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For an hour he sat listening to the somewhat prosy talk of the old lady, and then there being no sign of Annis's return he silently departed and made his way back to the Seamew. To the cook's relief he found that the Seamew's next voyage was to a little port on the West Coast named Cocklemouth, calling at the garrison town of Bymouth on the way.
Then he heard the cry a seamew's call repeated thrice at intervals, and five minutes later something loomed out of the darkness quite close to the hind wheels of the cart. "Hist! Ffoulkes!" came in a soft whisper, scarce louder than the wind. "Present!" came in quick response. "Here, help me to lift the child into the cart.
Some of them had been members of the Seamew's deserting crews. They were afraid of Tunis Latham, but they had little sympathy for Orion. The skipper caught up with him in the middle of the road and almost opposite the Pareta cottage. Orion had picked up a cobblestone as he reached the street and, finding himself about to be overtaken, he turned and threw the missile at Tunis' head.
"I'd rather take my chance through the channel under sail than depend on that tug," the captain added. "Like a puppy dragging around an old rubber boot. Lively there! Ready to cast off, Mr. Chapin." The schooner was freed of the "puffing abomination," the smoke of which sooted the Seamew's clean sails.
"Ah!" exclaimed Eunez Pareta to Johnny Lark, the Seamew's cook. "So you know she of the evil eye, eh?" "What do you mean?" asked Johnny. "That pretty girl who rides behind Captain Latham?" "Si!" "She has no evil eye," declared the cook stoutly. "It is told me that she has," said the smiling girl. "And she has put what you call the 'hoodoo' on that schooner. She come down in her from Boston."
He was, perhaps, a driver too quick with his fist or the toe of his boot. Questions along this line were bound to breed answers and answers from those members of the Seamew's crew who were not friendly to the skipper. In some little den off Commercial Street 'Rion Latham had forgathered with certain dock loiterers, and, after that, word went to and fro that the Seamew was haunted.
And they knew that a gale was coming. This was no place for a schooner of the Seamew's size to ride out the storm. She might easily drag her anchors and go ashore on the Hollis sands that in the past had buried many a good ship. So the trio of Cape men nodded grimly to each other and took the better chance.
"That'll be all right, too," he told her with confidence. "Just wait and see." They dropped anchor near the Main Street dock in order that they should be able to warp the schooner in to unload her cargo in the morning. Tunis allowed shore leave, late as the hour was. But he sat beside the passenger on the Seamew's deck, and they talked. It was surprising how much those two found to talk about!
Once fairly out of the breakers the fishermen at great risk to their little craft opened the companion leading down into the Seamew's tiny after-cabin, and the poor souls from the wreck were conveyed below, out of the reach of the bitter blast and the incessant showers of icy spray.
And she merely nodded her understanding of his statement when Tunis said, speaking directly to her: "The Seamew's going to lie here over Sunday this time, Ida May." "That'll be nice for you, Tunis," Aunt Prue put in. "You can go to church. You don't often have that privilege. Seafarin' is an awful godless life."
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