Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
had been a rude tongue. Shocked grief put an end to her poor little
rebellion. Tears came.
“You are giving these two men a budget to carry home and spread about
the village! Oh, father, you are wicked--wicked!” She put her hands to
her face, sobbed, and then ran away down into the gloomy cabin.
There was a long silence on the quarter-deck. Otie recovered his
marlinespike and began to pound the eye-bolt.
“Without presuming, preaching, or poking into things that ain't none of
my business, I want to say that I don't blame you one mite, cap'n,” he
volunteered. “No matter what she says, she wasn't to be trusted among
them dudes on shore, and I speak from observation and, being an old
bach, I can speak impartial. The dudes on the water is just as bad. Them
fellows were flirting with her all the time they was 'longside. Real men
that means decent ain't called on to keep whisking their caps off and on
all the time a woman is in sight--and I see one of 'em wink at her.”
Captain Candage was in a mood to accept this comfort from Oakum Otie,
and to put out of his contrite conscience the memory of what Captain
Ranse Lougee had said.
“Don't you worry! I've got her now where I can keep my eye on her, and
I'm cap'n of my own vessel--don't nobody ever forget that!” He shook his
fist at the gaping cook. “What ye standing there for, like a hen-coop
with the door open and letting my vittels cool off? Hiper your boots!
Down below with you and dish that supper onto the table!”
The skipper lingered on deck, his hand at his ear.
The fog was settling over the inner harbor. In the dim vastness seaward
a steamer was hooting. Each prolonged blast, at half-minute intervals,
sounded nearer. The sound was deep, full-toned, a mighty diapason.
“What big fellow can it be that's coming in here?” the captain grunted.
“Most likely only another tin skimmer of a yacht,” suggested the mate,
tossing the eye-splice and the marline-spike into the open hatch of the
lazaret. “You know what they like to do, them play-critters! They stick
on a whistle that's big enough for Seguin fog-horn.” He squinted under
the edge of his palm and waited. “There she looms. What did I tell ye?
Nothing but a yacht.”
“But she's a bouncer,” remarked the skipper. “What do you make her?”
“O--L,” spelled Otie--“O--L--_Olenia_. Must be a local pilot aboard.
None of them New York spiffer captains could find Saturday Cove through
the feather-tide that's outside just now.”
“Well, whether they can or whether they can't isn't of any interest to
me,” stated the skipper, with fine indifference. “I'd hate to be in
a tight place and have to depend on one of them gilded dudes! I smell
supper. Come on!”
He was a little uncertain as to what demeanor he ought to assume
below, but he clumped down the companion-way with considerable show of
confidence, and Otie followed.
The captain cast a sharp glance at his daughter. He had been afraid that
he would find her crying, and he did not know how to handle such cases
with any certainty.
But she had dried her eyes and she gave him no very amiable
look--rather, she hinted defiance. He felt more at ease. In his opinion,
any person who had spirit enough left for fight was in a mood to keep on
enjoying life.
“Perhaps I went a mite too far, Polly,” he admitted. He was mild, but
he preserved a little touch of surliness in order that she might not
conclude that her victory was won. “But seeing that I brought you off to
sea to get you away from flirting--”
“Don't you dare to say that about me!” She beat her round little fist on
the table. “Don't you dare!”
“I don't mean that you ever done it! The dudes done it! I want to do
right by you, Polly. I've been to sea so long that I don't know much
about ways and manners, I reckon. I can't get a good line on things as
I ought to. I'm an old fool, I reckon.” His voice trembled. “But it made
me mad to have you stram up there on deck and call me names before 'em.”
She did not reply.
“I have always worked hard for you--sailing the seas and going without
things myself, so that you could have 'em--doing the best I could ever
after your poor mother passed on.”
“I am grateful to you, father. But you don't understand a girl--oh, you
don't understand! But let's not talk about it any more--not now.”
“I ain't saying to-night--I ain't making promises! But maybe--we'll
see how things shape up--maybe I'll send you back home. Maybe it 'll be
to-morrow. We'll see how the stage runs to the train, and so forth!”
“I am going to leave it all to you, father. I'm sure you mean to do
right.” She served the food as mistress at the board.
“It seems homelike with you here,” said Captain Can-dage, meekly and
wistfully.
“I will stay with you, father, if it will make you happier.”
“I sha'n't listen to anything of the sort. It ain't no place aboard here
for a girl.”
Through the open port they heard the frequent clanging of the
steam-yacht's engine-room bell and the riot of her swishing screws as
she eased herself into an anchorage. She was very near them--so near
that they could hear the chatter of the voices of gay folk.
“What boat is that, father?”
“Another frosted-caker! I can't remember the name.”
“It's the _Oilyena_ or something like that. I forget fancy names pretty
quick,” Otie informed her.
“Well, it ain't much use to load your mind down with that kind of
sculch,” stated Captain Candage, poising a potato on his fork-tines and
peeling it, his elbows on the table. “That yacht and the kind of folks
that's aboard that yacht ain't of any account to folks like us.”
The memory of some remarks which are uttered with peculiar fervor
remains with the utterer. Some time later--long after--Captain Candage
remembered that remark and informed himself that, outside of weather
predictions, he was a mighty poor prophet.
V ~ ON THE BRIDGE OF YACHT “_OLENIA_”
O the times are hard and the wages low,
Leave her, bullies, leave her!
I guess it's time for us to go,
It's time for us to leave her.
--Across the Western Ocean.
Captain Mayo was not finding responsibility his chief worry while the
_Olenia_ was making port.
It was a real mariner's job to drive her through the fog, stab the
harbor entrance, and hunt out elbow-room for her in a crowded anchorage.
But all that was in the line of the day's work. While he watched the
compass, estimated tide drift, allowed for reduced speed, and listened
for the echoes which would tell him his distance from the rocky shore,
he was engaged in the more absorbing occupation of canvassing his
personal affairs.
As the hired master of a private yacht he might have overlooked that
affront from the owner, even though it was delivered to a captain on the
bridge.
But love has a pride of its own. He had been abused like a lackey in the
hearing of Alma Marston. It was evident that the owner had not finished
the job. Mayo knew that he had merely postponed his evil moment by
sending back a reply which would undoubtedly seem like insubordination
in the judgment of a man who did not understand ship discipline and
etiquette of the sea.
It was evident that Marston intended to call him “upon the carpet” on
the quarter-deck as soon as the yacht was anchored, and proposed to
continue that insulting arraignment.
In his new pride, in the love which now made all other matters of life
so insignificant, Mayo was afraid of himself; he knew his limitations in
the matter of submission; even then he felt a hankering to walk aft
and jounce Julius Marston up and down in his hammock chair. He did not
believe he could stand calmly in the presence of Alma Marston and listen
to any unjust berating, even from her father.
He tried to put his flaming resentment out of his thoughts, but he could
not. In the end, he told himself that perhaps it was just as well! Alma
Marston must have pride of her own. She could not continue to love a man
who remained in the position of her father's hireling; she would surely
be ashamed of a lover who was willing to hump his back and take a
lashing in public. His desire to be with her, even at the cost of his
pride, was making him less a man and he knew it. He decided to
face Marston, man fashion, and then go away. He felt that she would
understand in spite of her grief.
Then, turning from a look at the compass, he saw that the yacht's owner
was on the bridge. Half of an un-lighted cigar, which was soggy with the
dampness of the fog, plugged Marston's-mouth.
He scowled when the captain saluted.
“You needn't bother to talk now,” the millionaire broke in when
Mayo began an explanation of his delay in obeying the call to the
quarter-deck. “When I have anything to say to a man I want his undivided
attention. Is this fog going to hold on?”
“Yes, sir, until the wind hauls more to the norrard.”
“Then anchor.”
“I am heading into Saturday Cove now, sir.”
“Anchor here.”
“I'm looking for considerably more than a capful of wind when it comes,
sir. It isn't prudent to anchor offshore.”
Marston grunted and turned away. He stood at the end of the bridge,
chewing on the cigar, until the _Olenia_ was in the harbor with mudhook
set. Mayo twitched the jingle bell, signaling release to the engineer.
“I am at your service, sir,” he reported, walking to the owner.
Marston rolled the plugging cigar to a corner of his mouth and inquired,
“Now, young man, tell me what you mean by saluting a Bee line steamer
with my whistle?”
“I did not salute the _Conomo_, sir.”
“You gave her three whistles.”
“Yes, but--”
“You're on a gentleman's yacht now, young man, and not on a
fishing-steamer. Yachting etiquette doesn't allow a steam-whistle to
be sounded in salute. Mr. Beveridge has just looked it up for me, and I
know, and you need not assume any of your important knowledge.” Marston
seemed to be displaying much more irritation than a small matter
warranted. But what he added afforded more light on the subject. “The
manager of the Bee line was on board that steamer. You heard him hoot
that siren at me!”
“I heard him give me cross-signals in defiance of the rules of the road,
sir.”
“Didn't you know that he whistled at me as an insult--as a sneer?”
“I heard only ordinary signals, sir.”
“Everything is ordinary to a sailor's observation! You allowed him to
crowd you off your course. You made a spectacle of my yacht, splashing
it around like a frightened duck.”
“I was avoiding collision, sir.”
“You should have made your bigness with my yacht! You sneaked and dodged
like a fishing-boat skipper. Was it on a fishing-boat you were trained
to those tricks?”
“I have commanded a fishing-steamer, sir.”
“On top of it all you gave him three whistles--regular fishing-boat
manners, eh?”
Captain Mayo straightened and his face and eyes expressed the spirit of
a Yankee skipper who knew that he was right.
“I say,” insisted Marston, “that you saluted him.”
“And I say, sir, that he cross-signaled, an offense that has lost
masters their licenses. When I was pinched I gave him three whistles to
say that my engines were going full speed astern. If Mr. Beveridge had
looked farther in that book he might have found that rule, too!”
“When I looked up at the bridge, here, you were waving your hand to
him--three whistles and a hand-wave! You can't deny that you were
saluting!”
“I was shaking my fist at him, sir.”
Within himself Captain Mayo was frankly wondering because the owner of
the _Olenia_ was displaying all this heat. He remembered the taunt from
the pilot-house of the _Conomo_ and understood vaguely that there were
depths in the affair which he had not fathomed. But he was in no mood to
atone vicariously for the offenders aboard the _Conomo_.