Tish Plays the Game Read online

  “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 they 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 anymore; 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.

  “Someday,” 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 unpleasant look she went away again.

  But 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.r />
  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 quietly 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 Aggie’s 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 looped 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 fancy-work.

  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 two P.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 coast-guard 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 whiskey from fish.”

  “Whiskey!” 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.