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Page 77
"That the actress from Philadelphia?" said Disko Troop, scowling
at the platform. "You've fixed it about old man Ireson, hain't ye,
Harve? Ye know why naow."
It was not "Ireson's Ride" that the woman delivered, but some sort
of poem about a fishing-port called Brixham and a fleet of trawlers
beating in against storm by night, while the women made a guiding
fire at the head of the quay with everything they could lay hands
on.
"They took the grandma's blanket,
Who shivered and bade them go;
They took the baby's cradle,
Who could not say them no."
"Whew!" said Dan, peering over Long Jack's shoulder. "That's
great! Must ha' bin expensive, though."
"Ground-hog case," said the Galway man. "Badly lighted port,
Danny."
"And knew not all the while
If they were lighting a bonfire
Or only a funeral pile."
The wonderful voice took hold of people by their heartstrings; and
when she told how the drenched crews were flung ashore, living
and dead, and they carried the bodies to the glare of the fires,
asking: "Child, is this your father?" or "Wife, is this your man?"
you could hear hard breathing all over the benches.
"And when the boats of Brixham
Go out to face the gales,
Think of the love that travels
Like light upon their sails!"
There was very little applause when she finished. The women
were looking for their handkerchiefs, and many of the men stared
at the ceiling with shiny eyes.
"H'm," said Salters; "that 'u'd cost ye a dollar to hear at any
theatre--maybe two. Some folk, I presoom, can afford it. 'Seems
downright waste to me. . . . Naow, how in Jerusalem did Cap. Bart
Edwardes strike adrift here?"
"No keepin' him under," said an Eastport man behind. "He's a poet,
an' he's baound to say his piece. 'Comes from daown aour way,
too."
He did not say that Captain B. Edwardes had striven for five
consecutive years to be allowed to recite a piece of his own
composition on Gloucester Memorial Day. An amused and
exhausted committee had at last given him his desire. The
simplicity and utter happiness of the old man, as he stood up in his
very best Sunday clothes, won the audience ere he opened his
mouth. They sat unmurmuring through seven-and-thirty
hatchet-made verses describing at fullest length the loss of the
schooner Joan Hasken off the Georges in the gale of 1867, and
when he came to an end they shouted with one kindly throat.
A far-sighted Boston reporter slid away for a full copy of the epic
and an interview with the author; so that earth had nothing more to
offer Captain Bart Edwardes, ex-whaler, shipwright,
master-fisherman, and poet, in the seventy-third year of his age.
"Naow, I call that sensible," said the Eastport man. "I've bin over
that graound with his writin', jest as he read it, in my two hands,
and I can testily that he's got it all in."
"If Dan here couldn't do better'n that with one hand before
breakfast, he ought to be switched," said Salters, upholding the
honor of Massachusetts on general principles. "Not but what I'm
free to own he's considerable litt'ery--fer Maine. Still--"
"Guess Uncle Salters's goin' to die this trip. Fust compliment he's
ever paid me," Dan sniggered. "What's wrong with you, Harve?
You act all quiet and you look greenish. Feelin' sick?"
"Don't know what's the matter with me," Harvey implied. "Seems
if my insides were too big for my outsides. I'm all crowded up and
shivery."
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