Sheila of Big Wreck Cove: A Story of Cape CodCooper, James A.
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Sheila of Big Wreck Cove: A Story of Cape Cod
Cooper, James A.
Cape Cod (Mass.) -- Fiction
There was one face on the wharf Tunis Latham sought out with grim
persistency as the schooner was made fast. He had purposely placed
Sheila in Zebedee Pauling's care. Tunis kept, directly under his
hand, the broken oar which had helped to make so much of his recent
trouble. When the _Seamew_ was safe, her skipper leaped ashore. And
he carried the broken oar with him.
Orion, grinning and sneering by turns, saw his cousin coming. It
must have been preternatural sagacity which caused him to see and
recognize the broken oar. Having seen it, he jumped for the head of
the wharf.
Tunis leaped away on his cousin's trail. The crowd parted to let
them through, and then joined in a streaming, excited tail to their
kite of progress. Most of the spectators lived in Portygee Town.
Some of them had been members of the _Seamew's_ deserting crews.
They were afraid of Tunis Latham, but they had little sympathy for
Orion.
The skipper caught up with him in the middle of the road and almost
opposite the Pareta cottage. Orion had picked up a cobblestone as he
reached the street and, finding himself about to be overtaken, he
turned and threw the missile at Tunis' head. The latter dodged it
and, with a single, savage blow of the oar felled his cousin to the
roadway.
"You unmitigated scoundrel!" Tunis roared. "I ought to take your
life. Because of you I nearly lost my own to-day--and the lives of
two other men and my schooner into the bargain. You villain!"
As Orion tried to scramble up, the skipper of the _Seamew_ made
another pass at him with the oar, and the fellow fell again.
"Don't hit me! Don't hit me again, Tunis! Remember I'm your cousin.
I--I haven't done a thing--true an' honest, I haven't!"
The listeners gathered closer. Tunis Latham's face displayed such
rage that the Portygees expected him to continue his attack with the
oar. But instead he shook it before their eyes--and Orion's.
"See it?" he demanded of the bystanders. "That's the scurvy trick
the dog played me. Found this broken oar in somebody's woodpile,
burned the name of the _Marlin B._ into the handle, and foisted it
on a fool crew to prove that my schooner was once called by that
name. I ought to pound him to death!"
Suddenly a brilliant figure whirled into the midst of the crowd and
reached the angry skipper and his victim. Eunez, her black eyes
ablaze, her face ruddy with anger, planted herself before Tunis
Latham, hands on hips, confronting him boldly. One glance at the
prostrate Orion assured her that, although there was blood upon his
face, he was not much hurt. She tossed her head and snapped her
fingers under the nose of the captain of the _Seamew_.
"So now, Tunis Latham! It is that you have waked up! Of a gr-r-reat
smartness are you, eh?" she cried. "You scorn us all, and tr-r-reat
us as you would dogs. Heh! All you shipmasters are alike.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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