Humorous stories; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Short stories, American
"Why, I remember now," says I. "It was the yacht his son and his new
wife was takin' a honeymoon trip on. And she went on some rocks up on
the coast of Maine durin' a storm. The papers was full of it at the
time. And how they was all rescued by an old lobsterman who made two
trips in a leaky tub of a motorboat out through a howlin' northeaster.
And--why, say, you don't mean to tell me you're Uncle Jimmy Isham, the
hero?"
"Sho!" says he. "Don't you begin all that nonsense again. I was pestered
enough by the summer folks that next season. You ought to see them
schoolma'ams takin' snapshots of me every time I turned around. And
gushin'! Why, it was enough to make a dog laugh! Course I ain't no
hero."
"But that must have been some risky stunt of yours, just the same," I
insists.
"Wall," he admits, "it wa'n't just the weather I'd pick to take the old
Curlew out in; but when I see through the glasses what the white thing
was that's poundin' around on Razor Back Ledges, and seen the distress
signal run up--why, I couldn't stay ashore. There was others would have
gone, I guess, if I hadn't. But there I was, an old bach, and not much
good to anybody anyway, you know."
"Come, come!" says I. "Why wa'n't you as good as the next?"
"I dun'no," says he, sighin' a little. "Only--only you know the kind of
a chap that everybody calls Uncle Jimmy? That--that's me."
"But you went out and got 'em!" I goes on.
"Yes," says he. "It wa'n't so much, though. You know how the papers run
on?"
I didn't say yes or no to that. I was sittin' there starin' across the
table, tryin' to size up this leather-faced old party with the bashful
ways and the simple look in his steady eyes. The grizzled mustache
curlin' close around his mouth corners, the heavy eyebrows, and the
thick head of gray hair somehow reminds me of Mark Twain, as we used to
see him a few years back walkin' up Fifth-ave. Only Uncle Jimmy was a
little softer around the chin.
"Let's see," says I, "something like three summers ago, that was, wa'n't
it?"
"Four," says he, "the eighteenth of September."
"And since then?" says I.
"Just the same as before," says he. "I've been right at Pemaquid."
"At what?" says I.
"Pemaquid," he repeats, leanin' hard on the "quid." "I've been there
goin' on forty years, now."
"Doin' what?" says I.
"Oh, lobsterin' mostly," says he. "But late years they've been runnin'
so scurce that summers I've been usin' the Curlew as a party boat.
Ain't much money in it, though."
"How much, for instance?" says I.
"Wall, this season I cleaned up about one hundred and twenty dollars
from the Fourth to Labor Day," says he. "But there was lots of good days
when I didn't git any parties at all. You see, I look kind of old and
shabby. So does the Curlew; and the spruce young fellers with the new
boats gits the cream of the trade. But it don't take much to keep me."
"I should say not," says I, "if you can winter on that!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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