Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
tied, like a calf bound for market? Here are a few things you can do if
you duck out of sight for a little while. I'll go ahead and--”
Suddenly he checked himself. He was facing the window, which commanded
a considerable section of street. He wasted no further breath on good
advice.
“I know those men coming down there,” he cried. “They're bailiffs. I saw
them around the court-house. They're after you, Mayo! You run! Get
away! There must be a back door here. Scoot!” He pulled the unresisting
scapegoat out of his chair and hustled him to the rear of the office.
A young man may have the best intentions. He may resolve to be a martyr,
to bow to the law's majesty. But at that moment Mayo was receiving
imperious command from the shipmaster whose orders he had obeyed for so
long that obedience was second nature. And panic seized him! Men were at
hand to arrest him. There was no time to reason the thing out. Flight is
the first impulse of innocence persecuted. Manly resolve melted. He ran.
“I'll stay behind and bluff 'em off! I'll say you're just out for a
minute, that I'm waiting here for you,” cried Captain Wass. “That will
give you a start. Try the docks. You may find one of the boys who will
help.”
Mayo escaped into a yard, dodged down an alley, planning his movements
as he hurried, having a mariner's quickness of thought in an emergency.
He made directly for the pier where steam-vessels took water. A huge
ocean-going tug was just getting ready to leave her berth under the
water-hose. Her gruff whistle-call had ordered hawsers cast off. Mayo's
'longcoast acquaintance was fairly extensive. This was a coal-barge tug,
and he waved quick greeting to the familiar face in her pilot-house and
leaped aboard. He climbed the forward ladder nimbly.
“I reckon you'll have to make it hello and good-by in one breath, mate,”
advised the skipper. “I'm off to take a light tow down-coast. Norfolk
next stop.”
“Let her go--sooner the better,” gasped the fugitive. “I'll explain why
as soon as you are out of the dock.”
“You don't say that you want to take the trip?”
“I've got to take it.”
The skipper cocked an eyebrow and pulled his bell. “Make yourself to
home, mate,” he advised. “I hope you ain't in so much of a hurry to get
there as you seem to be, for I've got three barges to tow.”
Mayo sat down on the rear transom and was hidden from all eyes on the
pier.
There was no opportunity for an explanation until the barges had been
picked up, for there was much manouver-ing and much tooting. But he
found ready sympathy after he had explained.
“The law sharps are always hankering to catch a poor cuss who is trying
to navigate these waters and suit the inspectors and the owners at the
same time,” admitted the master of the tug. “I have read everything the
papers had to say about your case, and I figured they didn't give you a
fair show. Newspapers and lawyers and owners don't understand what a
fellow is up against. I'm glad you're aboard, mate, because I want to
hear your side, with all the details.”
The threshing over of the matter occupied many hours of the long wallow
down the Jersey coast, and the tug captain weighed all features of the
case with the care of a man who has plenty of time on his hands and with
the zest a mariner displays in considering the affairs of his kind of
folk.
“If I didn't know you pretty well, Mayo, and know what kind of a man
you got your training with, I might think--just as those law sharps
will probably say--that you were criminally careless or didn't know your
business. But that dodge she made on you! Two points off her course!
You've got to put your finger right on there and hold it! Let me tell
you something. It was a queer thing in my own case. That was a queer
thing in your case. Stand two queer things in our business up beside
each other and squint at 'em and you may learn something.”
“She was on her course--I put her there with my own hands,” persisted
Mayo.
“Sure! You know your business. If this thing was going to be left to
the bunch that know you, you'd go clear. But here's what happened in my
case: I had a new man in the wheel-house, here, and he almost rammed me
into Cuttyhunk, gave me a touch and go with the Pollock Rip Lightship,
and had me headed toward Nauset when the fog lifted. And he was steering
my courses to the thinness of a hair, at that! Say, I took a sudden
tumble and frisked that chap and dragged a toad-stabber knife out of his
pocket--one of those regular foot-long knives. It had been yawing off
that compass all the way from a point to a point and a half. When did
you shift wheel-watch?”
“Before we made Vineyard Sound.”
“And no trouble coming up the sound?”
“Made Nobska and West Chop to the dot.”
“Then perhaps your general manager, who was in that pilot-house, had an
iron gizzard inside him. Most of them Wall Street fellows do have!” said
the skipper, with sarcasm.
“There's something going on in the steamboat business that I can't
understand,” declared Mayo. “It's high up; it hasn't to do with us
chaps, who have to take the kicks. Fogg brought a man aboard the old
_Nequasset_, and he didn't bring along a good explanation to go with
that man. I have been wondering ever since how it happened that Fogg got
to be general manager of the Vose line so almighty sudden.”
“Them high financiers play a big game, mate. And if you happened to be
a marked card in it, they'd tear you up and toss you under the table
without thinking twice. If you'll take a tip from me, you lay low and
do a lot of thinking while Uncle Zoradus does his scouting. What are you
going to do when you get to Norfolk?”
“I haven't thought.”
“Well, the both of us better think, and think hard, mate. If the United
States is really after you there'll be a sharp eye at every knot-hole. I
can't afford to let 'em get in a crack at me for what I've done.”
“I'll jump overboard outside the capes before I'll put you in wrong,”
asserted Mayo, with deep feeling.
That night the captain of the tug took a trick at the wheel in person.
His guest lay on the transom, smoking the skipper's spare pipe, and
racking his mind for ways and means. After a time he was conscious that
the captain was growling a bit of a song to relieve the tedium of his
task. He sang the same words over and over--a tried and true Chesapeake
shanty:
“Oh, I sailed aboard a lugger, and I shipped aboard a scow,
And I sailed aboard a peanut-shell that had a razor bow.
Needle in a haystack, brick into a wall!
A nigger man in Norfolk, he ain't no 'count at all!”
Mayo rolled off the transom and went to the captain's side. “There's
more truth than poetry in that song of yours, sir,” he said. “You have
given me an idea. A nigger in Norfolk doesn't attract much attention.
And I haven't got to be one of the black ones, either. Don't you suppose
there's something aboard here I can use to stain my face with?”
“My cook is a great operator as a tattoo artist.”
“I don't think I want to make the disguise permanent, sir,” stated the
young man, with a smile.
“What I mean is, he may have something in his kit that he can use to
paint you with. What's your idea--stay there? I'm afraid they'll nail
you.” >
“I'll stay there just long enough to ship before the mast on a schooner.
There isn't time to think up any better plan just now. Anything to keep
out of sight until I can make up my mind about what's really best to be
done.”
“We'll have that cook up here,” offered the captain. “He's safe.”
The cook took prompt and professional interest in the matter. “Sure!” he
said. “I've got a stain that will sink in and stay put for a long time,
if no grease paint is used. Only you mustn't wash your face.”
“There's no danger of a fellow having any inducement to do that when
he's before the mast on a schooner in these days,” declared the tug
captain, dryly.
An hour later, Captain Boyd Mayo, late of the crack liner _Montana_,
was a very passable mulatto, his crisply curling hair adding to the
disguise. He swapped his neat suit of brown with a deck-hand, and
received some particularly unkempt garments.
The next night, when the tug was berthed at the water station, he
slipped off into the darkness, as homeless and as disconsolate as an
abandoned dog.
XXII ~ SPECIAL BUSINESS OF A PASSENGER
O Ranzo was no sailor,
He shipped on board a whaler.
O pity Reuben Ran-zo, Ran-zo, boys!
O poor old Reuben Ranzo, Ranzo, boys!
--Reuben Ranzo.
Captain Mayo kept out of the region of the white lights for some time.
He had a pretty wide acquaintance in the Virginia port, and he knew the
beaten paths of the steamboating transients, ashore for a bit of a blow.
He lurked in alleys, feeling especially disreputable. He was not at
all sure that his make-up was effective. His own self-consciousness
convinced him that he was a glaring fraud, whose identity would be
revealed promptly to any person who knew him. But while he sneaked in
the purlieus of the city several of his 'longshore friends passed him
without a second look. One, a second engineer on a Union line freighter,
whirled after passing, and came back to him.
“Got a job, boy?”
“No, sir.”
“We need coal-passers on the _Drummond_. She's in the stream. Come
aboard in the morning.”
But it was not according to Mayo's calculation, messing with steamboat
men. “Ah doan' conclude ah wants no sech job,” he drawled.
“No, of course you don't want to work, you blasted yaller mutt!” snapped
the engineer. He marched on, cursing, and Mayo was encouraged, for the
man had given him a thorough looking-over.
He went out onto the wider streets. He was looking for a roving schooner
captain, reckoning he would know one of that gentry by the cut of his
jib.
A ponderous man came stumping down the sidewalk, swinging his shoulders.
“He's one of 'em,” decided Mayo. The round-crowned soft hat, undented,
the flapping trouser legs, the gait recognized readily by one who has
ever seen a master mariner patrol his quarter-deck--all these marked him
as a safe man to tackle. He stopped, dragged a match against the brick
side of a building, and relighted his cigar. But before Mayo could reach
him a colored man hurried up and accosted the big gentleman, whipping
off his hat and bowing with smug humility. Mayo hung up at a little
distance. He recognized the colored man; he was one of the numerous
Norfolk runners who furnish crews for vessels. He wore pearl-gray
trousers, a tailed coat, and had a pink in his buttonhole.
“Ah done have to say that ah doan' get that number seven man up to now,
Cap'n Downs, though I have squitulate for him all up and down. But ah
done expect--”
Captain Downs scowled over his scooped hands, puffing hard at his cigar.
He threw away the match.
“Look-a-here! you've been chasing me two days with new stories about
that seventh man. Haven't you known me long enough to know that you
can't trim me for another fee?”
“Cap'n Downs, you done know yo'self the present lucidateness of the
sailorman supply.”
“I know that if you don't get that man aboard my schooner to-night or
the first thing to-morrow morning you'll never put another one aboard
for me. You go hustle! And look here! I see you making up your mouth!
Not another cent!”
The colored man backed off and went away.
Mayo accosted the captain when that fuming gentleman came lunging along
the sidewalk. “Ah done lak to have that job, cap'n,” he pleaded.
“You a sailor?”
“Yas, sir.”
“How is it you ain't hiring through the regular runners?”
“Ah doan' lak to give all my money to a dude nigger to go spotein' on.”
“Well, there's something in that,” acknowledged Captain Downs, softening