Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
It seemed to Mayo that she was trying to assure herself that Bradish was
some person whom she knew. But she did not appear to have much success
in making him seem real. She spoke to him once or twice in an undertone,
but he did not answer. Then she turned her back on him.
Suddenly Mayo leaped up and shouted.
A man was running along the sandy crest of a low hill near the beach. He
disappeared in a little structure that was no larger than a sentry-box.
“There's a coast-guard patrol from the life-saving station. There must
be one somewhere along here!”
The man rushed out and flourished his arms.
“He has telephoned,” explained Mayo. “Those are the boys! There's hope
for us!”
There was more than hope--there was rescue after some hours of dreary
and anxious waiting.
The life-boat came frothing down the sea from the distant inlet, and
they were lifted on board by strong arms.
And then Alma Marston gave Mayo the strangest look he had ever received
from a woman's eyes. But her lips grew white and her eyes closed, and
she lapsed into unconsciousness while he folded a blanket about her.
“You must have had quite a job of it, managing a woman through this
scrape,” suggested the captain of the crew.
“It's just the other way,” declared Mayo. “I'm giving her credit for
saving the whole of us.”
“How's that?”
“I might find it a little hard to make you understand, captain. Let it
stand as I have said it.”
XXV ~ A GIRL AND HER DEBT OF HONOR
Says she, “You lime-juice sailor,
Now see me home you may.”
But when we reached her cottage door
She unto me did say--
And a-way, you santee,
My dear Annie!
O you New York girls,
Can't you dance the polka!
--Walking Down the Broadway.
Mayo was promptly informed that Captain Downs and the crew of the
_Alden_ were safe.
“He caught our flare, got his motor to working, and made the inlet by a
lucky stab,” explained the coast-station captain. “But he didn't reckon
he'd ever see you folks again. How did it happen he didn't tell me there
was a woman aboard?”
“You'll have to ask him.”
“Who is she?”
“You'll have to ask him that, too. I'm only a sailor.”
The captain looked him over with considerable suspicion: His shirt was
torn and his white skin was revealed. The drenching by rain and spray
had played havoc with his disguise; most of the coloring had been washed
away.
“Have you got anything special to say about yourself?”
“No, sir.”
The captain turned his back on his men and leaned close to Mayo. “They
have had your picture in the paper this week,” he said. “You're the
captain they are wanting in that _Montana_ case. They're after you. I've
got to report on this thing, you understand!”
“Very well, captain.”
“But I reckon we'll talk it all over after we get to the station,”
said the master, kindly. “There may be something in it that I don't
understand.”
“There's considerable in it that I don't understand myself, just now,
but I'm going to find out,” declared Captain Mayo.
They placed Ahpa Marston in the care of the station captain's wife as
soon as they were safely on shore in the inlet. Fortunate chance had
sent the woman to the station that day on a visit to her husband.
Captain Downs, fed and warmed, watched the new arrivals eat beside the
kitchen stove and listened to the story Mayo had for him.
The bedraggled cat lapped milk, protected from the resentful jealousy of
the station's regular feline attaché by the one-eyed cook.
And afterward, closeted with Captain Downs and the station captain, Mayo
went over his case.
“I must say you seem to be pretty hard and fast ashore in mighty
sloppy water,” commented the coastguard captain. “It isn't my especial
business--but what do you propose to do?”
“Go to New York and take what they're going to hand me, I suppose. I
ought to have stayed there and faced the music. I have put myself in bad
by running away. But I was rattled.”
“The best of us get rattled,” said the host, consolingly. “I'm not a
policeman, sheriff, or detective, mate. I'll report this case as Captain
Downs and so many souls saved from the schooner _Alden_. You'd better
trot along up to the city and face 'em as a man should. I'll rig you out
in some of my clothes. Your old friend, Wass, meant well by rushing
you away, but I've always found that in a man's fight you can't do much
unless you're close enough to t'other fellow to hit him when he reaches
for you.”
A half-hour later, made presentable in the coast-guard captain's liberty
suit, Mayo walked through the kitchen. Bradish and the cook were still
in front of the stove.
The captain's wife, standing in a door which admitted to an inner room,
put up a finger to signal the young man and then nodded her head in
invitation. “The young lady wants to see you, sir,” she informed him
in a whisper, when he stepped to her side. “Go in!” She closed the door
behind him and remained in the kitchen.
He stood in the middle of the room and gazed at the girl for some time,
and neither of them spoke. She was swathed in blankets and was huddled
in a big chair; her face was wan and her eyes showed her weariness. But
her voice was firm and earnest when she addressed him.
“Captain Mayo, what I am going to say to you will sound very strange.
Tell me that you'll listen to me as you would listen to a man.”
“I'm afraid--” he stammered.
“It's too bad that man and woman can seldom meet on the plane where man
and man meet. But I don't want to be considered a girl just now. I'm one
human being, and you're another, and I owe something to you which must
be paid, or I shall be disgraced by a debt which will worry me all my
life.” She put out her hands and knotted the fingers together in appeal.
“Understand me--help me!”
He was ill at ease. He feared with all his soul to meet the one great
subject.
“When we thought we were going to die I told you it seemed as if I had
lived a life in a few hours--that I did not seem like the same person
as I looked into my thoughts. Captain Mayo, that is true. It is more
apparent to me now when I have had time to search my soul. Oh, I am not
the Alma Marston who has been spoiled and indulged--a fool leaping here
and there with every impulse--watching a girl in my set do a silly thing
and then doing a sillier thing in order to astonish her. That has been
our life in the city. I never knew what it meant to be a mere human
being, near death. You know you saved me from that death!”
“I only did what a man ought to do, Miss Marston.”
“Perhaps. But you did it, that's the point. There are other men--” She
hesitated. “I have had a talk with Mr. Bradish,” she told him. “It was a
mistake. You saved me from that mistake. You did it in the cabin of the
schooner. He has told me. It was better for me than saving my life.”
“But because a man isn't a sailor--isn't used to danger--” he
expostulated.
“That is not it. I say I have just had a talk with Mr. Bradish! I have
found out exactly what he is. I did not find it out when I danced with
him. But now that I have come near to dying with him I have found him
out.” The red banners in her cheeks signaled both shame and indignation.
“A coward will show all his nature before he gets himself in hand again,
and Mr. Bradish has shown me that he is willing to ruin and disgrace
me in order to make profit for himself. And there is no more to be said
about him!” She paused.
“Captain Mayo, I know what idea you must have of me--of a girl who would
do what I have done! But you don't have half the scorn for me I have for
myself--for the girl I was. But I have my self-respect now! I respect
the woman that I am at this moment after that experience! Perhaps you
don't understand. I do! I'm glad I have that self-respect. I shall face
what is ahead of me. I shall do right from now on.” She spoke quickly
and passionately, and he wanted to say something, but his sailor tongue
halted. “I am not going to bring up a certain matter--not now! It's too
sacred. I am too miserably ashamed! Again, Captain Mayo, I say that I
want to stand with you as man to man! I want to render service for what
you have done for me. You have lost everything out of your life that you
value. I want you to have it back. Will you listen to me now?”
“Yes, Miss Marston.”
“You go to my father with a letter from me. I do not believe he knows
what kind of methods have been practised by his understrappers, but he
can find out. You tell him that he must find out--that he must make
them confess. You tell him that this is a man's fight, and that you are
fighting back with all the strength that you can command. You tell him
that you have me hidden, and that I cannot get away--as my own letter
will tell him. You tell him that he must make a fair exchange with
you--give you back what is yours before he can have what is his.”
Mayo walked backward limply, feeling for the wall with his hands behind
him, and leaned against it.
“You are single-handed--it's a big game they play up in the city when
they are after money--and you must take what cards are offered,” she
insisted, displaying the shrewdness of the Marston nature.
“You mean to say that I'm going to your father as if I were holding you
for ransom?” he gasped.
“Something like that,” she returned, eagerly. “The only way you'll get
what you want--and get it quickly--is by a good bluff. I have had some
good samples of your courage, Captain Mayo. You can do it beautifully.”
“But I'm not going to do it!”
“I say you are!”
“Not by a--” His feelings were carrying him away. He was forgetting that
these dealings were with an impulsive girl. His anger was mounting. She
was putting him on the plane of a blackleg.
“Go ahead and talk as strongly as you like, Captain Mayo. It will make
it seem like man's business between us.”
“Those tricks may be all right in Wall Street, but they don't do for me.
And you've got a pretty poor opinion of me if you think I'll do it.”
“Don't be quixotic,” she protested, impatiently. “We are living in
up-to-date times, Captain Mayo. Some of those underlings have played a
nasty trick on you. They must be exposed.”
“This is a girl's crazy notion!”
“Captain Mayo, is this the way you help me pay my debt?”
“You don't owe me anything.”
“And now you pay me an insult! Are my honor as a girl and my life worth
nothing? You have saved both.”
“I don't know how to talk to you. I haven't had any experience in
talking with women. I simply say that I'm not going to your father in
any such manner. Certainly not!”
“Don't you realize what I have offered you?” she pleaded. “You are
throwing my sacrifice in my face. As the case stands now, I can hurry
off to the home of some girl friend and make up a little story of a
foolish lark, and my father will never know what has been happening. He
expects me to do a lot of silly things.”
“That's your business--and his,” he returned, dryly.
“Captain Mayo, I have been trying to show you that I am fit to be
considered something besides a silly girl. I wanted you to know that
I have a sense of obligation. The plan may seem like a girl's romantic
notion. But it isn't. It's bold, and your case heeds boldness. I was
trying to show you that I'm not a coward. I was going to confess to my
father what I have done and start on the level with him. You throw it
all in my face--you insult my plan by calling it crazy.”
“It is,” he insisted, doggedly. “And I'm in bad enough as it is!”
“Oh, you're afraid, then?”
He frowned. Her sneer seemed gratuitous injury.
He did not understand that variety of feminine guile which seeks to goad
to action one who refuses to be led.
“I admire boldness in a man when his case is desperate and he is trying