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About The Hesperian / (Lincoln, Neb.) 1885-1899 | View Entire Issue (April 11, 1896)
THE HESPERIAN 9 Captain Dennis' cheerful whistle yet yet sounded as lie "turned in" to his broad hammock. It was his fancy to sleep in a hammock, a good fancy, ho said, that gavo him a cruise every night and made him con tent to stay on land evory day. But tonight ho did not have a happy voyago. From stormy seas ho reached a stormior port, waking with a start, from a crazy dream in which ho had boon captured by South Sea Ialandors, and bound hand and foot to the earth, while a tall savage danced "Yankee .Doodle" on his aching arm. Ho told Lucy, at breakfast, that ho would take his cruise in a now craft hereafter. Lucy poured out a clear, hot amber stream into his cup. It was a dainty cup. There was only one more liko it this side the water so the captain said: that was Lucy's. Ho had picked them up in somo odd corner of the world ho had never told anyone where but Lucy. They were very white and clear, witn a delicate tracery of greon, a long spray running round half way up to the rim. Lucy filled the cup just past the edge of the green spray. uYo8," she said smiling, "You will have to sail as I do, now." Then she stopped. But the captain, watching her day after day, tried to whistle away the voice that was telling him, louder and loudor, 4iYou will have to sail with Lucy, now.' And ho looked hard at the great chair by the sunny south window where Lucy was always asking him to sit and read to her. His laugh sounded merrily as ho reached his awkward left hand for his tea-cup. His good right arm must be put away liko the old hammock. Ho could not use it any more. And Lucy smiled. But she was look ing at the fingers that hold the white cup. Was it her nervous fancy, or did the loft hand shake slightly. The captain knew. He had felt it creeping closer. His tales wore longer and jollier than over, and his whistle did not tremble. But his face grew dark when he was alono, and ho said to him self, "It's all the time, all the time. Only so much as an ant's foot goes, but I never got it back." But on Thanksgiving day tho captain al ways "colobratod." The evening had always tho same ending the stories and the "South Soa Island jig." It made him feel like him self, ho said. Even when ho had come to sit all day in the wide chair, ho would start with a Hush in his face when the clock struck cloven and, springing from his seat, chal lenge Martha to equal his time. Martha always said sho was too old and sriff. And the captain answered, sometimes, that it was harder to keep still than to dance all the time. It was a gloomy Thanksgiving on which Lucy must first feed him at tho table. It had long boon her task, but ho had kept it a part of the Thanksgiving celebration to do this himsolf. And John and Martha had protended not to see how ho spilled his tea and dropped his cranberry jelly on the pickles. Tho South Sea Island jig made all tho spectators laugh that evening till their handkerchiefs went to their eyes. -x- It is evening. Lucy sits beside the cap tain's chair and reads to him. It had seem ed to him that ho would bo cutting his last shore lino, if he must give up his reading. Sitting in his arm chair, his book and papers before him, ho sailed long cruises and visit ed the old ports again. He could not give it up, and he steadied his shaking hands, and held his papers with a grasp that slowly, slowly failed, until one day Lucy gently took them away. She knelt down before him and put her hands on his knee, and placed his trembling fingers on her brown hair. It was not long until sho must lift those fingers, soft and white, wherever the captain's quiet voice told her. Only Lucy can clearly distinguish all his words, now. And the captain does not hear all that she is reading. He is beginning to lose even her voice out of the narrow, darkening space ' that closes slowly, slowly about him. He sits in his chair and sees, through, the shadows, a tall, leafless, towering, tree against a crimson sky.
