Read Online Fog Magic by Julia L. Sauer - Free Book Online Page A

were clear enough to get in.”
    They settled down to wait for the dory. The men talked in low voices. The vessel off shore might have been a ghost ship for the spell it cast. No one seemed to know why, but they waited on the wharf as shrouded in foreboding as they were in fog. When a gull mewed overhead they stirred nervously, and when their ears caught the creaking of oars, everyone surged to the edge to look over. The elder men gathered at the top of the iron ladder. Mr. Morehouse came up first and the rest of the dory’s crew followed him onto the wharf. They stood in a close group and spoke together. One or two others were summoned, and the talking continued. Something at last seemed decided, and old Mr. Morehouse stepped out from among them as spokesman. He took off his cap before he began to speak and stood bareheaded before them.
    â€œShe’s the Emmeretta, folks, Cap’n Cornwall’s vessel,” he told them.
    The Emmeretta! Why the Emmeretta was almost one of their own, sailing as she did out of Middle Harbour, not five miles up the shore. No mystery about her —except having Captain Ansel Cornwall anchor off shore here instead of going on home. They murmured among themselves and then were silent as Mr. Morehouse began to speak again.
    â€œMrs. Cornwall’s in command of her,” he went on.
    â€œMrs. Cornwall! Laleah Cornwall!” They couldn’t believe it. She was no seafaring woman. This was her first voyage. She had gone as a bride from this very town on her honeymoon to the Far East. Even the children could remember the gay wedding not two years before. Captain Cornwall had at last won the bride that he had courted between voyages for twenty years.
    To Greta the names “Cornwall” and “Laleah Cornwall” seemed familiar. Where had she heard them? There was no one of that name living in Little Valley. But she stopped wondering to listen to the people around her.
    â€œBut the Cap’n? Where’s he?” voices asked.
    â€œCap’n Cornwall died aboard ship. He died in the roadstead of Bombay,” Mr. Morehouse continued slowly.
    â€œBut why’s Laleah Cornwall bringing the vessel home? Where’s the mate?” someone asked quickly.
    â€œYoung Eldridge, the mate, is my wife’s cousin,” another added.
    â€œThere’s been trouble aboard.” There was complete silence as the old man went on. “Cap’n Cornwall died in his own cabin. But he died of—of yellow fever. The mate wanted to bury him at sea as was right and proper. And then, I reckon, Laleah Cornwall went mad. You can understand how it’d be. She’d been married but a few months. Well, she got hold of the Cap’n’s pistols and she threatened to kill every man in the crew if they didn’t do her bidding. She swore she’d bring the Cap’n home for Christian burial in her family plot. There was no sense to it, of course, but she held the only firearms aboard. She meant what she said. And they knew it.
    â€œYoung Eldridge was between the devil and the deep sea—a crazed woman holding two guns on him and a crew well-nigh out of its wits with terror as long as the Cap’n’s body was aboard. But he played a man’s part, I’ll say that for him, and he thought fast. He thought up a plan and he persuaded Laleah Cornwall to agree to it. Between them he and the ship’s carpenter got the Cap’n sewed up in sailcloth; they lashed the body in the ship’s longboat and they towed the Cap’n home. Young Eldridge says that Mrs. Cornwall never put her guns down until they were cleared for the open sea; and she kept vigil over that line for days for fear somebody’d cut the longboat loose. I guess after a time she must have let down a bit. She could see the crew was content—as long as there was a line between them and the longboat. It would have been a different story, though, if anybody else had