Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
Mayo ran to the wheel and yanked the bell-pull furiously. There were
four quick clangs in the engine-room, and in a moment the _Olenia_ began
to quiver in all her fabric. Going full speed ahead, Mayo had called
for full speed astern. Then he sounded three whistles, signaling as the
rules of the road provide. The yacht's twin screws churned a yeasty riot
under her counter, and while she was laboring thus in her own wallow,
trembling like some living thing in the extremity of terror, the big
steamer swept past. Froth from the creamy surges at her bows flicked
spray contemptuously upon Julius Marston and his guests on the
_Olenia_'s quarter-deck. Men grinned down upon them from the high
windows of the steamer's pilot-house.
A jeering voice boomed through a megaphone: “Keep out of the way of the
Bee line! Take the hint!”
An officer pointed his finger at Marston's house flag, snapping from
the yacht's main truck. The blue fish-tail with its letter “M” had
revealed the yacht's identity to searching glasses.
“Better make it black! Skull and cross-bones!” volunteered the megaphone
operator.
On she went down the sea and the _Olenia_ tossed in the turbulent wake
of the kicking screws.
Then, for the first time, Captain Mayo heard the sound of Julius
Marston's voice. The magnate stood up, shook his fist at his staring
captain, and yelled, “What in damnation do you think you are doing?”
It was amazing, insulting, and, under the circumstances as Mayo knew
them, an unjust query. The master of the _Olenia_ did not reply. He was
not prepared to deliver any long-distance explanation. Furthermore, the
yacht demanded all his attention just then. He gave his orders and she
forged ahead to round the whistler.
“Nor'west by west, half west, Billy. And cut it fine!”
The fog had fairly leaped upon them from the sea. The land-breeze
had been holding back the wall of vapor, damming it in a dun bank to
southward. The breeze had let go. The fog had seized its opportunity.
“Saturday Cove for us to-night, Mr. McGaw,” said the master. “Keep your
eye over Billy's shoulder.”
Then the secretary appeared again on the ladder. This time he did not
bring any “compliments.”
“Mr. Marston wants you to report aft at once,” he announced, brusquely.
Mayo hesitated a moment. They were driving into blankness which had shut
down with that smothering density which mariners call “a dungeon fog.”
Saturday Cove's entrance was a distant and a small target. In spite of
steersman and mate, his was the sole responsibility.
“Will you please explain to Mr. Marston that I cannot leave the bridge?”
“You have straight orders from him, captain! You'd better stop the boat
and report.”
The skipper of the _Olenia_ was having his first taste of the
unreasoning whim of the autocrat who was entitled to break into
shipboard discipline, even in a critical moment. Mayo felt exasperation
surging in him, but he was willing to explain.
The whistler and Razee Reef had been blotted out by the fog.
“If this vessel is stopped five minutes in this tide-drift we shall lose
our bearings, sir. I cannot leave this bridge for the present.”
“I'm thinking you'll leave it for good!” blurted the secretary. “You're
the first hired man who ever told Julius Marston to go bite his own
thumb.”
“I may be a hired man,” retorted Mayo. “But I am also a licensed
shipmaster. I must ask you to step down off the bridge.”
“Does that go for all the rest of the--passengers?” asked the secretary,
angry in his turn. He dwelt on his last word. “It does--in a time like
this!”
“Very well, I'll give them that word aft.”
Captain Mayo caught a side glance from Mate McGaw after a time.
“I have often wondered,” remarked the mate to nobody in particular, “how
it is that so many damn fools get rich on shore.”
Captain Mayo did not express any opinion on the subject. He clutched the
bridge rail and stared into the fog, and seemed to be having a lot of
trouble in choking back some kind of emotion.
III ~ THE TAVERN OF THE SEAS
Now, Mister Macliver, you knows him quite well,
He comes upon deck and he cuts a great swell;
It's damn your eyes there and it's damn your eyes here,
And straight to the gangway he takes a broad sheer.
--La Pique “Come-all-ye.”
Into Saturday Cove, all during that late afternoon, they came
surging--spars and tackle limned against the on-sweeping pall of the
gray fog--those wayfarers of the open main.
First to roll in past the ledgy portals of the haven were the venerable
sea-wagons--the coasters known as the “Apple-treers.” Their weatherwise
skippers, old sea-dogs who could smell weather as bloodhounds sniff
trails, had their noses in the air in good season that day, and knew
that they must depend on a thinning wind to cuff them into port. One
after the other, barnacled anchors splashed from catheads, dragging
rusty chains from hawse-holes, and old, patched sails came sprawling
down with chuckle of sheaves and lisp of running rigging.
A 'long-coast shanty explains the nickname, “Apple-treers”:
O, what's the use of compass or a quadrant or a log?
Keep her loafin' on her mudhook in a norther or a fog.
But as soon's the chance is better, then well ratch her off once more,
Keepin' clost enough for bearings from the apple-trees ashore.
Therefore, the topsail schooners, the fore-and-afters, the Bluenose
blunt-prows, came in early before the fog smooched out the loom of
the trees and before it became necessary to guess at what the old card
compasses had to reveal on the subject of courses.
And so, along with the rest of the coastwise ragtag, which was seeking
harbor and holding-ground, came the ancient schooner _Polly_. Fog-masked
by those illusory mists, she was a shadow ship like the others; but,
more than the others, she seemed to be a ghost ship, for her lines and
her rig informed any well-posted mariner that she must be a centenarian;
with her grotesqueness accentuated by the fog pall, she seemed unreal--a
picture from the past.
She had an out-thrust of snub bow and an upcock of square stern, and
sag of waist--all of which accurately revealed ripe antiquity, just as
a bell-crowned beaver and a swallow-tail coat with brass buttons would
identify an old man in the ruck of newer fashions. She had seams like
the wrinkles in the parchment skin of extreme old age. She carried a
wooden figurehead under her bowsprit, the face and bust of a woman on
whom an ancient woodcarver had bestowed his notion of a beatific smile;
the result was an idiotic simper. The glorious gilding had been worn
off, the wood was gray and cracked. The _Polly's_ galley was entirely
hidden under a deckload of shingles and laths in bunches; the
after-house was broad and loomed high above the rail in contrast to the
mere cubbies which were provided for the other fore-and-afters in the
flotilla which came ratching in toward Saturday Cove.
The _Polly_, being old enough to be celebrated, had been the subject of
a long-coast lyric of seventeen verses, any one of which was capable of
producing most horrible profanity from Captain Epps Candage, her master,
whenever he heard the ditty echoing over the waves, sung by a satirist
aboard another craft.
In that drifting wind there was leisure; a man on board a lime-schooner
at a fairly safe distance from the _Polly_ found inclination and lifted
his voice:
“Ow-w-w, here comes the _Polly_ with a lopped-down sail,
And Rubber-boot Epps, is a-settin' on her rail.
How-w-w long will she take to get to Boston town?
Can't just tell 'cause she's headin' up and down.”
“You think that kind o' ky-yi is funny, do you, you walnut-nosed,
blue-gilled, goggle-eyed son of a dough-faced americaneezus?” bellowed
Captain Candage, from his post at the _Polly's_ wheel.
“Father!” remonstrated a girl who stood in the companionway, her elbows
propped on the hatch combings. “Such language! You stop it!”
“It ain't half what I can do when I'm fair started,” returned the
captain.
“You never say such things on shore.”
“Well, I ain't on shore now, be I? I'm on the high seas, and I'm talking
to fit the occasion. Who's running this schooner, you or me?”
She met his testiness with a spirit of her own, “I'm on board here,
where I don't want to be, because of your silly notions, father. I have
the right to ask you to use decent language, and not shame us both.”
Against the archaically homely background the beauty of the young girl
appeared in most striking contrast. Her curls peeped out from under the
white Dutch cap she wore. Her eyes sparkled with indignant protest, her
face was piquant and was just then flushed, and her nose had the least
bit of a natural uptilt, giving her the air of a young woman who had a
will of her own to spice her amiability.
Captain Candage blinked at her over the spokes of the wheel, and in his
father's heart acknowledged her charm, realizing more acutely that
his motherless girl had become too much of a problem for his limited
knowledge in the management of women.
He had not seen her grow up gradually, as other fathers had viewed their
daughters, being able to meet daily problems in molding and mastery.
She seemed to reach development, mental and physical, in disconcerting
phases while he was away on his voyages. Each time he met her he was
obliged to get acquainted all over again, it appeared to him.
Captain Candage had owned up frankly to himself that he was not able to
exercise any authority over his daughter when she was ashore.
She was not wilful; she was not obstinate; she gave him affection. But
she had become a young woman while his slow thoughts were classing her
still as a child. She was always ahead of all his calculations. In
his absences she jumped from stage to stage of character--almost of
identity! He had never forgotten how he had brought back to her from New
York, after one voyage, half a gunny sackful of tin toys, and discovered
that in his absence, by advice and sanction of her aunt, who had become
her foster-mother, she had let her dresses down to ankle-length and had
become a young lady whom he called “Miss Candage” twice before he had
managed to get his emotions straightened out. While he was wondering
about the enormity of tin toys in the gunny sack at his feet, as he sat
in the aunt's parlor; his daughter asked him to come as guest of
honor with the Sunday-school class's picnic which she was arranging as
teacher. That gave him his opportunity to lie about the toys and allege
that he had brought them for her scholars.
Captain Candage, on the deck of his ship, found that he was able to
muster a little courage and bluster for a few minutes, but he did not
dare to look at her for long while he was asserting himself.
He looked at her then as she stood in the gloomy companionway, a
radiant and rosy picture of healthy maidenhood. But the expression on
her face was not comfortingly filial.
“Father, I must say it again. I can't help saying it. I am so unhappy.
You are misjudging me so cruelly.”
“I done it because I thought it was right to do it. I haven't been
tending and watching the way a father ought to tend and watch. I never
seemed to be able to ketch up with you. Maybe I ain't right. Maybe I be!
At any rate, I'm going to stand on this tack, in your case, for a while
longer.”
“You have taken me away from my real home for this? This is no place for
a girl! You are not the same as you are when you are on shore. I didn't
know you could be so rough--and--wicked!”
“Hold on there, daughter! Snub cable right there! I'm an honest,
God-fearing, hard-working man--paying a hundred cents on the dollar, and
you know it.”