Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
“Captain Mayo is a noble man! You ought to be ashamed of hanging back
when your help is needed.”
“I don't blame you for sassing that skewangled old tywhoopus, sir,”
admitted the old skipper. “I wanted to do it myself. But--”
“I'm afraid I don't deserve much praise,” said Mayo. “I've been getting
back at that agent. He made me mad. I'm apt to go off half-cocked like
that.”
“So am I, sir--and I'm always sorry for it. We'd better dig out before
that tribe of gazaboos lands on our backs.”
“Oh, not a bit of it! I have given my word, sir. I must see it through.”
“But what are you going to do with 'em?”
“Blessed if I know right now! When I'm good and mad I don't stop to
think.”
“Suppose I meet 'em for you and tell 'em you have had a sudden death in
your family and have been called away? They won't know the difference,”
volunteered Captain Candage. “And a real death would be lucky for you
beside of what's in store if you hang around.”
“I shall hang around, sir. I can't afford to be ashamed of myself.”
“I think you have said quite enough, father,” stated Polly Candage, with
vigor.
'“I have heard of adopting families before,” said the irreconcilable
one, “but I never heard of any such wholesale operation as this. I'm
thinking I'll go climb a tree.”
They embarked in the dory. Mr. Speed and Dolph splashed their oars and
rowed, exchanging looks and not venturing to offer any comment.
“You might auction 'em off to farmers for scarecrows,” pursued Captain
Candage, still worrying the topic as a dog mouths a bone. “They ain't
fit for no more active jobs than that.”
“I do hope you'll forgive my father for talking this way,” pleaded Polly
Candage. She raised brimming eyes to the sympathetic gaze of the young
man beside her. “He doesn't understand it the way I do.”
“Perhaps I don't exactly understand it myself,” he protested.
“But what you are doing for them?”
“I haven't done anything as yet except start trouble for them. Now I
must do a little something to square myself.”
“There's a reward for good deeds, Captain Mayo, when you help those
who cannot help themselves. I believe what the Bible says about casting
bread on the waters. It will return to you some day!”
He smiled down on her enthusiasm tolerantly, but he was far from
realizing then that this pretty girl, whose eyes were so bright
behind her tears, and whose cheeks were flushed with the ardor of her
admiration, was speaking to him with the tongue of a sibyl.
XIII ~ A CAPTAIN OP HUMAN FLOTSAM
O what is that which smells so tarry?
I've nothing in the house that's tarry.
It's a tarry sailor, down below,
Kick him out into the snow!
Doo me axna, dinghy a-a-a ma!
Doo me ama-day!
--Doo Me Ama.
Captain Candage growled and complained so persistently during the trip
to the main that Mayo expected to be deserted by the querulous skipper
the moment the dory's prow touched the beach. But the skipper came
dogging at his heels when Mayo set off up the one street of Maquoit.
“May I come along with you?” asked the girl at his side. “I can see that
you are thinking up some plan. I do Hope I may come!” He gave her his
aim for answer.
“I haven't been into this port for some time, Captain Candage, but the
last trip I made here, as I remember, a man named Rowley, who runs the
general store, was first selectman.”
“Is now,” grunted the skipper. “They've got into the habit of electing
him and can't seem to break off.”
When they arrived in front of the store Captain Candage took the lead.
“I may as well go in and introduce you, whatever it is you want of him.
I know Rufe Rowley as well as anybody ever gets to know him.”
Mr. Rowley leaned over his counter and acknowledged the introduction
with a flicker of amiability lighting his reserve. But his wan smile
faded into blankness and he clawed his chin beard nervously when Mayo
informed him that he had invited the evicted folks of Hue and Cry to
land on the mainland that day.
“As overseer of the poor in this town I can't allow it, Captain Mayo!”
“Those people must land somewhere.”
“Yes, yes, of course!” admitted Selectman Rowley. “But not here! I'm
beholden to the taxpayers.”
“And I suppose the officers of all the other towns about here will say
the same?”
“Yes, yes! Of course.”
“Do you still own that old fish-house?” asked the captain, after
hesitating for a few moments; “the sardine-canning plant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You're not using it now?”
“No, sir.”
“It isn't paying you any revenue, eh?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you ought to be willing to let it pretty cheap--month-to-month
lease!”
“Depends on what I'm letting it for.”
“I want to stow those poor people in there till I can arrange further
for them, either show the matter up to the state, or get work for them,
or something! Will you let me have it?”
“No, sir!” declared the selectman, with vigor.
“It's only monthly lease, I repeat. You can prevent them from getting
pauper residence here, in case none of my plans work.”
“Don't want 'em here--won't have 'em! I consider taxpayers first!”
“Don't ye ever consider common, ordinary, human decency?” roared Captain
Epps Candage.
It was astonishing interruption. Its violence made it startling. Mayo
whirled and stared amazedly at this new recruit.
Captain Candage yanked his fat wallet from his pocket and dammed it down
on the counter with a bang which made the selectman's eyes snap.
“You know _me_, Rowley! We've got the money to pay for what we order and
contract for. Them folks ain't paupers so long as we stand be-hind 'em.
We are bringing 'em ashore, here, because it's right to help 'em get
onto their feet. Hold on, Captain Mayo; you let me talk to Rowley! Him
and me know how to get sociable in a business talk!”
However, Captain Candage seemed to be seeking sociability by bellowing
ferociously, thudding his hard fist on the counter. Mayo was not easily
surprised by the temperamental vagaries of queer old 'longcoast crabs
like Captain Candage, but this sudden conversion did take away his
breath.
“When a close and partickler friend of mine, like this one I've just
introduced, comes to you all polite and asks a favor, I want general
politeness all around or I'll know the reason why,” shouted the
intermediary. “Look-a-here, Rowley, you pretend to be a terrible
Christian sort of a man. When I have been fog-bound here I've tended out
on prayer-meetings, and I have heard you holler like a good one about
dying grace and salvation is free. I've never heard you say much about
living charity that costs something!”
“I claim to be a Christian man,” faltered Rowley, backing away from the
banging fist.
“Then act like one. If you don't do it, blast your pelt, I'll post you
for a heathen from West Quoddy to Kittery!”
“God bless you, my dad!” whispered the girl, snuggling close to the
skipper's shoulder.
“Furthermore, Rowley, besides paying you a fair rental for that old
fish-house we'll buy grub for them poor devils out of your store.”
Mr. Rowley caressed his beard and blinked.
“They're like empty nail-kags, and they'll eat a lot of vittles and
we've got the money to pay!”
“I have a wallet of my own,” stated Captain Mayo. He had not recovered
from his amazement at the sudden shift about of Captain Candage. After
all the sullen growling he had been tempted to ask the old skipper to
stop tagging him about on his errand of mercy.
“Hear that, Rowley? This is the best friend I've got in the whole
world! Brought him in here! Introduced him to you! Here's my daughter!
Interested, too! Now, whatever you say, you'd better be sure that you
pick the right words.”
“Well, I'm always ready to help friends,” stated Mr. Rowley.
“Yes, and do business in a slack time,” added Captain Candage.
“I'm willing to show Christian charity to them that's poor and
oppressed. But what's the sense in doing it in this case?”
“A great many folks in this life need a hard jolt before they turn to
and make anything of themselves,” said Captain Mayo. “The people on Hue
and Cry have had their jolt. I do believe, with the right advice and
management, they can be made self-supporting. They have been allowed
to run loose until now, sir. I have been pulled into the thing all of
a sudden, and now that I'm in I'm willing to give up a little time and
effort to start 'em off. I haven't much of anything else to do just
now,” he added, bitterly.
“Come into my back office,” invited Mr. Rowley.
“Much obleeged--we'll do so,” said Captain Candage. “You're a bright
man, Rowley, and I knowed you'd see the p'int when it was put up to you
right and polite.”
The business in the back office was soon settled satisfactorily, and
a busy day followed on the heels of that momentous morning. When night
fell the men, women, and children whom a benevolent state--through its
“straight-business” agent--had turned loose upon the world to shift for
themselves, were located in a single colony in the spacious fish-house.
A few second-hand stoves, hired from Rowley, served to cook the food
bought from Rowley, and the families grouped themselves in rooms and
behind partitions and arranged the poor belongings they had salvaged
from their homes. Even the citizen who had at first resolved to go
floating on the bosom of the deep joined the colony.
“It's more sociable,” he explained, “and my wife don't like to give up
her neighbors. Furthermore, I know the whole bunch, root and branch,
whims, notions, and all, and they can't fool me. I'll help boss 'em!” He
became a lieutenant of value.
This community life under a better roof than had ever sheltered them
before in their lives seemed to delight the refugees. Old and young,
they enjoyed the new surroundings with the zest of children. They had
never taken thought of the morrow in their existence on Hue and Cry.
Given food and shelter in this new abode, they did not worry about
the problems of the future. They roamed about their domain with the
satisfaction of princes in a palace. They did not show any curiosity
regarding what was to be done with them. They did not ask Captain Mayo
and his associates any questions. They surveyed him with a dumb and
sort of canine thankfulness when he moved among them. He himself tried
questions on a few of the more intelligent men, hoping that they would
show some initiative. They told him with bland serenity that they would
leave it all to him.
“But what are you going to do for yourselves?”
“Just what you say. You're the boss. Show us the job!”
It was borne in upon him that he had taken a larger contract than he had
planned on. Rowley and the taxpayers on the main looked to him on one
side, and his dependents on the other.
“It seems to be up to me--to us, I mean,” he told the girl, ruefully,
when they were on their way to the widow's cottage that evening. “It's
up to me most of all, however, for I'm the guilty party--I have pulled
you and your father in. I'm pegged in here till I can think up some sort
of a scheme.”
She had been working all day faithfully by his side, a tactful and
indefatigable helper. He would have been all at sea regarding the women
and children without her aid, and he told her so gratefully.
“Both my hands and my heart are with you in this thing, Captain Mayo.
And I know you'll think of some way out for them--just as you helped us
out of the schooner after we had given up all hope.”
“Getting out of the schooner was merely a sailor's trick of the hands,
Miss Candage. I don't believe I'll be much of a hand at making over
human nature. I have too much of it myself, and the material down in
that fish-house would puzzle even a doctor of divinity.”