Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
a bit. “I haven't got much use for that kind myself. You come along. But
if you ain't A-1, shipshape, and seamanlike and come aboard my vessel
to loaf on your job you'll wish you were in tophet with the torches
lighted. Got any dunnage laying around anywhere?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, then, I guess you're a regular sailor, all right, the way the
breed runs nowadays. That sounds perfectly natural.” The captain led the
way down to a public landing, where a power-yawl, with engineer and a
mate, was in waiting. “Will she go into the stream to-night, Mr. Dodge?”
asked Captain Downs, curtly.
“No, sir! About four hundred tons still to come.”
Schooner captains keep religiously away from their vessels as long as
the crafts lie at the coal-docks.
“Come up for me in the morning as soon as she is in the stream. Here's
a man to fill the crew. If that coon shows up with another man kick the
two of 'em up the wharf.”
“Will the passenger come aboard with you, sir?”
“He called me up at the hotel about supper-time and said something about
wanting to come aboard at the dock. I tried to tell him it was foolish,
but it's safe to reckon that a man who wants to sail as passenger from
here to Boston on a coal-schooner is a fool, anyway. If he shows up,
let him come aboard.” Captain Downs swung away and the night closed in
behind him.
Mayo took his place in the yawl and preserved meek and proper silence
during the trip down the harbor.
When they swung under the counter of the schooner which was their
destination, the young man noted that she was the _Drusilla M. Alden_,
a five-master, of no very enviable record along the coast, so far as the
methods and manners of her master went; Mayo had heard of her master,
whose nickname was “Old Mull.” He had not recognized him under the name
of Captain Downs when the runner had addressed him.
The new member of the crew followed the mate up the ladder--only a few
steps, for the huge schooner, with most of her cargo aboard, showed less
than ten feet of freeboard amidships.
“Sleepy, George?” asked the mate, when they were on deck.
“No, sir.”
“Then you may as well go on this watch.”
“Yass'r!”
“We'll call it now eight bells, midnight. You'll go off watch eight
bells, morning.”
Mayo knew that the hour was not much later than eleven, but he did
not protest; he knew something about the procedure aboard coastwise
coal-schooners.
Search-lights bent steady glare upon the chutes down which rushed the
streams of coal, black dust swirling in the white radiance. The great
pockets at Lambert Point are never idle. High above, on the railway,
trains of coal-cars racketed. Under his feet the fabric of the vessel
trembled as the chutes fed her through the three hatches. Sweating,
coal-blackened men toiled in the depths of her, revealed below hatches
by the electric lights, pecking at the avalanche with their shovels,
trimming cargo.
The young man exchanged a few listless words with the two negroes who
were on deck, his mates of the watch.
They were plainly not interested in him, and he avoided them.
The hours dragged. He helped to close and batten the fore-hatch,
and later performed similar service on the hatch aft. The main-hatch
continued to gulp the black food which the chute fed to it.
Suddenly a tall young man appeared to Mayo. The stranger was smartly
dressed, and his spick-and-span garb contrasted strangely with the
general riot of dirt aboard the schooner. He trod gingerly over the
dust-coated planks and carried two suit-cases.
“Here, George,” he commanded. “Take these to my stateroom.”
Mayo hesitated.
“I'm going as passenger,” said the young man, impatiently, and Mayo
remembered what the captain had told the mate.
Passengers on coal-schooners, sailing as friends of the master, were not
unknown on the coast, but Mayo judged, from what he had heard, that this
person was not a friend, and had wondered a bit.
“I am not allowed to go aft, sir, without orders from the mate.”
“Where is the mate?”
“I think he is below, sir.”
“Asleep?”
“I wouldn't wonder.”
Mayo did not trouble to use his dialect on this stranger, a mere
passenger, who spoke as if he were addressing a car-porter. The tone
produced instant irritation, resentment in the man who had so recently
been master of his ship.
The passenger set down his baggage and pondered a moment. He looked Mayo
over in calculating fashion; he stared up the wharf. Then he picked
up his bags and hurried along the port alley and disappeared down the
companionway.
He returned in a few moments, came into the waist of the vessel,
and made careful survey of all about him. There were two sailors far
forward, merely dim shadows. For some reason general conditions on the
schooner seemed to satisfy the stranger.
“The thing is breaking about right--about as I reckoned it would,” he
said aloud. “Look here, George, how much talking do you do about things
you see?”
“Talking to who, sir?”
“Why, to your boss--the captain--the mate.”
“A sailor before the mast is pretty careful not to say anything to a
captain or the mates unless they speak to him first, sir.”
“George, I'm not going to do anything but what is perfectly all right,
you understand. You'll not get into any trouble over it. But what you
don't see you can't tell, no matter if questions are asked later on.
Here, take this!” He crowded two silver dollars into Mayo's hands and
gave him a push. “You trot forward and stay there about five minutes,
that's the boy! It's all right. It's a little of my own private
business. Go ahead!”
Mayo went. He reflected that it was none of his affair what a passenger
did aboard the vessel. It was precious little interest he took in the
craft, anyway, except as a temporary refuge. He turned away and put the
money in his pocket, the darkness hiding his smile.
He did not look toward the wharf. He strolled on past the forward house,
where the engineer was stoking his boiler, getting up steam for the
schooner's windlass engine. When he patrolled aft again, after
a conscientious wait, he found the passenger leaning against the
coachhouse door, smoking a cigarette. The electric light showed his
face, and it wore a look of peculiar satisfaction.
Just then some one fumbled inside the coach-house door at the stranger's
back, and when the latter stepped away the first mate appeared, yawning.
“I'm the passenger--Mr. Bradish,” the young man explained, promptly. “I
just made myself at home, put my stuff in a stateroom, and locked the
door and took the key. Is that all right?”
“May be just as well to lock it while we're at dock and stevedores are
aboard,” agreed the mate.
“How soon do we pull out of here?”
The mate yawned again and peered up into the sky, where the first gray
of the summer dawn was showing over the cranes of the coal-pockets.
“In about a half-hour, I should say. Just as soon as the tug can use
daylight to put us into the stream.”
The roar of the coal in the main-hatch chute had ceased. The schooner
was loaded.
“Go strike eight bells, Jeff, and turn in!” ordered the mate, speaking
to Mayo.
“Well, I'll stay outside, here, and watch the sun rise,” said Bradish.
“It will be a new experience.”
“It's an almighty dirty place for loafing till we get into the stream
and clean ship, sir. I should think taking an excursion on a coal-lugger
would be another new experience!” There was just a hint of grim sarcasm
in his tone.
“The doctor ordered me to get out and away where I wouldn't hear of
business or see business, and a friend of mine told me there were plenty
of room and comfort aboard one of these big schooners. That cabin and
the staterooms, they're fine!”
“Oh, they have to give a master a good home these days. That's a Winton
carpet in the saloon,” declared the mate, with pride. “And we've got a
one-eyed cook who can certainly sling grub together. Yes, for a cheap
vacation I dun'no' but a schooner is all right!”
The two were getting on most amicably when Mayo went forward. He was
dog-tired and turned in on tie bare boards of his fo'cas'le berth.
No bedding is furnished men before the mast on the coal-carriers.
If a man wants anything between himself and the boards he must bring it
with him, and few do so. At the end of each trip a crew is discharged
and new men are hired, in order to save paying wages while a vessel is
in port loading or discharging. Therefore, a coastwise schooner harbors
only transients, for whom the fo'cas'le is merely a shelter between
watches.
But Mayo was a sailor, and the bare boards served him better than
bedding in which some dusky and dirty son of Ham had nestled. He laid
himself down and slept soundly.
The second mate turned out the watch below at four bells--six in the
morning. The schooner was in the stream and all hands were needed to
work hose and brooms and clear off the coal-dust. Mayo toiled in the
wallow of black water till his muscles ached.
There was one happy respite--they knocked off long enough to eat
breakfast. It was sent out to them from the cook-house in one huge,
metal pan without dishes or knives or forks.
A white cook wash dishes for negroes?
Mayo knew the custom which prevailed on board the schooners between the
coal ports and the New England cities, and he fished for food with his
fingers and cut meat with his jack-knife with proper meekness.
When he was back at his scrubbing again the cook passed aft, bearing
the zinc-lined hamper which contained the breakfast for the cabin table.
That this cook had the complete vocabulary of others of his ilk was
revealed when the man with the hose narrowly missed drenching the
hamper.
“That's right, cook!” roared Captain Downs, climbing ponderously on
board from his yawl. “Talk up to the loafing, cock-eyed, pot-colored
sons of a coal-scuttle when I ain't here to do it. Turn away that hose,
you mule-eared Fiji!” He turned on Mayo, who stood at one side and was
poising his scrubbing-broom to allow the master to pass. “Get to work,
there, yellow pup! Get to work!”
Ordinarily the skipper addresses one of his sailors only through the
mate. But there was no mate handy just then.
“One hand for the owners and one hand for yourself when you're aloft,
but on deck it's both hands for the owners,” he stated, as he plodded
aft, giving forth the aphorism for the benefit of all within hearing.
The passenger was still on deck, and Mayo heard Captain Downs greet him
rather brusquely.
Then the cook's hand-bell announced breakfast, and before the captain
and his guest reappeared on deck a tug had the _Alden's_ hawser and was
towing her down the dredged channel on the way to Hampton Roads and to
sea.
Mayo went at his new tasks so handily that he passed muster as an
able seaman. If a sailor aboard a big schooner of these days is quick,
willing, and strong he does not need the qualities and the knowledge
which made a man an “A. B.” in the old times.
While the schooner was on her way behind the tug they hoisted her sails,
a long cable called “the messenger” enabling the steam-winch forward to
do all the work. Mayo was assigned to the jigger-mast, and went aloft
to shake out the topsail. It was a dizzy height, and the task tried his
spirit, for the sail was heavy, and he found it difficult to keep his
balance while he was tugging at the folds of the canvas. He was obliged
to work alone--there was only one man to a mast, and very tiny insects
did his mates appear when Mayo glanced forward along the range of the
masts.
The tug dropped them off the Tail of the Horseshoe; a smashing
sou'wester was serving them.
With all her washing set, the schooner went plowing out past the capes,
and Mayo was given his welcome watch below; he was so sleepy that his
head swam.