Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
“I will take the rest of this watch and the middle watch, Mr. McGaw,”
offered the captain. “I want to stay up to-night. I can't go to sleep.”
The offer meant that Captain Mayo proposed to stay on duty until four
o'clock in the morning.
Mate McGaw fiddled a gnarled finger under his nose and tried to find
some words of protest. But Captain Mayo added a crisp command.
“Go below, Mr. McGaw, and take it easy. You can make it up to me some
time when there is no moon!” He laughed.
When all the cabin lights were out and he realized that she must be
asleep, he walked the bridge, exulting because her safety was in his
hands, but supremely exultant because she loved him and had told him so.
Obedience had been in the line of his training.
She had commanded him to live and love in the present, allowing the
future to take care of itself, and it afforded him a sense of sweet
companionship to obey her slightest wish when he was apart from
her. Therefore, he put aside all thoughts of Julius Marston and his
millions--Julius Marston, his master, owner of the yacht which swept on
under the moon--that frigid, silent man with the narrow strip of frosty
beard pointing his chin.
Mayo walked the bridge and lived and loved.
II ~ THEN CAPTAIN MAYO SEES SHOALS
There's naught upon the stern, there's naught upon the lee,
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we.
But there's a lofty ship to windward,
And she's sailing fast and free,
Sailing down along the coast of the high Barbaree.
--Ancient Shanty.
The skipper of the _Olenia_ found himself dabbling in guesses and
wonderment more than is good for a man who is expected to obey without
asking the reason why.
That cruise seemed to be a series of spasmodic alternations between
leisurely loafing and hustling haste.
There were days when he was ordered to amble along at half speed
offshore. Then for hours together Julius Marston and his two especial
and close companions, men of affairs, plainly, men of his kind, bunched
themselves close together in their hammock chairs under the poop awning
and talked interminably. Alma Marston and her young friends, chaperoned
by an amiable aunt--so Captain Mayo understood her status in the
party--remained considerately away from the earnest group of three.
Arthur Beveridge attached himself to the young folks.
From the bridge the captain caught glimpses of all this shipboard
routine. The yacht's saunterings offshore seemed a part of the summer
vacation.
But the occasional hurryings into harbors, the conferences below with
men who came and went with more or less attempt at secrecy, did not fit
with the vacation side of the cruise.
These conferences were often followed by orders to the captain to thread
inner reaches of the coast and to visit unfrequented harbors.
Captain Mayo had been prepared for these trips, although he had not been
informed of the reason. It was his first season on the yacht _Olenia_.
The shipping broker who had hired him had been searching in his
inquiries as to Mayo's knowledge of the byways of the coast. The young
man who had captained fishermen and coasters ever since he was seventeen
years old had found it easy to convince the shipping broker, and the
shipping broker had sent him on board the yacht without the formality of
an interview with the owner.
Mayo was informed curtly that there was no need of an interview. He was
told that Julius Marston never bothered with details.
When Julius Marston had come on board with his party he merely nodded
grim acknowledgment of the salute of his yacht's master, who stood at
the gangway, cap in hand.
The owner had never shown any interest in the management of the yacht;
he had remained abaft the main gangway; he had never called the captain
into conference regarding any movements of the _Olenia_.
Captain Mayo, pacing the bridge in the forenoon watch, trying to grasp
the full measure of his fortune after troubled dreams of his master's
daughter, recollected that he had never heard the sound of Julius
Marston's voice. So far as personal contact was concerned, the yacht's
skipper was evidently as much a matter of indifference to the owner as
the yacht's funnel.
Orders were always brought forward by a pale young man who was taciturn
even to rudeness, and by that trait seemed to commend himself to Marston
as a safe secretary.
At first, Alma Marston had brought her friends to the bridge. But after
the novelty was gone they seemed to prefer the comfort of chairs astern
or the saloon couches.
For a time the attentive Beveridge had followed her when she came
forward; and then Beveridge discovered that she quite disregarded him in
her quest for information from the tall young man in uniform. She came
alone.
And after that what had happened happened.
She came alone that forenoon. He saw her coming. He had stolen a glance
aft every time he turned in his walk at the end of the bridge. He leaned
low and reached down his hand to assist her up the ladder.
“I have been nigh crazy all morning. But I had to wait a decent time and
listen to their gossip after breakfast,” she told him, her face close
to his as she came up the ladder. “And, besides, my father is snappy
to-day. He scolded me last night for neglecting my guests. Just as if
I were called on to sit all day and listen to Nan Burgess appraise her
lovers or to sing a song every time Wally Dalton has his relapse of
lovesickness. He has come away to forget her, you know.” She chuckled,
uttering her funny little gurgle of a laugh which stirred in him,
always, a desire to smother it with kisses.
They went to the end of the bridge, apart from the man at the wheel.
“I hurried to go to sleep last night so that I could dream of you, my
own big boy.”
“I walked the bridge until after daylight. I wanted to stay awake. I
could not bear to let sleep take away my thoughts.”
“What is there like love to make this world full of happiness? How
bright the sun is! How the waves sparkle! Those folks sitting back there
are looking at the same things we are--or they can look, though they
don't seem to have sense enough. And about all they notice is that it's
daylight instead of night. My father and those men are talking about
money--just money--that's all. And Wally has a headache from drinking
too much Scotch. And Nan Burgess doesn't love anybody who loves her, But
for us--oh, this glorious world!”
She put out her arms toward the sun and stared boldly at that blazing
orb, as though she were not satisfied with what her eyes could behold,
but desired to grasp and feel some of the glory of outdoors. If Captain
Mayo had been as well versed in psychology as he was in navigation
he might have drawn a few disquieting deductions from this frank and
unconscious expression of the mood of the materialist. She emphasized
that mood by word.
“I'll show you my little clasp-book some day, big boy. It's where I
write my verses. I don't show them to anybody. You see, I'm telling you
my secrets! We must tell each other our secrets, you and I! I have put
my philosophy of living into four lines. Listen!
“The future? Why perplex the soul? The past? Forget its woe and strife!
Let's thread each day, a perfect whole, Upon our rosary of Life.”
“It's beautiful,” he told her.
“Isn't it good philosophy?”
“Yes,” he admitted, not daring to doubt the high priestess of the new
cult to which he had been commandeered.
“It saves all this foolish worry. Most of the folks I know are always
talking about the bad things which have happened to them or are peering
forward and hoping that good things will happen, and they never once
look down and admire a golden moment which Fate has dropped into their
hands. You see, I'm poetical this morning. Why shouldn't I be? We love
each other.”
“I don't know how to talk,” he stammered. “I'm only a sailor. I never
said a word about love to any girl in my life.”
“Are you sure you have never loved anybody? Remember, we must tell each
other our secrets.”
“Never,” he declared with convincing firmness.
She surveyed him, showing the satisfaction a gold-seeker would exhibit
in appraising a nugget of virgin ore. “But you are so big and fine! And
you must have met so many pretty girls!”
He was not restive under this quizzing. “I have told you the truth, Miss
Marston.”
“For shame, big boy! 'Miss Marston,' indeed! I am Alma--Alma to you. Say
it! Say it nicely!”
He flushed. He stole a shamefaced glance at the-wheelsman and made a
quick and apprehensive survey of the sacred regions aft.
“Are you afraid, after all I have said to you?”
“No, but it seems--I can hardly believe--”
“Say it.”
“Alma,” he gulped. “Alma, I love you.”
“You need some lessons, big boy. You are so awkward I think you are
telling me the truth about the other girls.”
He did not dare to ask her whether she had loved any one else. With all
the passionate jealousy of his soul he wanted to ask her. She, who was
so sure that she could instruct him, must have loved somebody. He tried
to comfort himself by the thought that her knowledge arose from the
efforts either men had made to win her.
“We have our To-day,” she murmured. “Golden hours till the moon comes
up--and then perhaps a few silver ones! I don't care what Arthur
guesses. My father is too busy talking money with those men to guess.
I'm going to be with you all I can. I can arrange it. I'm studying
navigation.”
She snuggled against the rail, luxuriating in the sunshine.
“Who are you?” she asked, bluntly.
That question, coming after the pledging of their affection, astonished
him like the loom of a ledge in mid-channel.
“It's enough for me that you are just as you are, boy! But you're not a
prince in disguise, are you?”
“I'm only a Yankee sailor,” he told her. “But if you won't think that
I'm trying to trade on what my folks have been before me, I'll say that
my grandfather was Gamaliel Mayo of Mayoport.”
“That sounds good, but I never heard of him. With all my philosophy, I'm
a poor student of history, sweetheart.” Her tone and the name she gave
him took the sting out of her confession.
“I don't believe he played a great part in history. But he built sixteen
ships in his day, and our house flag circled the world many times.
Sixteen big ships, and the last one was the _Harvest Home_, the China
clipper that paid for herself three times before an Indian Ocean monsoon
swallowed her.”
“Well, if he made all that money, are you going to sea for the fun of
it?”
“There are no more Yankee wooden ships on the sea. My poor father
thought he was wise when the wooden ships were crowded off. He put his
money into railroads--and you know what has happened to most of the
folks who have put their money into new railroads.”
“I'm afraid I don't know much about business.”
“The hawks caught the doves. It was a game that was played all over New
England. The folks whose money built the roads were squeezed out. Long
before my mother died our money was gone, but my father and I did not
allow her to know it. We mortgaged and gave her what she had always been
used to. And when my father died there was nothing!”
Her eyes glistened. “That's chivalry,” she cried. “That's the spirit of
the knights of old when women were concerned. I adore you for what you
did!”
“It was the way my father and I looked at it,” he said, mildly. “My
father was not a very practical man, but I always agreed with him. And
I am happy now, earning my own living. Why should I think my grandfather
ought to have worked all his life so that I would not need to work?”
“I suppose it's different with a big, strong man and a woman. She needs
so much that a man must give her.”