Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
Captain Candage's gaze shifted. He was a coaster and he was naturally
cautious, as Apple-treers are obliged to be. He knew perfectly well that
he was in the presence of a man who knew! He had not the assurance to
dispute that man, though his general grudge against all the world at
that moment prompted him.
“I got out because they drove me out,” he growled.
“A man can't afford to be childish when he is in command of a vessel,
sir. You are too old a skipper to deny that.”
“I was so mad I didn't stop to smell weather,” admitted the master,
bracing himself to meet a fresh list of the heeling _Polly_. He
evidently felt that he ought to defend his own sagacity and absolve
himself from mariner's culpability.
“Very well! Let it go at that! But what are you going to do?”
“I can't beat back to Saturday Cove against this wind--not now! She
would rack her blamed old butts out.”
“Then run her for Lumbo Reach. You can quarter a following sea. She
ought to ride fairly easy.”
“That's a narrow stab in a night as black as this one is.”
“I'll make a cross-bearing for you. Where's your chart?” Mayo exhibited
a sailor's alert anxiety to be helpful.
“I 'ain't ever needed a chart--not for this coast.”
“Then I'll have to guess at it, sir.” He closed his eyes in order to
concentrate. “You gave a course of sou'west by sou'. Let's see--it was
nine-fifteen when I just looked and we must have logged--”
“It ain't no use to stab for such a hole in the wall as Lumbo Reach,”
declared Candage in discouraged tones.
“But you've got your compass and I can--”
“There ain't no depending on my compass within two points and a half.”
“Confound it, I can make allowance, sir, if you'll tell me your
deviation!”
“But it's a card compass and spins so bad in a seaway there ain't no
telling, anyway. In my coasting I haven't had to be particular.”
“Not as long as you had an apple-tree in sight,” jeered Mayo, beginning
to lose his temper.
“I don't dare to run in the direction of anything that is solid--we'll
hit it sure, 'n' hell-fire will toast corn bread. We've got to stay to
sea!”
Captain Mayo set his teeth and clenched his fists and took a few turns
up and down the cabin. He looked up into the night through the open
hatch of the companion-way. The pale glimmer of the swinging lamp tossed
a mild flare against the blackness and lighted two faces which were
limned against that pall. Both Oakum Otie and Smut-nosed Dolph were at
the wheel. Their united strength was needed because the schooner was
yawing madly every now and then when the mightier surges of the frothing
sea hoisted her counter, chasing behind her like wild horses. Those
faces, when Mayo looked on them, were very solemn. The two were
crouching like men who were anxious to hide from a savage beast. They
grunted as they struggled with the wheel, trying to hold her up when the
_Polly_ tobogganed with rushes that were almost breath-checking.
Mayo hastened to the girl. “I must have my coat, Miss Candage. I thank
you. It will do now.”
She held it open for his arms, as a maid might aid her knight with his
armor. “Are we in danger?” she asked, tremulously.
“I hope not--only it is uncomfortable--and needless,” he said, with some
irritation.
“Must I stay down here--alone?”
“I would! It's only a summer blow, Miss Candage. I'm sure we'll be all
right.”
Captain Candage had gone on deck, rattling away in his stiff oilskins.
Mayo followed, but the master came down a few steps into the
companionway and intercepted the volunteer, showing a final smolder of
his surliness.
“I want to notify you that I can run my own bo't, sir!”
“Yes, run it with a yeast barometer, a straw bottom, a pinwheel compass,
and your general cussedness of disposition,” shouted Mayo into the whirl
of the wind, his anxiety whetting his much-tried temper.
“If you're feeling that way, I don't want you up here.”
“I'm feeling worse than you'll ever understand, you stubborn old fool!”
“I let one man call me a fool to-day and I didn't make back talk--but I
know where to draw the line,” warned Candage.
“Look here, I propose to start in with you right now, sir, on a basis
you'll understand! I say you're a fool and need a guardian--and from now
on I'm going to make my bigness aboard here! Get out of my way!”
Captain Mayo then emphasized his opinion of Captain Candage by elbowing
the master to one side and leaping out on deck.
“That may be mutiny,” stated Mr. Speed through set teeth, checking the
startled exclamation from his helper at the wheel. “But, by the Judas
I-scarrot, it's a Mayo that's doing it! Remember that, Dolph!”
VIII ~ LIKE BUGS UNDER A THIMBLE
Up comes the skipper from down below,
And he looks aloft and he looks alow.
And he looks alow and he looks aloft,
And it's, “Coil up your ropes, there, fore and aft.”
With a big Bow-wow!
Tow-row-row!
Fal de rai de, ri do day!
--Boston Shanty.
Captain Mayo strode straight to the men at the wheel. “Give me those
spokes!” he commanded. “I'll take her! Get in your washing, boys!”
“Ay, ay, sir!” assented Mr. Speed, giving the resisting Dolph a violent
shove.
When Captain Candage began to curse, Captain Mayo showed that he had a
voice and vocabulary of his own. He fairly roared down the master of the
_Polly_.
“Now shut up!” he ordered the dumfounded skipper, who faced him, mouth
agape. “This is no time for any more foolishness. It's a case of work
together to save our lives. Down with 'em, boys!”
“That's right,” declared the mate. “She don't need much of anything on
her except a double-reefed mitten with the thumb brailed up.”
The wind had not attained the velocity of a gale, but it did have an
ugly growl which suggested further violence. Mayo braced himself, ready
to bring the schooner about in order to give the crew an opportunity to
shorten sail.
Captain Candage, deposed as autocrat for the moment, seemed to be
uncertain as to his duties.
Mayo, understanding mariner nature, felt some contrition and was
prompted by saner second thought.
“You'd better take the wheel, Captain Candage. You know her tricks
better than I do in a seaway. I'll help the boys take in sail.”
The master obeyed with alacrity. He seemed to be cowed. Anger no longer
blinded him to their predicament.
“Just say what you want done, and I'll try to do it,” he told Mayo, in
a voice which had become suddenly mild and rather beseeching. Then he
called to his daughter, who had come to the foot of the companion steps,
“Better blow out that cabin light, Polly girl! She's li'ble to dance
bad, and we don't want to run the chance of fire.”
Mayo got a glimpse at her face as he hurried upon the house on his way
to the main halyards. Her face was pale, but there was the firm spirit
of her Yankee ancestry of the sea in her poise and in her very silence
in that crisis. She obeyed without complaint or question and the cabin
was dark; even the glimmer of the light had held something of cheer. Now
the gloom was somber and depressing.
The schooner came round with a sort of scared hurry when the master
threw the wheel hard over and trod on the spokes with all his weight. As
soon as the bellying mainsail began to flap, the three men let it go on
the run. They kept up the jumbo sail, as the main jib is called; they
reefed the foresail down to its smallest compass.
Mayo, young, nimble, and eager, singly knotted more reef points
than both his helpers together, and his crisp commands were obeyed
unquestioningly.
“He sartinly is chain lightning in pants,” confided Dolph to Otie.
“He knows his card,” said Otie to Dolph.
Captain Mayo led the way aft, crawling over the shingles and laths.
“I hope it's your judgment, sir, that we'd better keep her into the wind
as she is and try to ride this thing out,” he suggested to the master.
“It is my judgment, sir,” returned Captain Candage, with official
gravity.
Hove to, the old _Polly_ rode in fairly comfortable style. She was deep
with her load of lumber, but the lumber made her buoyant and she
lifted easily. Her breadth of beam helped to steady her in the sweeping
seas--but Captain Mayo clung to a mainstay and faced the wind and
the driving rain and knew that the open Atlantic was no place for the
_Polly_ on a night like that.
Spume from the crested breakers at her wallowing bow salted the rain on
his dripping face. It was an unseasonable tempest, scarcely to be looked
for at that time of year. But he had had frequent experience with the
vagaries of easterlies, and he knew that a summer easterly, when it
comes, holds menacing possibilities.
“They knowed how to build schooners when your old sirs built this one at
Mayoport,” declared Captain Candage, trying to put a conciliatory tone
into his voice when he bellowed against the blast. “She'll live where
one of these fancy yachts of twice her size would be smothered.”
Mayo did not answer. He leaped upon the house and helped Dolph and Otie
furl the mainsail that lay sprawled in the lazy-jaeks. They took their
time; the more imminent danger seemed to be over.
“I never knowed a summer blow to amount to much,” observed Mr. Speed,
trying to perk up, though he was hanging on by both hands to avoid bring
blown off the slippery house.
“It depends on whether there's an extra special squall knotted into it
somewhere to windward,” said Mayo, in a lull of the wind. “Then it can
amount to a devil of a lot, Mr. Speed!”
The schooner washed her nose in a curving billow that came inboard
and swept aft. With her small area of exposed sail and with the wind
buffeting her, she had halted and paid off, lacking steerageway. She got
several wallops of the same sort before she had gathered herself enough
to head into the wind.
Again she paid off, as if trying to avoid a volleying gust, and another
wave crested itself ahead of the blunt bows and then seemed to explode,
dropping tons of water on deck. Laths, lumber, and bunches of shingles
were ripped loose and went into the sea. The _Polly_ appeared to be
showing sagacity of her own in that crisis; she was jettisoning cargo
for her own salvation.
“Good Cephas! this is going to lose us our decklo'd,” wailed the master.
“We'd better let her run!” “Don't you do it, sir! You'll never get her
about!” Mayo had given over his work on the sail and was listening.
Above the scream of the passing gusts which assailed him he was hearing
a dull and solemn roar to windward. He suspected what that sound
indicated. He had heard it before in his experience. He tried to
peer into the driving storm, dragging the rain from his eyes with his
fingers. Then nature held a torch for him. A vivid shaft of lightning
crinkled overhead and spread a broad flare of illumination across the
sea. His suspicions, which had been stirred by that sullen roar, were
now verified. He saw a low wall of white water, rolling and frothing. It
was a summer “spitter” trampling the waves.
A spitter is a freak in a regular tempest--a midsummer madness of
weather upheaval. It is a thunderbolt of wind, a concentration of gale,
a whirling dervish of disaster--wind compactly bunched into one almighty
blast--wind enough to last a regular gale for a whole day if the stock
were spent thriftily.
“Don't ease her an inch!” screamed Mayo.
But just then another surging sea climbed aboard and picked up more of
the laths and more of the shingles, and frolicked away into the night
with the plunder. Captain Candage's sense of thrift got a more vital jab
than did his sense of fear. His eyes were on his wheel, and he had not
seen the wall of white spume.
“That decklo'd has got to be lashed,” he muttered. He decided to run