“That will be quite enough,” said Mr. Warner. “Where are your two famous tailless cats? I guess every man in the service knows about those cats.”
“Oh, they’re around somewheres, drat ’em,” said Captain Eli. Then he added:
“All right, come in an’ make yerselfs t’hum, gentlemen, while I consult t’ ‘doc.’”
They were ushered into the spick-and-span living apartment of the tiny four-room cottage adjoining the lighthouse tower, while Captain Whittaker bustled into the kitchen and returned with the portable medicine chest which the Service furnishes to all lighthouse keepers. This was the doctor referred to and Eli scrutinized the various bottles carefully before he brought out one labeled “Poison.”
“Here’s the consarn stuff. Now, let me see this here cut, young feller,” he said. Then when he had looked at the wound he began bathing and bandaging with experienced fingers. Of course Ray winced with pain when the iodine was applied, but he realized that it was the best thing for him.
“There,” said the light keeper after he had finished, “I guess ye’ll pull through all right, providin’ no complications sets in, es Old Doc Chipman sez when he hed stitched up Buck Longyear after t’ red bull hed carried him clear ’cross t’ pasture lot on t’ p’int o’ his horn. How did you come to get beat up so? Been gettin’ fresh to t’ skipper?”
“Yes, tell us your troubles, Ray,” said Jack, who was dreadfully curious to hear the boy’s tale.
“Oh, it isn’t much of a story,” said Ray. “Just a case of my usual luck. I’ve been living with my Uncle Vance for the last ten years. My dad died when I was five and mother followed him a year after. I guess Uncle Vance wasn’t keen on having me on his hands from the first, leastwise he never showed that he liked the idea at all, so I always took it for granted that I was sort of in his way.
“He’s a man who believes that every one including himself should work from dawn until darkness. He says it’s the only way to get along. Just slave like a horse at the work in front of you. That is all he has ever done. He don’t believe in progress and he won’t take any stock in a single new idea. That’s why he and I had most of our misunderstandings. I like to potter with machinery and build things. He called it all ‘durned nonsense’ and allowed he’d thrash it all out of me if it was the only thing he ever accomplished.
“Everything I built he broke up for kindling wood or tossed overboard as useless. Then he’d give me a flogging for not being hard at work on something more useful. It made me mighty mad. One time I made a corking fine water wheel in the trout stream back of our house in Ascog. I had the grindstone hitched to it, and every time I wanted to grind the ax or a knife or anything, all I had to do was to slip the belt on the pulley and away she went.