Myrtle Baldwin (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVII ON FOLLY ISLAND A Man may be a brute, almost, with scarcely any conscience at all or what has been rendered impervious by his adamantine egotism, and yet amenable to fear. Such a man was Cap'n Jud. And now from the very day Mark scared him with brave, scornful words, a new, uncanny, weird, and grewsome fear became his portion. Like all sailors he was more or less superstitious and believed in all the signs, warnings, omens, and sea monsters that sailors believe in. He also now supposed this waif whom he had so hated and abused all her life had ended that life in the eddying, swirling current sweeping under the Folly Island bridge. His first visit to Sandy Bay after Mark's scourging also entrenched him in this belief, for Amos Orton, Barney, and others who despised him, had not hesitated to make known their opinion of his conduct and even assure him of what he deserved. Ordinarily he would have resented this in his surly bull-dog manner, now he cowed, cringed, and made only weak and evasive answers. He also kept away from Sandy Bay after that one visit, and when he needed anything from a store rowed four miles across a bay to Dark Harbor for it. His life on Folly Island had always been a half-hermit one, now it became more so, and he went about his fishing and fish-curing, a silent, morose, and even more surly man. Often for days at a time he would not speak to the one other human being there, his aged and pitiful sister, he began to miss Myrtle also in spite of his hatred of her, and slowly but surely to realize how brutal his treatment had been. With this also came the recollection of her usefulness, her patient endurance of his sneers even while she worked for him. She had been his slave and so considered, but now he began to miss the slave...