Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
Captain Mayo became promptly silent, crestfallen, and embarrassed. He
stared aft, he looked at the splendid yacht whose finances he managed
and whose extravagance he knew. He saw the girl at his side, and blinked
at the gems which flashed in the sunlight as her fingers tucked up the
locks of hair where the breeze had wantoned.
“I think my father works because he loves it,” she said. “I wish he
would rest and enjoy other things more. If mother had lived to influence
him perhaps he would see something else in life instead of merely piling
up money. But he doesn't listen to me. He gives me money and tells me to
go and play. I miss my mother, boy! I haven't anybody to talk with--who
understands!”
There were tears in her eyes, and he was grateful for them. He felt
that she had depths in her nature. But keen realization of his position,
compared with hers, distressed him. She stood there, luxury incarnate,
mistress of all that money could give her.
“Anybody can make money,” she declared. “My father and those men are
sitting there and building plans to bring them thousands and thousands
of dollars. All they need to do is put their heads together and plan.
Every now and then I hear a few words. They're going to own all the
steamboats--or something of that kind. Anybody can make money, I say,
but there are so few who know how to enjoy it.”
“I have been doing a lot of thinking since last night--Alma.” He
hesitated when he came to her name, and then blurted it out.
“Do you think it is real lover-like to treat my name as if it were a
hurdle that you must leap over?” she asked, with her aggravating little
chuckle. “Oh, you have so much to learn!”
“I'm afraid so. I have a great many things ahead of me to learn and do.
I have been thinking. I have been afraid of the men who sit and scheme
and put all their minds on making money. They did bitter things to us,
and we didn't understand until it was all over. But I must go among them
and watch them and learn how to make money.”
“Don't be like the others, now, and talk money--money,” she said,
pettishly. “Money and their love-affairs--that's the talk I have heard
from men ever since I was allowed to come into the drawing-room out of
the nursery!”
“But I must talk money a little, dear. I have my way to make in the
world.”
“Thrifty, practical, and Yankee!” she jested. “I suppose you can't help
it!”
“It isn't for myself--it's for you!” he returned, wistfully, and with
a voice and demeanor he offered himself as Love's sacrifice before
her--the old story of utter devotion--the ancient sacrifice.
“I have all I want,” she insisted.
“But _I_ must be able to give you what you want!”
“I warn you that I hate money-grubbers! They haven't a spark of romance
in them. Boyd, you'd be like all the rest in a little while. You mustn't
do it.”
“But I must have position--means before I dare to go to your father--if
I ever shall be able to go to him!”
“Go to him for what?”
“To ask him--to say--to--well, when we feel that I'm in a position where
we can be married--”
“Of course we shall be married some day, boy, but all that will take
care of itself when the time comes. But now you are-- How old are you,
Boyd?”
“Twenty-six.”
“And I am nineteen. And what has marriage to do with the love we are
enjoying right now?”
“When folks are in love they want to get married.”
“Granted! But when lovers are wise they will treat romance at first as
the epicure treats his glass of good wine. They will pour it slowly and
hold the glass up against the light and admire its color!” In her gay
mood she pinched together thumb and forefinger and lifted an imaginary
glass to the sun. “Then they will sniff the bouquet. Ah-h-h, how
fragrant! And after a time they will take a little sip--just a weeny
little sip and hold it on the tongue for ever so long. For, when it is
swallowed, what good? Oh, boy, here are you--talking first of all about
marriage! Talking of the good wine of life and love as if it were a
fluid simply to satisfy thirst. We are going to love, first of all!
Come, I will teach you.”
He did not know what to say to her. There was a species of abandon in
her gaiety. Her exotic language embarrassed one who had been used to
mariners' laconic directness of speech. She looked at him, teasing him
with her eyes. He was a bit relieved when the pale-faced secretary came
dragging himself up the ladder and broke in on the tête-à-tête.
“Mr. Marston's orders are, Captain Mayo, that you turn here and go west.
Do you know the usual course of the Bee line steamers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He requests you to turn in toward shore and follow that course.”
“Very well, sir.” Captain Mayo walked to the wheel. “Nor' nor'west,
Billy, until I can give you the exact course.”
“Nor' nor'west!” repeated the wheelsman, throwing her hard over, and
the _Olenia_ came about with a rail-dipping swerve and retraced her way
along her own wake of white suds.
Miss Marston preceded the captain down the ladder and went into the
chart-room. “A kiss--quick!” she whispered.
He held her close to him for a long moment.
“You are a most obedient captain,” she said.
When he released her and went at his task, she leaned upon his shoulder
and watched him as he straddled his parallels across the chart.
“We'll run to Razee Reef,” he told her, eager to make her a partner in
all his little concerns. “The Bee boats fetch the whistler there so as
to lay off their next leg. I didn't know that Mr. Marston was interested
in the Bee line.”
“I heard him talking about that line,” she said, indifferently.
“Sometimes I listen when I have nothing else to do. He used a naughty
word about somebody connected with that company--and it's so seldom that
he allows himself to swear I listened to see what it was all about. I
don't know even now. I don't understand such things. But he said if he
couldn't buy 'em he'd bu'st 'em. Those were his words. Not very elegant
language. But it's all I remember.”
Before he left the chart-room Mayo took a squint at the barometer. “I'm
sorry he has ordered me in toward the coast,” he said. “The glass is too
far below thirty to suit me. I think it means fog.”
“But it's so clear and beautiful,” she protested.
“It's always especially beautiful at sea before something bad happens,”
he explained, smiling. “And there has been a big fog-bank off to
s'uth'ard for two days. It's a good deal like life, dear. All lovely,
and then the fog shuts in!”
“But I would be happy with you in the fog,” she assured him.
He glowed at her words and answered with his eyes.
She would have followed him back upon the bridge, but the steward
intercepted her. He had waited outside the chart-room.
“Mr. Marston's compliments, Miss Marston! He requests you to join him at
cards.”
She pouted as she gave back Mayo's look of annoyance, and then obeyed
the mandate.
Mr. Marston was stroking his narrow strip of chin beard with thumb and
forefinger when she arrived on the quarter-deck. The men of business
were below, and he motioned to a hammock chair beside him.
“Alma, for the rest of this cruise I want you to stay back here with
our guests where you belong,” he commanded with the directness of attack
employed by Julius Marston in his dealings with those of his ménage.
“What do you mean, father?”
“That--exactly. I was explicit, was I not?”
“But you do not intimate that--that I have--”
“Well?” Mr. Marston believed in allowing others to expose their
sentiments before he uncovered his own.
“You don't suggest that there is anything wrong in my being on the
bridge where I enjoy myself so much. I am trying to learn something
about navigation.”
“I am paying that fellow up there to attend to all that.”
“And it gets tiresome back here.”
“You selected your own company for the cruise--and there is Mr.
Beveridge ready to amuse you at any time.”
“Mr. Beveridge amuses me--distinctly amuses me,” she retorted. “But
there is such a thing as becoming wearied even of such a joke as Mr.
Beveridge.”
“You will please employ a more respectful tone when you refer to that
gentleman,” said her father, with severity. But he promptly fell back
into his usual mood when she came into his affairs. He was patronizingly
tolerant. “Your friend, Miss Burgess, has been joking about your sudden
devotion to navigation, Alma.”
“Nan Burgess cannot keep her tongue still, even about herself.”
“I know, but I do not intend to have you give occasion even for
jokes. Of course, I understand. I know your whims. You are interested,
personally, in that gold-braided chap about as much as you would be
interested in that brass thing where the compass is--whatever they call
it.”
“But he's a gentleman!” she cried, her interest making her unwary. “His
grandfather was--”
“Alma!” snapped Julius Marston. His eyes opened wide. He looked her up
and down. “I have heard before that an ocean trip makes women silly,
I am inclined to believe it. I don't care a curse who that fellow's
grandfather was. _You_ are my daughter--and you keep off that bridge!”
The men of business were coming up the companion-way, and she rose and
hurried to her stateroom.
“I don't dare to meet Nan Burgess just now,” she told herself.
“Friendships can be broken by saying certain things--and I feel
perfectly capable of saying just those things to her at this moment.”
In the late afternoon the _Olenia_, the shore-line looming to starboard,
shaped her course to meet and pass a big steamer which came rolling down
the sea with a banner of black smoke flaunting behind her.
The fog which Captain Mayo had predicted was coming. Wisps of it trailed
over the waves--skirmishers sent ahead of the main body which marched in
mass more slowly behind.
A whistling buoy, with its grim grunt, told all mariners to 'ware Razee
Reef, which was lifting its jagged, black bulk against the sky-line.
With that fog coming, Captain Mayo needed to take exact bearings from
Razee, for he had decided to run for harbor that night. That coastline,
to whose inside course Marston's orders had sent the yacht, was too
dangerous to be negotiated in a night which was fog-wrapped. Therefore,
the captain took the whistler nearly dead on, leaving to the larger
steamer plenty of room in the open sea.
With considerable amazement Mayo noticed that the other fellow was
edging toward the whistler at a sharper angle than any one needed. That
course, if persisted in, would pinch the yacht in dangerous waters. Mayo
gave the on-coming steamer one whistle, indicating his intention to pass
to starboard. After a delay he was answered by two hoarse hoots--a most
flagrant breach of the rules of the road.
“That must be a mistake,” Captain Mayo informed Mate McGaw.
“That's a polite name for it, sir,” averred Mr. McGaw, after he had
shifted the lump in his cheek.
“Of course he doesn't mean it, Mr. McGaw.”
“Then why isn't he giving us elbow-room on the outside of that buoy,
sir?”
“I can't swing and cross his bows now. If he should hit us we'd be the
ones held for the accident.”
Again Mayo gave the obstinate steamer a single whistle-blast.
“If he cross-signals me again I'll report him,” he informed the mate.
“Pay close attention, Mr. McGaw, and you, too, Billy. We may have to go
before the inspectors.”
But the big chap ahead of them did not deign to reply. He kept on
straight at the whistler.
“Compliments of Mr. Marston!” called the secretary from the bridge
ladder. “What steamer is that?”
“_Conorno_ of the Bee line, sir,” stated Captain Mayo over his shoulder.
Then he ripped out a good, hearty, deep-water oath. According to
appearances, incredible as the situation seemed, the _Conorno_ proposed
to drive the yacht inside the whistler.