Sheila of Big Wreck Cove | Page 4

extended to the people saved
from the big wreck.
Near the straggling settlement at the cove a group of shacks had sprung
up to shelter the "Portygees" from the stranded-vessel. As her bones
were slowly engulfed in the marching sands, through the decades that
passed, the people who had come ashore from the big wreck had waxed
well to do, bred families of strong, handsome, brown men and
black-eyed, glossy-haired women who flashed their white teeth in
smiles that were almost startling. Now one end of "the port," as the
village of Big Wreck Cove was usually called by the natives, was
known as Portygee Town.
Wreckers' Head boasted of several homes of retired shipmasters and
owners of Cap'n Ira's ilk. These ancient sea dogs, on such a day as this,
were unfailingly found "walking the poop" of their front yards, or
wherever they could take their diurnal exercise, binoculars or spyglass
in hand, their vision more often fixed seaward than on the land.
Cap'n Ira had scarcely put the glass to his eye for a first squint at his
"position" when he exclaimed:

"I swan! That's a master-pretty sight. I ain't seen a prettier in many a
day. Come here and look at this craft, Prudence."
She hurried to join him. Her motions when she was on her feet were
birdlike, yet there was the same unsteadiness in her walk as in Cap'n
Ira's. Only, at the moment, he did not see it, for his eye was glued to the
telescope.
"What do you see, Ira?" she asked.
"Clap this glass to your eye," said her husband. He steadied the
telescope, having pointed it for her. "See that suit of sails? Ain't they
grand? And the taper of them masts? She's a bird!"
"Why, what schooner is it?" asked Prudence. "I never saw her before,
did I? She's bearing in for the cove."
"I cal'late she is," agreed Cap'n Ira. "And I cal'late by the newness of
that suit of sails and her lines and all that she's Tunis Latham's new
craft that he went up to Marblehead last week to bring down here and
put into commission."
"The Seamew!" cried Prudence, in a pleased voice. "Isn't she a pretty
sight?"
"She's a sightly craft. Looks more like a racing yacht than a cargo boat.
Still and all, Tunis has got judgment. And he's put nigh every cent he's
got, all Peke Latham left him, into this schooner. And she not new."
"I hope Tunis has made no mistake," sighed Prudence, releasing the
glass for Ira to look through once more. "There has been trouble
enough over Peleg Latham's money."
"More trouble than the money amounted to. Split the family wide open.
'Rion Latham was saying to me he believed Peke never meant the
money should go all one way. The Medway Lathams, them 'Rion
belongs to, is all as sore as carbuncles about Tunis getting it. But I tell
Tunis as long as the court says the money should be his, let 'Rion and

all them yap like the hungry dogs they be. Tunis has got the marrer
bone."
"Does seem a pity," the old woman said, still watching the white
splotch against the background of gray and blue. "Families ought to be
at peace."
"Peace! I swan!" snorted Cap'n Ira. "'Rion Latham is about as much
given to peace as a wild tagger. But he knows which half of his
biscuit's buttered. He'll sail with Tunis as long as Tunis pays him
wages."
The captain continued to study the approaching schooner while
Prudence went back to her household tasks.
CHAPTER II
THE CAPTAIN OF THE SEAMEW
Tunis Latham's Seamew, tacking for the channel into Big Wreck Cove,
wings full-spread, skimming the heaving blue of the summer sea,
looked like a huge member of the tern family. From Wreckers' Head
and the other sand bluffs guarding this roadstead from the heave of the
Atlantic rollers, the schooner with her yachtlike lines was truly a
picture to please the most exacting mariner.
On her deck paced the young captain whose personal affairs had been a
subject of comment between Cap'n Ira Ball and his wife. He was a
heavy-set, upstanding, blue-jerseyed figure, lithe and as spry on his feet
as a cat. Tunis Latham was thirty, handsome in the bold way of
longshore men, and ruddy-faced. He had crisp, short, sandy hair; his
cheeks, chin, and lip were scraped as clean as his palm; his eyes were
like blue-steel points, but with humorous wrinkles at the outer corners
of them, matched by a faint smile that almost always wreathed his lips.
Altogether he was a man that a woman would be sure to look at twice.
The revelation of the lighter traits of his character counteracted the
otherwise sober look of