Denboro is many long miles from Eastboro, and the road, even in the best of weather, is not a good one. It winds and twists and climbs and descends through woods and over hills. There are stretches of marshy hollows where the yellow clay needs but a little moistening to become a paste which sticks to wheels and hoofs and makes traveling, even behind a young and spirited horse, a disheartening progress.
Joshua was neither young nor spirited. And the weather could not have been much worse. The three days' storm had soaked everything, and the clay-bottomed puddles were near kin to quicksands. As the lighthouse wagon descended the long slope at the southern end of the village and began the circle of the inner extremity of Eastboro Back Harbor, Seth realized that his journey was to be a hard one. The rain, driven by the northeast wind, came off the water in blinding gusts, and the waves in the harbor were tipped with white. Also, although the tide was almost at its lowest, streaks of seaweed across the road showed where it had reached that forenoon, and prophesied even a greater flood that night. He turned his head and gazed up the harbor to where it narrowed and became Pounddug Slough. In the Slough, near its ocean extremity, his old schooner, the Daisy M., lay stranded. He had not visited her for a week, and he wondered if the “spell of weather” had injured her to any extent. This speculation, however, was but momentary. The Daisy M. must look out for herself. His business was to reach Judge Gould's, in Denboro, before Mrs. Bascom and Bennie D. could arrange with that prominent citizen and legal light for the threatened divorce.
That they had started for Judge Gould's he did not doubt for a moment. “I shall seek the nearest lawyer,” Bennie D. had said. And the judge was the nearest. They must be going there, or why should they take that road? Neither did he doubt now that their object was to secure the divorce. How divorces were secured, or how long it took to get one, Seth did not know. His sole knowledge on that subject was derived from the newspapers and comic weeklies, and he remembered reading of places in the West where lawyers with the necessary blanks in their pockets met applicants at the arrival of one train and sent them away, rejoicing and free, on the next.
“You jump right off the cars and then
Turn round and jump right on again.”
This fragment of a song, sung at a “moving-picture” show in the town hall, and resung many times thereafter by Ezra Payne, John Brown's predecessor as assistant keeper at the lights, recurred to him as he urged the weary Joshua onward. So far as Seth knew, the Reno custom might be universal. At any rate, he must get to Judge Gould's before Emeline and her brother-in-law left there. What he should do when he arrived and found them there was immaterial; he must get there, that was all.
Eastboro Back Harbor was left behind, and the long stretch of woods beyond was entered. Joshua, his hoofs swollen by the sticky clay to yellow cannon balls, plodded on, but, in spite of commands and pleadings—the lightkeeper possessed no whip and would not have used one if he had—he went slower and slower. He was walking now, and limping sadly on the foot where the loose shoe hung by its bent and broken nails.
Five miles, six, seven, and the limp was worse than ever. Seth, whose conscience smote him, got out of the carriage into the rain and mud and attempted repairs, using a stone as a hammer. This seemed to help matters some, but it was almost dark when the granite block marking the township line was passed, and the windows in the houses were alight when he pulled up at the judge's door.
The judge himself answered the knock, or series of knocks. He seemed much surprised to find the keeper of Eastboro Twin-Lights standing on his front step.
“Why, hello, Atkins!” he cried. “What in the world are you doing over here? a night like this!”
“Has—has Mrs. Bascom been here? Is she here now?” panted Seth anxiously.
“Mrs. Bascom? Who is Mrs. Bascom?”
“She—she's a friend of mine. She and—and a relation of hers was comin' over here to see you on business. Ain't they here? Ain't they been here?”
“No. No one has been here this afternoon. I've been in since one o'clock, and not a soul has called, on business or otherwise.”
The lightkeeper could scarcely believe it.
“You're sure?” he demanded.
“Certainly. If they came before one my wife would have told me, I think. I'll ask her.”
“No, no,” hastily. “You needn't. If they ain't been since one they ain't been. But I don't understand. . . . There's no other lawyer nigh here, is there?”
“No; none nearer than Bayport.”
“My land! My LAND! Then—then I'm out of soundin's somehow. They never came for it, after all.”
“Came for what?”
“Nothin', nothin', I guess,” with a sickly smile. “I've made some sort of mistake, though I don't know how. Benije must have . . . I'll break that feller's neck; I will!”
The lawyer began to share the blacksmith's opinion that his caller had gone crazy.
“Come in, Atkins,” he urged. “Come in out of the wet. What IS the matter? What are you doing here at this time of night so far from the Lights? Is it anything serious? Come in and tell me about it.”
But Seth, instead of accepting the invitation, stared at him aghast. Then, turning about, he leaped down the steps, ran to the wagon and climbed in.
“Giddap!” he shouted. Poor, tired Joshua lifted his clay-daubed hoofs.
“You're not going back?” cried Gould. “Hold on, Atkins! Wait!”
But Seth did not wait. Already he had turned his horse's head toward Eastboro, and was driving off. The lawyer stood still, amazedly looking after him. Then he went into the house and spent the next quarter of an hour trying to call the Twin-Lights by telephone. As the northeast wind had finished what the northwest one had begun and the wire was down, his attempt was unsuccessful. He gave it up after a time and sat down to discuss the astonishing affair with his wife. He was worried.
But his worriment was as nothing compared to Seth's. The lawyer's reference to the Lights had driven even matrimonial troubles from the Atkins mind. The lights! the Twin-Lights! It was long past the time for them to be lit, and there was no one to light them but Brown, a green hand. Were they lit at all? If not, heaven knew what might happen or had happened already.
He had thought of this before, of course, had vaguely realized that he was betraying his trust, but then he had not cared. The Lights, his position as keeper, everything, were side issues compared with the one thing to be done, the getting to Denboro. He had reached Denboro and found his journey all a mistake; his wife and Bennie D. had not, apparently, visited that village; perhaps had not even started for it. Therefore, in a measure relieved, he thought of other things. He was many miles from his post of duty, and now his sole idea was to get back to it.
At ten o'clock Mrs. Hepsibah Deacon, a widow living in a little house in the woods on the top of the hill on the Denboro side of Eastboro Back Harbor, with no neighbors for a mile in either direction, was awakened by shouts under her bedroom window. Opening that window she thrust forth her head.
“Who is it?” she demanded quaveringly. “What's the matter? Is anything afire?”
From the blackness of the rain and fog emerged a vague shape.
“It's me, Mrs. Deacon; Seth Atkins, down to the Lights, you know. I've left my horse and carriage in your barn. Josh—he's the horse—is gone lame and played himself out. He can't walk another step. I've unharnessed him and left him in the stall. He'll be all right. I've given him some water and hay. Just let him stay there, if it ain't too much trouble, and I'll send for him to-morrer and pay for his keep. It's all right, ain't it? Much obliged. Good night.”
Before the frightened widow could ask a question or utter a word he was gone, ploughing down the hill in the direction of the Back Harbor. When he reached the foot of that hill where the road should have been, he found that it had disappeared. The tide had risen and covered it.
It was pitch-dark, the rain was less heavy, and clouds of fog were drifting in before the wind. Seth waded on for a short distance, but soon realized that wading would be an impossibility. Then, as in despair, he was about ready to give up the attempt, a dark object came into view beside him. It was a dory belonging to one of the lobstermen, which, at the end of its long anchor rope, had swung inshore until it floated almost over the road. Seth seized it in time to prevent collision with his knees. The thole pins were in place, and the oars laid lengthwise on its thwarts. As his hands touched the gunwale a new idea came to him.
He had intended walking the rest of the way to Eastboro, routing out the liveryman and hiring a horse and buggy with which to reach the Lights. Now he believed chance had offered him an easier and more direct method of travel. He could row up the Harbor and Slough, land close to where the Daisy M. lay, and walk the rest of the way in a very short time. He climbed into the dory, pulled up the anchor, and seated himself at the oars.
The bottom of the boat was two inches deep with rain water, and the thwart was dripping and cold. Seth, being already about as wet as he could be, did not mind this, but pulled with long strokes out into the harbor. The vague black shadows of the land disappeared, and in a minute he was, so far as his eyes could tell him, afloat on a shoreless sea. He had no compass, but this did not trouble him. The wind, he knew, was blowing directly from the direction he wished to go, and he kept the dory's bow in the teeth of it. He rowed on and on. The waves, out here in the deep water, were of good size, and the spray flew as he splashed into them. He knew that he was likely to get off the course, but the Back Harbor was, except for its upper entrance, landlocked, and he could not go far astray, no matter where he might hit the shore.
The fog clouds, driven by the squalls, drifted by and passed. At rare intervals the sky was almost clear. After he had rowed for half an hour and was beginning to think he must be traveling in circles, one of these clear intervals came and, far off to the left and ahead, he saw something which caused him to utter an exclamation of joy. Two fiery eyes shone through the dark. The fog shut them in again almost immediately, but that one glance was sufficient to show that all was well at the post he had deserted. The fiery eyes were the lanterns in the Twin-Lights towers. John Brown had been equal to the emergency, and the lamps were lighted.
Seth's anxiety was relieved, but that one glimpse made him even more eager for home. He rowed on for a short time, and then began edging in toward the invisible left-hand shore. Judging by the length of time he had been rowing, he must be close to the mouth of the Slough, where, winding through the salt marshes, it emerged into the Back Harbor.
He crept in nearer and nearer, but no shore came in sight. The fog was now so thick that he could see not more than ten feet from the boat, but if he was in the mouth of the Slough he should have grounded on the marsh bank long before. The reason that he did not, a reason which did not occur to him at the time, was that the marshes were four feet under water. Owing to the tremendous tide Pounddug Slough was now merely a continuation of the Harbor and almost as wide.
The lightkeeper began to think that he must have miscalculated his distance. He could not have rowed as far as he thought. Therefore, he again turned the dory's nose into the teeth of the wind and pulled steadily on. At intervals he stopped and listened. All he heard was the moan of distant foghorns and the whistling of the gusts in trees somewhere at his left. There were pine groves scattered all along the bluffs on the Eastboro side, so this did not help him much except to prove that the shore was not far away. He pulled harder on the right oar. Then he stopped once more to listen.
Another blast howled through the distant trees and swept down upon him. Then, borne on the wind, he heard from somewhere ahead, and alarmingly near at hand, other sounds, voices, calls for help.
“Ahoy!” he shouted. “Ahoy there! Who is it? Where are you?”
“Help!” came the calls again—and nearer. “Help!”
“Look out!” roared Seth, peering excitedly over his shoulder into the dark. “Where are you? Look out or you'll be afoul of . . . Jumpin' Judas!”
For out of the fog loomed a bulky shape driving down upon him. He pulled frantically at the oars, but it was too late. A mast rocked against the sky, a stubby bowsprit shot over the dory, and the little boat, struck broadside on, heeled to the water's edge. Seth, springing frantically upward, seized the bowsprit and clung to it. The dory, pushed aside and half full of water, disappeared. From the deck behind the bowsprit two voices, a man's voice and a woman's, screamed wildly.
Seth did not scream. Clinging to the reeling bowsprit, he swung up on it, edged his way to the vessel's bows and stepped upon the deck.
“For thunder sakes!” he roared angrily, “what kind of navigation's this? Where's your lights, you lubbers? What d'you mean by—Where are you anyhow? And—and what schooner's this?”
For the deck, as much as he could see of it in the dark, looked astonishingly familiar. As he stumbled aft it became more familiar still. The ropes, a combination of new and old, the new boards in the deck planking, the general arrangement of things, as familiar to him as the arrangement of furniture in the kitchen of the Lights! It could not be . . . but it was! The little schooner was his own, his hobby, his afternoon workshop—the Daisy M. herself. The Daisy M., which he had last seen stranded and, as he supposed, hard and fast aground! The Daisy M. afloat, after all these years!
From the stern by the cabin hatch a man came reeling toward him, holding to the rail for support with one hand and brandishing the other.
“Help!” cried the man wildly. “Who is it? Help us! we're drowning! We're . . . Can't you put us ashore. Please put us . . . Good Lord!”
Seth made no answer. How could he? The man was Bennie D.
And then another figure followed the first, and a woman's voice spoke pleadingly.
“Have you got a boat?” it cried. “We're adrift on this dreadful thing and . . . why, SETH!”
The woman was Emeline Bascom.
“Why, SETH!” she said again. Then the sounds of the wind and waves and the creaking and cracking of the old schooner alone broke the silence.
But Bennie D., even under the shock of such a surprise as this, did not remain silent long. His precious self was in danger.
“You put us ashore!” he shouted. “You put us ashore right off, do you hear? Don't stand there like a fool! Do something. Do you want us to drown? DO something!”
Seth came to life. His first speech was sharp and businesslike.
“Emeline,” he said, “there's a lantern hanging up in the cabin. Go light it and fetch it to me. Hurry!”
“It's upset,” was the frightened answer. “Bennie found it when we first came aboard. When we—when this awful boat started, it upset and went out.”
“Never mind. Probably there's ile enough left for a spell. Go fetch it. There's matches in a box on the wall just underneath where 'twas hangin'. Don't stop to talk! Move!”
Mrs. Bascom moved. Seth turned to the “inventor.”
“Come for'ard with me,” he ordered. “Here! this way! for'ard! FOR'ARD!”
He seized his companion by the arm and pulled him toward the bow. The frightened genius held back.
“What in time is the matter with you?” snarled the lightkeeper. “Are your feet asleep? Come!”
Bennie D. came, under compulsion. Seth half led, half dragged him to the bow, and, bending down, uncoiled a rope and put it in his hands.
“Them's the jib halliards,” he explained. “Haul on 'em quick and hard as you can. If we can h'ist the jib we can get some steerage way on her, maybe. Haul! haul till you can't haul no more. Then hang on till I come back and make fast.”
He rushed back to the wheel. The tiller ropes were new, and he could trust them, fortunately. From the cabin hatchway emerged Mrs. Bascom bearing the lighted lantern.
“Good!” snapped Seth. “Now we can see what we're doin' and, if we show a glim, maybe we won't run down no more dories. You go for'ard and—No, you take this wheel and hold it just as 'tis. JUST as 'tis; understand? I'll be back in a jiffy. What in thunder's the matter with that foolhead at the jib?”
He seized the lantern and rushed to the bow. Bennie D. had dropped the halliard and was leaning over the rail screaming for help.
Seth hoisted the jib himself, made it fast, and then turned his attention to the mutinous hand.
“Shut up!” he bellowed, catching him by the arm. “Who do you cal'late's goin' to hear you? Shut up! You come with me. I want you to pump. The old craft would do well enough if she was tight, but she's more'n likely takin' water like a sieve. You come and pump.”
But Bennie had no notion of pumping. With a jerk he tore loose from the lightkeeper's grasp and ran to the stern, where he continued his howls for help.
Seth was at his heels.
“Stop that, I tell you,” he commanded angrily. “It don't do no good. If you don't want to go to the bottom you'll work that pump. Don't be such a clown.”
The frantic genius paid no attention. His sister-in-law left the wheel and put her hand on his shoulder. “Please, Bennie,” she pleaded. “Please do as he says. He knows, and—”
Bennie D. pushed her backward with savage force. “Mind your own business,” he yelled with an oath. “'Twas your foolishness got me into this.” Then, leaning over the rail, he called shrilly, “He—lp! I'm drowning! Help!”
Mrs. Bascom staggered back against the wheel, which Seth had seized the instant she deserted it. “Oh!” she said, “you hurt me.”
Her husband freed an arm and put it about her. “Are you much hurt, Emeline?” he asked sharply.
“No—o. No, Seth. I—I guess I ain't really hurt at all.”
“Good! Then you take this wheel and hold her just so. That's it. AND DON'T YOU DROP IT AGAIN. I'll attend to this feller.”
His wiry fingers locked themselves in Bennie D.'s shirt collar.
“I ordered you to pump,” said Seth. “Now then, you come and pump!”
“Let go!” screamed his captive. “Take your hands off me, or—”
The back of his head striking the deck put a period in the middle of his sentence. The next moment he was being dragged by the collar to the little hand pump amidships.
“Pump!” roared the lightkeeper. “Pump! or I'll break your everlastin' neck. Lively now!”
The dazed genius rose to his knees. “What—” he stammered. “Where—”
“Right there in front of you. Lively, you lubber!”
A well-directed kick helped to facilitate liveliness.
“What shall I do?” wailed Bennie D., fumbling the pump brake. “How does it go?”
“Up and down—so.” Seth jerked his victim's head up and down, by way of illustration. “Now, then,” he continued, “you pump till I say quit, or I'll—I swan to man I'll make a spare tops'l out of your hide!”
He left the inventor working as he had not worked in the memory of man, and strode back to the wheel. Mrs. Bascom was clinging to the spokes for dear life.
“I—I ain't dropped it, Seth,” she declared. “Truly I ain't.”
“All right. You can drop it now. I'll take it myself. You set down and rest.”
He took the wheel and she collapsed, breathless, against the rail. After a time she ventured to ask a question.
“Seth!” she said, “how do you know which way to steer?”
“I don't,” was the reply. “All I'm tryin' to do is keep her afore it. If this no'theast wind would hold, we'd be all right, but it's dyin' fast. And the tide must be at flood, if not startin' to go out. With no wind, and no anchor, and the kind of ebb tide there'll be pretty soon—well, if we don't drift out to sea we'll be lucky. . . . Pump! pump! you son of a roustabout. If I hear you stoppin' for a second I'll come for'ard and murder you.”
Bennie D., who had ventured to rest for a moment, bent his aching back to the task. Was this man-slaughtering tyrant his mild-mannered, meek brother-in-law, the creature whom he had brow-beaten so often and managed so effectively? He could not understand—but he pumped.
Perhaps Seth did not understand, either; perhaps he did not try to. Yet the explanation was simple and natural. The sea, the emergency, the danger, his own deck beneath his feet—these were like old times, here was a situation he knew how to handle. He forgot that he was a lightkeeper absent from duty, forgot that one of his passengers was the wife he had run away from, and the other his bugbear, the dreaded and formidable Bennie D. He forgot all this and was again the able seaman, the Tartar skipper who, in former days, made his crews fear, respect, and swear by him.
And he reveled in his authority. Once Mrs. Bascom rose to peer over the rail.
“Emeline,” he snapped, “didn't I tell you to set down and set still? Must I give orders twice? SET DOWN!”
Emeline “set.”
The wind died to fitful gusts. The schooner barely moved. The fog was as thick as ever. Still Seth did not lose courage. When the housekeeper ventured to murmur that she was certain they would drown, he reassured her.
“Keep your pennant mast-high, Emeline,” he said cheerfully. “We ain't out at sea, that's sure and sartin. And, until we get in the breakers, we're safe enough. The old gal leaks some; she ain't as dry as a Good-Templar prayer meetin', but she's afloat. And when I'm afloat I ain't afraid, and you needn't be.”
Some time after that he asked a question in his turn.
“Emeline,” he said, “what in the world are you doin' here, on my schooner?”
“Your schooner, Seth? Yours? Is this dreadful—is this boat yours?”
“Yup. She's mine. I bought her just for fun a long spell ago, and I've been fussin' with her ever since. But I did it FOR fun; I never s'posed she'd take a cruise—like this. And what are you and—him—doin' on her?”
Mrs. Bascom hesitated. “It was all an accident, Seth,” she explained. “This has been an awful night—and day. Bennie and I was out ridin' together, and we took the wrong road. We got lost, and the rain was awful. We got out of the buggy to stand under some trees where 'twas drier. The horse got scared at some limbs fallin' and run off. Then it was most dark, and we got down to the shore and saw this boat. There wa'n't any water round her then. Bennie, he climbed aboard and said the cabin was dry, so we went into it to wait for the storm to let up. But it kept gettin' worse. When we came out of the cabin it was all fog like this and water everywhere. Bennie was afraid to wade, for we couldn't see the shore, so we went back into the cabin again. And then, all at once, there was a bump that knocked us both sprawlin'. The lantern went out, and when we come on deck we were afloat. It was terrible. And then—and then you came, Seth, and saved our lives.”
“Humph! Maybe they ain't saved yet. . . . Emeline, where was you drivin' to?”
“Why, we was drivin' home, or thought we was.”
“Home?”
“Yes, home—back to the bungalow.”
“You was?”
“Yes.”
A pause. Then: “Emeline, there's no use your tellin' me what ain't so. I know more than you think I do, maybe. If you was drivin' home why did you take the Denboro road?”
“The Denboro road? Why, we only went on that a ways. Then we turned off on what we thought was the road to the Lights. But it wa'n't; it must have been the other, the one that goes along by the edge of the Back Harbor and the Slough, the one that's hardly ever used. Seth,” indignantly, “what do you mean by sayin' that I told you what wa'n't so? Do you think I lie?”
“No. No more than you thought I lied about that Christy critter.”
“Seth, I was always sorry for that. I knew you didn't lie. At least I ought to have known you didn't. I—”
“Wait. What did you take the Denboro road at all for?”
“Why—why—Well, Seth, I'll tell you. Bennie wanted to talk to me. He had come on purpose to see me, and he wanted me to do somethin' that—that . . . Anyhow, he'd come to see me. I didn't know he was comin'. I hadn't heard from him for two years. That letter I got this—yesterday mornin' was from him, and it most knocked me over.”
“You hadn't HEARD from him? Ain't he been writin' you right along?”
“No. The fact is he left me two years ago without even sayin' good-by, and—and I thought he had gone for good. But he hadn't,” with a sigh, “he hadn't. And he wanted to talk with me. That's why he took the other road—so's he'd have more time to talk, I s'pose.”
“Humph! Emeline, answer me true: Wa'n't you goin' to Denboro to get—to get a divorce from me?”
“A divorce? A divorce from YOU? Seth Bascom, I never heard such—”
She rose from her seat against the rail.
“Set down,” ordered her husband sharply. “You set down and keep down.”
She stared, gasped, and resumed her seat. Seth gazed straight ahead into the blackness. He swallowed once or twice, and his hands tightened on the spokes of the wheel.
“That—that feller there,” nodding grimly toward the groaning figure at the pumps, “told me himself that him and you had agreed to get a divorce from me—to get it right off. He give me to understand that you expected him, 'twas all settled and that was why he'd come to Eastboro. That's what he told me this afternoon on the depot platform.”
Mrs. Bascom again sprang up.
“Set down!” commanded Seth.
“I won't.”
“Yes, you will. Set down.” And she did.
“Seth,” she cried, “did he—did Bennie tell you that? Did he? Why, I never heard such a—I never! Seth, it ain't true, not a word of it. Did you think I'd get a divorce? Me? A self-respectin' woman? And from you?”
“You turned me adrift.”
“I didn't. You turned yourself adrift. I was in trouble, bound by a promise I give my dyin' husband, to give his brother a home while I had one. I didn't want to do it; I didn't want him with us—there, where we'd been so happy. But I couldn't say anything. I couldn't turn him out. And you wouldn't, you—”
She was interrupted. From beneath the Daisy M.'s keel came a long, scraping noise. The little schooner shook, and then lay still. The waves, no longer large, slapped her sides.
Mrs. Bascom, startled, uttered a little scream. Bennie D., knocked to his knees, roared in fright. Seth alone was calm. Nothing, at that moment, could alarm or even surprise him.
“Humph!” he observed, “we're aground somewheres. And in the Harbor. We're safe and sound now, I cal'late. Emeline, go below where it's dry and stay there. Don't talk—go. As for you,” leaving the wheel and striding toward the weary inventor, “you can stop pumpin'—unless,” with a grim smile, “you like it too well to quit—and set down right where you be. Right where you be, I said! Don't you move till I say the word. WHEN I say it, jump!”
He went forward, lowered the jib, and coiled the halliards. Then, lantern in hand, he seated himself in the bows. After a time he filled his pipe, lit it by the aid of the lantern, and smoked. There was silence aboard the Daisy M.
The wind died away altogether. The fog gradually disappeared. From somewhere not far away a church clock struck the hour. Seth heard it and smiled. Turning his head he saw in the distance the Twin-Lights burning steadily. He smiled again.
Gradually, slowly, the morning came. The last remnant of low-hanging mist drifted away. Before the bows of the stranded schooner appeared a flat shore with a road, still partially covered by the receding tide, along its border. Fish houses and anchored dories became visible. Behind them were hills, and over them roofs and trees and steeples.
A step sounded behind the watcher in the bows. Mrs. Bascom was at his elbow.
“Why, Seth!” she cried, “why, Seth! it's Eastboro, ain't it? We're close to Eastboro.”
Seth nodded. “It's Eastboro,” he said. “I cal'lated we must be there or thereabouts. With that no'theast breeze to help us we couldn't do much else but fetch up at the inner end of the Back Harbor.”
She laid her hand timidly on his arm.
“Seth,” she whispered, “what should we have done without you? You saved our lives.”
He swung about and faced her. “Emeline,” he said, “we've both been awful fools. I've been the biggest one, I guess. But I've learned my lesson—I've swore off—I told you I'd prove I was a man. Do you think I've been one tonight?”
“Seth!”
“Well, do you? Or,” with a gesture toward the “genius” who was beginning to take an interest in his surroundings, “do you like that kind better?”
“Seth,” reproachfully, “I never liked him better. If you had—”
She was interrupted by her brother-in-law, who came swaggering toward them. With the sight of land and safety, Bennie D.'s courage returned; also, his old assurance.
“Humph!” he observed. “Well, sister, we are safe, I really believe. In spite of,” with a glare at the lightkeeper, “this person's insane recklessness and brutality. Now I will take you ashore and out of his presence.”
Seth rose to his feet.
“Didn't I tell you,” he demanded, “not to move till I said the word? Emeline, stay right here.”
Bennie D. stared at the speaker; then at his sister-in-law.
“Sister,” he cried, in growing alarm, “sister, come! come! we're going ashore, I tell you. What are you waiting for?”
Seth put his arm about the lady.
“She is goin' ashore,” he said. “But she's goin' with me, and she's goin' to stay with me. Ain't you, Emeline?”
The lady looked up into his face and then down again. “If you want me, Seth,” she said.
Bennie D. sprang forward. “Emeline,” he shrieked, “what do you mean? Are you going to leave me? Have you forgotten—”
“She ain't forgot nothin',” broke in Seth. “But YOU'RE forgettin' what I told you. Will you go aft there and set down, or shall I make you?”
“But—but, Emeline—sister—have you forgotten your promise to your dying husband? To my brother? You promised to give me a home as long as you owned one.”
Then Seth played his trump.
“She don't own any home,” he declared triumphantly. “She sold her house, and she ain't got any home—except the one I'm goin' to give her. And if you ever dare to show your head inside of THAT, I'll—I'll heave you over both lights. If you think I'm foolin', just try and see. Now then, Emeline.”
And, with his wife in his arms, Seth Atkins—Seth Atkins Bascom—CAPTAIN Seth Atkins Bascom—swung over the rail and waded to land.
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