Capn Abe, Storekeeper | Page 7

o' the potaters?" gasped Amiel Perdue.
"Who went crazy--your brother, Cap'n Abe?" Milt asked cheerfully. He had squandered a nickel in trying to head off the flow of the storekeeper's story, and felt that he was entitled to something besides the Brown Mule.
Cap'n Abe kept to his course apparently unruffled: "Cap'n Am'zon an' the other feller lashed the poor chap--han's an' feet--and so kep' him from goin' overboard. But mebbe 'twarn't a marciful act after all. When they was rescued from the Posy Lass, her decks awash and her slowly breakin' up, there warn't nothing could be done for the feller that had lost his mind. He was put straightaway into a crazy-house when they got to port.
"Now, them fellers saved from the Gilbert Gaunt didn't go through nothin' like that, it stands to reason. Cap'n Am'zon----"
Lawford Tapp was gazing out of the door beside Cap'n Joab, whose deeply tanned, whisker-fringed countenance wore an expression of disgust.
"I declare! I'd love to see this wonderful brother of his. He must have Baron Munchausen lashed to the post," the young man whispered.
"Never heard tell of that Munchausen feller," Cap'n Joab reflected. "Reckon he didn't sail from any of the Cape ports. But you let Abe tell it, Cap'n Am'zon Silt is the greatest navigator an' has the rip-snortin'est adventoors of airy deep-bottom sailor that ever chawed salt hoss."
"Did you ever see him?" Lawford asked.
"See who?"
"Cap'n Amazon?"
"No. I didn't never see him. But I've heard Cap'n Abe talk about him--standin' off an' on as ye might say--for twenty year and more."
"Odd you never met him, isn't it?"
"No. I never happened on Cap'n Am'zon when I was sea-farin'. And he ain't never been to Cardhaven to my knowledge."
"Never been here?" murmured Lawford Tapp more than a little surprised. "Wasn't he born and brought up here?"
"No. Neither was Cap'n Abe. The Silts flourish, as ye might say--or, useter 'fore the fam'ly sort o' petered out--down New Bedford way. Cap'n Abe come here twenty-odd year back and opened this store. He's as salt as though he'd been a haddocker since he was weaned. But he's always stuck mighty close inshore. Nobody ever seen him in a boat--'ceptin' out in a dory fishin' for tomcod in the bay, and on a mighty ca'm day at that."
"How does it come that he is called captain, then?" Lawford asked, impressed by Cap'n Beecher's scorn of the storekeeper.
The captain reflected, his jaws working spasmodically. "It's easy 'nough to pick up skipper's title longshore. 'Most ev'ry man owns some kind of a boat; and o' course a man's cap'n of his own craft--or 'doughter be. But I reckon Abe Silt aimed his title honest 'nough."
"How?" urged Lawford.
"When Abe fust come here to Cardhaven there was still two-three wrecking comp'nies left on the Cape. Why, 'tain't been ten years since the Paulmouth Comp'ny wrecked the Mary Benson that went onto Sanders Reef all standin'. They made a good speck out o' the job, too.
"Wal, Abe bought into one o' the comp'nies--was the heaviest stockholder, in fac', so nat'rally was cap'n. He never headed no crew--not as I ever heard on. But the title kinder stuck; and I don't dispute Abe likes it."
"But about his brother--this Captain Amazon?" The line of Cap'n Joab Beecher's jaw, clean shaven above his whisker, looked very grim indeed, and he wagged his head slowly. "I don't know what to make of all this talk o' Cap'n Abe's," was his enigmatical reply.
Lawford turned to gaze curiously at the storekeeper. He certainly looked to be of a salt flavor, did Cap'n Abe Silt, though so many of his years had been spent behind the counter of this gloomy and cluttered shop. He was not a large man, nor commanding to look upon. His eyes were too mild for that--save when, perhaps, he grew excited in relating one of his interminable stories about Cap'n Amazon.
Cap'n Amazon Silt, it seemed, had been everything on sea and land that a mariner could be. No romance of the sea, or sea-going, was too remarkable to be capped by a tale of one of Cap'n Amazon's experiences. Some of these stories of wild and remarkable happenings, the storekeeper had told over and over again until they were threadbare.
Cap'n Abe's brown, gray-streaked beard swept the breast of his blue jersey. He was seldom seen without a tarpaulin on his head, and this had made his crown as bare and polished as a shark's tooth. Under the bulk of his jersey he might have been either thin or deep-chested, for the observer could not easily judge. And nobody ever saw the storekeeper's sleeves rolled up or the throat-latch of his shirt open.
Despite the fact that he held a thriving trade in his store on the Shell Road (especially during the summer season) Cap'n Abe lived emphatically a