And this salt-water Achilles burns the lamp rill all hours that night, nor being able to sleep, over his book of the Trojan war. And he plays not only Achilles' part, but Agamemnon's, Ajax's, and Menelaus'. He strews lien Boody all over the map.
For the next ten days, though, Achilles has to go back to the bayfields. He rakes scatterings and uncovers two nests of field mice and carries the blind things home in his pockets and feets them milk with his mother's medicine dropper until they catch cold and die.
Between windrows Peter sets his eel pots. They are big wicker bottles with pinched-in bottoms and stoppers of wood, woven by an old Indian of the coast who is a friend of the family. Peter crushes up horseshoe crabs for bail, stoppers them up, and sets them on their sides in the bay's channel. The cels creep in through the hole in the tunneled bottom and gorge themselves on the spawn of the crabs, just as they did for a thousand years for the Indians, and Peter conies along in his skiff, pulls out the traps, and unstopples them, and the yellow-bellied beauties pour out around his feet. Uncle Timothy gets out his jackknife and smacks his lips. It is fried eels for supper.
Peter turns a hundred grindstones for Uncle Timothy, till his mind goes round and round. He dogs his uncle trimming up with his scythe, till at last his hour of glory comes. Uncle Timothy sits down by the wall to smoke and lets Peter use his scythe. The boy runs it into the ground, nicks it on the stone wall, nearly takes off his own legs, but he gets the trick of it at last. Just then Uncle Timothy fetches a roar and leaves the scene. He has discovered he is sitting on a hornet's nest. Over the hill he goes. Peter drops his scythe and runs to see where. And Uncle Timothy disappears into the broad Atlantic to get rid of the yellow jackets.
In the midst of lightning and new rollings of thunder, the last load of hay rumbles barnwards to fill the barn to the hand-hewn rafters. And on top of the rack Peter's father has put the spray of wild roses which always comes in on the last load, for good luck against lightning and good luck to all the fourfooted creatures that will feed on the hay all winter long.
From hay to corn. Peter gets so hot hoeing the corn, he sheds his overalls at each row's end and buries his burning in high water.
There are so many kinds of work to run back and forth to in these brief summer days, which the seagoing farm of the north depends on for its food, that Peter forgets all about love. Not once docs he have time to mount the hill back of the kitchen and look north-wards or stand there at night among the songs of thrushes and sigh his soul away in that direction under the low summer dipper. Peter falls asleep at night with his clothes on, and his father has to peel his overalls off him like the azure skin off an eel. He carries him like lead to his bed. The father laughs to see his handsome sons sound asleep there. The windrowed brothers lie like four brief Adams before the Fall with not a stitch of clothes on their copper bodies, and their Indianed toes turn this way and that in their sleep, trying to locate a breeze in the hot room. This is the best crop of this seaward farm, and the father closes the door on his naked wealth with a smile.
While Peter is resting, Uncle Timothy makes him dig him a peck of young quahaugs, and he shells them out and eats them, tossing every fifth one to Peter.
July's book is the Arabian Nigbts. It is Father's huge unexpurgated edition, and Peter reads it up in the pasture, keeping one eye on the bull that pushes down the bean patch fence if no boy is around to watch him, and one eye on the jinn in the book.
And smack into the midst of the harvest days in the busiest peak of the year comes Aunt Esther, the city flower, for her month of rusticating in the green peace of a seaside farm.
This aunt has no uncle in tow. She had a husband once, but she lost him in a railroad wreck. It was just as well she lost him, vows sweating Uncle Timothy, for he would have been hard on her complexion. Aunt lather's complexion is her chiefest treasure. She uses up all the sour milk in the cellar each night on her face, and goes to her bed looking like a ghost. She wears a veil when she picks a mess of green beans and a hat when she cuts beet greens. She wakes Uncle Timothy up going out for morning dew to wash her cheeks in. She wears gloves when she snaps beans or picks over the peas.
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