The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1890-06-26
SKIPPER BEN'S GIRL.

come upon The Cove with its cluster
of brown gray and black wooden
houses having queer, uneven roofs
and crooked chimneys. and its narrow
strip of pebbly beach, backed by high.
forbidding rocks.
You are very likely to find boats
drawn up upon this beach. some of
them overturned for calking, and great
heaps of kelp and seaweed and layers
of salt hay, showing how far up the
water comes at high tide.
And climbing over the boats or play
ing along the beach. l am quite sure
YOU will find little girl,-a brown
faced, barefooted little girl in faded
pink frock, whose hair is like seaweed.
a rich chestnut underneath, but faded
to sort of nutty tinge where the sun
strikes it.
If you ask this little girl who she is,
she will peep shyly up at you through
her tangled hair. with pair of eyes
that will win your love and admiration
at once, and will answer, Dolly"
Then she will run away and hide
among the boats. with her brown curls
shaken over her blushing cheeks.
But if you ask any one else, say the
old lobster man yonder examining his
lobster pots beside his warped and
leaky old dory, or, better still, old
Captain Graves, as he stands on the
wharves every day, or sits by the stove
in 'Lisha fuckers store, telling of the
fishing when he was young, he will
say:
"Thet9 oh thet's Skipper Ben's gall"
1t is strange story, and it all hap
pened some years ago-a great many
years ago, Dolly would say, when Skip
per Ben was not a skipper ut ALL but
merely a brown-skinned young fisher
man.
little brown house that stands quite by
itself by the waterside, and whose caves
almost touch the ground. And over in
the blackish-looking cottage. with the
shingles down the sides, lived his
sweetheart rosy lass named Dolly.
They had always been friends ever
since they were old enough to GO
about, and sailed boats together in the
pools among the rocks, or tished from
the wharves. AS they grew older,
the Cove lust kind of understood
that they were to be married as soon as
Ben should become owner or part own.
er of a tishiugvessel.
Ben was an industrious fellow and
was always off at the banks. Each
time he came home he laid little
money away in an old stocking, for he
was saving up to buy his boat, and
once, while he was on a fishing cruise
with Captain Pratt, the captain told
of -, I, l,, 10
home in the Cove, which Ben might
secure for the contents of his stocking.
and in payment for his service that
season.
Ben came home happy youth. He
had already christened his new posses
sion the Dolly And as he walked
up the narrow. crooked street of the
little fishing town he wondered why his
comrades should look at him with such
solemn, pitying glances.
Poor Ben! he soon learned why they
all looked pityingly at him. His sweet
heart, Dolly. was dead. Two week be-
fore she had been buried in the little
graveyard upon the hill.
Poor Ben, indeed!
He was never the same man after
ward. He kept the Dolly" and took
a pride in her. going off to the banks
and becoming in time one of the first
fisherman in the cove. But he never
was boy again; all his old light-heart.
edness had vanished, and he became
grave, moody and silent. For some
years he lived, when he was at home
alone in the little brown house-for his
old mother was dead, too. A lonely
time he had of it. when he was not at
| the banks. In the evenings he would sit
for hours with his pipe, staring into the
tire, and thinking how different it
might all have been if only Dolly had
| lived.
One night there was terrible storm,
and Skipper Ben sat by his lonely
hearth, smoking and thinking. The
| wind blew and howled about the little
| brown house. 1t rushed down the
chimney and beat against the side of
| the house until it rocked. But Ben
| does not notice bit of wind.
| Presently his gloomy thoughts got
seemed to grow as narrow and as
suffocating as n grave, and he rushed
out into the night and the storm. where
he could draw in deep breaths of the
wild. salt air.
There was no rain, but the clouds
We're scurrying swiftly across the sky.
Aud well they might, with such wind
at their heels.
Such a wind! If Ben had not been
the broad, sturdy fellow that he was it
would have blown him off his feet. But
as it was, he strobe up and down the
beach with long, fierce strides. and
needed neither the wind nor the roar.
ing surf.
Was it strange that, with the fierce
storm raging without, and the equally
fierce storm raging within, Skip
| per Ben should not have heard the
shrieks and cries of distress that night?
Not so very strange, | think, sut what
was strange was that, above all the din
and commotion. he should have heard
feeble wail-the faintest little wall in
the world.
But he heard it. at any rate, and
hurried to the spot whence it came.
There living on the beach with =.