Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
“But what did you just shout--right out where everybody could hear you?”
“That--that was only passing the compliments of the day as compared with
what I can do when I get started proper. Do you think I'm going to let
any snub-snooted wart-hog of a lime-duster sing--”
“Father!”
“What's a girl know about the things a father has to put up with when he
goes to sea and earns money for her?”
“I am willing to work for myself. You took me right out of my good
position in the millinery-store. You have made me leave all my young
friends. Oh, I am so homesick!” Her self-reliance departed suddenly. She
choked. She tucked her head into the hook of her arm and sobbed.
“Don't do that!” he pleaded, softening suddenly. “Please don't, Polly!”
She looked up and smiled--a pleading, wan little smile. “I didn't mean
to give way to it, popsy dear. I don't intend to do anything to make you
angry or sorry. I have tried to be a good girl. I am a good girl. But it
breaks my heart when you don't trust me.”
“They were courting you,” he stammered. “Them shore dudes was hanging
around you. I ain't doubting you, Polly. But you 'ain't got no mother.
I was afraid. I know I've been a fool about it. But I was afraid!” Tears
sprinkled his bronzed cheeks. “I haven't been much of a father because
I've had to go sailing and earn money. But I thought I'd take you away
till-till I could sort of plan on something.”
She gazed at him, softening visibly.
“Oh, Polly,” he said, his voice breaking, “you don't know how pretty you
are-you don't know how afraid I am!”
“But you can trust me, father,” she promised, after a pause, with simple
dignity. “I know I am only a country girl, not wise, perhaps, but I know
what is right and what is wrong. Can't you understand how terribly you
have hurt my pride and my self-respect by forcing me to come and be
penned up here as if I were a shameless girl who could not take care of
herself?”
“I reckon I have done wrong, Polly. But I don't know much-not about
women folk. I was trying to do right-because you're all I have in this
world.”
“I hope you will think it all over,” she advised, earnestly. “You will
understand after a time, father, I'm sure. Then you will let me go back
and you will trust me-as your own daughter should be trusted. That's the
right way to make girls good-let them know that they can be trusted.”
“You are probably right,” he admitted. “I will think it all over.
As soon as we get in and anchored I'll sit down and give it a good
overhauling in my mind. Maybe-”
She took advantage of his pause. “We are going into a harbor, are we,
father?”
“Yes. Right ahead of us.”
“I wish you would put me ashore and send me back. I shall lose my
position in the store if I stay away too long.”
His obstinacy showed again, promptly. “I don't want you in that
millinery-shop. I'm told that dude drummers pester girls in stores.”
“They do not trouble me, father. Haven't you any confidence in your own
daughter?”
“Yes, I have,” he said, firmly, and then added, “but I keep thinking of
the dudes and then I get afraid.”
She gave him quick a glance, plainly tempted to make an impatient
retort, and then turned and went down into the cabin.
“Don't be mad with me, Polly,” he called after her. “I guess, maybe, I'm
all wrong. I'm going to think it over; I ain't promising nothing sure,
but it won't be none surprising if I set you ashore here and send you
back home. Don't cry, little girl.” There were tears in his voice as
well as in his eyes.
The lime-schooner vocalist felt an impulse to voice another verse:
“Ow-w-w, here comes the _Polly_ in the middle of the road,
Towed by a mule and paving-blocks her load.
Devil is a-waiting and the devil may as well,
'Cause he'll never get them paving-blocks to finish paving hell.”
Captain Candage left his wheel and strode to the rail. All the softness
was gone from his face and his voice.
“You horn-jawed, muck-faced jezebo of a sea-sculpin, you dare to yap
out any more of that sculch and I'll come aboard you after we anchor and
jump down your gullet and gallop the etarnal innards out of ye! Don't
you know that I've got ladies aboard here?”
“It don't sound like it,” returned the songster.
“Well, you hear what _I_ sound like! Half-hitch them jaw taakuls of
yours!”
Captain Candage's meditations were not disturbed after that.
With the assistance of his one helper aboard ship, “Oakum Otie,” a gray
and whiskered individual who combined in one person the various offices
of first mate, second mate, A-1 seaman, and hand before the mast-as
well as the skipper's boon companion-the _Polly_ was manoeuvered to her
anchorage in Saturday Cove and was snugged for the night. Smoke began to
curl in blue wreaths from her galley funnel, and there were occasional
glimpses of the cook, a sallow-complexioned, one-eyed youth whose chief
and everlasting decoration provided him with the nickname of “Smut-nosed
Dolph.”
Then came some of the ocean aristocrats to join the humbler guests in
that tavern of the seas.
Avant couriers of a metropolitan yacht club, on its annual cruise,
arrived, jockeying in with billowing mountains of snowy canvas spread to
catch the last whispers of the breeze. Later arrivals, after the breeze
failed, were towed in by the smart motor craft of the fleet. One by one,
as the anchors splashed, brass cannons barked salute and were answered
by the commodore's gun.
Captain Candage sat on the edge of the _Polly's_ house and snapped
an involuntary and wrathful wink every time a cannon banged. In that
hill-bound harbor, where the fog had massed, every noise was magnified
as by a sounding-board. There were cheery hails, yachtsmen bawled over
the mist-gemmed brass rails interchange of the day's experiences, and
frisking yacht tenders, barking staccato exhausts, began to carry men to
and fro on errands of sociability. In the silences Captain Candage could
hear the popping of champagne corks.
“Them fellers certainly live high and sleep in the garret,” observed
Oakum Otie. He was seated cross-legged on the top of the house and was
hammering down the lumps in a freshly twisted eye-splice with the end of
a marlinespike.
“It has always been a wonder to me,” growled Captain Candage, “how dudes
who don't seem to have no more wit than them fellows haw-hawing over
there, and swigging liquor by the cart-load, ever make money the way
they do so as to afford all this.”
On that point Captain Candage might have found Mate McGaw of the
_Olenia_ willing to engage in profitable discussion and amicable
understanding!
“They don't make it-they don't know enough to make it,” stated Otie,
with the conviction of a man who knew exactly what he was talking about.
“It has all been left to 'em by their fathers.”
The bearded and brown men of the apple-tree crews leaned the patched
elbows of their old coats on the rails and gloomily surveyed the
conviviality on board the plaything crafts. Remarks which they exchanged
with one another were framed to indicate a sort of lofty scorn for these
frolickers of the sea. The coasting skippers, most of whom wore hard
hats, as if they did not want to be confounded with those foppish yacht
captains, patrolled their quarter-decks and spat disdainfully over their
rails.
Everlastingly there was the clank of pumps on board the Apple-treers,
and the pumps were tackling the everlasting leaks. Water reddened
by contact with bricks, water made turbid by percolation through
paving-blocks, splashed continuously from hiccuping scuppers.
Captain Ranse Lougee of the topsail schooner _Belvedere_, laden with
fish scraps for a Boston glue-factory, dropped over the counter into his
dory and came rowing to the _Polly_, standing up and facing forward and
swaying with the fisherman's stroke.
He straddled easily over the schooner's scant freeboard and came aft,
and was greeted cordially by Captain Candage.
“Thought I'd show them frosted-cakers that there's a little sociability
amongst the gents in the coasting trade, too,” he informed his
host. “Furthermore, I want to borry the ex-act time o' day. _And_,
furthermore, I'm glad to get away from that cussed aromy on board the
_Belvedere_ and sort of air out my nose once in a while. What's the good
word, Cap?”
Captain Candage replied to the commonplaces of the other skipper in
abstracted fashion. He had viewed Lougee's approach with interest, and
now he was plainly pondering in regard to something wholly outside this
chatter.
“Captain Lougee,” he broke in, suddenly, in low tones, “I want you
should come forward with me out of hearing of anybody below. I've got a
little taakul I want you to help me overhaul.”
The two walked forward over the deckload and sat on the fore-gaff, which
sprawled carelessly where it had fallen when the halyards were let run.
“My daughter is below, there,” explained Captain Candage.
“Vacation trip, eh?”
“I don't think it can be called that, Captain Lougee,” stated the host,
dryly. “She is having about as good a time as a canary-bird would have
in a corn-popper over a hot fire.”
“What did she come for, then?”
“I made her come. I shanghaied her.”
“That's no way to treat wimmen folks,” declared Captain Lougee. “I've
raised five daughters and I know what I'm talking about.”
“I know you have raised five girls, and they're smart as tophet and
right as a trivet--and that's why I have grabbed right in on the subject
as I have. I was glad to see you coming aboard, Captain Lougee. I want
some advice from a man who knows.”
“Then I'm the man to ask, Captain Candage.”
“Last time I was home--where she has been living with her Aunt Zilpah--I
ketched her!” confessed Candage. His voice was hoarse. His fingers, bent
and calloused with rope-pulling, trembled as he fingered the seam of his
trousers.
“You don't tell!” Lougee clucked, solicitously.
“Yes, I ketched her buggy-riding!”
“Alone?”
“No, there was a gang of 'em in a beach-wagon. They was going to a
party. And I ketched her dancing with a fellow at that party.”
“Well, go ahead now that you've got started! Shake out the mainsail!”
“That's about all there is to it--except that a fellow has been beauing
her home from Sunday-school concerts with a lantern. Yes, I reckon that
is about all to date and present writing,” confessed Candage.
“What else do you suspect?”
“Nothing. Of course, there's no telling what it will grow to be--with
dudes a-pestering her the way they do.”
“There ain't any telling about anything in this world, is there?”
demanded Captain Lougee, very sharply.
“I reckon not--not for sure!”
“Do you mean to say that because your girl--like any girl should--has
been having a little innocent fun with young folks, you have dragged her
on board this old hooker, shaming her and making her ridiculous?”
“I have been trying to do my duty as a father,” stated Captain Candage,
stoutly, and avoiding the flaming gaze of his guest.
Captain Lougee straightened his leg so as to come at his trousers
pocket, produced a plug of tobacco, and gnawed a chew off a corner,
after careful inspection to find a likely spot for a bite.
“I need to have something in my mouth about this time--something
soothing to the tongue and, as you might say, sort of confining, so that
too much language won't bu'st out all at once,” he averred, speaking
with effort as he tried to lodge the huge hunk of tobacco into a
comfortable position. “I have raised five nice girls, and I have always
treated 'em as if they had common sense along with woman's nat'ral
goodness and consid'able more self-reliance than a Leghorn pullet. And
I used 'em like they had the ordinary rights and privileges of human
beings. And they are growed up and a credit to the family. And I haven't