Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
“I'll go back--go back right now. I supposed I was asking a favor of
a gentleman and a brother officer.” He started on his return to the
ladder.
“Go get your stuff,” commanded Mayo. “If your business here is all your
own, I don't want to spy on you.”
He went back to question the captain of the tug for information in
regard to the _Ethel and May_.
“She's in Limeport,” reported the captain, elbows on his window-sill.
“Came past her in the inner harbor this morning. You've bit off quite a
chunk here, haven't you? We all thought this storm had sluiced her. Made
quite a stir up and down the water-front when old Can-dage blew along
and reported that she had lived it out.”
“Reckon some of the panic boys are talking in another key about the
prospects out here, about now, aren't they?”
“Ain't so sure about that, sir,” stated the towboat man, loafing into an
easier attitude.
“Isn't there a feeling on shore that we are likely to make good on
this proposition?” There was solicitude in Mayo's voice. He was acutely
anxious. On the sentiment ashore depended Captain Candage's success.
“Can't say that I hear of any!”
“But the talk must--”
“There ain't very much talk--not now. It's generally reckoned that this
packet is a gone goose and folks are talking about something else.”
“But she is here--she is upright and fast! She is--”
The towboat man was not enough interested to listen to statements
concerning the _Conomo's_ condition. “Look-a-here, son,” he broke in,
“do you think for a minute that this thing wouldn't have been grabbed
up by the real people if there had been any show of a make? I know there
isn't a show!”
“How do you know?” demanded Mayo, with indignation.
“Haven't I been talking with the representative of one of the biggest
salvaging companies on the Atlantic coast? He's there in Limeport
now--was aboard my tug this morning.”
“How does he know?”
“Well, he does know. That's his business. And everybody in Limeport
knows what he has said. He hasn't been bashful about expressing his
opinion.”
Mayo leaned over the rail, a baleful light in his eyes indicating what
his own opinions regarding this unknown detractor were, just then.
“I'd like to know who this Lord Guess-so is--barking behind honest men's
backs!”
“Mr. Fogg! That's him! Seems to know his business!”
“Fogg?”
“'Exactly!' That's his great word,” explained the other, grinning. “Some
chap, too, with cigars and language!”
“By the gods, now I know who chartered this tug!” he shouted. “What kind
of a fool am I getting to be?”
He turned and ran toward the officers' quarters. He leaped into the main
passageway and explored headlong the staterooms. There was no sign of
his visitor.
At that moment, in the tumult of his thoughts, he had only a glimmering
of an idea as to what might be the motive of the man's visit. But he
was certain, now, that a wretch who had deliberately wrecked a rival
steamer--if Candage's suspicions were correct--would do almost anything
else for money.
A narrow companionway with brass rails led below to the crew's quarters.
Mayo, coming to the head of it, saw the man hurrying to its foot. The
captain grasped the rails and slid down with one swoop.
“What in the devil's name are you doing?” he gasped.
The intruder grabbed him and threw him to one side, and started up the
companionway. He had dropped the suit-case to seize Mayo, and it bounced
in a way to show that it was empty.
Mayo leaped and grasped the other's legs as he was mounting. The man
kicked him ferociously in the breast before the attacker managed to
pinion the legs in his arms. They went down together, rolling over and
over.
The stranger was stocky and strong, his muscles toughened by a sailor's
activities. Moreover, he seemed to be animated by something more than a
mere grudge or desire to defend himself; he fought with frenzy, beating
his fists into Mayo's face and sides as they rolled. Then he began to
shout. He fairly screamed, struggling to release himself.
But his assailant was just as tough and just as desperate, and he had
a younger man's superior agility. The other had forced the fight. Mayo
proposed to hang to him until he discovered the meaning of this peculiar
ferocity.
He flipped across his prisoner, clutched him by both ears, and rapped
the man's head so smartly on the deck planks that his victim relaxed,
half unconscious.
Then he opened staring eyes. “Let me go! Let me go! I quit. Run for it.
Let me run. We're goners!” he squalled.
“Run? Why?” demanded the victor.
“Dynamite! I've planted it. The fuse is going.”
“Where is it?”
“Below--somewhere. I've forgot. I, can't remember. My mind is gone. I'm
too scared to think. Run!”
Mayo jumped up and yanked the man to his feet. “Take me to it!” he
shouted.
“There ain't time. I guessed at the fuse--it may burn quicker than I
reckoned.”
The young man drove his fist into the other's face and knocked him down.
Then he jerked him upright again.
“Take me where you've planted that dynamite or we'll stay here and go up
together. And now you know I mean what I say.”
The last blow had cowed his man; he raised his fist again.
The visitor leaped away from him and ran along the lower deck, Mayo
at his heels. He led the way aft. In the gloom of betweendecks there
gleamed a red spark. Mayo rushed to it, whipped off his cap, and snuffed
the baleful glow. When he was sure that the fuse was dead he heard his
man scrambling up the companion ladder. He pursued and caught the quarry
as he gained the upper deck, and buffeted the man about the ears and
forced him into a stateroom.
“This means state prison for you! You were guilty of barratry before,
and you know it! How did you dare to try this last trick?”
“I had my orders.”
“Orders from what man?”
“No matter. You needn't ask. I won't tell.” The stranger was sullen, and
had recovered some of his assurance, now that his fear of the dynamite
was removed.
“You're a lunatic. You ought to have known you couldn't pull off a thing
of this kind.”
“I don't know about that! It was working pretty slick. If she had split
and gone off these ledges, you couldn't have proved anything special.
I've got good backing. You better let me go.”
Mayo glared at him, deprived of speech by this effrontrery.
“You'd better come over with the big fellows,” advised the man. “I can
tell you right now that every hole in Limeport has been plugged against
you. You can't hire equipment there, or get a cent's credit. It has all
been nicely attended to. You're here fooling with a dead duck. You'd be
better off if that dynamite had been let alone to split her.”
The entire uselessness of words in a situation like this, the inadequacy
of speech to meet such brazen boldness, checked Mayo's oath-peppered
anathema. He pulled the key from the stateroom door and menaced the
prisoner with his fist when the man started to follow him out.
“You don't dare to keep me aboard here! Take warning by what they have
already done to you, Mayo! I'm sure of my backing.”
“You'll have a chance to use it!” retorted the young man. He dodged out
and locked the stateroom door.
“Your passenger is not going back with you, sir,” he called down over
the rail to the towboat captain.
“I take my orders from him.”
“You are taking them from me now. Cast off!”.
“Look here--”
“I mean what I say, sir. That man you brought out here is going to stay
till I can put him into the hands of the police.”
“What has he done?”
“The less you know about the matter the better it will be for yourself
and your boat! You tell the man who chartered your tug--”
“You have him aboard, there!”
Mayo looked straight into the towboat man's eyes.
“You tell Mr. Fogg, who chartered your tug, that I have his man under
lock and key and that the more riot he starts over the matter the better
I will be satisfied. And don't bring any more passengers out here unless
they are police officers.” Then he roared in his master-mariner tones:
“Cast off your lines, sir. You know what the admiralty law is!”
The captain nodded, closed his pilot-house window, and clanged his bell.
Mayo knew by his mystified air that he was not wholly in the confidence
of his passenger and his employer.
This bungling, barefaced attempt to destroy the steamer touched Mayo's
pride as deeply as it stirred his wrath. Fogg evidently viewed the
pretensions of the new ownership with contempt. He must have belief in
his own power to ruin and to escape consequences, pondered the young
man. He had put Mayo and his humble associates on the plane of the
ordinary piratical wreckers of the coast-men who grabbed without law or
right, who must be prepared to fight other pirates of the same ilk, and
whose affairs could have no standing in a court of law.
Even more disquieting were the statements that the avenues of credit
ashore had been closed. Malicious assertions could ruin the project more
effectually than could dynamite. But now that the _Conomo_ had withstood
the battering of a gale and bulked large on the reef, a visible pledge
of value, it did seem that Captain Candage must be able to find somebody
who would back them.
For two days Mayo waited with much impatience, he and his men doing such
preliminary work as offered itself.
He expected that Fogg would send a relief expedition, but his
apprehensions bore no fruit. His prisoner was sourly reticent and by the
few words he did drop seemed to console himself with the certainty that
retribution awaited Mayo.
On the third day came the schooner. She came listlessly, under a
light wind, and her limp sails seemed to express discouragement and
disappointment. Mayo, gazing across to her as she approached, received
that impression, in spite of his hopes. He got a glimpse of Captain
Candage's face as he came to the steamer's side in his dory, and his
fears were confirmed.
“'Tain't no use,” was the skipper's laconic report as he swung up the
ladder.
“You mean to say you didn't get a rise out of anybody?”
“Nothing doing nowhere. There's a fat man named Fogg in Limeport, and he
is spreading talk that we 'ain't got law or prospects. Got a few men to
listen to me, but they shooed me off when they found that we wouldn't
take 'em in and give 'em all the profits. Went to Maquoit and tried to
get Deacon Rowley into the thing--and when I go and beg favors of Deacon
Rowley, you can imagine how desperate I am. He's a cash-down fellow--you
have found that out.”
“But couldn't you show him that this is the best gamble on the coast?”
“He ain't a gambler; he's a sure-thing operator. And when he knew that
we had put in all our cash, he threatened to take the schooner away from
us unless we go back to fishing and 'be sensible'--that's the way he put
it. So then him and me had that postponed row.”
“But look at her,” pleaded Mayo, waving his hand, “Ice off her, sound in
all her rivets after her beating. If we could get the right men out here
now--”
“I ain't confident, myself, no more,” stated Captain Candage, running
an eye of disfavor over their property. “If ye get out here away from
level-headed business men and dream about what might happen, you can
fool yourself. I can see how it is with you. But I've been ashore, and
I've got it put to me good and plenty. I did think of one way of getting
some money, but I come to my senses and give it up.”
“Getting money--how?”
“No matter. I'd cut off both hands before I'd let them hands take that
money for a desp'rit thing like this. Let's sell her for scrap to
the first man who'll take her--and then mind our own business and go
fishing.”
“Will you take your turn aboard here and let me go ashore?”
“There ain't no sense in us wasting more time.”