“I – I didn’t ask you to come before eight, Dick.”
“Oh, that was it, was it? I suppose you told him to come at seven.”
“Now, Dick, – please – ”
But he, not daring to trust his tongue, was angry and helpless before her. After a moment he turned away and stood looking out toward the lights of the schooner. Finally he said, in a strange voice, “I see I’ve been a fool – I thought you meant some of the things you’ve said – I ought to have known better; I ought to have known you were just fooling with me – you were just a flirt.”
He did not look around. Even if he had, the night would have concealed the color in her cheeks. But he heard her say, “I think perhaps – you had better go, Dick.”
He hesitated, then turned.
“Good night,” she said, and ran up the steps.
“Say – wait, Annie – ”
The door closed behind her, and Dick stood alone. He waited, thinking she might come back, but the house was silent. He stepped back and looked up at her little balcony with its fringe of flowers, but it was deserted; no light appeared in the window. At last he turned away, and tramped out to the Merry Anne. The men were aboard, ready for an early start in the morning; the new mate was settling himself in the cabin. To Dick, as he stood on the pier and looked down on the trim little schooner, nothing appeared worth while. He leaped down to the deck, and thought savagely that he would have made the the same leap if the deck had not been there, if there had been fourteen feet of green water and a berth on the scalloped sand below. But there was one good thing – nothing could rob Dick of his sleep. And in his dreams Annie was always kind.
CHAPTER IV – THE CIRCLE MARK
EARLY in the morning they were off. Dick, glum and reckless, took the wheel; McGlory went up forward and looked after hoisting the jibs and foresail. The new mate had already succeeded, by an ugly way he had, in antagonizing most of the men; but their spirits ran high, in spite of him, as the Merry Anne slipped away from the pier and headed out into the glory of the sunrise.
“Hey, Peenk,” called Larsen, “geeve us ‘Beelly Brown.’” And Pink, who needed no urging, roared out promptly the following ballad, with the whole crew shouting the spoken words: – =
Oh, Billy Brown he loved a girl,
And her name was Mary Rowe, O-ho!
She lived way down
In that wick-ed town,
The town called She-caw-go.
(Spoken) WHERE’S THAT?
The place where the Clark streets grow.=
"Oh, Mary, will you bunk with me?”
"Say, ain’t you a little slow, O-ho!
’Bout sailin’ down
To this wicked town
To tell me you love me so?”
(Spoken) GO ‘LONG!
She’s givin’ ’im the wink, I know.=
Oh, the wind blowed high, an’ the wind blowed strong,
An’ the Gross’ Point’ reef laid low, O-ho!
An’ Billy Brown
Went down, down, down,
To the bottom of the place below.
(Spoken) WHERE’S MARY?
She’s married to a man named Joe.=
“You’re makin’ noise enough up there,” growled McGlory. Pink, with a rebellious glance, bent over the rope he was coiling and held his peace.
As they started, so they sailed during four days – the Captain reckless, the mate hard and uncommunicative, the men cowed. And at mid-morning on the fourth day they arrived at Spencer.
The Hydrographic Office had at that time worked wonders in charting these Great Lakes of ours, but it had given no notice to the little harbor that was tucked snugly away behind False Middle Island, not a hundred miles from Mackinaw City on the Lake Huron side; merely a speck of an island with a nameless dent behind it. But old Spencer, a lank, hatchet-faced Yankee, had found that a small schooner could be worked in if she headed due west, “with the double sand dune against the three pines till you get the forked stump ranged with the ruined shanty; meet this range and hold it till clear of the bar at the north end of the island; circle around to port; when clear of the bar, hug the inner shore of the island until the mill can be seen behind the trees; then run up into the harbor. Plenty of water here.”
This discovery had resulted in such a curious little mill as can be found only in the back corners of the country, – a low shed with a flat roof; one side open to the day; within, an old-fashioned vertical saw; the whole supplied with power by a rotting, dripping, moss-covered sluiceway.
All about were blackened pine stumps – nothing else for a hundred miles. And all through the forest was the sand, drifting like snow over roads and fences, changing the shape of the land in every high wind, blowing into hair and clothes, and adding, with the tall, endless, gray-green mullein stalks, the final touch of desolation to a hopeless land. Here and there, in the clearings, sand-colored farmers and their sand-colored wives struggled to wring a livelihood from the thankless earth. Other farmers had drifted helplessly away, leaving houses and barns to blacken and rot and sink beneath the sand drifts, and leaving, too, rows of graves under the stumps.
Twenty miles down the coast, where a railroad touched, was a feeble little settlement that was known, on the maps, as Ramsey City.
This region had been “cut over” once; it had been burned over more than once; and yet old Spencer, with his handful of employees and his deliberate little mill, wore a prosperous look on his inscrutable Yankee face. There was no inhabited house within ten miles, but he was apparently contented.
McGlory, it seemed, knew the channel; so Dick surrendered the wheel when they were nearing the island, and stood at his elbow, watching the landmarks. The mate volunteered no information, but Dick needed none; he made out the ranges with the eye of a born sailor. But even he was surprised when the Merry Anne swung around into the landlocked harbor and glided up to a rude wharf that was piled with lumber. Behind it was the mill; behind that, at some distance, a comfortable house, nearly surrounded by other smaller dwellings.
“So this is Spencer, eh?” observed Dick.
“This is Spencer,” McGlory replied.
The owner himself was coming down to meet them, reading over a letter from his friend, Stenzenberger, as he walked. His wife came out of her kitchen and stood on her steps to see the schooner. Two or three men in woodman’s flannels were lounging about the mill, and these sat up, renewed their quids from a common plug, and stared.
“How are you?” nodded Spencer, pocketing the letter. He caught the line and threw it over a snubbing post. “This Mr.
“Smiley?”
“That’s who,” said Dick.
“How are you, Joe?” to McGlory.
“How are you, Mr. Spencer?”
In a moment they were fast, and Dick had leaped ashore. He caught Spencer’s shrewd eyes taking him in, and laughed, “Well, I guess you ‘ll know me next time.”
“Guess I will.” There was a puzzled, even disturbed expression on the lumberman’s face. “I was thinking you didn’t look much like your cousin. The stuffs all ready for you there. You’d better put one of your men on to check it up. Will you walk up and take a look around the place?”
“Thanks – guess I ‘ll stay right here and hustle this stuff aboard. I’d like to put out again after dinner.”
Spencer drew a plug from a trousers pocket, offered it to Dick, who at the sight of it shook his head, and helped himself to a mouthful. Then