CHAPTER XXII

THE YARN OF THE “SPANKING SAL”

The wooden-legged clam digger, Habakuk Somes, seemed suddenly to have acquired a great interest in Tom Jonah.

He appeared almost every day at the tent of the Corner House girls and did his best to become friendly with the dog. Tom Jonah grew used to his presence, but he would allow no familiarities from the dilapidated waterside character.

The girls thought “Kuk” Somes only queer; the boys “joshed” him a good deal. Nobody minded having him around, considering merely that he was a peculiar fellow, and harmless.

His tales of sea-going and sea-roving were wonderful indeed. How much of them was truth and how much pure invention, the older Corner House girls and Neale O’Neil did not know. However, they forgave his “historical inaccuracies” because of the entertainment they derived from his yarns.

Tess and Dot listened to the old fellow with perfect confidence in his achievements. Had he not known—in a moment—what it was that shot water up through the holes in the clam flat? The smaller girls listened to old Kuk Somes with unshaken confidence.

“And how did the pirates get your leg, Mr. Kuk?” asked Tess. “Your really truly leg, I mean.”

She and Dot were sitting on the edge of the tent-platform, under the awning, with their bare feet in the sand, with Tom Jonah lying comfortably between them. The dog had a brooding eye upon the clam digger, who sat on a broken lobster trap a few feet away.

“Huh! them pi-_rats_?” queried the clam digger. “Well—er—now, did I say it was pi-_rats_ as got my leg, shipmet?”

“Yes, you did, sir.” Dot hastened to bolster up her sister’s statement of fact. “And you said it was on the Spanish Main.”

“Well!” declared the old man, “so it was, an’ so they did. Pi-_rats_ it was, shipmet. An’ I’ll tell yer the how of it.

“I was carpenter’s mate on the _Spankin’ Sal_, what sailed from Bosting to Rio, touchin’ at some West Injy ports on the way—pertic’larly Porto Rico, which is a big merlasses port. We had a good part of our upper holt stowed with warmin’ pans for the merlasses planters——”

“Oh, Mr. Kuk!” ejaculated Tess in rather a pained voice. “Isn’t that a mistake? _Warming pans?_”

“Not by a joblot it ain’t no mistake!” returned the old man. “Warming pans I sez, an’ warming pans I sticks to.”

“But my geogoraphy,” Tess ventured, timidly, and mispronouncing the word as usual, “says that the West Indies are tropical. Porto Rico is near the Equator.”

“Now, ain’t that wonderful—jest wonderful?” declared the clam digger, smiting his knee with his palm. “Shows what it is to be book l’arned, shipmet.

“’Course, _I_ knowed them was tropical places, but I didn’t know ’twas all writ down in books—joggerfries, do they call ’em?”

“Yes, sir,” said Tess, seriously. “And it is so hot down there they couldn’t possibly need warming pans.”

“Now, ye’d think that, wouldn’t ye, shipmet? And I’d think it. But the skipper of the _Spankin’ Sal_, he knowed dif’rent.

“A master brainy man was Captain Roebuck. That was his name—Roebuck,” declared the clam digger, solemnly. “Hev you ever seen a warming pan, shipmet—an old-fashioned warmin’ pan?”

“Oh, yes!” cried Tess and Dot together. “There’s one hangs over the mantelpiece in the sitting-room of the old Corner House,” added Tess. “That’s where we live when we’re at home in Milton.

“And it is a round brass pan, with a cover that has holes in it, and a long handle. Mrs. MacCall says folks used to put live coals in it and iron the beds before folks went to bed, in the cold weather. But we got furnace heat now, and don’t need the warming pan.”

“Surely, surely, shipmet,” agreed the clam digger. “Them’s the things. And Cap’n Roebuck of the _Spankin’ Sal_, plagued near crammed the upper holt with them.

“It looks right foolish, shipmet; but that skipper got a chancet ter buy up a whole lot o’ them brass warmin’ pans cheap. If he’d seen ’em cheap enough, he’d bought up a hull cargo of secon’ hand hymn books, and he’d took ’em out to the heathen in the South Seas and made a profit on ’em—he would that!” pursued Kuk, confidently.

“He must have been a wonderful man, sir,” said Tess, while Dot sat round-eyed and listened.

“Wonderful! wonderful!” agreed the clam digger. “But about them warmin’ pans. When we got ter Porto Rico we broke out the first of them things. Looked right foolish. All them dons in Panama hats and white pants, an’ barefooted comin’ aboard to look over samples of tradin’ stock, an’ all they can see is warmin’ pans.

“‘What’s them things for?’ axed the first planter, in the Spanish lingo.

“‘Them’s skimmers,’ says Cap’n Roebuck, knowin’ it warn’t no manner o’ use to try to explain the exact truth to a man what ain’t never seed snow, or knowed there was a zero mark on the almanack.

“He grabbed up one o’ them warmin’ pans and made a swing with it like you’d use a crab-net. ‘See! See!’ says the dons. ‘Skim-a da merlasses.’ That’s Spanish for ‘Yes, yes! skim the merlasses,’” explained Kuk, seriously.

“‘But what’s the cover for?’ axed the don. ‘Ye don’t hafter have no cover,’ says Cap’n Roebuck, and he yanks the cover off the warmin’ pan an’ throws it away.

“And there them dons had the finest merlasses dipper that ever went inter the islan’s. Cap’n Roebuck seen their eyes snap an’ put a good, stiff price on the things, and inside of a week there warn’t a warmin’ pan left on the _Spankin’ Sal_.

“Then,” pursued the clam digger, “we stowed away in our upper holt goods what would bring a fancy price at Rio, and laid our course for the Amazon.

“But we was all hands mighty worritted,” admitted Kuk, lowering his voice mysteriously. “Ye see, ye never could tell in them old days, an’ in the West Injies, who it was safe to trust, an’ who it was safe ter _dis_-trust.

“Yer see, so many of them snaky Spanish planters was hand an’ glove with the pi-_rats_. And ev’rybody on the island knowed the _Spankin’ Sal_ was takin’ away a great treasure that had been exchanged for them warmin’ pans. We was a fair mark, as ye might say, for them pi-_rats_.”

“Oh!” gasped Dot, hugging her Alice-doll the tighter.

“How much treasure was there, Mr. Kuk?” asked the ever-practical Tess.

“A chist full,” announced the clam digger without a moment’s hesitation. “A reg’lar treasure-chist full. All them planters hadn’t had ready cash money to pay for the warmin’ pans, and they’d give in exchange di’monds and other jools—and the exchange rates for American money was high anyway. So the _Spankin’ Sal_ was a mighty good ketch if the pi-_rats_ ketched her.

“So, when we sailed from Porto Rico we kep’ a weather eye open for black-painted schooners with rakin’ masts an’ skulls and shinbones on their flags. When we seed them signs we’d know they was pi-_rats_,” declared Kuk, gravely.

The small Corner House girls sighed in unison—and in delight! “The plot thickens!” whispered Agnes to Ruth behind the flap of the tent where they were listening, likewise, though unbeknown to Kuk and the children.

“Go on, please, Mr. Kuk,” breathed Tess.

“Oh, do!” said Dot.

“Well, shipmets,” said the old clam digger, “bein’ peaceful merchantmen, as ye might say, we hadn’t shipped aboard the _Spankin’ Sal_ to fight no pi-_rats_,” declared Kuk, with energy. “We wasn’t no sogers, and we told the skipper so.

“‘We’ll fight,’ says I. Bein’ an officer—carpenter’s mate, as I told ye—I was spokesman for the crew. ‘But we wants ter fight with weepons as we air fermiliar with. Let you and the ossifers fire the cannon, skipper,’ says I, ‘and give us fellers that was bred along shore an’ on the farms some o’ them scythes out’n the lower holt.

“‘Cutlasses an’ muskets,’ says I, ‘is all right for them as has been brought up with ’em,’ says I, ‘but, skipper, me an’ my shipmets has been better used ter cuttin’ swamp-grass an’ mowin’ oats. Give us the weepons we air fermiliar with.’

“And he done it,” declared Kuk, wagging his sinful old head. “We broke out some cases of scythes and fixed ’em onto their handles after grindin’ of ’em sharp as razers on the grin’stone in the waist of the _Spankin’ Sal_.

“Pretty soon we seen one o’ them black-hulled schooners comin’. She couldn’t be mistook for anythin’ but a pi-_rat_, although she didn’t fly no black flag yet.

“‘Let ’em come to close quarters, skipper,’ says I. ‘Let ’em board us. Then me an’ my shipmets can git ’em on the short laig. We’ll mow ’em down like weeds along a roadside ditch.’

“He done it, an’ we did,” pursued Kuk, rather heated now with the interest of his own narrative. “When they run their schooner alongside of us and the two ships clinched, and they broke out the black flag at their peak, me an’ my shipmets stood there ready to repel boarders.

“Them pi-_rats_,” proceeded Kuk, “fought like a passel of cats—tooth an’ nail! They come over aour bulwarks jest like peas pourin’ out o’ a sack. ‘Steady, lads!’ I sings out. ‘Take a long, sweepin’ stroke, an’ each o’ ye cut a good swath!’

“An’ we done so,” the clam digger said, nodding. “Our scythes was longer than the cutlasses of them pi-_rats_; and before they could git at us, we’d reach ’em with a side-swipe of the scythes, and mow ’em down like ripe hay.”

“Oh, dear, me!” gasped Dot.

“How awful!” murmured Tess.

“’Twas sartain sure a bloody field of battle,” declared the clam digger, nodding again. “If it hadn’t been for my leg I wouldn’t never have fought no pi-_rats_ again. A man has his feelin’s, ye see. Our scuppers run blood. The enemy was piled along the deck under our bulwarks in a reg’lar windrow.”

“And did you kill them _all_—every one?” demanded Tess, in amazement.

“No. We jest cut ’em down for the most part,” explained Kuk. “Ye see, we cut a low swath with our scythes; mostly we mowed off their feet and mebbe their legs purty near to their knees. After that there battle there was a most awful lot o’ wooden legged pi-_rats_ on the Spanish Main.

“An’ _that_,” declared the clam digger, rising and getting ready to move on, “was the main reason why I left the sea; leastwise I never wanted to go sailin’ much in them parts again.

“In the scrimmage I got a shot in this leg as busted my knee-cap. I kep’ hoppin’ ’round on that busted leg as long as there was any pi-_rats_ to mow down; and I did the knee a lot of harm the doctors in the horspital said.

“So I had ter have the leg ampertated. That made folks down that-a-way ax me was I a pi-_rat_, too. I’m a sensitive man,” said Kuk, wagging his head, “an’ it hurt my feelin’s to be classed in with all them wooden-legged fellers as we mowed down in the _Spankin’ Sal_. So I come hum an’ left the sea for good and all,” concluded Habakuk Somes, and at once pegged off with his clam basket on his arm.

“What an awful, _awful_ story!” cried Dot.

“Too awful to believe,” answered Tess, wisely.

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