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So did Francis Lee, superintendent of the Mica Quarry Company at Port-of-Waves. So have a dozen men who work in the quarry. Oh, you needn't laugh, young man. It's an old story here, and anybody can tell you about the harbor-master." "The harbor-master!" I exclaimed. "Yes, that slate-colored thing with gills, that looks like a man and by Heaven! is a man that's the harbor-master.
Then, turning to me, he rasped out: "And that young lady was obliged to row all the way to Port-of-Waves and call to Lee's quarrymen to take her boat in." Completely mystified, I looked from Halyard to the girl, not in the least comprehending what all this meant. "That will do," said Halyard, ungraciously, which curt phrase was apparently the usual dismissal for the nurse.
"To Port-of-Waves and then to New York," he replied, tranquilly. I was doubtful, and my lack of cordiality hurt his feelings. "Oh, of course, if you need the sea-voyage " I began. "I don't; I need you," he said, savagely; "I need the stimulus of our daily quarrel. I never disagreed so pleasantly with anybody in my life; it agrees with me; I am a hundred per cent. better than I was last week."
"No, I'm Francis Lee, bossing the mica pit at Port-of-Waves," he replied, "but this letter is from Halyard, asking me to look out for a man in a hurry from Bronx Park, New York."
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.
I asked. "Yes except for a professional trained nurse poor thing!" "A man?" "No," said Lee, disgustedly. Presently he gave me a peculiar glance; hesitated, and finally said: "Ask Halyard to tell you about his nurse and the harbor-master. Good-bye I'm due at the quarry. Come and stay with us whenever you care to; you will find a welcome at Port-of-Waves."
It took me a week to perfect my arrangements for transporting the great auks, by water, to Port-of-Waves, where a lumber schooner was to be sent from Petite Sainte Isole, chartered by me for a voyage to New York. I had constructed a cage made of osiers, in which my auks were to squat until they arrived at Bronx Park. My telegrams to Professor Farrago were brief. One merely said "Victory!"
Ask any quarryman at Port-of-Waves what it is that comes purring around their boats at the wharf and unties painters and changes the mooring of every cat-boat in the cove at night! Ask Francis Lee what it was he saw running and leaping up and down the shoal at sunset last Friday!
"Besides," she said, with a shudder, "it's all slate color, like a porpoise, and it looks as wet as a sheet of india-rubber in a dissecting-room." The day before I was to set sail with my auks in a cat-boat bound for Port-of-Waves, Halyard trundled up to me in his chair and announced his intention of going with me. "Going where?" I asked.
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