Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
and that's just what we hit to-day.” He surveyed his gloomy partner with
sympathetic concern. “Why don't you take a run uptown?” he suggested.
“You're sticking too close to this packet for a young man. Furthermore,
if you see a store open buy me a box of paper collars. Rowley hain't got
my size!”
Mayo, unreconciled and uneasy, hating that day the sound of the
flapping, sliding fish as they were pitchforked into the tubs for
hoisting, annoyed by the yawling of pulleys and realizing that his
nerves were not right at all, obeyed the suggestion. He had a
secret errand of his own, yielding to a half-hope; he went to the
general-delivery window of the post-office and asked for mail. He knew
that love makes keen guesses. The _Olenia_ had visited that harbor
frequently for mail. But there was nothing for him. He strolled about
the streets, nursing his melancholy, forgetting Captain Candage's
commission, envying the contentment shown by others.
In that mood he would have avoided Captain Zoradus Wass if he had spied
that boisterously cheerful mariner in season. But the captain had him by
the arm and was dancing him about the sidewalk, showing more affability
than was his wont.
“Heifers o' Herod! youngster,” shouted the grizzled master, “have you
come looking for me?”
“No,” faltered Mayo. “Did you want to see me?”
“Have worn taps off my boots to-day chasing from shipping commissioner's
office to every hole and corner along the water-front. Heard you had
quit aboard a yacht, and reckoned you had got sensible again and wanted
real work.”
“If you had asked down among the fish-houses you might have got on track
of me, sir.” Mayo's tone was somber.
“Fish! You fishing?” demanded Captain Wass, with incredulity.
“Yes, and on a chartered smack at that--shack-fishing on shares!” Mayo
was sourly resolved to paint his low estate in black colors. “And I have
concluded it's about all I'm fit for.”
“That's fine, seaman-like talk to come from a young chap I have trained
up to master's papers, giving him two years in my pilot-house. I was
afraid you were going astern, you young cuss, when I heard you'd gone
skipper of a yacht, but I didn't think it was as bad as all this.”
“My yachting business is done, sir.”
“Thank the bald-headed Nicodemus! There's hopes of you. Did anybody tell
you I've been looking for you?”
“No, sir!”
“Glad of it. Now I can tell you myself. Do you know where I am now?”
“I heard you were on a Vose line freighter, sir.”
“Don't know who told you that--but it wasn't Ananias. You're right.
She's the old _Nequasset_, handed back to me again because I'm the
only one who understands her cussed fool notions. First mate got drunk
yesterday and broke second mate's leg in the scuffle--one is in jail and
t'other in the hospital, and never neither of 'em will step aboard any
ship with me again. I sail at daybreak, bade to the Chesapeake for steel
rails. Got your papers?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Come along. You're first mate.”
“Do you really want me, sir?”
“Want you? Confound it all, I've got you! In about half a day I'll have
all the yacht notions shaken out of you and the fish-scales stripped
off, and then you'll be what you was when I let you go--the smartest
youngster I ever trained.”
Mayo obeyed the thrust of the jubilant master's arm and went along.
“I'll go and explain to Captain Can-dage, my partner.”
“All right. I'll go along, too, and help you make it short.”
As they walked along Captain Wass inspected his companion critically.
“High living aboard Marston's yacht make you dyspeptic, son? You look as
if your vittles hadn't been agreeing with you.”
“My health is all right, sir.”
“Heard you had trouble with Marston,” proceeded the old skipper, with
brutal frankness. “Anybody who has trouble with that damnation pirate
comes well recommended to me. He is trying to steal every steamboat line
on this coast. Thank Gawd, he can never get his claws on the old Vose
line. Some great doings in the steamboat business are ahead, Mayo.
Reckon it's a good line to be in if you like fight and want to make your
bigness.”
Mayo walked on in silence. He was troubled by this added information
that news of his affair with Marston had gained such wide currency.
However, he was glad that this new opportunity offered him a chance to
hide himself in the isolation of a freighter's pilot-house.
Captain Candage received the news with meek resignation. “I knowed it
would have to come,” he said. “Couldn't expect much else. Howsomever, it
ain't comforting.”
“Can't keep a good boy like this pawing around in fish gurry,” stated
Captain Wass.
“I know it, and I wish him well and all the best!”
Their leave-taking, presided over by the peremptory master of the
_Nequasset_, was short.
“I'll probably have a chance to see you when we come here again,” called
Mayo from the wharf, looking down into the mournful countenance of the
skipper. “Perhaps I'll have time to run down to Maquoit while we are
discharging. At any rate, explain it all for me, especially to your
daughter.”
“I'll tell all concerned just what's right,” Captain Candage assured
him. “I'll tell her for you.”
She was on the beach when the skipper came rowing in alone from the
_Ethel and May_.
“He's gone,” he called to her. “Of course we couldn't keep him. He's too
smart to stay on a job like this.”
When they were on their way up to the widow's cottage he stole
side-glances at her, and her silence distressed him.
“Let's see! He says to me--if I can remember it right-he says, says he,
'Take my best respects and '--let's see--yes, 'take my best respects and
love to your Polly--'”
“Father! Please don't fib.”
“It's just as I remember it, dear. 'Especial,' he says. I remember that!
'Especial,' he says. And he looked mighty sad, dear, mighty sad.” He
put his arm about her. “There are a lot of sad things in this world for
everybody, Polly. Sometimes things get so blamed mixed up that I feel
like going off and climbing a tree!”
XV ~ THE RULES OF THE ROAD
Now the _Dreadnought's_ a-sailing the Atlantic so wide,
Where the high, roaring seas roll along her black side.
Her sailors like lions walk the deck to and fro,
She's the Liverpool packet--O Lord let her go!
--Song of the Flash Packet.
On a day in early August the _Nequasset_ came walloping laboriously
up-coast through a dungeon fog, steel rails her dragging burden, caution
her watchword.
The needle of her indicator marked “Half speed,” and it really meant
half speed. Captain Zoradus Wass made scripture of the rules laid
down by the Department of Commerce and Labor. There was no tricky
slipping-over under his sway--no finger-at-nose connivance between the
pilot-house and the chief engineer's grille platform. No, Captain Wass
was not that kind of a man, though the fog had held in front of him two
days, vapor thick as feathers in a tick, and he had averaged not much
over six nautical miles an hour, and was bitterly aware that the rate of
freight on steel rails was sixty-five cents a ton.
“And as I've been telling you, at sixty-five cents there's about as much
profit as there would be in swapping hard dollars from one hand to the
other and depending on what silver you can rub off,” said Captain Wass
to First-mate Mayo.
The captain was holding the knob of the whistle-pull In constant clutch.
Regularly every minute _Nequasset's_ prolonged blast sounded, strictly
according to the rules of the road.
Her voice started with a complaining squawk, was full toned for a few
moments, then trailed off into more querulousness; the timbre of that
tone seemed to fit with Captain Wass's mood.
“It's tough times when a cargo-carrier has to figger so fine that she
can lose profit on account of what the men eat,” he went on. “If you're
two days late, minding rules in a fog, owners ask what the tophet's
the matter with you! This kind of business don't need steamboat men any
longer; it calls for boarding-house keepers who can cut sirloin steak
off'n a critter clear to the horn, and who are handy in turning sharp
corners on left-overs. I'll buy a book of cooking receets and try to
turn in dividends.”
The captain was broad-bowed, like the _Nequasset_, he sagged on short
legs as if he carried a cargo fully as heavy as steel rails, his white
whiskers streamed away from his cutwater nose like the froth kicked up
by the old freighter's forefoot. He chewed slowly, conscientiously and
continuously on tobacco which bulged in his cheek; his jaws, moving as
steadily as a pendulum swings, seemed to set the time for the isochronal
whistle-blast. Sixty ruminating jaw-wags, then he spat into the fog,
then the blast--correct to the clock's tide!
The windows of the pilot-house were dropped into their casings, so
that all sounds might be admitted; the wet breeze beaded the skipper's
whiskers and dampened the mate's crisp hair. While the mate leaned
from a window, ear cocked for signals, the captain gave him more of the
critical inspection in which he had been indulging when occasion served.
Furthermore, Captain Wass went on pecking around the edges of a topic
which he had been attacking from time to time with clumsy attempt at
artful inquisition.
“As bad as it is on a freighter, I reckon you ain't sorry you're off
that yacht, son?”
“I'm not sorry, sir.”
“From what you told me, the owner was around meddling all the time.”
“I don't remember that I ever said so, sir.”
“Oh, I thought you did,” grunted Captain Wass, and he covered his
momentary check by sounding the whistle.
“Now that you are back in the steamboat business, of course you're a
steamboat man. Have the interests of your owners at heart,” he resumed.
“Certainly, sir.”
“It would be a lot of help to the regular steamboat men--the good old
stand-bys--if they could get some kind of a line on what them Wall
Street cusses are gunning through with Marston leading 'em--or, at
leastways, he's supposed to be leading. He hides away in the middle of
the web and lets the other spiders run and fetch. But it's Marston's
scheme, you can bet on that! What do you think?”
“I haven't thought anything about it, Captain Wass.” “But how could
you help thinking, catching a word here and a word there, aboard that
yacht?”
“I never listened--I never heard anything.”
“But he had them other spiders aboard--seen 'em myself through my
spy-glass when you passed us one day in June.”
“I suppose they talked together aft, but my duty was forward, sir.”
“It's too bad you didn't have a flea put into your ear about getting a
line on Marston's scheme, whatever it is. You could have helped the real
boys in this game!”
Mayo did not reply.
Captain Wass showed a resolve to quit pecking at the edges and make a
dab at the center of the subject. He pulled the whistle, released the
knob, and turned back to the window, setting his elbows on the casing.
“Son, you ain't in love with that pirate Marston, are you?”
“No, sir!” replied the young man, with bitterness that could not be
doubted.
“Well, how about your being in love with his daughter?” The caustic
humor in the old skipper's tones robbed the question of some of its
brutal bluntness, and Mayo was accustomed to Captain Wass's brand
of humor. The young man did not turn his head for a few moments; he
continued to look into the fog as if intent on his duty; he was trying
to get command of himself, fully aware that resentment would not work in
the case of Zoradus Wass. When Mayo did face the skipper, the latter
was discomposed in his turn, for Mayo showed his even teeth in a cordial
smile.
“Do you think I have been trying the chauffeur trick in order to catch
an heiress, sir?”