Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
got to look back over my record and reflect that I was either a Chinyman
or a Turkeyman. No, sir! I have been a father--and my girls can come
and sit on my knee to-day and get my advice, and think it's worth
something.”
He rose and walked toward his dory.
“But hold on,” called Captain Candage. “You haven't told me what you
think.”
“Haven't I? I thought I had, making it mild and pleasant. But if you
need a little something more plain and direct, I'll remark--still making
it mild and pleasant--that you're a damned old fool! And now I'll go
back and be sociable with them fish scraps. I believe they will smell
better after this!” He leaped into his dory and rowed away.
Captain Candage offered no rejoinder to that terse and meaty summing up.
Naturally, he was as ready with his tongue as Captain Ranse Lougee or
any other man alongshore. But in this case the master of the _Polly_
was not sure of his ground. He knew that Captain Lougee had qualified as
father of five. In the judgment of a mariner experience counts. And
he did not resent the manner of Captain Lougee because that skipper's
brutal bluntness was well known by his friends. Captain Candage had
asked and he had received. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared
after the departing caller and pondered.
“Maybe he is right. He probably _is_ right. But it wouldn't be shipboard
discipline if I told her that I have been wrong. I reckon I'll go aft
and be pleasant and genteel, hoping that nothing will happen to rile my
feelings. Now that my feelings are calm and peaceful, and having taken
course and bearings from a father of five, I'll probably say to her,
'You'd better trot along home, sissy, seeing that I have told you how to
mind your eye after this.'”
IV ~ OVER THE “POLLY'S” RAIL
O Stormy was a good old man!
To my way you storm along!
Physog tough as an old tin pan,
Ay, ay, ay, Mister Storm-along!
--Storm-along Shanty.
Without paying much attention to the disturber, Captain Candage had been
a bit nettled during his meditation. A speed boat from one of the yachts
kept circling the _Polly_, carrying a creaming smother of water
under its upcocked bow. It was a noisy gnat of a boat and it kicked a
contemptuous wake against the rust-streaked old wagon.
When it swept under the counter, after Captain Candage was back on his
quarter-deck, he gave it a stare over the rail, and his expression was
distinctly unamiable.
“They probably wasted more money on that doostra-bulus than this
schooner would sell for in the market today,” he informed Otie.
“They don't care how money goes so long as they didn't have to sweat
earning it. Slinging it like they'd sling beans!”
Back on its circling course swished the darting tender. This time the
purring motor whined into silence and the boat came drifting alongside.
“On board _Polly!_” hailed one of the yachtsmen, a man with owner's
insignia on his cap.
The master of the old schooner stuck his lowering visage farther over
the rail, but he did not reply.
“Isn't this _Polly_ the real one?”
“No, it's only a chromo painting of it.”
“Thank you! You're a gentleman!” snapped the yachtsman.
“Oh, hold on, Paul,” urged one of the men in the tender. “There's a
right way to handle these old boys.” He stood up. “We're much interested
in this packet, captain.”
“That's why you have been making a holy show of her, playing ring around
a rosy, hey?”
“But tell me, isn't this the old shallop that was a privateer in the war
of eighteen twelve?”
“Nobody aboard here has ever said she wasn't.”
“Well, sir, may we not come on board and look her over?”
“No sir, you can't.”
“Now, look here, captain--”
“I'm looking!” declared the master of the _Polly_ in ominous tones.
“We don't mean to annoy you, captain.”
“Folks who don't know any better do a lot of things without meaning to.”
Captain Candage regularly entertained a sea-toiler's resentment for men
who used the ocean as a mere playground. But more especially, during
those later days, his general temper was touchy in regard to dapper
young men, for he had faced a problem of the home which had tried his
soul. He felt an unreasoning choler rising in him in respect to these
chaps, who seemed to have no troubles of their own.
“I am a writer,” explained the other. “If I may be allowed on board I'll
take a few pictures and--”
“And make fun of me and my bo't by putting a piece in the paper to
tickle city dudes. Fend off!” he commanded, noticing that the tender was
drifting toward the schooner's side and that one of the crew had set a
boat-hook against the main chain-plate.
“Don't bother with the old crab,” advised the owner, sourly.
But the other persisted, courteously, even humbly. “I am afraid you do
not understand me, captain. I would as soon make jest of my mother as of
this noble old relic.”
“Go ahead! Call it names!”
“I am taking off my hat to it,” he declared, whipping his cap from his
head. “My father's grandfather was in the war of eighteen twelve. I want
to honor this old patriot here with the best tribute my pen can pay.
If you will allow me to come on board I shall feel as though I were
stepping upon a sacred spot, and I can assure you that my friends, here,
have just as much respect for this craft as I have.”
But this honest appeal did not soften Captain Candage. He did not
understand exactly from what source this general rancor of his flowed.
At the same time he was conscious of the chief reason why he did not
want to allow these visitors to rummage aboard the schooner. They would
meet his daughter, and he was afraid, and he was bitterly ashamed of
himself because he was afraid. Dimly he was aware that this everlasting
fear on her account constituted an insult to her. The finer impulse to
protect her privacy was not actuating him; he knew that, too. He was
merely foolishly afraid to trust her in the company of young men, and
the combination of his emotions produced the simplest product of mental
upheaval--unreasonable wrath.
“Fend off, I say,” he commanded.
“Again I beg you, captain, with all respect, please may we come on
board?”
“You get away from here and tend to your own business, if you've got
any, or I'll heave a bunch of shingles at you!” roared the skipper.
“Father!” The voice expressed indignant reproof. “Father, I am ashamed
of you!”
The girl came to the rail, and the yachtsmen stared at her as if she
were Aphrodite risen from the sea instead of a mighty pretty girl
emerging from a dark companion-way. She had appeared so suddenly! She
was so manifestly incongruous in her surroundings.
“Mother o' mermaids!” muttered the yacht-owner in the ear of the man
nearest. “Is the old rat still privateering?”
The men in the tender stood up and removed their caps.
“You have insulted these gentlemen, father!”
Captain Candage knew it, and that fact did not soften his anger in the
least. At the same time this appearance of his own daughter to read him
a lesson in manners in public was presumption too preposterous to be
endured; her daring gave him something tangible for his resentment to
attack.
He turned on her. “You go below where you belong.”
“I belong up here just now.”
“Down below with you!”
“I'll not go until you apologize to these gentlemen, father!”
“You ain't ashore now, miss, to tell me when to wipe my feet and not
muss the tidies! You're on the high seas, and I'm cap'n of this vessel.
Below, I say!”
“These gentlemen know the _Polly_, and they will find out the name of
the man who commands her, and I don't propose to have it said that the
Candages are heathens,” she declared, firmly. “If you do not apologize,
father, I shall apologize for you.” She tried to crowd past him to the
rail, but he clapped his brown hand over her mouth and pushed her back.
His natural impulse as commander of his craft dominated his feelings as
a father.
“I'll teach ye shipboard discipline, Polly Candage,” he growled, “even
if I have to take ye acrost my knee.”
“Hold on there, if you please, captain,” called the spokesman of the
yachtsmen.
Captain Candage was hustling his daughter toward the companionway. But
there was authority in the tone, and he paused and jutted a challenging
chin over his shoulder.
“What have any of you critters got to say about my private business?”
The formality of the man in the tender was a bit exaggerated in his
reply. “Only this, sir. We are going away at once before we bring any
more trouble upon this young lady, to whom we tender our most respectful
compliments. We do not know any other way of helping her. Our protests,
being the protests of gentlemen, might not be able to penetrate; it
takes a drill to get through the hide of a rhinoceros!”
The skipper of the _Polly_ did not trouble himself about the finer
shadings in that little speech, but of one fact he felt sure: he
had been called a rhinoceros. He released his daughter, yanked the
marlinespike away from Otie, who had been holding himself in the
background as a reserve force, and stamped to the rail. He poised his
weapon, fanning it to and fro to take sure aim. But the engineer had
thrown in his clutch and the speed boat foamed off before the captain
got the range, and he was too thrifty to heave a perfectly good
marlinespike after a target he could not hit, angry as he was.
The girl faced her father. There was no doubting her mood. She was a
rebel. Indignation set up its flaming standards on her cheeks, and the
signal-flames of combat sparkled in her eyes.
“How did you dare to do such a thing to me--those gentlemen looking on?
Father, have you lost your mind?”
Otie expressed the opinion tinder his breath that the captain, on the
contrary, had “lost his number.”
Otie's superior officer was stamping around the quarterdeck, kicking at
loose objects, and avoiding his daughter's resentful gaze. There was
a note of insincerity in his bluster, as if he wanted to hide
embarrassment in a cloud of his own vaporings, as a squid colors water
when it fears capture.
“After this you call me Cap'n Candage,” he commanded. “After this
I'm Cap'n Candage on the high seas, and I propose to run my own
quarter-deck. And when I let a crowd of dudes traipse on board here to
peek and spy and grin and flirt with you, you'll have clamshells for
finger-nails. Now, my lady, I don't want any back talk!”
“But I am going to talk to you, father!”
“Remember that I'm a Candage, and back talk--”
“So am I a Candage--and I have just been ashamed of it!”
“I'm going to have discipline on my own quarterdeck.”
“Back talk, quarter-deck discipline, calling you captain! Fol-de-rol and
fiddlesticks! I'm your own daughter and you're my father. And you have
brought us both to shame! There! I don't want to stay on this old hulk,
and I'm not going to stay. I am going home to Aunt Zilpah.”
“I had made up my mind to let you go. My temper was mild and sweet till
those jeehoofered, gold-trimmed sons of a striped--”
“Father!”
“I had made up my mind to let you go. But I ain't going to give in to a
mutiny right before the face and eyes of my own crew.”
Smut-nosed Dolph had arrived with the supper-dishes balanced in his arms
while he crawled over the deckload. He was listening with the utmost
interest.
“Your Aunt Zilpah has aided and abetted you in your flirting,” raged the
captain. “My own sister, taking advantage of my being off to sea trying
to earn money--”
“Do you mean to insult everybody in this world, father? I shall go home,
I say. I'm miserable here.”
“I'll see to it that you ain't off gamboling and galley-westing with
dudes!”
In spite of her spirit the girl was not able to bandy retort longer with
this hard-shelled mariner, whose weapon among his kind for years