CHAPTER XIV THE LAUNCHING

“Hurrah! She kicks! She crawls!... She goes!”

It was an hour later. The girls, nineteen of them, with their Guardian, were standing upon the skirts of the adjoining shipyard, watching, with a thrill only a shade less keen than that which had heralded the landing of a war-plane by their Council Fire, the shooting-off of a new vessel on to the water--the curling, laughing high tide which rose crowing to meet her, its bride.

Atlas was with them. Until the end of the War--or as long as he was a shipyard worker--he would be Atlas now, for the foreman had caught the merry deification from Olive’s lips.

He was covering his halo with his hair; it was a rainbowed halo, too, a bump the size of a hen’s egg, of all colors, upon his right temple, sending a red streak down to his cheek-bone.

In feeling, he was more Atlas than ever, for now it seemed as if he had a lightning-shot globe upon his head, in the shape of that heroic bump, which at times spun so hard through space that it threatened to spin him round with it. But he managed to keep his feet, and the delirious throbs of pain only added to his excitement--and to the thrill of the foreman’s words in his swelling ear: “It was a good line. And you held it--Mike. You saved the life of that contrary little craft--that girl!”

And now he was witnessing the launching of another craft upon her career, with a stifling heart-throb of anxiety which said that it might--might be an unnaturally short one. For the beautiful ship’s hull just darting off the greased launching-ways on to the river, sleek and glossy in her fresh garment of paint--the embryo fishing schooner--would not alone have to face the perils which were the daily bread of Captain Bob and his kind, when big seas would pound her like an earthquake, but even on her maiden trip a submarine might sink her.

There was no knowing what might be in store for her even while, as now, she was a mere sparless hull, before she matured into a maiden vessel; whether, if word had got out as to the date of her launching, a raiding sea-wolf might not be in waiting to seize upon her--a perfectly helpless, wobbly lamb, under the convoy of a tugboat--and blow her up, as she was being towed round to the seaport, to have her masts set up.

This lent a pathos to the cheers--from girls and others--which greeted the first stir of life in her, as her rocking glide began.

“She cr-rawls! She goes! Hi! Hi! Oh-h, see her go!... Oh, isn’t she a bird!”

And, indeed, for the brief few seconds of that swallow-like dart--her white deck flashing--she did seem radiantly winged, like the a?roplane.

“Hour-rah! Houp-ela! She go--de petit ship!” Now it was the voice of a French workman, hanging upon the tail of the launching cheers. “Houp-ela! Ah! Vive le vaisseau!”

“Vive le vaisseau! Here’s hoping no submarine will get her!” cried Atlas, forgetting that he bore a spinning globe upon his head, as he saw the new hull kick up her heels in the water for the first time--brought up short by her snubbing-line--while the crowing tide shot an aigrette of spray aloft, to baptize the ensign--the Stars and Stripes--proudly waving at her stern.

“Vive le vaisseau! Long life to the vessel! O dear! Why can’t we go round to Gloucester on her, all of us, as the tugboat is here now, waiting to tow her down the river?” It was a joint, eager cry from a dozen girls. “Oh-h! do say we can. Captain Andy--our Menokijábo!”

But the old sea-giant--the Tall Standing Man--was proof even against the wheedling use of the Indian name which his Camp Fire Group had bestowed upon him and which could generally, according to his own weakening lament, beguile him into a compliance with being shoved around like a schooner in a tide-rip, at the will of a score of headstrong girls.

“No! No--siree!” He shook his massive shoulders determinedly. “If I was only sure of the tide--and the tug-captain who’s to tow the new hull round was sure of it--I’d haul down my colors an’ ye could.”

“I know a girl who was launched on a new vessel like this--from this very ship-yard, too--and she an’ her father went round to Gloucester on it--the new hull--and she said it was a sort of ‘royal progress’ all the way; everybody from every house and camp along the shore tooting horns, blowing whistles, waving the biggest flags they had, cheering the new vessel on her course--hoping she’d escape the submarines,” said Lilia--Little Owl--looking longingly at that newly launched ship’s hull rocking gracefully upon the river, with her deck white as a hound’s tooth.

“Well! the tide answered for them to go through the canal, I reckon,” was Captain Andy’s reply, still accompanied by negative shrugs. “That’s the new canal that they built since war began, to avoid the danger of taking freshly launched ships outside the harbor, into open sea, at all. Happen it might answer to-day. Happen it mightn’t! Ye never can tell about the tide in this river. An’ if ye had to go outside, how would you like to see a sub pop up to leeward an’ fire a tin fish at you, as I did when I was running that slick old coaster, the Susie Jane, last spring?”

“How could the said sub know that a new vessel had just been launched up here and was being towed round?” questioned Sara Davenport. Her tones were small; it was the first time she had spoken since her challenge to Atlas upbearing the rib--and what came of it.

“I can’t tell how. But information leaks out somehow. Spies, I guess,” was the mariner’s answer.

“Fresh rumors from the sky, as the aviators say,” burst forth Olive excitedly. “According to report those two who landed by our Council Fire and entertained us so well, did discover a lonely hut, with a wireless outfit attached, in some part of the woods along the shore here.”

“They’ll have to do some more tall scouting, I reckon--comb the shores from end to end--before they nab every one who’s playing into the hands of the ‘Jerries.’” Menokijábo shook his great head. “A spy on any side has a quick eye an’ his nerve with him. Anyhow, I’m not taking chances on the safety of this new hull--against the odds of somebody, who has a ‘nifty’ scheme up his sleeve, signaling out to sea about her--by letting you girls make the towed trip on her new deck.”

“And you won’t take chances on our going through the canal, either, on--on the tide being obliging?” Sybil eyed him wistfully.

“Great Neptune! Not much! With a river-channel that’s all ‘studdled’ with quicksands an’ changing gullies, as this one is,” glancing down the brackish river, “the old tide just naturally has to chase itself out a little faster at one time than another. Just high tide now--four o’clock--five by my watch! They didn’t change the tide-table when, on Easter morning, they shoved the clocks an hour ahead. They couldn’t work any daylight-saving racket on the hoary old tide,” laughingly; “’twould upset calculations all over the globe.”

“Well, I think I’ll follow the tide’s example and ‘beat it’ for the sea--Manchester-by-the-Sea--rather earlier than usual to-day, now that I’ve seen the launching,” said Atlas, in whose ear the foreman had been whispering.

“Good! And don’t ye show up to-morrow,” softly enjoined the latter. “An’ you don’t drive your own car this evening, either. Marty Williams will be starting your way pretty soon; you’ve driven him home many an evening; now he can drive you!”

“But you’ll come down to see us at our camp just as soon as you feel able”--began Olive, and stopped, for Atlas’ bump, bared by breezes, flamed like a thunder-bolt in her direction--“I mean--I mean any day now,” she amended lamely. “If you row down the river from here, we’ll come across the sand-dunes from our side of them and meet you half-way, so that you need not go all the way down to the mouth of the river, over the bar and, so, around up to our white beach.”

“We might bring our supper with us, light a fire and picnic out on the middle of the dunes--that would be dandy--right near that great, huge pile of clam-shells where the Indians once held an historic clam-bake,” came breathlessly from Betty--fair-haired Betty Ayres--whose symbol was the Holly, green when all other shrubs were bare.

“Thanks! Awf’ly--awf’ly good you are!” murmured Atlas. “You may look for me on deck--meaning on the dunes by the shell-heap--some time soon. I’ll let you know first. Well, good-bye. So long!”

Yet he lingered a little, ostensibly absorbed in the river and its bride, the new hull, really inclining his swollen right ear for some added word of invitation from the girl with the amber-tipped eyelashes, whose life he had saved.

But those lashes, except for the grace of one flickering farewell nod, were persistently lowered.

“Pshaw! Pshaw! she’s the very original female clam herself--not a word out of her,” thought Atlas, and departed, in high dudgeon.

“Sara Davenport! You behaved like an idiot, not moving off when he told you, before--before that horrid old, jaundiced rib of a ship came near falling on you--and killing you. I suppose it really might have killed you but for him!” was the Flame’s scorching thought. “But he did feel so self-important--crouching there, under the great rib, feeling that he was upholding shipping--I know he did! Just because he’s such a rich boy, who never did anything like that before!... And Olive’s cousin! One of the set into which her father--her family--would think she ought to--ought to marry--when by and by it comes to that--never thinking of Iver, at all!... Iver who held out his burnt hand to a private! Iver who’s been over the top--wounded three times--burned with mustard gas! Oh-h-h!”

Mustard tears were in Sesooā’s eyes now. But, for all their stinging, she would not have parted with them for a kingdom--those diamond drops of the first water, tribute to her pride in the soldier-brother “over there,” to a quite extravagant jealousy on his behalf, too, lest he should fail of getting his heart’s desire when he came back--as she knew he would come!

“Oh! I suppose I shouldn’t vent it on Olive’s kith and kin,” she told herself, looking out through a blur at the lately launched vessel which the tugboat was now taking in tow for her perilous trip round to the seaport, when, if the hoary old tide was not obliging, a “tin fish” might be fired at her, or a bomb whip-sawed up under her new keel, to blow up some thirty thousand dollars’ worth of vessel--and the labor of months.

“What a contrary little cat--an utter simpleton--that Atlas boy must think me! A nice impression I’ve given him of our Camp Fire Group! Well! I can--can--undo some of it, later on. Watch him--watch him open his eyes when he sees me light a fire with rubbing sticks, out there on the middle of the dunes, as the Indians did long ago, I suppose, when they had that huge clam-bake. I wish I could show him that very last honor-bead, too, red with a white square on it, like the Scouts’ signal-flags--a local honor for signaling, for understanding wigwag--sending a message with Morse code or semaphore. I’ll wager he couldn’t do it, for all he held up shipping! No, sir!”

The Flame’s lip was hotly quivering to match the storm water in her eyes, as she sent these thoughts after the new hull, now being towed down the river.

One and all, the girls waved a parting salute, made the hand-sign of fire to win her luck--that baby vessel.

The hand-sign was in Sesooā’s heart. Not by any stereotyped thanks for the vital spark still in her, paid for by the spinning globe which Atlas was carrying home on his head--although, of course, these must be offered, verbal or written--but by the magic of thunder-bird or “hand-hold,” bow, drill, fire-board and tinder, winning the boon of fire from dead wood, would she retrieve the honor of her Camp Fire, uphold the other side of her not scarred by wilfulness and petty mockery through a fantastic jealousy on Iver’s behalf.

Never--never before had Firemaking Outfit such a contract to fill--or the dunes such a vindication to witness!