The Hearth and Eagle Read Free

like a tar-rn pocket han’kerchief.”
    Susan stepped back, and others filled her place. The air grew harsh with despairing questions. The
Sabine,
the
Pacific,
the
Trio,
the
Warrior
—the agonizing list grew. Sixty-five men and boys had been lost. Scarce a home in Marblehead that had no kin amongst the drowned, and from the crowd behind, a woman’s voice raised in a long moaning wail.
    Susan turned and pushed her way back through the people. Hesper followed close. She was awed and excited. Ma had been right. The great storm had got the fishing fleet, and Tom and Willy. She felt no special sorrow. Her brothers had been big men of sixteen and eighteen, away fishing half the year, and with no time for her when they were home. Cousin Tom Dolliber had been on the
Liberty
too. So he was gone with the others.
    Hesper followed along behind her mother filled with a sense of importance and drama. By Lovis Cove they met her father hurrying towards them, his thin face anxious, his vague eyes peering into their faces.
    “What is it, Susan? Why didn’t you tell me there was news?”
    The child watched them nervously expecting her mother’s ready anger, because Pa had somehow failed again. But Susan was even quieter than she had been on the wharf. She laid her hand on her husband’s arm. “Come back home, dear.”
    He gave her a startled, uncertain look, as surprised by this gentleness as Hesper was. They moved away from the child, and though Susan’s hand still rested on her husband’s arm it was as though he leaned on her, his long body drooping over the broad figure beside him.
    Hesper trailed after them. She paused at Fort Beach a moment to watch a sea gull catch a fish, and felt a rough hand on her hair, and a painful tug.
    “Don’t—” she cried, whirling around, tears smarting her eyes. Two boys had crept up behind her, Johnnie Peach and Nathan Cubby. It was the latter who had pulled her hair, and he now began to caper around her jeering—“Gnaw your bacon, gnaw your bacon—little Fire-top’s head is achin’.”
    Nat was a skinny boy of eleven with watery yellow eyes and a sharp nose. Already Hesper was used to being teased about her flaming red hair, but she had not yet learned any defense. She shrank into herself and tried to keep the tears from rolling out of her eyes.
    “Oh, let her be,” said Johnnie, carelessly. “She’s just a little kid.”
    He was a year younger than Nat, a handsome boy with curly dark hair. He shied a stone at the water and watched it skip.
    “What for you’re blubberin’—Fire-top?” taunted Nat coming closer. “Blubberin’ cause your head’s on fire?” He made another grab at her hair.
    Hesper ducked. “I’m crying ’cause Tom and Willy’s gone down with the fleet—” she wailed.
    Johnnie turned. He raised his arm and struck down Nat’s outstretched hand. “That’s so—” he said. “They was on the
Liberty.
My uncle’s lost too, on the
Clinton.
Reason enough to cry without you roilin’ her.”
    “Oh, whip!” said Nat contemptuously, using an obscene Marblehead expletive. “I betcha my Pa’s lost too. Leastways he hasn’t come in from the spring fare yet. Ma, I think she’s give him up.”
    Young as Hesper was, she was conscious of an obliquity in Nat, and that his speech about his father sprang from something stranger than bravado or the callousness of childhood. Though he was of normal height for his age he had a hunched and wizened look, and maliciousbrooding eyes. He reminded her of a picture of an evil dwarf in the Grimm’s
Fairy Tales
her father had given her.
    “You shouldn’t talk like that—” said Johnnie severely, “and you shouldn’t say ‘whip’ front of a little lass. Run along home, Fire-top.”
    Hesper caught her underlip with her teeth, though she didn’t mind the hated nickname from Johnnie. She looked at him adoringly, but the two boys had lost interest in her. They had sighted Peter Union’s dory pulling around the rocks to