Ho! Ho! Ho! Santa Claus' Reading List

by A. A. Milne

  * * *

  Captain Eli made no answer. He still sat with his elbows on his knees and his hands in his hair.

  * * *

  "A better course than you laid down fer these Christmas times was never dotted on a chart," continued Captain Cephas. "From port of sailin' to port of entry you laid it down clear and fine. But it seems there was rocks that wasn't marked on the chart."

  * * *

  "Yes," groaned Captain Eli, "there was rocks."

  * * *

  Captain Cephas made no attempt to comfort his friend, but went to work to get breakfast.

  * * *

  When that meal--a rather silent one--was over, Captain Eli felt better. "There was rocks," he said, "and not a breaker to show where they lay, and I struck 'em bow on. So that's the end of that voyage. But I've tuk to my boats, cap'n, I've tuk to my boats."

  * * *

  "I'm glad to hear you've tuk to your boats," said Captain Cephas, with an approving glance upon his friend.

  * * *

  About ten minutes afterwards Captain Eli said, "I'm goin' up to my house."

  * * *

  "By yourself?" said the other.

  * * *

  "Yes, by myself. I'd rather go alone. I don't intend to mind anything, and I'm goin' to tell her that she can stay there and spend Christmas,--the place she lives in ain't no place to spend Christmas,--and she can make the little gal have a good time, and go 'long just as we intended to go 'long--plum-duff and mince-pie all the same. I can stay here, and you and me can have our Christmas dinner together, if we choose to give it that name.

  * * *

  And if she ain't ready to go to-morrow, she can stay a day or two longer. It's all the same to me, if it's the same to you, cap'n."

  * * *

  Captain Cephas having said that it was the same to him, Captain Eli put on his cap and buttoned up his pea-jacket, declaring that the sooner he got to his house the better, as she might be thinking that she would have to move out of it now that things were different.

  * * *

  Before Captain Eli reached his house he saw something which pleased him. He saw the sea-going stranger, with his back toward him, walking rapidly in the direction of the village store.

  * * *

  Captain Eli quickly entered his house, and in the doorway of the room where the tree was he met Mrs. Trimmer, beaming brighter than any morning sun that ever rose.

  * * *

  "Merry Christmas!" she exclaimed, holding out both her hands. "I've been wondering and wondering when you'd come to bid me `Merry Christmas'--the merriest Christmas I've ever had."

  * * *

  Captain Eli took her hands and bid her "Merry Christmas" very gravely.

  * * *

  She looked a little surprised. "What's the matter, Captain Eli?" she exclaimed. "You don't seem to say that as if you meant it."

  * * *

  "Oh, yes, I do," he answered. "This must be an all-fired--I mean a thunderin' happy Christmas fer you, Mrs. Trimmer."

  * * *

  "Yes," said she, her face beaming again. "And to think that it should happen on Christmas day--that this blessed morning, before anything else happened, my Bob, my only brother, should--"

  * * *

  "Your what!" roared Captain Eli, as if he had been shouting orders in a raging storm.

  * * *

  Mrs. Trimmer stepped back almost frightened. "My brother," said she. "Didn't he tell you he was my brother--my brother Bob, who sailed away a year before I was married, and who has been in Africa and China and I don't know where? It's so long since I heard that he'd gone into trading at Singapore that I'd given him up as married and settled in foreign parts. And here he has come to me as if he'd tumbled from the sky on this blessed Christmas morning."

  * * *

  Captain Eli made a step forward, his face very much flushed.

  * * *

  "Your brother, Mrs. Trimmer--did you really say it was your brother?"

  * * *

  "Of course it is," said she. "Who else could it be?" Then she paused for a moment and looked steadfastly at the captain.

  * * *

  "You don't mean to say, Captain Eli," she asked, "that you thought it was--"

  * * *

  "Yes, I did," said Captain Eli, promptly.

  * * *

  Mrs. Trimmer looked straight in the captain's eyes, then she looked on the ground. Then she changed color and changed back again.

  * * *

  "I don't understand," she said hesitatingly, "why--I mean what difference it made."

  * * *

  "Difference!" exclaimed Captain Eli. "It was all the difference between a man on deck and a man overboard--that's the difference it was to me. I didn't expect to be talkin' to you so early this Christmas mornin', but things has been sprung on me, and I can't help it I just want to ask you one thing: Did you think I was gettin' up this Christmas tree and the Christmas dinner and the whole business fer the good of the little gal, and fer the good of you, and fer the good of Captain Cephas?"

  * * *

  Mrs. Trimmer had now recovered a very fair possession of herself. "Of course I did," she answered, looking up at him as she spoke. "Who else could it have been for!"

  * * *

  "Well," said he, "you were mistaken. It wasn't fer any one of you. It was all fer me--fer my own self."

  * * *

  "You yourself?" said she. "I don't see how."

  * * *

  "But I see how," he answered. "It's been a long time since I wanted to speak my mind to you, Mrs. Trimmer, but I didn't ever have no chance. And all these Christmas doin's was got up to give me the chance not only of speakin' to you, but of showin' my colors better than I could show them in any other way. Everything went on a-skimmin' till this mornin', when that stranger that we brought in from the shoal piped up and asked fer you. Then I went overboard--at least, I thought I did--and sunk down, down, clean out of soundin's."

  * * *

  "That was too bad, captain," said she, speaking very gently, "after all your trouble and kindness."

  * * *

  "But I don't know now," he continued, "whether I went overboard or whether I am on deck. Can you tell me, Mrs. Trimmer?"

  * * *

  She looked up at him. Her eyes were very soft, and her lips trembled just a little. "It seems to me, captain," she said, "that you are on deck--if you want to be."

  * * *

  The captain stepped closer to her. "Mrs. Trimmer," said he, "is that brother of yours comin' back?"

  * * *

  "Yes," she answered, surprised at the sudden question. "He's just gone up to the store to buy a shirt and some things. He got himself splashed trying to push his boat off last night."

  * * *

  "Well, then," said Captain Eli, "would you mind tellin' him when he comes back that you and me's engaged to be married? I don't know whether I've made a mistake in the lights or not, but would you mind tellin' him that?"

  * * *

  Mrs. Trimmer looked at him. Her eyes were not so soft as they had been, but they were brighter. "I'd rather you'd tell him that yourself," said she.

  * * *

  The little girl sat on the floor near the Christmas tree, just finishing a large piece of red-and-white candy which she had taken out of her stocking. "People do hug a lot at Christmas- time," said she to herself. Then she drew out a piece of blue- and-white candy and began on that.

  * * *

  Captain Cephas waited a long time for his friend to return, and at last he thought it would be well to go and look for him. When he entered the house he found Mrs. Trimmer sitting on the sofa in the parlor, with Captain Eli on one side of her and her brother on the other, and each of them holding one of her hands.

  * * *

  "It looks as if I was in port, don't it?" said Captain Eli to his astonished friend. "Well, here I am, and here's my fust mate," inclining his head toward Mrs. Trimmer. "And she's in port too, safe and soun
d. And that strange captain on the other side of her, he's her brother Bob, who's been away for years and years, and is just home from Madagascar."

  * * *

  "Singapore," amended Brother Bob.

  * * *

  Captain Cephas looked from one to the other of the three occupants of the sofa, but made no immediate remark. Presently a smile of genial maliciousness stole over his face, and he asked, "How about the poor little gal? Have you sent her back to Mrs. Crumley's?"

  * * *

  The little girl came out from behind the Christmas tree, her stocking, now but half filled, in her hand. "Here I am," she said. "Don't you want to give me a Christmas hug, Captain Cephas? You and me's the only ones that hasn't had any."

  * * *

  The Christmas dinner was as truly and perfectly a sailor- cooked meal as ever was served on board a ship or off it. Captain Cephas had said that, and when he had so spoken there was no need of further words.

  * * *

  It was nearly dark that afternoon, and they were all sitting around the kitchen fire, the three seafaring men smoking, and Mrs. Trimmer greatly enjoying it. There could be no objection to the smell of tobacco in this house so long as its future mistress enjoyed it. The little girl sat on the floor nursing a Chinese idol which had been one of her presents.

  * * *

  "After all," said Captain Eli, meditatively, "this whole business come out of my sleepin' with my best ear up. Fer if I'd slept with my hard-o'-hearin' ear up--" Mrs. Trimmer put one finger on his lips. "All right," said Captain Eli, "I won't say no more. But it would have been different."

  * * *

  Even now, several years after that Christmas, when there is no Mrs. Trimmer, and the little girl, who has been regularly adopted by Captain Eli and his wife, is studying geography, and knows more about latitude and longitude than her teacher at school, Captain Eli has still a slight superstitious dread of sleeping with his best ear uppermost.

  * * *

  "Of course it's the most all-fired nonsense," he says to himself over and over again. Nevertheless, he feels safer when it is his "hard-o'-hearin' ear" that is not upon the pillow.

  The Christmas Wreck

  Frank Stockton

  The Christmas Wreck

  "Well, sir," said old Silas, as he gave a preliminary puff to the pipe he had just lighted, and so satisfied himself that the draught was all right, "the wind's a-comin', an' so's Christmas. But it's no use bein' in a hurry fur either of 'em, fur sometimes they come afore you want 'em, anyway."

  * * *

  Silas was sitting in the stern of a small sailing-boat which he owned, and in which he sometimes took the Sandport visitors out for a sail, and at other times applied to its more legitimate but less profitable use, that of fishing. That afternoon he had taken young Mr. Nugent for a brief excursion on that portion of the Atlantic Ocean which sends its breakers up on the beach of Sandport. But he had found it difficult, nay, impossible, just now, to bring him back, for the wind had gradually died away until there was not a breath of it left. Mr. Nugent, to whom nautical experiences were as new as the very nautical suit of blue flannel which he wore, rather liked the calm. It was such a relief to the monotony of rolling waves. He took out a cigar and lighted it, and then he remarked:

  * * *

  "I can easily imagine how a wind might come before you sailors might want it, but I don't see how Christmas could come too soon."

  * * *

  "It come wunst on me when things couldn't `a' looked more onready fur it," said Silas.

  * * *

  "How was that?" asked Mr. Nugent, settling himself a little more comfortably on the hard thwart. "If it's a story, let's have it. This is a good time to spin a yarn."

  * * *

  "Very well," said old Silas. "I'll spin her."

  * * *

  The bare-legged boy whose duty it was to stay forward and mind the jib came aft as soon as he smelt a story, and took a nautical position, which was duly studied by Mr. Nugent, on a bag of ballast in the bottom of the boat.

  * * *

  "It's nigh on to fifteen year ago," said Silas, "that I was on the bark Mary Auguster, bound for Sydney, New South Wales, with a cargo of canned goods. We was somewhere about longitood a hundred an' seventy, latitood nothin', an' it was the twenty- second o' December, when we was ketched by a reg'lar typhoon which blew straight along, end on, fur a day an' a half. It blew away the storm-sails. It blew away every yard, spar, shroud, an' every strand o' riggin', an' snapped the masts off close to the deck. It blew away all the boats. It blew away the cook's caboose, an' everythin' else on deck. It blew off the hatches, an' sent 'em spinnin' in the air about a mile to leeward. An' afore it got through, it washed away the cap'n an' all the crew 'cept me an' two others. These was Tom Simmons, the second mate, an' Andy Boyle, a chap from the Adirondack Mount'ins, who'd never been to sea afore. As he was a landsman, he ought, by rights, to 'a' been swep' off by the wind an' water, consid'rin' that the cap'n an' sixteen good seamen had gone a'ready. But he had hands eleven inches long, an' that give him a grip which no typhoon could git the better of. Andy had let out that his father was a miller up there in York State, an' a story had got round among the crew that his granfather an' great-gran'father was millers, too; an' the way the fam'ly got such big hands come from their habit of scoopin' up a extry quart or two of meal or flour fur themselves when they was levellin' off their customers' measures. He was a good-natered feller, though, an' never got riled when I'd tell him to clap his flour-scoops onter a halyard. "We was all soaked, an' washed, an' beat, an' battered. We held on some way or other till the wind blowed itself out, an' then we got on our legs an' began to look about us to see how things stood. The sea had washed into the open hatches till the vessel was more'n half full of water, an' that had sunk her, so deep that she must 'a' looked like a canal-boat loaded with gravel. We hadn't had a thing to eat or drink durin' that whole blow, an' we was pretty ravenous. We found a keg of water which was all right, and a box of biscuit which was what you might call softtack, fur they was soaked through an' through with sea-water.

  * * *

  We eat a lot of them so, fur we couldn't wait, an' the rest we spread on the deck to dry, fur the sun was now shinin' hot enough to bake bread. We couldn't go below much, fur there was a pretty good swell on the sea, an' things was floatin' about so's to make it dangerous. But we fished out a piece of canvas, which we rigged up ag'in' the stump of the mainmast so that we could have somethin' that we could sit down an' grumble under. What struck us all the hardest was that the bark was loaded with a whole cargo of jolly things to eat, which was just as good as ever they was, fur the water couldn't git through the tin cans in which they was all put up, an' here we was with nothin' to live on but them salted biscuit. There wasn't no way of gittin' at any of the ship's stores, or any of the fancy prog, fur everythin' was stowed away tight under six or seven feet of water, an' pretty nigh all the room that was left between decks was filled up with extry spars, lumber, boxes, an' other floatin' stuff. All was shiftin', an' bumpin', an' bangin' every time the vessel rolled.

  * * *

  "As I said afore, Tom was second mate, an' I was bo's'n. Says I to Tom, `The thing we've got to do is to put up some kind of a spar with a rag on it fur a distress flag, so that we'll lose no time bein' took off.' `There's no use a-slavin' at anythin' like that,' says Tom, `fur we've been blowed off the track of traders, an' the more we work the hungrier we'll git, an' the sooner will them biscuit be gone.'

  * * *

  "Now when I heared Tom say this I sot still an' began to consider. Bein' second mate, Tom was, by rights, in command of this craft. But it was easy enough to see that if he commanded there'd never be nothin' fur Andy an' me to do. All the grit he had in him he'd used up in holdin' on durin' that typhoon. What he wanted to do now was to make himself comfortable till the time come for him to go to Davy Jones's locker--an' thinkin', most likely, that Davy couldn't make it any hotter fur him than it was o
n that deck, still in latitood nothin' at all, fur we'd been blowed along the line pretty nigh due west. So I calls to Andy, who was busy turnin' over the biscuits on the deck. `Andy,' says I, when he had got under the canvas, `we's goin' to have a 'lection fur skipper. Tom, here, is about played out. He's one candydate, an' I'm another. Now, who do you vote fur? An' mind yer eye, youngster, that you don't make no mistake.' `I vote fur you' says Andy. `Carried unanermous!' says I. `An' I want you to take notice that I'm cap'n of what's left of the Mary Auguster, an' you two has got to keep your minds on that, an' obey orders.' If Davy Jones was to do all that Tom Simmons said when he heared this, the old chap would be kept busier than he ever was yit. But I let him growl his growl out, knowin' he'd come round all right, fur there wasn't no help fur it, consid'rin' Andy an' me was two to his one. Pretty soon we all went to work, an' got up a spar from below, which we rigged to the stump of the foremast, with Andy's shirt atop of it.