A Madcap Cruise

"It strikes me," said Jerrold Taberman, "that we are booked for everlasting fame, win or lose. We'll either sail down the ages as a brace of heroes, or as the most egregious pair of donkeys that ever botched a job."

"Well, Jerry," returned his companion, smiling, "you've as much to do with making the thing a success as I have. I hope you realize the responsibility."

The young men chuckled in concert at the thought of all that was involved in this remark, although they looked, not at each other, but out over the sea.

It was early twilight in the last week of the month of May. The two speakers were standing on a little jetty that ran out into a small and all but landlocked harbor of an island in East Penobscot Bay. Both were evidently in the earlier twenties, both were dressed in such canvas working-suits as are worn by the sailors in our navy, and both were, at half a glance, gentlemen.

The second speaker, John Castleport, was tall and dark. His face, with its prominent features and keen brown eyes, was rather striking than handsome. He stood looking southward to where, in the fading light, the Atlantic shouldered away to the west as if with a hidden purpose of its own. In his hand he held a pair of powerful binoculars, and despite his smile he had the air of being pretty seriously in earnest.

Taberman contrasted curiously with his host. He was short and thickset, with blue eyes and fair hair which showed a tendency to curl. As he stood with shoulders turned to the wind, the square collar of his canvas jumper was blown against his round pate, and made a background for his tanned face. He held a briar drop-pipe between his teeth, and his hands were thrust deep into his trousers pockets. Working his pipe into the corner of his mouth, he spoke again.

"Hope this breeze won't trouble the old gentleman," he remarked, casting a glance at the billowing double-headers that were driving by aloft.

The wind shrilled by the watchers on the jetty, clear, strong, and salt.

"Guess not," replied Castleport; "anything short of a hurricane's a sailing-wind for him. He's a mettlesome old chap."

"That's right enough. Can't have him spoiling our game by being late, you know. Let's go up; it's getting beastly chilly."

They turned and walked along the pier. At the point where it met the shore stood a small boathouse. Thence the ground, covered with a stunted growth of spruce and fir, and the inevitable New England boulders, rose abruptly. Directly in the line of the jetty the shingled roof of a small house showed above the trees. To the westward, in the dimming afterglow of the sunset, the Camden Hills stood out luminous, purple, yet rimmed with a thread of golden fire. Away to the east, clad in soberer colors, rose Mt. Desert, a mass of shadowy greens and blues. The steepness of the path they were ascending soon cut off from the view of the young men these beauties and grandeurs, which, however, they were probably not in a mood to dwell upon; and a minute's walking brought them to the door of the house, a small affair with high-pitched roof and broad veranda. Its shingles were almost the color of the dark evergreens that encircled the clearing in which it stood; its windows reflected with a vacant and glassy stare the fast-fading light. Castleport opened the door for his guest, and followed him into the living-room.

The darkness seemed the greater from its contrast with what light yet remained outside, and not until Taberman had put a match to the pile of old shingles and light driftwood in the wide fireplace could they see fairly. The crimson glow showed a room some twenty feet square, with windows on two sides,--the south and east. The joists and sheathing were of planed spruce, left unpainted. The big Mexican fireplace of brick occupied the northwestern corner; in the middle of the room stood conspicuously a round deal table, covered with a litter of pipes, tobacco, magazines, and nautical hardware; between the two eastern windows, below a box-like cabinet which was attached to the wall, was a smaller table with a square top, piled with books and charts. Beneath the southern windows was placed a heavy desk with a faded baize top, the cloth ink-stained and full of holes due to moths and carelessly handled cigars. Of the happy-go-lucky assortment of chairs which completed the furniture of the room, no large portion was in an entirely unbroken condition, but all evidently were meant for service and ease. The walls of the room were decorated with devices in scallop-shells and a few unframed water-colors of the impressionist type. A large chart of Penobscot Bay was tacked to the inside of the door, and a venerable flintlock musket hung below a battered quadrant over the chimneypiece. Everything was simple almost to rudeness, yet the place gave at once and most strongly the impression of comfort and good-fellowship.

Castleport laid his binoculars on the desk, and, stepping to a door on his right, opened it and called out:--

"Oh, Gonzague?"

"Sair?" promptly replied some one from beyond the short passage into which he looked.

"Dinner when you're ready, Gonzague."

"A' right, sair."

Taberman had seated himself by the fire, and here Castleport joined him. Each filled and lighted a pipe, and together they stared at the flames roaring up the wide chimney. The smaller sticks already began to fall apart, pitching outward or dropping between the dogs, and for some moments the young men watched them in silence. At length, as Taberman flung a fresh stick into the flames, Castleport spoke, half to himself.

"What a lesson it'll be to the old chap! My aunt! He'll grind his teeth to powder!"

"Tooth-powder, eh?" queried the other with a grin. "But we must be sure we have the laugh on the right side. It isn't merely the getting away with the Merle that's the joke; it's the hanging on to her and bringing her back safe."

"That's true enough," assented Castleport; "but with pluck and luck and an eye to the three L's, we ought to manage."

"You'd better go over the whole plan for me, Jack; you haven't given me half the details, and I'd like to know the latest version. It's certainly important to have everything perfectly understood beforehand."

"All right; I'll go over the whole business after dinner, old man. We will act the conspirators rehearsing their villainy; but let's wait for food. I hate discussions on an empty stomach."

"Correct; here's Gonzague now."

A tall, gray-haired man, with a much-bronzed face, came in and began to clear away the litter on the round table. He had a rugged, weather-beaten countenance, with prominent features and luminous black eyes. Beneath his big, hooked nose a large white mustache, stiff and curled like that of a walrus, half hid a firm, full-lipped mouth. A native of Provence,--soldier, sailor, cook, and deck-hand,--old Gonzague Mairecalde had led sixty-odd years of exciting and polyglot existence, the last three of which had been spent in Castleport's service. Dressed in blue flannel trousers and an immaculate white jacket, the old man moved noiselessly about, swiftly disposing of the things on the table. He seemed to have a place for everything, and the lightest tread and deftest hands imaginable. Having cleared away, he went out, and soon reappeared with linen and service. In a short time the table was ready for the bringing in of the food.

"A' ready, sair?" asked Gonzague, tugging at his mustache with his bony fingers.

"Two minutes," answered Jack. "Come on, Jerry; let's scrub up."

In ten minutes they were seated before a dinner plain but hearty, well cooked and appetizingly served. They were apparently not at all troubled by any incongruity between their rough and not over-fresh sailor clothes and the snowy napery and the silver on which the fire threw dancing and wavering lights. On the walls opposite the fireplace mute, shadowy grotesques helped each other to huge supplies from dishes of vague outline and uncertain size, plied dark forks and spoons with ogre-like gusto, or with heads thrown back and crooked elbows drank like trolls from enormous tankards.

After dinner the table was cleared, a jug of ale was placed upon it, with a plate of ship-biscuit and a supply of tobacco. It was the theory of Castleport that the climate of the Island was English enough to warrant this nightly attack upon the October, of which his uncle, who owned the Island, kept always a butt in the cellar. In truth, the fresh coolness of the air at night, the pleasant blaze of the fire, the agreeable scent of burning tobacco, made a tankard or two of ale seem hardly to need an excuse of any sort.

With the table pulled forward so that its edge came between them, their pipes lit, their feet stretched out comfortably toward the hearth, the pair of friends smoked for a time in silence, until at last Jack, after refilling and relighting his pipe with great deliberation, broke into speech.

"Before I go into the details of this job," he observed, "there's one thing I have to say. It's a waste of breath for me to talk until I know you're with me. I haven't done anything more than to ask you off-hand, old man; now I'd like you to say seriously whether you'll come on this cruise with me or not. I hate to be so horribly businesslike, Jerry, especially in the matter of a lark; but in--er--larking on this scale, things have got to be put on a definite basis,--be perfectly understood, as you said before dinner."

Taberman gave his companion a sidelong glance, and began to smile. The smile grew into an audible chuckle; and this in its turn developed into a laugh increasing to a jovial roar.

"You solemn old pirate," he cried, "what sort of a quitter do you take me for? I'll give you any kind of a promise you like, provided--_semper more equitis_, you know--Can't bind myself to cut throats, scuttle ships, fly the jolly roger, et cetera. What's your form of oath, eh? Do we drink each other's blood out of a skull, or what?"

There was a boyish exuberance about Jerrold Taberman, a debonair abandon, which he never could outgrow. It accorded well with his youthful face and careless mien, which made him so marked a contrast to his friend. Castleport, although impulsive and disposed to jollity as only a hale and hearty young man of twenty-two can be, was, on the whole, of a temperament the reverse of boisterous. He responded frankly to Jerry's outburst.

"Well, old man," said he, "there's nothing more needed than your word that you'll go, and stick it out to the end. I knew you would, Jerry. Confound it, give us your flipper!"

In his enthusiasm he caught Taberman's hand and wrung it heartily, being evidently moved more by some inner consciousness of the weighty nature of the scheme he was about to outline than by anything that had actually been said between them. Jerry laughed, and returned the grip with interest.

"And now," continued Castleport, "I'll let you have particulars galore. I'll tell you the beginning of it first: how the idea came to me. About three weeks ago I decided I'd go abroad,--I wrote you, you remember. Well, I went to Uncle Randolph, and asked him for a letter of credit. That's what comes of the pleasant arrangement by which all my property's in trust till I'm twenty-five! Beastly nuisance!"