there! I've been sailing stern first. Let's get her headed right, if we ever expect to turn the first mark. You see, 'twas this way:
'Twas in the early part of May follering the year that the "Old Home House" was opened. We'd had the place all painted up, decks holy-stoned, bunks overhauled, and one thing or 'nother, and the "Old Home" was all taut and shipshape, ready for the crew--boarders, I mean. Passages was booked all through the summer and it looked as if our second season would be better'n our first.
Then the Dillaway girl--she was christened Lobelia, like her mother, but she'd painted it out and cruised under the name of Belle since the family got rich--she thought 'twould be nice to have what she called a "spring house-party" for her particular friends 'fore the regular season opened. So Peter--he being engaged at the time and consequent in that condition where he'd have put on horns and "mooed" if she'd give the order--he thought 'twould be nice, too, and for a week it was "all hands on deck!" getting ready for the "house-party."
Two days afore the thing was to go off the ways Brown gets a letter from Belle, and in it says she's invited a whole lot of folks from Chicago and New York and Boston and the land knows where, and that they've never been to the Cape and she wants to show 'em what a "quaint" place it is. "Can't you get," says she, "two or three delightful, queer, old 'longshore characters to be at work 'round the hotel? It'll give such a touch of local color," she says.
So out comes Peter with the letter.
"Barzilla," he says to me, "I want some characters. Know anybody that's a character?"
"Well," says I, "there's Nate Slocum over to Orham. He'd steal anything that wa'n't spiked down. He's about the toughest character I can think of, offhand, this way."
"Oh, thunder!" says Brown. "I don't want a crook; that wouldn't be any novelty to THIS crowd," he says. "What I'm after is an odd stick; a feller with pigeons in his loft. Not a lunatic, but jest a queer genius--little queerer than you and the Cap'n here."
After a while we got his drift, and I happened to think of Beriah and his chum, Eben Cobb. They lived in a little shanty over to Skakit P'int and got their living lobstering, and so on. Both of 'em had saved a few thousand dollars, but you couldn't get a cent of it without giving 'em ether, and they'd rather live like Portugees than white men any day, unless they was paid to change. Beriah's pet idee was foretelling what the weather was going to be. And he could do it, too, better'n anybody I ever see. He'd smell a storm further'n a cat can smell fish, and he hardly ever made a mistake. Prided himself on it, you understand, like a boy does on his first long pants. His prophecies was his idols, so's to speak, and you couldn't have hired him to foretell what he knew was wrong, not for no money.
Peter said Beriah and Eben was just the sort of "cards" he was looking for and drove right over to see 'em. He hooked 'em, too. I knew he would; he could talk a Come-Outer into believing that a Unitarian wasn't booked for Tophet, if he set out to.
So the special train from Boston brought the "house-party" down, and our two-seated buggy brought Beriah and Eben over. They didn't have anything to do but to look "picturesque" and say "I snum!" and "I swan to man!" and they could do that to the skipper's taste. The city folks thought they was "just too dear and odd for anything," and made 'em bigger fools than ever, which wa'n't necessary.
The second day of the "party" was to be a sailing trip clear down to the life-saving station on Setuckit Beach. It certainly looked as if 'twas going to storm, and the Gov'ment predictions said it was, but Beriah said "No," and stuck out that 'twould clear up by and by. Peter wanted to know what I thought about their starting, and I told him that 'twas my experience that where weather was concerned Beriah was a good, safe anchorage. So they sailed away, and, sure enough, it cleared up fine. And the next day the Gov'ment fellers said "clear" and Beriah said "rain," and she poured a flood. And, after three or four of such experiences, Beriah was all hunky with the "house-party," and they looked at him as a sort of wonderful freak, like a two-headed calf or the "snake child," or some such outrage.
So, when the party was over, 'round comes Peter, busting with a new notion. What he cal'lated to do was to start a weather prophesying bureau all on his own hook, with Beriah for prophet, and him for manager and general advertiser, and Jonadab and me to help put up the money to get her going. He argued that summer folks from Scituate to Provincetown, on both sides of the Cape, would pay good prices for the real thing in weather predictions. The Gov'ment bureau, so he said, covered too much ground, but Beriah was local and hit her right on the head. His idee was to send Beriah's predictions by telegraph to agents in every Cape town each morning, and the agents was to hand 'em to susscribers. First week a free trial; after that, so much per prophecy.
And it worked--oh, land, yes! it worked. Peter's letters and circulars would satisfy anybody that black was white, and the free trial was a sure bait. I don't know why 'tis, but if you offered the smallpox free, there'd be a barrel of victims waiting in line to come down with it. Brown rigged up a little shanty on the bluff in front of the "Old Home," and filled it full of barometers and thermometers and chronometers and charts, and put Beriah and Eben inside to look wise and make b'lieve do something. That was the office of "The South Shore Weather Bureau," and 'twas sort of sacred and holy, and 'twould kill you to see the boarders tip-toeing up and peeking in the winder to watch them two old coots squinting through a telescope at the sky or scribbling rubbish on paper. And Beriah was right 'most every time. I don't know why--my notion is that he was born that way, same as some folks are born lightning calculators--but I'll never forget the first time Peter asked him how he done it.
"Wall," drawls Beriah, "now to-day looks fine and clear, don't it? But last night my left elbow had rheumatiz in it, and this morning my bones ache, and my right toe-j'int is sore, so I know we'll have an easterly wind and rain this evening. If it had been my left toe now, why--"
Peter held up both hands.
"That'll do," he says. "I ain't asking any more questions. ONLY, if the boarders or outsiders ask you how you work it, you cut out the bones and toe business and talk science and temperature to beat the cars. Understand, do you? It's science or no eight-fifty in the pay envelope. Left toe-joint!" And he goes off grinning.
We had to have Eben, though he wasn't wuth a green hand's wages as a prophet. But him and Beriah stuck by each other like two flies in the glue-pot, and you couldn't hire one without t'other. Peter said 'twas all right--two prophets looked better'n one, anyhow; and, as subscriptions kept up pretty well, and the Bureau paid a fair profit, Jonadab and me didn't kick.
In July, Mrs. Freeman--she had charge of the upper decks in the "Old Home" and was rated head chambermaid--up and quit, and being as we couldn't get another capable Cape Codder just then, Peter fetched down a woman from New York; one that a friend of old Dillaway's recommended. She was able seaman so far's the work was concerned, but she'd been good-looking once and couldn't forget it, and she was one of them clippers that ain't happy unless they've got a man in tow. You know the kind: pretty nigh old enough to be a coal-barge, but all rigged up with bunting and frills like a yacht.
Her name was Kelly, Emma Kelly, and she was a widow--whether from choice or act of Providence I don't know. The other women servants was all down on her, of course, 'cause she had city ways and a style of wearing her togs that made their Sunday gowns and bonnets look like distress signals. But they couldn't deny that she was a driver so far's her work was concerned. She'd whoop through the hotel like a no'theaster and have everything done, and done well, by two o'clock in the afternoon. Then she'd be ready to dress up and go on parade to astonish the natives.
Men--except the boarders, of course--was scarce around Wellmouth Port. First the Kelly lady begun to flag Cap'n Jonadab and me, but we sheered off and took to the offing. Jonadab, being a widower, had had his experience, and I never had the marrying disease and wasn't hankering to catch it. So Emma had to look for other victims, and the prophet-shop looked to her like the most likely feeding-ground.
And, would you b'lieve it, them two old critters, Beriah and Eben, gobbled the bait like sculpins. If she'd been a woman like the kind they was used to--the Cape