Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

“You can imagine that we scrambled out of the way pretty quickly, hurrying behind a blacksmith’s shop, which did little good, since they knocked that structure down. If anything, their cordialities toward each other increased once they discovered the hammer and anvils under the debris. You have never heard such ringing in your life.

  “In all, before mid-afternoon, they had partially or completely leveled seventeen buildings and rerouted one major thoroughfare. The dust and sand raised by their activity hung over the town like a dense fog and darkened the sky like an eclipse of the sun. Ursula dragged me home in a great huff and swore she would marry the next available Quaker she laid eyes on, which is exactly what she did one week later, and moved off with him to Oregon, to my everlasting childhood sorrow.

  “Things were far from over, however, for neither Dan nor Hank were run out of pleasantries, and by evening they almost had tears in their eyes, they were so fond of one another.

  “Now, it was an odd business; people would be certain that Hank was getting the upper hand and they’d realize then that the battle had fallen closer to the river. Then it would seem that Dan was come ahead and someone would mention that the scrape had tumbled near the forest. The noise had grown deafening, and just about the time they had reached Humboldt’s Livery Stable and were batting at each other with a pair of wagons, a town meeting was held to decide what could be done.

  “A worse situation was narrowly avoided, for those who made their living from the woods had one idea of what was to be done, and those whose calling was the sea had another. The only thing that kept that discussion on track was the awful noise of that battle raging just a few streets away. My father was there, and he said that every once in a while someone would have to leave because word would arrive that their store had been demolished or their house had been knocked down.

  “Forester, seaman, or indifferent—it was plain that something had to be done, and quickly. Finally a plan was decided upon, and the assembly proposed to somehow lead the two combatants to a nearby gunpowder mill, lay down a good amount of fuse, and blow the two of them to kingdom come.

  “And just as the unanimous ayes died away, it was realized that none of them could hear the sound of battle anymore. Holding handkerchiefs before their faces as they waded through the dust-filled air, holding lanterns that scarcely cut through the murk, they left the town hall and followed the trail of debris and litter to the very gates of the Devil’s Half-Acre.

  “There they lay, side by side, Dan facing inland, Hank facing toward the sea. They were not dead, but they were dead to the world—‘Exhaustified!’ said one man. ‘Positively exhaustified.’ Those two giants were as fervent about unconsciousness as they were about fighting and good manners; they were out cold, done in, mutually untethered from the waking world. But nobody imagined this to be anything but a temporary state of affairs. Something still had to be done.

  “My mother appeared just then, squinting through the dust. ‘I hope they’ll be pleased!’ she said. ‘Ursula is going to leave us the first chance she gets! Why don’t you bury the both of them right where they lay!’ When she was told they weren’t yet dead, she said she didn’t much care. Talk went around about what to do with the two men, and when someone mentioned how Hank seemed to thrive the nearer he got to the water and how Dan waxed strong the closer he got to the forest, my mother suggested that they switch places.

  “Why, it was a stroke of sagacity! The men stood around and scratched their heads, they were so puzzled why they hadn’t thought of it themselves. Water was to Hank and the woods were to Dan what hair was to Samson! What better way of spiking both these cannons than by depriving them of their natural elements?

  “And so, while still insensate, Hank was loaded onto the back of a buckboard and driven inland to a lumber camp in one of the territories; Dan was taken aboard a schooner and sailed out with the tide. It was melancholy really, each of them sentenced to prison of a sort, for neither of them ever came back—they were that weakened by their imposed conditions. Oh, they continued to do great things, for sure—especially when Dan was docked upon some forested island, or Hank brought logs down the Penobscot—but there were never such stories about them. I never saw either of them again, but I remember both of them as being extremely polite.”

  It is not a long journey from Ellsworth to Bangor, even with the occasional stop at small stations in between; it is shorter still when such a story speeds the way. Mr. Tolly finished his tale just as the outskirts of Bangor came in sight and people roused themselves, as if from a dream. Hampers were packed and linen put away; the lemonade man had left to restock his cart; James folded his forgotten newspaper.

  “Good heavens!” said Grace several times. She was looking very pale, and since her daughter’s hand was not close enough to pat protectively, she patted her own. “Good heavens!”

  “So she married a Quaker,” said Aunt Delia, as if that were an exotic turn of events. “Not that it mattered to them.”

  “You are quite right, ma’am,” said Mr. Tolly. “It is my experience, nine times out of ten, when fists fly, the cause has long since flown. It wasn’t Ursula, and it wasn’t her hat—those two sized each other up and their altercation was as sure as sailors’ grog. But they were a polite pair of ruffians, and it was often remarked upon afterwards.”

  The engine ahead of them sent out a shrill whistle as they neared the platform on the east side of Bangor; the rhythm of the rails began to slow.

  “What happened to Applewood and Mr. Feldspar, Mr. Tolly?” asked Cordelia.

  “Miss Feldspar, as it turned out. For a macaw and a crow they got on exceedingly well. They flew off together one day and raised a batch of mac-rows. I never saw them again.”

  Cordelia had been here before with Mr. Tolly. “If you never saw them again, Mr. Tolly,” she asked, “how is it that you know what they raised?”

  “They still write,” said Isherwood Tolly. He fished through his pockets, frowning with thought. “Got something from them just the other day. Now where did I put that?”

  44 The Kraken Speaks

  “WELL, SIR,” SAID MISTER WALTON TO CAPTAIN PINKHAM. “I HAD A VERY odd dream last night, but till yesterday I never dreamed that I would be steaming out to sea in search of a nautical monster.”

  “No man knows the day until the sun goes down,” said the captain, a pipe clenched fiercely between his teeth. He was a husky sort of man, though no taller than Mister Walton, with spectacles that he squinted through and the slightest hint of stubble upon his face. His pipe seldom came out of his mouth, and when he spoke, he seemed to snarl around it, giving him the air of a practiced curmudgeon, though to the observant a glint of humor never left his eyes.

  At fifty-five feet, Captain Pinkham’s boat, the Winter Harbor, was longer than the vessel that Sundry and Mister Walton had seen earlier in the day, but still relatively small in the way of steam-driven craft. Despite a healthy degree of skepticism regarding their mission, Mister Walton could not help but wonder if a larger boat might be more suitable for chasing sea serpents. He left the thought for others to voice aloud, however; and when someone did, Captain Pinkham had an answer.

  “You’re safer from these creatures in a small vessel, sir,” he said. “Big boats just make them ugly.”

  “They must object to anything that challenges their extraordinary size,” said Mister Walton, following the captain’s logic.

  “They are that jealous, sir,” agreed the captain.

  “What is he saying?” shouted Mrs. Eccles, who was being carried past them—chair and all—into the pilot house. The thrum of the steam engine, small as it was, did nothing to aid her against her deafness. This procession stopped briefly since the elderly woman insisted upon it by whacking one of her porters on the top of the head. “What is he saying?” she demanded of her great-granddaughter.

  “I didn’t hear, Gran,” said Miss Bishop. “He wasn’t speaking to us.”

  “He was talking aloud, wasn’t he?”
r />   “The captain says,” said Mr. Berkeley, “that these creatures are less apt to disturb a small vessel.”

  “Good heavens!” snapped the elderly woman. “Let’s all row out in a dory, then!”

  Mister Walton thought he heard a short laugh from the captain, who followed the woman’s entourage inside. Other passengers began to drift down the wharf in small groups, and Miss McCannon, who had instigated the excursion, was counting off members of the party as they came on board. There seemed a round score of them, altogether, counting the captain and his two crew members, and it occurred to Mister Walton that the lot of them defied the capacity of the Winter Harbor’s single lifeboat.

  They set off just before the tide began to turn, and Captain Pinkham gave a couple of jaunty toots with his steam whistle to add to the excitement of their departure. Nobody (including Miss McCannon) really believed that there was any likelihood of seeing a sea serpent, but this did nothing to dispel an air of adventure from the outing. Most of them stood at the railing and waved to people on the docks and along the shore. The boat weaved its way among the anchored vessels and passed several craft coming in before it broke free from the constraints of the harbor.

  It was half past twelve. A breeze met them as they steamed out, and Mister Walton reveled in the bracing air, his nose keen to the tang of salt. The sea was moderate and the boat pitched only slightly, but Sundry was not so familiar with the roll of the waves, no matter how gentle, and his employer was quick to notice the telltale signs of distress on the young man’s face.

  “Dear me,” said Mister Walton. “We must get you something to nibble on. It’s the only thing for it.” Miss McCannon, fortunately, had foreseen such a problem and was already passing pilot crackers out to the more discomforted among them. Sundry seemed unsure of this tactic, but his trust in Mister Walton’s judgment, not to mention Miss McCannon’s insistence, won out. The effects were laudatory if not complete, and Sundry’s face turned from a jaundiced yellow to a pale white.

  As it turned out, he soon had the added pressure of being in the company of an attractive young woman, and though his complexion belied the attempt, he did his best to appear unconcerned with the movement of the boat. Miss Bishop joined them at the rail, reminding Mister Walton (on the orders of her great-grandmother) that he had promised to hold the elderly woman’s hand if the need arose. Good-naturedly Mister Walton went inside the pilot house to fulfill this office. Mrs. Eccles sat majestically in the small room, her chair steadied by her two young attendants.

  “What a lot of folderol!” she said when Mister Walton entered, but it was clear that she was enjoying herself. “Who is that young man with you?”

  “A friend of mine, traveling with me,” said Mister Walton.

  “Yes, I guessed that, didn’t I? I like him, though. He’s not too handsome and he stands straight. I would like my great-granddaughter to marry someone who isn’t too handsome. Her father was very good-looking and he slouched, and I was never very fond of him. He used to look at himself in the mirror, and he denied cheating at solitaire.”

  “Did he cheat at solitaire, then?” wondered Mister Walton cautiously.

  “Of course he did! Everyone cheats at solitaire! Denying it, though, indicates a lack of character. Do you cheat at solitaire?”

  “Well,” said Mister Walton, chuckling heartily. “I have flipped an extra card now and then. It seems so much trouble to reshuffle the deck.”

  “There! Do you see? You have character.”

  “It’s very kind of you to say so. I shall remember your rule.”

  Mrs. Eccles waved a hand impatiently. “Folderol!” she said.

  They watched the two young people talking, and Mister Walton felt sympathy for Sundry, who was doing his best to ignore his seasickness. The young woman, for her part, looked as comfortable as she would on firm ground, but when Miss McCannon made the rounds with her crackers again, Miss Bishop gamely took one so that Sundry might feel less embarrassed in doing the same. They nibbled at their crackers, talking quietly—the wind blowing in their hair. Watching Miss Bishop, Mister Walton might have been recalling another young lady, known in his own youth, for he sighed deeply and turned to look out the pilot’s window. It was not long before Mrs. Eccles was snoring loud enough to be heard above the engine noise.

  The mainland diminished as islands rose out of the earth’s curvature into crags of granite and scrub pine and brave houses standing against the weather. The mood of the ocean, which was almost playful after two days of storm, grew plain as the mainland disappeared from their port side. Captain Pinkham pointed to the east, where the last remnants of the morning’s rain curtained a portion of the horizon in a dusty gray.

  “Where is this prime site for spotting monsters?” wondered Mister Walton to the captain.

  “Between Seguin and Southport, at the Black Rocks,” came the reply over the engine noise.

  “A descriptive name.”

  “They are not much to look at, it’s true. There is one rock that only shows at low tide, or near it, which is why it was best to come this afternoon.”

  “And this is where our sea serpent lives?”

  “It is where I saw him last.”

  Mister Walton mouthed an O in silence, eyes wide with surprise; then he caught what he thought to be a quick wink from the captain. Amused, and not a little bemused, he waited for the captain to tell his story in his own time.

  Coastal lands are, on the whole, more mysterious than other places; the sea and the weather conspire to erase the works of man, so that the origins of words and phrases, as well as physical structures, quickly disappear with succeeding generations, leaving the puzzle of empty cellar holes, and riddles posed by the names that are left by forgotten people and events. Any place that men have long frequented must hold such secrets; the Coast of Maine is rife with them.

  But the sea itself, in its depths, thrives with secrets. Flight is mysterious, but birds—plain to the eye—are not; the most diffident member of the forest may evade our direct knowledge, but we can see the sign it leaves behind and tread the paths it walks. Like night, the ocean reveals itself close at hand or not at all; human sight and (more significantly) human perception travel poorly within it.

  This sense of mystery, of the unimaginable fathoms below him, was familiar to Mister Walton. He stood in the doorway to the pilot house, looking out over the waves, and though land was still visible, the stretch of ocean between their small craft and the jagged coast surged like a living thing, intimating the presence of great creatures and great schools of creatures to fill its vastness. The shadows cast by stray clouds were indistinguishable from the shadows of animate forms lurking just below the water’s surface, and the waves themselves might roll from the movement of monstrous leviathans. At the very least he understood that dark and teeming cycles of life flourished in the cold silences and terrible pressures below, and that the largest vessel man would ever build could hardly skim the smallest surface of such a measureless entity as the Atlantic.

  It was after they passed the craggy ledges known as the Cuckolds that the Black Rocks became discernible in the distance. Captain Pinkham gave the wheel over to his first mate and, reigniting his pipe, stood in the short companionway to the passengers’ cabin, where groups of people stood and sat, conversing among their own circles. The captain watched for several minutes before one of them took notice of him and hailed him good-naturedly.

  “How long before we see this sea serpent?” wondered the fellow with a laugh, which was followed by more happy laughter.

  “Well, it’s true,” said the captain around his pipe. “I have been hired to show you some such creature, and I am glad you laugh and enjoy yourselves—it is a particularly fine afternoon for an outing, and promises to be a particularly fine evening. But I will be honest: if I thought there was some likelihood of finding this monster, I would not have taken you.”

  “You disappoint us, Captain Pinkham,” said a middle-aged lady, barely
concealing a smile.

  “Then be disappointed, please, ma’am, and Lord bless you. I would not take you within reach of that beast, nor myself, either, for all the fame and fortune in the world.”

  “You’ve seen this creature,” said the first man.

  “I have, sir. And if I cannot give you sight of her, I can give you the report, and show you where I sat in terror of falling into those awful clutches.” The captain stepped down from the pilot house and put a shoulder against the wall behind him. He blew smoke rings as he considered his tale, glancing at Mister Walton, who had taken his place in the doorway.

  The captain’s audience waited, and the sound of the engine’s thrum took precedence, though behind it one was conscious of wind and waves and Mrs. Eccles’ heroic snores from the pilot house.

  “It was nineteen years ago this September,” said Captain Pinkham. “I was a younger man in those days, and I daresay my heart was stronger, though a strong heart may yet feel fear. I was a first mate aboard the bark Windward, under the command of Captain Lewis, and we were coming down from Boston with a mixed cargo when we fell among great islands of fog blowing across our path, through our sails, and over our deck.

  “It was early in September, but more like the very midst of August—hot and humid and still. The haze rolls off the ocean at times like these and blinds the coast and founders ships; sound carries unnaturally and sailors peer the harder for the sudden lack of sight. A small breeze coaxed alongside us, but the sails were laden with the damp and the shrouds dripped as from a rain. We planned for Wiscasset late in the afternoon, but Captain Lewis was uneasy with the fog and hoped to find anchorage that night at Five Islands.

  “The fog was low and we saw Seguin occasionally, the lighthouse against the brief glimpses of sky, her light blinking, her horn lonely in the close air. You meet such a landmark, in such a mist, with gratitude, and leave it behind with regret until the next light, or the next bell, gives shape to the gloom ahead. The fog is a strange thing, and strangest of all at sea, and no sailor feels wholly at ease in its shadow.