Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
“I'm afraid you said it then, Thompson! American bottoms seem to be
turned into barnacle-gardens,” declared the man who had questioned the
matter of Tucker's value.
“Gentlemen, just a moment!” Julius Marston leaned forward in his
chair. His voice was low. His eyes narrowed. He dominated them by his
earnestness. “You have followed me in a number of enterprises, and we
have had good luck. But let me tell you that we have ahead of us the
biggest thing yet, and we cannot afford to leave one loose end! Not
one, gentlemen! That's why a fool like Tucker doesn't deserve any
consideration when he gets in our way. Listen to me! The biggest thing
that has ever happened in this world is going to happen. How do I know?
I am not sure that I do know. But as I have just told you, the man who
guesses right is the winner.” His thin nose was wrinkled, and the strip
of beard on his chin bristled. Sometimes men called Marston “the fox of
Wall Street.” He suggested the reason for his nickname as he sat there
and squinted at his associates. “And there's an instinct that helps some
men to guess right. Something is going to happen in this world before
long that will make millionaires over and over out of men who have
invested a few thousands in American bottoms.”
“What will happen?” bluntly inquired one of the men, after a silence.
“I am neither clairvoyant nor crystal-gazer,” said Marston, grimly. “But
I have led you into some good things when my instinct has whispered. I
say it's going to happen--and I say no more.”
“To make American bottoms worth while the whole of Europe will have to
be busy doing something else with their ships.”
“All right! Then they'll be doing it,” returned Marston.
“It would have to be a war--a big war.”
“Very well! Maybe that's the answer.”
“But there never can be another big war. As a financier you know it.”
“I have made some money by adhering to the hard and fast rules of
finance. But I have made the most of my money by turning my back on
those rules and listening to my instinct,” was Marston's rejoinder. “I
don't want to over-influence you, gentlemen. I don't care to discuss any
further what you may consider to be dreams. I am not predicting a great
war in Europe. Common sense argues the other way. But I am going into
this ship-merger proposition with every ounce of brains and energy and
capital I possess. The man who gets in my way is trying to keep these
two hands of mine off millions!” He shook his clutched fists above
his head. “And I'll walk over him, by the gods! whether it's Tucker
or anybody else. We have had some good talks on the subject, first
and last. I'm starting now to fight and smash opposition. What do you
propose to do in the matter, gentlemen?”
They were silent for a time, looking at one another, querying without
words. Then out of their knowledge of Julius Marston's uncanny
abilities, remembering their past successes, came resolve.
“We're in with you to the last dollar,” they assured him, one after the
other.
“Very well! You're wise!”
He unlocked a drawer of his desk and secured a code-book. He pressed a
buzzer and the secretary came hurrying from his stateroom.
“We'll open action, gentlemen, with a little long-distance skirmish over
the wire.”
He began to dictate his telegrams.
VI ~ AND WE SAILED
O Johnny's gone to Baltimore
To dance upon that sanded floor.
O Johnny's gone for evermore;
I'll never see my John no more!
O Johnny's gone!
What shall I do?
A-way you. H-e-e l-o-o-o!
O Johnny's gone!
What shall I do?
Johnny's gone to Hilo.
--Old Hauling Song.
The taciturn secretary fumbled his way forward and delivered to Captain
Mayo a little packet securely bound with tape.
“Orders from Mr. Marston that you take these ashore, yourself. They are
important telegrams and he wants them hurried.”
The master called his men to the dinghy, and they rowed him away through
the fog. It was a touchy job, picking his way through that murk. He
stood up, leaning forward holding to his taut tiller-ropes, and more
by ears than his eyes directed his course. A few of the anchored craft,
knowing that they were in the harbor roadway, clanged their bells
lazily once in a while. Yacht tenders were making their rounds, carrying
parties who were paying and returning calls, and these boats were
avoiding each other by loud hails. Small objects loomed largely and
little sounds were accentuated.
The far voice of an unseen joker announced that he could find his way
through the fog all right, but was afraid he had not strength enough to
push his boat through it.
But Mayo knew his waters in that harbor, and found his way to the wharf.
His real difficulties confronted him at the village telegraph office.
The visiting yachtsmen had flooded the place with messages, and the
flustered young woman was in a condition nearly resembling hysteria. She
was defiantly declaring that she would not accept any more telegrams.
Instead of setting at work upon those already filed she was spending her
time explaining her limitations to later arrivals.
Captain Mayo stood at one side and looked on for a few moments. A gentle
nudge on his elbow called his attention to an elderly man with stringy
whiskers, who thus solicited his notice. The man held a folded paper
gingerly by one corner, exhibiting profound respect for his minute
burden.
“You ain't one of these yachting dudes--you're a skipper, ain't you?”
asked the man.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, I can talk to you, as one officer to another--and glad to
meet one of my own breed. I'm first mate of the schooner _Polly_. Mr.
Speed is my name.”
Captain Mayo nodded.
“And I need help and advice. This is the first tele-graft I ever had in
my hands. I'd rather be aholt of an iced halyard in a no'easter! I've
been sent ashore to telegraft it, and now she says she won't stick it
onto the wire, however it is they do the blasted trick.”
Captain Mayo had already noticed that the messengers from the yachts
were killing time by teasing the flustered young woman; it was
good-humored badinage, but it was effectively blocking progress at that
end of the line.
He felt a “native's” instinctive impulse to go to the relief of the
young woman who was being baited by the merrymakers; the responsibility
of his own errand prompted him to help her clear decks. But he waited,
hoping that the yachtsmen would go about their business.
“From the _Polly_, Mr. Speed?” he inquired, amiably. “Is the Polly in
the harbor? I didn't notice her in the fog.”
“Reckon you know her, by the way you speak of her,” replied the
gratified Mr. Speed.
“I ought to, sir. She was built at Mayoport by my great-grandfather
before the Mayo yards began to turn out ships.”
“Well, I swanny! Be you a Mayo?”
The captain bowed and smiled at the enthusiasm displayed by Mr. Speed.
“By ginger! that sort of puts you right into _our_ fambly, so to speak!”
The mate surveyed him with interest and with increasing confidence. “I'm
in a mess, Cap'n Mayo, and I need advice and comfort, I reckon. I was
headed on a straight tack toward my regular duty, and all of a sudden I
found myself jibed and in stays, and I'm there now and drifting. Seeing
that your folks built the _Polly_, I consider that you're in the fambly,
and that Proverdunce put you right here to-night in this telegraft
office. Do you know Cap'n Epps Candage?”
Mayo shook his head.
“Or his girl, Polly, named for the _Polly?_”
“No, I must confess.”
“Well, it may be just as well for ye that ye don't,” said Oakum Otie,
twisting his straggly beard into a spill and blinking nervously. “There
I was, headed straight and keeping true course, and then she looked at
me and there was a tremble in her voice and tears in her eyes--and the
next thing I knowed I was here in this telegraft place with this!” He
held up the folded paper and his hand shook.
Captain Mayo did not understand, and therefore he made no remarks.
“There was a song old Ephrum Wack used to sing,” went on Mr. Speed,
getting more confidential and making sure that the other men in the room
were too much occupied to listen. “Chorus went:
“I ain't afeard of the raging sea,
Nor critters that's in it, whatever they be.
But a witch of a woman is what skeers me!
“There I've been, standing by Cap'n Epps in the whole dingdo, and she
got me one side and looked at me and says a few things with a quiver in
her voice and her eyes all wet and shiny and”--he paused and looked down
at the paper with bewilderment that was rather pitiful--“and I walked
right over all common sense and shipboard rules and discipline and
everything and came here, fetching this to be stuck on to the wire, or
whatever they do with telegrafts. But,” he added, a waver in his tones,
“she is so lord-awful pretty, I couldn't help it!”
Still did Captain Mayo refrain from comment or question.
“The question now is, had I ought to,” demanded Mr. Speed. “I'm taking
you into the fambly on my own responsibility. You're a captain, you're a
native, and I need good advice. Had I ought to?”
“I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, sir. The matter seems to be
private, and, furthermore, I don't know what you're talking about.”
“She says it's to the milliner so that the milliner will hold the job
open. But I'm suspicioning that it's roundabout to the beau that's in
love with her. That's the style of women. Cap'n Epps shanghaied her to
get her away from that fellow. Now she has got it worked around so that
she is going back. But there's a beau in it instead of a milliner. She
wouldn't be so anxious to get word to a milliner. That's my idee, and I
reckon it's yours, too.”
“I really have no ideas on the subject,” returned Captain Mayo. “But
if you have promised a young lady to send a telegram for her I would
certainly keep that promise if I were in your place.”
The next moment he regretted his rather impetuous advice, for Mr. Speed
slapped the paper against a hard palm and blurted out: “That's all I
wanted! Course and bearings from an a-number-one adviser. New, how'll I
go to work to send this thing?”
“I have been figuring on that matter for the last few minutes, myself,”
acknowledged the captain. “It's about time to have a little action in
this place.”
He was obliged to elbow his way through the group of men who surrounded
the telegraph operator. Oakum Otie followed on his heels, resolved to
study at close range the mystery of telegraphing, realizing what he
needed for his own instruction.
“These telegrams are important and they must go at ore, madam,” Mayo
informed the flustered young woman.
“I can't send them. I am bothered so much I can't do anything,” she
stammered.
“Oh, forget your business, skipper,” advised one of the party.
“It is not my business, sir.” He laid the packet of messages before the
operator on her little counter and tapped his finger on them. “They must
go,” he repeated.
“In their turn,” warned the yachtsman, showing that he resented this
intrusion. “And after the party is over!”
“I intended to confine my conversation to this young lady,” said Mayo.
He turned and faced them. “But I have been here long enough to see that
you gentlemen are interfering with the business of this office. Perhaps
your messages are not important. Mine are.”
The yachtsman was not sober nor was he judicious. “Go back to your job,
young fellow,” he advised. “You are horning in among gentlemen.”
“So am I,” squawked Mr. Speed, with weather eye out for clouds of any
sort.
Captain Mayo gave his supporter a glance of mingled astonishment and
relish. “We'd better not have any words about the matter, gentlemen,''
he suggested, mildly.