Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
“No, they ain't courting, either,” she informed the pestering neighbors.
“Do you suppose I have been twice married and twice a widder not to know
courting when I see it? It's 'Boyd this' and 'Polly that,' to be sure,
the whole continyal time; but she is engaged to somebody else, because
she has been wearing an engagement ring that has come to her since she
has been here. She showed it to me, and she showed it to him! And as for
him, everybody 'longcoast knows how dead gone on him that millionaire
girl is! Now everybody mind their own business!”
As the days passed the widow's counsel seemed to apply to all the
affairs of Maquoit; folks went at their business in good earnest.
The winter wind nipped, the wharf piles were sheathed with ice, and only
hardy men were abroad on the waterfront of the coast city, but the crew
of the _Ethel and May_ were unusually cheerful that day.
The schooner had stayed on Cashes Banks and had ridden out a gale that
had driven other fishermen to shelter. Then in the first lull she had
sent her dories over the rail and had put down her trawls for a set,
and a rousing set it was! It seemed as if the cod, hake, and haddock had
been waiting for that gale to stop so that they might hunt for baited
hooks and have a feast. Nearly every ganging-line had its prize. The bow
pulley in each dory fairly chuckled with delight as the trawl line was
pulled over it. Every three feet was a ganging-line. Each dory strung
out a mile of trawl. And when the dories returned to the schooner and
dumped the catch into the hold the little craft fairly wallowed under
her load.
They caught the market bare; the gale had blown for nearly a week.
Fish-houses bid spiritedly against one another, and when at last a trade
was made and the schooner's crew began to pitchfork the fish into the
winch buckets, and the buckets rose creaking out over the rail, the two
captains went into the office of the fish-house to figure some mighty
gratifying profits.
“Nothing like luck in the fishing game, gents,” observed the manager.
“Well, grit counts for something,” stated Captain Candage. “We've got a
crew that ain't afraid of a little weather.”
“If that's the case, there may be something for you off-coast about now
that's better than the fishing game.”
“What's that?” asked the old skipper.
“Wrecking. Seen the morning papers?”
“We've had something to do besides fool with papers.”
“That new Bee line steamer, _Conomo_, has been piled up on Razee Reef.”
“One time--this last time--she hugged too close!” snapped the young man.
The others bent an inquiring gaze on him. But he did not explain. His
thoughts were busy with the events of that day when the Bee line steamer
started his troubles with Marston.
“Paper says she's considered a total loss,” went on the manager. “If
that's so, and the underwriters give her up, there ought to be some fine
picking for men with grit. The board of survey went out to her on a
tug this morning.” He gave them their check, and they went aboard their
schooner.
The affair of the _Conomo_ was not mentioned between them until they
were at sea on their way to the eastward again. The piece of news did
not interest Mayo at first, except as a marine disaster that had no
bearing on his own affairs.
Captain Candage was stumping the quarter-deck, puffing at his short,
black pipe. “I don'no' as you feel anyways as I do about it, Captain
Mayo, but it ain't going to be no great outset to us if we make a leg
out to Razee and see what's going on there,” he suggested.
“I have no objections,” returned Mayo. “But the way things are managed
nowadays in case of wrecks, I don't see much prospect of our getting in
on the thing in any way.”
“Mebbe not; but in case they're going to abandon her there'll be some
grabbing, and we might as well grab with the rest of 'em.”
“If they can't get her off some junk concern will gamble on her. But
we'll make an excursion of it to see the sights, sir. We can afford a
little trip after what we pulled down to-day.”
There was no hope of reaching the wreck before nightfall, so they jogged
comfortably in the light westerly that had succeeded the gale.
Captain Candage took the first watch after the second dog-watch, and
at two bells, or nine o'clock, in the evening, Mayo awoke and heard him
give orders to “pinch her.” He heard the sails flap, and knew that the
men were shortening in readiness to lay to. He slipped on his outer
clothing and went on deck.
“We're here,” stated the old skipper, “and it looks like some other
moskeeters had got here ahead of us, ready to stick in their little
bills when they get a chance.”
It was a clear night, brilliant with stars. In contrast with the
twinkling and pure lights of the heavens, there were dim reds and greens
and yellow-white lights on the surface of the ocean. These lights rocked
and oscillated and tossed as the giant surges swept past.
“I make out half a dozen sail--little fellers--and two tugs,” said
Captain Candage. “But get your eye on the main squeeze!”
Mayo looked in the direction of the extended mittened hand.
“Some iceberg, hey?” commented the skipper.
A short half-mile away, a veritable ghost ship, loomed the wrecked
_Conomo_. Spray had beaten over her and had congealed until she seemed
like a mass of ice that had been molded into the shape of a ship. She
gleamed, a spectral figure, under the starry heavens.
A single red light, a baleful blob of color, showed from her main
rigging.
They surveyed her for some time.
“I should say she was spoke for,” was Captain Candage's opinion. “It's
high tide now, and a spring tide at that, and them tugs is just loafing
out there--ain't making a move to start her. We can tell more about the
prospect in the morning.”
Then the two captains turned in, for the _Ethel and May_ lay to docilely
with a single helmsman at the wheel.
The crisp light of morning did not reveal anything especially new or
important. There were half a dozen small schooners, fishermen, loafing
under shortened canvas in the vicinity of the wreck. One of the tugs
departed shoreward after a time.
Mayo had assured himself, through the schooner's telescope, that the
remaining tug was named _Seba J. Ransom_.
“The captain of that fellow went mate with me on a fishing-steamer
once,” he informed Captain Candage. “Jockey me down in reaching distance
and I'll go aboard him in a dory. He may have some news.”
Captain Dodge was immensely pleased to see his old chum, and called him
up into the pilot-house and gave him a cigar.
“It's only a loafing job,” he said. “I've got to stand by and take off
her captain and crew in case of rough weather or anything breaks loose
more'n what's already busted. They are still hanging by her so as to
deliver her to the buyer.”
“Buyer?”
“Yep! To whatever junkman is fool enough to bid her in. She's stuck
fast. Underwriters have gone back on that tug, and are going to auction
her. I'm here to help keep off pirates and take her men ashore after she
has been handed over. You a pirate, Mayo?” he asked, with a grin.
“I'm almost anything nowadays, if there's a dollar to be made,”
returned the young man.
The _Ransom's_ captain gave him a wink. “I'm on to what happened on
board the _Olenia_” he confided. “Feller who was in the crew told me.
You're good enough for old Marston's girl. Why haven't you gone up to
New York and taken--”
“Cut that conversation, Dodge,” barked Mayo, his face hard and his jaw
jutting threateningly. “Good day!” added the young man, slamming the
pilot-house door behind him.
His schooner, standing off and on, picked him up.
“There's no use hanging around here,” he informed the old skipper.
“They're going to junk her, if they can find anybody fool enough to bid.
She'll be guarded till after the auction.”
Therefore the _Ethel and May_ shook out all her canvas and headed full
and by for Maquoit to secure her fresh supply of bait.
“It's a shame,” mourned Captain Candage, staring over the taffrail at
the ice-sheathed steamer. “'Most new, and cost two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars to build, if I remember right what the paper said when
she was launched.”
“If she was making money they'll have another one in her place,” said
Mayo.
“Don'no' about that, sir. The Bee line wasn't none too strong
financially, I'm told--a lot of little fellers who put in what they
could scrape and borrowed the rest. Depends on insurance and their
courage what they do after this.” He offered another observation after
he had tamped down a load in his black pipe. “Men will do 'most anything
for money--enough money.”
“Seems as if I'd heard that statement before,” was Mayo's curt
rejoinder.
“Oh, I know it ain't in any ways new. But the more I think over what has
happened to the _Conomo_, the pickeder seems the point to that remark.
And whilst I was standing off and on, waiting for you, I run close
enough to that steamer to make out a few faces aboard her.”
Mayo glanced at him without comment.
“F'r instance, I saw Art Simpson. You know him, don't you?”
“He was captain of Mr. Marston's yacht once.”
“Why did he leave her?”
“I heard he had been discharged. That was what the broker said when he
hired me.”
“Yes, that's what Simpson said. He made a business of going around and
swearing about it. Seemed to want to have everybody 'longcoast hear him
swear about it. When I see a man make too much of a business of swearing
about another man I get suspicious. After Art Simpson worked his cards
so as to get the job of second officer on board the new _Conomo_ I
got _more_ suspicious. Now that I have seen how that steamer has
been plunked fair and square on Razee, I'm _almighty_ suspicious.
I'm suspicious enough to believe that she banged during Art Simpson's
watch.”
“What are you driving at, Captain Candage? Are you hinting that anybody
would plant a man for a job of that kind?”
“Exactly what I'm hinting,” drawled the skipper.
“But putting a steamer on the rocks at this time of year!”
“No passengers--and plenty of life-boats for the crew, sir. I have
been hearing a lot of talk about steamboat conditions since I have been
carrying in fish.”
“I've found out a little something in that line myself,” admitted Mayo.
“There's one thing to be said about Blackbeard and Cap'n Teach and old
Cap Kidd--they went out on the sea and tended to their own pirating;
they didn't stay behind a desk and send out understrappers.”
Mayo, in spite of his bitter memories of Julius Mar-ston's attitude,
felt impelled to palliate in some degree the apparent enormities of the
steamboat magnates.
“I don't believe the big fellows know all that's done, Captain Candage.
As responsible parties they wouldn't dare to have those things done. The
understrappers, as you say, are anxious to make good and to earn their
money, and when the word is passed on down to 'em they go at the job
recklessly. I think it will be pretty hard to fix anything on the real
principals. That's why I am out in the cold with my hands tied, just
now.”
“I wish we were going to get into the _Conomo_ matter a little, so that
we could do some first-hand scouting. It looks to me like the rankest
job to date, and it may be the opening for a general overhauling. When
deviltry gets to running too hard it generally stubs its toes, sir.”
Captain Candage found a responsive gleam in Mayo's eyes and he went on.
“Of course, I didn't hear the talk, nor see the money pass, nor I wa'n't
in the pilot-house when Art Simpson shut his eyes and let her slam. But
having been a sailorman all my life, I smell nasty weather a long ways
off. That steamer was wrecked a-purpose, and she was wrecked at a time
o' year when she can't be salvaged. You don't have to advise the devil