第21章
THE SCHOOLHOUSE BELL RINGS
"All hands on deck! Turn out there! Turnout!"Captain Eri grunted and rolled over in his bed; for a moment or two he fancied himself back in the fo'castle of the Sea Mist, the bark in which he had made his first voyage. Then, as he grew wider awake, he heard, somewhere in the distance, a bell ringing furiously.
"Turn out, all hands! Turn out!"
Captain Eri sat up. That voice was no part of a dream. It belonged to Captain Jerry, and the tone of it meant business. The bell continued to ring.
"Aye, aye, Jerry! What's the matter?" he shouted.
"Fire! There's a big fire up in the village. Look out of the window, and you can see. They're ringing the schoolhouse bell;don't you hear it?"
The Captain, wide awake enough by this time, jumped out of bed, carrying the blankets with him, and ran to the window. Opening it, he thrust out his head. The wind had changed to the eastward, and a thick fog had come in with it. The house was surrounded by a wet, black wall, but off to the west a red glow shone through it, now brighter and now fainter. The schoolhouse bell was turning somersaults in its excitement.
Only once, since Captain Jerry had been janitor, had the schoolhouse bell been rung except in the performance of its regular duties. That once was on a night before the Fourth of July, when some mischievous youngsters climbed in at a window and proclaimed to sleeping Orham that Young America was celebrating the anniversary of its birth. Since then, on nights before the Fourth, Captain Jerry had slept in the schoolhouse, armed with a horsewhip and an ancient navy revolver. The revolver was strictly for show, and the horsewhip for use, but neither was called into service, for even if some dare-devil spirits did venture near the building, the Captain's snores, as he slumbered by the front door, were danger signals that could not be disregarded.
But there was no flavor of the Fourth in the bell's note this night. Whoever the ringer might be, he was ringing as though it was his only hope for life, and the bell swung back and forth without a pause. The red glow in the fog brightened again as the Captain gazed at it.
Captain Jerry came tumbling up the stairs, breathless and half dressed.
"Where do you make it out to be?" he panted.
"Somewhere's nigh the post-office. Looks 's if it might be Weeks's store. Where's Perez?"Captain Eri had lighted a lamp and was pulling on his boots, as he spoke.
"Here I be!" shouted the missing member of the trio from the dining room below. "I'm all ready. Hurry up, Eri!"Captain Eri jumped into his trousers, slipped into a faded pea-jacket and clattered downstairs, followed by the wildly excited Jerry.
"Good land, Perez!" he cried, as he came into the dining room, "Ithought you said you was all ready!"
Captain Perez paused in the vain attempt to make Captain Jerry's hat cover his own cranium and replied indignantly, "Well, I am, ain't I?""Seems to me I'd put somethin' on my feet besides them socks, if Iwas you. You might catch cold."
Perez glanced down at his blue-yarn extremities in blank astonishment. "Well, now," he exclaimed, "if I hain't forgot my boots!""Well, git 'em on, and be quick. There's your hat. Give Jerry his."The excited Perez vanished through the door of his chamber, and Captain Eri glanced at the chronometer; the time was a quarter after two.
They hurried out of the door and through the yard. The wind, as has been said, was from the east, but there was little of it and, except for the clanging of the bell, the night was very still. The fog was heavy and wet, and the trees and bushes dripped as if from a shower. There was the salt smell of the marshes in the air, and the hissing and splashing of the surf on the outer beach were plainly to be heard. Also there was the clicking sound of oars in row-locks.
"Somebody is comin' over from the station," gasped Captain Jerry.
"Don't run so, Eri. It's too dark. I've pretty nigh broke my neck already."They passed the lily pond, where the frogs had long since adjourned their concert and gone to bed, dodged through the yard of the tightly shuttered summer hotel, and came out at the corner of the road, having saved some distance by the "short-cut.""That ain't Weeks's store," declared Captain Perez, who was in the lead. "It's Web Saunders's place; that's what it is."Captain Eri paused and looked over to the left in the direction of the Baxter homestead. The light in the window was still burning.
They turned into the "main road" at a dog trot and became part of a crowd of oddly dressed people, all running in the same direction.
"Web's place, ain't it?" asked Eri of Seth Wingate, who was lumbering along with a wooden bucket in one hand and the pitcher of his wife's best washstand set in the other.
"Yes," breathlessly answered Mr. Wingate, "and it's a goner, they tell me. Every man's got to do his part if they're going to save it. I allers said we ought to have a fire department in this town."Considering that Seth had, for the past eight years, persistently opposed in town-meeting any attempt to purchase a hand engine, this was a rather surprising speech, but no one paid any attention to it then.
The fire was in the billiard saloon sure enough, and the back portion of the building was in a blaze when they reached it.
Ladders were placed against the eaves, and a line of men with buckets were pouring water on the roof. The line extended to the town pump, where two energetic youths in their shirtsleeves were working the handle with might and main. The houses near at hand were brilliantly illuminated, and men and women were bringing water from them in buckets, tin pails, washboilers, and even coalscuttles.