Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
flipped his watch out. “I've got a train to make, gentlemen. Good day!”
He took Boyne by the arm and led him to the ladder from the bridge.
“Son,” said he, “you dig into that Mayo chap till you know him up and
down and through and through. I'm going to use him. And you keep your
mouth shut about yourself.” He backed down the ladder, feeling his
way cautiously with his fat legs, trotted to the waiting cab, and was
whirled away.
At high noon the next day Fletcher Fogg marched into the general
offices of the Vose line in company with ten solid-looking citizens.
Imperturbable and smiling, he allowed President Vose to shriek anathema
and to wave the certified copy of the record of the annual meeting under
the snub Fogg nose.
“What you say doesn't change the situation in the least,” affirmed Mr.
Fogg. “You'll find the actual records of the meeting deposited in the
usual place in the state of your incorporation. If you think these
new directors are not lawfully and duly elected, you can apply to the
courts.”
“You confounded thief, it's likely to take a year to get a decision.
This is damnable. It's piracy. You know what courts are!”
“Poke up your courts, then. It isn't my fault if they're slow.”
The new directors filed into the board-room and with great celerity
proceeded to elect Fletcher Fogg to be president and general manager of
the Vose line.
“What are you going to do?” pleaded the deposed executive head. “My
money is in here--my whole life is in it--my pride--my intention to see
that the public gets a square deal. You infernal rogue, what are you
going to do with my property?”
“That's my own business,” said Fletcher Fogg.
“You can't get away with it--you can't do it!” raged Vose. “I'll get
at the inside of how that meeting was conducted. You'd better take
backwater right now, Fogg, and save yourself. I'm not afraid to tell
you what I'm going to do. I'll have a temporary injunction issued. I'll
prove fraud was used at that meeting--bribery, yes, sir!”
Mr. Fogg smiled and sat down at the president's desk. “First he'll have
to find a young man by the name of David Boyne,” he told himself.
“Vose,” said the new president, “all you can show a court is the record
of an annual meeting, duly and legally held. And if the judge wants to
have a look at me he'll find me running this line a blamed sight better
than you have ever run it.”
“It's a cheap, plain trick,” bleated the aged steamship manager. “Your
crowd is going to sell out to the Paramount--it's your plot.”
“Oh no! We're not inviting injunctions and law and newspaper talk and
slurs and slander, Mr. Vose. If there's ever any selling out you'll be
the first to suggest it; I never shall. You see, I'm just as frank with
you as you are with me. Selling this line to the Paramount right now,
just because the new board is in, would be ragged work--very coarse
work. Thank Heaven, I have a proper respect for the law--and what it can
do to bother a fool. I am not a fool, Mr. Vose.”
XIX ~ THE PRIZE PACKAGE FROM MR. FOGG
Our captain stood on his quarter-deck,
And a fine little man was he!
“Overhaul, overhaul, on your davit tackle fall,
And launch your boats to the sea,
Brave boys! And launch your boats to the sea.”
--The Whale.
A slowing, tug, tooting fussy and staccato blasts which Captain Wass
translated into commands to hold up, intercepted the _Nequasset_ in
Hampton Roads.
Mr. Fletcher Fogg was a passenger on the tug. In a suit of natty gray,
he loomed conspicuously in the alley outside the tug's pilot-house. He
cursed roundly when he toilsomely climbed the ladder to the freighter's
deck, for the rusty sheathing smutched the knees of his trousers.
“I'm doing a little better than I promised you, captain,” he stated when
he arrived finally in the presence of the master. “I said Philadelphia.
But here I am. Do you know me now?”
“Your name is Fogg,” returned Captain Wass, exhibiting no special
delight.
“And I'm manager of this line. As it seems to be pretty hard for you to
get anything through that thick nut of yours, I'll ask you to glance at
a paper which will save argument.”
The paper was an attested notification, signed by the directors, stating
in laconic legal phrase what Mr. Fogg had just declared.
“You recognize my authority, do you?”
“Your bill o' lading reads O. K.,” assented the skipper.
“Very well! Exactly! Then you take your orders. Proceed to an anchorage
off Lambert Point below Norfolk, pick a berth well off the channel, and
put down both hooks. The boat is going out of commission. I find you're
not making any money for the owners.”
“It ain't my fault. With charters at--” began the master, indignantly.
“I haven't any time for a joint debate. You are laid off. Bring your
accounts to the main office as soon as you have turned the steamer over
to the caretaker--he'll come out from Norfolk.” Manager Fogg turned on
his heel to meet Mate Mayo. “You will report at the main offices, too,
Mr. Mayo. Have you master's papers?”
“I have, sir--Atlantic waters, Jacksonville to East-port.”
“Very good--you're going to be promoted. I shall put you aboard the
passenger-steamer _Montana_ as captain.” He looked about sharply. “Where
is my agent?”
“There, in the quartermaster's cabin. We gave him that,” replied Captain
Wass, gruffly. “I'm glad I'm out of steamboating. I've learned how to
run a boarding-house and make money out of it.”
Mr. Fogg did not understand that sneer, and he paid no attention to the
captain's manner. He started for the cabin indicated.
“Well, you can swell around in gold braid now and catch your heiress,”
observed Captain Wass to his mate.
“I'm sorry, skipper,” said the young man, with real feeling. “You are
the man to be promoted, not I. It isn't right--it doesn't seem real.”
“There isn't any real steamboating on this coast any longer. It is--I
don't know what the devil it is,” snarled the veteran. “I have been
sniffing and scouting. I'd like to be a mouse in the wall of them New
York offices and hear what it is they're trying to do to us poor cusses.
Ordered one day to keep the law; ordered the next day to break the law;
hounded by owners and threatened by the government! I'm glad I'm out of
it and glad you've got a good job. That last I'm specially glad about.
But keep your eye peeled. There are queer doings round about you!”
Fogg entered the cabin and shut the door behind him. He found Boyne
sitting on a stool and looking somewhat apprehensive. “Hiding?” inquired
Fogg.
“I thought I wouldn't show myself till I was sure about who was on that
tug,” said the young man.
“That's the boy, David,” complimented Fogg, with real heartiness.
“You're no fool. Nothing like being careful. Pack your bag and go aboard
the tug.” He marched out.
“Philadelphia charter has been canceled, eh?” asked Captain Wass. The
tone of his voice did not invite amity.
“It has, sir.”
“Seems queer to turn down a cargo that's there waiting--and the old boat
can carry it cheaper than anybody else, the way I've got expenses fined
down.”
“Are you trying to tell me my business?”
“I have beep steamboating forty years, and I know a little something
about it.”
Mr. Fogg looked at the old mariner, eyes narrowed. He wanted to inform
Captain Wass that the latter knew altogether too much about steamboating
for the kind of work that was planned out along the coast in those
ticklish times.
“Then I ain't to expect anything special from now on?” asked the
skipper. In spite of his determination to be crusty and keep his upper
lip stiff, he could not repress a little wistfulness, and his eyes roved
over the old freighter with affection.
“Not a thing, sir!” Mr. Fogg was blunt and cool. He started for the
ladder. He slapped the shoulder of Mayo as he passed the young man.
“Here's the kind of chap we're looking for nowadays. The sooner you
report, my boy, the better for you.”
With Boyne following him, he climbed down the swaying ladder, and was
lifted from the lower rungs over the tug's rail to a secure footing.
After the lines had been cast off and the tug went floundering away at
a sharp angle, Captain Wass scuffed into his pilot-house and gave the
bells.
“She seems to feel it--honest she does!” he told Mate Mayo. “She goes
off logy. She doesn't pick up her heels. Nor could I do it when I walked
in here. Going to be scrapped--the two of us! Cuss their picking and
stealing and fighting and financing. They ain't steam-boating any
longer. They're using good boats to play checkers in Wall Street with.
Well, son,” he mourned, hanging dispiritedly over the sill of the window
and staring up the wind-swept Chesapeake, “I ain't going to whine--but
I shall miss the old packet and the rumble and racket of the old machine
down there in her belly. I'd even take the job of watchman aboard her if
he would hire me.”
“He seems to fancy me a bit. I'll ask him to hire you,” proffered the
mate, eagerly.
“I reckon you didn't get the look in his eye when he fired me,” said
Captain Wass. “I won't allow you to say a word to him about me. You go
ahead, boy, and take the job he has offered. But always remember that
he's a slick operator. See what he has done to Uncle Vose; and we
haven't been able to worm it out of that passenger how it was done,
either. Financing in these days comes pretty nigh to running without
lights and under forced draught. It gets a man to Prosperity Landing in
a hurry, providing he doesn't hit anything bigger than he is. They're
going to haul up this freighter and blame it on to me because I ain't
making money for the owners. They'll have plenty of figgers to show it.
Look out that they don't lay something worse and bigger to you. They're
going to play a game with the Vose line, I tell you! In the game of big
finance, 'tag-gool,' making 'it' out of the little chap who can't run
very fast, seems to be almighty popular.”
He slowed the freighter to a snail's pace when he approached the dredged
channel, and at last the leadsman found suitable bottom. Both anchors
were let go.
The old skipper sounded the jingle, telling the chief engineer that the
engine-crew was released. In a speaking-tube the captain ordered both
boilers to be blown off.
“And there's the end of me as master of my ship,” he said.
Mate Mayo's eyes were wet, but words of sympathy to fit the case did not
come to his sailor tongue, and he was silent.
When the tug was near Newport News, Manager Fogg took David Boyne apart
from all ears which might hear. He gave the young man another packet of
money.
“The rest of your expenses for a good trip,” he said. “You seem to be
a chap who knows how to mind his own business--and able to get at the
other fellow's business in pretty fair shape. You haven't told such an
awful lot about young Mayo, but it's satisfactory to learn that he has
lived such a simple and every-day life that there isn't much to tell.”
“I never saw a man so sort of guileless,” affirmed Boyne. “Not that I
have had a lot of experience, but in a lawyer's office you are bound to
see considerable of human nature.”
“He is no doubt a very deserving young man--and I'm glad I can use him,”
said Fogg, not able to keep all the grimness out of his tones. “Now,
son,” he went on, after a moment of pondering, “you stay on board this
tug till I have been gone five minutes. There are a lot of sharp eyes
around in these times, and some of Vose's friends would be glad to run
to him with a story about me. After five minutes, you take your bag and
walk to Dock Seven and go aboard the freighter _Ariel_--go just as if
you belonged there. Tell the captain that you are Daniel Boyle--get the