Night Birds On Nantucket Read Online Free Page B

do you do all day long in there?’ she asked, the beginnings of a plan sprouting in her mind. There was no answer. She had not really expected one. She went on, half to herself: ‘Well, I don’t wonder you gets blue-devilled if you does nothing but sit and think o’ drowning all the time. Cheesy,
I
calls it!’
    She left the cabin, shutting the door behind her with a loud annoying slam.
    After more than sixteen hours of frantic, continuous work the captured whale had been all cut up and melted down; Mr Slighcarp’s watch staggered below, blind and speechless with fatigue. At last the moment arrived that Dido had been waiting for. She stretched, rose, left the quarter-deck, and went along to the try-works, which were simmering down, now, to a dull red glow. Half-a-dozen weary men were scrubbing the deck with ashes; their shadows flitted to and fro under a towering Arctic moon. From time to time they paused in their labours, dipped bits of hardtack in the still molten blubber and chewed them. The good-natured Mr Pardon was supervising the work.
    â€˜Why, dearie,’ he said in surprise, ‘you shoulda been in your bunk hours agone. Cap’n Casket tells me he’s given you his stateroom for to be company for little Miss Penitence. Mr Slighcarp’s not best pleased at having to move in with me, but ’tis more fitting for you than lying here on a donkey’s breakfast. And I guess you’ll be better able than a man to look after that poor little ailing lass.’
    Dido nodded soberly. ‘Mr Pardon,’ she said.
    â€˜Well, dearie?’
    â€˜What’s Captain Casket’s little girl like?’
    â€˜Like?’ Mr Pardon scratched his white head, puzzled. ‘Why, I guess she’s like all little gals. Sews her sampler, reads her lesson – Mrs Casket allus used to hear her lessons when she was alive, poor lady.’
    â€˜But what’s she like?’ Dido persisted. ‘What kind o’ games does she like to play?’
    â€˜Play? Why, I dunno as how she plays any
games
.But my nephew Nate here’d know better’n I do; his home’s not too far from the Casket place.’
    â€˜Games?’ said Nate when appealed to. ‘Don’t reckon she ever played any. Very quiet little thing, sorta peaky. Her ma allus kept her pretty much at her stitching and so forth.’
    â€˜Blimey,’ muttered Dido, ‘what a set-out. No wonder she’s such a misery. Mr Pardon, d’you reckon as how you could make me a shuttlecock for her? Out o’ whalebone or summat? I could stick it with gulls’ feathers.’
    â€˜I don’t see why not,’ Mr Pardon said doubtfully. ‘Guess it would be simple enough. But what would Cap’n Casket think? Mrs Casket allus used to say that toys were inventions of the Devil.’
    â€˜I guess he’d have to put up with it,’ Dido said. ‘He asked me if I’d try to take Dutiful Penitence outa herself. She’s pining for her ma.’
    Nate was interested in the scheme. ‘I could make a whalebone bat,’ he offered. ‘And some checkers or spillikins.’
    â€˜Could you? That’d be bang-up!’
    Dido went below, well pleased with the way matters were shaping.
    The big cabin was lit up by a hanging whale-oil lamp. Dido turned the wick up to its brightest. Then she listened. No sound came from Dutiful Penitence, so Dido banged the cabin door, opened and shut some drawers several times as loudly as she could, and overturned a chair with a tremendous clatter.
    She heard a sleepy stir from beyond the panel. ‘Papa, what’s the matter?’ said a scared voice. ‘Is it a storm?’
    Dido made no answer. She climbed up on to thechart table and then, after carefully judging the distance, jumped four feet to a wall shelf, where she clung like a squirrel. From there, making use of the hanging compass, she swung to the bed, landing with a thud.