CHAPTER XXII
THE MAN WHO THOUGHT SLOW
AS the old fisherman had said, Varge had no difficulty in finding Varley's wharf. He passed by the large storehouse that faced it on the shore, though he heard a number of men moving within, and went out along the wharf toward where, at the extreme end, a schooner was moored—her rail, with the high tide, riding well above the string-piece.
Across the boat's stern Varge read her name: Mary K. Jones of Gloucester. She was a black-hulled little craft of perhaps seventy tons. To Varge, she appeared very dirty and in great confusion, except for the pile of nested dories that fitted neatly into one another just abaft the mainmast. Barrels were about the decks and the hold was open. She smelt very strongly of fish.
Varge walked her length, inspecting her curiously and with interest. He had seen no one about her, but now as he stood near the bow a woolly head and a coal-black face appeared suddenly from the forecastle hatchway.
"Is Captain Sully here?" Varge asked.
The negro regarded him for a moment with an amiable grin.
"I done reckon youall means Jonah," he responded. "Yassir, dat's what I done reckon—an' dar he am now comin' along de w'arf wrastlin' wif a barr'l bigger 'n he is."
Varge looked in the direction indicated. A short, very small man, whiskered, dressed in trousers and heavy blue jersey, with an old black sou'wester tilted back off his forehead far enough to show up a shiny bald spot and disclose the fact that most of his hair grew upon his chin, was laboriously rolling a cask along the uneven timbers of the wharf.
Varge turned to speak to the negro again, but the latter had ducked down into the forecastle and disappeared.
Bumping along came the cask, Jonah Sully supplying the motive power now with his foot and now with his hands; occasionally, he tilted the sou'wester a little further back and flirted his sleeve across a wet brow. As the other drew nearer Varge saw that his face, what showed of it apart from the beard, was white as from illness—the skin, though thick and toughened, lacked the bronzed, ruddy hue of recent exposure.
A plank ran up from the wharf to the schooner's rail. With a grunt, the little man kicked the cask around at right angles to its former course, jolted it with some exertion onto the end of the plank, and started to roll it upwards. He succeeded to the extent of a foot—then he sat down suddenly, and the cask toppled off the plank, landing on the wharf with a scrunch that tried the temper of its staves.
Varge stepped quickly forward, placed the cask on the plank again, rolled it up to the rail, and then, jumping to the deck, reached up and lifted the cask down after him. By the time this was done and Varge was standing on the wharf again, Jonah Sully was picking himself up and yelling at him.
"Heh, there! Heh, there! Don't drop that there cask on the deck; you'll stove a hole in the plankin'!" he screamed anxiously. "Rastus 'll help you."
For an instant Varge stared in astonishment, then he laughed—the old fisherman's diagnosis was evidently not very far wrong.
"What you laughin' at?" demanded the skipper of the Mary K. Jones; then: "Oh, you got it done, eh? Reckoned I could roll it fur's the rail, but that all-fired pendyceetus has took it out of me considerable. I'm much obleeged"—and before Varge could get a chance to say anything, Captain Sully had hopped from the rail to the deck and vanished into the cabin, or "house."
Varge's laugh died, and though humour still lingered in his expression, perplexity played the greater part. He was dealing with men and conditions that were entirely new and foreign to him, and it was like groping a little in the dark. The only thing that stood out quite clearly, that he had determined and decided upon, was that when the Mary K. Jones sailed he would sail with her.
A procession of three men, each rolling a cask, now appeared from the storehouse coming along the wharf toward the schooner—the balance of the crew, Varge decided in his own mind. Each was dressed much after the fashion of Jonah Sully, but they were quite a polyglot three. They talked and laughed as they came along. A young giant in physique, with blue eyes and straw-coloured hair, a mop of it, was evidently a Swede; the short, dark-visaged one, with red woollen cap, was unmistakably French; while the nasal twang of the third, an elderly man, quite like the old fisherman in face though still straight and sturdy of form, stamped him instantly beyond peradventure of doubt as a native New Englander.
They rolled their casks up the plank, and helped each other down with them to the deck—their united and earnest demands for 'Rastus eliciting no other response than the brief appearance of that coloured gentleman's head in the forecastle hatchway, who announced piquantly:
"Yah! You lazy debbils, you done do yoh own work—I'se otherwise engaged, I is. Yah!"—and ducked out of sight again.
They hurled a battery of intimate and uncomplimentary remarks at him, and started back along the wharf again. The Swede was a little behind the others, and Varge spoke to him.
"How long before you sail?" he inquired.
The China-blue eyes regarded Varge with the ingenuous stare of a child.
"Ban go with tide," he said gravely, moving on after the others. "Ban go 'bout one hour, Ay tank."
Varge followed him shorewards along the wharf with his eyes, and then turned suddenly as Jonah Sully popped hurriedly and with evident excitement from the "house."
"Well, I swan!" exclaimed the skipper, crossing the deck to the rail. "Knew there was something oughter'd struck me!" He stretched out his arm, pointing his finger at Varge. "You, there, young fellow! Well, I vum! I wouldn't have thought it!"
"Thought what?" said Varge in surprise.
"What?" echoed the skipper excitedly. "Why, jumpin' jerooshey, that there cask! Put it down on the deck all by yourself like it wasn't any heavier than a baby, didn't ye? Must have weighed three hundred an' I dunno but four hundred pounds. Well, I swan! Say, what's your name?"
The whimsical smile that had spread over Varge's face gave place to a sober and earnest expression.
"Peters," he said quietly.
"Peters?"—the skipper repeated the name slowly. "Ain't of the Peterses from down Mascoit way, be you?"
"No," said Varge, quite seriously.
"Well," said Jonah Sully profoundly, "of course, there's lots of Peterses. Had an aunt married into 'em down there. Thought mabbe you might be one of 'em. What might you be doin' 'raound here?"
"Why," said Varge, smiling quickly at the other, "I came down this morning to ask you if you wouldn't ship me for the trip?"
"Haow?"—the skipper tilted his sou-wester very far back and rubbed the flat of his hand caressingly backward and forward over his bald head. "Ship on the Mary K.?"
"Yes," said Varge.
"You don't look much as if you knew much 'baout sich things," observed Jonah Sully critically, "even if I be a hand short."
"I don't," admitted Varge. "But I can make myself handy, and you haven't got to pay me anything but what you find I'm worth."
"Yes," said the skipper confidentially to his whiskers, "ought to make himself handy, that's a fact. Pesky strong he is."
"You'll take me, then?" asked Varge.
"Well, I dunno, I dunno," said Jonah Sully musingly. "You hang 'raound a spell an' I'll think it over."
The "spell" dragged on to half an hour, from that to an hour, and became an hour and a half. The casks were lowered and stowed in the hold; the decks took on more semblance of order; the mainsail, with many a protesting creak, was hoisted; a little knot of people, some women amongst them, assembled to say good-bye—and Jonah Sully was still "thinkin' it over."
Varge, as he saw that the final preparations for getting under way were being made, moved quietly to the extreme end of the wharf by the schooner's bows. When the Mary K. Jones sailed he would sail with her. As she moved out and the stern cleared the end of the wharf where he had taken his position, he would jump for it, that was all there was to it—they would have some difficulty in putting him ashore again!
There was a sudden shouting of good-byes from the little crowd; the moorings were cast off, and, fended along, the schooner began to slip past the wharf. Jonah Sully was at the wheel—he looked vacantly at Varge as the stern went by.
A foot, two, four—six feet of clear water lay between the schooner's stern and the end of the wharf—and then, with a leap, Varge landed on the vessel's deck.
Jonah Sully screwed around his head, lifted one hand from the spokes of the wheel, tilted back his sou'wester, tilted it forward again, and then pulled thoughtfully at his beard.
"I reckon," said the skipper of the Mary K. Jones, that mabbe if you're serious 'baout comin', I dunno as I've got any objections."