Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
his party.
“I'm the only citizen who can get away early and--as you might call
it--respectable, gents. I took my hundred and fifty and bought that
house-bo't out there.” It was an ancient scow, housed over, and
evidently had grown venerable in service as a floating fish-market.
“They can't drive me off'n the Atlantic Ocean! The others 'ain't woke
up to a reelizing sense that they have got to go and that this all means
business! I'm getting away early or else they'd all be trying to climb
aboard my bo't like the folks wanted to do to Noah's ark when they see
that the flood wasn't just a shower.” He lifted his table upon his head
and marched on, leading his flock.
All the population of the island was out of doors. The women and the
children were idling in groups; the men were listlessly following the
commissioner on his rounds. No spirit of rebelliousness was evident. The
men acted more like inquisitive sheep. They were of that abject variety
of poor whites who accept the rains from heaven and bow to the reign of
authority with the same unquestioning resignation.
But Mayo discovered promptly an especial reason for the calmness
exhibited by these men. Their slow minds had not wakened to full
comprehension.
“What do you men propose to do?” demanded Captain Mayo of a group which
had abandoned the commissioner and had strolled over to inspect the
new-comers.
“There ain't nothing we can do,” stated a spokesman.
“But don't you understand that this man is here with full power from the
state to put you off this island?”
“Oh, they have threated us before. But something has allus come up. We
haven't been driv' off.”
“But this time it's going to happen! Why don't you wake up? Where are
you going?”
“That's for somebody else to worry about. This ain't any of our picking
and choosing.”
“What's the use of trying to beat anything sensible through the shells
of them quahaugs?” snarled Captain Candage, with 'longcoast scorn for
the inefficient.
“Not much use, I'm afraid,” acknowledged the young man. “But look at the
children!”
Those pathetic waifs of Hue and Cry were huddled apart, dumb with terror
which their elders made no attempt to calm. They were ragged, pitiful,
wistful urchins; lads with pinched faces, poor little snippets of girls.
Their childish imaginations made of the affair a tragedy which they
could not understand. Under their arms they held frightened cats,
helpless kittens, or rag dolls. The callous calm of the men mystified
them; the weeping of their mothers made their miserable fear more acute.
They stared from face to face, trying to comprehend.
“What can I say to them?” asked Polly Candage, in a whisper. “It's
wicked. They are so frightened.”
“Perhaps something can be done with that agent. I'm trying to think up
something to say to him,” Mayo told her.
An old man, a very old man, sat on an upturned clamhod and yawled a
discordant miserere on a fiddle. His eyes were wide open and sightless.
A woman whose tattered skirt only partly concealed the man's trousers
and rubber boots which she wore, occasionally addressed him as “father.”
She was piling about him a few articles of furniture which she was
lugging out of their home; that house was the upper part of a schooner's
cabin--something the sea had cast up on Hue and Cry. She was obliged to
bend nearly double in order to walk about in the shelter. Dogs slinked
between the feet of their masters, canine instinct informing them that
something evil was abroad that day. The children staring wide-eyed and
white-faced, the weeping women, the cowed men who shuffled and mumbled!
Among them strode the god of the machine, curt, contemptuous, puffing
his cigar! He came past Captain Mayo and his friends.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” called the captain; “but are you sure that you
are doing this thing just right?”
“Let's see--if I remember, I had a little talk with you last night!”
suggested the agent, frostily. “Whom do you represent?” “Myself.”
“Just how do you fit into this matter?” “I don't think I do fit--there
seem to be too many sharp corners,” stated Mayo, not liking the other's
insolent manner. “Well, I fit! I have state authority.” “So you have
told me. May I ask you a question?” “Go ahead, but be lively. This is
my busy day.” “These people are being rooted up; they don't seem to know
what's to become of them. What will be done?”
“I told you last evening! Fools in an institution; able-bodied must go
to work. The state proposes--” “When you say 'state' just what do you
mean, sir?” “I mean that I have investigated this matter and I'm running
it.”
“That's what I thought! The state usually doesn't know much about what
its agents are doing.”
“You are not doubting my authority, are you?”
“No, but I'm doubting your good judgment.”
“Look here, my man!”
“We'd better not lose our tempers,” advised Mayo, calmly. “You are a
state servant, you say. Then a citizen has a right to talk to you. Let's
leave the state out of this, if you question my right. Man to man, now!
You're wrong.”
The population of the island had drawn close circle about them.
“That's enough talk from you,” declared the agent, wrathfully.
“You are trying to make over all at once what it has taken three
generations to bring about,” insisted Mayo. “You can't do it!”
“You watch me and see if I can't! When I transact any business I'm paid
to transact it gets transacted. I might have given these people a few
more days if you had not come sticking your oar in here. But now I
propose to show you! I'll have 'em off here by nightfall, and every
shack burned to the ground.”
“Do you mean to say you're going to rub it into these poor folks just
because I have tried to say something to help them?”
“I'll show you and them that it isn't safe to monkey with the state when
the state gets started.”
“Oh, the state be condemned!” exploded Mayo, feeling his own temper
getting away from him. “This isn't the state--it's a case of a man's
swelled head!”
“Get off this island, you and your meddlers,” commanded the agent.
“Yes, when we are ready to leave, sir.”
Mayo was wondering at his own obstinacy. He knew that a rather boyish
temper, resentment roused by the other man's arrogance, had considerable
to do with his stand in the matter, but underneath there was protest
at the world's injustice. He felt that he had been having personal
experience with that injustice. He knew that he had not come out to Hue
and Cry to volunteer as the champion of these unfortunates, but now
that he was there and had spoken out it was evident that he must allow
himself to be forced into the matter to some extent; the agent had
declared in the hearing of all that this interference had settled the
doom of the islanders. Polly Candage was standing close to the champion,
and she looked at him with eyes that flashed with pride in him and
spirit of her own. She reached and took one of the frightened children
by the hand.
“If I have been a little hasty in my remarks I apologize,” pleaded the
captain, anxious to repair the fault. “I don't mean to interfere with
your duty. I have no right to do so!”
“You hear what your friend says, after getting you into the mess,”
shouted the agent, so that all might hear. “Now he is getting ready to
trot away and leave you in your trouble.”
“You are wrong there, my friend. If you are angry with me, go ahead and
have your quarrel with me. Don't bang at me over the shoulders of these
poor folks. It isn't a square deal.”
“They go off to-day--and they go because you have butted into the
matter. The whole of you have got to be shown that the state doesn't
stand for meddlers after orders have been given.” Then he added, with
malice: “You folks better ride this chap down to the beach on a rail.
Whatever happens to you is his fault!”
This attempt to shift responsibility as a petty method of retaliation
stirred Mayo's anger in good earnest.
The agent was dealing with men who were scarcely more than children in
their estimates of affairs; they muttered among themselves and scowled
on this stranger who had brought their troubles to a climax.
“I'm not going to allow you to get away with that kind of talk, Mr.
Agent. You know perfectly well that people on the main will not hire
these men, even if they _are_ able-bodied. Everybody is down on them.
You said that to me last evening. They will be kicked from pillar to
post--from this town to that! They will be worse than beggars. And they
must drag these women and little children about with them. I will expose
this thing!”
“That exposure will sound fine!” sneered the commissioner. “Exposing a
state officer for doing what the Governor and Council have ordered!”
“Yes, ordered on your advice!”
“Well, it has been ordered! And I'll be backed up! As soon as I can get
to a justice I shall swear out a warrant against you for interfering
with a state officer.” He flung down the stub of his cigar. “Listen, you
people! Get off this island. Anybody who is here at sunset--man, woman,
or child--will be arrested and put in jail for trespassing on state
land. Now you'd all better give three cheers for your meddling friend,
here!”
“They have allus let us stay, even when they have threated us before
now,” whimpered a man. “He has poured the fat into the fire for us,
that's what he has done!” He pointed his finger at Mayo.
“It's wicked!” gasped the girl. “These poor folks don't know any better,
they are not responsible!”
“Say, look here, you folks!” shouted Mr. Speed, who had been holding
himself in with great difficulty. “It's about time for you to wake up!”
The plutocrat of the house-boat had come up from the beach and had been
listening. The whimpering man started to speak again, and the magnate of
the island cuffed him soundly; it was plain that this man, who had lived
in the best house, had been a personage of authority in the tribe.
“I'm ashamed of the whole caboodle of ye,” he vociferated. “Here's a
gent that's been standing up for us. He's the only man I ever heard say
a good word for us or try to help us! Nobody else in the world ever done
it! Take off your hats and thank him!”
“I'm in it!” whispered Mayo to the girl. “For heaven's sake, what am I
going to do?”
“Do all you can--please, Captain Mayo!”
He stepped forward. The agent began to shout.
“Hold on, sir!” broke in the captain with quarter-deck air that made for
obedience and attention. “You have had your say! Now I'm going to
have mine. Listen to me, folks! I'm not the man to get my friends into
trouble and then run off and leave 'em. All of you who are kicked out
by the state--all men, women, and children who are ready to go to
work--come over to me on the main at Maquoit with what stuff you can
bring in your dories. I'll be waiting for you there. My name is Boyd
Mayo.”
“I'll remember that name, myself,” declared the angry agent. “You'll be
shown that you can't interfere in a state matter.”
“You have turned these folks loose in the world, and I'm going to give
'em a hand when they come to where I am. If you choose to call that
interference, come on! It will make a fine story in court!”
He did not stop to shake the grimy hands which were thrust out to him.
He pushed his way out of the crowd, and his party followed.
“Meet me yonder on the main, boys,” he called back with a sailor
heartiness which they understood. “We'll see what can be done!”
“Well, what in the infernal blazes can be done?” growled Captain
Candage, catching step with the champion.
“I don't know, sir.”
“You can't do nothing any more sensible with them critters than you
could with combined cases of the smallpox and the seven years' itch.”
“Father!” cried the girl, reproachfully.
“I know what I'm talking about! This is dum foolishness!”