Page:Rideout--Beached keels.djvu/269

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CAPTAIN CHRISTY
255

fly-whisk, the carved model of a Massoola boat, a Malay kriss, a paper of fish-hooks, and a brass telescope. The captain's hands ransacked the farthest corners of the locker; they stopped suddenly; his face became very grave.

"Can't have this, anyway," he said, in a voice changed and troubled. He drew forth a red and blue worsted doll, badly stained, with one boot-button eye. "No, by James Rice, he can't!" muttered the captain passionately. He sat down on the edge of his bunk, as in the black mouth of a crypt, and, bunching his beard in one gnarled fist, regarded sadly the absurd puppet in the other.

"I never expected to take this out again, somehow," he said, in a vacant tone of soliloquy. "She put it away in there herself—nigh on to forty year ago. You don't go so far back, do ye, Zing? I remember when it fell overboard; young Kit Chegwidden over after it. My, how Eunice cried! Then she kissed him for savin' it. A clever boy, Kit: master o' the Jennie Gus now, and children of his own. Time goes quick"—

The old man, still grasping the doll gently,