“I’m a serious-minded man,

I have sailed from old Cape Ann

For fifty years, and I’ve braved as much as ary a mortal can.

I ain’ afraid of the stormy sea,

Nor critters that swim it, whatever they be,

But a witch of a woman is what floors me.”

—Sea-song of the “Baches of Bucksport.”

The Palermo packet, “Effort,” rocked slowly on the refuse-strewn ooze in her berth at Merrithew’s wharf, Square Harbour, her gray, weather-streaked sides rubbing at the barnacles on the piles. On the upper step of her cuddy companionway sat her skipper, Captain Nymphus Bodfish, rubbing his raspy palm over his bristly gray beard, the little curls of which were much like barnacles, too.

“I tell ye, set quiet,” he growled down the companionway. “I ain’t run packet here for ten years not to know when trains leave or not to know how to telefoam for a hack when I want one. That hack will be here ha’f-past twelve and it will get you to the deppo plenty in time.”

In a little while the complaining whine of a woman’s voice came up the companionway again. The captain impatiently twitched at a leather chain and flipped a big silver watch out of his pocket.

“Ten minits arter twelve, if ye’ve got to know,” he grumbled. “And it was eight minits arter twelve when you asked before. Now I ain’t no town clock to set here passin’ down time to ye ev’ry second or two. I say you’ll get to that deppo. So set quiet.”

But in a little while the complaining voice came up once more—the voice of a woman who was hoarse with much weeping.

“It ain’t no time now to be wishin’ that,” he snapped impatiently. “Your wishin’ wants to be all done up ahead when you make up your mind to run away from your husband. It’s all been fixed and arranged and you’ve agreed to do thus and so, and now there ain’t nothin’ to do but set quiet, set quiet, I tell you.”

Rather abstractedly he fingered in his waistcoat pocket and pulled the corner of a bill above its edge. He noted with fresh satisfaction, though he had looked at that bill at least a dozen times during the forenoon, that the figures in the corner were “20.”

“Yes, it’s all been fixed and arranged,” he repeated with additional firmness, “and you said you’d go and you’ve gone, so now what is the use of cry-babyin’?” He craned his neck and looked up the long alley that led from the wharf to the street. “Hack will prob’ly git here a little ahead of time,” he muttered, “and I’ll be blamenation glad if it does. There’s nothin’ so cussed aggravatin’ to have ’round as a woman that can’t keep her mind set on one thing more’n fourteen seconds at a time. It will be good riddance when her gown-tail goes over the rail.” Again the voice complained below.

“Now I want a puffick understandin’ about this thing,” snarled Captain Bodfish. “You want to stop whifflin’ back and forth, like a sheet at come-about, and fill full on one tack or t’other. When that hack comes you want to be ready to step into it, free will and no caterwaulin’s. I don’t propose to lug you out. It’s your own bus’ness and ’tain’t mine. But I’ve contracted to git you to that deppo and you’ve taken par-sage with that understandin’—and it’s to that deppo that I deliver you. Then you can go to Tophet, home or Hackenny so soon’s you’re off’n my hands.”

The voice came promptly when he finished. There was a question.

“No, s’r! Not a dum word of advice from me,” barked the skipper. “You’ve rooted your own hole and now you lay in it. I don’t never advise folks about their own business. If I said to go back to Wat Mayo or said to run away to where King Bradish is sendin’ you, you’d wish you’d done t’other, whatever one you done, and then I’d get the blame.”

He half rose and craned his neck again. It was at the noon hour and the drays were silent and the hum of business had ceased in the storehouses along the wharf. In the stillness he heard the rapid roll of some heavy vehicle on the stones of the street to which the alley admitted.

“Here comes your hack,” he said.

The voice rose in shrill protest.

“Yes, you will go, too!” he bawled, angrily. “I ain’t goin’ to have you left on my hands. It ain’t in the bargain.”

The next moment four horses swung around the corner into the alley.

“Jee-hosophat!” whistled the skipper. “They’re sartinly putting on style in the hackin’ line.”

Then the van appeared, but it was too far away for Captain Bodfish to see just what it was.

“Blast ’em,” he snorted, “I didn’t telefoam for no furnitur’ to be moved.” He clumped across the deck and stood at the rail, peering under his palm.

Captain Nymphus Bodfish of the packet “Effort” had never met Hiram Look, having scornfully refused to “go up and hang ’round a peep-show.” He was not familiar, as were his townsmen, with the showman’s vans and horses.

His slow comprehension did not connect this apparition in Square Harbour with anything that could have come out of Palermo.

“They’re both of ’em wearin’ plug hats,” he soliloquised as the outfit came rattling down the alley, “but ’tain’t no hearse, painted and gew-gawed up like that.”

The equipage made a gallant sweep past the end of the storehouse near the packet’s berth and halted at the edge of the dock. Hiram leisurely tucked away his whip in the socket beside the seat, passed the reins to Peak and jumped to the ground.

“We didn’t have to waste a minute askin’ the way, Cap,” he remarked, cheerfully. “I find that the ‘Effort’ puts up at the same old dock, even if you are a new skipper.”

“Ain’t anything very new about ten years o’ runnin’,” returned Bodfish, rather surlily, for the stranger’s easy familiarity nettled him.

“Well, it makes you new to me,” said Hiram. “Howsomever, I ain’t got time to swap a great deal of talk.” He pulled out his watch. “I’ve got thutty-five minutes to git to the station if she ain’t here. If she is here I want her.”

Captain Bodfish’s jaw dropped in his astonishment, and his rolling eye now caught for the first time the lettering on the upper panel of the van: “Leviathan Circus and Menagerie, H. Look, Prop.”

“Yes,” went on Hiram, noting the skipper’s gathering scowl, “we’ve come round by land per the Inlet road, crooked as an angle-worm and up and down like a dash chum. It took sweat and axle-grease, but we’re here, Cap, glad to see you and wishin’ you all the compliments of the season. Now, brief and to the point—is the lady aboard that you took out of Palermo this mornin’?”

“None o’ your bus’ness,” replied Captain Bodfish, promptly and emphatically.

“Then I’ll come aboard and look. That’ll save me time and you the wear and tear on your mouth.”

But Captain Bodfish leaped to the gang-plank and straddled himself there.

“No you don’t come aboard no packet o’ mine,” he cried.

“Oh, then she’s here,” said Hiram. “They’re easy, these mossback fellers, Sime,” he added, turning to Peak. “It’s the old pickpocket trick. Jab a jay in the crowd and he flaps his hand onto where he’s carrying his wallet. Then all you have to do is to pick it.”

Bodfish’s rage was gathering fast.

Hiram stepped upon the wharf-end of the plank.

“I say ye can’t come aboard,” shouted the skipper. “You ain’t no policeman and you ain’t no custom officer.” He pulled a marline-spike from a knot of rope at the rail. “You come in reach of me, you circus man, and I’ll drive that plug hat down so fur oh your shoulders that folks will have to slice it off with a can-opener.”

“Ain’t your works gittin’ a little heated?” sarcastically queried Hiram. “Now, there’s a young woman aboard that bo’t that I’ve come after, and I’m goin’ to have her. You don’t know me and I don’t know you. You think you can stop me. I know you can’t. Now you’d better come over to my opinion of the case, Cap’n Nymp’ Bodfish, and save further wear and tear.”

But the irate captain only stepped out on the plank and whirled his spike. “You ain’t got your pitchfork to-day, and you ain’t got no Klebe Willard to deal with, either.”

“No, but I’ve got my grapplers,” shouted Hiram, and before the skipper could stir stump he snapped forward, grabbed the gang-plank and jerked it toward him. At the same time he tipped it and the captain of the “Effort” went down ’longside with a “kerplunko” that sent the turbid water above the wharf’s edge like the spout of a geyser. Hiram made two bounds, one to the rail and one to the deck.

“Here, Mayo woman,” he cried, as he clumped down the companionway into the dim cabin, “no arguments, no back talk.”

He seized her by the arm, rushed her up the steps and to the rail, and fairly tossed her across the space to the wharf, over the head of Captain Bodfish, who was blowing water from his mouth and nose, and clambering painfully up the side of the craft.

“You ain’t cool yet. Take another dip,” cried Hiram, and he put his broad boot down on Bodfish’s head and sent him under again.

The girl swayed dizzily on the wharf, but the showman had her in his grasp the next moment. He noted a hack bowling down the wharf and persons were sauntering that way, attracted by the unusual spectacle of a circus van. Without a moment’s hesitation he half-carried the woman to the rear of the van, threw open the double doors, pushed her in on some blankets that were spread on the floor, and closed and padlocked the opening. She was uttering sharp cries, but he put his mouth close to the crack and growled at her:

“You’re goin’ home, you little fool. But if you let one more yip out of you I’ll deliver you to the first policeman I meet and tell him you’re an eloper. Then it’s State prison for you.”

Her cries ceased and Hiram turned a bland face to the persons who had come up.

Captain Bodfish had regained his vessel and was sitting on the rail, dragging the water out of his eyes with his knuckles, and panting for breath. The showman forestalled any compromising accusations. He went close to the edge of the wharf, leaned over and said:

“Cap, you can’t afford to open your mouth. I can have you tarred and feathered here in ten minutes if I let the crowd in on what you’ve tried to do. I’m a son of a seacook on handlin’ a crowd.”

The skipper unclosed and shut his mouth like a fish, but he realised the force of that warning.

Hiram went along and prepared to climb back upon his seat. As he set his toe on the hub one of the crowd inquired suspiciously:

“If it ain’t a sassy question, mister, what was that critter that you was putting into the cart here? We heard it squawkin’, but we couldn’t see very well.” Hiram, his success making him amiable, smiled upon the bystanders.

“Gents, I am both pleased and proud to tell you that I have now in this van one of the most beautiful specimens of the five-finned American mermaid that was ever captured on our stem and rock-bound coast.”

The zeal of the barker entered his spirit. It had been a long time since he had faced an audience.

“This stupendous attraction, gents, that has just been secured for Look’s Leviathan Menagerie is the only living specimen of the American Mermaidissus in captivity to-day. She has flowing hair in which she wraps herself as in a mantle of the purest silk, and she is fresh from the royal courts of the king of the seas. She was captured off our aforesaid rocky coast by the bravest sailor that ploughs the ocean blue”—Bodfish was edging through the crowd, his face working with mighty wrath that he did not dare to give rein to. The showman beamed on him. “Yes, gents, captured in a single-handed conflict by that brave sailor, Cap’n Nymphus Bodfish, of the ‘Effort.’ And now he will be pleased to give you full particulars of that gigantic struggle in the waters of old ocean. As for me I shall have to be movin’ on to where immense and delighted audiences await me.”

He started to climb over the wheel, tipping a wink at Peak, and the crowd turned open-mouthed to Bodfish. The instant the showman’s back was turned that infuriated individual rushed forward, dealt Hiram a mighty kick, and when the showman turned, bonneted him in his tall hat, and then ran like a deer off the wharf and across the decks of a nest of fishing schooners that were packed in at one of the docks.

Hiram worked off his hat and straightened it, gazing after the fleeing Bodfish without a word. But his face was gray and rigid with rage. Then he climbed to his seat and gazed afresh on the skipper, scuttling across the decks.

“Aforesaid brave and intrepid sailor seems to have had his brain turned by his wonderful success as a mermaid capturer,” he grated. “It—it’s——” he choked and paused. “It’s too bad!” he managed to growl at last, and then snatched the reins from Peak’s hands and drove off up the alley at a stiff pace, leaving a very much mystified crowd behind him.

“We’ll get out of this place as soon as pullin’ the braid and pushin’ the webbin’ will do it,” he said to Peak as the van turned into the dingy shore street of Square Harbour. “Ev’ry one here has got eyes hung out on their cheeks like lobsters have,” he went on, glowering at the people on the sidewalks. His amiability had departed suddenly.

“What ye goin’ to do to old Tarfinger?” asked Peak, who fully understood what the showman was thinking about.

“It’s goin’ to take a good deal of prayer and meditation to plan it out, Sime,” replied Hiram, slowly and menacingly. “Do you think that many of them critters that stood round there knew who I was?”

“Ain’t your name on this cart bigger’n a fat woman sign on a side-show banner?”

Hiram ground his teeth.

“There was a man kicked me once,” he related slowly, “and there wasn’t no outsiders see him do it, either. And that man—but I ain’t any hand to brag, Sime. All I say is that such a case as this needs prayer and meditation, and a lot of it.”

They rode on in silence. There was no sound from within.

“We’ll stop up-country at some farmer’s place and bait,” said Hiram at last, “and we’ll get into Palermo after dark. The invisible lady trick will be played all right and there’s that much to say, but—I never was kicked before in the face and eyes of a public audience, to have it talked about from Clew to Erie and laughed over, and him get away! Oh, it ain’t no common case, Sime. Don’t talk to me. Let me meditate.”

Therefore the ride along the highway that swept up around the broad Inlet was one devoted wholly to introspection, both without and within the rumbling van.