Nov. 8, 1913. 
FOREST AND STREAM 
583 
a man can git as sick as I been on this beach 
an’ sleep out here for a week or mebbe three 
weeks, I dunno with no roof over him an’ all 
exposed and git well atop of it, then this here 
beach orter be a pretty good place to stay.’ 
“An’, well, I stayed. Come spring, I went 
back to the mainland an' got tools and sich, an’ 
that summer I built me this house. An’ I built 
her to stay.” 
Cap’n Lige got up and went over to the 
wall and thumped on it. There was no hollow 
sound such as comes from a blow on most walls. 
“She’s five-ply thick; that’s what she is,” 
grinned the captain. “I built her that way so’s 
she’d stay, and so’s she'd keep out the cold. 
There’s five thicknesses of inch stuff in these 
walls. The parlor’s on’y four-ply, an’ the up¬ 
stairs on’y three, but she’s stayed pretty good 
at that, an’ she’s warm in the coldest weather. 
I’ve seen five other houses blow into the bay 
since I been here, but this one ain’t never even 
shook.” 
We tapped the walls of the kitchen approv- 
we had to stay till she thawed out and busted up. 
“Lucky we had plenty of grub, but we didn’t 
have no fuel. So second day we walked over 
the ice to West Island to git wood. But we 
didn’t have no luck, for all we could find was 
a big, old black log, smellin’ strong o’—what’s 
the name of that there medicine?—cre-sotee. I 
hear afterward they doses up logs with that 
smellin’ stuff to make ’em stand water ’thout 
gettin’ wormy. 
“Well, we dragged her back an’ chopped her 
up. When we put some of the sticks in the 
stove it made a mighty strong smell, but it 
burned fine, an’ we got used to it pretty quick. 
Then having nothin’ else to do I went walkin’ 
around the ice an’ pretty soon I come to a dead 
shark froze in atop of it. The shark had been 
ate most all up by sea gulls, an’ there wasn’t 
nothin’ left but the skin, but I drug that back 
to the boat just for instance. An’ when I git 
it there I come across an idea. Didn’t no sooner 
git it than I begin to put it to work. I hung up 
that skin to dry, an’ on the fourth day I had 
might wonder what I was starin’ at, and his feel- 
in’s ’d be hurt. You see, we didn’t have a look¬ 
in’ glass aboard, an’ Bill didn’t know he was 
turnin’ nigger, an’ I was too soft-hearted to tell 
him the truth. 
“Well, I jest kept on a watchin’ him be¬ 
tween tryin’ to make talk, an’ strugglin’ not to 
embarrass him by appearin’ too curious. An’ 
then I begin to notice somethin’ else kinder 
strange about him. It wasn’t in his appearance 
this time; it was in the way he begin to act. 
He certainly didn’t act right. Every time I 
wasn’t lookin’ straight at him I’d get the feelin’ 
he was starin’ at me, an’ then, when I’d look 
around quick to see if he was, I’d see him take 
his eyes off’n me in a hurry, kinder like the cat 
what swallered the canary. 
“Things goes on this way for two days, an’ 
then I begin to get uneasy. I couldn’t have my 
face turned a minute, but what Bill’d be lookin’ 
at me, an’, what between that an’ me tryin’ 
not to show, I noticed he was gettin’ blacker’n 
blacker every hour. I got all upsot. Somethin’ 
ingly, expressed our appreciation of the captain’s 
sagacity in building it so, and with the possibili¬ 
ties of a day’s shooting in our minds, asked him 
what the weather would be doing in the morn¬ 
ing. 
“Well,” opined the captain, “I been a listen¬ 
in’ for the sand a pilin’ up against the southerly 
side of this shack all evenin’, an’ I ain’t heard 
it. So it ain’t a pilin’ an’ that means quiet 
weather, which’s bad for duckin’. But even if 
’twas a bawlin’ a gale, ’twouldn’t be nothin’. 
Duckin’ ain’t at the best till the ice gits in the 
bay. That’s the time to kill burds. I don’t do 
no botherin’ with ’em to speak of till then. 
’Tain’t worth while. What I like to see is a 
powerful cold spell that freezes up everything 
tight over night. Then I runs out my scooter, 
finds an air hole, an’ kills a mess of burds fit 
to last me most all winter. 
“An’ that reminds me of the time Bill Slope 
an’ me got froze in over to the west islands. 
We was in my little sloop with the winter gun- 
nin’ cabin, an’ we’d been pint shootin’ for a 
week, when all to a sudden one night ’long 
come an awful freeze, an’ by mornin’ we was 
hard an’ fast, with a mile of three-inch ice be¬ 
tween us an’ the beach. We didn’t have no 
scooter, an’ as there was open water in the 
beach channel, we couldn’t walk ashore. So’s 
a pretty good fiddle constructed out of it, an’ 
a frame 1 whittled out of some o’ that cre- 
sotee log. I didn’t have no strings, nor no horse 
hair for a bow, but I got ’em when we finally 
got back home, and that there fiddle’s jest as 
good to-day as she ever was. I plays on her 
oncet a week now. The old lady and most of 
the kids give me a sort of pertition not to do it 
any oftener’n that. Monday mornin’s music 
time. They all goes out reg’lar then before I 
begin. You see, I can’t play no reg’lation tunes, 
but I like to muss around on the instrument 
jest to remember how I constructed her. 
“But I’m gettin’ off’n the track. I was goin’ 
to say about what happened to me’n Bill. The 
fifth day we’d been livin’ in the cabin of the 
sloop I begin to notice somethin’ queer about 
Bill. He begin to change color. He begin get¬ 
tin’ darker and darker completely, an’ ’twa’n’t 
long before he was about as black as any nigger 
I ever see. I couldn't account for it at the time 
noway, so I laved it down to what it looked like. 
He was jest plain turnin’ into a coon. I’d read 
of sich things before, but I didn’t never have a 
chance to observate ’em personal. I. says to my¬ 
self, ‘I’m in luck to be witnessin’ sich an un¬ 
usual sight,’ an’ you better believe I watched 
Bill with a pile of interest. On t’other hand, I 
didn’t want to look too curious for fear he 
was a troublin’ Bill in the head, too. He kept 
actin’ queerer an’ queerer, an’ gettin’ uneasier 
an’ uneasier, as though he was ’bout as upsot as 
I was. An’ at dinner, the eighth day, the strain 
got too great, an’ I up an’ outs with it. 
“ ‘Bill,’ I says, but before I git any further 
he interrupts nervous like— 
“ ‘Lige,’ he says, an’ then we both bust out 
at each other all to oncet: ‘You’re turnin’ into 
a nigger!’ 
“Great swoopin’ brant! but ’twas turrible. 
“ ‘Why,’ yells Bill, ‘you’re black as mid¬ 
night !’ 
“ ‘An’ you’re blacker,’ I yells back. 
“ ‘You been turnin’ nigger fer a week, an’ I 
was too kind-hearted to- tell you,’ says Bill. 
“ ‘I didn’t want to flabbergast your feelin’s, 
but so have you,’ I comes back. 
“We looks at each other blank-like a minute. 
I ain’t ’sbamed to say I was plumb scared, an’ 
I guess Bill was too. 
“ ‘Lige,’ he says, tremblin’ like, ‘what ails 
us?’ 
“ ‘I dunno,’ I answers, shakin’ myself. 
“‘It’s a iedgment—a jedgment for killin’ 
that pore ole sea gull what we shot last week 
when ’twas ’gainst the law,’ he says. An’ then 
all to oncet he stops, and begins to look very 
(Continued on page 601.) 
