The Ebbing Tide Read Online Free PDF

Nils, who smiled and touched his cap.
    â€œI'll try to get down to Pruitt’s Harbor this afternoon and see Ellen,” Nils said as they walked on.
    â€œShe’ll love that,” said Joanna enthusiastically. “Especially if you go to the school. She considers you an honest-to-goodness hero, and all hers.”
    â€œShe’s a good girl. More of a lady than you were at twelve, too.”
    â€œShe takes after Mother,” Joanna said. She slipped her arm through his and tightened her fingers on his sleeve. He would go down to Pruitt’s Harbor, too. It was typical of Nils, and the deep comradeship between him and his stepdaughter. She knew he wasn’t her father, and Joanna didn’t know if Ellen considered Nils in the light of a father, at all; in some things Ellen was rather a mystery to her, but she was certain that Ellen considered Nils an indispensable part of her universe. And so do I , thought Joanna, and tightened her fmgers even more.
    Nils glanced at her sidewise. “O.K., Jo?”
    â€œO.K.,” she reassured him. “I’m just overcome with the idea that I’m walking along Bennett’s Island main street with a C.P.O. It’s making me conceited as anything.”
    â€œAnd everybody looking at you, too,” said Nils, pointing to the long baithouse on their right and the boatshop on their left. He nodded at the row of gulls on the boatshop’s ridgepole. “The reviewing stand. Politicians, every damn’ one of ’em.”
    â€œI wonder if they have parades in the Pacific,” said Joanna. “Politicians in the Solomons ought to be a change from the Limerock brand, anyway.”
    We’re doing wonderfully , she thought, and then they had reached the old wharf, by the boatshop, and the White Lady was waiting, her engine idling. Out beyond the shelter of the baithouse, the east wind swept in from Schoolhouse Cove, raced across the marsh, and tried to wrap them in rain. But nobody noticed it, it was Island weather. Owen grinned up from the cockpit. “You want to be piped aboard, Admiral?”
    Sigurd came out of the cabin, waving a bottle of beer and whistling “Semper Paratus.” He was a big, yellow-maned Viking of a man, who gave the impression, even when he was in a roaring rage, of an utterly friendly and humorous person. “You pipe down,” he advised Owen. “You want to pipe, you can pipe down. Hi, Nils. God, I wish I was goin’ with you!”
    He took Nils’ bag and clapped his younger brother on the shoulder with a heavy hand. Nils, however, bore up under it. “Well, you’re going as far as Brigport, aren’t you?” He took his bag back, and went into the cabin to stow it. Sigurd hovered hugely in the companionway.
    â€œSure, but my God. You know what I mean. I could kill a lot of those yellow beggars—”
    â€œHe’s been goin’ on like that for an hour,” said Owen. “I’m intendin’ to drown him as soon as we get out by Tenpound. Put him out of his misery.”
    Nils forced a smile. “Well, I guess we’d better get started—”
    Joanna stood on the edge of the wharf, shivering. It seemed as if the east wind had never cut so deeply; yet her tweed coat was warm, and so was her wool kerchief. I’m not really cold , she thought. It’s just the excitement. After all, I’m not falling on his neck and crying, and making it hard for him. It’s all right if I feel a little funny . . . . She saw someone coming by the baithouse, and called quickly, nervously.
    â€œWait a minute, here come Francis and Matthew!” She met Nils’ eyes and grinned, and took her hands out of her pockets and blew on them so he’d think the jerky note in her voice came from the cold. He looked back at her steadily, standing in the roomy cockpit while the others baited each other noisily behind him. She wondered what he was thinking in