Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/321



HE wind was fresh from the east; she had to beat out all the way to the light. The tide was past the full, the ebb setting out strongly helped her on. Coming to the inlet finally, the wind was dead ahead, and the tide running out swift as a mill-race. Running for the middle of the passage, she put the Foam up straight into the wind, drew the sail fore-and-aft, and drifted out slowly on the tide, in the teeth of the fresh breeze. The light-keeper gave her a "Good-day" as she passed; his great black Newfoundland bounded and barked on the shore, then plunged in and swam off to the boat. They all knew and liked Kit. She patted the dripping head that looked at her so friendly out of the waves. But she drove him off.

"Off, Tower, off, sir! I've no time for play. Poor boy—you'd help me if you could!"

She put the helm to starboard, slipped the sheet, then, bringing the boat up close to the wind, stood off half a mile on the port tack. Going about then, she ran down straight for the other inlet, worked through slowly against the ebb, and then went bowling on up Hilbury harbor, with a stiff breeze on the port beam.

Coming to the head of the harbor, she tied up her boat to the landing-place, letting the sail fly out. A strange boat lay close by, with "Bess Maynard" painted on the stern. Kit bought a few groceries at the shop near by, engaged Clif Crackel to take the Foam back home, and then walked up the road.

By this time it was half-past one. Hearing voices, she looked forward. Two men sat on a bench by the door of Mark Callowell's little shop; she knew them both. The great unwieldly, red-faced, and jolly-looking fellow on the right was Captain Tacitus Marlin. Few in Hilbury, however, knew him by that name. He had somehow got the nickname of "Whaler;" and it stuck to him as such things will. Everybody in Hilbury called him Cap'n Tass or Cap'n Tass Whaler. He had lived there all his life, off and on, until, a couple of years back, becoming too unwieldly for active life, he had gone to live with his married son, across the