# Hijack and the Game

Extracted from the The Saturday Evening Post, 31 Jan 1925 1922, pp. 3–5, 72, 77, 78, 80. Accompanying illustrations by May Wilson Preston may be omitted. A Tish story: Included in Tish Plays the Game.
“Oh, Very Well," Said Lily May, “If You Like to Think That the Easter Bunny Lays Hard-Boiled Eggs——”
HIJACK AND THE GAME
A Tish Story—By May Roberts Rinehart
ILLUSTRATED BY MAY WILSON PRESTON
IT WAS last May that Tish's cousin, Annabelle Carter, wrote to her and asked her to take Lily May for the summer.
“I need a rest, Tish,” she wrote. “I need a rest from her. I want to go off where I can eat a cup custard without her looking at my waistline, and can smoke an occasional cigarette without having to steal one of hers when she is out. I may even bob my hair.”
“She'll smoke no cigarettes here,” Tish interjected. “And Annabelle Carter's a fool, Always was and always will be. Bob her hair indeed!”
She read on: “I want you to take her, Tish, and show her that high principles still exist in the older generation. They seem to think we are all hypocrites and whited sepulchers. But most of all, I want to get her away from Billy Field. He is an enchanting person, but he couldn't buy gas for her car. Jim says if he can earn a thousand dollars this summer he'll think about it. But outside of bootlegging, how can he? And he has promised not to do that.”
Tish had read us the letter, but she had already made up her mind.
“It is a duty, she said, “and I have never shirked a duty. Annabelle Carter has no more right to have a daughter than I have; I've seen her playing bridge and poker before that child. And she serves liquor in her house, although it is against the law of the nation.”
And later on: “What the girl needs,” she said, “is to be taken away from the artificial life she is living, and to meet with Nature. Nature,” she said, “is always natural. A mountain is always a mountain; the sea is the sea. Sufficient of either should make her forget that boy.”
“Too much of either might, Tish,” I said, rather tartly, “You can drown her or throw her over a precipice, of course. But if you think she'll trade him for a view or a sailboat, you'd better think again.”
But Tish was not listening.
“An island,” she said, ‘would be ideal. Just the four of us, and Hannah. Simple living and high thinking. That's what the young girls of today require.”
“1 often wonder,” Aggie said sadly, “what Mr. Wiggins would have thought of them! I remember how shocked he was when his Cousin Harriet used ice on her face before a party, to make her cheeks pink.”
So the matter was determined, and Tish appealed to Charlie Sands, her nephew, to find her an island. I shall never forget hie face when she told him why.
“A flapper!” he said. “Well, your work's cut cut for you all right.”
“Nonsense!” Tish said sharply. “I have been a girl myself. I understand girls.”
“Have you made any preparations for her?"
“I've bought a set of Louisa M. Alcott. And I can hire a piano if she wants to keep in practice.”
“Oh, she'll keep in practice all right,” he said, “but I wouldn't bother with a piano.” He did not explain this, but went away soon after. “I'll do my best to find you an island,” he said cryptically, as he departed, “but the chances are she can swim.”
That last sentence of his made Tish thoughtful, and she determined that, if our summer was to be spent on the sea, we should all learn to swim. I cannot say that the result was successful. Indeed, our very first lesson almost ended in a tragedy, for it was Tish's theory that one must start in deep water.
“The natural buoyancy of the water is greater there,” she said, “One goes in and then simply strikes out.”
She did this, therefore, standing on the diving board in the correct position—the instructor was not yet ready—and made a very nice dive. But she did not come up again, although the water was very agitated, and after a time Aggie became alarmed and called the instructor. He found her at last, but she was so filled with water that we abandoned the lesson for the day.
As the instructor said to her, “All you need is a few goldfish, lady, and you'd be a first-class aquarium.”
And then, with all our ideas of setting Lily May an example of dignity and decorum, along about the middle of June Hannah, going out on a Thursday, came creeping in about nine o'clock at night and brought in the tray with cake and blackberry cordial, with her hat on.
“What do you mean,” Tish demanded, fixing her with a stony glare, “by coming in here like that?”
Hannah set the tray down and looked rather pale.
“It's my hat, Miss Tish,” she said; “and it's my head.”
“Take it off,” said Tish. “Your hat, not your head. Not that you'd miss one more than the other.”
So Hannah took her hat off, and she had had her hair shingle-bobbed! I never saw anything more dreadful, unless it was our dear Tish's face. She looked at her for some moments in silence.
“Have you seen yourself?" she demanded.
“Yes.”
“Then I shall add no further punishment,” said Tish grimly. “But as I do not propose to look at you in this condition, you will continue to wear a hat until it grows out again.”
“I'm to wear a hat over the stove?”
“You're to wear a hat over yourself, Hannah,” Tish corrected her, and Hannah went out in tears.
It was very strange, after that, to see Hannah serving the table with a hat on, but our dear Tish is firmness itself when it comes to a matter of principle, and even the discovery of an artificial rosebud in the stewed lamb one day did not cause her to weaken. I shall, however, never forget Lily May's expression when Hannah served luncheon the day she arrived.
She came in, followed by a taxi man and the janitor of Tish's apartment building, who were loaded down with bags and hat boxes, and having kissed Tish without any particular warmth, turned to the janitor.
“Go easy with that bag, Charles,” she said. His name is not Charles, but this seemed not to worry her. “If you break the contents Miss Carberry will be out her summer liquor.”
As Tish has been for many years a member of the W.C.T.U., she protested at once, but the taxi man seemed to think it funny until Tish turned on him.
“It is you,” she said, “and your kind who make it impossible to enforce the best law our nation has ever passed. If there is liquor in that bag,” she said to Lily May, “it will not remain in this apartment one instant. Lizzie, open the bag, and pour the wretched stuff into the kitchen sink.”
I was about to open the bag, when the taxi man said that, while he was not a drinking man, plenty of hospitals need stimulants.
“You pour it down the sink,” he said, “and where is it? Nowhere, lady. But if I take it to the Samaritan, and they use it—why, it's a Christian action, as I see it.”
I will say for Lily May that she offered no objection. She stood by, looking at each of us in turn and seeming rather puzzled. She only spoke once.
“Look here, Aunt Tish,” she began, “I was only ——”
“I shall discuss this with you later and in private,” Tish cut in sternly, and motioned me to open the bag.
I did so, but it contained no alcoholic stimulant whatever; only a number of bottles and jars for the toilet. Tish eyed them, and then turned to Lily May.
“Have I your word of honor,” she said, “that these are what they purport to be?”
“Probably not,” said Lily May coolly. “Nothing is these days. But there's nothing there for Volstead to beat his breast about. I tried to tell you.”
While she was in her room taking off her things, Tish expressed herself with her usual clearness on the situation in which she found herself.
“Already,” she said, “the girl has shown two of the most undesirable modern qualities—flippancy and a disregard for the law of the nation. I am convinced that I saw a box of rouge in that bag, Lizzie.”
But when, later on, she accused Lily May of making up her face, Lily May only smiled sweetly and said she was obliged to do so.
“Obliged!” Tish sniffed. “Don't talk nonsense.”
“Not nonsense at all,” said Lily May. “All the ——” She seemed to hesitate. “It's like this,” she said. “Make-up is respectable. The other thing isn't. When you see a woman these days with a dead-white face, watch her. That's all.”
Poor Aggie cast an agonized glance at herself in the mirror, but Tish stared hard at Lily May.
“There are certain subjects on which I do not wish to be informed,” she said coldly.
“Oh, very well,” said Lily May. “If you like to think that the Easter bunny lays hard-boiled eggs——”
I must say things looked very uncomfortable from the start. Nobody could accuse Lily May of being any trouble, or even of being unpleasant; she had a very sweet smile, and she did everything she was told. But she seemed to regard the three of us as mere children, and this was particularly galling to Tish.
But it Was a Painful Sight to See Our Poor Aggie Thus Marooned, Watching Us Into the Fog With Wistful Eyes
“Why shouldn't we see that picture?” Tish demanded one night, when she steered us away from a movie we had been waiting three weeks to see.
“It's not a nice movie,” said Lily May gently, and took us to see The Ten Commandments, which we had already seen three times.
It was a difficult situation, for of course Tish could not insist on going, after that. And Aggie suffered also, for on the hay-fever season coming on she brought out her medicinal cigarettes, and Lily May walked right out and bought her a vaporizing lamp instead, which smelled simply horrible when lighted.
But it was over Hannah that Tish suffered the most, for of course Lily May had had her hair bobbed, and Hannah rebelled the first minute she saw it.
“Either she wears a hat or I don't, Miss Tish,” she said. “And you'd better put a hat on her. The way that janitor is hanging around this place is simply sinful.”
It ended by Hannah abandoning her hat, copying Lily May's method of fixing her hair; only where Lily May's hair hung straight and dark, Hannah was obliged to use soap to gain the same effect.
As Tish observed to her scathingly, “It will break off some night in your sleep. And then where will you be?”
It became evident before long that the city simply would not do for Lily May. The grocer's boy took to forgetting things so he could make a second trip, and in the market one day Mr. Jurgens, Tish's butcher, handed Lily May a bunch of pansies.
“Pansies are for thoughts, Miss Lily May,” he said.
And Tish said he looked so like a sick calf that she absently ordered veal for dinner, although she had meant to have lamb chops.
Other things, too, began to worry us. One was that although Lily May had, according to orders, received no letters from the Field youth, Hannah's mail had suddenly increased. For years she had received scarcely anything but the catalogue of a mail-order house, and now there was seldom a mail went by without her getting something.
Another was Tish's discovery that Lily May wore hardly any clothes. I shall never forget the day Tish discovered how little she actually wore. It was wash day, and Tish had engaged Mrs. Schwartz for an extra day.
“There will be extra petticoats and—er—undergarments, Mrs. Schwartz,” she explained. “I well remember in my young days that my dear mother always alluded to the expense of my frillies.”
It has been Tish's theory for years that no decent woman ever appears without a flannel petticoat under her muslin one, and I shall never forget the severe lecture she read Aggie when, one warm summer day, she laid hers aside. It was therefore a serious shock to her to come home the next day and find Mrs. Schwartz scrubbing the kitchen floor, while Hannah was drinking a cup of tea and gossiping with her.
“The young lady's clothes!” said Mrs. Schwartz. “Why, bless your heart, I pressed them off in fifteen minutes.”
It turned out that Lily May wore only a single garment, beneath her frock. I cannot express in words Tish's shock at this discovery, or her complete discouragement when, having brought out her best white flannel petticoat and a muslin one with blind embroidery, of which she is very fond, Lily May flatly refused to put them on.
“Why?” she said. “I'm not going to pretend I haven't got legs. My feet have to be fastened to something.”
It was in this emergency that Tish sent for Charlie Sands, but I regret to say that he was of very little assistance to us. Lily May was demure and quiet at first, and sat playing with something in her hand. Finally she dropped it, and it was a small white cube with spots on each side. Charlie Sands picked it up and looked at Lily May.
“Got the other?” he asked.
Well, she had, and it seems one plays a sort of game with them, for in a very short time they were both sitting on the floor, and she won, I think, a dollar and thirty cents,
I cannot recall this situation without a pang, for our dear Tish never gambles, and is averse to all games of chance. Indeed, she went so pale that Aggie hastily brought her a glass of blackberry cordial, and even this was unfortunate, for Lily May looked up and said, “If you want mother's recipe for homemade gin I think I can remember it.”
Tish was utterly disheartened when Charlie Sands went away, but he seemed to think everything would be all right.
“She's a nice child,” he said. “She's only living up to a type. And there isn't an ounce of hypocrisy in her. I can see through her, all right.”
“I dare say,” Tish retorted grimly. “So can anyone else, when the sun is shining.”
But the climax really came when old Mr. Barnes, on the floor above Tish's apartment, sent her a note. It seems that he had asthma and sat at the window just above Lily May's, and the note he sent was to ask Tish not to smoke cigarettes out her window. I really thought Tish would have a stroke on the head of it, and if Annabelle Carter hadn't been in Europe I am quite sure she would have sent Lily May back home.
But there we were, with Lily May on our hands for three months, and Hannah already rolling her stockings below her knees and with one eyebrow almost gone, where she had tried to shave it to a line with a razor. And then one day Aggie began to talk about long hair being a worry, and that it would be easier to put on her tonic if it was short; and with that Tish took the island Charlie Sands had found, and we started.
II
I SHALL never forget Lily May's expression when she saw Tish trying on the knickerbockers which are her usual wear when in the open.
“Oh, I wouldn't!” she said in a sort of wail.
“Why not?” Tish demanded tartly. “At least they cover me, which is more than I can say of some of your clothes.”
“But they're not—not feminine,” said Lily May, and Tish stared at her.
“Feminine!” she said. “The outdoors is not a matter of sex. Thank God, the sea is sexless; so are the rocks and trees.”
“But the people——”
“There will be no people,” said Tish with an air of finality.
The next few days were busy ones. Tish had immediately, on learning that the New England coast has several varieties of fish, decided that we could combine change and isolation with fishing for the market.
“Save for the cost of the bait,” she said, “which should be immaterial, there is no expense involved. The sea is still free, although the bootleggers seem to think they own it. But I do not intend to profit by this freedom. The money thus earned will go to foreign missions.”
She bought a book on New England fish, and spent a long time studying it. Then she went to our local fish market and secured a list of prices.
“With any luck,” she said, “we should catch a hundred pounds or so a day. At sixty cents a pound, that's sixty dollars, or we'll say thirty-six hundred dollars for the summer. There may be a bad day now and then.”
Mr. Ostermaier, our clergyman, was greatly impressed, and felt that the money should perhaps go toward a new organ. Tish, however, held out for missions, and in the end they compromised on a kitchen for the parish house.
Toward the end, Lily May began to take more interest in our preparations. At first she had been almost indifferent, observing that any old place would do, and the sooner the better.
“It will give you something to do,” Tish told her severely.
“So would a case of hives,” she replied, and lapsed again into the lethargy which Tish found so trying.
But, as I have said, she cheered up greatly before our departure, and we all felt much encouraged. She never spoke to us of Billy Field, but she had made Hannah a confidante, and Hannah told Aggie that it was apparently off.
“It's this way, Miss Aggie,” she said. “He's got to earn a thousand dollars this summer, one way or another, and I guess he's about as likely to do it as you are to catch a whale.”
Perhaps it was significant, although I did not think of it at the time, that Aggie did catch a whale later on; and that indeed our troubles began with that unlucky incident.
But Lily May became really quite cheery as the time for departure approached, and we began to grow very much attached to her, although she inadvertently got us into a certain amount of trouble on the train going up.
She had brought along a pack of cards, and taught us a game called cold hands, a curious name, but a moat interesting idea. One is dealt five cards, and puts a match in the center of the table. Then one holds up various combinations, such as pairs, three of a kind, and so on, and draws again. Whoever has the best hand at the end takes all the matches.
Tish, I remember, had all the matches in front of her, and rang for the porter to bring a fresh box. But when he came back the conductor came along and said gambling was not allowed.
“Gambling!” Tish said. “‘Gambling! Do you suppose I would gamble on this miserable railroad of yours, when at any moment I may have to meet my Creator?”
“If it isn't gambling, what is it?”
And then Lily May looked up at him sweetly and said, “Now run away and don't tease, or Mamma spank.”
That is exactly what she said, And instead of reproving her that wretched conductor only grinned at her and went away. What, as Tish says, can one do with a generation. which threatens an older and wiser one with corporal punishment?
We had telegraphed ahead for a motorboat to meet us and take us over to Paris Island, and we found it waiting; quite a handsome boat named the Swallow, a name which Tish later observed evidently did not refer to the bird of that sort, but to other qualities it possessed.
“Swallow!” she snorted. “It's well named, The thing tried to swallow the whole Atlantic Ocean.”
It was in charge of a young fisherman named Christopher Columbus Jefferson Spudd.
“It sounds rather like a coal bucket falling down the cellar stairs,” said Lily May, giving him a cold glance.
And indeed he looked very queer. He had a nice face and a good figure, but his clothes were simply horrible. He wore a checked suit with a short coat, very tight at the waist, and pockets with buttons on everywhere. And he had a baby-blue necktie and a straw hat with a fancy ribbon on it, and too small for his head.
Lily May put her hand up as if he dazzled her, and said, “What do we call you if we want you? If we ever do,” she added unpleasantly.
“Just call me anything you like, miss,” he said with a long look at her, “and I'll come running. I kind of like Christopher myself.”
“You would!" said Lily May, and turned her back on him.
But, as Tish said that night, we might as well employ him as anyone else.
“Do what we will,” she said, “we might as well recognize the fact that the presence of Lily May is to the other sex what catnip is to a cat. It simply sets them rolling. And,” she added, “if it must be somebody, better Christopher, who is young and presumably unattached, than an older man with a wife and children. Besides, his boat is a fast one, and we shall lose no time getting to and from the fishing grounds.”
We therefore decided to retain Christopher and the Swallow, although the price, two hundred and fifty dollars a month, seemed rather high.
“We do not need Christopher,” she said, “but if we must take him with the boat we must. He can chop wood and so on.”
We spent the next day getting settled. The island was a small one, with only a few fishermen”s houses on it, and Tish drew a sigh of relief.
“No men except Christopher,” she said tome. “And she detests him. And who can be small in the presence of the Atlantic Ocean? She will go back a different girl, Lizzie. Already she is less selfish. I heard her tell Hannah tonight, referring to Christopher, to 'feed the brute well.' There was true thoughtfulness behind that.”
Christopher, of course, ate in the kitchen.
It was the next morning that Tish called him in from the woodpile and asked him about the size of codfish.
“Codfish?” he said. “Well, now, I reckon they'd run a pound or so.”
“A pound or so?” Tish demanded indignantly. “There is one in the natural history museum at home that must weigh sixty pounds.”
“On, well,” he said, “if you're talking about museum pieces, there are whales around here that weigh pretty considerable. But you take the run of cod, the oil variety, and you get 'em all sizes. Depends on their age,” he added.
Tish says that she knew then that he was no fisherman, but it was not for several days that he told her his story.
“I am not exactly a fisherman,” he said. “I can run a boat all right, so you needn't worry, but in the winter I clerk in a shoe store in Bangor, Maine. But there is no career in the shoe business, especially on a commission basis. In New England the real money goes to the half-sole-and-heel people.”
“I suppose that's so,” said Tish. “I never thought of it."
Then,” he went on, “you take automobiles. Did you ever think how they've hurt the sale of shoes? Nobody walks. Folks that used to buy a pair of shoes every year have dropped clean off my list. The tailors are getting my business.”
“Tailors?” Tish asked.
“Putting new seats in trousers,” he said gloomily, and stalked away.
The boat, he told us later, belonged to his uncle, who was a tailor. But he was not tailoring at present. As a matter of fact, he was at the moment in the state penitentiary, and that was how Christopher had the Swallow.
“He took to bootlegging on the side,” he explained.
“It was a sort of natural evolution, as you may say. He noticed the wear and tear on hip pockets from carrying flasks, and it seized on his imagination.” He mopped discouraged}y at the boat, in which we were about to go on our first trip, and sighed. “Many a case of hard liquor has run the revenue blockade in this,” he said.
“Well, there will be no liquor run in it while I'm renting it,” said Tish firmly.
III
I CANNOT say that the fishing was whet we had expected. There was plenty of fish, and Tish grew quite expert at opening clams and putting them on her hook. But as Aggie could never bear the smell of clams at any time, and as the rocking of the boat seriously disturbed her, we had rather a troublesome time with her. Once she even to be thrown overboard.
“Nonsense!” Tish said. “You can't swim and you know it.”
“I don't want to swim, Tish,” she said pitifully. “I just want to die, and the quicker the better.”
On rough days, too, when an occasional wave dashed over us, and Tish would shake herself and speak of the bracing effect of salt water, our poor Aggie would fall into violent sneezing, and more than once lost a fish by so doing. And I shall never forget the day when she drew up a squid, and the wretched thing squirted its ink all over her. There was a certain dignity in the way she turned her blackened face to Tish.
“I have stood for clams, Tish,” she said, “and I have stood for the rocking of this d-damned boat. But when the very creatures of the deep insult me I'm through!”
As, however, a wave came overboard just then and removed practically all the ink, as well as the squid itself, she was fortunately unable to express herself further. It speaks well for our dear Tish's self-control that she allowed Aggie's speech to pass without reproof, and even offered her a small glass of blackberry cordial from the bottle we always carried with us.
But it was in the matter of payment for the fish that our plans suffered a serious reverse. We had on our first day out taken what we imagined was a hundred pounds of various sorts, many unknown to us, and on the way to the fish wharf, while Aggie and I neatly arranged them as to sizes, Tish figured out the probable value.
“About forty dollars,” she said. “And if they take that thing with whiskers under its chin, even more. Gasoline, one dollar, Christopher's wages and boat hire per day, eight dollars. Clams, a dollar and a quarter. Leaving a net profit of twenty-nine dollars and seventy-five cents, or clear every month eight hundred and seventy dollars and fifty cents.”
She closed her notebook and we drew in under the fish wharf, where a man who was chewing tobacco came to the edge and looked down at us.
“We are selling these fish,” Tish said with her usual dignity. “They are quite fresh, and ought to bring the best market rates.”
The man spit into the water and then glanced at our boxes.
“Jerry!” he called. “Want any more fish?”
“What kind of fish?” a voice replied from back in the shed.
The man squinted again at our catch.
“Looks like succotash to me,” he called.
Jerry came out and stared down at us, and then slowly descended the ladder to the boat. He had a mean face, Tish says, and he made us about as welcome as the bubonic plague. He said nothing, but picked out six haddock and handed them up to the man above.
“Thirty cents,” he said.
“I'm paying sixty in the market,” Tish protested.
“Thirty-five,” he repeated, and started up the ladder.
“Forty,” said Tish firmly.
“Look here,” he said with bitterness, “all you've had to do is to catch those fish. That's easy; the sea's full of 'em. What have I got to do? I've got to clean 'em and pack 'em and ice 'em and ship 'em. I'm overpaying you; that's what I'm doing.”
“What am I going to do with the others?” Tish demanded angrily. “Seventy pounds of good fish, and half the nation needing food.”
“You might send it to Congress,” he suggested. “They say it's good for the brain—phosphorus.”
“You must eat a great deal of fish!” said Tish witheringly.
“Or,” he said, brightening, “take it home to the cat. There's nothing a cat will get real worked up about like a nice mess of fish.”
He then went up the ladder, leaving us in speechless fury. But Tish recovered quickly and began figuring again. “Six haddock at seven pounds each,” she said. “Forty-two pounds at thirty-five cents per pound, or about fourteen dollars. At least we've made our expenses. And of course we can eat some.”
Aggie, who had felt the motion severely coming in, raised herself from the bottom of the boat at this, and asked for another sip of cordial.
“They smell,” she wailed, and fell back again.
“All perfectly healthy fish smell,” said Tish.
“So does a healthy skunk,” said Aggie, holding her handkerchief to her nose, “but I don't pretend to like it.”
And then Jerry came down the ladder and handed Tish a quarter and a five-cent piece.
“There you are,” he said cheerfully. “One of them's a bit wormy, but we say here that a wormy fish is a healthy fish.”
I draw a veil over the painful scene that followed. That fish house paid two-thirds of a cent a pound for fish, no more and no less, and the more Tish raged the higher Jerry retreated up the ladder until he was on the wharf . From there he looked down at us before he disappeared.
“You might get more out in the desert, lady,” he said as a parting shot. “But then, you'd get a pretty good price for a plate of ice cream in hell too.”
And with that he disappeared, and left us to face our situation.
Our deficit on the day, according to Tish, was ten dollars. In three months it would amount to nine hundred dollars. She closed her notebook with a snap.
“Unless we count intangible assets,” she said, “we shall certainly be bankrupt. Of course there is the gain in health; the salt air——”
“Health!” said Aggie feebly. “A little more of this, Tish Carberry, and Jerry will be cleaning and packing and icing and shipping something that isn't fish.”
“Then again,” said Tish, ignoring this outburst, “we may find something unusual. There are whales about here, according to Christopher. And the oil of the whale is still used, I believe.”
But after learning from Christopher that whales ranged in size from fifty to one hundred feet, and were not caught on a line, however heavy, but with a knife thrown into some vital part, she was compelled to abandon this idea. Indeed, I do not know how we should have filled up our summer had it not been that on that very evening we received a visit from a Mr. MacDonald, who turned out to be the deputy sheriff on the island.
Aggie was still far from well that night. She said the floor kept rising and falling, and at dinner several times she had clutched at her plate to keep it from sliding off the table. So she had been about to pour herself a glass of blackberry cordial, when Lily May saw Mr. MacDonald coming, and hastily took the bottle and hid it under a table.
Christopher brought him in, and he sat down and began to sniff almost immediately. But he said that he had called to secure our assistance; it wasn't often he needed help, but he needed it now.
“It's these here rum runners, ladies,” he said. “You take a place like this, all islands and about a million of them. We've got as much coast line as the state of California.”
“Indeed?” said Tish politely.
“And they know every inch of it. And every trick,” he added. “'Tain't more than a week now since the government inspector found a case of Black and White tied under the surface to one of the channel buoys. And who's to know whether the fellows hauling up lobster pots aren't hauling up something else too?”
“Very probably they are,” said Tish dryly—“from the price of lobsters.”
“There's liquor all around these waters. Last big storm we had, a lot of it must have got smashed up, and there was a porpoise reeling around the town wharf for two or three hours. Finally it brought up against one of the poles of the fish pier and went asleep there. It was a disgraceful exhibition.”
“Tish,” Aggie said suddenly, “if this floor doesn't keep still that bottle will upset.”
Mr. MacDonald stared at her and then cleared his throat.
“Of course I'm taking for granted,” he said, “that you ladies believe in upholding the law.”
“We are members of the W. C. T. U.,” Tish explained. “We stand ready to assist our nation in every possible way. We do not even believe in beer and light wines.”
He seemed reassured at that, and explained what he wanted. The Government had a number of patrol boats outside, and they were doing their best, but in spite of them liquor was coming in and was being shipped hither and yon.
“The worst of it is,” he said, “we don't know who we can trust. Only last week I paid a fellow fifteen dollars good money to take me out and locate a rum runner, and he got lost in the fog and had to come back. Yesterday I learned he got forty dollars from the other side for getting lost.”
His idea was that under pretense of fishing we could assist him by watching for the criminals, and reporting anything we saw that was suspicious. As Tish said afterward, there was no profit for the church in the arrangement, but there was a spiritual gain to all of us.
“There are things one cannot measure in dollars and cents,” she said.
We all agreed, and rose to see Mr. MacDonald to the door. But I think he left in a divided state of mind, for Christopher, standing near the table, upset the bottle of blackberry cordial, and Aggie, who had been watching it, gave a wail and started for it. But the floor was still going up and down to her, and her progress across the room was most unsteady.
It is to this unfortunate combination undoubtedly that we owe our later ill luck. For Mr. MacDonald caught her as she was about to bump the mantel, and still holding her, turned to Tish.
“That fellow that double-crossed me,” he said with meaning, “he got thirty days.”
“When we agree to do a thing we do it,” Tish said stiffly.
“So did he,” said Mr. MacDonald, and went away, taking a final sniff at the door.
Tish made her usual preparations for our new rôle. She at once sent to Bar Harbor for a pair of field glasses, and oiled and loaded her revolver.
“Not that I mean to shoot them,” she said, “but a well-placed shot or two can wreck their engine. In that case all we shall have to do is to tow them in.”
She procured also a good towing rope for this purpose, and spent her odd time the next day or two shooting at a floating target in the water. Unfortunately, the fact that a bullet will travel over the water like a skipping stone escaped her, and our next-door neighbor, who was just hauling in the largest halibut of the season, had the misfortune to have his line cut in half and of seeing the halibut escape.
On the other hand, her resolution was strengthened by a letter from Charlie Sands, her nephew, which showed the moral deterioration being fostered by these wretched liquor smugglers.
“Dear Aunt Tish,” he wrote. “It has just occurred to me that you are near the Canadian border. Scotch ought to be good and also cheap there. Why not fill a hot-water bag or two for me? Even a bottle or two would not come amiss, and if you are nervous on the train I suggest the space outside your ventilator in the drawing-room.”
Tish's indignation was intense. She wrote him a very sharp letter, informing him that she was now in the government service. “If the worst comes,” she said, “I shall not hesitate to arrest my own family. No Carberry has been jailed yet for breaking the nation's laws, but it is not too late to begin.”
It may have been pure coincidence, but Lily May ordered a hot-water bag from the mainland soon after that. She said her feet got cold at night.
I must confess May puzzled us at that time. She would not go fishing but stayed at home and insulted poor Christopher. She claimed that he spent most of his time at the woodpile smoking cigarettes, and so she'd go out and watch him. Hannah said that her manner to him was really overbearing, and that she believed she said quite insulting things to him under her breath.
She counted the wood he cut too. Once Hannah heard her say, “Twice two fifty is five hundred. You've still five hundred to go.”
And he groaned and said, “It's the h—— of a long way yet.”
She was very odd about the revenue matter, also, and said very little when Tish got her badge.
“Well,” she said, “it may stop a bullet. But that's all it will stop.”
As Tish said, such cynicism in the young was really bewildering.
IV
IT WAS the middle of July when Tish finally started on her dangerous duty. Aggie had begged to be left at home, but Tish had arranged a duty for each of us.
“I shall steer the boat,” she said. “Aggie is to lower and lift up the anchor, and you, Lizzie, are to take charge of the fishing tackle and the bait.”
We were, as I have said, to pretend to be fishing, and thus avert the suspicion of the bootleggers.
Lily May and Christopher saw us off, and Lily May's farewell was characteristic of her.
“Pick out a good-looking rum runner for me,” Lily May called. “I know father would love to have one in the family.”
We had gone about three miles, I think, when I heard a peculiar noise, like the rumbling of steam, but no one else noticed it. A little later, however, Aggie called out that there was a fountain playing not far ahead. Tish at once announced that it was a whale spouting, and changed our course so as to avoid it.
We saw no more of it, and Aggie was beginning to look white about the ears and the tip of the nose as usual, when Tish decided to drop our anchor and there take up our position. She therefore stopped the engine and Aggie heaved the anchor overboard. But we did not stop.
“There's certainly a very fast tide,” Tish said, looking over the side. “We are going as fast as before.”
“Then the bottom's moving too,” Aggie said sharply. “The anchor's caught, all right.”
We looked about. Either we were moving out to sea or Smith's Island was going toward the mainland and would soon collide with it. And at that moment the front end of the boat dipped down, shipping an enormous amount of sea, and throwing us all forward, and then the entire boat shot ahead as if it had been fired out of a gun.
“It's an earthquake, Tish,” Aggie groaned, lying prone in the water.
Tish pulled herself to her knees and stared about her.
“It may be a tidal wave,” she said. “But they go in, not out.” She then stared again, forward, and finally rose to her feet. I followed her, and she lifted a shaking finger and pointed ahead. Only a hundred feet or so from us, and heading for Europe, was an enormous whale. One point of our anchor had caught in his blowhole, and we were traveling at what I imagine was sixty miles an hour or more.
“Really, Aggie,” Tish said, “this is a little too much! I gave you the lightest duty on the boat—simply to anchor this boat to the bottom. Instead——”
“What did you want me to do?” Aggie demanded. “Go down with it, and hook it to a rock?”
“When I want a whale I'll ask for a whale,” said Tish with dignity. But with her usual alertness she was already making a plan. She at once started the engine and put it in reverse. “After all,” she said, “we have the thing, and we may as well try to take it in.”
But there was no perceptible effect, and after a moment or so the engine choked, and would not start again. Tish's second thought, therefore, of running at the whale and stunning it until we could free ourselves, was not practical. And the creature itself began to show signs of extreme nervous irritation; it struck the water really terrific blows with its enormous broad flat tail, and Aggie remembered a moving picture she had seen, where a whale had turned in anger on a boat and had crushed it like a peanut shell.
And to add to our difficulties there was a fishing fleet ahead of us, and the creature was heading directly for it. We went through that fleet without touching a boat!
One fisherman yelled to us. “Better let go!” he called. “If you do get him what'll you do with him?”
“If I ever get him,” Tish said grimly, “I'll know what to do with him.”
But of course the man was a mile behind us by that time.
We had left the islands far behind us, and the last bit of land was out of sight. With her usual forethought Tish ordered us to put on our life preservers, and after that we set to work to endeavor to loosen the anchor rope from the ring to which it was fastened.
But the tension was too great, and careful search revealed no hatchet with which to cut ourselves free. Our knife had gone overboard with the first jerk. In this emergency my admiration for Tish was never greater.
“One of two things will happen,” she said. “Either he will go down to the sea bottom, taking the boat with him, or he will strike for his native haunts, which to the north whale is probably the arctic region around Greenland. In the first event, we have our life preservers; in the second case, our sweaters. And as there is nothing more to do, we may as well have our luncheon.”
Her courage was contagious, and while Aggie spread the cloth on our folding table, I brought out the sandwiches and coffee. I daresay the schooner had been in sight for some time, just ahead of us, before we noticed it, and Tish thinks that the whale was too excited to see it at all. Anyhow, we were within half a mile of it and heading directly at it when we first saw it.
Aggie was the first to see what was happening, and she ran forward and yelled to the other boat to head him off. But there was no one in sight on it, and the whale kept straight on. Within a hundred feet or so, however, he suddenly dived; the Swallow went on, however, striking the other boat in the center, and the jar must have loosened the anchor, for we remained on the surface.
It was then that a man carefully peered over the edge of the revenue boat and looked down at us.
“My land!” he said. “I was just waiting for you to explode!"
He then said that he had thought the had been struck by a torpedo, and on Tish explaining, he looked rather odd and brought two other men to look at us. In the end, however, we convinced them, and they invited us on board while they bailed our boat and fixed our engine.
The first man was the captain, and while Aggie made us some fresh tea in the galley Tish confided to him our real purpose, and showed him her badge.
He seemed greatly impressed, and said, “If more people would see their duty and do it, we would get rid of the rum evil.”
He then said that they were also a part of the revenue fleet, or had been. He didn't know how long they could stick it out.
“I'm all right,” he said. “But now you take Joe and Bill, there. They're not normal any more; it's the loneliness gets them. Nothing to do but wait, you see.”
“You might try cross-word puzzles,” Tish suggested.
“We had a book of them,” he said dejectedly. “But Bill got mad one day trying to think of a South American river, in five letters, and flung it overboard.”
Over our tea Tish discoursed of the reasons which had turned us from our original idea to the revenue service, and the captain nodded his head.
“I know Jerry,” he said. “Now you take us. Wouldn't you think we could fish out here, and fill in our spare time? Not a bit of it. It's my belief Jerry's running liquor, and he won't let a revenue boat near the wharf.”
But he had, he said, discovered a way to circumvent Jerry. He and Bill and Joe fished, all right, only they dried the fish and packed them in boxes.
“Some day,” he said, “we'll land those fish, and old Jerry will find the market glutted. That's all; glutted.” He had, he said, a hundred boxes in the hold already. “Only trouble is,” he went on, “we're getting overloaded. If a big sea comes along, and one's due most any time, they may shift, and then where are we?”
It was just before we left, I remember, that he asked us if we wouldn't carry in a few boxes for him and land them at a cove on our island, where a friend of the captain's was living alone. And Tish agreed at once.
I have no wish to reflect on Tish; her motive, then as later, was of the highest, and for Charlie Sands to say what he does is most ungenerous. At the same time, her reckless kindness led us into serious trouble later on, and I hope will be a lesson to her.
We not only took the boxes of fish to Al Smith, at the cove, that day, but we made repeated excursions to the revenue boat from that time on, carrying back a dozen boxes or so at a time, and taking out an occasional batch of Aggie's doughnuts, a parcheesi game, and once a bottle of blackberry cordial
“For mal de mer,” Tish said kindly as she presented it, and it created a profound impression. Bill and Joe seemed quite overcome, and the captain was so moved that he had to walk away and wipe his eyes.
“It's not the gift,” he said later, “It's the thought.”
We had naturally not told Lily May. But one day when Mr. Smith, the captain's friend, was unpacking the boxes of fish at the cove, who should wander into sight but the child herself.
She came right up and looked at the boxes, and said, “What's that anyhow?”
“It's dried fish,” said Tish. “And I'll thank you to say nothing about it.”
I must say she gave Tish a very strange look.
“Well,” she said, “I only hope you're getting something out of it.'
“I am getting the pleasure of assisting people who need assistance.”
“I'll tell the world you are!” said Lily May. And after giving Mr. Smith a most pleasant look she went away again.
ut the very next day, rounding the corner, who should we see but Lily May at Smith's wharf, sitting on the edge of the boat and smiling, and Mr. Smith talking in a very loud and angry voice. Once he even seemed to shake his fist at her, but she kept right on smiling.
She was certainly a queer child.
Then, one night early in August, we had another visit from Mr. MacDonald. He said that liquor was coming in from somewhere in quantities, and that trucks on the mainland were distributing it all over the country. I happened to have my eye on Lily May, and she turned pale. I said nothing to Tish, but from that time on Aggie and I kept a watch on her, and I really shudder to recall what we discovered. Night after night our boat was going out; sometimes with Christopher alone in it, and sometimes with Lily May also. And on one such night we searched her room.
We knew she had practically no money for her mother had been afraid she would run away, back to the Field boy. But under her mattress we found three hundred and twenty dollars, mostly in small bills!
I simply cannot record how we felt about it. Especially as in other ways the child was really quite lovable. She and Aggie had become great friends, and she would listen for hours while Aggie told her of Mr. Wiggins. But on endeavoring to discuss bootlegging with her she would shut up like a clam. Aggie tried to draw her out.
“Of course,” she said one day, “if we knew some of the reasons behind bootlegging, we might be more lenient.”
But there was no use trying to gain her confidence. She only gave Aggie another of her strange looks, and got up and went away.
Tish knew nothing of our worry, and day after day we went out in the boat, watching for rum runners. On Tuesdays and Fridays we made our trips to the revenue boat, but on other days Aggie and I fished, while Tish stood erect with her glasses, sweeping the surface of the sea. She was particularly severe with the lobster men, and after showing her badge would search their boats carefully. On one such occasion a lobster fastened itself to her and remained unnoticed until Aggie gave a terrible scream. She had sat down on the thing.
But mostly life in the Swallow moved quietly enough. Aggie worked at a bag she was making out of steel beads, with a fishing line pore around her arm; a habit she was obliged to alter, after a very large fish one day unexpectedly took her hook and but for Tish's presence of mind in grasping her feet would have taken her overboard. And I did most of my Christmas fancywork.
And thus things were up to the twenty-ninth of August, a day, or rather a night, which none of us will ever forget. At two o'clock that afternoon three of us started out; at four in the morning I returned home alone, in such agony of spirit as can only be imagined when the facts are known.
V
IT WAS our day to go out to the revenue boat, and there were indications of a fog. Poor Aggie did not want to go. It was as though she had a premonition of trouble, but Tish insisted, and even took along some seasick remedy. Aggie, who has been somewhat bitter since, should remember that, and the real kindness which lay behind it. We made jelly in the morning, so it was late when we started, and the fog was fairly thick already. But Tish took along a compass, and we started at twop.m. For once Lily May insisted on going along, although the sea was very rough, and she flirted quite dreadfully with the captain of the revenue boat while Joe and Bill were loading.
But she was seasick on the way back, and so was Aggie. I took the lookout, therefore, and it must have been four or five miles from land that I saw something straight ahead in the fog, and Tish turned out just in time to avoid a bell buoy. It was not ringing!
Tish at once stopped and examined it. It consisted of a small platform above which rose a superstructure with a bell at the top, and clappers which struck the bell as the sea moved it this way and that. But the bell had fallen down and now lay on the platform.
“This is a very serious matter,” Tish said. “This buoy is here to save our shipping. Undoubtedly it marks a reef. And now when it is most needed its warning voice is stilled.”
“I wish you'd still your own voice, Tish,” Aggie groaned. “Or else get out on it and yell ding-dong.”
It was an unfortunate suggestion. Aggie was taking a dose of her remedy for sea-sickness at the moment, and she did not see Tish's eyes as they traveled from her to me, but I did.
“You couldn't do it, Lizzie,” she said. “You're too stout. But Aggie could.”
“Could what?” said Aggie, giving her a cold glance.
“Your duty,” said Tish gravely. “That bell must ring, Aggie. The fog is intense, and all about are—or may be—men who depend on its warning signal for their lives. Can we fail them?”
“I can,” said Aggie shortly.
Lily May said it was all nonsense, but “Give me a hammer and I'll do it,” she said. “I suppose I can stick it out for an hour or so, and after that I dare say I'll not care.”
But Tish said the child was in her care, and she was to stay just where she was. And in the end Aggie crawled onto the bell buoy, and we placed one of the boxes on the platform as a seat for her.
“It will take only a short time,” were Tish's final words, “to get to the coastguard station. We shall return at once.”
But it was a painful sight, as we moved away, to see our poor Aggie thus marooned, watching us into the fog with wistful eyes and ever and anon striking the bell with the hammer as she sat on the box,
I did not see her again until three o'clock the next morning!
It was when we had gone about six miles by Tish's watch, while I watched the compass, that Tish suddenly announced something was wrong.
“Either we've missed the land altogether, Lizzie,” she said, “or we've passed right over the Baptist church and are now at Graham's grocery store.”
I handed the compass to her, but the moment she took it the needle turned about and continued pointing toward me. It was very unusual, and Tish stared at me with a justifiable irritation.
“Don't stand there pretending you're the magnetic pole,” she snapped. “Move around, and see what the dratted thing will do.”
Well, wherever I went that needle pointed at me. As events proved, for Tish to blame it on my gold tooth was quite unjustified, but it was not until in a burst of irritation she had flung it overboard that we discovered the true cause.
Aggie's workbag, containing a magnet for picking up steel beads, was on my arm.
All the time the fog was growing thicker, so that we could not see ten feet in any direction. And although we kept moving we never seemed to arrive anywhere. Once, indeed, I thought I heard faintly the sound of Aggie's hammer striking the bell, but it was very feeble and soon died away.
At seven o'clock it was already dark, and we had just two gallons of gasoline left. Tish shut off the engine and we considered our position.
“If we use all our gasoline the tide will carry us straight out to sea, and we may never get back,” she said.
“And Aggie!” I said. “Our poor Aggie!”
“Aggie is all right,” she said impatiently. “At least she doesn't have to get anywhere. We do.”
We decided at last until the fog lifted to save our gasoline, in case we had to get out of the way of some vessel; and Tish—who can knit quite well in the dark—got out her work. But Lily May seemed to have recovered, and was acting very strangely.
For instance, she roused once from deep thought to suggest that we throw the boxes of fish overboard, and she seemed quite worried when Tish refused.
“Why should I?” Tish said. “They represent money and effort. They have a certain value.”
Lily May muttered something about a thousand dollars and ten years, which I did not catch, and then became silent once more, But when, about seven o'clock, we all heard the engine of a boat not far off and Tish was for hailing it at once, she sharply said we'd better not.
“Nonsense!” said Tish, and had started to call when Lily May put a hand over her mouth.
“Haven't you any sense?” she demanded. “It may be a revenue boat.”
“And what if it is?” said Tish.
Lily May sat down on the edge of a thwart and stared at us
“Look here,” she said, “is the little old bean gone, or has that shot of blackberry cordial gone to my head? What about this stuff you're loaded with?”
“If there is any fine connected with running fish,” Tish said shortly, “I have yet to hear of it.”
“Fish!” said Lily May in a disgusted tone. “I could do better than that myself. Why not canned corn? Or artificial legs? Or bunion plasters?”
“Fish,” Tish repeated. “Dried fish. And if you dare to intimate ——”
“Oh, don't be so silly!” said Lily May, and yawned. “Now see here, you may be older than I am in years, but I was old when I was born. And I can't remember the time when I didn't know whisky from fish.”
“Whisky!” said Tish in a terrible voice.
“Booze,” said Lily May. “You're loaded to the gunwales with booze. You've landed, so far, about a hundred cases of first-grade Canadian Club, and if you haven't made more than I have out of it you've been stung. That's all.”
Tish got up at that and gave her a really terrible look.
“You have made money out of this iniquitous traffic?” she demanded.
“Oh, a bagatelle,” Lily May replied languidly. “I had to protect you, you see. If you will run liquor——
“Silence!" Tish thundered. “What have you made?”
“I got three hundred for keeping Christopher busy while you unloaded,” she said a trifle sulkily.
“Christopher?” Tish said in a dazed manner.
“He's in the revenue service,” said Lily May. “So am I, for that matter. There's been hardly a day since we came when I couldn't have arrested you all. But it would have upset mother a lot. If you don't believe me——”
She turned up her skirt, and I shall never forget Tish's eyes when she saw what I saw. That chit had her revenue badge pinned to the top of her stocking!
It was after that that our dear Tish was taken with a sudden shuddering spell and we had to give her quite a heavy dose of blackberry cordial. It is possible that in the darkness we gave her more than we intended, on an empty stomach, and there is undoubtedly a small percentage of alcohol in it to preserve it. When, later on, she insisted on opening one of the boxes and on tasting its contents before she would be entirely convinced, the combination was unfortunate.
She lapsed into silence soon after that, rousing once to shed a few tears, a most unusual process for her, and with her voice slightly thickened she said, “We have been ushed by those sons of Belial, Lizzie. I musht think of a way to shettle with them.”
She dozed a little then, but shortly thereafter she wakened and said a sea serpent had just stuck its head up beside her, and what if it should find Aggie? I was greatly alarmed, but Lily May was quite calm.
“She's only slightly binged,” she said, “but she will sleep it off. Do her good probably; like having a good cry.”
I pass over the next few hours. Tish slept, and we drifted about at the mercy of wind and tide. About midnight a gale came up and gave us considerable trouble, as the boxes kept shifting. Lily May once more suggested flinging them over but I dared not do this without Tish's consent, and when I roused her and asked her she gave me no satisfaction.
“Shertainly not,” she said. “It's evidench. Never destroy evidench, Lizzie.”
“She'll snap out of it after a while,” Lily comforted me. “But she's sure gifted. I'll bet a brandied peach would give her the D.T.'s”
I was about to reprove her when I suddenly perceived that the wind had lifted the fog, and there was even a pale moonlight. And at that, Lily May clutched my arm and pointed ahead.
We had indeed been drifting with the tide, and the schooner was just ahead, within a hundred yards or so. We were moving slowly toward it.
I wakened Tish, and this time she responded. I can still see her, majestic and calm, clutching the rail and staring ahead. I can still hear the ringing tone of her voice when she said, “The hour of vengeance is at hand, Lizzie.”
“I'll tell the world it is, if you go up there,” said Lily May.
But she brushed the child aside, and immediately Bill yelled from the schooner, “Stand by, there! What do you want?”
“We're looking for trouble, Bill,” said Lily May. “If you have any around——”
But Bill recognized her voice, and he smiled down at us.
“Trouble's my middle name, ladies,” he said. “Come up and make yourselves at home. Hi, cap!” he shouted. “Here's company.”
I had not an idea of what was in the wind until I saw Tish pick up her knitting bag. Her revolver was in it.
How can I relate what followed? Tish went up first, Lily May was on the ladder, and I was in the very act of tying up, our rope in my hands, when I heard Tish say, “Hands up! You are under arrest.”
Immediately on that, a most terrible uproar broke out above, and a shot rang out. Just after that my poor Tish's revolver fell into the boat with a terrible thud, and so startled me that I let go of the rope. There was a frightful noise going on overhead, and as I drifted away I heard another shot or two, and then the captain's voice.
“I've got her, the h——cat!” he called. “Start the engine, Bill. We'd better get out of here.”
And the next minute the engine of the schooner was starting and they were getting the anchor up. The schooner was moving away.
I cannot write my sensations without pain. The schooner starting off; my dear Tish a prisoner on that accursed boat, helpless, possibly injured; and Lily May, who had been placed in our care, on that accursed vessel.
I stood up and called.
“Tish!” I said in agony. “Tish, where are you?”
“I am here, Lizzie,” I heard the dear familiar tones. And that was all.
In a few moments I was alone on the bosom of the raging deep, and Tish and Lily May were on their way probably to the Canadian border.
I have no very clear idea of what happened next. As I had no knowledge of a motor I could but experiment, and finally about two a.m. I did start the engine. I managed the steering fairly well after a time, and started back. The fog was quite gone by that time, and it was clear moonlight. I seemed to be going very fast, but I did not know how to stop the thing and could but keep on. I have one clear and tragic impression, however. In the moonlight I passed the bell buoy where we had left Aggie—and Aggie was not there!
After that I remember little, except seeing our beach in front of me with a group of people on it, and steering at it. They have told me since that I came in on the top of a high roller, and that the Swallow simply crossed the beach and went up onto the lawn, where it stopped finally in the pansy bed, but I did not.
And then Christopher was lifting my head from a bottle of Canadian Club whisky as I lay on the ground, and saying in a shaken voice, “Where is she?'
“Gone,” I said sadly. “They are all gone, Christopher. Tish and Aggie and May. Gone.”
“My God!” he said. “Lily May!”
“Canada,” I said. “Or maybe England; or Spain. I don't know. But Aggie ——
“What do you mean?” yelled Christopher. “Canada or England?”
“They've been stolen. Abducted. By rum runners, Christopher,” I said. “But my dear Aggie——”
And at that minute I heard a sneeze from the house.
“Aggie!” I cried. “Aggie!”
Then Hannah and Mr. MacDonald came up. Mr. MacDonald picked up a bottle and said, “You wouldn't believe me before. Is this eau de cologne or is it liquor?”
“Oh, get the h—— out of here,” said Christopher.
They took me into the house, and there was Aggie sitting before the fire, still shivering, and with a very bad cold. She had her feet in a mustard foot bath with a blanket over it, for Mr. MacDonald would not allow her to go upstairs, and she burst into tears the minute she saw me.
“I'b udder arrest, Lizzie,' she wailed. “I've beed soaked through, ad bit at by sharks, ad fired od, ad lost by teeth. Ad dow I'b arrested. It's just too buch.”
She had lost her teeth, poor soul. She had taken them out because they were chattering so, and they had slipped out of her hand. She might have recovered them, but just as she was about to do so a huge fish had snapped at them and got them.
It had indeed been a day of misfortunes, and Aggie's were not the least. For Mr. MacDonald and Christopher had heard her sneezing on the bell buoy, and had fired at her before they knew her.
Then, when they did find her, she was sitting on a case of liquor, and nothing she could say did any good.
“I told theb it was dried fish,” she said, “but the darded fools wouldd't believe be, ad whed they looked, it wasd't.”
VI
AS SOON as possible Christopher and Mr. MacDonald had aroused the island, and every possible boat had started out. I telegraphed to Charlie Sands also, and he was on his way by the first train.
But all the next day went by, and no sign of the schooner or of Tish and Lily May. And as Aggie said, sitting up in bed with a bowl of junket—she could only eat soft food, poor thing—“We bay dever see theb agaid, Lizzie. They bay have to walk the plak or sobethig.”
I spent all my time on the beach, awaiting news, and at evening Charlie Sands arrived from the mainland. He came over to me as I sat disconsolately on a rock, cutting up fish and feeding the sea gulls as our poor Tish had always done, and listened to my story.
“Now,” he said when I had finished, “how many men were on that boat?”
“Three ”
“Three,” he repeated thoughtfully. “And my dear Aunt Letitia and Lily May. Is that correct?”
“And boxes and boxes of-f—of liquor, Charlie.”
“I wouldn't worry about the liquor,” he said. “I imagine by this time——” hesitated and sighed. “It seems rather a pity, in a way. Still——”
“A pity!” I said angrily. “Your Aunt Letitia and Lily May Carter abducted, and you say it is a pity!”
“I'm sorry,” he apologized. “Just for the moment my mind had wandered. Now let's see. They've had eighteen hours, and the percentage was favorable. I rather think—of course, I'm not sure—but I rather think it's about time something happened,”
He then rose to his feet and looked out over the water, and said, “What kind of a boat was it anyhow?”
“It was a schooner.”
“Of course,” he said. “It would be a schooner, naturally. And while I am not a betting man, I'll wager ten dollars against a bottle of blackberry cordial that this is it now.”
I leaped to my feet, and there, coming around the point of our cove, was the revenue boat! I could only stand and stare. Our beloved Tish was at the helm, and as we gazed she shouted to Lily May, who at once shoved the anchor overboard. As all the sails were still up, the boat listed heavily to one side, but it stopped.
There was no one else in sight, and this seemed to make Charlie Sands somewhat uneasy.
“By the gods,” he said, “she's done away with them!”
But this proved to be erroneous. Our dear Tish, having brought the vessel to a halt, straightened her bonnet, and then drawing the small boat which trailed behind to the foot of the rope ladder, she and Lily May got into it and Tish rowed it to the shore.
Her first words were typical.
“I want a policeman, Lizzie,” she said briefly, “and a room in the jail, and a bath.”
“I doubt if the jails are arranged that way,” said Charlie Sands, coming forward. “Still, we can inquire.”
She had not noticed him before, and his presence startled her. I have never seen our Tish flinch, but she very nearly did so. And she gave Lily May a curious look.
“I have taken three prisoners,” she said with dignity. “They are locked in, down below in that ship. And here's the key, for Mr. MacDonald.”
She then felt in her workbag, handed a key to Charlie Sands, and started with dignity to the house. Charlie Sands looked at the key and then called after her.
“Is that all you've got?” he said.
She stiffened and glared at him.
“If you mean the curse of this nation, rum,” she said coldly, “I have thrown it overboard.”
“Not every bottle?” he said in a pleading voice.
“Every bottle,” she said, and walked firmly into the house.
Lily May did not follow her. She stood eying Charlie Sands through her long lashes.
“Well?” she said. “Doesn't papa still love mamma?”
“I'll tell you that,” he said sternly, “when you tell me something else.” He then stooped and picked up a one-hundred-dollar bill which was lying on the grass. “Where did this come from?”
“Well, well!” said Lily May. “You are lucky, aren't you?”
“Don't look at me like that,” said Charlie Sands. “Where did this come from?”
“They grow around here,” said Lily May cheerfully. “Not everywhere, but here and there, you know. Like four-leaf clovers.”
“It didn't by any chance drop from my Aunt Tish's workbag?”
“Well, you might call up and inquire,” she suggested, and sauntered off to the house.
She spent an hour and a quarter getting dressed that evening, and when the Swallow and Christopher came back, Christopher almost crazy, she was sitting on the veranda doing her finger nails.
Hannah was laying the table inside, and she says she greeted him with “Hello, old egg! And how are things?”
And that fool of a boy just got down on his knees and put his head in her lap and his arms around her; and when he looked up he said, “You little devil! I've a good notion to turn you over my knee and spank you.”
As Aggie says, it was queer love-making, and there is no use trying to understand the younger generation.
“Under no circumstances,” she says, “would Mr. Wiggins have threatened me with that. But then,” she adds, “Mr. Wiggins would never have put on those dreadful clothes and pretended to be something he wasn't either. Times have changed, Lizzie.”
For it turned out, that very night, that Christopher was Billy Field.
Never, so long as I live, shall I forget that evening around Aggie's bed, when Tish told her story. The bootleggers had tied her up at once, and even Lily May also. But Lily May was so quiet and chastened that they had weakened, after a while, and had let her loose.
“And then what did you do?” asked Charlie Sands.
“I amused them,” she said, not looking at Tish.
“I think,” Tish said in a terrible voice, “the less said of that the better.”
But it appears—for one must be frank—that Lily May saw that Tish was working with her ropes, and so she began to tell them stories. They must have been very queer ones, for Tish has never reverted to the subject.
“I told them the flapper story,” she said to Charlie Sands, “and that new Ford one, and the April-fool joke.”
Charlie Sands seemed to understand, for he nodded.
“Pretty fair,” he said.
But it seems they relaxed after that, and then she got them started on mixing different kinds of drinks. She would say, Did you ever try this and that, with a drop of something else floated on the top? And she would taste the things they brought, and they would take the rest.
“It was Bill who went under first. He went asleep standing up,” she said. And the captain next. But by that time Tish had freed herself, and she knocked Joe out with a piece of chain that was handy. And then their troubles were over, for they only had to drag them down below and lock them up. But they had been banging at the door all day, and Tish had had to make them keep quiet. She had the captain's revolver by that time, and now and again she fired a bullet into the door frame, and they would hush up for an hour or so. Then they would start again.
Our dear Tish finished her narrative and then rose.
“And now,” she said brightly, “it is time for bed. I have done my duty, and shall sleep with a clear conscience.”
“Are you so sure of that?” said Charlie Sands, and fixed her with a cold eye.
“Why not?” Tish asked tartly.
“One reason might be—piracy on the high seas.”
“Piracy!” said Tish furiously. “I capture three rum runners, and you call it piracy?”
“Then there's no matter of money to be discussed.”
“Certainly not,” said Tish.
“Of seventeen hundred and forty-one dollars,” he insisted. “At the present moment concealed in your bedroom.”
“That money belongs to the church.”
“I see. But the amount interests me. I can understand the seventeen hundred, and even the forty. But why the one?”
“Two months at eight hundred and seventy dollars and fifty cents per month,” Tish said, staring at him defiantly. “Even an idiot could figure that.”
“And you took it from those bootleggers?”
“I'd earned it for them.”
“By force and duress?”
“Nothing of the sort. The man was asleep.”
“Hijacking,” he said softly. “Ye gods and little fishes! Hijacking for the church!”
He seemed a trifle dazed, although Tish carefully explained her position to him.
“I see it all,” he said. “It sounds all right, but there must be a catch in it somewhere. I don't quite grasp it, that's all.”
After a time, however, he got up and went to the door, still thinking, and called Christopher.
“Come in, you young impostor,” he said, “and tell us how much you've had out of the summer.”
“I couldn't quite make it,” said Christopher sadly. “Five hundred for the boat and two hundred revenue salary. That's all.”
“Certainly it's not all, Billy Field!” said Lily May. “I have three hundred from Smith, haven't I? That makes the thousand.”
But Charlie Sands was holding his head.
“It sounds all right,” he said. “The parish house gets a kitchen, and Field gets Lily May. Personally I think my Aunt Tish ought to get thirty years, but still ——” He groaned. “Rum running, assault and battery, piracy, straight larceny and hijacking!" he said. “And everybody's happy! There's a profound immorality somewhere,” he added, looking around at us. “But where?”
He got up feebly. “I'm getting too old for much of this,” he said. “Get me a stiff dose of blackberry cordial, somebody. And, Field, slip around to old MacDonald's and get a bit of something to float on the top.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1958, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 65 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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