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St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, September 1878
Dab Kinzer: A Story of a Growing Boy
by William O. Stoddard
Chapter XIX
That was a great day for the boys, but, before the close of it, Ford Foster
had told his friends the news that Joe Hart and his brother Fuz had been invited
to visit with him.
"Will they come?" asked Dab.
"Certainly. That kind of boy always comes. Nobody wants to keep him from
coming."
"When do you look for them?"
"Right away. Vacation's most gone, you know."
"Wont they be ashamed to meet your sister!"
"Not a bit. They'll try their tricks even after they get here."
"All right. We'll help 'em all we know how. But, boys, I tell you what we must
try for."
"What's that?"
"One grand, good sailing party, in the 'Swallow,' before they get here."
"Hurrah for that! Annie was wishing for one only yesterday."
"We'll have all of your folks and all of ours. The 'Swallow' 's plenty big
enough."
"Mother wouldn't go and father can't, just now. He's trying a case. But there's
Annie and Frank and me—"
"And my mother and Ham and Miranda and our girls. Ham'll go, sure. Then we must
take Dick Lee along. It'd make him sick if we didn't."
"Of course. And aint I glad about him? Could we get ready and go to-morrow?"
"Guess not so quick as that. We might by the day after, if the weather's all
right."
Exactly. There is always a large sized "if" to be put in where anything depends
on the weather. Mrs. Kinzer took the matter up with enthusiasm, and so did the
girls, Miranda included, and Ford Foster was right about his own part of the
company.
But the weather!
It looked well enough to unpracticed eyes, but Ham Morris shook his head and
went to consult his fishermen friends. Every human barometer among them warned
him to wait a day or so.
"Such warm, nice weather," remonstrated Ford Foster, "and there isn't any wind
to speak of."
"There's too much of it coming," was Ham's response, and there was no help for
it. Not even when the mail brought word from "Aunt Maria" that her two boys
would arrive in a day or so.
"Our last chance is gone, Annie," said Ford, when the news came.
"O, mother, what shall we do?"
"Have your sail, just the same, and invite your cousins."
"But the Kinzers—"
"Why, Annie! Mrs. Kinzer will not think of neglecting them. She's as kind as
kind can be."
"And we are to pay her with Joe and Fuz," said Ford. "Well, I wish Ham Morris's
storm would come along."
He only had to wait till next day for it, and he was quite contented to be on
shore while it lasted. There was no use in laughing at the prophecies of the
fishermen after it began to blow. Still, it was not a long one, and Ham Morris
remarked: "This is only an outside edge of it. It's a good deal worse at sea.
Glad we're not out in it."
Ford Foster thought the worst of it was when the afternoon train came in, and he
had to show a pair of tired, moist and altogether unpleasant cousins to the room
set apart for them. Just after tea a note came over from Mrs. Kinzer, asking the
Hart boys to join the yachting party next morning.
"The storm may not be over," growled Ford.
"Oh," said Annie, "Mrs. Kinzer adds that the weather will surely be fine after
such a blow, and the bay will be quite safe and smooth."
"Does she know the clerk of the weather," asked Joe Hart.
"Got one of her own," said Ford.
Fuz Hart laughed but said nothing. Both he and his brother felt a little
"strange" as yet, and were almost inclined to try and behave themselves.
When morning came, however, sea and earth and sky seemed to be the better for
what they had just been through. The grass and trees were greener and the bay
seemed bluer, while the few clouds visible in the sky were very white and clean,
as if all the storms had been washed out of them. Not a single thing went wrong
in Mrs. Kinzer's management of the "setting out" of the party, and that was half
the day now to begin with. Ford had some trouble in getting Joe and Fuz up so
very early, but an intimation that "Ham Morris wouldn't wait five minutes for
the Queen of England, or even me," was sufficient to rouse them.
"Joe," whispered Fuz, after they got on board, "are we to be gone a week?"
"Why? What's up?"
"Such piles of provisions as they've stowed away in that kennel!"
The bit of a water-tight cabin under the half-deck, at which Fuz pointed, was
pretty well filled, beyond a doubt, but Mrs. Kinzer knew what she was about. She
had provided lunch for most of that party before, and the effect of the sea-air
was also to be taken into account.
"Dab," said Ford Foster, "you've forgotten to unhitch the 'Jenny.' Here she is,
towing astern."
"That's all right. We may need her. She's too heavy to take on board."
A careful fellow was Mr. Hamilton Morris, and he knew very well the value of a
row-boat to a picnic party. As for Joe and Fuz they were compelled to overcome a
strong inclination to cast the boat loose. Such a joke it would have been, but
Ham was in the way as long as he held the tiller.
The "Swallow" was "steady" enough to inspire even Annie Foster with a feeling of
confidence, but Ford carefully explained to her the difference between slipping
along over the little waves of the land-locked bay, and plunging into the great
billows of the stormy Atlantic.
"I prefer this," said Annie.
"But I wouldn't have missed the other for anything," replied Ford. "Would you,
Dick?"
Mr. Richard Lee had taken his full share in the work of starting, and had made
himself singularly useful, but if all the rest had not been so busy they would
have noticed his silence. Hardly a word had he uttered, that anybody could
remember, and, now he was forced to say something, his mouth opened slowly, as
if he had never tried to speak before and was not quite sure he knew how:
"No,-Mr.-Foster,-I-would-not-have-missed-that-trip-for-a-good-deal."
Every word by itself, and as different from Dick's ordinary talk as a cut stone
is from a rough one. Ham Morris opened his eyes wide, and Ford puckered up his
lips in a sort of a whistle, but Annie caught the meaning of it quicker than
they did.
"Dick," she said, "are we to fish to-day?"
"May be,-but-that-depends-on-Mr.-Morris."
Every word slowly and carefully uttered, a good deal like a man counts over
doubtful money, looking sharp for a counterfeit.
"Look here, Dick!" suddenly exclaimed Dab Kinzer, "I give it up. You can do it.
But don't try to keep it up all day. Kill you, sure as anything, if you do."
"Did I say 'em all right, Cap'n Dab?" anxiously inquired Dick, with a happy look
on his black, merry face.
"Every word," said Dab. "Well for you they were all short. Keep on practicing."
"I'll jest do dat, shuah!"
Practicing? Yes, that was it, and Dick himself joined heartily in the peal of
laughter with which the success of his first attempt at "white folk's English"
was received by the party. Dab explained that as soon as Dick found he was
really to go to the academy he determined to teach his tongue new habits, and
the whole company heartily approved, even while they joined Dab in advising him
not to try too much at a time.
Plenty of talk and fun all around as the "Swallow" skimmed onward, and the long,
low outlines of the narrow sand-island were rapidly becoming more distinct.
"Is that a light-house?" asked Annie of Dab.
"Yes, and there's a wrecking station close by."
"Men there all the while? Are there many wrecks on this coast?"
"Ever so many, and there used to be more of them. It was a bad place to run
ashore, in those days. Almost as bad as Jersey."
"Why?"
"Because of the wreckers. The shore's bad enough, and the bar's a mean place to
escape on, but the wreckers used to make it worse."
And Dab launched out into a slightly exaggerated description of the terrors of
the Long Island coast in old times and new, and of the character of the men who
were formerly the first to find out if anything or anybody had gone ashore.
"What a prize that French steamer would have been!" said Annie, "the one you
took Frank Harley from."
"No, she wouldn't. Why, she wasn't wrecked at all. She only stuck her nose in
the sand and lay still till the tugs pulled her off. That isn't a wreck. A wreck
is where the ship is knocked to pieces and people are drowned, and all that sort
of thing. Then the wreckers have a notion that everything that comes ashore
belongs to them. Why, I've heard even some of our old fishermen—best kind of
men, too—talk of how government has robbed 'em of their rights."
"By the new system?"
"By having wrecks prevented, and saving the property for the owners."
"Isn't that strange! Did you say they were good men?"
"Some of 'em. Honest as the day is long about everything else. But they weren't
all so. There was old Peter, and he lives on the Island yet. There's his cabin
now. You can just see it in the edge of that great sand-hill."
"What a queer thing it is!"
"Sometimes the storms drift the sand all over it, and old Peter has to dig it
out again. He's snowed under two or three times every winter."
They were now coasting along the island, at no great distance, and, although it
was not nearly noon, Dab heard Joe Hart say to his brother:
"Never was so hungry in all my life. Glad they did lay in a good stock of
provisions."
"So am I," returned Fuz. "Isn't there any such thing as our getting into the
cabin!"
No, there was not, so long as Mrs. Kinzer was the "stewardess" of that
expedition, and Joe and Fuz were compelled to wait her motions.
(To be continued.)
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