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 The Last
Silent Picture Show
Silent Films on
American Screens in the 1930s

William M. Drew

THE SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
2010

10_321_01_Front.indd i 7/22/10 7:00 AM

 Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.
A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
http://www.scarecrowpress.com

Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2010 by William M. Drew

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Drew, William M.
The last silent picture show : silent films on American screens in the 1930s / William
M. Drew.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8108-7680-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7681-1 (ebook)
1. Silent films—United States—History and criticism. 2. Motion pictures—United
States—History—20th century. I. Title.
PN1995.75.D74 2010
791.430973—dc22 2010011243

 ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

10_321_01_Front.indd ii 7/22/10 7:00 AM

 To the film conservationists who are restoring
the silents for future generations

To the musicians who are underscoring the silent images

to produce a unique artistic experience

To the devotees throughout the world who are ensuring that the silent
cinema will remain a vital part of our culture

10_321_01_Front.indd iii 7/22/10 7:00 AM

10_321_01_Front.indd iv 7/22/10 7:00 AM
 Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
Prologue: The Old Time Movie Show xiii

1 A Little Silence amid All the Talk 1

The Silent Enemy 1
City Lights 8
Tabu 23
2 Silents with Sound and Fury 37
The Griffith Revivals 37
The Silent Lion Roars 46
3 Not Wired for Sound 63
4 Mary and Charlie vs. the World 83
Mary’s Endangered Legacy 83
Hollywood and Its Past 92
Charlie’s Modern Times 101
5 A Silent Revolution 113
6 The Silent East 137
7 Of Art and Archives 161
The Preservation Movement 161
Iris Barry and the Museum of Modern Art 171
8 The Sheik Returns! 189

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 vi Contents

9 The Silents Go on Forever 209

Index 229
About the Author 243

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 Acknowledgments

I owe a special debt of gratitude to Kevin Brownlow, Andi Hicks, Hugh

Neely, and Marilyn Slater for the generosity, support, and knowledge that
helped make this book possible. They read the manuscript from its inception,
made valuable suggestions, and provided stills. Others who have been of in-
estimable help to me with information, photos, and encouragement include
Rachel Ashley, Glynford Hatfield, Donna Hill, Melik Karapetyan, David
Kiehn, Hiroshi Komatsu, Don Marion, John McElwee, Hala Pickford, David
Shepard, Marc Wanamaker, and Haidee Wasson.

vii

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10_321_01_Front.indd viii 7/22/10 7:00 AM
 Introduction

I n the entire history of motion pictures, nothing has been as dramatic and
radical in its consequences as the transition from silent films to sound, which
began at the end of the 1920s. Nothing in subsequent cinematic developments
has quite equaled it, whether the move from black-and-white to color film,
the displacement of traditional-sized by wide screens, even the film theatre
yielding to television its role as the public’s primary source of moving images.
In comparison to the much more rapid replacement of silents by talkies, these
changes have all been gradual—with older and newer forms coexisting for
decades.
While much has been written about the transition from silents to sound
that took place in Hollywood and Western Europe between 1926 and 1930,
relatively little has been published in depth about how this development af-
fected the views of the general public and critics toward the style of filmmak-
ing displaced by the technological revolution of sound. Equally lacking is a
comprehensive study of the silent film production that continued to dominate
for much of the 1930s in the countries outside the Western industrial orbit,
producing a final golden age of silent cinema. Analyses of this transitional
period, besides delineating the technological challenges posed by adapting the
requirements of sound to image, have tended to limit discussion of the talkies’
relationship to the older media to recycling the questionable assertions that a
number of silent artists were unable to adjust to the new medium due to an
alleged inability to master the microphone.
One especially significant factor contributing to the victory of sound,
which seems to have been missed by a number of commentators, is the extent
to which it gave rise to the entirely new discipline of film history and the
need to build new institutional structures to conserve it. In the 1920s, prior

ix

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 x Introduction

to sound, there was in the United States an increasing tendency to view the
early nickelodeon period as part of a more distant past, evident in various ef-
forts to exhibit selected films from those years in a spirit of burlesque. Yet only
with the talkie revolution would the entire tradition and mode of filmmaking
be widely considered as something now labeled “the silent era.” Whether
viewed disdainfully as antiquated “flickers” or revered as a highly accom-
plished art form with unique characteristics, in the Western world silent films
were regarded as history in the 1930s. While some would use this perception
as a justification to ignore or neglect what was now deemed obsolete, others
would argue that the technological revolution required a more sophisticated
examination of the cinematic past in order to preserve its achievements for
future generations.
The present study is perhaps the first extended account of the fate of
silent cinema and the attendant “invention” of film history in the 1930s as it
unfolded in the United States, the center of the world’s largest film industry,
which had initiated the talkie revolution in the late 1920s. Drawing on con-
temporary sources, mainly the daily newspapers that informed the majority of
the American reading (and viewing) public, it presents the differing attitudes
then existing in the country toward the silent film along with records of its
persistence in the age of sound. Here are described the responses to the last
new American silent films to be released, the reissues of older hits, the final
silent movie houses, the foreign imports from non-Western countries resist-
ing the advent of sound, the birth of a movement to preserve the heritage of
early cinema.
From the perspective of later periods, the most significant of these de-
velopments in this decade was the emergence of the archival movement cen-
tered around Iris Barry and her creation of the Museum of Modern Art Film
Library. As with any new organizational structure, there were, in retrospect,
flaws which have become apparent with the passing of time. Like many of the
most revered institutions, whether a major church establishment or a consti-
tutional government, there was much that was excluded from this pioneering
archive as well as the first scholarly chronicles of film history closely related to
its activities. In describing the foundation of the Film Library in the 1930s and
1940s during the Iris Barry years, I have pointed out some of the vital pages
of cinema history that were omitted from the collection it built up, along
with several of the compromises that were made in presenting early film to
the public. This, however, is in no sense intended to diminish the fundamen-
tal achievement of Barry and her creation of the first American film archive,
including her vision of a collection of early cinema intended to be shared with
a wider public than those privileged to visit the archive’s headquarters. For
although succeeding generations of cinephiles must correct the shortcomings

10_321_01_Front.indd x 7/22/10 7:00 AM

 Introduction xi

of the original structure, such progress, even while rebelling against the limita-
tions of the earlier model, has only been able to emerge within the context of
the organized movement to preserve film history which first crystallized in the
United States with the Museum of Modern Art.
While the establishment of sound, as has often been noted, provided a
number of studios with a convenient excuse to neglect or destroy the silents in
their vaults, it may have also proved pivotal in an entirely opposite direction.
During the years that silent films were in production, prints and negatives rou-
tinely vanished with scant consideration for their fate from either the industry
or the wider public. But once the silent era had come to be regarded as part
of history, more and more observers began to recognize the unique power and
beauty of an artistic medium that appeared threatened with extinction. In the
process, a strong sentiment at last emerged to preserve the achievements of
that vanished age. Thus, one of the consequences of the arrival of sound may
have been the salvation of many of the films from the extraordinarily creative
era of filmmaking that had preceded it.

10_321_01_Front.indd xi 7/22/10 7:00 AM

10_321_01_Front.indd xii 7/22/10 7:00 AM
 Prologue
The Old Time Movie Show

A midst the great expansion of silent cinema as both art and social influence
in America after the First World War, the earlier period of film production
was increasingly viewed by many people as part of a more distant past. Indeed,
as startling as it may now seem, the term “old time movies” had already started
to come into widespread use by 1920. Exhibitors at that time capitalized on
this perception with a new idea: adding as a special attraction The Old Time
Movie Show on the same bill with the latest big feature. Advertisements in the
Chicago Tribune reveal that The Old Time Movie Show had become a popular
addition to the program in film theatres there by April 1920, even topping the
bill at the New Park Theatre two months later in June.1
The new attraction soon spread from the large urban centers like Chicago
in which it had originated to smaller cities and towns around the nation. Its
promoters thought the contrast between The Old Time Movie Show, consist-
ing of vintage shorts from the nickelodeon era, and the new features could
illustrate effectively the dramatic progress in the development of film while
furnishing added mirth for an audience convulsed by the “ancient” primitive
movies of a decade ago.
As an example, the February 20, 1921, Lorain County (Ohio) Chronicle-
Telegram carried a large advertisement for the new extra attraction at the
American Theatre in the city of Lorain. Accompanied by an illustration of a
vintage storefront nickelodeon located between a second-hand shoe store and
a meat market was the following text:

Remember the movies of ten years ago? The “Please remove your hat”
signs, the slide flashing the hopeful message “Next part in a few min-
utes?”

xiii

10_321_01_Front.indd xiii 7/22/10 7:00 AM

 xiv Prologue

They’ll all be back, and right in an up-to-the-minute modern motion

picture palace, too, when The Old Time Movie Show is presented as an added
attraction in the American Theatre Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
This relic of bygone days will be presented alongside a modern motion
picture program and the contrast will add to the enjoyment of those who
were fans ten years ago as well as to the younger generation which has
known only the programs of recent days.
Along with The Old Time Movie Show, which is made up of Mary Pick-
ford’s first picture, Shadows of Doubt, in which Owen Moore is co-starred,
the audience will be treated to another feature, Dot Riley in illustrated
songs, another reminder of the old days of the movies.
The Old Time Movie Show has proved one of the biggest hits of the
season, crowds growing hysterical with merriment in the big cities as this
reminder of the crude younger days of the photodrama unreeled itself on
the screen.2

Variants of this ad announcing The Old Time Movie Show appeared in

other communities across the country where the novelty was included on the
bill. In fact, The Old Time Movie Show became so popular that it remained a
featured attraction in film theatres throughout the nation for a full decade.
While reissues of earlier films had been a staple of movie houses for years,
The Old Time Movie Show struck a new note with its conscious attempt to
send up the cinema’s “primitive” past by intentionally exposing it to ridicule.
And while there seems to have been no particular recutting of the films, the
promotion for these shows and the manner in which they were presented all
but guaranteed a risible audience reaction to films that originally had been in-
tended as serious dramas. Hence, the attitude that was later to lead to the series
of shorts, Goofy Movies in the 1930s and Flicker Flashbacks in the 1940s; the
1945 compilation feature, Gaslight Follies; and Fractured Flickers on television
in the 1960s was originally a byproduct of the silent cinema era itself looking
with a mixture of condescending amusement and nostalgia on an “unsophis-
ticated” or “naive” past which had ended only a few years before the early
1920s but already seemed remote.
Shadows of Doubt was not, as the ads proclaimed, Mary Pickford’s first
film although it was one of her earlier works for Biograph directed by D.
W. Griffith, originally released in 1909 under the title The Restoration. The
exhibitors of 1921 seem to have been deliberately capitalizing on the press
sensationalism attending Mary’s recent divorce from Owen Moore and subse-
quent marriage to Douglas Fairbanks. One of the ads for The Old Time Movie
Show said, “See Mary Pickford and Owen Moore (Her First Husband) make
love in the good old-fashioned way. See James Kirkwood and How Angry He
Becomes When His Suspicions Are Aroused, You’ll Laugh.”3

10_321_01_Front.indd xiv 7/22/10 7:00 AM

Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The mystery
of the Sea-Lark
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The mystery of the Sea-Lark

Author: Ralph Henry Barbour

H. P. Holt

Illustrator: C. M. Relyea

Release date: January 18, 2024 [eBook #72751]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: The Century Co, 1920

Credits: Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MYSTERY OF

THE SEA-LARK ***
 THE MYSTERY
OF THE SEA-LARK
“The moment I jump swing her ’round”
 THE MYSTERY
OF THE SEA-LARK
BY

RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

AND

H. P. HOLT

ILLUSTRATED BY
C. M. RELYEA

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1920
Copyright, 1920, by
The Century Co.
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE

I Cap’n Crumbie Is Surprised 3

II George Signs On 19
III Back to the Water 37
IV The Trial Trip 53
V A Rescue 81
VI Prowlers 98
VII The Clue 115
VIII Jack Counts His Profits 138
IX The Sea-Lark to the Rescue 154
X Salvage 168
XI The Struggle in the Dark 182
XII Fighting a Gale 201
XIII The Simon P. Barker Goes Out 220
XIV Castaways 238
XV Jack Loses Command 254
XVI Cast Adrift 272
XVII Trapped! 283
XVIII The Canvas Bag 311
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“The moment I jump swing her ’round” Frontispiece
FACING
PAGE

“We’re all right, George. I can see the coast plainly” 244
“Put that thing down and stop your nonsense” 266
“You’re too late, Hegan,” he said 292
THE MYSTERY OF THE SEA-LARK
THE MYSTERY OF THE SEA-LARK
 CHAPTER I
CAP’N CRUMBIE IS SURPRISED

“A lucky thing so few of the boats were out when the storm came
up!” said Jack Holden. “I guess they’d have had a pretty hard
time of it yesterday.”
“Cap’n” Crumbie nodded in satisfaction. “Only one missing,” he
replied. “And why? Why? ’Cause Cap’n Crumbie told ’em what to
expect. Not far out, I ain’t, as a rule. There was nigh a dozen o’ ’em
wanting to get away to the grounds when I told ’em the gale was
coming. And most o’ ’em took my advice and stayed safe an’ snug at
home. ’Tain’t that I’m wanting to blow my own trumpet, as the
saying is, but facts is facts. Bob Sennet laughed at me and put to
sea. Laughed at me, mind you! Obstinate as they make ’em, Bob is
—or should say was—just like his father afore him. If he hadn’t been
so obstinate he’d ha’ been here to-day, alive an’ well. An’ instead o’
that, see where he is!”
“Where, Cap’n?” asked the boy, gravely.
The Cap’n dropped his voice to a sepulchral rumble. “Fathoms
deep, son! Fathoms deep somewheres out there, he and the Ellen E.
Hanks together; aye, and all hands as well. Fathoms deep; mark my
words!”
Jack, suppressing a disrespectful grin, glanced seaward in the
direction of the Cap’n’s pointing hand. The scene there held no
suggestion of tragedy. The storm of the last two days was over.
Since early morning the leaden skies had turned to blue and the
fresh, salty breeze that swept in from the broad Atlantic was but the
tag-end of the terrific gale that had lashed the waters of the harbor
and raced, shrieking, up the quaint, narrow streets of the town.
Now, instead of the storm-wrack, a few white clouds sailed
eastward, and, in place of the fury of tormented waters, the harbor
and the sea beyond the breakwater reflected the blue of the
heavens in their dancing, white-capped waves.
A mile away, Gull Island was fringed with creamy foam, and,
farther still, at the tip-end of the Point, the squat stone lighthouse
gleamed snowy-white against the clear horizon. Washed and swept
by rain and wind, the little Massachusetts fishing-town of Greenport
looked bright and clean this May afternoon. The fishing-schooners,
some at anchor, some lying snug at the wharves, were drying their
sails in the warm sunlight.
Cap’n Crumbie viewed them approvingly as, with Jack at his side,
he paced to and fro on Garnett and Sayer’s wharf, his short, slightly
bowed legs working with the regularity of a pendulum, six paces
nor’east, then six paces so’west. He had traveled a good many miles
in that fashion in the last twenty years, for he was watchman at
Garnett and Sayer’s, and this stretch of clear space on the busy
wharf was the Cap’n’s quarter-deck. He was, let it be confessed, no
ancient deep-sea mariner, although he had all the marks of the
ocean-going skipper—leathery, crinkled face, with crow’s-feet at the
corners of his twinkling eyes, skin tanned deeply from long exposure
to the salt sea air, a fringe of yellowish-white whiskers, and a deep
growl of a voice. True it is that he had been a captain, but captain
only of a center-board sail-boat in which, before he had given up the
precarious life, he had taken out pleasure parties for a day’s fishing
—including chowder—or for a run around the Head. But everybody
didn’t know that, more especially the “summer folks,” and among
the latter he held the reputation for being not only the most
dependable weather-prophet along the coast but a perfect example
of the old-time ship’s captain, with experience gathered from Iceland
to Fiji, from Seattle to Siam. And many a good yarn Cap’n Crumbie
could spin, too, of his adventures in far-off climes. Indeed, he had
related some of them so frequently that he had long since grown to
believe them!
Jack had spent all of his sixteen years in Greenport and so knew
the Cap’n for what he was, a kind-hearted, eccentric, and amusing
old character.
“But,” he said, suppressing a smile, “if Bob does come back he’s
pretty sure to have a tremendous catch. The mackerel are in and the
water’s boiling with them, they say.”
“Maybe, maybe,” blustered the Cap’n; “but what good’s a load o’
mackerel to a drowned man? Terrible bad weather it was yesterday.
Don’t know when I’ve seen such a snorter. Guess the last one was
three years ago, the time your father was robbed.”
“I remember,” replied Jack. “There was a fierce gale that night,
wasn’t there? Poor Dad was wet through when they brought him
home. He’s never talked much about the robbery, Cap’n, and I never
really understood just what happened that night. But I do know that
poor Dad’s never been quite the same since.”
“And no wonder,” answered the Cap’n. “He was hard hit, Jack.
More’n a thousand dollars went, as near as I recall.”
“Twelve hundred and forty. I asked him once and he told me, but
he said I wasn’t to talk about it again.”
“Well, by gravy, ’twas a shame, anyway!” said the Cap’n,
emphatically, with a belligerent glance at Barker’s wharf across the
slip.
“Wasn’t it queer that they never caught any one!” Jack observed.
“That’s what Simon Barker always said,” replied the Cap’n, dryly,
“but when he says that, he’s trying to suggest that Samuel Holden
knows more about the affair than he cares to tell.”
Jack flushed slightly, and threw his shoulders back.
“I had forgotten that,” he said quietly. “I remember, though, that it
was you who found Dad. You didn’t see anybody about, of course?”
Cap’n Crumbie shook his head.
“And I don’t know as they mightn’t have suspected me, if it hadn’t
so happened that the new Baptist parson was with me, and they had
to take his word.”
“Well, what’s your theory of it, Cap’n?” Jack asked.
Cap’n Crumbie paused in his sentry-go to stuff shreds of tobacco
into the much blackened bowl of his old brier pipe and then, with
deftness born of practice extending over many years on the exposed
wharf, struck a match, cupped it in both hands under the lee of a
broad shoulder turned away from the breeze, and puffed
contentedly for a moment.
“Well, if I don’t know what happened that night, there ain’t no one
as does,” he said at length, with a slightly judicial air. He had told the
story a good many times, not because there was anything specially
stirring about it, but because he was directly concerned and because
it happened to be the nearest approach to an adventure ever
happening to him in all his three score years—if one excepted the
time when he fell overboard from his sail-boat and, after a few
thrilling seconds, was ignominiously pulled back to safety by one of
his passengers, who passed a boat-hook through his trousers. “Your
father and Simon Barker were partners, as you know, as fish-
merchants. ’Twas a pity Samuel Holden ever joined up with a feller
like Barker, because nobody ever did any good harnessed to a mean
cuss like that. They started in a small way, with one schooner, the
Grace and Ella. There she is, now, lying up against Barker’s wharf.
And many a thousand-dollars’ worth of fish has been landed from
over her side since then. At the time I’m speaking of, she’d come in
with a big haul, that fetched high prices. A day or two after that the
gale sprang up. And it was a storm. Never since I was in the Indian
Ocean—umph—er—er—”
Cap’n Crumbie coughed discreetly, remembering that his audience
was “home folks,” and then resumed quite without embarrassment:
“Well, as I was saying, it was a gale that fair knocked Greenport
galley-endwise. It started all of a sudden, raining cats and dogs, and
the wind was so strong you couldn’t stand up. We lost two of our
best fishing-vessels that day; windows were blown in and roofs
ripped off; and a bunch o’ little sail-boats lying at their moorings
were blown clean out to sea. Some of ’em never were found again.
One or two got smashed up on the rocks. One of ’em went ’way up
’round Indian Head, drifted up the tide way o’ the Sangus River, and
lodged on the sand-dunes there. Then the sea piled the sand up,
changed the course o’ the river, and she’s been left high and dry
ever since.”
“You mean the old Sea-Lark?” put in Jack.
The watchman nodded.
“I know where she is,” observed the boy. “I’ve climbed aboard her
several times. She’s lying a couple of hundred yards from the river
now.”
“Well,” Cap’n Crumbie went on, “that night, just when the gale
was starting, your father left the office with the money he’d drawn
from the bank to pay off the crew of the Grace and Ella. It was in a
canvas bag, notes and silver together, and he didn’t like leaving it at
the office all night. I was coming down High Street, when I met the
parson, and we walked along together a ways. It was hard going
and all-fired dark, when we turned down Wharf Street and fell right
over your father. He was lying all in a heap on the sidewalk. I didn’t
know it was him at first, mind you, because it was so dark. Parson
and me tried to get him onto his feet, but he was all limp, like a wet
string, and so we carried him into Simmons’s house, and there we
saw who it was. When he recovered a bit he told us he’d been
robbed. He had no idea who’d done it. All he knew was that he was
hurrying along, with his head bent down, when some one laid hold
of him. Then he got a smashing blow on the head, and didn’t know
anything more until he came to in Simmons’s kitchen.”
“And the police never found any clue?” Jack asked.
“Not as I ever heard of. But Simon Barker went nearly crazy. You’d
have thought, by the way he fussed, that Sam Holden was the
biggest criminal unhung. Barker lost his head. He’s that mean he
hates to see a mosquito walking on his wall-paper ’cause it’s wearing
out the paper. You’d have thought it was him that had been half
killed instead of Sam Holden. He swore ’twas a put-up job, and that
your father had done it himself somehow, to get away with the
money. And mighty unpopular he made himself by saying such
things. Some of us told him what we thought o’ him, next day, and
then he began to calm down a bit, but by that time the thief had
covered up his tracks, and nobody has ever heard any explanation o’
what happened, from that day to this. It cost your father his
partnership in the business, ’cause he had too much pride to go on
working with a man who had as good as called him a thief, and he
sold his home to replace the money that was stolen. I did hear that
Simon Barker came near dropping dead when your dad handed it to
him. You see, if things had been t’other way round, Barker couldn’t
have brought himself to do such a thing in a month o’ Sundays, and
so he couldn’t understand any one else doing it. Your father wasn’t
obliged to pay the money to Barker, o’ course. If a thing gets stole,
it’s stole, and that’s all there is to it. But your father wanted to clear
his name. And he did, don’t you ever doubt it, Jack! Maybe Barker
still has a sneaking notion that it was a put-up job, but if he does I
can’t see how he figures your father made anything by it!”
“How can he?” protested Jack.
Cap’n Crumbie shook his head, and cast a glance in the direction
of the tug Simon P. Barker, which was being coaled noisily at its
owner’s wharf thirty yards away.
“I ain’t no Shylock Holmes, son,” he said. “Maybe he thinks what
he says, and maybe he says what he don’t think. I shouldn’t faint
right now if some one told me here and now that Barker knew more
than your father did about the robbery.”
“You don’t mean—”
“No, Jack, no. I ain’t saying Barker had anything to do with it,
because, to give him his due, he wasn’t never convicted o’ theft. I
b’lieve he’s honest, and if he is, it’s only because he’s too mean to
give his time to the Government, in prison.”
 The conversation was interrupted by the approach of a stranger,
who, after looking across the harbor, addressed the watchman.
“Pardon me,” he said, “but will you tell me where I can find the
ferry to East Greenport?”
“There ain’t no ferry, and there ain’t never been one,” replied the
watchman, “though ’tain’t for the want o’ customers. Sometimes in
the summer I’ve been asked that same question a dozen times a
day.”
“How can I get over there?” the stranger asked, looking dubiously
at the intervening mile of water. “There is no trolley and it is rather a
long way to walk with this grip.”
“A little ways round that corner,” replied the watchman, pointing
off the wharf, “you’ll find Hinkley’s stable, and you’ll get a carriage
there.”
Cap’n Crumbie watched the man speculatively until he had
disappeared, but Jack was looking out at the stretch of water
between the wharf and the distant hotel, with a puzzled expression.
“I say, Cap’n,” he said a few moments later, “did you mean it when
you said lots of people want to be ferried across to the Point during
the summer?”
“Why, yes, son,” replied the watchman. “You never heard me say
anything that wasn’t the truth, did you?”
Jack smiled and almost made some reference to the Indian
Ocean; but other thoughts were buzzing at the back of his brain.
“Why hasn’t anybody ever started a ferry, then, if there’s need of
one?” he asked.
Cap’n Crumbie put his head on one side and looked down at the
ocean.
“Ever swallow sea-water, Jack?” he asked.
“When I was swimming, many a time.”
 “What does it taste of?”
“Salt, of course.”
“Salt is right. But there’s all manner o’ things in it besides salt—
even gold, I’ve heard say. It’s there, for the taking, and no danger o’
the ocean running dry. Well, did you ever hear o’ any one in
Greenport starting to take salt or gold out o’ the sea. No. O’ course
you didn’t. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. But I reckon it’s about
the same reason why nobody ever started to run a ferry across to
the Point from here. Either they didn’t think of it, or it’s too much
trouble.”
“When the summer cottagers come back and the hotel opens, I
guess there would be plenty of business,” Jack mused. “You’d think
the hotel alone would make it pay.”
“Probably ’twould,” the Cap’n agreed.
“I’m sure of it,” said Jack, thoughtfully; and then, as his eyes fell
on something away out to sea, beyond the breakwater, he
suppressed an exclamation and glanced amusedly at Cap’n Crumbie,
who was engaged in a contest with his obstinate pipe.
“Too bad about Bob Sennet!” the boy said. “You think the Ellen E.
Hanks must have foundered with all hands, don’t you?”
“Aye, with all hands,” declared Cap’n Crumbie, wagging his head.
“Fathoms deep, they must be now, floating around among the fish
they went after. I’m not denying they’d ha’ made a big haul o’
mackerel, and they’d ha’ had the market all to themselves. But
there, obstinate folks have to pay for their obstinacy sooner or later!
I warned Bob, but ’twas no use.”
“There’s a boat coming in now,” said the boy, pointing to the craft,
which, with all sail set, was rounding the end of the breakwater, her
hatches evidently full, for her hull was low. “If she isn’t the Ellen E.
Hanks she’s awfully like her.”
Cap’n Crumbie shot a glance over the harbor, and a look of
mingled surprise and chagrin crossed his rugged face.
 “Humph!” he said finally. “Some folks are like Jeff Trefry’s old tom-
cat for luck. Jeff tied the cat up in a sack and dropped him off the
wharf and afore he’d more than turned around that cat comes
marchin’ into the kitchen with a flounder in his mouth!”
 CHAPTER II
GEORGE SIGNS ON

A few minutes later Jack left the watchman, and made his way
through town toward the cottage in which he lived. And as he
went, his mind busied itself with the idea of the ferry suggested by
Cap’n Crumbie.
Jack Holden was as care-free as any boy of his age in Greenport.
For him, life so far had contained little but healthy sport and
amusement, and the question of earning money had never
concerned him. Nor was it the wish of his father that it should. Yet,
despite his natural light-heartedness, Jack had a level head. The
time would come, and before very long, when he must face the
problem of winning a place for himself in the world. It had been
decided that, if it could be arranged, he was to spend another two
years at High School, after which he would seek a position. But two
years is a long time, and Jack was by no means certain that he
would not have to turn out and become a wage-earner long before
his education was completed. For his father was now a very different
man from the old Samuel Holden. Since the robbery, troubles had
piled themselves on his shoulders somewhat seriously. First had
come the loss of Jack’s mother, from which Mr. Holden had never
really recovered. Then had followed that blow on the head inflicted
by the thief, which had necessitated numerous visits to a costly eye
specialist, in order to preserve his sight. Finally, with his business
taken away from under his feet, he had been in financial straits ever
since. After selling his home to make good the missing money, he
had taken a small cottage on the outskirts of Greenport and gone to
work as a bookkeeper for Garnett and Sayer, the fish-packers. Had
his wife lived, with her indomitable spirit and unending courage—
characteristics which, fortunately, she had bestowed upon her son—
she would have buoyed him up and kept alive his old ambition. But
now his worries told on him, and it was that fact which caused Jack
to wonder sometimes whether his own education would ever be
completed as he would like it to be.
If, he reflected, as he walked home, he could only start that ferry
and so bring a little grist to the mill, it would at least help to relieve
his father of some of his anxiety. But one cannot make bricks
without straw. And he was face to face with the cold fact that he had
no boat, nor any chance of acquiring one. At home, he looked over
his sum total of worldly possessions. There was four dollars and
twenty cents in the savings-bank. He had a nickel and two dimes in
his pocket. Also, he owned a silver watch, of little value, as most of
its works were missing. There was a penknife, which he had bought
after much careful deliberation, and there was—well, little else save
rubbish, worth nothing when it came to a question of raising enough
money to buy a boat suitable for Holden’s Ferry.
“Holden’s Ferry!” Jack repeated aloud, smiling a little at the sound.
The name had an agreeable ring to it. It would be fun. And at the
same time it might be fairly profitable fun.
In the evening, when his father returned, Jack immediately
introduced the subject uppermost in his thoughts.
“Dad,” he began impulsively, “how can I get a boat, twenty feet
long, or something like that—one that will hold ten or a dozen
people and won’t leak more than about ten buckets of water an
hour.”
“Eh? What’s that?” asked Mr. Holden, in surprise.
“I’ve got an idea, and I want a boat, Dad,” replied Jack. “I thought
—perhaps—somehow—”
“I wish I could buy you one, my lad,” said Mr. Holden, a trifle
dejectedly, “but you’ll have to wait till my ship comes in.”
“I don’t want it for pleasure—not altogether, that is,” the boy
declared.
 “Not for pleasure? Then what on earth— Are you thinking of
setting up in the shipping business?”
Jack chuckled.
“I may do a little freight-carrying,” he said with mock seriousness,
“but the passenger trade is what I was thinking of chiefly.”
“Modest youth! You’ll want to go into steam for that, though,” said
Mr. Holden, jokingly. “It is a pretty tall proposition for a youngster of
your age. Have you fixed on just what ports you are going to trade
at?”
“Only Greenport, Dad. But I’m in earnest.”
Still slightly amused, Mr. Holden stroked his chin and eyed his son
inquiringly.
“Well, what is this wonderful scheme of yours?” he asked.
“I want to run a ferry between Garnett and Sayer’s wharf and the
hotel landing on the Point,” the boy replied. “There is no way of
getting across except by hiring a boat or walking around, or taking a
carriage; and plenty of people would pay a dime to be run across
there in a ferry-boat.”
“Yes, but—”
“Wait a minute, Dad. I’ve had this in my mind all the afternoon.
Cap’n Crumbie tells me there are lots of people who inquire for the
ferry in the summer. He says there never has been one, but that is
no reason why there shouldn’t be one now. Perhaps I wouldn’t make
lots of money at it, but I’m old enough to help you a bit, and I don’t
want to loaf all through vacation, because I know you’ve had worry
enough and that you’re going to have a tough time keeping me in
school until I finish.”
“Well?” observed Samuel Holden, rather vaguely.
“I was wondering,” continued the boy, “whether you could manage
somehow to buy me the sort of boat I’d need. Almost anything
would do that was half-way decent—and clean, too, because
summer folk wouldn’t want to get into her if she wasn’t.”
Mr. Holden shook his head slowly. “I dare say it might work out all
right, Jack,” he said, “and a little more money would come in very
handy, but you’d better get the notion out of your head, son, before
you waste any more time thinking about it. I couldn’t afford to buy
you even a dory, and it’s about six times too far across the water at
that point to row, anyway.”
“All right, Dad,” said Jack, quietly. He realized that there was no
use in asking his father to perform impossibilities. Later in the
evening Mr. Holden noted an expression of quiet determination in
the lad’s face such as he had so often seen in Mrs. Holden’s when,
things not going well, her resourceful brain and stout heart had set
themselves the task of getting affairs back in order.
The next day was Saturday, and shortly after breakfast, there
being no school, Jack and his chum, George Santo, started off on a
hike toward the sand-dunes and salt-flats which lay for miles to the
north of Greenport. This region the boys had made their playground
ever since they were old enough to go about together. It was on the
bold summit of Indian Head, a rocky barrier which for centuries had
kept the encroaching sea at bay, that they had built their first
wigwam out of driftwood, and stood, at the mature ages of nine and
ten respectively, adorned with feathers and armed with spears,
guarding their hunting-grounds from the hated palefaces who never
seemed to approach much nearer than Greenport. From there they
let their eyes wander in imagination over vast herds of buffalo,
moose and antelope grazing peacefully on a far-stretching prairie. At
times, as the hated palefaces all seemed to be fully occupied
elsewhere, phantom palefaces had to blunder upon their hunting-
grounds, and these intruders were hastily despatched or led captive
to the driftwood wigwam, there to be held as hostages. There were
terrific battles up on Indian Head, but somehow or other, whatever
the overwhelming odds with which they were faced, the two lone
braves invariably came out from the encounters unscathed. But the
wigwam was now scattered to the four winds of heaven. The boys
had grown too old for that sort of make-believe; yet their love for
the region of dunes and marsh endured.
On this particular morning they headed over toward the salt-flats
above Cow Creek, and then followed the course of the Sangus River
toward the sea. They must have trudged half a dozen miles by this
circuitous route before Jack, standing on the rippled summit of a
wind-swept dune, drew his companion’s attention to the fact that
the Sangus had changed its sandy course.
“It must have been caused by the flood and the last gale,” he said.
“See, the water has come right across this low bit and—and—say,
George, the old sloop, the Sea-Lark, was lying nearly buried just
along here. I shouldn’t wonder if the river has swept her away now.
Come on, let’s see how the old dear is.”
Ten minutes’ tramping brought them to the place, and each gave
a cry of joy when they saw that the sloop lay exactly as she had lain
for three years. But she had escaped the effects of the recent gale
by a narrow margin only, for the Sangus had swirled over its banks,
eating its way through the sand to a new course, until it now flowed
within twenty feet of the Sea-Lark.
The boys climbed aboard the derelict, and with their legs dangling
over the side, with healthy appetites attacked a parcel of
sandwiches.
“I’m glad she’s still here,” said Jack. “Do you remember when I
was a pirate king last summer and made you walk the plank? We’ve
had lots of fun on this sloop. If she’d been lying a mile or so nearer
Greenport, crowds of kids would have been swarming all over her
and she’d have been broken up.”
George nodded, and poked the last of the sandwiches into his
mouth.
“Talking of boats,” Jack went on, “where do you suppose I could
get one, George?”
 “What do you want her for? There’s my dory. You can have that
any time you want.”
“Thanks, George,” Jack replied. “But a dory isn’t just what I do
want.”
Then he explained.
“I don’t know. I guess a boat like that, one you could use for a
ferry, would cost money,” declared the other, when Jack had
finished.
“I thought maybe, your father being a boat-builder, you might
know of some way I could manage it,” said Jack. “There’s plenty of
time, because it’s early in the season yet, and maybe I’ll find what I
want somewhere.”
“If you do start the ferry I want to help. May I?” asked George.
“Why not?”
“You’ll be skipper and I’ll be mate,” said George, laughing.
“You mustn’t laugh at the captain—that is, not after you’re
properly appointed mate—” said Jack, “or I’ll order you put in irons.
That’s what they always do. Yes, laugh now, if you like, but wait till
I’m your captain. But why wait? See here, George Santo, weren’t
you making an application to me for a job just now?”
“Yes, sir,” replied George, meekly touching his cap.
“How old are you?” This, brusquely, as befitting a fearsome master
mariner.
“Fifteen, sir.”
“Umph! Pretty young for my class of trade. What’s your rating?”
“Chief mate, sir.”
“Got your certificate?”
“I left it at home, sir.”