Cape Cod (Mass.) -- Fiction; Short stories, American
“'You can't be too sure,' I says. 'This door's locked. Give me the key.'
“'I--I left the key at home,' he says. 'Don't waste time. Go over to
your boat and fetch me some gasoline. I'll pay you well for it.'
“Then I was sartin of what I suspicioned. The cabin was locked, but
not with the key. THAT was in the keyhole. The door was bolted ON THE
INSIDE.
“'All right,' says I. 'I'll sell you the gasoline, but you'll have to
go with me in the skiff to get it. Get your anchor over or this craft'll
drift to Eastham. Hurry up.'
“He didn't like the idee of leaving the launch, but I wouldn't hear of
anything else. While he was heaving the anchor I commenced to talk to
him.
“'I didn't know but what you'd started for foreign parts to meet that
Newport girl you're going to marry,' I says, and I spoke good and loud.
“He jumped so I thought he'd fall overboard.
“'What's that?' he shouts.
“'Why, that girl you're engaged to,' says I. 'Miss--' and I yelled her
name, and how she'd gone abroad with his folks, and all.
“'Shut up!' he whispers, waving his hands, frantic. 'Don't stop to lie.
Hurry up!'
“''Tain't a lie. Oh, I know about it!' I hollers, as if he was deef. I
meant to be heard--by him and anybody else that might be interested.
I give a whole lot more partic'lars, too. He fairly shoved me into the
skiff, after a spell.
“'Now,' he says, so mad he could hardly speak, 'stop your lying and row,
will you!'
“I was willing to row then. I cal'lated I'd done some missionary work
by this time. Allie's guns was spiked, if I knew Barbara Saunders. I
p'inted the skiff the way she'd ought to go and laid to the oars.
“My plan had been to get him aboard the skiff and row
somewheres--ashore, if I could. But 'twas otherwise laid out for me. The
wind was blowing pretty fresh, and the skiff was down by the stern, so's
the waves kept knocking her nose round. 'Twas dark'n a pocket, too. I
couldn't tell where I WAS going.
“Allie got more fidgety every minute. 'Ain't we 'most there?' he asks.
And then he gives a screech. 'What's that ahead?'
“I turned to see, and as I done it the skiff's bow slid up on something.
I give an awful yank at the port oar; she slewed and tilted; a wave
caught her underneath, and the next thing I knew me and Allie and the
skiff was under water, bound for the bottom. We'd run acrost one of the
guy-ropes of my fish-weir.
“This wa'n't in the program. I hit sand with a bump and pawed up for
air. When I got my head out I see a water-wheel doing business close
along-side of me. It was Allie.
“'Help!' he howls. 'Help! I'm drowning!'
“I got him by the collar, took one stroke and bumped against the
weir-nets. You know what a fish-weir's like, don't you, Mr. Brown?--a
kind of pound, made of nets hung on ropes between poles.
“'Help!' yells Allie, clawing the nets. 'I can't swim in rough water!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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