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There was not a fire-arm aboard that we could get at. Halyard's hand crept backward where a steel-shod boat-hook lay, and I also made a clutch at it.
I'm damned if I say another word about the harbor-master until you've been to Halyard's!" "A harbor-master," I persisted, "is an official who superintends the mooring of ships isn't he?" But he refused to be tempted into conversation, and we lounged silently on the lumber until a long, thin whistle from the locomotive and a rush of stinging salt-wind brought us to our feet.
I thanked him, but said that I was anxious to reach Halyard's before dark, and he very kindly led me along the cliffs and pointed out the path. "This man Halyard," he said, "is an invalid. He lives at a cove called Black Harbor, and all his truck goes through to him over the company's road. We receive it here, and send a pack-mule through once a month.
"Wild auk, you mean," said Professor Farrago, shaking hands with me. "You will start to-night, won't you?" "Yes, but Heaven knows how I'm ever going to land in this man Halyard's door-yard. Good-bye!" "About that sea-biped " began Professor Farrago, shyly. "Oh, don't!"
His thoughts were broken by Halyard's appearance in the companionway, and he descended to his solitary supper in the contracted, still cabin. Again on deck his sense of the monotony of life trebled. He had been cruising now about the edges of continents for twelve years.
"I'll trouble you to use a different tone in addressing me," I replied, hotly; "I'll feel sorry for you if I choose to!" And our usual quarrel proceeded, to his deep satisfaction. By six o'clock next evening I had Halyard's luggage stowed away in the cat-boat, and the pretty nurse's effects corded down, with the newly hatched auk-chicks in a hat-box on top.
It certainly came from Halyard's chimney, although the opposite cliff prevented me from seeing the house itself. I rested a moment to refill my pipe, then resumed rifle and pack, and cautiously started to skirt the cliffs.
Then I asked him whether these birds of Halyard's were really great auks, and he replied, somewhat indifferently, that he supposed they were at least, nobody had ever before seen such birds near Port-of-Waves. "There's something else," he said, running, a pine-sliver through his pipe-stem "something that interests us all here more than auks, big or little.
"It runs to the cove or ought to " He stopped abruptly with a thoughtful glance at me. "So you're going over to Halyard's?" he continued, as though answering a question asked by himself. I nodded. "You've never been there of course?" "No," I said, "and I'm not likely to go again." I would have told him why I was going if I had not already begun to feel ashamed of my idiotic errand.
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