Read Ebook: St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls Vol. 5 No. 07 May 1878 Scribner's Illustrated by Various Dodge Mary Mapes Editor

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Ebook has 610 lines and 48137 words, and 13 pages

Editor: Mary Mapes Dodge

ST. NICHOLAS.

HOW MANDY WENT ROWING WITH THE "CAP'N."

BY MARY HALLOCK FOOTE.

It was the month of May--the season of fresh shad and apple-blossoms on the Hudson River. "Bub" and "Mandy" Lewis knew more about the shad than they did about the apple-blossoms, for their father was a fisherman, and they lived in a little house built on a steep bank between the road above and the river below. Sometimes, on cool, damp spring evenings, the scent of the orchards came down to them from the hills above, but the smell of shad was much stronger and nearer.

Just in front of the house was an old wharf, where fishing-boats were moored, and nets spread for drying or mending. One morning, Bub and Mandy were sitting on the log which guards the edge of the wharf, watching their father and brother Jeff getting ready to spread the nets for next night's "haul." Jeff was busy with the buoy lines and sinkers, while the father bailed out the boat with an old tin pan. The children were rather subdued--Bub wondering how long it would be before he could "handle a boat" like Jeff and go out with his father? Mandy was expecting every moment to hear her mother's voice calling from the house. It was Monday morning, and Mandy knew her mother would soon be starting for the Hillard's, where she "helped" on Mondays and Saturdays.

These were the longest days of the week to Mandy, for then she had baby to tend all by herself and he was "such a bother!"

"What's the use makin' b'l'eve you don't hear?" said Bub. "You know you've got to go!"

"Seems as if you didn't love your little brother, Mandy--such work as you make of tendin' him! Just look how glad he is to see you," as baby leaned forward and began pulling at the pink bonnet. "He's just had his bread and milk, and if you set right there in the door, where he can watch the chickens, I shouldn't wonder if he'd be real good for ever so long. Father and Jeff wont be home to dinner, but there's plenty of bread and butter and cold beans in the closet for you and Bub. You can set the beans in the oven to warm, if you like--only be sure you put 'em on an old plate; and you can divide what's left of the ginger-bread between you."

"Oh, mother! can't we eat it now?" said Bub, who had watched his father and Jeff off in the boat, and, now returning to the house, didn't quite know what to do next.

"Why, it aint an hour sence breakfast! But you can do as you like; only, if Mandy eats hers, baby'll want it, sure. Better wait till he's asleep."

"All right; Mandy can wait," said Bub, cheerfully, as his mother set the plate of cake on the table before leaving the house.

"Oh, Bub, I'm awful hungry, too!" said Mandy. "You cut the cake in halves,--mind you cut fair,--and hold my piece for me where baby can't see it. Sit right here behind me."

So Mandy on the door-step, and Bub on the floor, with his back against the door, which he gently tilted as he munched his cake, were very silent and comfortable for a minute or two.

The hens crawed and cackled, with cozy, gossipy noises, in the sun before the door; the baby blinked and cooed contentedly.

"Ready for another bite?" said Bub, holding out Mandy's cake close to her left ear.

"In a min-ute," said Mandy, with her mouth full. "Bub Lewis, aint you ashamed of yourself? You've been eatin' off my piece! I saw you just now!"

"Aint, either! You can see great things with the back of your head! Here's your piece 'n' here's mine. Yours is ever so much bigger!"

"Well, you've been gobbling yours's fast's you could, and I only had two little bites off mine."

Bub walked down toward the water without deigning a reply, but thought of several things on his way which would have been more withering than silence.

Mandy felt that, after their late unpleasantness, it would be more dignified to take no notice of Bub for a while; but curiosity, and baby's restlessness, finally prevailed over pride, and rolling up her troublesome little burden in an old red shawl, she trotted with him down to the river.

"I told you 't wasn't. If you don't b'l'eve me, what's the use o' my sayin' so again?"

"Well, I'm sorry, Bub. I just caught a sight of you as I turned my head, an' I thought--"

"Oh, well, never mind what you thought; we've heard enough 'bout that cake! Shove your foot one side a little? I want to drive another spile there. Them's the hitchin' spiles on the inside."

"What you buildin'?" asked Mandy.

"Can't you see for yourself? What's built on spiles, I'd like to know! Meetinghouses, may be you think. This is Lewis's dock; all the day boats and barges stop here!"

"Where's the water?" asked Mandy.

"Oh, you wait till high tide, 'bout four o'clock this afternoon, 'n' you'll see water enough!"

Just then, a boy in a blue blouse, with a basket of fish over his shoulder, came whistling along.

"Perry! Perry Kent! Where you goin'?" Bub called.

"Down to little cove, to clean fish."

"Oh, can't I go along and help? I can scale a herrin' first-rate; father said so."

"Aint herrin'; they're shad; got to be cleaned very partic'lar, too. But come along, if you want to."

"Bub," said Mandy, in an eager whisper, "oh, Bub, wait for me! Baby's fast asleep. I'll lay him right down here, in his shawl; the nets'll keep the sun off, 'n' he'll be real cozy 'n' nice till we get back."

"Why don't you take him up to the house?" said Perry, looking with some interest at Mandy's bundle. "'Taint a very good place for him here. You'll find us at the cove, all right."

"He'll wake up sure, if I try to carry him up the hill. See how nice he lays; and I'll hang the end of the shawl over this net-pole. I can see it plain enough from the cove. If he wakes up, he'll be tumblin' round and pull it off, so I'll know when to come back for him."

"Well, it takes a girl for contrivance," Perry said; and it was something in his manner rather than the words which made Mandy, as she followed the two boys, vaguely feel she was disapproved of.

The cove was a half-circle of pebble beach, washed by the ripples of a slowly rising tide, with a wall of gray slate rock at the back. Hemlock-trees leaned from the steep wooded cliff above, the shadows of their boughs moving with the wind across the sunny face of the rock.

It was very warm and still and bright. Mandy climbed to a perch high up in the twisted roots of an old hemlock, who, having ventured too far over the edge of the cliff, was clinging there, desperately driving his tough toes into the crevices of the rock, and wildly waving his boughs upward and backward as if imploring help from his comrades, safe in the dark wood above.

The river spread broad and bright below her. Mandy listened, in happy silence, to all the mysterious rustlings and twitterings and cracklings in the wood above, and the sounds, far and near, from the river below. Now and then she looked to see if the shawl still fluttered from the net-pole. She was glad she came, and it seemed but a very little while before the fish were all cleaned, and the boys, sitting on a rock, skipping pebbles, and watching for Perry Kent's father, who was coming in his boat to take the fish up to the hotel.

Perry's father was always called Cap'n Kent. He kept a kind of floating restaurant. One end of his boat was boarded over into a closet, with shelves filled with a supply of fresh fruit and berries in the season, cider, cakes, pies, root-beer, lemons, crackers, etc. His customers were chiefly the "hands" on board sloops becalmed opposite the landing, or passing barges and canal-boats, slowly trailed in the wake of a panting propeller, or escorted by dingy little "tugs," struggling along like lively black beetles.

The "Cap'n" was a very tall man, and his arms were so long that, as he rowed, he sat quite upright, only stretching his arms back and forth, scarcely bending his body at all. This gave great dignity to his appearance in a boat. His feet were very long too, and when he walked he lifted the whole foot at once, and put it down flat. Of course he could not walk very fast; but so important a person as the "Cap'n" could never be in a hurry.

As he held his boat against a rock while Perry lifted in the basket of fish, he saw the wistful faces of the children standing on the beach. Now, the "Cap'n" considered himself a very good-natured man, and good-natured men are always fond of children. So he called out in a loud voice:

"Whose little folks are you?"

"Bub and Mandy Lewis," Mandy answered quickly.

Bub nudged her with his elbow.

"Want to take a little row up to the hotel? Let's see--your folks live by the old fishin' dock, don't they? Wal, I can leave ye there comin' back. You can tell your Pa that Cap'n Kent took ye out rowin'."

"I'd like to go, if you please," said Bub, who was ready with an answer this time; "but Mandy, she's got to tend to the baby."

"The baby! What baby?" said the "Cap'n," while Mandy whispered, crossly, "Bub, I think you're real mean!"

"Oh, sir, baby's fast asleep up on the dryin'-ground, where the nets are! I could go as far as that, if you'd let me get out there,--if it wouldn't be too much trouble, sir."

"Course it would!" said Bub, emphatically.

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