askquestions about the wreck. Captain Joy, it appeared, was part owner ofthe ship, whose name was the "Sarah Jane."

  "She was called after my wife's sister," he told them, "and my littlegirl to home has the same name, 'Sarah Jane.' She is about the age ofthat boy there, or a mite older maybe,"--nodding toward Davy. "Shewanted to come with me this vy'age, but her mother wouldn't hear of it,and I'm mighty thankful she wouldn't, as things have turned out. Nochild could have stood the exposure of such a night as we had and comeout alive; and Sarah Jane, though she's as spry as a cricket and alwayson the go, isn't over strong."

  The captain took a long pull at his pipe and looked dreamily into thefire.

  "I asked her, just as I was coming off, what I should bring her," hewent on, "and she had a wish all fixed and ready. I never knew such achild for knowing her own mind. She's always sure what she wants, SarahJane is. The thing she wanted was a cologne-bottle, she said, and itmust be just so, shaped like one of them pepper and vinegar what d' youcall em's, that they put on hotel tables. She was very pertikeler aboutthe kind. She drew me a picter of it on her slate, so 's to have nomistake, and I promised her if New York could furnish it she should havethat identical article, and she was mighty pleased."

  Nobody noticed that at the mention of the cologne-bottle, Davy gave aguilty jump, and shrank back into the shadow of Uncle Si's broadshoulders. Oh, if he could only put it back into the pocket of thepea-jacket! But how could he when the captain had the jacket on?

  "I was kind of fearful that there wouldn't be any bottles of thatpertikeler shape that Sarah Jane had in her mind," continued CaptainJoy, "but the town seemed to be chock-full of 'em. The very first shop Icome to, there they stood in the window, rows of 'em, and I just went inand bought one for Sarah Jane before I did anything else, and when I'dgot it safely stowed away in the locker, I felt kind of easy in my mind.We come down with a load of coal, but I hadn't more 'n a quarter cargoto take back, mostly groceries for the stores up to Bucksport andEllsworth,--and it's lucky it was no more, as things have happened. Theschooner was pretty old and being so light in ballast, I jedged itsafest, when the blow come on so hard from the nor'-east, to run itunder the lee of Cape Cod and ride it out there if we could. But wehadn't been anchored more 'n three hours--just about nine o'clock itwas--when the men came to tell me that we was taking in water terriblefast. I suppose the ship had kind of strained her seams open in thegale. It want no use trying to pump her out in such a storm, and if wedidn't want to go down at our anchorage, there wasn't anything for itbut to cut her loose and drive across the Haven in hopes of goingaground on the sand before she sank. I can tell you if ever a manprayed, I prayed then, when I thought every minute she'd founder in deepwater before we struck the shoal. And just as she was settling I heardthe sand grate under the keel, and you may believe I was thankful,though it meant the loss of pretty much all I've got in the world. Ishouted to the men to get to the rigging in the mainmast, for I knewshe'd go to pieces pretty soon, and there wasn't no way of signallingfor help till daylight, and I gave one dive for the cabin, got thepapers out of the locker, and Sarah Jane's cologne-bottle, buttoned themup inside my pea-coat, and just got back again in time to see theforemast go over the side and the sea make a clean sweep of the decks.The mainmast stayed, and we lashed ourselves, and managed to hold ontill sunrise, when we see you a-coming out to us, and glad we were.

  "Every now and then in the night, when the water was washing over us, Iput my fingers inside my coat and made sure that Sarah Jane's bottle wasthere, and wasn't broken. I didn't want the child to be disappointed,you see. It was safe when we come ashore, I'm certain of that, but--"The captain paused.

  "Now don't say it got broken after all!" cried Myra sympathetically.

  "No, it wasn't broken, but it's just as bad," said Captain Joy. "EitherI dropped it getting out of the boat and trod it down in the sand, orelse some one has took it. It's gone, any way, and do you know, it's afoolish thing to say, but I feel nigh as bad about that there little dudas wasn't worth more 'n fifty cents, as I do about the loss of the hullcargo, on account of Sarah Jane."

  There was a pause as he ceased. Aunt Patty and Myra were too sorry forthe captain to feel like speaking at once. Suddenly into the silencethere fell the sound of a sob. Everybody started, and Uncle Si caughtDavy's arm and pulled him into the firelight where his face could beseen.

  "Why, what are you crying for, little 'un?" asked Uncle Si.

  "I'm so sorry. I didn't know it was the captain's," said Davy, in atear-choked voice.

  "Didn't know what was the captain's? Now, Davy Crocker, 'twasn't everyou who took that bottle?" cried Aunt Patty.

  "I found it on the floor," sobbed Davy. "I thought it was washed ashorefrom the shipwreck. I didn't suppose it belonged to anybody, and Iwanted it for Bella. Oh, I'm so sorry."

  "Why, then it ain't lost after all," cried Captain Joy, brightening up."Well, how pleased Sarah Jane _will_ be! Don't cry any more, my lad. Ican see how it was, and that you didn't think it was stealing to takeanything that had been in the sea."

  Aunt Patty and Myra, however, still were deeply shocked, and could notlook as lightly at Davy's offence as did the captain. Davy creptupstairs, brought down the cologne-bottle and slid it into Captain Joy'shand; then he crept away and sat in a dark corner behind the rest, buthis conscience followed him, and Myra's reproachful look.

  "Oh, Davy!" she whispered, "I never thought you'd be so mean as to takeanything from a shipwrecked sailor!"

  This was Davy's punishment, and rankled in his mind long after everybodyelse had forgotten the matter, after the sands had swallowed up all thatwas left of the "Sarah Jane," and after the captain had returned toBucksport and made the real Sarah Jane happy by the gift of the bottleshe had wished for so much. It rankles occasionally to this day, thoughhe is now a stout lad of fifteen. That he, he of all boys, should havedone such a thing to a man just saved from the sea! He consoles himselfby resolving to be particularly kind to shipwrecked sailors all the restof his life; but unluckily, the "Sarah Jane" is, so far, his soleexperience of a wreck, and the only sailor he has as yet had any chanceto do
anything for is Captain Joy, and what he did for him we all know.One does not always have the opportunity to make up for a blunder or afault, and I am afraid Davy may live his life out and never again havethe good luck to show his good intentions by _not_ picking up and hidinga Shipwrecked Cologne-Bottle!