The Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
WARNINGS IN THE AIR
When Turner and the boys reached the beach skirting the fishing settlement, a group of about twenty men were inspecting the booty stretched out on the sand. Among the spectators stood the bandy-legged Cap'n Buffum, who, getting wind of the adventure, had waddled down to gloat over the prize with his own eyes.
Loud plaudits greeted the arrival of the intrepid heroes. Cat in particular was the object of attention, and, undrr the admiration, swelled like a pouter pigeon. It was the proudest moment of the near six thousand days of his eventful life.
"Here's my hand to all of ye," said Buffum, with heartfelt pleasure, suiting the action to the word. "I never had no use for them flyin' ships befo', a-droppin' bombs and scrap iron to mess up good seaworthy vessels, but if they kin light and scavenger the ocean o' varmints like these hyuh, I'll vote for 'em good and hearty. But where's Hardy and that leggy lad?"
Turner proceeded to explain the occasion of their absence.
"Them lighthouse superintendents is cracked to be sendin' men kitin' aroun' in the air, with a storm dead-ahead. They don't git Bill Buffum a-sailin' hither and thither. I was give my lighthouse job to set, and set like hardtack I will aginst all the flyin' powers in creation."
"That reminds me," said Turner. "I got a wireless that Commodore Hatton's yacht is due to pass sometime this evening. He's young Hatton's father. Keep your light burning."
"I'll have it extry bright," promised the ex-mariner, "but if I had my hands on them there wires I'd 'a tol' him to snug in some handy port, for, take a Jack tar's word for it, it'll be blowin' great guns and loaded ones, with Old Nick servin' 'em, by sundown."
On the outskirts of the group of brawny fishermen gathered about the shark, stood a man who seemingly was not of the company, though he wore a longshoreman's oilskin coat reaching nearly to the heels of his rubber boots, while a hat of the same material covered his head and shadowed the upper part of his face. A bushy black beard was most conspicuously in evidence.
As Buffum and Turner had begun to talk, he had drawn closer to the two, but now as Buffum suddenly looked sharply about, the stranger whirled around, sauntered away and appeared to be idly inspecting the ocean.
"Who's that thar felluh?" asked the lighthouse keeper of one of the fishermen, pointing at the same time at the intruder.
"I ain't seen him befo'," declared the one addressed, "He tol' some of the folks at the settlement jus' now that he come from Belle Haven and was waiting for the mail carrier to take him to Millford."
"He don't look like no genuwine fisherman to me," asserted Buffum, staring keenly after the now retreating figure.
"Nor me neither," agreed the other. "Ain't set up right."
"Hope that 'ere yacht will keep well out at sea," continued the Cap'n, turning to Turner once more. "The Cape Peril shoals ain't got no respect for Commodores or for Admirals either. They don't salute nobody as I ever heard of. What's that 'ere Hatton Commodore of?"
Turner explained that it was merely a complimentary title conferred on the yacht owner by his cronies.
"His handle come off'n the same bush as mine did," chuckled the old fellow. "If you've ever blowed a whistle on the sea or fired a popgun at a clay pigeon on land and gits a few years on ye, these folks shoots a Cap'n or a Gen'ral at ye. I knowed a man once who was a gen'ral nuisance, and his acquaintances—he didn't have no friends—all called him 'Gen'ral.' It's the same as the police force. You calls 'em all 'officer.' Thar ain't no more prives left above the sod. But Gen'ral or Commodore, I'll have the light fer him. Let the wind blow high or low, the light's always a-burnin'; and if they come close enough to the shoals to see it and don't go a-scootin' off like them water-bugs that slides on a pond, they're spilin' for trouble, and submarines ain't nothin' to what them shoals kin do for 'em when they takes a notion.
"Didn't I tell ye, mates," he continued, addressing the whole group, "a blow was comin'? I tol' them boys, too. The weather reports jus' aftertells what my feet has been a-howlin' fer three days. They're better than any barometer I ever seed blowed in glass, and, as I gets older, they gits aocurater and accurater."
During the Cap*n's harangue the youngsters were busy, with open penknives, progging at the mouth of the monster.
"What's them boys tryin' to do?" Cap'n Buffum asked Turner. "Torment a critter after he's dead? That ain't no way to do."
"Want to get some teeth as souvenirs," explained Cat, looking up.
"I'll be bound you can't get 'em out that-a-way, sonny," asserted one of the fishermen, "Come along with me and we'll go up the house and get some pinchers and a jackknife."
Eagerly the boys jumped up and trotted along with the man, and in a short time were back with the implements and proceeded to extract a number of tusks from the grinning mouth. Some of these they counted on having mounted for scarf-pins; others would be distributed among their intimates.
First one and then another of the around began "reminiscing."
"This is the first one I ever seen in these parts," declared one fisherman, "though somebody or the other tells me every summer they's spied one. Say, them varmints can chaw up a fish net same as a spider web."
"And they ain't squeamish about their mess, neither," quoth Cap*n Buffum. "In the tropics I heard tell of one that was landed and sliced, and in his belly they lit on a lady's workbox, with pins and needles and scissors and all them other jimcracks that women folks cuts up with."
The crowd applauded this as a genuine whopper.
"And I've seen 'em," said another traveled seaman, "thirty-seven feet long, and that's no sea yarn; and they could flip over a rowboat same as I could a splinter."
"Recollec' that sucker that turned up on the Jersey coast a summer or two ago and chawed up a kid in, swimmin'?" said a third.
"When I was learnin' this hydroplane game on the Florida coast," related Turner, "one of my chums topped in the sea, and by the time we could row out to where he fell, there wasn't a strand of him left—not a sliver. But those folks down there don't seem to mind 'em. They go on in swimming regardless, and when an alarm's given, they hop on shore, and in fifteen minutes back they go again."
The shark chit-chat went on a half hour after the boys had laid in their supply of teeth. Then Turner, suddenly remembering his wireless, paid the fishermen the promised ten dollars, and insisted on an immediate return to Seagulls' Nest.
Cap'n Buffum accompanied the party as far as his lighthouse. "Wind's still gettin' chipper," remarked the old man as he parted with the others, "but I b'lieve that 'ere hurricane will butt up aginst Cape Hatteras and twis' out to sea. We won't get more'n the tail of it, but like the tail of one of them there sharks, a hurricane's tail kin lash up water considerable."
"Hope you are right about the turning," said Turner. "And don't forget to signal if you see the yacht."
Then Turner and the lads proceeded to their destination.