Mrs. Tiger Stands By: Schooner Days CMXLIV (944)

by C. H. J. Snider

Hiring in a Ha'nt

WE left the "Anna Miles" in shelter in the Genesee River in an April gale, almost as far from her destination at Oswego as when she had left Cobourg on her first trip under new ownership four days before, on a run which might have been made in eight hours. She had been driven across and up and down the length of Lake Ontario twice in the interval.

It took a couple of days to mend the torn sails and overhaul the rigging at Charlotte, at the river mouth, but a week or so after her departure from Cobourg she really reached the Oswego trestle and loaded the coal she had come to get for Whitby.

Then the captain developed a weakness. The development took five days assiduous cultivation. Every morning he went uptown. Every night around midnight he fell on board and into his berth, completely exhausted with the day's development efforts. All the time the wind was fair up the lake and the freight was under hatches waiting to be paid for in Whitby.

"Why don't you take her out as goon as he comes aboard. You're the mate and part owner, ain't you?" demanded Clem Clewlin of the In-law who drew wages as mate.

"HE wouldn't like that."

"Well, do you like this?"

"No."

So Clem went uptown also next morning. But he was back in an hour. He gave Thusa, his wife, the cook, a paper, and said to the In-law: "Will you take her out if I get the sails on her when he comes aboard?"

"I don't know the channel to the breakwater," demurred the In-law, "but I'll get the sails on her if you'll take the wheel."

DOWN AND UP

When poor Capt. Goodfellow fell into his berth again the sails began to rise. The lines were cast off and out sailed the "Anna Miles," Clem at the wheel, the In-law and Johnny Bowerman and John Selix pulling away on the halliards. The wind was still fair. She was a long way up the lake by morning.

After breakfast the captain, who had made no sound for eight hours, came on deck. He looked blankly around.

"That's the Devil's Nose," said he slowly, eyeing that retreating proboscis. "We're pretty well up the lake. How'd we get here?"

"Wind's been fair all night," said Clem truthfully.

"That's fine. But—Boys, we gotta go back! I'm sorry. But there's a $400 fine for leaving Oswego without a clearance, and they tie you up until you pay it. Gybe her over. We gotta go back."

"Just a minute, captain," said Clem. "Mrs. Clewlin, will you kindly bring Capt. Goodfellow that paper you received yesterday?"

'Thusa Clewlin, very large and very smart in her fresh-ironed white apron over her clean chintz wrapper, emerged with a folded paper in one hand and a cup of black coffee in the other. She was followed by Mrs. Tiger, the green-eyed Cobourg cat that had cleared away the rats.

"Good morning, captain," said she pleasantly, "wouldn't you like some coffee? Is this the paper you meant, Clem?"

The captain looked at the paper and blinked. He drained the coffee cup, and found it more help even than his little gold earrings in improving his eyesight.

"Why," he said tremblingly, "that's a clearance, all right; my name 'n' everything. Clem, who did this?"

"Well," . . . said Clem, and spat to leeward.

"I'll never forget it, Clem." said Goodfellow with a gulp. "What day is this?"

TOO LONG

NEVER is a long time. Barrel-bellied Capt. Goodfellow promised Clem Clewlin, his acting mate, that he would never forget his clever clean-up of the Oswego lapse.

But then he had promised Clem when he hired him and his wife Thusa for the Anna Miles that there would be no drinking on board, and—

"Well," said the devil kindly, "you kept that promise. You were so pie-eyed for five days uptown while you lay in Oswego that you couldn't take a drink aboard if they had rammed a hoze nozzle down your throat."

"There's something in that," mused Capt. Goodfellow, "and besides, as you say, never is a very long time."

Next day, two weeks after setting out from Cobourg with such high hopes on this first trip in the new bought ship, they reached Whitby with the coal they had gone to Oswego to load.

They were all week unloading three hundred tons of coal a scuttleful at a time. A bucket holding a hundredweight had to be hoisted up from the hold to the coal pile by a rheumatic horse who considered a thousand hoists a day a thousand too many. An even lesser number proved so for poor Goodfellow. He disappeared. So did the ship's cat.

The crew didn't mind the skipper not turning up at night; but they did miss the cat. This was Mrs. Tiger, who had rid them of the pest of rats in Cobourg.

A lantern-jawed individual approached the vessel when she again rode light and empty and said:

"Have you a wheelbarrow?"

"What do you want one for?" countered Clem.

"Your captain."

"Haven't seen him this week." contributed Johnny Bowerman truthfully. He thought it was the sheriff.

"Well, I'll show you where he is," said Lantern jaws, "but bring along the wheelbarrow. You can't leave a Royal Arch lying around like that."

"That's him," said the In-law with conviction, "he wears a Masonic ring."

A rumbling procession went up past the old International Hotel in Port Whitby - boarded up fifty years ago and long since torn down — and along the port road through the bulrushes toward Whitby town. In the ditch lay a crumpled figure, gold rings gleaming in ears and on his left ring-finger, and a green-eyed cat with tiger stripes licking a litter of little blind kittens on his barrel-like corporation.

"Dead?" gasped Clem.

"No," said the In-law, "leastways, not that kind of dead."

"Take him aboard," said Lantern jaws, "I'll spell you on the wheelbarrow, for he's pretty heavy. But you can't leave a brother in distress."

They loaded him into the wheelbarrow, cat, kittens and all, for Lantern jaws said he would never have seen him but for the cat on his mountain of stomach.

So again the Anna Miles sailed without her captain's knowledge.

He did not come to until they were standing into Picton Harbor.

"You said," Clem reminded 'Thusa, when they got back to Picton, "the voyage would be troublesome, but we'd all get home."

But the In-law was not as dumb as he seemed. The Salvation Army was new in those times. He got them after poor Goodfellow. They cured him, or the grace of God did, through them. He sold the Anna Miles, paid the In-law his precarious investment in the schooner, and went west. He took Mrs. Tiger and her brood with him, for, he said, she had stood by him when he couldn't stand by himself. He died long years afterwards, loved and honored as one of the best farmers in Saskatchewan.