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Title: Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast

Author: Holman Day

Release date: March 9, 2008 [eBook #24793]
Most recently updated: February 24, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24793

Credits: Produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLOW THE
MAN DOWN: A ROMANCE OF THE COAST ***

BLOW THE MAN DOWN

A ROMANCE OF THE COAST

By Holman Day

Copyright, 1916, by Harper & Brothers

TO MY GOOD FRIEND

Captain John W. Christie

BRITISH MASTER MARINER
WHO HAS SUNG ALL THE SHANTIES
AND HAS SAILED ALL THE SEAS

“O, blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down!
Way-ay, blow the man down.
O, blow the man down in Liverpool town!
Give me some time to blow the man down.”
—Old Shanty of the Atlantic Packet Ships.

CONTENTS

BLOW THE MAN DOWN
I ~ CAPTAIN BOYD MAYO GETS OUT OF
SOUNDINGS
II ~ THEN CAPTAIN MAYO SEES SHOALS
III ~ THE TAVERN OF THE SEAS
IV ~ OVER THE “POLLY'S” RAIL
V ~ ON THE BRIDGE OF YACHT “OLENIA”
VI ~ AND WE SAILED
VII ~ INTO THE MESS FROM EASTWARD
VIII ~ LIKE BUGS UNDER A THIMBLE
IX ~ A MAN'S JOB
X ~ HOSPITALITY, PER JULIUS MARSTON
XI ~ A VOICE FROM HUE AND CRY
XII ~ NO PLACE POR THE SOLES OP THEIR
FEET
XIII ~ A CAPTAIN OP HUMAN FLOTSAM
XIV ~ BEARINGS FOR A NEW COURSE
XV ~ THE RULES OF THE ROAD
XVI ~ MILLIONS AND A MITE
XVII ~ “EXACTLY!” SAID MR. FOGG
XVIII ~ HOW AN ANNUAL MEETING WAS HELD
—ONCE!
XIX ~ THE PRIZE PACKAGE FROM MR. FOGG

XX ~ TESTING OUT A MAN
XXI ~ BITTER PROOF BY MORNING LIGHT
XXII ~ SPECIAL BUSINESS OF A PASSENGER
XXIII ~ THE MONSTER THAT SLIPPED ITS
LEASH
XXIV ~ DOWN A GALLOPING SEA
XXV ~ A GIRL AND HER DEBT OF HONOR
XXVI ~ THE FANGS OF OLD RAZEE
XXVII ~ THE TEMPEST TURNS ITS CARD
XXVIII ~ GIRL'S HELP AND MAN'S WORK
XXIX ~ THE TOILERS OF OLD RAZEE
XXX ~ THE MATTER OP A MONOGRAM IN WAX
XXXI ~ THE BIG FELLOW HIMSELF
XXXII ~ A GIRL'S DEAR “BECAUSE!”

BLOW THE MAN DOWN

I ~ CAPTAIN BOYD MAYO GETS OUT OF
SOUNDINGS
When in safety or in doubt,
Always keep a safe lookout;
Strive to keep a level head,
Mind your lights and mind your lead.
—Pilot-house Ditty.

For days he had been afraid of that incredible madness of his as a man
fears a nameless monster. But he was sure of his strength even while
admitting his weakness. He was confident that he had the thing securely in
leash.
Then all at once it happened!
Without preface of word or look he whirled and faced her, swept her into
his arms and kissed her. He did not attempt to absolve himself or mitigate
his offense by telling her that he loved her. He was voiceless—he could not
control his speech. He did not dare to show such presumption as talk of love
must seem to be to her. He knew he must not speak of love; such proffer to
her would be lunacy. But this greater presumption, this blind capture of her
in his arms—this was something which he had not intended any more than a
sane man considers flight to the moon.
He did not understand; he had been himself—then, instantly, in time
measured by a finger-snap, he had become this wretch who seemed to be
somebody else.
He had ceased, for an insane moment, to be master of all his senses. But
he released her as suddenly as he had seized her, and staggered to the door
of the chart-room, turning his back on her and groaning in supreme misery.
In that moment of delirium he had insulted his own New England sense
of decency and honor.
He was afraid to look back at her. With an agony of apprehension he
dreaded the sound of her voice. He knew well enough that she was striving
to get command of herself, to recover from her utter amazement. He waited.

The outrage must have incensed her beyond measure; the silence was
prolonged.
In the yacht's saloon below a violin sang its very soul out upon the
summer night, weaving its plaint into the soft, adagio rippling of a piano's
chords.
He searched his soul. The music, that distant, mellow phrasing of the call
of love, the music had unstrung him. While he paced the bridge before her
coming that music had been melting the ice of his natural reserve. But he
did not pardon himself because he had acted the fool.
He stared at the night framed in the door of the chart-house. Little waves
were racing toward him, straight from the moon, on the sea-line, like a
flood of new silver pouring from the open door of plenty!
But the appealing beauty of that night could not excuse the
unconscionable insult he had just offered her. He knew it, and shivered.
She had come and leaned close to him over the outspread chart, her
breath on his cheek—so close to him that a roving tress of her hair flicked
him. But because a sudden fire had leaped from the touch to his brain was
no reason for the act by which he had just damned himself as a
presumptuous brute.
For he, Boyd Mayo, captain of her father's yacht, a hireling, had just paid
the same insulting courtship to Alma Marston that a sailor would proffer to
an ogling girl on the street.
“I'll jump overboard,” he stammered at last. “I'll take myself out of your
sight forever.”
The ominous silence persisted.
“I don't ask you to forgive me. It is not a thing which can be forgiven.
Tell them I was insane—and jumped overboard. That will be the truth. I am
a lunatic.”
He lurched through the door. In that desperate moment, in the whirl of his
emotions, there seemed to be no other way out of his horrible predicament.
He had grown to love the girl with all the consuming passion of his soul,
realizing fully his blind folly at the same time. He had built no false hopes.
As to speaking of that love—even betraying it by a glance—he had
sheathed himself in the armor of reserved constraint; he had been sure that
he sooner would have gone down on his hands and knees and bayed that

silver moon from the deck of the yacht Olenia than do what he had just
done.
“Captain Mayo! Wait!”
He waited without turning to look at her. Her voice was not steady, but he
could not determine from the tone what her emotions were.
“Come back here!”
She was obliged to repeat the command with sharper authority before he
obeyed. He lowered his eyes and stood before her, a voiceless suppliant.
“Why did you do that?” she asked. It was not the contemptuous demand
which he had been fearing. Her voice was so low that it was almost a
whisper.
“I don't know,” he confessed.
The violin sang on; the moon shone in at the door; two strokes, like
golden globules of sound, from the ship's bell signaled nine o'clock. Only
the rhythm of the engines, as soothing as a cat's purring, and the slow roll of
the yacht and the murmuring of the parted waves revealed that the Olenia
was on her way through the night.
“I don't know,” he repeated. “It doesn't excuse me to say that I could not
help it.”
And he understood women so little that he did not realize that he was
making the ages-old plea which has softened feminine rancor ever since the
Sabine women were borne away in their captors' arms and forgave their
captors.
She stared at him, making once more a maiden's swift appraisal of this
young man who had offered himself so humbly as a sacrifice. His brown
hands were crossed in front of him and clutched convulsively his white cap.
The cap and the linen above the collar of his uniform coat brought out to the
full the hue of his manly tan. The red flush of his shocked contrition
touched his cheeks, and, all in all, whatever the daughter of Julius Marston,
Wall Street priest of high finance, may have thought of his effrontery, the
melting look she gave him from under lowered eyelids indicated her
appreciation of his outward excellencies.
“I suppose you are thoroughly and properly ashamed of what you have
done!”

“I am ashamed—so ashamed that I shall never dare to raise my eyes to
you again. I will do what I promised. I will jump overboard.”
“Captain Mayo, look at me!”
When he obeyed, with the demeanor of a whipped hound, his
perturbation would not allow him to show as much appreciation of her as
she had displayed in the secret study of him, which she now promptly
concealed. He surveyed her wistfully, with fear. And a maiden, after she has
understood that she has obtained mastery over brawn and soul, does not
care to be looked at as if she were Medusa.
She stole a side-glance at her face in one of the mirrors, and then tucked
into place a vagrant lock of hair with a shapely finger, thereby suggesting,
had there been a cynical observer present, that Miss Alma Marston never
allowed any situation, no matter how crucial, to take her attention wholly
from herself.
There was no mistaking it—had that cynical observer been there, he
would have noted that she pouted slightly when Mayo declared his
unutterable shame.
“You will never get over that shame, will you?”
And Captain Mayo, feverishly anxious to show that he understood the
enormity of his offense, and desiring to offer pledge for the future, declared
that his shame would never lessen.
Her dark eyes sparkled; whether there was mischief mingled with
resentment, or whether the resentment quite supplanted all other emotions,
might have been a difficult problem for the cynic. But when she tilted her
chin and stared the offender full in the eyes, propping her plump little hands
in the side-pockets of her white reefer, Captain Mayo, like a man hit by a
cudgel, was struck with the sudden and bewildering knowledge that he did
not know much about women, for she asked, with a quizzical drawl, “Just
what is there about me, dear captain, to inspire that everlasting regret which
seems to be troubling you so much?”
Even then he did not grasp the full import of her provocative question. “It
isn't you. I'm the one who is wholly to blame,” he stammered. “I have dared
to—But no matter. I know my place. I'll show you I know it.”
“You dared to—What have you dared to do—besides what you just did?”
“I cannot tell you, Miss Marston. I don't propose to insult you again.”

“I command you to tell me, Captain Mayo.”
He could not comprehend her mood in the least and his demeanor
showed it. Her command had a funny little ripple in it—as of laughter
suppressed. There were queer quirks at the corners of her full, red lips.
“Now straighten up like your real self! I don't like to see you standing
that way. You know I like to have all the folks on the yachts look at our
captain when we go into a harbor! You didn't know it? Well, I do. Now what
have you dared to do?”
He did straighten then. “I have dared to fall in love with you, Miss
Marston. So have a lot of other fools, I suppose. But I am the worst of all. I
am only a sailor. How I lost control of myself I don't know!”
“Not even now?” Still that unexplainable softness in her voice, that
strange expression on her face. Being a sailor, he looked on this calm as
being ominous presage of a storm.
“I am willing to have you report me to your father, Miss Marston. I will
take my punishment. I will never offend you again.”
“You can control yourself after this, can you?”
“Yes, Miss Marston, absolutely.”
She hesitated; she smiled. She lowered her eyelids again and surveyed
him with the satisfied tolerance a pretty woman can so easily extend when
unconquerable ardor has prompted to rashness.
“Oh, you funny, prim Yankee!” she murmured. “You don't understand
even now just why you did it!”
His face revealed that he did not in the least understand.
“Come here,” she invited.
He went three steps across the narrow cabin and stood in an attitude of
respectful obedience before her.
“What now, sir?” It was query even more provocative—a smile went
with it.
“I apologize. I have learned my lesson.”
“You need to learn a lot—you are very ignorant,” she replied, with
considerable tartness.
“Yes,” he agreed, humbly.

What happened then was so wholly outside his reckoning that the
preceding events of the evening retired tamely into the background. It had
been conceivable that rush of passion might drive him to break all the rules
of conduct his New England conscience had set over him; but what Alma
Marston did overwhelmed him with such stupefaction that he stood there as
rigid and motionless as a belaying-pin in a rack. She put up her arms,
pressed her two hands on his shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him on
his lips.
“There, foolish old Yankee,” she said, softly, her mouth close to his;
“since you are so ashamed I give you back your kiss—and all is made right
between us, because we are just where we started a little while ago.”
His amazement had so benumbed him that even after that surrender he
stood there, close to her, his countenance blank, his arms dangling at his
side.
“What on earth is the matter with you?” she asked, petulantly.
“I don't know! I—I—I don't seem to understand.”
“I'm going to be honest with you. You are so honest you will understand
me, then,” she told him. It seemed to him that he must be mistaken, but he
certainly felt her arms were slipping up his shoulders and had met behind
his neck. “I saw it in your eyes long ago. A woman always knows. I wanted
you to do what you did to-night. I knew I would be obliged to tempt you. I
came up here while the moon and the music would help me. I did it all on
purpose—I stood close to you—for I knew you were just my slow old
Yankee who would never come out of his shell till I poked. There! I have
confessed!”
His mad joy did not allow him to see anything of the coquette in that
confession. It all seemed to be consecrated by the love he felt for her—a
love which was so honest that he perceived no boldness in the attitude of
this girl who had come so far to meet him. He took her into his arms again,
and she returned his kisses.
“Tell me again, Boyd, that you love me,” she coaxed.
“And yet I have no right to love you. You are—”
“Hush! Hush! There goes your Yankee caution talking! I want love, for I
am a girl. Love hasn't anything to do with what you are or what I am. Not
now! We will love each other—and wait! You are my big boy! Aren't you?”

He was glad to comply with her plea to put sensible talk from them just
then. There was nothing sensible he could say. He was holding Julius
Marston's daughter in his arms, and she was telling him that she loved him.
The world was suddenly upside down and he was surrendering himself to
the mad present.

In the yacht's saloon below a woman began to sing:

“Love comes like a summer sigh,
Softly o'er us stealing.
Love comes and we wonder why
To its shrine we're kneeling.
Love comes as the days go by—”

“That's it,” the girl murmured, eagerly. “We don't know anything at all
about why we love. Folks who marry for money make believe love—I have
watched them—I know. I love you. You're my big boy. That's all. That's
enough.”
He accepted this comforting doctrine unquestioningly. Her serene
acceptance of the situation, without one wrinkle in her placid brow to
indicate that any future problems annoyed her, did not arouse his
wonderment or cause him to question the depths of her emotions; it only
added one more element to the unreality of the entire affair.
Moon and music, silver sea and glorious night, and a maid who had been,
in his secret thoughts, his dream of the unattainable!
“Will you wait for me—wait till I can make something of myself?” he
demanded.
“You are yourself—right now—that's enough!”
“But the future. I must—”
“Love me—love me now—that's all we need to ask. The future will take
care of itself when the time comes! Haven't you read about the great loves?
How they just forgot the whole petty world? What has love to do with
business and money and bargains? Love in its place—business in its place!
And our love will be our secret until—”
He pardoned her indefiniteness, for when she paused and hesitated she
pressed her lips to his, and that assurance was enough for him.
“Yes—oh yes—Miss Alma!” called a man's voice in the singsong of
eager summons.

“It's Arthur,” she said, with snap of impatience in her voice. “Why won't
people let me alone?”
He released her, and she stood at arm's-length, her hands against his
breast. “I have thought—It seemed to me,” he stammered, “that he—
Forgive me, but I have loved you so! I couldn't bear to think—think that he
—”
“You thought I cared for him!” she chided. “That's only the man my
father has picked out for me! Why, I wouldn't even allow my father to select
a yachting-cap for me, much less a husband. I'll tell him so when the time
comes!”
Mayo's brows wrinkled in spite of himself. The morrow seemed to play
small part in the calculations of this maid.
“Money—that's all there is to Arthur Beveridge. My father has enough
money for all of us. And if he is stingy with us—oh, it's easy enough to earn
money, isn't it? All men can earn money.”
Captain Mayo, sailor, was not sure of his course in financial waters and
did not reply.
“Miss Alma! I say! Oh, where are you?”
“Even that silly, little, dried-up man,” she jeered, with a duck of her head
in the direction of the drawling voice, “goes down to Wall Street and makes
thousands and thousands of dollars whenever he feels like it. And you could
put him in your reefer pocket. They will all be afraid of you when you go
down to Wall Street to make lots of money for us two. You shall see! Kiss
me! Kiss me once! Kiss me quick! Here he comes!”
He obeyed, released her, and when Beveridge shoved his wizened face in
at the door they were bending over the chart.
“Oh, I say, we have missed you. They are asking for you.”
She did not turn to look at him. “I have something else on my mind,
Arthur, besides lolling below listening to Wally Dalton fiddle love-tunes.
And this passage, here, Captain Mayo! What is it?” Her finger strayed idly
across a few hundred miles of mapped Atlantic Ocean.
“It's Honeymoon Channel,” replied the navigator, demurely. His new
ecstasy made him bold enough to jest.

“Oh, so we are learning to be a captain, Miss Alma?” inquired Beveridge
with a wry smile.
“It would be better if more yacht-owners knew how to manage their own
craft,” she informed him, with spirit.
“Yes, it might keep the understrappers in line,” agreed the man at the
door.. “I apply for the position of first mate after you qualify, Captain
Alma.”
“And this, you say, is, Captain Mayo?” she queried, without troubling
herself to reply. Her tone was crisply matter of fact.
Beveridge blinked at her and showed the disconcerted uneasiness of a
man who has intruded in business hours.
Captain Mayo, watching the white finger rapturously, noted that it was
sweeping from the Arctic Circle to the Tropic Zone. “That's Love Harbor,
reached through the thoroughfare of Hope,” he answered, respectfully.
“Oh, I say!” exclaimed Beveridge; “the sailors who laid out that course
must have been romantic.”
“Sailors have souls to correspond with their horizon, Arthur. Would you
prefer such names as Cash Cove and Money-grub Channel?”
Mr. Beveridge cocked an eyebrow and stared at her eloquent back; also,
he cast a glance of no great favor on the stalwart young captain of the
Olenia. It certainly did not occur to Mr. Beveridge that two young folks in
love were making sport of him. That Julius Marston's daughter would
descend to a yacht captain would have appeared as incredible an enormity
as an affair with the butler. But there was something about this intimate
companionship of the chart-room which Mr. Beveridge did not relish.
Instinct rather than any sane reason told him that he was not wanted.
“I'm sorry to break in on your studies, Miss Marston,” he said, a bit
stiffly. “But I have been sent by your father to call you to the cabin.” Mr.
Beveridge's air, his tone of protest, conveyed rather pointed hint that her
responsibilities as a hostess were fully as important as her studies as a
navigator.
“I must go,” she whispered.
Relief was mingled with Captain Mayo's regret. He had feared that this
impetuous young woman might rebel against the summons, even though the
word came from her father. And her persistent stay in his chart-room, even

on the pretext of a fervid interest in the mysteries of navigation, might
produce complications. This wonderful new joy in his life was too precious
to be marred by complications.
She trailed her fingers along his hand when she turned from the chart-
table, and then pinched him in farewell salute.
“Good night, Captain Mayo. I'll take another lesson to-morrow.”
“I am at your service,” he told her.
Their voices betrayed nothing, but Beveridge's keen eyes—the eyes
which had studied faces in the greatest game of all when fortunes were at
stake—noted the look they exchanged. It was long-drawn, as expressive as
a lingering kiss.
Mr. Beveridge, sanctioned in his courtship by Julius Marston, was not
especially worried by any inferences from that soft glance. He could not
blame even a coal-heaver who might stare tenderly at Miss Alma Marston,
for she was especially pleasing to the eye, and he enjoyed looking at her
himself. He was enough of a philosopher to be willing to have other folks
enjoy themselves and thereby give their approbation to his choice. He
excused Captain Mayo. As to Miss Marston, he viewed her frivolity as he
did that of the other girls whom he knew; they all had too much time on
their hands.
“Give the poor devils a chance, Alma. Don't tip 'em upside down,” he
advised, testily, when she followed him down the ladder. He stood at the
foot and offered his hand, but she leaped down the last two steps and did
not accept his assistance. “Now, you have twisted that skipper of ours until
he doesn't know north from south.”
“I do not care much for your emphasis on the 'now,'” she declared,
indignantly. “You seem to intimate that I am going about the world trying to
beguile every man I see.”
“That seems to be the popular indoor and outdoor sport for girls in these
days,” he returned with good humor. “Just a moment ago you were raising
the very devil with that fellow up there with your eyes. Of course, practice
makes perfect. But you're a good, kind girl in your heart. Don't make 'em
miserable.”
Mr. Beveridge's commiseration would have been wasted on Captain
Boyd Mayo that evening. The captain snapped off the light in the chart-

room as soon as they had departed, and there in the gloom he took his
happiness to his heart, even as he had taken her delicious self to his breast.
He put up his hands and pressed his face into the palms. He inhaled the
delicate, subtle fragrance—a mere suggestion of perfume—the sweet ghost
of her personality, which she had left behind. Her touch still thrilled him,
and the warmth of her last kiss was on his lips.
Then he went out and climbed the ladder to the bridge. A peep over the
shoulder of the man at the wheel into the mellow glow under the hood of
the binnacle, showed him that the Olenia was on her course.
“It's a beautiful night, Mr. McGaw,” he said to the mate, a stumpy little
man with bowed legs, who was pacing to and fro, measuring strides with
the regularity of a pendulum.
“It is that, sir!”
Mr. McGaw, before he answered, plainly had difficulty with something
which bulged in his cheek. He appeared, also, to be considerably surprised
by the captain's air of vivacious gaiety. His superior had been moping
around the ship for many days with melancholy spelled in every line of his
face.
“Yes, it's the most beautiful and perfect night I ever saw, Mr. McGaw.”
There was triumph in the captain's buoyant tones.
“Must be allowed to be what they call a starry night for a ramble,”
admitted the mate, trying to find speech to fit the occasion.
“I will take the rest of this watch and the middle watch, Mr. McGaw,”
offered the captain. “I want to stay up to-night. I can't go to sleep.”
The offer meant that Captain Mayo proposed to stay on duty until four
o'clock in the morning.
Mate McGaw fiddled a gnarled finger under his nose and tried to find
some words of protest. But Captain Mayo added a crisp command.
“Go below, Mr. McGaw, and take it easy. You can make it up to me some
time when there is no moon!” He laughed.
When all the cabin lights were out and he realized that she must be
asleep, he walked the bridge, exulting because her safety was in his hands,
but supremely exultant because she loved him and had told him so.
Obedience had been in the line of his training.

She had commanded him to live and love in the present, allowing the
future to take care of itself, and it afforded him a sense of sweet
companionship to obey her slightest wish when he was apart from her.
Therefore, he put aside all thoughts of Julius Marston and his millions—
Julius Marston, his master, owner of the yacht which swept on under the
moon—that frigid, silent man with the narrow strip of frosty beard pointing
his chin.
Mayo walked the bridge and lived and loved.

II ~ THEN CAPTAIN MAYO SEES SHOALS
There's naught upon the stern, there's naught upon the lee,
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we.
But there's a lofty ship to windward,
And she's sailing fast and free,
Sailing down along the coast of the high Barbaree.
—Ancient Shanty.

The skipper of the Olenia found himself dabbling in guesses and
wonderment more than is good for a man who is expected to obey without
asking the reason why.
That cruise seemed to be a series of spasmodic alternations between
leisurely loafing and hustling haste.
There were days when he was ordered to amble along at half speed
offshore. Then for hours together Julius Marston and his two especial and
close companions, men of affairs, plainly, men of his kind, bunched
themselves close together in their hammock chairs under the poop awning
and talked interminably. Alma Marston and her young friends, chaperoned
by an amiable aunt—so Captain Mayo understood her status in the party—
remained considerately away from the earnest group of three. Arthur
Beveridge attached himself to the young folks.
From the bridge the captain caught glimpses of all this shipboard routine.
The yacht's saunterings offshore seemed a part of the summer vacation.
But the occasional hurryings into harbors, the conferences below with
men who came and went with more or less attempt at secrecy, did not fit
with the vacation side of the cruise.
These conferences were often followed by orders to the captain to thread
inner reaches of the coast and to visit unfrequented harbors.
Captain Mayo had been prepared for these trips, although he had not
been informed of the reason. It was his first season on the yacht Olenia. The
shipping broker who had hired him had been searching in his inquiries as to
Mayo's knowledge of the byways of the coast. The young man who had
captained fishermen and coasters ever since he was seventeen years old had
found it easy to convince the shipping broker, and the shipping broker had

sent him on board the yacht without the formality of an interview with the
owner.
Mayo was informed curtly that there was no need of an interview. He
was told that Julius Marston never bothered with details.
When Julius Marston had come on board with his party he merely
nodded grim acknowledgment of the salute of his yacht's master, who stood
at the gangway, cap in hand.
The owner had never shown any interest in the management of the yacht;
he had remained abaft the main gangway; he had never called the captain
into conference regarding any movements of the Olenia.
Captain Mayo, pacing the bridge in the forenoon watch, trying to grasp
the full measure of his fortune after troubled dreams of his master's
daughter, recollected that he had never heard the sound of Julius Marston's
voice. So far as personal contact was concerned, the yacht's skipper was
evidently as much a matter of indifference to the owner as the yacht's
funnel.
Orders were always brought forward by a pale young man who was
taciturn even to rudeness, and by that trait seemed to commend himself to
Marston as a safe secretary.
At first, Alma Marston had brought her friends to the bridge. But after the
novelty was gone they seemed to prefer the comfort of chairs astern or the
saloon couches.
For a time the attentive Beveridge had followed her when she came
forward; and then Beveridge discovered that she quite disregarded him in
her quest for information from the tall young man in uniform. She came
alone.
And after that what had happened happened.
She came alone that forenoon. He saw her coming. He had stolen a
glance aft every time he turned in his walk at the end of the bridge. He
leaned low and reached down his hand to assist her up the ladder.
“I have been nigh crazy all morning. But I had to wait a decent time and
listen to their gossip after breakfast,” she told him, her face close to his as
she came up the ladder. “And, besides, my father is snappy to-day. He
scolded me last night for neglecting my guests. Just as if I were called on to
sit all day and listen to Nan Burgess appraise her lovers or to sing a song

every time Wally Dalton has his relapse of lovesickness. He has come away
to forget her, you know.” She chuckled, uttering her funny little gurgle of a
laugh which stirred in him, always, a desire to smother it with kisses.
They went to the end of the bridge, apart from the man at the wheel.
“I hurried to go to sleep last night so that I could dream of you, my own
big boy.”
“I walked the bridge until after daylight. I wanted to stay awake. I could
not bear to let sleep take away my thoughts.”
“What is there like love to make this world full of happiness? How bright
the sun is! How the waves sparkle! Those folks sitting back there are
looking at the same things we are—or they can look, though they don't
seem to have sense enough. And about all they notice is that it's daylight
instead of night. My father and those men are talking about money—just
money—that's all. And Wally has a headache from drinking too much
Scotch. And Nan Burgess doesn't love anybody who loves her, But for us—
oh, this glorious world!”
She put out her arms toward the sun and stared boldly at that blazing orb,
as though she were not satisfied with what her eyes could behold, but
desired to grasp and feel some of the glory of outdoors. If Captain Mayo
had been as well versed in psychology as he was in navigation he might
have drawn a few disquieting deductions from this frank and unconscious
expression of the mood of the materialist. She emphasized that mood by
word.
“I'll show you my little clasp-book some day, big boy. It's where I write
my verses. I don't show them to anybody. You see, I'm telling you my
secrets! We must tell each other our secrets, you and I! I have put my
philosophy of living into four lines. Listen!
“The future? Why perplex the soul? The past? Forget its woe and strife!
Let's thread each day, a perfect whole, Upon our rosary of Life.”
“It's beautiful,” he told her.
“Isn't it good philosophy?”
“Yes,” he admitted, not daring to doubt the high priestess of the new cult
to which he had been commandeered.
“It saves all this foolish worry. Most of the folks I know are always
talking about the bad things which have happened to them or are peering

forward and hoping that good things will happen, and they never once look
down and admire a golden moment which Fate has dropped into their
hands. You see, I'm poetical this morning. Why shouldn't I be? We love
each other.”
“I don't know how to talk,” he stammered. “I'm only a sailor. I never said
a word about love to any girl in my life.”
“Are you sure you have never loved anybody? Remember, we must tell
each other our secrets.”
“Never,” he declared with convincing firmness.
She surveyed him, showing the satisfaction a gold-seeker would exhibit
in appraising a nugget of virgin ore. “But you are so big and fine! And you
must have met so many pretty girls!”
He was not restive under this quizzing. “I have told you the truth, Miss
Marston.”
“For shame, big boy! 'Miss Marston,' indeed! I am Alma—Alma to you.
Say it! Say it nicely!”
He flushed. He stole a shamefaced glance at the-wheelsman and made a
quick and apprehensive survey of the sacred regions aft.
“Are you afraid, after all I have said to you?”
“No, but it seems—I can hardly believe—”
“Say it.”
“Alma,” he gulped. “Alma, I love you.”
“You need some lessons, big boy. You are so awkward I think you are
telling me the truth about the other girls.”
He did not dare to ask her whether she had loved any one else. With all
the passionate jealousy of his soul he wanted to ask her. She, who was so
sure that she could instruct him, must have loved somebody. He tried to
comfort himself by the thought that her knowledge arose from the efforts
either men had made to win her.
“We have our To-day,” she murmured. “Golden hours till the moon
comes up—and then perhaps a few silver ones! I don't care what Arthur
guesses. My father is too busy talking money with those men to guess. I'm
going to be with you all I can. I can arrange it. I'm studying navigation.”
She snuggled against the rail, luxuriating in the sunshine.

“Who are you?” she asked, bluntly.
That question, coming after the pledging of their affection, astonished
him like the loom of a ledge in mid-channel.
“It's enough for me that you are just as you are, boy! But you're not a
prince in disguise, are you?”
“I'm only a Yankee sailor,” he told her. “But if you won't think that I'm
trying to trade on what my folks have been before me, I'll say that my
grandfather was Gamaliel Mayo of Mayoport.”
“That sounds good, but I never heard of him. With all my philosophy, I'm
a poor student of history, sweetheart.” Her tone and the name she gave him
took the sting out of her confession.
“I don't believe he played a great part in history. But he built sixteen
ships in his day, and our house flag circled the world many times. Sixteen
big ships, and the last one was the Harvest Home, the China clipper that
paid for herself three times before an Indian Ocean monsoon swallowed
her.”
“Well, if he made all that money, are you going to sea for the fun of it?”
“There are no more Yankee wooden ships on the sea. My poor father
thought he was wise when the wooden ships were crowded off. He put his
money into railroads—and you know what has happened to most of the
folks who have put their money into new railroads.”
“I'm afraid I don't know much about business.”
“The hawks caught the doves. It was a game that was played all over
New England. The folks whose money built the roads were squeezed out.
Long before my mother died our money was gone, but my father and I did
not allow her to know it. We mortgaged and gave her what she had always
been used to. And when my father died there was nothing!”
Her eyes glistened. “That's chivalry,” she cried. “That's the spirit of the
knights of old when women were concerned. I adore you for what you did!”
“It was the way my father and I looked at it,” he said, mildly. “My father
was not a very practical man, but I always agreed with him. And I am happy
now, earning my own living. Why should I think my grandfather ought to
have worked all his life so that I would not need to work?”

“I suppose it's different with a big, strong man and a woman. She needs
so much that a man must give her.”
Captain Mayo became promptly silent, crestfallen, and embarrassed. He
stared aft, he looked at the splendid yacht whose finances he managed and
whose extravagance he knew. He saw the girl at his side, and blinked at the
gems which flashed in the sunlight as her fingers tucked up the locks of hair
where the breeze had wantoned.
“I think my father works because he loves it,” she said. “I wish he would
rest and enjoy other things more. If mother had lived to influence him
perhaps he would see something else in life instead of merely piling up
money. But he doesn't listen to me. He gives me money and tells me to go
and play. I miss my mother, boy! I haven't anybody to talk with—who
understands!”
There were tears in her eyes, and he was grateful for them. He felt that
she had depths in her nature. But keen realization of his position, compared
with hers, distressed him. She stood there, luxury incarnate, mistress of all
that money could give her.
“Anybody can make money,” she declared. “My father and those men are
sitting there and building plans to bring them thousands and thousands of
dollars. All they need to do is put their heads together and plan. Every now
and then I hear a few words. They're going to own all the steamboats—or
something of that kind. Anybody can make money, I say, but there are so
few who know how to enjoy it.”
“I have been doing a lot of thinking since last night—Alma.” He
hesitated when he came to her name, and then blurted it out.
“Do you think it is real lover-like to treat my name as if it were a hurdle
that you must leap over?” she asked, with her aggravating little chuckle.
“Oh, you have so much to learn!”
“I'm afraid so. I have a great many things ahead of me to learn and do. I
have been thinking. I have been afraid of the men who sit and scheme and
put all their minds on making money. They did bitter things to us, and we
didn't understand until it was all over. But I must go among them and watch
them and learn how to make money.”
“Don't be like the others, now, and talk money—money,” she said,
pettishly. “Money and their love-affairs—that's the talk I have heard from

men ever since I was allowed to come into the drawing-room out of the
nursery!”
“But I must talk money a little, dear. I have my way to make in the
world.”
“Thrifty, practical, and Yankee!” she jested. “I suppose you can't help it!”
“It isn't for myself—it's for you!” he returned, wistfully, and with a voice
and demeanor he offered himself as Love's sacrifice before her—the old
story of utter devotion—the ancient sacrifice.
“I have all I want,” she insisted.
“But I must be able to give you what you want!”
“I warn you that I hate money-grubbers! They haven't a spark of romance
in them. Boyd, you'd be like all the rest in a little while. You mustn't do it.”
“But I must have position—means before I dare to go to your father—if I
ever shall be able to go to him!”
“Go to him for what?”
“To ask him—to say—to—well, when we feel that I'm in a position
where we can be married—”
“Of course we shall be married some day, boy, but all that will take care
of itself when the time comes. But now you are— How old are you, Boyd?”
“Twenty-six.”
“And I am nineteen. And what has marriage to do with the love we are
enjoying right now?”
“When folks are in love they want to get married.”
“Granted! But when lovers are wise they will treat romance at first as the
epicure treats his glass of good wine. They will pour it slowly and hold the
glass up against the light and admire its color!” In her gay mood she
pinched together thumb and forefinger and lifted an imaginary glass to the
sun. “Then they will sniff the bouquet. Ah-h-h, how fragrant! And after a
time they will take a little sip—just a weeny little sip and hold it on the
tongue for ever so long. For, when it is swallowed, what good? Oh, boy,
here are you—talking first of all about marriage! Talking of the good wine
of life and love as if it were a fluid simply to satisfy thirst. We are going to
love, first of all! Come, I will teach you.”

He did not know what to say to her. There was a species of abandon in
her gaiety. Her exotic language embarrassed one who had been used to
mariners' laconic directness of speech. She looked at him, teasing him with
her eyes. He was a bit relieved when the pale-faced secretary came
dragging himself up the ladder and broke in on the tête-à-tête.
“Mr. Marston's orders are, Captain Mayo, that you turn here and go west.
Do you know the usual course of the Bee line steamers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He requests you to turn in toward shore and follow that course.”
“Very well, sir.” Captain Mayo walked to the wheel. “Nor' nor'west,
Billy, until I can give you the exact course.”
“Nor' nor'west!” repeated the wheelsman, throwing her hard over, and the
Olenia came about with a rail-dipping swerve and retraced her way along
her own wake of white suds.
Miss Marston preceded the captain down the ladder and went into the
chart-room. “A kiss—quick!” she whispered.
He held her close to him for a long moment.
“You are a most obedient captain,” she said.
When he released her and went at his task, she leaned upon his shoulder
and watched him as he straddled his parallels across the chart.
“We'll run to Razee Reef,” he told her, eager to make her a partner in all
his little concerns. “The Bee boats fetch the whistler there so as to lay off
their next leg. I didn't know that Mr. Marston was interested in the Bee
line.”
“I heard him talking about that line,” she said, indifferently. “Sometimes
I listen when I have nothing else to do. He used a naughty word about
somebody connected with that company—and it's so seldom that he allows
himself to swear I listened to see what it was all about. I don't know even
now. I don't understand such things. But he said if he couldn't buy 'em he'd
bu'st 'em. Those were his words. Not very elegant language. But it's all I
remember.”
Before he left the chart-room Mayo took a squint at the barometer. “I'm
sorry he has ordered me in toward the coast,” he said. “The glass is too far
below thirty to suit me. I think it means fog.”

“But it's so clear and beautiful,” she protested.
“It's always especially beautiful at sea before something bad happens,” he
explained, smiling. “And there has been a big fog-bank off to s'uth'ard for
two days. It's a good deal like life, dear. All lovely, and then the fog shuts
in!”
“But I would be happy with you in the fog,” she assured him.
He glowed at her words and answered with his eyes.
She would have followed him back upon the bridge, but the steward
intercepted her. He had waited outside the chart-room.
“Mr. Marston's compliments, Miss Marston! He requests you to join him
at cards.”
She pouted as she gave back Mayo's look of annoyance, and then obeyed
the mandate.
Mr. Marston was stroking his narrow strip of chin beard with thumb and
forefinger when she arrived on the quarter-deck. The men of business were
below, and he motioned to a hammock chair beside him.
“Alma, for the rest of this cruise I want you to stay back here with our
guests where you belong,” he commanded with the directness of attack
employed by Julius Marston in his dealings with those of his ménage.
“What do you mean, father?”
“That—exactly. I was explicit, was I not?”
“But you do not intimate that—that I have—”
“Well?” Mr. Marston believed in allowing others to expose their
sentiments before he uncovered his own.
“You don't suggest that there is anything wrong in my being on the
bridge where I enjoy myself so much. I am trying to learn something about
navigation.”
“I am paying that fellow up there to attend to all that.”
“And it gets tiresome back here.”
“You selected your own company for the cruise—and there is Mr.
Beveridge ready to amuse you at any time.”
“Mr. Beveridge amuses me—distinctly amuses me,” she retorted. “But
there is such a thing as becoming wearied even of such a joke as Mr.

Beveridge.”
“You will please employ a more respectful tone when you refer to that
gentleman,” said her father, with severity. But he promptly fell back into his
usual mood when she came into his affairs. He was patronizingly tolerant.
“Your friend, Miss Burgess, has been joking about your sudden devotion to
navigation, Alma.”
“Nan Burgess cannot keep her tongue still, even about herself.”
“I know, but I do not intend to have you give occasion even for jokes. Of
course, I understand. I know your whims. You are interested, personally, in
that gold-braided chap about as much as you would be interested in that
brass thing where the compass is—whatever they call it.”
“But he's a gentleman!” she cried, her interest making her unwary. “His
grandfather was—”
“Alma!” snapped Julius Marston. His eyes opened wide. He looked her
up and down. “I have heard before that an ocean trip makes women silly, I
am inclined to believe it. I don't care a curse who that fellow's grandfather
was. You are my daughter—and you keep off that bridge!”
The men of business were coming up the companion-way, and she rose
and hurried to her stateroom.
“I don't dare to meet Nan Burgess just now,” she told herself.
“Friendships can be broken by saying certain things—and I feel perfectly
capable of saying just those things to her at this moment.”
In the late afternoon the Olenia, the shore-line looming to starboard,
shaped her course to meet and pass a big steamer which came rolling down
the sea with a banner of black smoke flaunting behind her.
The fog which Captain Mayo had predicted was coming. Wisps of it
trailed over the waves—skirmishers sent ahead of the main body which
marched in mass more slowly behind.
A whistling buoy, with its grim grunt, told all mariners to 'ware Razee
Reef, which was lifting its jagged, black bulk against the sky-line. With that
fog coming, Captain Mayo needed to take exact bearings from Razee, for
he had decided to run for harbor that night. That coastline, to whose inside
course Marston's orders had sent the yacht, was too dangerous to be
negotiated in a night which was fog-wrapped. Therefore, the captain took

the whistler nearly dead on, leaving to the larger steamer plenty of room in
the open sea.
With considerable amazement Mayo noticed that the other fellow was
edging toward the whistler at a sharper angle than any one needed. That
course, if persisted in, would pinch the yacht in dangerous waters. Mayo
gave the on-coming steamer one whistle, indicating his intention to pass to
starboard. After a delay he was answered by two hoarse hoots—a most
flagrant breach of the rules of the road.
“That must be a mistake,” Captain Mayo informed Mate McGaw.
“That's a polite name for it, sir,” averred Mr. McGaw, after he had shifted
the lump in his cheek.
“Of course he doesn't mean it, Mr. McGaw.”
“Then why isn't he giving us elbow-room on the outside of that buoy,
sir?”
“I can't swing and cross his bows now. If he should hit us we'd be the
ones held for the accident.”
Again Mayo gave the obstinate steamer a single whistle-blast.
“If he cross-signals me again I'll report him,” he informed the mate. “Pay
close attention, Mr. McGaw, and you, too, Billy. We may have to go before
the inspectors.”
But the big chap ahead of them did not deign to reply. He kept on straight
at the whistler.
“Compliments of Mr. Marston!” called the secretary from the bridge
ladder. “What steamer is that?”
“Conorno of the Bee line, sir,” stated Captain Mayo over his shoulder.
Then he ripped out a good, hearty, deep-water oath. According to
appearances, incredible as the situation seemed, the Conorno proposed to
drive the yacht inside the whistler.
Mayo ran to the wheel and yanked the bell-pull furiously. There were
four quick clangs in the engine-room, and in a moment the Olenia began to
quiver in all her fabric. Going full speed ahead, Mayo had called for full
speed astern. Then he sounded three whistles, signaling as the rules of the
road provide. The yacht's twin screws churned a yeasty riot under her
counter, and while she was laboring thus in her own wallow, trembling like

some living thing in the extremity of terror, the big steamer swept past.
Froth from the creamy surges at her bows flicked spray contemptuously
upon Julius Marston and his guests on the Olenia's quarter-deck. Men
grinned down upon them from the high windows of the steamer's pilot-
house.
A jeering voice boomed through a megaphone: “Keep out of the way of
the Bee line! Take the hint!”
An officer pointed his finger at Marston's house flag, snapping from the
yacht's main truck. The blue fish-tail with its letter “M” had revealed the
yacht's identity to searching glasses.
“Better make it black! Skull and cross-bones!” volunteered the
megaphone operator.
On she went down the sea and the Olenia tossed in the turbulent wake of
the kicking screws.
Then, for the first time, Captain Mayo heard the sound of Julius
Marston's voice. The magnate stood up, shook his fist at his staring captain,
and yelled, “What in damnation do you think you are doing?”
It was amazing, insulting, and, under the circumstances as Mayo knew
them, an unjust query. The master of the Olenia did not reply. He was not
prepared to deliver any long-distance explanation. Furthermore, the yacht
demanded all his attention just then. He gave his orders and she forged
ahead to round the whistler.
“Nor'west by west, half west, Billy. And cut it fine!”
The fog had fairly leaped upon them from the sea. The land-breeze had
been holding back the wall of vapor, damming it in a dun bank to
southward. The breeze had let go. The fog had seized its opportunity.
“Saturday Cove for us to-night, Mr. McGaw,” said the master. “Keep
your eye over Billy's shoulder.”
Then the secretary appeared again on the ladder. This time he did not
bring any “compliments.”
“Mr. Marston wants you to report aft at once,” he announced, brusquely.
Mayo hesitated a moment. They were driving into blankness which had
shut down with that smothering density which mariners call “a dungeon

fog.” Saturday Cove's entrance was a distant and a small target. In spite of
steersman and mate, his was the sole responsibility.
“Will you please explain to Mr. Marston that I cannot leave the bridge?”
“You have straight orders from him, captain! You'd better stop the boat
and report.”
The skipper of the Olenia was having his first taste of the unreasoning
whim of the autocrat who was entitled to break into shipboard discipline,
even in a critical moment. Mayo felt exasperation surging in him, but he
was willing to explain.
The whistler and Razee Reef had been blotted out by the fog.
“If this vessel is stopped five minutes in this tide-drift we shall lose our
bearings, sir. I cannot leave this bridge for the present.”
“I'm thinking you'll leave it for good!” blurted the secretary. “You're the
first hired man who ever told Julius Marston to go bite his own thumb.”
“I may be a hired man,” retorted Mayo. “But I am also a licensed
shipmaster. I must ask you to step down off the bridge.”
“Does that go for all the rest of the—passengers?” asked the secretary,
angry in his turn. He dwelt on his last word. “It does—in a time like this!”
“Very well, I'll give them that word aft.”
Captain Mayo caught a side glance from Mate McGaw after a time.
“I have often wondered,” remarked the mate to nobody in particular,
“how it is that so many damn fools get rich on shore.”
Captain Mayo did not express any opinion on the subject. He clutched
the bridge rail and stared into the fog, and seemed to be having a lot of
trouble in choking back some kind of emotion.

III ~ THE TAVERN OF THE SEAS
Now, Mister Macliver, you knows him quite well,
He comes upon deck and he cuts a great swell;
It's damn your eyes there and it's damn your eyes here,
And straight to the gangway he takes a broad sheer.
—La Pique “Come-all-ye.”

Into Saturday Cove, all during that late afternoon, they came surging—
spars and tackle limned against the on-sweeping pall of the gray fog—those
wayfarers of the open main.
First to roll in past the ledgy portals of the haven were the venerable sea-
wagons—the coasters known as the “Apple-treers.” Their weatherwise
skippers, old sea-dogs who could smell weather as bloodhounds sniff trails,
had their noses in the air in good season that day, and knew that they must
depend on a thinning wind to cuff them into port. One after the other,
barnacled anchors splashed from catheads, dragging rusty chains from
hawse-holes, and old, patched sails came sprawling down with chuckle of
sheaves and lisp of running rigging.
A 'long-coast shanty explains the nickname, “Apple-treers”:

O, what's the use of compass or a quadrant or a log?
Keep her loafin' on her mudhook in a norther or a fog.
But as soon's the chance is better, then well ratch her off once more,
Keepin' clost enough for bearings from the apple-trees ashore.

Therefore, the topsail schooners, the fore-and-afters, the Bluenose blunt-
prows, came in early before the fog smooched out the loom of the trees and
before it became necessary to guess at what the old card compasses had to
reveal on the subject of courses.
And so, along with the rest of the coastwise ragtag, which was seeking
harbor and holding-ground, came the ancient schooner Polly. Fog-masked
by those illusory mists, she was a shadow ship like the others; but, more
than the others, she seemed to be a ghost ship, for her lines and her rig
informed any well-posted mariner that she must be a centenarian; with her
grotesqueness accentuated by the fog pall, she seemed unreal—a picture
from the past.

She had an out-thrust of snub bow and an upcock of square stern, and sag
of waist—all of which accurately revealed ripe antiquity, just as a bell-
crowned beaver and a swallow-tail coat with brass buttons would identify
an old man in the ruck of newer fashions. She had seams like the wrinkles
in the parchment skin of extreme old age. She carried a wooden figurehead
under her bowsprit, the face and bust of a woman on whom an ancient
woodcarver had bestowed his notion of a beatific smile; the result was an
idiotic simper. The glorious gilding had been worn off, the wood was gray
and cracked. The Polly's galley was entirely hidden under a deckload of
shingles and laths in bunches; the after-house was broad and loomed high
above the rail in contrast to the mere cubbies which were provided for the
other fore-and-afters in the flotilla which came ratching in toward Saturday
Cove.
The Polly, being old enough to be celebrated, had been the subject of a
long-coast lyric of seventeen verses, any one of which was capable of
producing most horrible profanity from Captain Epps Candage, her master,
whenever he heard the ditty echoing over the waves, sung by a satirist
aboard another craft.
In that drifting wind there was leisure; a man on board a lime-schooner at
a fairly safe distance from the Polly found inclination and lifted his voice:

“Ow-w-w, here comes the Polly with a lopped-down sail,
And Rubber-boot Epps, is a-settin' on her rail.
How-w-w long will she take to get to Boston town?
Can't just tell 'cause she's headin' up and down.”

“You think that kind o' ky-yi is funny, do you, you walnut-nosed, blue-
gilled, goggle-eyed son of a dough-faced americaneezus?” bellowed
Captain Candage, from his post at the Polly's wheel.
“Father!” remonstrated a girl who stood in the companionway, her
elbows propped on the hatch combings. “Such language! You stop it!”
“It ain't half what I can do when I'm fair started,” returned the captain.
“You never say such things on shore.”
“Well, I ain't on shore now, be I? I'm on the high seas, and I'm talking to
fit the occasion. Who's running this schooner, you or me?”
She met his testiness with a spirit of her own, “I'm on board here, where I
don't want to be, because of your silly notions, father. I have the right to ask

you to use decent language, and not shame us both.”
Against the archaically homely background the beauty of the young girl
appeared in most striking contrast. Her curls peeped out from under the
white Dutch cap she wore. Her eyes sparkled with indignant protest, her
face was piquant and was just then flushed, and her nose had the least bit of
a natural uptilt, giving her the air of a young woman who had a will of her
own to spice her amiability.
Captain Candage blinked at her over the spokes of the wheel, and in his
father's heart acknowledged her charm, realizing more acutely that his
motherless girl had become too much of a problem for his limited
knowledge in the management of women.
He had not seen her grow up gradually, as other fathers had viewed their
daughters, being able to meet daily problems in molding and mastery.
She seemed to reach development, mental and physical, in disconcerting
phases while he was away on his voyages. Each time he met her he was
obliged to get acquainted all over again, it appeared to him.
Captain Candage had owned up frankly to himself that he was not able to
exercise any authority over his daughter when she was ashore.
She was not wilful; she was not obstinate; she gave him affection. But
she had become a young woman while his slow thoughts were classing her
still as a child. She was always ahead of all his calculations. In his absences
she jumped from stage to stage of character—almost of identity! He had
never forgotten how he had brought back to her from New York, after one
voyage, half a gunny sackful of tin toys, and discovered that in his absence,
by advice and sanction of her aunt, who had become her foster-mother, she
had let her dresses down to ankle-length and had become a young lady
whom he called “Miss Candage” twice before he had managed to get his
emotions straightened out. While he was wondering about the enormity of
tin toys in the gunny sack at his feet, as he sat in the aunt's parlor; his
daughter asked him to come as guest of honor with the Sunday-school
class's picnic which she was arranging as teacher. That gave him his
opportunity to lie about the toys and allege that he had brought them for her
scholars.
Captain Candage, on the deck of his ship, found that he was able to
muster a little courage and bluster for a few minutes, but he did not dare to
look at her for long while he was asserting himself.

He looked at her then as she stood in the gloomy companionway, a
radiant and rosy picture of healthy maidenhood. But the expression on her
face was not comfortingly filial.
“Father, I must say it again. I can't help saying it. I am so unhappy. You
are misjudging me so cruelly.”
“I done it because I thought it was right to do it. I haven't been tending
and watching the way a father ought to tend and watch. I never seemed to
be able to ketch up with you. Maybe I ain't right. Maybe I be! At any rate,
I'm going to stand on this tack, in your case, for a while longer.”
“You have taken me away from my real home for this? This is no place
for a girl! You are not the same as you are when you are on shore. I didn't
know you could be so rough—and—wicked!”
“Hold on there, daughter! Snub cable right there! I'm an honest, God-
fearing, hard-working man—paying a hundred cents on the dollar, and you
know it.”
“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 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 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.
“If I could have found a New York captain who knew the short cuts along
this coast I could have had some decency and dignity on board my yacht.
I'm even forgetting my own sense of what is proper—out here wasting
words and time in this fashion. You're all of the same breed, you down-
easters!”
“I am quite sure you can find a New York captain—” began Mayo.
“I don't want your opinion in regard to my business, young man. When I
need suggestions from you I'll ask for them.” He flung his soggy cigar over
the rail and went down the ladder, and the fog closed immediately behind
him.
Captain Mayo paced the bridge. He was alone there. A deck-hand had
hooded the brass of the binnacle and search-light, listening while the owner
had called the master to account. Mayo knew that the full report of that
affair would be carried to the forecastle. His position aboard the yacht had
become intolerable. He wondered how much Marston would say aft. His
cheeks were hot and rancor rasped in his thoughts. In the hearing of the girl
he adored his shortcomings would be the subject for a few moments of
contemptuous discourse, even as the failings of cooks form a topic for idle
chatter at the dinner-table.
Out of the blank silence of the wrapping fog came many sounds. Noises
carried far and the voice of an unseen singer, who timed himself to the
clank of an Apple-treer pump, brought to Mayo the words of an old shanty:

“Come all you young fellows that follow the sea,
Now pray pay attention and lis-ten to me.
O blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down!
Way-ay, blow the man down.
O blow the man down in Liverpool town!
Give me some time to blow the man down.
'Twas aboard a Black-Bailer I first served my time,
And in that Black-Bailer I wasted my prime.
'Tis larboard and starboard on deck you will sprawl,
For blowers and strikers command the Black Ball.
So, it's blow the man down, bullies—”

Alma Marston's voice interrupted his somber appreciation of the
significance of that ditty. “Are you up there, Boyd?” she asked, in cautious
tones.

He hurried to the head of the ladder and saw her at its foot, half hidden in
the mists even at that short distance. He reached down his hand and she
came up, grasping it.
She was studying his expression with both eagerness and apprehension.
“I couldn't stay away from you any longer,” she declared. “The fog is good
to us! Father could not see me as I came forward. I must tell you, Boyd. He
has ordered me to stay aft.”
He did not speak.
“Has he dared to say to you what he has been saying below about you?”
“I don't think it needed any especial daring on your father's part; I am
only his servant,” he said, with bitterness.
“And he—he insulted you like that?”
“I suppose your father did not look on what he said as insult. I repeat, I
am a paid servant.”
“But what you did was right! I know it must have been right, for you
know everything about what is right to do on the sea.”
“I understand my duties.”
“And he blamed you for something?”
“It was a bit worse than that from my viewpoint.” He smiled down at her,
for her eyes were searching his face as if appealing for a bit of consolation.
“Boyd, don't mind him,” she entreated. “Somebody who has been
fighting him in business has been very naughty. I don't know just what it's
all about. But he has so many matters to worry him. And he snaps at me just
the same, every now and then.”
“Yes, some men are cowards enough to abuse those who must look to
them for the comforts of this world,” he declared.
“We must make allowances.”
“I'll not stay in a position where a man who hires me thinks he can talk to
me as if I were a foremast hand. Alma, you would despise me if I allowed
myself to be kicked around like a dog.”
“I would love you all the more for being willing to sacrifice something
for my sake. I want you here—here with all your love—here with me as
long as these summer days last.” She patted his cheek. “Why don't you tell
me that you want to stay with me, Boyd? That you will die if we cannot be

together? We can see each other here. I can bring Nan Burgess on the bridge
with me. Father will not mind then. Let each day take care of itself!”
“I want to be what you want me to be—to do what you want me to do.
But I wish you would tell me to go out into the world and make something
of myself. Alma, tell me to go! And wait for me!”
She laid her face against his shoulder and reached for his fingers,
endeavoring to pull one of his arms about her. But both of his hands were
clutching the rail of the bridge. He resisted.
“Are you going to be like all the rest? Just money and trouble and
worry?” She stretched up on tiptoe and brushed a kiss across his fog-wet
cheek. “Are you asleep, my big boy? Yesterday you were awake.”
“I think I am really awake to-day, and that I was dreaming yesterday.
Alma, I cannot sneak behind your father's back to make love to you. I can't
do it. I'm going to give up this position. I can't endure it.”
“I say 'No!' I need you.”
“But—”
“I'll not give you up.”
There was something dramatic in her declaration; her demeanor
expressed the placid calm of absolute proprietorship. She worked his
unwilling fingers free from the rail.
“I love you because you can forget yourself. Now don't be like all the
others.”
He realized that a queer little sting of impatience was pricking him. The
girl did not seem to understand what his manhood was prompting.
“You mustn't be selfish, Boyd!”
She put into words the vague thought which had been troubling him in
regard to her attitude; and now that he understood what his thought had
been he was incensed by what seemed his own disloyalty. And yet, the girl
was asking him to make over his nature!
“I'm afraid it's all wrong. These things never seem to come out right,” he
mourned.
“You are trying to turn the world upside down all at once—and all alone.
Don't think so much, you solemn Yankee. Just love!”

He put his aims about her. “I'm sailing in new waters. I don't seem to
know the true course or the right bearings!”
“Let's stay anchored until the fog lifts! Isn't that what sailors usually do?”
He confessed it, kissing her when she lifted her tantalizing face from his
shoulder.
“Now you'll let the future alone, won't you?” she asked.
“Yes.” But even while he promised he was obliged to face that future.
Julius Marston, at the foot of the ladder, called to his daughter. “Are you
up there?” he demanded, sharply.
“Yes, father.”
“Come down here.”
She gave her lover a hasty caress and obeyed.
Captain Mayo was obliged to listen. Marston, in his anger, showed no
consideration for possible eavesdroppers.
“I have told you to stay aft where you belong.”
“Really, father, I don't understand why—”
“Those are my orders! I understand. You don't need to understand. This
world is full of cheap fellows who misinterpret actions.”
Captain Mayo grasped the rails of the bridge ladder and did down to the
deck without touching his feet to the treads. He appeared before the father
and daughter with startling suddenness.
“Mr. Marston, I am leaving my position on board here as soon as you can
get another man to take my place.”
“You are, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You signed papers for the season. It is not convenient for me to make a
change.” Marston spoke with the crispness of a man who had settled the
matter.
Captain Mayo was conscious that the girl was trying to attract his gaze,
but he kept his eyes resolutely from her face.
“I insist on being relieved.”
“I have no patience with childishness in a man! I found it necessary to
reprimand you. You'll probably know your place after this.” He turned

away.
“I have decided that I do not belong on this yacht,” stated Mayo, with an
emphasis he knew the girl would understand. “You must get another
master!”
“I cannot pick captains out of this fog, and I allow no man to tell me my
own business. I shall keep you to your written agreement. Hold yourself in
readiness to carry telegrams ashore for me. I take it there is an office here?”
“There is, sir,” returned Mayo, stiffly.
The girl, departing, bestowed on him a pretty grimace of triumph, plainly
rejoicing because his impetuous resignation had been overruled so
autocratically. But Mayo gave a somber return to the raillery of her eyes. He
had spoken out to Marston as a man, and had been treated with the
contemptuous indifference which would be accorded to a bond-servant. He
was wounded by the light manner in which she viewed that affront, even
though her own father offered it.
He stood there alone for a time, meditating various rash acts. But under
all the tumult of his feelings was the realization that the responsibility for
that yacht's discipline and safety rested on his shoulders and he went about
his duties. He called two of the crew and ordered the gangway steps down
and the port dinghy cleared and lowered. Then he went to the chart-room
and sat on a locker and tried to figure out whether he was wonderfully
happy or supremely miserable.
Marston promptly closeted himself with his three wise men of business
after he went aft. “We'll frame up those telegrams now and get them off,” he
told them. “I thought I'd better wait until I had worked the bile out of my
system. Never try to do sane and safe business when you're angry,
gentlemen! I'm afraid those telegrams would not have been exactly coherent
if I had written them right after that Bee liner smashed past us.”
“I have been ready to believe that Tucker would come in with us on the
right lay,” said one of the associates.
“So did I,” agreed Marston. “I have thought all his loud talk has been
bluff to beat up a bigger price. But, after what he did to-day! Oh no! He is
out to fight and he grabbed his chance to show us! I do not believe a lot of
this regular fight talk. But when a man comes up and smashes me between
the eyes I begin to suspect his intentions.”

“There's no need of dickering with him any longer, Mr. Marston. He
made his work as dirty as he could to-day—he has left nothing open to
doubt.”
“I'm sorry,” said another of the group. “Tucker has let himself get ugly.”
“So have I,” replied Marston, dryly. “And I'm growing senile, too, I'm
afraid. I went forward and wasted as much anathema on that skipper of
mine as I would use up in putting through a half-million deal with an
opposition traffic line. Next thing I know I'll be arguing with, the smoke-
stack. But I must confess, gentlemen, that Tucker rather took my breath
away to-day. Either he has become absolutely crazy or else he doesn't
understand the strength of the combination.”
“He hasn't waked up yet. He doesn't know what's against him.”
“That may be our fault, in a measure,” stated one of the men. “We haven't
been able to let men like Tucker in on the full details.”
“In business it's the good guesser who wins,” declared Marston. “Our
merger isn't a thing to be advertised. And if we do any more explaining to
Tucker the whole plan will be advertised, you can depend on it. The infernal
fool has been holding us up three months, demanding more knowledge—
and he can't be trusted. There's only one thing to do, gentlemen! That!” He
drove his fist into his palm with significant thud.
“Is the Bee line absolutely essential in our plans?”
“Every line along this coast is essential in making that merger stock an
air-tight proposition.”
“It's a new line and is not paying dividends.”
“Well, for that matter, it's got nothing in that respect on some of the other
lines we're salting down in the merger,” suggested a member of the party,
speaking for the first time.
“I'm afraid you said it then, Thompson! American bottoms seem to be
turned into barnacle-gardens,” declared the man who had questioned the
matter of Tucker's value.
“Gentlemen, just a moment!” Julius Marston leaned forward in his chair.
His voice was low. His eyes narrowed. He dominated them by his
earnestness. “You have followed me in a number of enterprises, and we
have had good luck. But let me tell you that we have ahead of us the biggest
thing yet, and we cannot afford to leave one loose end! Not one, gentlemen!

That's why a fool like Tucker doesn't deserve any consideration when he
gets in our way. Listen to me! The biggest thing that has ever happened in
this world is going to happen. How do I know? I am not sure that I do
know. But as I have just told you, the man who guesses right is the winner.”
His thin nose was wrinkled, and the strip of beard on his chin bristled.
Sometimes men called Marston “the fox of Wall Street.” He suggested the
reason for his nickname as he sat there and squinted at his associates. “And
there's an instinct that helps some men to guess right. Something is going to
happen in this world before long that will make millionaires over and over
out of men who have invested a few thousands in American bottoms.”
“What will happen?” bluntly inquired one of the men, after a silence.
“I am neither clairvoyant nor crystal-gazer,” said Marston, grimly. “But I
have led you into some good things when my instinct has whispered. I say
it's going to happen—and I say no more.”
“To make American bottoms worth while the whole of Europe will have
to be busy doing something else with their ships.”
“All right! Then they'll be doing it,” returned Marston.
“It would have to be a war—a big war.”
“Very well! Maybe that's the answer.”
“But there never can be another big war. As a financier you know it.”
“I have made some money by adhering to the hard and fast rules of
finance. But I have made the most of my money by turning my back on
those rules and listening to my instinct,” was Marston's rejoinder. “I don't
want to over-influence you, gentlemen. I don't care to discuss any further
what you may consider to be dreams. I am not predicting a great war in
Europe. Common sense argues the other way. But I am going into this ship-
merger proposition with every ounce of brains and energy and capital I
possess. The man who gets in my way is trying to keep these two hands of
mine off millions!” He shook his clutched fists above his head. “And I'll
walk over him, by the gods! whether it's Tucker or anybody else. We have
had some good talks on the subject, first and last. I'm starting now to fight
and smash opposition. What do you propose to do in the matter,
gentlemen?”
They were silent for a time, looking at one another, querying without
words. Then out of their knowledge of Julius Marston's uncanny abilities,

remembering their past successes, came resolve.
“We're in with you to the last dollar,” they assured him, one after the
other.
“Very well! You're wise!”
He unlocked a drawer of his desk and secured a code-book. He pressed a
buzzer and the secretary came hurrying from his stateroom.
“We'll open action, gentlemen, with a little long-distance skirmish over
the wire.”
He began to dictate his telegrams.

VI ~ AND WE SAILED
O Johnny's gone to Baltimore
To dance upon that sanded floor.
O Johnny's gone for evermore;
I'll never see my John no more!
O Johnny's gone!
What shall I do?
A-way you. H-e-e l-o-o-o!
O Johnny's gone!
What shall I do?
Johnny's gone to Hilo.
—Old Hauling Song.

The taciturn secretary fumbled his way forward and delivered to Captain
Mayo a little packet securely bound with tape.
“Orders from Mr. Marston that you take these ashore, yourself. They are
important telegrams and he wants them hurried.”
The master called his men to the dinghy, and they rowed him away
through the fog. It was a touchy job, picking his way through that murk. He
stood up, leaning forward holding to his taut tiller-ropes, and more by ears
than his eyes directed his course. A few of the anchored craft, knowing that
they were in the harbor roadway, clanged their bells lazily once in a while.
Yacht tenders were making their rounds, carrying parties who were paying
and returning calls, and these boats were avoiding each other by loud hails.
Small objects loomed largely and little sounds were accentuated.
The far voice of an unseen joker announced that he could find his way
through the fog all right, but was afraid he had not strength enough to push
his boat through it.
But Mayo knew his waters in that harbor, and found his way to the wharf.
His real difficulties confronted him at the village telegraph office. The
visiting yachtsmen had flooded the place with messages, and the flustered
young woman was in a condition nearly resembling hysteria. She was
defiantly declaring that she would not accept any more telegrams. Instead
of setting at work upon those already filed she was spending her time
explaining her limitations to later arrivals.

Captain Mayo stood at one side and looked on for a few moments. A
gentle nudge on his elbow called his attention to an elderly man with
stringy whiskers, who thus solicited his notice. The man held a folded paper
gingerly by one corner, exhibiting profound respect for his minute burden.
“You ain't one of these yachting dudes—you're a skipper, ain't you?”
asked the man.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, I can talk to you, as one officer to another—and glad to meet
one of my own breed. I'm first mate of the schooner Polly. Mr. Speed is my
name.”
Captain Mayo nodded.
“And I need help and advice. This is the first tele-graft I ever had in my
hands. I'd rather be aholt of an iced halyard in a no'easter! I've been sent
ashore to telegraft it, and now she says she won't stick it onto the wire,
however it is they do the blasted trick.”
Captain Mayo had already noticed that the messengers from the yachts
were killing time by teasing the flustered young woman; it was good-
humored badinage, but it was effectively blocking progress at that end of
the line.
He felt a “native's” instinctive impulse to go to the relief of the young
woman who was being baited by the merrymakers; the responsibility of his
own errand prompted him to help her clear decks. But he waited, hoping
that the yachtsmen would go about their business.
“From the Polly, Mr. Speed?” he inquired, amiably. “Is the Polly in the
harbor? I didn't notice her in the fog.”
“Reckon you know her, by the way you speak of her,” replied the
gratified Mr. Speed.
“I ought to, sir. She was built at Mayoport by my great-grandfather
before the Mayo yards began to turn out ships.”
“Well, I swanny! Be you a Mayo?”
The captain bowed and smiled at the enthusiasm displayed by Mr. Speed.
“By ginger! that sort of puts you right into our fambly, so to speak!” The
mate surveyed him with interest and with increasing confidence. “I'm in a
mess, Cap'n Mayo, and I need advice and comfort, I reckon. I was headed

on a straight tack toward my regular duty, and all of a sudden I found
myself jibed and in stays, and I'm there now and drifting. Seeing that your
folks built the Polly, I consider that you're in the fambly, and that
Proverdunce put you right here to-night in this telegraft office. Do you
know Cap'n Epps Candage?”
Mayo shook his head.
“Or his girl, Polly, named for the Polly?”
“No, I must confess.”
“Well, it may be just as well for ye that ye don't,” said Oakum Otie,
twisting his straggly beard into a spill and blinking nervously. “There I was,
headed straight and keeping true course, and then she looked at me and
there was a tremble in her voice and tears in her eyes—and the next thing I
knowed I was here in this telegraft place with this!” He held up the folded
paper and his hand shook.
Captain Mayo did not understand, and therefore he made no remarks.
“There was a song old Ephrum Wack used to sing,” went on Mr. Speed,
getting more confidential and making sure that the other men in the room
were too much occupied to listen. “Chorus went:

“I ain't afeard of the raging sea,
Nor critters that's in it, whatever they be.
But a witch of a woman is what skeers me!

“There I've been, standing by Cap'n Epps in the whole dingdo, and she
got me one side and looked at me and says a few things with a quiver in her
voice and her eyes all wet and shiny and”—he paused and looked down at
the paper with bewilderment that was rather pitiful—“and I walked right
over all common sense and shipboard rules and discipline and everything
and came here, fetching this to be stuck on to the wire, or whatever they do
with telegrafts. But,” he added, a waver in his tones, “she is so lord-awful
pretty, I couldn't help it!”
Still did Captain Mayo refrain from comment or question.
“The question now is, had I ought to,” demanded Mr. Speed. “I'm taking
you into the fambly on my own responsibility. You're a captain, you're a
native, and I need good advice. Had I ought to?”
“I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, sir. The matter seems to be private,
and, furthermore, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“She says it's to the milliner so that the milliner will hold the job open.
But I'm suspicioning that it's roundabout to the beau that's in love with her.
That's the style of women. Cap'n Epps shanghaied her to get her away from
that fellow. Now she has got it worked around so that she is going back. But
there's a beau in it instead of a milliner. She wouldn't be so anxious to get
word to a milliner. That's my idee, and I reckon it's yours, too.”
“I really have no ideas on the subject,” returned Captain Mayo. “But if
you have promised a young lady to send a telegram for her I would
certainly keep that promise if I were in your place.”
The next moment he regretted his rather impetuous advice, for Mr. Speed
slapped the paper against a hard palm and blurted out: “That's all I wanted!
Course and bearings from an a-number-one adviser. New, how'll I go to
work to send this thing?”
“I have been figuring on that matter for the last few minutes, myself,”
acknowledged the captain. “It's about time to have a little action in this
place.”
He was obliged to elbow his way through the group of men who
surrounded the telegraph operator. Oakum Otie followed on his heels,
resolved to study at close range the mystery of telegraphing, realizing what
he needed for his own instruction.
“These telegrams are important and they must go at ore, madam,” Mayo
informed the flustered young woman.
“I can't send them. I am bothered so much I can't do anything,” she
stammered.
“Oh, forget your business, skipper,” advised one of the party.
“It is not my business, sir.” He laid the packet of messages before the
operator on her little counter and tapped his finger on them. “They must
go,” he repeated.
“In their turn,” warned the yachtsman, showing that he resented this
intrusion. “And after the party is over!”
“I intended to confine my conversation to this young lady,” said Mayo.
He turned and faced them. “But I have been here long enough to see that
you gentlemen are interfering with the business of this office. Perhaps your
messages are not important. Mine are.”

The yachtsman was not sober nor was he judicious. “Go back to your job,
young fellow,” he advised. “You are horning in among gentlemen.”
“So am I,” squawked Mr. Speed, with weather eye out for clouds of any
sort.
Captain Mayo gave his supporter a glance of mingled astonishment and
relish. “We'd better not have any words about the matter, gentlemen,'' he
suggested, mildly.
“Certainly not,” stated the spokesman. “If you'll pass on there'll be no
words—or anything else.”
“Then we'll dispense with words!” The quick anger of youth flared in
Mayo. The air of the man rather than his words had offended deeply. “You'd
like to have this room to yourself so that you can attend to your business, I
presume?” he asked the operator.
“Yes, I would.”
Oakum Otie laid his folded paper upon the packet of Captain Mayo.
“You will leave the room gentlemen,” advised the captain.
Mr. Speed thrust out his bony elbows and cracked his hard fists together.
“I have never liked dudes,” he stated. “I have been brought up that way. All
my training with Cap'n Epps has been that way.”
“How do you fit into this thing?” demanded one of the yachtsmen.
“About like this,” averred Mr. Speed. He grabbed the young man by both
shoulders and ran him out into the night before anybody could interfere.
Then Mr. Speed reappeared promptly and inquired, “Which one goes next?”
“I think they will all go,” said the captain.
“Come on,” urged one of the party. “We can't afford to get into a brawl
with natives.”
“You bet you can't,” retorted Oakum Otie. “I hain't hove bunches of
shingles all my life for nothing!”
Mayo said nothing more. But after the yachtsmen had looked him over
they went out, making the affair a subject for ridicule.
“Hope I done right and showed to you that I was thankful for good
advice,” suggested Mr. Speed, seeking commendation.
“Just a bit hasty, sir.”

“Maybe, but there's nothing like handing folks a sample just to show up
the quality of the whole piece.”
“I thank you—both of you,” said the grateful operator.
“You'd better lock your door,” advised Mayo. “Men are thoughtless when
they have nothing to do except play.”
“I am so grateful! And I'm going to break an office rule,” volunteered the
girl. “I shall send off your telegrams first.”
“And I hope you can tuck that little one in second—it won't take up much
room!” pleaded Oakum Otie. “It's to help an awful pretty girl—looks are a
good deal like yours!”
“I'll attend to it,” promised the young woman, blushing.
Outside in the village street Mr. Speed wiped his rough palm against the
leg of his trousers and offered his hand to the captain. “I'll have to say
good-by to you here, sir. I've got a little errunting to do—fig o' terbacker
and a box of stror'b'ries. I confess to a terrible tooth for stror'b'ries. When
the hanker ketches me and I can't get to stror'b'ries my stror'b'ry mark shows
up behind my ear. I hope I have done right in sending off that tele-graft for
her—but it's too bad that a landlubber beau is going to get such a pretty
girl.” Then Oakum Otie sighed and melted away into the foggy gloom.
When Captain Mayo was half-way down the harbor, on his way back to
the yacht, he was confronted by a spectacle which startled him. The fog was
suddenly painted with a ruddy flare which spread high and flamed steadily.
His first fears suggested that a vessel was on fire. The Olenia lay in that
direction. He commanded his men to pull hard.
When he burst out of the mists into the zone of the illumination his
misgivings were allayed, but his curiosity was roused.
A dozen yacht tenders flocked in a flotilla near the stern of a rusty old
schooner. All the tenders were burning Coston lights, and from several
boats yachtsmen were sending off rockets which striped the pall of fog with
bizarre colorings.
The stern of the schooner was well lighted up by the torches, and Mayo
saw her name, though he did not need that name to assure him of her
identity; she was the venerable Polly.
The light which flamed about her, showing up her rig and lines, was
weirdly unreal and more than ever did she seem like a ghost ship. The thick

curtain of the mist caught up the flare of the torches and reflected it upon
her from the skies, and she was limned in fantastic fashion from truck to
water-line. Shadows of men in the tenders were thrown against the fog-
screen in grotesque outline, and a spirit crew appeared to be toiling in the
top-hamper of the old schooner.
Captain Mayo ordered his men to hold water and the tender drifted close
to the flotilla. He spied a yacht skipper whom he had known when both
were in the coasting trade.
“What's the idea, Duncan?”
His acquaintance grinned. “Serenade for old Epps Candage's girl—
handed to her over his head.” He pointed upward.
Projecting over the schooner's rail was the convulsed countenance of
Captain Candage. Choler seemed to be consuming him. The freakish light
painted everything with patterns in arabesque; the captain's face looked like
the countenance of a gargoyle.
Mayo, observing with the natural prejudice of a “native,” detected
mockery in the affair. He had just been present at one exhibition of the
convivial humor of larking yachtsmen.
“What's the special excuse for it?” he asked, sourly.
“According to the story, Epps has brought her with him on this trip to
break up a courting match.”
“Well, does that have anything to do with this performance?”
“Oh, it's only a little spree,” confessed the other. “It was planned out on
our yacht. Old Epps made himself a mucker to-day by sassing some of the
gents of the fleet, and the boys are handing him a little something. That's
all! It's only fun!”
“According to my notion it's the kind of fun that hurts when a girl is
concerned, Duncan.”
“Just as serious as ever, eh? Well, my notion is that a little good-natured
fun never hurts a pretty girl—and they say this one is some looker! Oh, hold
on a minute, Boyd!” The master of the Olenia had turned away and was
about to give an order to his oarsmen. “You ought to stop long enough to
hear that new song one of the gents on the Sunbeam has composed for the
occasion. It's a corker. I heard 'em rehearsing it on our yacht.”

In spite of his impatient resentment on behalf of the daughter of Epps
Candage, Captain Mayo remained. Just then the accredited minstrel of the
yachtsmen stood up, balancing himself in a tender. He was clearly revealed
by the lights, and was magnified by the aureole of tinted fog which
surrounded him. He sang, in waltz time, in a fine tenor:

“Our Polly O,
O'er the sea you go;
Fairer than sunbeam, lovely as moon-gleam,
All of us love thee so!
While the breezes blow
To waft thee, Polly O,
We will be true to thee,
Crossing the blue to thee,
Polly—Polly!
Dear little Polly,
Polly—O-O-O!”

He finished the verse and then raised both arms with the gesture of a
choral conductor.
“All together, now, boys!”
They sang with soul and vigor and excellent effect.
Ferocity nearly inarticulate, fury almost apoplectic, were expressed by
the face above the weather-worn rail.
“They say that music soothes the savage breast, but it don't look like it in
this case,” observed Captain Duncan with a chuckle.
“Clear off away from here, you drunken dudes! I'll have the law on ye!
I'll have ye arrested for—for breaking the peace.”
That threat, considering the surroundings, provoked great hilarity.
“Give way all! Here comes a cop!” warned a jeering voice.
“He's walking on the water,” explained another.
“The man must be a fool,” declared Captain Mayo. “If he'd go below and
shut up, they'd get tired and leave in a few minutes.”
However, Captain Candage seemed to believe that retreat would be
greatly to his discredit. He continued to hang over the rail, discharging as
complete a line of deep-water oaths as ever passed the quivering lips of a
mariner. Therefore the playful yachtsmen were highly entertained and
stayed to bait him still further. Every little while they sang the Polly song

with fresh gusto, while the enraged skipper fairly danced to it in his mad
rage and flung his arms about like a crazy orchestra leader.
Mr. Speed came rowing in his dory, putting out all his strength, splashing
his oars. “My Gawd! Cap'n Mayo,” he gasped, “I heard 'em hollering 'Oh,
Polly!' and I was 'feard she was afire. What's the trouble?”
“You'd better get on board, sir, and induce Captain Candage to go below
and keep still. He is fast making a complete idiot of himself.”
“I hain't got no influence over him. I ask and implore you to step on
board and soothe him down, sir. You can do it. He'll listen to a Mayo.”
“I'd better not try. It's no job for a stranger, Mr. Speed.”
“He'll be heaving that whole deckload of shingles at 'em next!”
“Get his daughter to coax him.”
“He won't listen to her when he's that fussed up!”
“I'm sorry! Give way men!”
His rowers dropped their oars into the water and pulled away with
evident reluctance.
“Better stay and see it out,” advised Captain Duncan.
“I don't care much for your show,” stated Mayo, curtly.
The cabin curtains were drawn on the Olenia, and he felt especially shut
away from human companionship. He went forward and paced up and
down the deck, turning over his troubled affairs in his mind, but making
poor shift in his efforts to set anything in its right place.
There were no indications that the serenading yachtsmen were becoming
tired of their method of killing time during a fog-bound evening. They had
secured banjos and mandolins, and were singing the Polly song with better
effect and greater relish. And continually the hoarse voice of the Polly's
master roared forth malediction, twisted into new forms of profanity.
But Captain Mayo, pacing under the damp gleam of the riding-light, paid
but little heed to the hullabaloo. He was too thoroughly absorbed in his own
troubles to feel special interest in what his neighbors were doing. He did not
even note that a fog-sodden breeze had begun to puff spasmodically from
the east and that the mists were shredding overhead.
However, all of a sudden, a sound forced itself on his attention; he heard
the chuckling of sheaves and knew that a sail was being hoisted. The low-

lying stratum of fog was still thick, and he could not perceive the identity of
the craft which proposed to take advantage of the sluggish breeze. The
“ruckle-ruckle” of the blocks sounded at quick intervals and indicated
haste; there was a suggestion of vicious determination on the part of the
men who were tugging at the halyards. Then Captain Mayo heard the steady
clanking of capstan pawls. He knew the methods of the Apple-treers, their
cautiousness, and their leisurely habits, and he could scarcely believe that a
coasting skipper was intending to leave the harbor that night. But the
capstan pawls began to click in staccato, showing that the anchor had been
broken out.
Protesting shouts from all about in the gloom greeted that signal.
There was no mistaking the hoarse voice of Captain Candage when it
was raised in reply; his tones had become familiar after that evening of
malediction.
“Dingdam ye, I know of a way of getting shet of the bunch of ye!”
“Don't try to shift your anchorage!”
“Anchorage be hossified! I'm going to sea!” bellowed the master of the
Polly.
“Down with that hook of yours! You'll rake this whole yacht fleet with
your old dumpcart!”
“You have driv' me to it! Now you can take your chances!”
The next moment Mayo heard the ripping of tackle and a crash.
“There go two tenders and our boat-boom! Confound it, man, drop your
hook!”
But from that moment Captain Candage, as far as his mouth was
concerned, preserved ominous silence. The splintery speech of havoc was
more eloquent.
Mayo could not see, but he understood in detail what damage was
wrought upon the delicate fabric of yachts by that unwieldy old tub of a
schooner. Here, another boat-boom carried away, as she sluggishly thrust
her bulk out through the fleet; there an enameled hull raked by her rusty
chain-plate bolts. Now a tender smashed on the outjutting davits, next a
wreck of spidery head-rigging, a jib-boom splintered and a foretopmast
dragged down. If Captain Mayo had been in any doubt as to the details of

the disasters he would have received full information from the illuminating
profanity of the victims.
He knew well enough that Captain Candage was not performing with
wilful intent to do all that damage. In what little wind there was the
schooner was not under control. She was drifting until she got enough
headway to be steered. In the mean time she was doing what came in her
way to do. The Polly had been anchored near the Olenia. As soon as her
anchor left bottom the schooner drifted up the harbor. Mayo knew, in a few
minutes, that Candage was bringing her about. An especial outbreak of
smashing signaled that manouver.
Mayo sniffed at the breeze, judged distance and direction, and then he
rushed forward and pounded his fist on the forecastle hatch.
“Rout out all hands!” he shouted. “Rouse up bumpers and tarpaulin!”
With the wind as it was, he realized that the schooner would point up in
the Olenia's direction when Candage headed out to sea.
At last Mayo caught a glimpse of her through the fog. His calculation had
been correct. Headed his way she was. She was moving so slowly that she
was practically unmanageable; her apple-bows hardly stirred a ripple, but
with breeze helping the tide-set she was coming irresistibly, paying off
gradually and promising to sideswipe the big yacht.
Mayo had a mariner's pride in his craft, and a master's devotion to duty.
He did not content himself with merely ordering about the men who came
tumbling on deck.
He grabbed a huge bumper away from one of the sailors who seemed
uncertain just what to do; he ran forward and thrust it over the rail, leaning
far out to see that it was placed properly to take the impact. He was giving
more attention to the safety of the Olenia than he was to what the on-
coming Polly might do to him.
Under all bowsprits on schooners, to guy the headstays, thrusts
downward a short spar, at right angles to the bowsprit; it is called the
martingale or dolphin-striker. The amateur riggers who had tinkered with
the Polly's gear in makeshift fashion had not troubled to smooth off spikes
with which they had repaired the martingale's lower end. Captain Mayo
ducked low to dodge a guy, and the spikes hooked themselves neatly into
the back of his reefer coat. Mr. Marston had bought excellent and strong

cloth for his captain's uniform. The fabric held, the spikes were well set, the
Polly did not pause, and, therefore, the master of the Olenia was yanked off
his own deck and went along.
All the evening Mayo's collar had been buttoned closely about his neck
to keep out the fog-damp, and when he was picked up by the spikes the
collar gripped tightly about his throat and against his larynx. His cry for
help was only a strangled squawk. His men were scattered along the side of
the yacht, trying to protect her, the night was over all, and no one noted the
mode of the skipper's departure.
The old schooner scrunched her way past the Olenia, roweling the yacht's
glossy paint and smearing her with tar and slime. It was as if the rancorous
spirit of the unclean had found sudden opportunity to defile the clean.
Then the Polly passed on into the night with clear pathway to the open
sea.

VII ~ INTO THE MESS FROM EASTWARD
Farewell to friends, farewell to foes,
Farewell to dear relations.
We're bound across the ocean blue—
Bound for the foreign nations.
Then obey your bo's'n's call,
Walk away with that cat-fall!
And we'll think on those girls when we can no longer stay.
And we'll think on those girls when we're far, far away.
—Unmooring.

For the first few moments, after being snatched up in that fashion, Mayo
hung from the dolphin-striker without motion, like a man paralyzed. He was
astounded by the suddenness of this abduction. He was afraid to struggle.
Momentarily he expected that the fabric would let go and that he would be
rolled under the forefoot of the schooner. Then he began to grow faint from
lack of breath; he was nearly garroted by his collar. Carefully he raised his
hands and set them about a stay above his head and lifted himself so that he
might ease his throat from the throttling grip of the collar. He dangled there
over the water for some time, feeling that he had not strength enough, after
his choking, to lift himself into the chains or to swing to the foot-rope.
He glanced up and saw the figurehead; it seemed to be simpering at him
with an irritating smile. There was something of bland triumph in that grin.
In the upset of his feelings there was personal and provoking aggravation in
the expression of the figurehead. He swore at it as if it were something
human. His anger helped him, gave him strength. He began to swing
himself, and at last was able to throw a foot over a stay.
He rested for a time and then gave himself another hoist and was able to
get astride the bowsprit. He judged that they must be outside the headland
of Saturday Cove, because the breeze was stronger and the sea gurgled and
showed white threads of foam against the blunt bows. His struggles had
consumed more time than he had realized in the dazed condition produced
by his choking collar.
He heard the popping of a motor-boat's engine far astern, and was
cheered by the prompt conviction that pursuit was on. Therefore, he made
haste to get in touch with the Polly's master. He scrambled inboard along

the bowsprit and fumbled his way aft over the piles of lumber, obliged to
move slowly for fear of pitfalls, Once or twice he shouted, but he received
no answer, He perceived three dim figures on the quarter-deck when he
arrived there—three men. Captain Candage was stamping to and fro.
“Who in the devil's name are you?” bawled the old skipper. “Get off'm
here! This ain't a passenger-bo't.”
“I'll get off mighty sudden and be glad to,” retorted Mayo.
“Well, I'll be hackmetacked!” exploded Mr. Speed shoving his face over
the wheel. “It's—”
“Shut up!” roared the master. “How comes it you're aboard here as a
stowaway?”
“Don't talk foolishness,” snapped Captain Mayo “Your old martingale
spikes hooked me up. Heave to and let me off!”
“Heave to it is!” echoed Oakum Otie, beginning to whirl the tiller.
Captain Candage turned on his mate with the violence of a thunderclap.
“Gad swigger your pelt, who's giving off orders aboard here? Hold on your
course!”
“But this is—”
“Shut up!” It was a blast of vocal effort. “Hold your course!”
“And I say, heave to and let that motor-boat take me off,” insisted Mayo.
Captain Candage leaned close enough to note the yacht skipper's uniform
coat. “Who do you think you're ordering around, you gilt-striped, monkey-
doodle dandy?”
“That motor-boat is coming after me.”
“Think you're of all that importance, hey? No, sir! It's a pack of 'em
chasing me to make me go back into port and be sued and libeled and
attached by cheap lawyers.”
“You ought to be seized and libeled! You had no business ratching out of
that harbor in the dark.”
“Ought to have taken a rising vote of dudes, hey, to find out whether I
had the right to h'ist my mudhook or not?”
“I'm not here to argue. You can do that in court. I tell you to come into
the wind and wait for that boat.”

“You'd better, Cap Candage,” bleated Oakum Otie. “This is—”
“Shut up! I'm running my own schooner, Mr. Speed.”
“But he is one of the—”
“I don't care if he is one of the Apostles. I know my own business. Shut
up! Hold her on her course!”
He took two turns along the quarter-deck, squinting up into the night.
“Look here, Candage, you and I are going to have a lot of trouble with
each other if you don't show some common sense. I must get back to my
yacht.”
“Jump overboard and swim back. I ain't preventing. I didn't ask you on
board. You can leave when you get ready. But this schooner is bound for
New York, they're in a hurry for this lumber, and I ain't stopping at way
stations!” He took another look at the weather, licked his thumb, and held it
against the breeze. “Sou'west by sou', and let her run! And shut up!” he
commanded his mate.
Mayo grabbed one of the yawl davits and sprang to the rail.
“We're some bigger than a needle, but so long as the haystack stays thick
enough I guess we needn't worry!” remarked Captain Candage, cocking his
ear to listen to the motor-boat's exhaust.
“Hoi-oi!” shouted Mayo into the night astern. He knew that men hear
indistinctly over the noise of a gasoline-engine, but he had resolved to keep
shouting.
“This way, men! This way with that boat!”
“'Vast heaving on that howl!” commanded Candage.
But Mayo persisted with all his might. His attention was confined wholly
to his efforts, and he was not prepared for the sudden attack from behind.
The master of the Polly seized Mayo's legs and yanked him backward to the
deck. The young man fell heavily, and his head thumped the planks with
violence which flung him into insensibility.
When he opened his eyes he looked up and saw a hanging-lamp that
creaked on its gimbals as it swayed to the roll of the schooner. He was in
the Polly's cabin. Next he was conscious that he was unable to move. He
was seated on the floor, his back against a stanchion, his hands lashed
behind him by bonds which confined him to the upright support. But the

most uncomfortable feature of his predicament was a marlinespike which
was stuck into his mouth like a bit provided for a fractious horse, and was
secured by lashings behind his head. He was effectually gagged.
Furthermore, the back of his head ached in most acute fashion. He rolled his
eyes about and discovered that he had a companion in misery. A very pretty
young woman was seated on a camp-chair across the cabin. Her face
expressed much sympathy.
He gurgled a wordless appeal for help, and then perceived that she was
lashed into her chair.
“I wish I could take that awful thing out of your mouth, sir.”
He gave her a look which assured her that he shared in her desire.
“My father has tied me into this chair. I tried to make him stop his
dreadful talk when the boats came and burned the lights. He put me down
here and made a prisoner of me. It is terrible, all that has been happening. I
can't understand! I hope you will not think too hard of my father, sir.
Honestly, he seems to be out of his right mind.”
He wanted to return some comforting reply to this wistful appeal, but he
could only roll his head against the stanchion and make inarticulate sounds.
“He seemed to be very bitter when he brought you below. I could not
make him listen to reason. I have been thinking—and perhaps you're the
gentleman who led the singing which made him so angry?”
Mayo shook his head violently in protest at this suspicion.
“I didn't mind,” she assured him. “I knew it was only in fun.” She
pondered for a few minutes. “Perhaps they wouldn't have teased one of their
city girl friends in that way—but I suppose men must have a good time
when they are away from home. Only—it has made it hard for me!” There
were tears in her eyes.
Mayo's face grew purple as he tried to speak past the restraining spike
and make her understand his sentiments on the subject of that serenade.
“Don't try to talk, sir. I'm so sorry. It is shameful!”
There was silence in the cabin after that for a long time. He looked up at
the swinging lamp, his gaze wandered about the homely cabin. But his eyes
kept returning to her face. He could not use his tongue, and he tried to tell
her by his glances, apologetic little starings, that he was sorry for her in her
grief. She met those glances with manifest embarrassment.

After an absence which was prolonged to suit his own sour will in the
matter, Captain Candage came stamping stormily down the companionway.
He stood between his captives and glowered, first at one and then at the
other.
“Both of ye blaming me, I reckon, for what couldn't be helped.”
“Father, listen to me now, if you have any sense left in you,” cried the
girl, with passion. “Take that horrible thing out of that gentleman's mouth.”
“It has come to a pretty pass in this world when an honest man can't carry
on his own private business without having to tie up meddlers so as to have
a little peace.” He walked close to Mayo and shook a monitory finger under
the young man's nose. “Now, what did ye come on board here for, messing
into my affairs?”
The indignant captain put forth his best efforts to make suitable retort,
but could only emit a series of “guggles.”
“And now on top of it all I am told by my mate, who never gets around to
do anything that ought to be done till it's two days too late, that you are one
of the Mayos! Why wasn't I informed? I might have made arrangements to
show you some favors. I might have hove to and taken a chance,
considering who you was. And now it's too late. Everybody seems to be
ready to impose on me!”
Again Mayo tried to speak.
“Why don't you shut up that gobbling and talk sense?” shouted the irate
skipper, with maddening disregard of the captive's predicament.
“Father, are you completely crazy? You haven't taken that spike out of his
mouth.”
“Expect a man to remember everything when he is all wrapped in his
own business and everybody trying to meddle with it?” grumbled Candage.
He fumbled in his pocket and produced a knife. He slashed away the rope
yarn which lashed the marlinespike. “If you can talk sense I'll help you do
it! I reckon you can holler all you want to now. Them dudes can't find their
own mouths in a fog, much less this schooner. Now talk up!”
Mayo worked his aching jaws and found his voice. “You know how I
happened to get aboard, Captain Candage. I am skipper of the Olenia. Put
back with me if you want to save trouble.”

“Not by a tin hoopus, sir! I ain't going about and tackle them reefs in this
fog. I've got open sea ahead, and I shall keep going!”
Mayo was a sailor who knew that coast, and he admitted to himself that
Candage's stubbornness was justified.
“I ain't responsible for your getting aboard here. I'll land you as soon as I
can—and that covers the law, sir.”
During a prolonged silence the two men stared at each other.
“At any rate, Captain Candage, I trust you will not consider that you have
a right to keep me tied up here any longer.”
“Now that there's a better understanding about who is boss aboard here, I
don't know as I'm afraid to have you at large,” admitted the skipper. “I only
warn you to remember your manners and don't forget that I'm captain.”
He flourished his clasp-knife and bent and cut the lashings. Then he
strode across the cabin and performed like service for his daughter.
“I reckon I can afford to have you loose, too, now that you can't tell me
my business in front of a lot of skylarkers throwing kisses right and left!”
“Father! Oh, oh!” She put her hands to her face.
Captain Candage seemed to be having some trouble in keeping up his
rôle of a bucko shipmaster; he shifted his eyes from Mayo's scowl and
surveyed his daughter with uncertainty while he scratched his ear.
“When a man ain't boss on his own schooner he might as well stop going
to sea,” he muttered. “Some folks knows it's the truth, being in a position to
know, and others has to be showed!” He went stamping up the
companionway into the night.
Captain Mayo waited, for some minutes. The girl did not lift her head.
“About that—What he said about—You understand! I know better!” he
faltered.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, gratefully, still hiding her face from him.
“Men sometimes do very foolish things.”
“I didn't know my father could be like this.”
“I was thinking about the men who came and annoyed him. I can
understand how he felt, because I am 'a 'native' myself.”
“I thought you were from outside.”

“My name is Boyd Mayo. I'm from Mayoport.”
She looked up at him with frank interest.
“My folks built this schooner,” he stated, with modest pride.
“I'm Polly Candage—I'm named for it.”
“It's too bad!” he blurted. “I don't mean to say but what the name is all
right,” he explained, awkwardly, “but I don't think that either of us is
particularly proud of this old hooker right at the present moment.” He went
across the cabin and sat down on a transom and, tested the bump on the
back of his head with cautious palm.
She did not reply, and he set his elbows on his knees and proceeded to
nurse his private grouch in silence, quite excluding his companion from his
thoughts. Now that he had been snatched so summarily from his hateful
position on board the Olenia, his desire to leave her was not so keen. After
Mayo's declaration to the owner, Marston might readily conclude that his
skipper had deserted. His reputation and his license as a shipmaster were in
jeopardy, and he had already had a bitter taste of Marston's intolerance of
shortcomings. If Marston cared to bother about breaking such a humble
citizen, malice had a handy weapon. But most of all was Mayo concerned
with the view Alma Marston would take of the situation. She would either
believe that he had fallen overboard in the skirmish with the attacking Polly
or had deserted without warning—and in the case of a lover both
suppositions were agonizing. His distress was so apparent that the girl, from
her seat on the opposite transom, extended sympathy in the glances she
dared to give him.
“How did you tear your coat so badly in the back?” she ventured at last.
“Spikes your excellent father left sticking out of his martingale,” he said,
a sort of boyish resentment in his tones.
“Then it is only right that I should offer to mend it for you.”
She hurried to a locker, as if glad of an excuse to occupy herself. She
produced her little sewing-basket and then came to him and held out her
hand.
“Take it off, please.”
“You needn't trouble,” he expostulated, still gruff.

“I insist. Please let me do a little something to make up for the Polly's
naughtiness.”
“It will be all right until I can get ashore—and perhaps I'll never have
need to wear the coat again, anyway.”
“Won't you allow me to be doing something that will take my mind off
my troubles, sir?” Then she snapped her finger into her palm and there was
a spirit of matronly command in her voice, in spite of her youth. “I insist, I
say! Take off your coat.”
He obeyed, a little grin crinkling at the corners of his mouth—a flicker of
light in his general gloom. After he had placed the coat in her hands he sat
down on the transom and watched her busy fingers. She worked deftly. She
closed in the rents and then darned the raveled places with bits of the thread
pulled from the coat itself.
“You are making it look almost as good as new.”
“A country girl must know how to patch and darn. The folks in the
country haven't as many things to throw away as the city folks have.”
“But that—what you are doing—that's real art.”
“My aunt does dressmaking and I have helped her. And lately I have been
working in a millinery-shop. Any girl ought to know how to use her
needle.”
He remembered what Mr. Speed had said about the reason for her
presence on the Polly. He cast a disparaging glance around the bare cabin
and decided in his mind that Mr. Speed had reported truthfully and with full
knowledge of the facts. Surely no girl would choose that sort of thing for a
summer vacation.
She bent her head lower over her work and he was conscious of warmer
sympathy for her; their troubled affairs of the heart were in similar plight.
He felt an impulse to say something to console her and knew that he would
welcome understanding and consolation from her; promptly he was afraid
of his own tongue, and set curb upon all speech.
“A man never knows how far he may go in making fool talk when he gets
started,” he reflected. “Feeling the way I do to-night, I'd better keep the
conversation kedge well hooked.”
Now that her hands were busy, she did not find the silence embarrassing.
Mayo returned to his ugly meditations.

After a time he was obliged to shift himself on the transom. The schooner
was heeling in a manner which showed the thrust of wind. He glanced up
and saw that the rain was smearing broad splashes on the dingy glass of the
windows. The companion hatch was open, and when he cocked his ear, with
mariner's interest in weather, he heard the wind gasping in the open space
with a queer “guffle” in its tone.
Instinctively he began to look about the cabin for a barometer.
Already that day the Olenia's glass had warned him by its downward
tendency. He wondered whether further reading would indicate something
more ominous than fog.
Across the cabin he noted some sort of an instrument swinging from a
hook on a carline. He investigated. It was a makeshift barometer, the
advertising gift of a yeast company. The contents of its tube were roiled to
the height of the mark which was lettered “Tornado.”
“You can't tell nothing from that!” Captain Candage had come down into
the cabin and stood behind his involuntary guest. “It has registered
'Tornado' ever since the glass got cracked. And even at that, it's about as
reliable as any of the rest of them tinkerdiddle things.”
“Haven't you a regular barometer—an aneroid?” inquired Captain Mayo.
“I can smell all the weather I need to without bothering with one of them
contrivances,” declared the master of the schooner, in lordly manner. He
began to pull dirty oilskins out of a locker.
Mayo hurried up the companionway and put out his head. There were
both weight and menace in the wind which hooted past his ears. The fog
was gone, but the night was black, without glimmer of stars. The white
crests of the waves which galloped alongside flaked the darkness with
ominous signalings.
“If you can smell weather, Captain Candage, your nose ought to tell you
that this promises to be something pretty nasty.”
“Oh, it might be called nasty by lubbers on a gingerbread yacht, but I
have sailed the seas in my day and season, and I don't run for an inshore
puddle every time the wind whickers a little.” He was fumbling with a
button under his crisp roll of chin beard and gave the other man a stare of
superiority.
“You don't class me with yacht-lubbers, do you?”

“Well, you was just on a yacht, wasn't you?”
“Look here, Captain Candage, you may just as well understand, now and
here, that I'm one of your kind of sailors. Excuse me for personal talk, but I
want to inform you that from fifteen to twenty I was a Grand-Banksman.
Last season I was captain of the beam trawler Laura and Marion. And I
have steamboated in the Sound and have been a first mate in the hard-pine
trade in Southern waters. I have had a chance to find out more or less about
weather.”
“Un-huh!” remarked the skipper, feigning indifference. “What about it?”
“I tell you that you have no business running out into this mess that is
making from east'ard.”
“If you have been so much and so mighty in your time, then you
understand that a captain takes orders from nobody when he's on board his
own vessel.”
“I understand perfectly well, sir. I'm not giving orders. But my own life is
worth something to me and I have a right to tell you that you are taking
foolhardy chances. And you know it, too!”
Captain Candage's gaze shifted. He was a coaster and he was naturally
cautious, as Apple-treers are obliged to be. He knew perfectly well that he
was in the presence of a man who knew! He had not the assurance to
dispute that man, though his general grudge against all the world at that
moment prompted him.
“I got out because they drove me out,” he growled.
“A man can't afford to be childish when he is in command of a vessel, sir.
You are too old a skipper to deny that.”
“I was so mad I didn't stop to smell weather,” admitted the master,
bracing himself to meet a fresh list of the heeling Polly. He evidently felt
that he ought to defend his own sagacity and absolve himself from mariner's
culpability.
“Very well! Let it go at that! But what are you going to do?”
“I can't beat back to Saturday Cove against this wind—not now! She
would rack her blamed old butts out.”
“Then run her for Lumbo Reach. You can quarter a following sea. She
ought to ride fairly easy.”

“That's a narrow stab in a night as black as this one is.”
“I'll make a cross-bearing for you. Where's your chart?” Mayo exhibited
a sailor's alert anxiety to be helpful.
“I 'ain't ever needed a chart—not for this coast.”
“Then I'll have to guess at it, sir.” He closed his eyes in order to
concentrate. “You gave a course of sou'west by sou'. Let's see—it was nine-
fifteen when I just looked and we must have logged—”
“It ain't no use to stab for such a hole in the wall as Lumbo Reach,”
declared Candage in discouraged tones.
“But you've got your compass and I can—”
“There ain't no depending on my compass within two points and a half.”
“Confound it, I can make allowance, sir, if you'll tell me your deviation!”
“But it's a card compass and spins so bad in a seaway there ain't no
telling, anyway. In my coasting I haven't had to be particular.”
“Not as long as you had an apple-tree in sight,” jeered Mayo, beginning
to lose his temper.
“I don't dare to run in the direction of anything that is solid—we'll hit it
sure, 'n' hell-fire will toast corn bread. We've got to stay to sea!”
Captain Mayo set his teeth and clenched his fists and took a few turns up
and down the cabin. He looked up into the night through the open hatch of
the companion-way. The pale glimmer of the swinging lamp tossed a mild
flare against the blackness and lighted two faces which were limned against
that pall. Both Oakum Otie and Smut-nosed Dolph were at the wheel. Their
united strength was needed because the schooner was yawing madly every
now and then when the mightier surges of the frothing sea hoisted her
counter, chasing behind her like wild horses. Those faces, when Mayo
looked on them, were very solemn. The two were crouching like men who
were anxious to hide from a savage beast. They grunted as they struggled
with the wheel, trying to hold her up when the Polly tobogganed with
rushes that were almost breath-checking.
Mayo hastened to the girl. “I must have my coat, Miss Candage. I thank
you. It will do now.”
She held it open for his arms, as a maid might aid her knight with his
armor. “Are we in danger?” she asked, tremulously.

“I hope not—only it is uncomfortable—and needless,” he said, with
some irritation.
“Must I stay down here—alone?”
“I would! It's only a summer blow, Miss Candage. I'm sure we'll be all
right.”
Captain Candage had gone on deck, rattling away in his stiff oilskins.
Mayo followed, but the master came down a few steps into the
companionway and intercepted the volunteer, showing a final smolder of
his surliness.
“I want to notify you that I can run my own bo't, sir!”
“Yes, run it with a yeast barometer, a straw bottom, a pinwheel compass,
and your general cussedness of disposition,” shouted Mayo into the whirl of
the wind, his anxiety whetting his much-tried temper.
“If you're feeling that way, I don't want you up here.”
“I'm feeling worse than you'll ever understand, you stubborn old fool!”
“I let one man call me a fool to-day and I didn't make back talk—but I
know where to draw the line,” warned Candage.
“Look here, I propose to start in with you right now, sir, on a basis you'll
understand! I say you're a fool and need a guardian—and from now on I'm
going to make my bigness aboard here! Get out of my way!”
Captain Mayo then emphasized his opinion of Captain Candage by
elbowing the master to one side and leaping out on deck.
“That may be mutiny,” stated Mr. Speed through set teeth, checking the
startled exclamation from his helper at the wheel. “But, by the Judas I-
scarrot, it's a Mayo that's doing it! Remember that, Dolph!”

VIII ~ LIKE BUGS UNDER A THIMBLE
Up comes the skipper from down below,
And he looks aloft and he looks alow.
And he looks alow and he looks aloft,
And it's, “Coil up your ropes, there, fore and aft.”
With a big Bow-wow!
Tow-row-row!
Fal de rai de, ri do day!
—Boston Shanty.

Captain Mayo strode straight to the men at the wheel. “Give me those
spokes!” he commanded. “I'll take her! Get in your washing, boys!”
“Ay, ay, sir!” assented Mr. Speed, giving the resisting Dolph a violent
shove.
When Captain Candage began to curse, Captain Mayo showed that he
had a voice and vocabulary of his own. He fairly roared down the master of
the Polly.
“Now shut up!” he ordered the dumfounded skipper, who faced him,
mouth agape. “This is no time for any more foolishness. It's a case of work
together to save our lives. Down with 'em, boys!”
“That's right,” declared the mate. “She don't need much of anything on
her except a double-reefed mitten with the thumb brailed up.”
The wind had not attained the velocity of a gale, but it did have an ugly
growl which suggested further violence. Mayo braced himself, ready to
bring the schooner about in order to give the crew an opportunity to shorten
sail.
Captain Candage, deposed as autocrat for the moment, seemed to be
uncertain as to his duties.
Mayo, understanding mariner nature, felt some contrition and was
prompted by saner second thought.
“You'd better take the wheel, Captain Candage. You know her tricks
better than I do in a seaway. I'll help the boys take in sail.”
The master obeyed with alacrity. He seemed to be cowed. Anger no
longer blinded him to their predicament.

“Just say what you want done, and I'll try to do it,” he told Mayo, in a
voice which had become suddenly mild and rather beseeching. Then he
called to his daughter, who had come to the foot of the companion steps,
“Better blow out that cabin light, Polly girl! She's li'ble to dance bad, and
we don't want to run the chance of fire.”
Mayo got a glimpse at her face as he hurried upon the house on his way
to the main halyards. Her face was pale, but there was the firm spirit of her
Yankee ancestry of the sea in her poise and in her very silence in that crisis.
She obeyed without complaint or question and the cabin was dark; even the
glimmer of the light had held something of cheer. Now the gloom was
somber and depressing.
The schooner came round with a sort of scared hurry when the master
threw the wheel hard over and trod on the spokes with all his weight. As
soon as the bellying mainsail began to flap, the three men let it go on the
run. They kept up the jumbo sail, as the main jib is called; they reefed the
foresail down to its smallest compass.
Mayo, young, nimble, and eager, singly knotted more reef points than
both his helpers together, and his crisp commands were obeyed
unquestioningly.
“He sartinly is chain lightning in pants,” confided Dolph to Otie.
“He knows his card,” said Otie to Dolph.
Captain Mayo led the way aft, crawling over the shingles and laths.
“I hope it's your judgment, sir, that we'd better keep her into the wind as
she is and try to ride this thing out,” he suggested to the master.
“It is my judgment, sir,” returned Captain Candage, with official gravity.
Hove to, the old Polly rode in fairly comfortable style. She was deep with
her load of lumber, but the lumber made her buoyant and she lifted easily.
Her breadth of beam helped to steady her in the sweeping seas—but
Captain Mayo clung to a mainstay and faced the wind and the driving rain
and knew that the open Atlantic was no place for the Polly on a night like
that.
Spume from the crested breakers at her wallowing bow salted the rain on
his dripping face. It was an unseasonable tempest, scarcely to be looked for
at that time of year. But he had had frequent experience with the vagaries of

easterlies, and he knew that a summer easterly, when it comes, holds
menacing possibilities.
“They knowed how to build schooners when your old sirs built this one
at Mayoport,” declared Captain Candage, trying to put a conciliatory tone
into his voice when he bellowed against the blast. “She'll live where one of
these fancy yachts of twice her size would be smothered.”
Mayo did not answer. He leaped upon the house and helped Dolph and
Otie furl the mainsail that lay sprawled in the lazy-jaeks. They took their
time; the more imminent danger seemed to be over.
“I never knowed a summer blow to amount to much,” observed Mr.
Speed, trying to perk up, though he was hanging on by both hands to avoid
bring blown off the slippery house.
“It depends on whether there's an extra special squall knotted into it
somewhere to windward,” said Mayo, in a lull of the wind. “Then it can
amount to a devil of a lot, Mr. Speed!”
The schooner washed her nose in a curving billow that came inboard and
swept aft. With her small area of exposed sail and with the wind buffeting
her, she had halted and paid off, lacking steerageway. She got several
wallops of the same sort before she had gathered herself enough to head
into the wind.
Again she paid off, as if trying to avoid a volleying gust, and another
wave crested itself ahead of the blunt bows and then seemed to explode,
dropping tons of water on deck. Laths, lumber, and bunches of shingles
were ripped loose and went into the sea. The Polly appeared to be showing
sagacity of her own in that crisis; she was jettisoning cargo for her own
salvation.
“Good Cephas! this is going to lose us our decklo'd,” wailed the master.
“We'd better let her run!” “Don't you do it, sir! You'll never get her about!”
Mayo had given over his work on the sail and was listening. Above the
scream of the passing gusts which assailed him he was hearing a dull and
solemn roar to windward. He suspected what that sound indicated. He had
heard it before in his experience. He tried to peer into the driving storm,
dragging the rain from his eyes with his fingers. Then nature held a torch
for him. A vivid shaft of lightning crinkled overhead and spread a broad
flare of illumination across the sea. His suspicions, which had been stirred

by that sullen roar, were now verified. He saw a low wall of white water,
rolling and frothing. It was a summer “spitter” trampling the waves.
A spitter is a freak in a regular tempest—a midsummer madness of
weather upheaval. It is a thunderbolt of wind, a concentration of gale, a
whirling dervish of disaster—wind compactly bunched into one almighty
blast—wind enough to last a regular gale for a whole day if the stock were
spent thriftily.
“Don't ease her an inch!” screamed Mayo.
But just then another surging sea climbed aboard and picked up more of
the laths and more of the shingles, and frolicked away into the night with
the plunder. Captain Candage's sense of thrift got a more vital jab than did
his sense of fear. His eyes were on his wheel, and he had not seen the wall
of white spume.
“That decklo'd has got to be lashed,” he muttered. He decided to run with
the wind till that work could be performed. He threw his helm hard over.
Mayo had been riding the main boom astraddle, hitching himself toward the
captain, to make him hear. When the volunteer saw the master of the Polly
trying to turn tail to the foe in that fashion, he leaped to the wheel, but he
was too late. The schooner had paid off too much. The yelling spitter caught
them as they were poised broadside on the top of a wave, before the
sluggish craft had made her full turn.
What happened then might have served as confirmation of mariners'
superstition that a veritable demon reigns in the heart of the tempest. The
attack on the old Polly showed devilish intelligence in team-work. A
crashing curler took advantage of the loosened deckload and smashed the
schooner a longside buffet which sent all the lumber in a sliding drive
against the lee rail and rigging. The mainsail had been only partly secured;
the spitter blew into the flapping canvas with all its force and the sail
snapped free and bellied out.
The next instant the Polly was tripped!
She went over with all the helpless, dead-weight violence of a man who
has caught his toe on a drooping clothes line in the dark.
The four men who were on deck were sailors and they did not need
orders when they felt that soul-sickening swing of her as she toppled.
Instinctively, with one accord, they dived for the cabin companionway.

Undoubtedly, as a sailor, the first thought of each was that the schooner
was going on to her beam-ends. Therefore, to remain on deck meant that
they would either slide into the water or that a smashing wave would carry
them off.
They went tumbling down together in the darkness, and all four of them,
with impulse of preservation as instant and true as that of the trap-door
spider, set their hands to the closing of the hatch and the folding leaves of
the door.
Captain Mayo, his clutch still on a knob, found himself pulled under
water without understanding at first just what had happened. He let go his
grip and came up to the surface, spouting. He heard the girl shriek in
extremity of terror, so near him that her breath swept his face. He put out
his arm and caught her while he was floundering for a footing. When he
found something on which to stand and had steadied himself, he could not
comprehend just what had happened; the floor he was standing on had
queer irregularities.
“We've gone over!” squalled Mr. Speed in the black darkness. “We've
gone clear over. We're upside down. We're standing on the ceiling!”
Then Mayo trod about a bit and convinced himself that the irregularities
under his feet were the beams and carlines.
The Polly had been tripped in good earnest! Mr. Speed was right—she
was squarely upside down!
Even in that moment of stress Mayo could figure out how it had
happened. The spitter must have ripped all her rotten canvas off her spars as
she rolled and there had been no brace to hold her on her beam-ends when
she went over.
Captain Candage was spouting, splashing near at hand, and was
bellowing his fears. Then he began to call for his daughter in piteous
fashion.
“Are you drownded, Polly darling?” he shouted.
“I have her safe, sir,” Mayo assured him in husky tones, trying to clear
the water from his throat. “Stand on a beam. You can get half of your body
above water.”
“It's all off with us,” gasped the master. “We're spoke for.”

Such utter and impenetrable blackness Mayo had never experienced
before. Their voices boomed dully, as if they were in a huge hogshead
which had been headed over.
'“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,'”
quavered the cook. “If anybody knows a better prayer I wish he'd say it.”
“Plumb over—upside down! Worse off than flies in a puddle of Porty
Reek molasses,” mourned Mr. Speed.
The master joined the mate in lamentation. “I have brought my baby to
this! I have brought my Polly here! God forgive me. Can't you speak to me,
Polly?”
Mayo found the girl very quiet in the hook of his arm, and he put his free
hand against her cheek. She did not move under his touch.
“She has fainted, sir.”
“No, she's dead! She's dead!” Candage began to weep and started to
splash his way across the cabin, directed by Mayo's voice.
“She is all right—she is breathing,” the young man assured the father.
“Here! This way, captain! Take her. Hold her up. I want to see whether
anything can be done for us.”
“Nothing can be done!” whimpered Candage. “We're goners.”
“We're goners,” averred Oakum Otie.
“We're goners,” echoed Dolph.
Mayo gave the girl into the groping arms of her father and stood for a
few moments reflecting on their desperate plight. He was not hopeful. In his
heart he agreed with the convictions which his mates were expressing in
childish falsetto. But being a young sailor who found his head above water,
he resolved to keep on battling in that emergency; the adage of the
coastwise mariner is: “Don't die till Davy Jones sets his final pinch on your
weasen!”
First of all, he gave full consideration to what had happened. The Polly
had been whipped over so quickly that she had been transformed into a sort
of diving-bell.{*} That is to say, a considerable amount of air had been
captured and was now retained in her. It was compressed by the water
which was forced up from below through the windows and the shattered
skylight. The pressure on Mayo's temples afforded him information on this

point. The Polly was floating, and he felt comforting confidence that she
would continue to float for some time. But this prospect did not insure
safety or promise life to the unfortunates who had been trapped in her
bowels. The air must either escape gradually or become vitiated as they
breathed it.

* The strange adventure of the Polly is not an
improbability of fiction. A Bath, Maine, schooner, lumber-
laden, was tripped in exactly this fashion off Hatteras.
Captain Boyd Mayo's exploit has been paralleled in real life
in all details. My good friend Captain Elliott C. Gardner,
former skipper of the world's only seven-master, the Thomas
W. Lawson, furnished those details to me, and after writing
this part of the tale I submitted the narrative to him for
confirmation. It has received his indorsement.—H. D.

There was only one thing to do, he decided: take advantage of any period
of truce which their ancient enemy, the sea, had allowed in that desperate
battle.
A sailor is prey to hazards and victim of the unexpected in the ever-
changing moods of the ocean; he must needs be master of expedients and
ready grappler of emergencies.
“Where are your tools—a saw—a chisel?” demanded Mayo. He was
obliged to repeat that query several times. His companions appeared to be
wholly absorbed in their personal woes.
At last Mr. Speed checked his groans long enough to state that the tools
were in “the lazareet.”
The lazaret of a coaster is a storeroom under the quarter-deck—
repository of general odds and ends and spare equipment.
“Any way to get at it except through the deck-hatch?”
“There's a door through, back of the companion ladder,” said Mr. Speed,
with listless indifference.
Mayo crowded his way past the ladder after he had waded and stumbled
here and there and had located it. He set his shoulders against the slope of
the steps and pushed at the door with his feet. After he had forced it open he
waded into the storeroom. It was blind business, hunting for anything in
that place. He knew the general habits of the hit-or-miss coasting crews, and
was sure that the tools had been thrown in among the rest of the clutter by
the person who used them last. If they had been loose on the floor they

would now be loose on the ceiling. He pushed his feet about, hoping to
tread on something that felt like a saw or chisel.
“Ahoy, you men out there!” he called. “Don't you have any idea in what
part of this lazaret the tools were?”
“Oh, they was probably just throwed in,” said Mr. Speed. “I wish you
wouldn't bother me so much! I'm trying to compose my mind to pray.”
There were so much ruck and stuff under his feet that Mayo gave up
searching after a time. He had held his breath and ducked his head under
water so that he might investigate with his bare hands, but he found nothing
which would help him, and his brain was dizzy after his efforts and his
mouth was choked by the dirty water.
But when he groped his way back into the main cabin his hands came in
contact with the inside of the lazaret door. In leather loops on the door he
found saw, ax, chisel, and hammer. He was unable to keep back a few
hearty and soul-satisfying oaths.
“Why didn't you tell me where the tools were? They're here on the door.”
“I had forgot about picking 'em tip. And my mind ain't on tools, anyway.”
“Your mind will be on 'em as soon as I can get forward there,” growled
the incensed captain.
Mayo was not sure of what he needed or what he would be obliged to do,
therefore he took all the tools, holding them above water. When he waded
past Captain Can-dage he heard the old skipper trying to comfort the girl,
his voice low and broken by sobs. She had recovered consciousness and
Mayo was a bit sorry; in her swoon she had not realized their plight; he
feared hysterics and other feminine demonstrations, and he knew that he
needed all his nerve.
“We're going to die—we're going to die!” the girl kept moaning.
“Yes, my poor baby, and I have brought you to it,” blubbered her father.
“Please keep up your courage for a little while, Miss Candage,” Mayo
pleaded, wistfully.
“But there's no hope!”
“There's hope just as long as we have a little air and a little grit,” he
insisted. “Now, please!”
“I am afraid!” she whispered.

“So am I,” he confessed. “But we're all going to work the best we know
how. Can't you encourage us like a brave, good girl?” He went stumbling
on. “Now tell me, mate,” he commanded, briskly, “how thick is the
bulkhead between the cabin, here, and the hold?”
“I can't bother to think,” returned Mr. Speed.
“It's only sheathing between the beams, sir,” stated Captain Candage.
“Mate, you and the cook lend a hand to help me.”
Oakum Otie broke off the prayer to which he had returned promptly.
“What's the use?” he demanded, with anger which his fright made juvenile.
“I tell you I'm trying to compose my soul, and I want this rampage-round
stopped.”
“I say what's the use, too!” whined Dolph. “You can't row a biskit across
a puddle of molasses with a couple of toothpicks,” he added, with cook's
metaphor for the absolutely hopeless.
Mayo shouted at them with a violence that made hideous din in that
narrow space. “You two men wade across here to me or I'll come after you
with an ax in one hand and a hammer in the other! Damn you, I mean
business!”
They were silent, then there sounded the splash of water and they came,
muttering. They had recognized the ring of desperate resolve in his
command.
Mayo, when he heard their stertorous breathing close at hand, groped for
them and shoved tools into their clutch. He retained the hammer and chisel
for himself.
“That's about all I need you for just now—for tool-racks,” he growled.
“Make sure you don't drop those.”
The upturned schooner rolled sluggishly, and every now and then the
water swashed across her cabin with extra impetus, making footing
insecure.
“If I tumble down I'll have to drop 'em,” whimpered Oolph.
“Then don't come up. Drowning will be an easier death for you,”
declared the captain, menacingly. He was sounding the bulkhead with his
hammer.

The tapping quickly showed him where the upright beams were located
on the other side of the sheathing. In his own mind he was not as sanguine
as his activity might have indicated. It was blind experiment—he could not
estimate the obstacles which were ahead of him. But he did understand,
well enough, that if they were to escape they must do so through the bottom
of the vessel amidship; there, wallowing though she was, there might be
some freeboard. He had seen vessels floating bottom up. Usually a section
of the keel and a portion of the garboard streaks were in sight above the sea.
But there could be no escape through the bottom of the craft above them
where they stood in the cabin. He knew that the counter and buttock must
be well under water.
“Have you a full cargo belowdecks?” he asked.
“No,” stated Captain Candage, hinting by his tone that he wondered what
difference that would make to them in the straits in which they were placed.
Mayo felt a bit of fresh courage. He had been afraid that the Polly's hold
would be found to be stuffed full of lumber. His rising spirits prompted a
little sarcasm.
“How did it ever happen that you didn't plug the trap you set for us?”
“Couldn't get but two-thirds cargo below because the lumber was sawed
so long. Made it up by extra deck-lo'd.”
“Yes, piled it all on deck so as to make her top-heavy—so as to be sure of
catching us,” suggested Mayo, beginning to work his hammer and chisel on
the sheathing.
“'Tain't no such thing!” expostulated Captain Candage, missing the irony.
“Them shingles and laths is packet freight, and I couldn't put 'em below
because I've got to deliver 'em this side of New York. And you don't expect
me to overhaul a whole decklo'd so as to—”
“Not now,” broke in Mayo. “The Atlantic Ocean has attended to the case
of that deckload.”
“My Gawd, yes!” mourned the master. “I was forgetting that we are
upside down—and that shows what a state of mind I'm in!”
Mayo had picked his spot for operations. He drove his chisel through the
sheathing as close to the cabin floor as he could. Remembering that the
schooner was upside down and that the floor was over his head, the aperture
he was starting work on would bring him nearest the bilge. When he had

chiseled a hole big enough for a start, he secured the saw from the mate and
sawed a square opening. He lifted himself up and worked his way through
the hole and found himself on lumber and out of water. It was what he had
been hoping to find, after the assurance from the master: the partial cargo of
lumber in the hold had settled to the deck when the schooner tipped over.
Investigating with groping hands, he assured himself that there were fully
three feet of space between the cargo and the bottom of the vessel.
“Come here with your daughter, Captain Candage!” he called, cheerily.
“It's dry in here.”
He kneeled and held his hands out through the opening, directing them
with his voice, reaching into the pitchy darkness until her hands found his,
and then he brought her up to him and in upon the lumber.
“It's a little better, even if it's nothing to brag about,” he told her. “Sit
over there at one side so that the men can crawl in past you. I'll need them
to help me.”
“And what do you think now—shall we die?” she asked, in tremulous
whisper.
“No, I don't think so,” he told her, stoutly.
They were alone in the hold for a few moments while the others were
helping one another through the opening.
“But in this trap—in the dark—crowded in here!” Her tone did not
express doubt; it was pathetic endeavor to understand their plight. “My
father and his men are frightened—they have given up. And you told me
that you are frightened!”
“Yes, I am!”
“But they are not doing anything to help you.”
“Perhaps that is because they are not scared as much as I am. It often
happens that the more frightened a man is in a tight place the more he
jumps around and the harder he tries to get out.”
“I don't care what you say—I know what you are!” she rejoined. “You
are a brave man, Captain Mayo. I thank you!”
“Not yet! Not until—”
“Yes, now! You have set me a good example. When folks are scared they
should not sit down and whimper!”

He reached and found a plump little fist which she had doubled into a
real knob of decision.
“Good work, little girl! Your kind of grit is helping me.” He released her
hand and crawled forward.
“This ain't helping us any,” complained Captain Candage. “I know what's
going to happen to us. As soon as it gets daylight a cussed coast-guard
cutter will come snorting along and blow us up without bothering to find
out what is under this turkle-shell.”
“Say, look here, Candage,” called Captain Mayo, angrily, “that's enough
of that talk! There's a-plenty happening to us as it is, without your infernal
driveling about what may happen.”
“Isn't it about time for a real man to help Captain Mayo instead of
hindering him?” asked the girl. Evidently her new composure startled her
father.
“Ain't you scared any more, Polly? You ain't losing your mind, are you?”
“No, I have it back again, I hope.”
“Your daughter is setting you a good example, Captain Candage. Now
let's get down to business, sir! What's your sheathing on the ribs?”
“Inch and a half spruce, if I remember right.”
“I take it she is ribbed about every twelve inches.”
“Near's I remember.”
“All right! Swarm forward here, the three of you, and have those tools
handy as I need 'em.”
He had brought the hammer and chisel in his reefer pockets, and set at
work on the sheathing over his head, having picked by touch and sense of
locality a section which he considered to be nearly amidship. It was blind
effort, but he managed to knock away a few square feet of the spruce
boarding after a time.
“Hand me that saw, whoever has it.”
A hand came fumbling to his in the dark and gave him the tool. He began
on one of the oak ribs, uncovered when the boarding had been removed. It
was difficult and tedious work, for he could use only the tip of the saw,
because the ribs were so close together. But he toiled on steadily, and at last

the sound of his diligence appeared to animate the others. When he rested
for a moment Captain Candage offered to help with the sawing.
“I think I'll be obliged to do it alone, sir. You can't tell in the dark where I
have left off. However, I'm glad to see that you're coming back to your
senses,” he added, a bit caustically.
The master of the Polly received that rebuke with a meekness that
indicated a decided change of heart. “I reckon me and Otie and Dolph have
been acting out what you might call pretty pussylaminous, as I heard a
schoolmarm say once,” confessed the skipper, struggling with the big word.
“But we three ain't as young as we was once, and I'll leave it to you, sir, if
this wasn't something that nobody had ever reckoned on.”
“There's considerable novelty in it,” said Mayo, in dry tones, running his
fingers over the rib to find the saw-scarf. The ache had gone out of his
arms, and he was ready to begin again.
“I'm sorry we yanked you into all this trouble,” Can-dage went on. “And
on the other hand, I ain't so sorry! Because if you hadn't been along with us
we'd never have got out of this scrape.”
“We haven't got out of it yet, Captain Candage.”
“Well, we are making an almighty good start, and I want to say here in
the hearing of all interested friends that you're the smartest cuss I ever saw
afloat.”
“I hope you will forgive father,” pleaded Polly of the Polly. He felt her
breath on his cheek. She was so near that her voice nearly jumped him. “I
don't mean to get in your way, Captain Mayo, but somehow I feel safer if
I'm close to you.”
“And I guess all of us do,” admitted Captain Candage.
Mayo stopped sawing for a moment. “What say, men? Let's be Yankee
sailors from this time on! We'll be the right sort, eh? We'll put this brave
little girl where she belongs—on God's solid ground!”
“Amen!” boomed Mr. Speed. “I have woke up. I must have been out of
my mind. I showed you my nature when I first met you, Captain Mayo, and
I reckon you found it was helpful and enterprising. I'll be the same from
now on, even if you order me to play goat and try to butt the bottom out of
her with my head.” “Me, too!” said Smut-nosed Dolph.

IX ~ A MAN'S JOB
O Nancy Dawson, hi—o!
Cheer'ly man! She's got a notion, hi—o!
Cheer'ly manl For our old bo'sun, hi—o!
Cheer'ly man! O hauley hi—o!
Cheer'ly man!
—Hauling Song.

Boyd Mayo soon found that his ancestors had put no scrub timber into
the Polly. The old oak rib was tough as well as bulky. The task of sawing
with merely the tip of the blade in play required both muscle and patience,
and the position he was obliged to assume added to his difficulties. He
rested after he had sawed the rib in four places, and decided to give Oakum
Otie something to do; the mate had been begging for an opportunity to grab
in. He was ordered to knock away as much as he could of the sawed section
with hammer and chisel. Mayo figured that when this section of rib had
been removed it would leave room for a hole through the bottom planks at
least two feet square—and there were no swelling girths in their party.
The mate had strength, and he was eager to display that helpful spirit of
which he had boasted. He went at the beam with all his might.
Mayo's attention had been centered on his task; now, with a moment's
leisure in which to note other matters, he was conscious of something which
provoked his apprehension; the air under the hull of the schooner was
becoming vitiated. His temples throbbed and his ears rang.
“Ain't it getting pretty stuffy in here?” asked the master, putting words to
Mayo's thoughts.
“I have been feeling like a bug under a thimble for some little time,”
stated Otie, whacking his chisel sturdily.
“Her bottom can't be awash with all this lumber in her. If we can only get
a little speck of a hole through the outside planking right now, we'd better
do it,” suggested Candage.
“That's just what I have been doing,” declared Mr. Speed. “I'm right after
the job, gents, when I get started on a thing. Helpful and enterprising, that's
my motto!”

The next moment, before Mayo, his thoughts busy with his new danger
of suffocation, could voice warning or had grasped the full import of the
dialogue, the chisel's edge plugged through the planking. Instantly there
was a hiss like escaping steam. Mayo yelled an oath and set his hands
against the mate, pushing him violently away. The industrious Mr. Speed
had been devoting his attention to the planking instead of to the sawed
beam.
Wan light filtered through the crevice made by the chisel and Mayo
planted his palm against the crack. The pressure held his hand as if it were
clamped against the planks, and the hissing ceased.
The schooner, as she lay, upside down in the sea, was practically a
diving-bell; with that hole in her shell their safety was in jeopardy. The girl
seemed to understand the situation before the duller minds of her father and
his mates had begun to work. She frenziedly sought for Mayo's disengaged
hand and thrust some kind of fabric into it.
“It's from my petticoat,” she gasped. “Can you calk with it?”
“Hand me the chisel,” he entreated.
As soon as she had given the tool to him he worked his hand free from
the crack and instantly drove the fabric into the crevice, crowding it fold by
fold with the edge of the chisel.
“Hope I didn't do anything wrong, trying to be helpful,” apologized Mr.
Speed.
“I'll do the rest of this job without any such help,” growled the captain.
“But what are you stopping the air for when it's rushing in to liven us
up?” asked Dolph, plaintively.
“It was rushing out, fool! Rushing out so fast that this lumber would have
flattened us against the bottom of this hull in a little while.”
“I would have figgered it just t'other way,” stated Mr. Speed, humbly.
“Outside air, being fresh, ought nat'rally to rush in to fill the holes we have
breathed out of this air.”
Mayo was in no mood to lecture on natural phenomena. He investigated
the cut which had been made by the incautious mate and estimated, by what
his fingers told him, that the schooner's bottom planks were three inches
thick. He settled back on his haunches and gave a little thought to the
matter, and understood that he had a ticklish job ahead of him. Those planks

must be gouged around the complete square of the proposed opening, so
that the section might be driven out in one piece by a blow from beneath.
That section must give way wholly and instantly. They were doomed if they
made a half-job of it. In that pitchy blackness he had only his fingers to
guide him. That one little streak of light from the open world without was
tantalizing promise. On the other side of those planks was God's limitless
air. The poor creatures penned under that hull were gasping and choking for
want of that air. Mayo set bravely to work, hammering at the chisel-head
above him.
All were silent. They felt the initial languor of suffocation and knew the
peril which was threatening them.
“If there is anything I can do—” ventured Otie.
“There isn't!”
Captain Mayo felt the lack of oxygen most cruelly, because he was
working with all his might. Perspiration was streaming into his eyes, he was
panting like a running dog, his blows were losing force.
He found that Otie had partly cleared out the rib before that too-willing
helper had taken it into his head to knock a hole through the planking. The
rib must come away entirely! The tough oak resisted; the chisel slipped; it
was maddeningly slow work. But he finished the task at last and began to
gouge a channel in the planking close to the other ribs. Torpor was
wrapping its tentacles about him. He heard his companions gasping for
breath. Then, all at once, he felt a little pat on his shoulder. He knew that tap
for what it was, though she did not speak to him; it was the girl's reassuring
touch. It comforted him to be told in that manner that she was keeping up
her courage in the horrible situation. He beveled the planks as deeply as he
dared, and made his cut around three sides of his square. He was forced to
stop for a moment and lay prostrate, his face on the lumber.
“Take that saw, one of you, and chunk off a few short lengths of plank,”
he whispered, hoarsely. The rasp of the hand-saw informed him that he had
been obeyed.
He held his eyes wide open with effort as he lay there in the darkness.
Then he struggled up and went at his task once more. Queerly colored
flames were shooting before his straining eyes. He toiled in partial delirium,
and it seemed to him that he was looking again at the phantasmagoria of the

Coston lights on the fog when the yachtsmen were serenading the girl of the
Polly. He found himself muttering, keeping time to his chisel-blows:

“Our Polly O,
O'er the sea you go—”

In all the human emotions there is no more maddening and soul-flaying
terror than the fear of being shut in, which wise men call claustrophobia.
Mayo had been a man of the open—of wide horizons, drinking from the
fount of all the air under the heavens. This hideous confinement was
demoralizing his reason. He wanted to throw down his hammer and chisel
and scream and kick and throw himself up against the penning planks. On
the other side was air—the open! There was still one side of the square to
do.
Again that comforting little hand touched his shoulder and he was
spurred by the thought that the girl was still courageous and had faith in
him. He groaned and kept on.
Lapse of time ceased to have significance. Every now and then the
hammer slipped and bruised his hand cruelly. But he did not feel the hurt.
Both tools wavered in his grasp. He struck a desperate—a despairing blow
and the hammer and chisel dropped. He knew that he had finished the
fourth side. He fell across Polly Candage's lap and she helped him to his
knees.
“I'm done, men,” he gasped. “All together with those joists! Strike
together! Right above my head.”
He heard the skipper count one—two—three. He heard the concerted
blow. The planks did not give way.
“We don't seem to have no strength left,” explained the mate, in hoarse
tones.
They struck again, but irregularly.
“It's our lives—our lives, men!” cried Mayo. “Ram it to her!”
“Here's one for you, Captain Mayo,” said Candage, and he thrust a length
of plank into the groping hands.
“Make it together, this time—together!” commanded Mayo. “Hard—one,
two, three!”

They drove their battering-rams up against the prisoning roof. Fury and
despair were behind their blow.
The glory of light flooded into their blinking eyes.
The section had given way!
Mayo went first and he snapped out with almost the violence of a cork
popping from a bottle. He felt the rush of the imprisoned air past him as he
emerged. Instantly he turned and thrust down his hands and pulled the girl
up into the open and the others followed, the lumber pushing under their
feet.
It seemed to Captain Mayo, after those few frenzied moments of escape,
that he had awakened from a nightmare; he found himself clinging to the
schooner's barnacled keel, his arm holding Polly Candage from sliding
down over the slimy bottom into the sea.
“Good jeero! We've been in there all night,” bawled Captain Candage. He
lay sprawled on the bottom of the Polly, his hornbeam hands clutching the
keel, his face upraised wonderingly to the skies that were flooded with the
glory of the morning. Otie and Dolph were beside him, mouths open,
gulping in draughts of the air as if they were fish freshly drawn from the
ocean depths.
There was a long silence after the skipper's ejaculation.
Thoughts, rather than words, fitted that sacred moment of their salvation.
The five persons who lay there on the bottom of the schooner stared at
the sun in its cloudless sky and gazed off across the sea whose blue was
shrouded by the golden haze of a perfect summer's day. Only a lazy roll was
left of the sudden turbulence of the night before. A listless breeze with a
fresh tang of salt in it lapped the surface of the long, slow surges, and the
facets of the ripples flashed back the sunlight cheerily.
Captain Candage pulled himself to the keel, sat upon it, and found speech
in faltering manner.
“I ain't a member of no church, never having felt the need of j'ining, and
not being handy where I could tend out. But I ain't ashamed to say here,
before witnesses, that I have just been telling God, as best I know how,
hoping He'll excuse me if I 'ain't used the sanctimonious way, that I'm going
to be a different man after this—different and better, according to my best
lights.”

“I believe you have spoken for all of us, Captain Can-dage,” said Mayo,
earnestly. “I thank you!”
They all perceived that the Polly had made offing at a lively pace during
her wild gallop under the impetus of the easterly.
Mayo balanced himself on the keel and took a long survey of the horizon.
In one place a thread of blue, almost as delicate as the tracery of a vein on a
girl's arm, suggested shore line. But without a glass he was not sure. He saw
no sign of any other craft; the storm had driven all coasters to harbor—and
there was not wind enough as yet to help them out to sea again. But he did
not worry; he was sure that something, some yacht or sea-wagon, would
come rolling up over the rim of the ocean before long. The faint breeze
which fanned their faces was from the southwest, and that fact promised
wind enough to invite shipping to spread canvas.
Only the oval of the schooner's broad bilge showed above water, and the
old Polly was so flat and tubby that their floating islet afforded only scant
freeboard.
Mayo shoved his arm down into the hole through which they had
escaped. After the air had been forced out the lumber was within reach from
the schooner's bottom. He fumbled about and found the ax. Some of the
short bits of lumber which they had used as battering-rams were in the jaws
of the hole. He busied himself with hewing these ends of planks into big
wedges and he drove them into cracks between the planks near the keel.
“It may come to be a bit sloppy when this sou'wester gets its gait on,” he
suggested to the skipper. “We'll have something to hang on to.”
Captain Candage's first thankfulness had shown a radiant gloss. But he
was a sailorman, he was cautious, he was naturally apprehensive regarding
all matters of the sea, and that gloss was now dulled a bit by his second
thought.
“We may have to hang on to something longer 'n we reckon on. We're too
far off for the coasters and too far in for the big fellers. And unless
something comes pretty clost to us we can't be seen no more 'n as if we was
mussels on a tide reef. We'd ought to have something to stick up.”
“If we could only work out one of those long joists it would make a little
show.” Captain Mayo shoved his arm down the hole again. “But they are
wedged across too solidly.”

“I think there's a piece of lumber floating over there,” cried the girl. She
was clinging to one of the wedges, and the composure which she felt, or
had assumed, stirred Mayo's admiration. The plump hand which she held
against her forehead to shield her eyes did not tremble. From the little
Dutch cap, under the edge of which stray locks peeped, down over her attire
to her toes, she seemed to be still trim and trig, in spite of her experiences
below in the darkness and the wet. With a sort of mild interest in her, he
reflected that her up-country beau would be very properly proud of her if he
could see her there on that schooner's keel.
“What a picture you would make, Miss Candage, just as you are!” he
blurted. She took down her hand, and the look she gave him did not
encourage compliments. “Just as you are, and call it 'The Wreck,'” he
added.
“Do I look as badly as all that, Captain Mayo?”
“You look—” he expostulated, and hesitated, for her gaze was distinctly
not reassuring.
“Don't tell me, please, how I look. I'm thankful that I have no mirror. Isn't
that a piece of lumber?” she inquired, crisply, putting a stop on further
personalities. “Wait! It's down in a hollow just now.”
The sea lifted it again immediately. Mayo saw that it was a long strip of
scantling, undoubtedly from the deckload that the Polly had jettisoned when
she was tripped. It lay to windward, and that fact promised its recovery; but
how was the tide? Mayo squinted at the sun, did a moment's quick
reckoning from the tide time of the day before, and smiled.
“We'll get that, Miss Candage. She's coming this way.”
Watching it, seeing it lift and sink, waiting for it, helped to pass the time.
Then at last it came alongside, and he crawled cautiously down the curve of
the bilge and secured it. After he had braced it in the hole in the schooner's
bottom with the help of Mr. Speed, the girl gave him a crumpled wad of
cloth when he turned from his task.
“It's the rest of my petticoat. You may as well have it,” she explained, a
pretty touch of pink confusion in her cheeks.
Mr. Speed boosted Mayo and the young man attached the cloth to the
scantling and flung their banner to the breeze. Then there was not much to

do except to wait, everlastingly squinting across the bright sea to the
horizon's edge.

X ~ HOSPITALITY, PER JULIUS MARSTON
Hoo—oo—rah; and up she rises!
Hoo—oo—rah! and up she rises!
Early in the morning.
What shall we do with a saucy sailor?
Put him in the long boat and make him bail 'erv
Early in the morn—ing!
—Old “Stamp-and-go.”

Mayo saw the sail first. It was coming in from the sea, and was very far
and minute. He pointed it out with an exclamation.
“What do you make it, sir?” asked Captain Candage. “Your eyes are
younger 'n mine are.”
“I reckon it's a fisherman bound in from Cashes Banks. He seems to be
lying well over, and that shows there's a good breeze outside. He ought to
reach near enough to see us, judging from the way he's heading.”
That little sail, nicked against the sky, was something else to watch and
speculate on and wait for, and they forgot, almost, that they were hungry
and thirsty and sun-parched.
However, Captain Mayo kept his own gaze most steadfastly on the
landward horizon. He did not reveal any of his thoughts, for he did not want
to raise false hopes. Nevertheless, it was firmly in his mind that no matter
what might be the sentiments of Julius Marston in regard to his recent
skipper, the mate and engineer on board the Olenia were loyal friends who
would use all their influence with the owner to urge him to come seeking
the man who had been lost.
The fact that a motor-boat had come popping out of Saturday Cove in
pursuit of the schooner suggested that Mate McGaw had suspected what
had happened, and was not dragging the cove-bottom for a drowned man.
Mayo had plenty of time for pondering on the matter, and he allowed
hope to spice his guesses. He knew Mate McGaw's characteristics and
decided that the yacht would get under way early, would nose into a few
near-by harbors where a gale-ridden schooner might have dodged for safety,
and then would chase down the sea, following the probable course of a craft

which had been caught in that nor'easter. Mate McGaw was a sailorly man
and understood how to fit one fact with another. He had a due portion of
mariner's imagination, and was not the sort to desert a chum, even if he
were obliged to use stiff speech to convert an owner. Therefore, Mayo
peered toward the blue shore-line, coddling hope. He wondered whether
Mate McGaw would have courage to slip a word of encouragement to Alma
Marston if she asked questions.
Mayo was elated rather than astonished when he spied a smear of drab
smoke and was able to determine that the craft which was puffing that
smoke was heading out to sea, not crawling alongshore.
“That's a fisherman all right, and he's bound to come clost enough to
make us out,” stated Captain Candage, his steady gaze to southward.
“But here comes another fellow who is going to beat him to us,”
announced Captain Mayo, gaily.
“And what do you make it?” asked the skipper, blinking at the distant
smoke.
“A yacht, probably.”
“Huh? A yacht! If that's what it is they'll most likely smash right past.
They'll think we're out here on a fishing picnic, most like. That's about all
these yacht fellers know.”
The girl gave her father a frown of protest, but Mayo smiled at her.
“I think this one is different, sir. If I am not very much mistaken, that is
the yacht Olenia and she is hunting me up. Mate McGaw is one of our best
little guessers.”
A quarter of an hour later he was able to assure them that the on-coming
craft was the Olenia.
“Good old Mate McGaw!” he cried, rapturously. In his joy he wished he
could make them his confidants, tell them who was waiting for him on
board that yacht, make them understand what wonderful good fortune was
his.
After a time—the long time that even a fast yacht seems to consume in
covering distance to effect the rescue of those who are anxious—the
Olenita's whistle hooted hoarsely to assure them that they had been seen.

“The same to you, Mate McGaw!” choked Captain Mayo, swinging his
cap in wide circles.
“Seeing that things have come round as they have, I'm mighty glad for
you, Captain Mayo,” declared Candage. “I ain't no kind of a hand to plaster
a man all over with thanks—”
“I don't want thanks, sir. We worked together to save our lives.”
“Then I'm hoping that there won't be any hard feelings one way or the
other. I have lost my schooner by my blasted foolishness. So I'll say good-
by and—”
“Good-by?” demanded Mayo, showing his astonishment. “Why are you
saying good-by to me now?”
“Because you are going aboard your yacht.”
“The rest of you are going there, too.”
“It ain't for poor critters like us to go mussing—”
“Look here, Captain Candage, I am the captain of that yacht, and I say
that you are coming on board and stay until I can set you ashore at the
handiest port.”
“I'd just as lieve wait for that fisherman, sir. I'll feel more at home aboard
him.”
“You ought to think of your daughter's condition first, Captain Candage.
She needs a few comforts right away, and you won't find them on board a
fisherman.”
He turned to the girt who sat on the keel, silent, looking away to sea. She
seemed to show a strange lack of interest in the yacht. Her pretty face
exhibited no emotion, but somehow she was a wistfully pathetic figure as
she sat there. Mayo's countenance showed much more concern than she
expressed when she faced about at the sound of his voice and looked at him.
Color came into his cheeks; there was embarrassment in his eyes, a queer
hesitancy in his tones.
“There is a young lady—there are several young ladies—but there is Mr.
Marston's daughter!” he faltered. “She is on the yacht. I—I know she will
do all she can for you. She will be good to you!” His eyes fell under her
frank and rather quizzical gaze.
“She might not care to be bothered with such a ragamuffin.”

“I can speak for her!” he cried, eagerly. He was now even more disturbed
by the glance she gave him. He had read that women have intuition in
affairs of the heart.
“I am quite certain you can, Captain Mayo,” she assured him, demurely.
“And I am grateful. But perhaps we'd be better off on board that other
vessel—father and the rest of us.”
“I insist,” he said, but he did not dare to meet her searching eyes. “I
insist!” he repeated, resuming the decisive manner which he had shown
before on board the Polly.
The Olenia, slowing down, had come close aboard, and her churning
screws pulled her to a standstill. Her crew sent a tender rattling down from
her port davits. As she rolled on the surge her brass rails caught the sunlight
in long flashes which fairly blinded the hollow eyes of the castaways. The
white canvas of bridge and awnings gleamed in snowy purity. She was so
near that Dolph smelled the savory scents from her galley and began to
“suffle” moisture in the corners of his mouth.
They who waited on the barnacled hulk of the Polly, faint with hunger,
bedraggled with brine, unkempt and wholly miserable after a night of toils
and vigil, felt like beggars at a palace gate as they surveyed her
immaculateness.
A sort of insolent opulence seemed to exude from her. Mayo, her captain
though he was, felt that suggestion of insolence more keenly than his
companions, for he had had bitter and recent experience with the moods of
Julius Marston.
He did not find Marston a comforting object for his gaze; the
transportation magnate was pacing the port alley with a stride that was
plainly impatient. Close beside the gangway stood Alma Marston, spotless
in white duck. Each time her father turned his back on her she put out her
clasped hands toward her lover with a furtive gesture.
Polly Candage watched this demonstration with frank interest, and
occasionally stole side-glances at the face of the man who stood beside her
on the schooner's bottom; he was wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of the
other girl.
Mate McGaw himself was at the tiller of the tender. His honest face was
working with emotion, and he began to talk before the oarsmen had eased

the boat against the overturned hulk.
“I haven't closed my eyes, Captain Mayo. Stayed up all night, trying to
figure it out. Almost gave up all notion that you were aboard the schooner.
You didn't hail the boat we sent out.”
“I tried to do it; perhaps you couldn't hear me.”
Captain Candage's countenance showed gratitude and relief.
“This morning I tried Lumbo and two other shelters, and then chased
along the trail of the blow.”
Mayo trod carefully down the bilge and clasped the mate's hand. “I was
looking for you, Mr. McGaw. I know what kind of a chap you are.”
McGaw, still holding to the captain's hand, spoke in lower tones. “Had a
devil of a time with the owner, sir. He was bound to have it that you had
deserted.”
“I was afraid he would think something of the sort.”
The mate showed frank astonishment. “You was afraid of what? Why, sir,
I wanted to tell him that he was a crazy man to have any such ideas about
you! Yes, sir, I came nigh telling him that! I would have done it if I hadn't
wanted to keep mild and meek whilst I was arguing with him and trying to
make him give me leave to search!”
“We have had a terrible time of it, Mr. McGaw,” stated Mayo, avoiding
the mate's inquisitiveness. “I am going to take these folks on board and set
them ashore.”
“Ay, sir, of course.”
The two of them stood with clasped hands and held the tender close to
the wreck until the passengers embarked. When they reached the foot of the
Olenia's steps Captain Mayo sent his guests ahead of him.
Marston paused in his march and scowled, and the folks on the quarter-
deck crowded to the rail, showing great interest.
Captain Mayo exchanged a long look with Alma Marston when he came
up the steps. Love, pity, and greeting were in his eyes. Her countenance
revealed her vivid emotions; she was overwrought, unstrung, half-crazed
after a night spent with her fears. When he came within her reach caution
was torn from her as gossamer is flicked away by a gale. Impulse had
always governed her; she gave way to it then.

“I don't care,” she sobbed. “I love you. They may as well know it!”
Before he understood her intentions or could prevent her rashness she
flung her arms about his neck and kissed him repeatedly.
Marston stood in his tracks like a man stricken by paralysis; his cigar
dropped from his open mouth. This exhibition under his very nose, with his
guests and the whole crew of his yacht looking on, fairly stunned him.
“If you had died I would have died!” she wailed.
Then her father plunged toward her, elbowing the astonished Beveridge
out of his way.
Captain Mayo gently unhooked the arms of the frantic girl from about his
neck and stepped forward, putting himself between father and daughter. He
was not taking sensible thought in the matter; he was prompted by an
instinctive impulse to protect her.
Mayo had no word ready at his tongue's end, and Mar-ston's anathema
was muffled and incoherent. The girl's rash act had tipped over the sane and
manly self-possession of both of them. The captain was too bewildered to
comprehend the full enormity of his action in standing guard over the
daughter of Julius Marston, as if she needed protection on her father's
quarter-deck. He did not move to one side of the alley when Marston jerked
an impatient gesture.
“I want to say that I am wholly to blame, sir,” he faltered. “I hope you
will overlook—”
“Are you presuming to discuss my daughter's insanity with me?” He
noticed that the sailors were preparing to hoist the tender to the davits.
“Drop that boat back into the water!” he shouted. There was an ugly rasp in
his voice, and for a moment it seemed as if he were about to lose control of
himself. Then he set a check on his temper and tongue, though his face was
deathly white and his eyes were as hard as marbles. Resolve to end further
exhibition in this incredible business dominated his wrathful shame.
“If you will set us ashore—” pleaded Mayo.
“Get back into that boat, you and your gang, whatever it is!”
“Mr. Marston, this young woman needs—”
“Get into that boat, or I'll have the bunch of you thrown overboard!” The
owner spoke in low tones, but his furious determination was apparent.

“We will go without being thrown, sir. Will you order us set aboard that
fisherman?” He pointed to the little schooner which was almost within
hailing distance.
“Get off! I don't care where you go!” He crowded past Mayo, seized his
daughter's arm, and led her aft.
She seemed to have expended all her determination in her sensational
outburst.
The captain met her pleading gaze as she turned to leave. “It's for the
best,” he declared, bravely. “I'll make good!”
The pathetic castaways from the Polly made a little group at the
gangway, standing close to the rail, as if they feared to step upon the white
deck. Mate McGaw intercepted Mayo as he was about to join them.
“Hadn't I better stretch Section Two of the collision act a mite and scare
him with the prospect of a thousand-dollar fine?” asked the mate, eagerly.
“My glory, Captain Mayo, I'm so weak I can hardly stand up! Who'd have
thought it?”
“We'll go aboard the schooner, Mr. McGaw. It's the place for us.”
“Maybe it is, but I'll speak up if you say the word, and make him set you
ashore—even if I leave along with you?”
“Keep your job, sir. Will you pick up my few little belongings in my
stateroom and bring them to me, Mr. McGaw? I'd better stay here on deck
with my friends.” He emphasized the last word, and Captain Candage gave
him a grateful look. “I'm sorry, mates! I can't say any more!” Captain Mayo
did not allow himself to make further comment on the melancholy situation.
The others were silent; the affair was out of their reckoning; they had no
words to fit the case. Polly Candage stood looking out to sea. He had hoped
that she would give him a glance of understanding sympathy, at least. But
she did not, not even when he helped her down the steps into the tender.
Mate McGaw came with the captain's bag and belongings, and promptly
received orders from the owner from the quarter-deck.
“Go on to the bridge and hail that schooner. Tell her we are headed for
New York and can't be bothered by these persons!”
Mr. McGaw grasped Mayo's hand in farewell, and then he hurried to his
duty. His megaphoned message echoed over their heads while the tender
was on its way.

“Ay, ay, sir!” returned the fishing-skipper, with hearty bellow. “Glad to
help sailors in trouble.”
“And that shows you—” blurted Captain Candage, and stopped his say in
the middle of his outburst when his daughter shoved a significant fist
against his ribs.
Captain Mayo turned his head once while the tender was hastening
toward the schooner. But there were no women in sight on the yacht's deck.
There was an instant's flutter of white from a stateroom port, but he was not
sure whether it was a handkerchief or the end of a wind-waved curtain. He
faced about resolutely and did not look behind again. Shame, misery,
hopelessness—he did not know which emotion was stinging him most
poignantly. The oarsmen in the tender were gazing upward innocently while
they rowed, but he perceived that they were hiding grins. His humiliation in
that amazing fashion would be the forecastle jest. Through him these new
friends of his had been subjected to insult. He felt that he understood what
Polly Candage's silence meant.
The next moment he felt the pat of a little hand on the fist he was
clenching on his knee.
“Poor boy!” she whispered. “I understand! It will come out right if you
don't lose courage.”
But she was not looking at him when he gave her a quick side-glance.
The fisherman had come into the wind, rocking on the long swell, dingy
sails flapping, salt-stained sides dipping and flashing wet gleams as she
rolled. Her men were rigging a ladder over the side.
“I want to say whilst we're here together and there's time to say it,”
announced Captain Candage, “that we are one and all mighty much obliged
for that invite you gave us to come aboard the yacht, sir, and we all know
that if—well, if things had been different from what they was you would
have used us all right. And what I might say about yachts and the kind of
critters that own 'em I ain't a-going to say.”
“You are improving right along, father,” observed Polly Candage, dryly.
“Still, I have my own idees on the subject. But that's neither here nor
there. You're a native and I'm a native, and I want ye should just look at that
face leaning over the lee rail, there, and then say that now we know that
we're among real friends.”

It was a rubicund and welcoming countenance under the edge of a rusty
black oilskin sou'wester hat, and the man was manifestly the skipper. Every
once in a while he flourished his arm encouragingly.
“Hearty welcome aboard the Reuben and Esther,” he called out when the
tender swung to the foot of the ladder. “What schooner is she, there?”
“Poor old Polly,” stated the master, first up the ladder. In his haste to
greet the fishing-skipper he left his daughter to the care of Captain Mayo.
“That's too bad—too bad!” clucked the fishing-skipper, full measure of
sympathy in his demeanor. “She was old, but she was able, sir!”
“And here's another poor Polly,” stated Captain Candage. “I was fool
enough to take her out of a good home for a trip to sea.”
The skipper ducked salute. “Make yourself to home, miss. Go below.
House is yours!”
Then the schooner lurched away on her shoreward tack, and the insolent
yacht marched off down across the shimmering waves.
Mayo shook hands with the solicitous fisherman in rather dreamy and
indifferent fashion. He realized that he was faint with hunger, but he refused
to eat. Fatigue and grief demanded their toll in more imperious fashion than
hunger. He lay down in the sun in the lee alley, put his head on his crossed
arms, and blessed sleep blotted out his bitter thoughts.

XI ~ A VOICE FROM HUE AND CRY
But when the money's all gone and spent,
And there's none to be borrowed and none to be lent,
In comes old Grouchy with a frown,
Saying, “Get up, Jack, let John sit down.”
For it's now we're outward bound,
Hur-rah, we're outward bound!
—Song of the Dog and Bell.

Captain Mayo, when he woke, had it promptly conveyed to him that
hospitality on board the Reuben and Esther had watchful eyes. While he
was rubbing feeling back into his stiffened limbs, sitting there in the lee
alley, the cook came lugging a pot of hot coffee and a plate heaped with
food.
“Thought you'd rather have it here than in the cuddy. The miss is asleep
in the house,” whispered the cook.
Captain Candage came to Mayo while the latter was eating and sat down
on the deck. Gloom had settled on the schooner's master. “I don't want to
bother you with my troubles, seeing that you've got aplenty of your own,
sir. But I'm needing a little advice. I have lost a schooner that has been my
home ever since I was big enough to heave a dunnage-bag over the rail, and
not a cent of insurance. Insurance would have et up all my profits. What do
you think of my chances to make a dollar over and above providing I hire a
tugboat and try to salvage?”
“According to my notion your chances would be poor, sir. Claims in such
cases usually eat up all a craft is worth. Besides, you may find those
yachtsmen on your back for damages, providing you get her in where she
can be libeled.”
“I shouldn't wonder a mite,” admitted Captain Can-dage. “The more
some folks have the more they keep trying to git.”
“I was looking her bottom over while we sat there, and it must be owned
up that her years have told on her.”
“I hate to let her go.”

“That's natural, sir. But I have an idea that she will be reported as a
menace to navigation, and that a coastguard cutter will blow her up before
you can get around to make your salvage arrangements.”
“When a man is down they all jump on him.”
“I can agree with you there,” affirmed Captain Mayo, mournfully.
“She showed grit—that girl,” ventured Candage, giving the other man
keen survey from under his grizzled brows.
“I must ask you to furl sail on that subject, sir,” snapped Mayo, with
sailor bluntness.
“I only said it complimentary. Lots of times girls have more grit than
they are given credit for. You think they're just girls, and then you find out
that they are hero-ines! I thought I had some grit, but my own Polly has
shamed me. I was just down watching her—she's asleep in Cap'n Sinnett's
bunk. Made the tears come up into my eyes, sir, to ponder on what she has
been through on account of my cussed foolishness. Of course, you haven't
been told. But confession is good for a man, and I'm going to own up. I
took her with me to get her away from a fellow who is courting her.”
Mayo did not offer comment. He wanted to advise the skipper to keep
still on that subject, too.
“I don't say he ain't good enough for her. Maybe he is. But I 'ain't been
realizing that she has growed up. When I found she was being courted it
was like hitting a rock in a fairway. You are young, and you are around
consid'able and know the actions of young folks. What's your advice?”
“I don't know anything about the circumstances, sir.”
“But speaking generally,” insisted Captain Candage. “I want to do what's
right. There ain't many I can bring myself to ask. I'm a poor old fool, I'm
afraid. Won't you kind of grab in on this, Captain Mayo? I do need a little
advice.” His rough hands trembled on his knees.
“If the young man is worthy—is the right sort,” returned Mayo, in gentler
tones, “I think you are making a great mistake by interfering.”
“I'll go look that young fellow over—re-survey him, as ye might say,”
stated the skipper, after a moment's meditation.
“I don't know your daughter very well, sir, but I have much faith in her
judgment. If I were you I'd allow her to pick her own husband.”

“Thanks for that advice. I know it comes from a man who has shown that
he knows exactly what to do in emergencies. I have changed my mind about
her being courted, sir.”
“Honest love isn't a question of money, Captain Candage. Many good
girls are ruined by—” He was speaking bitterly and he checked himself.
“Where is Captain Sinnett going to set us ashore?”
“Maquoit. He is going to take his fish to the big market. But he said he
would set us ashore anywhere, and so I said Maquoit. I might as well be
there as anywhere till I know what I'm going to do.”
“Same thing holds good for me, I suppose. I don't feel like going to the
city just yet.”
Captain Sinnett came rolling into the alley, and when Mayo started to
thank him for the trouble he was taking he raised in genial protest a hand
which resembled in spread a split codfish.
“Trouble! It ain't trouble. Was going to call into Maquoit to ice up,
anyway. I know my manners even if them yachting fellows didn't.”
Captain Candage preserved the demeanor of innocence under Mayo's
scrutiny.
“I've missed you off the fishing-grounds—didn't know you had gone on
to a yacht, sir,” pursued Captain Sinnett. “Hope to see you back into the
fishing business again; that is, providing you don't go on one of them beam
trawlers that are hooking up the bottom of the Atlantic and sp'iling the thing
entire for us all.”
“I agree with you about the trawler; that's why I quit. And as to yachting,
I think I'll go after a real man's job, sir!”
“So do! You'll be contenteder,” replied the other, significance in his
tones.
Mayo knew that his secret had been exposed, but he had no relish for an
argument with Captain Candage on the subject of garrulity. He finished his
coffee and went forward where the fishermen were coiling the gang-lines
into the tubs.
The fisherman made port at Maquoit late in the afternoon, and was
warped to her berth at the ice-house wharf.
The castaways went ashore.

Maquoit was a straggling hamlet at the head of a cove which nicked the
coast-line.
Captain Candage, an Apple-treer, who knew every hole alongshore where
refuge from stress of weather was afforded, led his party through the village
with confidence.
“There's a widder here who will put us up for what time we want to stay
—and be glad of the money. I knowed her husband in the coasting trade. I
like to get into a place like this that 'ain't been sp'iled by them cussed
rusticators and the prices they are willing to pay,” he confided to Mayo. He
slyly exhibited a wallet that was stuffed with paper money. “I ain't busted,
but there's no sense in paying more 'n five dollars a week anywhere for
vittles and bed. She will make plenty off'n us at that rate. You just let me do
the dickering.”
The widow proved to be a kindly soul who, in the first excitement of her
sympathetic nature, resolutely refused to consider the matter of any
payment whatever.
“You are shipwrecked, and my poor husband's body wouldn't rest quiet
wherever it is in the Atlantic Ocean if I grabbed money from shipwrecked
folks.”
However, in the end, Captain Candage worked her up from three dollars
to five per week, and she took Polly Candage into her heart and into the
best chamber.
Captain Mayo came back to supper after a moody stroll about the village.
Skipper Candage was patrolling the widow's front yard and was exhibiting
more cheerfulness.
“It's God's Proverdunce and your grit that has saved us, sir. I have come
out of my numb condition and sense it all. What's your plans?”
“I don't seem to be able to make any just yet.”
“I'm going to stay right here for a spell, and shall keep Dolph and Otie
with me. We shall be here on the coast where we can hear of something to
grab in on. As soon as Polly gets straightened around I'll let her go home to
her aunt. But, of course, hanging around here doesn't offer you any
attractions, sir. You're looking for bigger game than we are.”
“I have about made up my mind to leave in the morning on the stage. I'll
go somewhere.”

The widow tapped her knuckles on the glass of a near-by window.
“Supper!” she announced. “Hurry in whilst it's hot!”
“I always do my best pondering on a full stomach,” said Captain
Candage. “And I smell cream-o'-tartar biskits and I saw her hulling field
strorb'ries. Better look on the bright side of things along with me, Captain
Mayo.”
Captain Mayo failed to find any bright side as he turned his affairs over
in his mind. He had only a meager stock of money. He had used his modest
earnings in settling the debts of the family estate. The outlook for
employment was vague—he could not estimate to what extent the hostility
of Julius Marston might block his efforts, provided the magnate troubled
himself to descend to meddle with the affairs of such an inconspicuous
person. His poor little romance with Alma Marston had been left in a
shocking condition. He did not talk at the supper-table, and the widow's
wholesome food was like ashes in his mouth. He went out and sat on the
porch of the widow's cottage and looked into the sunset and saw nothing in
its rosy hues to give him encouragement for his own future.
Polly Candage came timidly and sat down beside him. “Father says you
think of leaving in the morning!”
“There's nothing for me here.”
“Probably not.”
A long silence followed.
“I suppose you don't care to have me talk to you, Captain Mayo?”
“I'll listen to you gratefully, any time.”
“I'm only a country girl. I don't know how to say it—how to tell you I'm
so sorry for you!”
“That one little pat on my hand to-day, it was better than words.”
“It's all I can think about—your unhappiness.”
“That touches me because I know that you have enough sorrow of your
own.”
“Sorrow!” She opened her eyes wide.
“Perhaps I have no business speaking of it,” he returned, with
considerable embarrassment.
“And yet I have been so bold as to speak to you!”

There was a touch of reproach in her voice, and therefore he ventured:
“Your father told me—I tried to stop him, but he went on and said—Well, I
understand! But I have some consolation for you and I'm going to speak
out. He says he is going to allow you to marry your young man.”
“Did he dare to talk such matters over with you?”
“He insisted on doing it—on asking my advice. So I advised in a way to
help you. I am glad, for your sake, that he is coming to his senses.”
“I thank you for your help,” she said, stiffly.
“Of course it's none of my business. I'm sorry he told me. But I wish you
all happiness.”
She rose as if to go away. Then she stamped her foot and sat down. “My
father ought to be muzzled!”
She realized that he might misinterpret her indignation, for he said: “I'm
ashamed because I meddled in your affairs. But from what you saw to-day
in my case, I felt that I ought to help others who are in the same trouble.”
“But my father has mistaken my—” She broke off in much confusion,
not understanding the queer look he gave her. “I—I am glad my father is
coming to his senses and will allow me to—to—marry the young man,” she
stammered. “And now I think I may be allowed to say that I hope you may
have the girl you love, some day. Would you like to have me talk to you
about her—how dear and pretty I think she is?”
“No, it hurts! But I do want you to know, Miss Can-dage, that I'm not out
fortune-hunting. I love her for herself—just herself—nothing more!”
“I know it must be so.”
“And I know that a young man you would choose is worthy of you. I told
your father—”
“No matter. That hurts, too! We both understand. We'll leave it there!”
After the declaration of that truce they were frankly at ease and began to
chat with friendly freedom. The dusk came shading into the west, the
evening star dripped silver light.
“It's a peaceful spot here,” she suggested. “Everybody seems to be
contented.”
“Contentment—in a rut—that may be the best way of passing this life,
after all.”

“But if you were in the rut, Captain Mayo, you might find that
contentment would not agree to come and live with you.”
“Probably it wouldn't! I'd have to be born to the life here like this chap
who is coming up the hill. You can see that he isn't worrying about himself
or the world outside.”
The man was clumping slowly along in his rubber boots; an old cap was
slewed awry on his head, its peak drawn down over one ear. He cocked up
the other ear at sound of voices on the porch and loafed up and sat down on
the edge of the boarding. Captain Mayo and the girl, accustomed to bland
indifference to formality in rural neighborhoods, accepted this interruption
without surprise or protest.
“'Tain't a bad night as nights go,” stated the caller.
“It's a beautiful night,” said Polly Candage.
“I reckon it seems so to you, after what you went through. I've been
harking to your father telling the yarn down to the store.”
They did not reply, having their own ideas as to Captain Candage's
loquacity.
The caller hauled a plug of tobacco from his pocket, gnawed off a chew,
and began slow wagging of his jaws. “This world is full of trouble,” he
observed,
“It seems to be,” agreed Captain Mayo.
“Them what's down get kicked further down.”
“Also true, in many cases.”
“Take your case! It's bad. But our'n is worse!” The caller pointed to the
dim bulk of a small island which the cove held between the bold jaws of its
headland. “The old sir who named that Hue and Cry Island must have smelt
into the future so as to know what was going to happen there some day—
and this is the day!” He chewed on, and his silence became irritating.
“Well, what has happened?” demanded the captain.
“It hasn't happened just yet—it's going to.”
Further silence.
“Tell us what's going to happen, can't you?”
“Of course I can, now that you have asked me. I ain't no hand to butt in. I
ain't no hand to do things unless I'm asked. There's seventeen fam'lies of us

on Hue and Cry and they've told us to get off.”
“Who told you?”
“The state! Some big bugs come along and said the Governor sent 'em,
and they showed papers and we've got to go.”
“But I know about Hue and Cry!” protested Mayo. “You people have
lived there for years!”
“Sure have! My grandfather was one of the first settlers. Most all of us
who live there had grandfathers who settled the place. But according to
what is told us, some heirs have found papers what say that they own the
island. The state bought out the heirs. Now the state says get off. We're only
squatters, state says.”
“But, good Caesar, man, you have squatter rights after all these years.
Hire a lawyer. Fight the case!”
“We ain't fighters. 'Ain't got no money—'ain't got no friends. Might have
fit plain heirs, but you can't fight the state—leastways, poor cusses like us
can't.”
“Where are you going?”
“Well, there's the problem! That's what made me say that this world is
full of trouble. You see, we have taken town help in years past—had to do it
or starve winters. And we have had state aid, too. They say that makes
paupers of us. Every town round about has served notice that we can't settle
there and gain pauper residence. Hue and Cry 'ain't ever been admitted to
any town. Towns say, seeing that the state has ordered us off, now let the
state take care of us.”
“And men have been here, representing the state?”
“You bet they have.”
“What do they say?”
“Say get off! But they won't let us settle on the main. Looks like they
wanted us to go up in balloons. But we hain't got no balloons. Got to move,
though.”
“I never heard of such a thing!”
“Nor I, neither,” admitted this man, with a sort of calm numbness of
discouragement. “But that ain't anyways surprising. We don't hear much
about anything on Hue and Cry till they come and tell us. Speaking for

myself, I ain't so awful much fussed up. I've got a house-bo't to take my
wife and young ones on, and we'll keep on digging clams for trawlers—
sixty cents a bucket, shucked, and we can dig and shuck a bucket a day, all
hands turning to. We won't starve. But I pity the poor critters that 'ain't got a
house-bo't. Looks like they'd need wings. I ain't worrying a mite, I say. I
had the best house on the island, and the state has allowed a hundred and
fifty dollars for it. I consider I'm well fixed.”
The plutocrat of the unhappy tribe of Hue and Cry rose and stretched
with a comfortable grunt.
“If it ain't one thing it's another,” he said, as he started off. “We've got to
have about so much trouble, anyway, and it might just as well be this as
anything else.” %
“Why, that's an awful thing to happen to those people!” declared the girl.
“I must say, he takes it calmly.”
“He is a fair sample of some of the human jellyfish I have found hidden
away in odd corners on this coast,” stated Captain Mayo. “Not enough mind
or spirit left to fight for his own protection. But this thing is almost
unbelievable. It can't be possible that the state is gunning an affair like this!
I'll find somebody who knows more about it than that clam-digging
machine!”
A little later a man strolled past, hands behind his back. He was placidly
smoking a cigar, and, though the dusk had deepened, Mayo could perceive
that he was attired with some pretensions to city smartness.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” called the young man. “But do you know
anything about the inwardness of this business on Hue and Cry Island?”
“I can tell you all about it,” stated the person who had been hailed. He
sauntered up and sat down on the edge of the porch. He showed the air of a
man who was killing time. “I'm in charge of it.”
“Not of putting those people off the island?”
“Sure! That's what I'm here for. I'm state agent on pauper affairs, acting
for the Governor and Council.”
“You say the state is back of this?” demanded Mayo, incredulously.
“Certainly! It's a matter that the state was obliged to take up. State has
bought that island from the real heirs, has ordered off those squatters, and
we shall burn down their shacks and clear the land up. Of course, we allow

heads of families some cash for their houses, if you can call 'em houses.
That's under the law regulating squatter improvements. But improvements
is a polite word for the buildings on that island. It is going to cost us good
money to clear up for that New York party who has made an offer to the
state—he's going to use the island for a summer estate.”
He flicked the ashes from his cigar and broke in on Mayo's indignant
retort.
“It had to be done, sir. They have intermarried till a good many of the
children are fools. The men are breaking into summer cottages, after the
owners leave in the fall. They steal everything on the main that isn't nailed
down. They have set false beacons in the winter, and have wrecked
coasters. Every little while some city newspaper has written them up as
wild men, and it has given the state a bad name. We're going to break up the
nest.”
“But where will they go?”
“Fools to the state school for the feeble-minded, cripples to the
poorhouse. The able-bodied will have to get out and go to work at
something honest.”
“But, look here, my dear sir! Those poor devils are starting out with too
much of a handicap. After three generations on that island they don't know
how to get a living on the main.”
“That's their own lookout, not the state's! State doesn't guarantee to give
shiftless folks a living.”
“How about using a little common sense in the case of such people?”
“You are not making this affair your business, are you?” asked the
commissioner, with acerbity.
“No.”
“Better not; and you'd better not say too much to me!” He rose and
dusted off his trousers. “I have investigated for the Governor and Council
and they are acting on my recommendations. You might just as well advise
nursing and coddling a nest of brown-tail moths—and we are spending
good money to kill off moths. We don't propose to encourage the breeding
of thieves. We are not keeping show places of this sort along the coast for
city folks to talk about and run down the state after they go back home. It
hurts state business!” He marched away.

Captain Mayo strode up and down the porch and muttered some
emphatic opinions in regard to the intellects and doings of rulers.
“You see, I know the sort of people who live on that island, Miss
Candage. I have seen other cases alongshore. They are blamed for what
they don't know—and what they are led into. Amateur missionaries will
load them down in a spasm of summer generosity with a lot of truck and
make them think that the world owes them a living. The poor devils haven't
wit enough to look ahead. When it comes winter they are starving—and
when children are hungry and cold a man will tackle a proposition that is
more dangerous than a summer cottage locked up for the winter. Next
comes along some chap like that state agent, who prides himself on being
straight business and no favors! He puts the screws to 'em! There's nobody
to help those folks in the real and the right way. I pity them!”
“I live in the country and I know how unfeeling the boards of selectmen
are in many of the pauper cases. When it's a matter of saving money for the
voters and making a good town record, they don't care much how poor folks
get along.”
Mayo continued to patrol the porch. “I'm in a rather rebellious state of
mind just now, I reckon,” he admitted. “Seems to me that a lot of folks,
including myself, are getting kicked. I'm smarting! I have a fellow-feeling
for the oppressed.” He laughed, but there was no merriment in his tones.
“It's the little children who will suffer most in this, Miss Candage,” he went
on. “They are not to blame—they don't understand.”
“And of course nothing can be done.”
“Nothing sensible, I'm afraid.” He walked to and fro for many minutes.
“You see, it's none of my business,” he commented, when he came and sat
down beside her.
“I suppose there's not one man in the world to step forward and say a
good word for them,” said the girl, softly, uttering her thoughts.
“Words wouldn't amount to anything—with the machinery of the state
grinding away so merrily as it is. But this matter is stirring my curiosity a
little, Miss Candage. That's because I am one of the oppressed myself, I
reckon.” Again his mirthless chuckle. “I intended to take the stage out of
here in the morning, but I have an idea that I'll stay over and see what
happens when that gentleman who represents our grand old state proceeds
to scatter those folks to the four winds.”

“I was hoping you would stay over, Captain Mayo.” She declared that
with frank delight.
“But you don't expect me to do anything, of course!”
“It's not that. You see, I'd like to go down to the island and—and father is
so odd he might not be willing to escort me,” she explained, trying to be
matter-of-fact, her air showing that she regretted her outburst.
“I volunteer, here and now.”
She rose and put out her hand to him. “I have not thanked you for saving
my life—saving us all, Captain Mayo. It is too holy a matter to be profaned
by any words. But here is my hand—like a friend—like a sister—no”—she
held herself straight and looked him full in the face through the gloom and
tightened her hold on his fingers—“like a man!”
He returned her earnest finger-clasp and released her hand when her
pressure slackened. That sudden spirit, the suggestion that she desired to
assume the attitude of man to man with him, seemed to vanish from her
with the release of her fingers.
She quavered her “Good night!” There was even a hint of a sob. Then she
ran into the house.
Mayo stared after her, wrinkling his forehead for a moment, as if he had
discovered some new vagary in femininity to puzzle him. Then he resumed
his patrol with the slow stride of the master mariner. Hue and Cry raised
dim bulk in the harbor jaws, showing no glimmer of light. It was barren,
treeless, a lump of land which towns had thrust from them and which
county boundaries had not taken in. He admitted that the state had good
reasons for desiring to change conditions on Hue and Cry, but this callous,
brutal uprooting of helpless folks who had been attached to that soil through
three generations was so senselessly radical that his resentment was stirred.
It was swinging from the extreme of ill-considered indulgence to that of
utter cruelty, and the poor devils could not in the least understand!
“There seem to be other things than a spiked martingale which can pick a
man up and keep him away from his own business,” he mused. “What fool
notion possesses me to go out there to-morrow I cannot understand.
However, I can go and look on without butting into stuff that's no affair of
mine.”

Two men were shuffling past in the road. In the utter silence of that
summer night their conversation carried far.
“Yes, sir, as I was saying, there he lays dead! When I was with him on the
Luther Briggs he fell from the main crosstrees, broke both legs and one
arm, and made a dent in the deck, and he got well. And a week ago, come
to-morrow, he got a sliver under his thumb, and there he lays dead.”
“It's the way it often is in life. Whilst a man is looking up into the sky so
as to see the big things and dodge 'em, he goes to work and stubs his toe
over a knitting-needle.”
“That's right,” Captain Mayo informed himself; “but I can't seem to help
myself, somehow!”

XII ~ NO PLACE POR THE SOLES OP THEIR
FEET
Don't you hear the old man roaring, Johnny,
One more day? Don't you hear that pilot bawling,
One more day? Only one more day, my Johnny,
One more day! O come rock and roll me over,
One more day.
—Windlass Song.

When the subject of the proposed expedition to Hue and Cry was
broached at the breakfast-table, Captain Epps Candage displayed prompt
interest.
“It's going to be a good thing for the section round about here—roust 'em
off! Heard 'em talking it over down to Rowley's store last evening. I'll go
along with you and see it done.”
Mayo and Polly Candage exchanged looks and refrained from comment.
It was evident that Captain Candage reflected the utilitarian view of
Maquoit.
Mayo had put off that hateful uniform of Marston's yacht, and the girl
gave him approving survey when he appeared that morning in his shore suit
of quiet gray. With the widow's ready aid Polly Candage had made her own
attire presentable once more. When they walked down to the shore she
smiled archly at Mayo from under the brim of a very fetching straw poke.
“I ran down to the general store early and bought a boy's hat,” she
explained. “I trimmed it myself. You know, I'm a milliner's apprentice. Does
it do my training credit?”
He was somewhat warm in his assurances that it did.
“I ought to be pleased by your praise,” she said, demurely, “because
women wear hats for men's approval, and if my customers go home and
hear such nice words from their husbands my business career is sure to be a
success.”
“Your business career?”

“Certainly, sir!” She bobbed a little courtesy. “I have money, sir! Money
of my own. Five thousand dollars in the bank, if you please! Oh, you need
not stare at me. I did not earn it. My dear mother's sister left it to me in her
will. And some day when you are walking down the city street you'll see a
little brass sign—very bright, very neat—and there'll be 'Polly' on it. Then
you may come up and call on the great milliner—that will be this person,
now so humble.”
“But that young man!” he protested, smiling at her gaiety.
“Oh, that young man?” She wrinkled her nose. Then she flushed,
conscious that he was a bit surprised at her tone of disdain. “Why, he will
wear a frock-coat and a flower in the buttonhole and will bow in my
customers. You didn't think my young man was a farmer-boy, did you?”
She hurried ahead of him to the beach, where her father was waiting with
his men. Captain Candage had borrowed a dory for the trip. He installed
himself in the stern with the steer-oar, and the young man and the girl sat
together on the midship seat. The skipper listened to their chat with bland
content.
“There's a fellow that's one of our kind, and he ain't trying to court my
girl,” he had confided to Mr. Speed. “He is spoke for and she knows it. And
under them circumstances I believe in encouraging young folks to be
sociable.”
It was still early morning when they arrived at the island, but the state
agent was there ahead of them. They saw him walking briskly about among
the scattered houses, puffing on his cigar.
He was making domiciliary visits and was transacting business in a loud
tone of voice. That business was paying over the money which the state had
allowed for “squatter improvements.” In the case of the settlers on Hue and
Cry the sums were mere pittances; their improvements consisted of
tottering shacks, erected from salvaged flotsam of the ocean and patched
over and over with tarred paper.
There was only one building on the island which deserved
the name of dwelling; from this their communicative caller of the
preceding evening was removing his scant belongings. His wife and
children were helping. He set down a battered table when he met Mayo and
his party.

“I'm the only citizen who can get away early and—as you might call it—
respectable, gents. I took my hundred and fifty and bought that house-bo't
out there.” It was an ancient scow, housed over, and evidently had grown
venerable in service as a floating fish-market. “They can't drive me off'n the
Atlantic Ocean! The others 'ain't woke up to a reelizing sense that they have
got to go and that this all means business! I'm getting away early or else
they'd all be trying to climb aboard my bo't like the folks wanted to do to
Noah's ark when they see that the flood wasn't just a shower.” He lifted his
table upon his head and marched on, leading his flock.
All the population of the island was out of doors. The women and the
children were idling in groups; the men were listlessly following the
commissioner on his rounds. No spirit of rebelliousness was evident. The
men acted more like inquisitive sheep. They were of that abject variety of
poor whites who accept the rains from heaven and bow to the reign of
authority with the same unquestioning resignation.
But Mayo discovered promptly an especial reason for the calmness
exhibited by these men. Their slow minds had not wakened to full
comprehension.
“What do you men propose to do?” demanded Captain Mayo of a group
which had abandoned the commissioner and had strolled over to inspect the
new-comers.
“There ain't nothing we can do,” stated a spokesman.
“But don't you understand that this man is here with full power from the
state to put you off this island?”
“Oh, they have threated us before. But something has allus come up. We
haven't been driv' off.”
“But this time it's going to happen! Why don't you wake up? Where are
you going?”
“That's for somebody else to worry about. This ain't any of our picking
and choosing.”
“What's the use of trying to beat anything sensible through the shells of
them quahaugs?” snarled Captain Candage, with 'longcoast scorn for the
inefficient.
“Not much use, I'm afraid,” acknowledged the young man. “But look at
the children!”

Those pathetic waifs of Hue and Cry were huddled apart, dumb with
terror which their elders made no attempt to calm. They were ragged,
pitiful, wistful urchins; lads with pinched faces, poor little snippets of girls.
Their childish imaginations made of the affair a tragedy which they could
not understand. Under their arms they held frightened cats, helpless kittens,
or rag dolls. The callous calm of the men mystified them; the weeping of
their mothers made their miserable fear more acute. They stared from face
to face, trying to comprehend.
“What can I say to them?” asked Polly Candage, in a whisper. “It's
wicked. They are so frightened.”
“Perhaps something can be done with that agent. I'm trying to think up
something to say to him,” Mayo told her.
An old man, a very old man, sat on an upturned clamhod and yawled a
discordant miserere on a fiddle. His eyes were wide open and sightless. A
woman whose tattered skirt only partly concealed the man's trousers and
rubber boots which she wore, occasionally addressed him as “father.” She
was piling about him a few articles of furniture which she was lugging out
of their home; that house was the upper part of a schooner's cabin—
something the sea had cast up on Hue and Cry. She was obliged to bend
nearly double in order to walk about in the shelter. Dogs slinked between
the feet of their masters, canine instinct informing them that something evil
was abroad that day. The children staring wide-eyed and white-faced, the
weeping women, the cowed men who shuffled and mumbled! Among them
strode the god of the machine, curt, contemptuous, puffing his cigar! He
came past Captain Mayo and his friends.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” called the captain; “but are you sure that you are
doing this thing just right?”
“Let's see—if I remember, I had a little talk with you last night!”
suggested the agent, frostily. “Whom do you represent?” “Myself.”
“Just how do you fit into this matter?” “I don't think I do fit—there seem
to be too many sharp corners,” stated Mayo, not liking the other's insolent
manner. “Well, I fit! I have state authority.” “So you have told me. May I
ask you a question?” “Go ahead, but be lively. This is my busy day.” “These
people are being rooted up; they don't seem to know what's to become of
them. What will be done?”

“I told you last evening! Fools in an institution; able-bodied must go to
work. The state proposes—” “When you say 'state' just what do you mean,
sir?” “I mean that I have investigated this matter and I'm running it.”
“That's what I thought! The state usually doesn't know much about what
its agents are doing.”
“You are not doubting my authority, are you?”
“No, but I'm doubting your good judgment.”
“Look here, my man!”
“We'd better not lose our tempers,” advised Mayo, calmly. “You are a
state servant, you say. Then a citizen has a right to talk to you. Let's leave
the state out of this, if you question my right. Man to man, now! You're
wrong.”
The population of the island had drawn close circle about them.
“That's enough talk from you,” declared the agent, wrathfully.
“You are trying to make over all at once what it has taken three
generations to bring about,” insisted Mayo. “You can't do it!”
“You watch me and see if I can't! When I transact any business I'm paid
to transact it gets transacted. I might have given these people a few more
days if you had not come sticking your oar in here. But now I propose to
show you! I'll have 'em off here by nightfall, and every shack burned to the
ground.”
“Do you mean to say you're going to rub it into these poor folks just
because I have tried to say something to help them?”
“I'll show you and them that it isn't safe to monkey with the state when
the state gets started.”
“Oh, the state be condemned!” exploded Mayo, feeling his own temper
getting away from him. “This isn't the state—it's a case of a man's swelled
head!”
“Get off this island, you and your meddlers,” commanded the agent.
“Yes, when we are ready to leave, sir.”
Mayo was wondering at his own obstinacy. He knew that a rather boyish
temper, resentment roused by the other man's arrogance, had considerable
to do with his stand in the matter, but underneath there was protest at the
world's injustice. He felt that he had been having personal experience with

that injustice. He knew that he had not come out to Hue and Cry to
volunteer as the champion of these unfortunates, but now that he was there
and had spoken out it was evident that he must allow himself to be forced
into the matter to some extent; the agent had declared in the hearing of all
that this interference had settled the doom of the islanders. Polly Candage
was standing close to the champion, and she looked at him with eyes that
flashed with pride in him and spirit of her own. She reached and took one of
the frightened children by the hand.
“If I have been a little hasty in my remarks I apologize,” pleaded the
captain, anxious to repair the fault. “I don't mean to interfere with your
duty. I have no right to do so!”
“You hear what your friend says, after getting you into the mess,”
shouted the agent, so that all might hear. “Now he is getting ready to trot
away and leave you in your trouble.”
“You are wrong there, my friend. If you are angry with me, go ahead and
have your quarrel with me. Don't bang at me over the shoulders of these
poor folks. It isn't a square deal.”
“They go off to-day—and they go because you have butted into the
matter. The whole of you have got to be shown that the state doesn't stand
for meddlers after orders have been given.” Then he added, with malice:
“You folks better ride this chap down to the beach on a rail. Whatever
happens to you is his fault!”
This attempt to shift responsibility as a petty method of retaliation stirred
Mayo's anger in good earnest.
The agent was dealing with men who were scarcely more than children in
their estimates of affairs; they muttered among themselves and scowled on
this stranger who had brought their troubles to a climax.
“I'm not going to allow you to get away with that kind of talk, Mr. Agent.
You know perfectly well that people on the main will not hire these men,
even if they are able-bodied. Everybody is down on them. You said that to
me last evening. They will be kicked from pillar to post—from this town to
that! They will be worse than beggars. And they must drag these women
and little children about with them. I will expose this thing!”
“That exposure will sound fine!” sneered the commissioner. “Exposing a
state officer for doing what the Governor and Council have ordered!”

“Yes, ordered on your advice!”
“Well, it has been ordered! And I'll be backed up! As soon as I can get to
a justice I shall swear out a warrant against you for interfering with a state
officer.” He flung down the stub of his cigar. “Listen, you people! Get off
this island. Anybody who is here at sunset—man, woman, or child—will be
arrested and put in jail for trespassing on state land. Now you'd all better
give three cheers for your meddling friend, here!”
“They have allus let us stay, even when they have threated us before
now,” whimpered a man. “He has poured the fat into the fire for us, that's
what he has done!” He pointed his finger at Mayo.
“It's wicked!” gasped the girl. “These poor folks don't know any better,
they are not responsible!”
“Say, look here, you folks!” shouted Mr. Speed, who had been holding
himself in with great difficulty. “It's about time for you to wake up!”
The plutocrat of the house-boat had come up from the beach and had
been listening. The whimpering man started to speak again, and the
magnate of the island cuffed him soundly; it was plain that this man, who
had lived in the best house, had been a personage of authority in the tribe.
“I'm ashamed of the whole caboodle of ye,” he vociferated. “Here's a
gent that's been standing up for us. He's the only man I ever heard say a
good word for us or try to help us! Nobody else in the world ever done it!
Take off your hats and thank him!”
“I'm in it!” whispered Mayo to the girl. “For heaven's sake, what am I
going to do?”
“Do all you can—please, Captain Mayo!”
He stepped forward. The agent began to shout.
“Hold on, sir!” broke in the captain with quarter-deck air that made for
obedience and attention. “You have had your say! Now I'm going to have
mine. Listen to me, folks! I'm not the man to get my friends into trouble and
then run off and leave 'em. All of you who are kicked out by the state—all
men, women, and children who are ready to go to work—come over to me
on the main at Maquoit with what stuff you can bring in your dories. I'll be
waiting for you there. My name is Boyd Mayo.”
“I'll remember that name, myself,” declared the angry agent. “You'll be
shown that you can't interfere in a state matter.”

“You have turned these folks loose in the world, and I'm going to give
'em a hand when they come to where I am. If you choose to call that
interference, come on! It will make a fine story in court!”
He did not stop to shake the grimy hands which were thrust out to him.
He pushed his way out of the crowd, and his party followed.
“Meet me yonder on the main, boys,” he called back with a sailor
heartiness which they understood. “We'll see what can be done!”
“Well, what in the infernal blazes can be done?” growled Captain
Candage, catching step with the champion.
“I don't know, sir.”
“You can't do nothing any more sensible with them critters than you
could with combined cases of the smallpox and the seven years' itch.”
“Father!” cried the girl, reproachfully.
“I know what I'm talking about! This is dum foolishness!”
“Captain Mayo is a noble man! You ought to be ashamed of hanging
back when your help is needed.”
“I don't blame you for sassing that skewangled old tywhoopus, sir,”
admitted the old skipper. “I wanted to do it myself. But—”
“I'm afraid I don't deserve much praise,” said Mayo. “I've been getting
back at that agent. He made me mad. I'm apt to go off half-cocked like
that.”
“So am I, sir—and I'm always sorry for it. We'd better dig out before that
tribe of gazaboos lands on our backs.”
“Oh, not a bit of it! I have given my word, sir. I must see it through.”
“But what are you going to do with 'em?”
“Blessed if I know right now! When I'm good and mad I don't stop to
think.”
“Suppose I meet 'em for you and tell 'em you have had a sudden death in
your family and have been called away? They won't know the difference,”
volunteered Captain Candage. “And a real death would be lucky for you
beside of what's in store if you hang around.”
“I shall hang around, sir. I can't afford to be ashamed of myself.”

“I think you have said quite enough, father,” stated Polly Candage, with
vigor.
'“I have heard of adopting families before,” said the irreconcilable one,
“but I never heard of any such wholesale operation as this. I'm thinking I'll
go climb a tree.”
They embarked in the dory. Mr. Speed and Dolph splashed their oars and
rowed, exchanging looks and not venturing to offer any comment.
“You might auction 'em off to farmers for scarecrows,” pursued Captain
Candage, still worrying the topic as a dog mouths a bone. “They ain't fit for
no more active jobs than that.”
“I do hope you'll forgive my father for talking this way,” pleaded Polly
Candage. She raised brimming eyes to the sympathetic gaze of the young
man beside her. “He doesn't understand it the way I do.”
“Perhaps I don't exactly understand it myself,” he protested.
“But what you are doing for them?”
“I haven't done anything as yet except start trouble for them. Now I must
do a little something to square myself.”
“There's a reward for good deeds, Captain Mayo, when you help those
who cannot help themselves. I believe what the Bible says about casting
bread on the waters. It will return to you some day!”
He smiled down on her enthusiasm tolerantly, but he was far from
realizing then that this pretty girl, whose eyes were so bright behind her
tears, and whose cheeks were flushed with the ardor of her admiration, was
speaking to him with the tongue of a sibyl.

XIII ~ A CAPTAIN OP HUMAN FLOTSAM
O what is that which smells so tarry?
I've nothing in the house that's tarry.
It's a tarry sailor, down below,
Kick him out into the snow!
Doo me axna, dinghy a-a-a ma!
Doo me ama-day!
—Doo Me Ama.

Captain Candage growled and complained so persistently during the trip
to the main that Mayo expected to be deserted by the querulous skipper the
moment the dory's prow touched the beach. But the skipper came dogging
at his heels when Mayo set off up the one street of Maquoit.
“May I come along with you?” asked the girl at his side. “I can see that
you are thinking up some plan. I do Hope I may come!” He gave her his
aim for answer.
“I haven't been into this port for some time, Captain Candage, but the last
trip I made here, as I remember, a man named Rowley, who runs the general
store, was first selectman.”
“Is now,” grunted the skipper. “They've got into the habit of electing him
and can't seem to break off.”
When they arrived in front of the store Captain Candage took the lead.
“I may as well go in and introduce you, whatever it is you want of him. I
know Rufe Rowley as well as anybody ever gets to know him.”
Mr. Rowley leaned over his counter and acknowledged the introduction
with a flicker of amiability lighting his reserve. But his wan smile faded
into blankness and he clawed his chin beard nervously when Mayo
informed him that he had invited the evicted folks of Hue and Cry to land
on the mainland that day.
“As overseer of the poor in this town I can't allow it, Captain Mayo!”
“Those people must land somewhere.”
“Yes, yes, of course!” admitted Selectman Rowley. “But not here! I'm
beholden to the taxpayers.”

“And I suppose the officers of all the other towns about here will say the
same?”
“Yes, yes! Of course.”
“Do you still own that old fish-house?” asked the captain, after hesitating
for a few moments; “the sardine-canning plant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You're not using it now?”
“No, sir.”
“It isn't paying you any revenue, eh?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you ought to be willing to let it pretty cheap—month-to-month
lease!”
“Depends on what I'm letting it for.”
“I want to stow those poor people in there till I can arrange further for
them, either show the matter up to the state, or get work for them, or
something! Will you let me have it?”
“No, sir!” declared the selectman, with vigor.
“It's only monthly lease, I repeat. You can prevent them from getting
pauper residence here, in case none of my plans work.”
“Don't want 'em here—won't have 'em! I consider taxpayers first!”
“Don't ye ever consider common, ordinary, human decency?” roared
Captain Epps Candage.
It was astonishing interruption. Its violence made it startling. Mayo
whirled and stared amazedly at this new recruit.
Captain Candage yanked his fat wallet from his pocket and dammed it
down on the counter with a bang which made the selectman's eyes snap.
“You know me, Rowley! We've got the money to pay for what we order
and contract for. Them folks ain't paupers so long as we stand be-hind 'em.
We are bringing 'em ashore, here, because it's right to help 'em get onto
their feet. Hold on, Captain Mayo; you let me talk to Rowley! Him and me
know how to get sociable in a business talk!”
However, Captain Candage seemed to be seeking sociability by
bellowing ferociously, thudding his hard fist on the counter. Mayo was not

easily surprised by the temperamental vagaries of queer old 'longcoast crabs
like Captain Candage, but this sudden conversion did take away his breath.
“When a close and partickler friend of mine, like this one I've just
introduced, comes to you all polite and asks a favor, I want general
politeness all around or I'll know the reason why,” shouted the intermediary.
“Look-a-here, Rowley, you pretend to be a terrible Christian sort of a man.
When I have been fog-bound here I've tended out on prayer-meetings, and I
have heard you holler like a good one about dying grace and salvation is
free. I've never heard you say much about living charity that costs
something!”
“I claim to be a Christian man,” faltered Rowley, backing away from the
banging fist.
“Then act like one. If you don't do it, blast your pelt, I'll post you for a
heathen from West Quoddy to Kittery!”
“God bless you, my dad!” whispered the girl, snuggling close to the
skipper's shoulder.
“Furthermore, Rowley, besides paying you a fair rental for that old fish-
house we'll buy grub for them poor devils out of your store.”
Mr. Rowley caressed his beard and blinked.
“They're like empty nail-kags, and they'll eat a lot of vittles and we've got
the money to pay!”
“I have a wallet of my own,” stated Captain Mayo. He had not recovered
from his amazement at the sudden shift about of Captain Candage. After all
the sullen growling he had been tempted to ask the old skipper to stop
tagging him about on his errand of mercy.
“Hear that, Rowley? This is the best friend I've got in the whole world!
Brought him in here! Introduced him to you! Here's my daughter!
Interested, too! Now, whatever you say, you'd better be sure that you pick
the right words.”
“Well, I'm always ready to help friends,” stated Mr. Rowley.
“Yes, and do business in a slack time,” added Captain Candage.
“I'm willing to show Christian charity to them that's poor and oppressed.
But what's the sense in doing it in this case?”

“A great many folks in this life need a hard jolt before they turn to and
make anything of themselves,” said Captain Mayo. “The people on Hue and
Cry have had their jolt. I do believe, with the right advice and management,
they can be made self-supporting. They have been allowed to run loose
until now, sir. I have been pulled into the thing all of a sudden, and now that
I'm in I'm willing to give up a little time and effort to start 'em off. I haven't
much of anything else to do just now,” he added, bitterly.
“Come into my back office,” invited Mr. Rowley.
“Much obleeged—we'll do so,” said Captain Candage. “You're a bright
man, Rowley, and I knowed you'd see the p'int when it was put up to you
right and polite.”
The business in the back office was soon settled satisfactorily, and a busy
day followed on the heels of that momentous morning. When night fell the
men, women, and children whom a benevolent state—through its “straight-
business” agent—had turned loose upon the world to shift for themselves,
were located in a single colony in the spacious fish-house.
A few second-hand stoves, hired from Rowley, served to cook the food
bought from Rowley, and the families grouped themselves in rooms and
behind partitions and arranged the poor belongings they had salvaged from
their homes. Even the citizen who had at first resolved to go floating on the
bosom of the deep joined the colony.
“It's more sociable,” he explained, “and my wife don't like to give up her
neighbors. Furthermore, I know the whole bunch, root and branch, whims,
notions, and all, and they can't fool me. I'll help boss 'em!” He became a
lieutenant of value.
This community life under a better roof than had ever sheltered them
before in their lives seemed to delight the refugees. Old and young, they
enjoyed the new surroundings with the zest of children. They had never
taken thought of the morrow in their existence on Hue and Cry. Given food
and shelter in this new abode, they did not worry about the problems of the
future. They roamed about their domain with the satisfaction of princes in a
palace. They did not show any curiosity regarding what was to be done with
them. They did not ask Captain Mayo and his associates any questions.
They surveyed him with a dumb and sort of canine thankfulness when he
moved among them. He himself tried questions on a few of the more

intelligent men, hoping that they would show some initiative. They told him
with bland serenity that they would leave it all to him.
“But what are you going to do for yourselves?”
“Just what you say. You're the boss. Show us the job!”
It was borne in upon him that he had taken a larger contract than he had
planned on. Rowley and the taxpayers on the main looked to him on one
side, and his dependents on the other.
“It seems to be up to me—to us, I mean,” he told the girl, ruefully, when
they were on their way to the widow's cottage that evening. “It's up to me
most of all, however, for I'm the guilty party—I have pulled you and your
father in. I'm pegged in here till I can think up some sort of a scheme.”
She had been working all day faithfully by his side, a tactful and
indefatigable helper. He would have been all at sea regarding the women
and children without her aid, and he told her so gratefully.
“Both my hands and my heart are with you in this thing, Captain Mayo.
And I know you'll think of some way out for them—just as you helped us
out of the schooner after we had given up all hope.”
“Getting out of the schooner was merely a sailor's trick of the hands,
Miss Candage. I don't believe I'll be much of a hand at making over human
nature. I have too much of it myself, and the material down in that fish-
house would puzzle even a doctor of divinity.”
“Oh, you will think of some plan,” she assured him-with fine loyalty. “If
you will allow me to help in my poor way I'll be proud.”
“I'll not tell you what I think of your help; it might sound like soft talk.
But let me tell you that you have one grand old dad!” he declared, earnestly;
but although he tried to keep his face straight and his tones steady he looked
down at her and immediately lost control of himself. Merriment was
mingled with tears in her eyes.
“Isn't he funny?” she gasped, and they halted in their tracks and laughed
in chorus with the whole-hearted fervor of youth; that laughter relieved the
strain of that anxious day.
“I am not laughing at your father—you understand that!” he assured her.
“Of course, you are not! I know. But you are getting to understand him,
just as I understand him. He is only a big child under all his bluster. But he

does make me so angry sometimes!”
“You can't tell much about a Yankee till he comes out of his shell, and I
agree with you as to the aggravating qualities in Captain Candage. I'm not
very patient myself, when I'm provoked! But after this he and I will get
along all right.”
They walked on to the cottage.
“Good night,” he said at the door.
“And you have no plan as yet?”
“Maybe something will come to me in a dream.”
The dream did not come to him, for his sleep was the profound slumber
of exhaustion. He went down in the early dawn and plunged into the sea,
and while he was walking back toward the cottage an idea and a conviction
presented themselves, hand in hand. The conviction had been with him
before—that he could not back out just then and leave those poor people to
shift for themselves, as anxious as he was to be off about his own affairs;
his undertaking was quixotic, but if he abandoned it at that juncture a queer
story would chase him alongcoast, and he knew what sort of esteem
mariners entertained for quitters.
However, deep in his heart, he confessed that it was not merely sailor
pride that spurred him. The pathetic helplessness of the tribe of Hue and
Cry appealed with an insistence he could not deny. He understood them as
he understood similar colonies along the coast—children whom an
indifferent world classed as man and treated with thoughtless injustice!
Work was prescribed for them, as for others! But, they did not know how to
work or how to make their work pay them.
The idea which came to him with the conviction that he must help these
folks concerned work for them.
After breakfast he took Captain Candage into his confidence, much to the
skipper's bland delight at being considered.
“I hope it's something where we can fetch Rowley in,” confessed the
skipper. “I don't care anything for them critters,” he added, assuming
brusqueness. “Don't want it hinted around that I'm getting simple in my old
age. But they give me an excuse to bingdoodle Rowley.”
“To carry out that plan I have outlined we need some kind of a packet,”
said Mayo.

“Sure! We'll go right to Rowley. He'll know. If there's anything in this
section that he 'ain't got his finger on some way—bill of sale, mortgage,
debt owed to him or expecting to be owed, then it ain't worth noticing.”
Mr. Rowley listened in his back office. He stroked his beard contentedly
and beamed his pleasure when he saw the prospect of making another
profitable dicker with men who seemed to be reliable and energetic.
“I had a mortgage on the Ethel and May when Captain Tebbets passed on
to the higher life,” he informed them. “Widder gave up the schooner when I
foreclosed, she not desiring to—er—bother with vessel proputty. So I have
it free and clear without it standing me such a terrible sum! Shall be pleased
to charter to you gents at a reasonable figure. Furthermore, seeing that
industry makes for righteousness, so we are told, your plan of making those
critters go to work may be a good one, providing you'll use a club on 'em
often enough.”
“From what I've heard of your talk in prayer-meeting I should think you'd
advise moral suasion,” suggested Captain Candage, plainly relishing this
opportunity to “bingdoodle.”
“I use common sense, whether it's in religion or politics or business,”
snapped Rowley, exhibiting a bit of un-Christian heat.
“It's advisable to ile up common sense with a little charity, and then the
machine won't squeak so bad.”
“I wouldn't undertake to trot a dogfish on my knee or sing him to sleep
with a pennyr'yal hymn, Captain Candage.”
“I think we can show results without the club,” interposed Mayo, with
mild intent to smooth the tone of this repartee.
The clerk called Mr. Rowley out into the store on some matter of special
importance, and the selectman departed, coming down rather hard on his
heels.
“The old Adam sort of torches up through his shell once in a while,”
commented Candage.
“We'd better settle the charter price, sir, before you lay aboard him too
much,” advised the young man.
“I just natch'ally can't help harpooning him,” confessed the skipper. “He's
a darned old hypocrite, cheating widders and orphans by choice because
they 'ain't got the spunk to razoo back, and I've allus enjoyed fighting such

as him. Him and me is due for a row. But I'll hold off the best I can till we
have got him beat down.”
Mayo's plan involved the modest venture of chartering a craft suitable for
fishing. There was no material for real Banksmen in the Hue and Cry
colony, but the run of the men would serve to go trawling for ground and
shack fish a few miles off the coast. It was the only scheme which would
afford employment for the whole body of dependents; older and more
decrepit men and the women and children could dig and shuck clams for the
trawl bait. In order to encourage ambition and independence among the
abler men of the colony, Mayo suggested that the fishermen be taken on
shares, and Captain Candage agreed.
When Mr. Rowley came back into the office he found his match waiting
for him in the person of Captain Candage, primed and ready to drive a sharp
bargain. At the end of an hour papers representing the charter of the Ethel
and May were turned over.
“I reckon it's a good job,” affirmed the skipper, when he and Mayo were
outside the Rowley store. “I have made up my mind to let poor old Polly go
to Davy Jones's locker. I wrote to the shippers and the consignees of the
lumber last night. If they want it they can go after it. I may as well fish for
the rest of this season!” He regarded Captain Mayo with eyes in which
query was almost wistftul. “Of course, you can depend on me to see to it
that you get your share, sir, just as if you were aboard.”
“I'm going aboard, Captain Candage.”
The old man stopped stock still and stared.
“I haven't anything in sight just now. You need help in getting the thing
started right. I'm not going away and leave that gang on your hands until I
can see how the plan works out. I'll go as mate with you.”
“Not by a blame sight you won't go as no mate with me,” objected
Candage. “You'll go as skipper and I'll be proud to take orders from you,
sir.”
They were wrangling amiably on that point when they returned to the
widow's cottage. Polly Candage broke the deadlock.
“Why not have two captains? That will be something brand new along
the coast!”

“The rest of it is brand new enough without that,” blurted her father. “But
considering what kind of a crew we've got I guess two captains ain't any too
much! I'll be captain number two and I know enough to keep my place.”
“I do not think you and I will ever do much quarreling again!” smiled
Captain Mayo, extending his hand and receiving Candage's mighty grip. “I
am going to start out a few letters, and I'll go now and write them. Until
those letters bring me something in the way of a job I am with you, sir.”
Captain Candage walked down toward the fish-house with his daughter.
“Polly,” he declared, after an embarrassed silence, “I have been all wrong in
your case, girl. Here and now I give you clearance papers. Sail for home
just as soon as you want to. I'm asking no questions! It's none of my
business!”
“My little affairs must always be business of yours, father,” she returned..
“I love you. I will obey you.”
“But I ain't giving off no more orders. I ain't fit to command in the waters
where you are sailing, Polly dear. So run along home and be my good girl! I
know you will be!”
“I have changed my mind about going home—just now!” Her eyes met
his frankly. “I have written to Aunt Zilpah to send me some of my clothes.
Father,” there was feminine, rather indignant amazement in her tones, “do
you know that there isn't a single woman from Hue and Cry who knows
how to use a needle?”
“I might have guessed it, judging from the way their young ones and men
folk go looking!”
“Do you realize that those children don't even know their A-B-C's?”
“Never heard of any college perfessers being raised on that island.”
“I am going to take a vacation from the millinery-shop, now that I am
down here. I'll show those women how to sew and cook, and I'll teach those
children how to read. It's only right—my duty! I couldn't go home and be
happy without doing it!”
“Calling that a vacation is putting a polite name to it, Polly.”
“If you could have seen their eyes, father, when I promised to help them,
you wouldn't wonder why I am staying.”

“I don't wonder, Polly, my girl! If you had gone away and—and left us—
Mayo and me—I should have been mighty disappointed in ye! But I really
never thought much about your going—'cause you wouldn't go, I knew, till
you had helped all you could.” He put his arm around her. “I have been
worrying about having brought you away. But I guess God had it all
figgered out for us. I didn't know my own girl the way I ought to have
knowed her. I'd been away too much. But now we're sort of growing up—
together—sort of that, ain't we, Polly dear?”
She put her arms about his neck and answered him with a kiss.

XIV ~ BEARINGS FOR A NEW COURSE
And now, my brave boys, comes the best of the fun,
It's hands about ship and reef topsails in one;
So it's lay aloft, topman, as the hellum goes down,
And clew down your topsails as the mainyard goes round.
—La Pique.

At the end of that week the Ethel and May had delivered at market her
first fare of fish and her captains had divided her first shares. Mayo decided
that the results were but of proportion to the modest returns. He was
viewing the regeneration of the tribe of Hue and Cry. In their case it had
been the right touch at the right time. For years their hopes had been hungry
for a chance to make good. Now gratitude inspired them and an almost
insane desire to show that they were not worthless drove them to supreme
effort. The leaven of the psychology of independence was getting in its
work.
The people of Hue and Cry for three generations had been made to feel
that they were pariahs. When they had brought their fish or clams to the
mainland the buyers were both unjust and contemptuous, as if they were
dealing with begging children who must expect only a charitable gift for
their product instead of a real man's price. Prices suited the fish-buyers'
moods of the day. The islanders had never been admitted to the plane of
straight business like other fishermen. They had always taken meekly what
had been offered—whether coin or insults. Therefore, their labor had never
returned them full values.
They who bought made the poor wretches feel that it constituted a special
favor to take their fish at any price.
They seemed to come into their own that first day at market when the
Ethel and May made her bigness in the dock at the city fish-house.
Masterful men represented them in the dealings with the buyers. The crew
hid their delighted grins behind rough palms when Captain Epps Candage
bawled out bidders who were under market quotations; they gazed with awe
on Captain Mayo when he read from printed sheets—print being a mystery
they had never mastered—and figured with ready pencil and even corrected

the buyer, who acknowledged his error and humbly apologized. No more
subservient paltering at the doors of fish-houses!
Back home the women and the children and the old folks had a good roof
over their heads; the fishers had the deck of a tidy schooner under their feet.
Shiftlessness departed from them. After years of oppression they had found
their opportunity. More experienced men would have found this new
fortune only modest; these men grasped it with juvenile enthusiasm.
They were over the side of the schooner and out in their dories when
more cautious trawlsmen hugged the fo'c'sle. On their third trip, because of
this daring, they caught the city market bare on a Thursday and made a
clean-up.
“I'm told that Saint Peter started this Friday notion because he was in the
fish business,” stated Captain Candage, sorting money for the shares. “All
I've got to say is, he done a good job of it.”
Mr. Speed, sailing as mate, always found ready obedience.
Smut-nosed Dolph never listened before to such praise as was lavished
by the hungry men over the pannikins which he heaped.
Captain Mayo, casting up accounts one day, was honestly astonished to
find that almost a month had passed since he had landed at Maquoit.
“That goes to show how a man will get interested when he is picked up
and tossed into a thing,” he said to Polly Candage.
“You are making real men of them, Captain Mayo!” She added, with a
laugh, “And you told me you were no kind of a hand at making over human
nature!”
“They are doing it themselves.”
“I will say nothing to wound your modesty, sir.”
“Now I must wake up. I must! There's nothing worth while in the profit
for both your father and myself. I want him to have the proposition alone.
There'll be a fair make for him. I didn't intend to stay here so long. I guess I
sort of forgot myself.” He went on with his figures.
“But I knew you could not forget,” she ventured, after a pause.
He glanced up and found a queer expression on her countenance. There
were frank sympathy and friendliness in her eyes. He had revolved bitter
thoughts alone, struggling with a problem he could not master. In sudden

emotion—in an unpremeditated letting-go of himself—he reached out for
somebody in whom to confide. He needed counsel in a matter where no
man could help him. This girl was the only one who could understand.
“There may be letters waiting for me in the city—in the big city where I
may be expected,” he blurted. “I haven't dared to send any.” He hesitated,
and then gave way to his impulse. “Miss Polly, I haven't any right to trouble
you with my affairs. I may seem impertinent. But you are a girl! Does a girl
usually sit down and think over all the difficulties—when she doesn't get
letters—and then make allowances?”
“I'm sure she does—when she loves anybody.”
“And yet it may seem very strange. I am worried out of my senses. I don't
know what to do.”
She was silent for a long time, looking away from him and twisting her
hands in her lap; she was plainly searching her soul for inspiration—and
courage!
“You think she will understand the situation?” he insisted.
“She ought to.”
“But no word from me! Silence for weeks!”
Her voice was low, but she evidently had found courage. “I have not
heard one word—not a letter has come to me—since I left my aunt's home.”
“Do you feel sure that he loves you just the same? You don't need
letters?”
“Oh no! I don't need letters.”
“But in my case?”
“I could see that she loves you very much. She stood out before them all,
Captain Mayo. That sort of a girl does not need letters.”
“You have put new courage in me. I believe you understand just how a
girl would feel. You know a Yankee! He expects to find a friend just where
he left him, in the matter of affection.”
“A girl does not need to be a Yankee to be that way in her love.”
“I can't sneak around to her by the back way—I can't do that!” he cried.
“I don't want to be ashamed of myself. I don't want to bring more trouble to
her. Don't you think she will wait for me until I can come—and come
right!”

“She will wait for you, sir. It's the nature of women to wait—when they
love.”
“But I cannot ask her to wait forever. That's why I must go away and try
to make good.” He set his teeth, and his jaw muscles were ridged. “I believe
a man can get what he goes after in the right spirit, Miss Polly.” He swing
off the porch and left her.
The fog was heavy on shore and sea that day, holding the Ethel and May
in port. He disappeared into the stifling mist, and the girl sat and stared into
that vacancy for a long time.
Mayo rowed out to the schooner, which was anchored in the harbor
roads. He was carrying his accounts to Captain Candage.
Standing and facing forward as he rowed, he came suddenly upon a big
steam-yacht which had stolen into the cove through the fog and was
anchored in his course. She was the Sprite, and he had formed a 'longshore
acquaintance with her skipper that summer, meeting him in harbors where
the Sprite and Olenia had been neighbors in the anchorage. He stopped
rowing and allowed the dory to drift. He noted that the blue flag was flying
at the main starboard spreader, announcing the absence of the owner, and he
understood that he could call for the skipper without embarrassing that
gentleman. One of the crew was putting covers on the brasswork forward.
“Compliments to Captain Trott, and tell him that Captain Mayo is at the
gangway.”
The skipper appeared promptly, replying to the hail before the sailor had
stirred. “Come aboard, sir.”
“I'll not bother you that much, captain. I can ask my question just as well
from here. Do you know of any good opening for a man of my size?”
The captain of the Sprite came to the rail and did not reply promptly.
“I have left the Olenia and I'm looking for something.”
Captain Trott started for the gangway. “Oh, you needn't trouble to come
down, sir.”
“I'd rather, Captain Mayo.” After he had descended he squatted on the
platform at the foot of the ladder and held the dory close, grasping the
gunwale. “What are you doing for yourself these days?”

Mayo had no relish for a long story. “I'm waiting to grab in on
something,” he replied.
Captain Trott did not show any alacrity in getting to the subject which
Mayo had broached. “It has set in pretty thick, hasn't it? I have been ordered
in here to wait for my folks; they're visiting at some big estate up-river.”
“But about the chance for a job, captain!”
“Look here! What kind of a run-in did you have with the Olenia owner?”
Mayo opened his mouth and then promptly closed it. He could not reveal
the nature of the trouble between himself and his former employer.
“We had words,” he said, stiffly.
“Yes, I reckon so! But the rest of it!”
“That's all.”
“You needn't tell me any more than you feel like doing, of course,” said
Captain Trott. “But I have to tell you that Mr. Marston has come out with
some pretty fierce talk for an owner to make. He has made quite a business
of circulating that talk. I didn't realize that you are of so much importance in
the world, Mayo,” he added, dryly.
“I don't know what he is saying.”
“Didn't you leave him in the night—without notice, or something of the
kind?”
“It was an accident.”
“I hope you have a good story to back you up, Captain Mayo, for I have
liked you mighty well ever since meeting you first. What is behind it?”
“I can't tell you.”
“But you can tell somebody—somebody who can straighten the thing out
for you, can't you?”
“No, Captain Trott.”
“Well, you know what has happened in your case, don't you?” The
skipper of the Sprite exhibited a little testiness at being barred out of
Mayo's confidence.
The young man shook his head.
“Marston claims that you mutinied and deserted him—slipped away in
the night—threw up your job on the high seas—left him to work to New

York with a short crew—the mate as captain.”
“That's an infernal lie!”
“Then come forward and show him up.”
“I cannot talk about the case. I have my reasons—good ones!”
“I'm sorry for you, Mayo. You are done in the yachting game, I'm afraid.
He'll blacklist you in every yacht club from Bar Harbor to Miami. I have
heard my folks talking about it. He seems to have a terrible grudge—more
than a big man usually bothers about in the case of a skipper.”
Mayo set his oar against the edge of the platform and pushed off. The
skipper called after him, but he was instantly swallowed up by the fog and
did not reply.
On board the Ethel and May his ragged but cheery crew were baiting up,
hooking clams upon the ganging hooks, and coiling lines into tubs. The men
grinned greeting when he swung over the rail. He scowled at them; he even
turned a glowering look on Captain Candage when he met the latter on the
quarter-deck.
“Yes, sir! I see how it is! You're getting cussed sick of this two-cent game
here,” said Candage, mournfully. “I don't blame ye. We ain't in your class,
here, Captain Mayo.” He took the papers which the young man held out to
him. “I suppose this is the last time we'll share, you and me. I'll miss ye
devilish bad. I'd rather go for nothing and let you have it all than lose ye.
But, of course, it ain't no use to argue or coax.”
Mayo went and sat on the rail, folding his arms, and did not reply. The
old skipper trudged forward, his head bowed, his hands clutched behind his
back. When he returned Mayo stood up and put his hand on the old man's
shoulder.
“Captain Candage, please don't misunderstand me. Just at present I feel
that the only friends I have in the world are here. Don't mind the way I
acted just now when I came on board. I have had a lot of trouble—I'm
having more of it. I'm not going to leave you just yet. I want to stay aboard
until I can think it all over—can get my grip. That is, if you're satisfied to
have it that way!”
“Satisfied! Jumping Cicero!” exploded Captain Can-dage. He took the
dory and rowed ashore. He found his daughter gazing into the fog from the
porch of the widow's cottage. “He is going to stay a while longer,” he

informed her, rapturously. “Something has happened. Do you suppose that
girl has throwed him over?”
“Father, do you dare to chuckle because a friend is in trouble?”
“I'll laugh and slap my leg if he ever gets shet of that hity-tity girl,” he
rejoined, stoutly.
“I am astonished—I am ashamed of you, father!”
“Polly dear, be honest with your dad!” he pleaded. “Do you want to see
him married off to her?”
“I certainly do. I only wish I might help him.” Her lips were white, her
voice trembled. She got up and hurried into the house.
“I'll be cussed if I understand wimmen,” declared Captain Candage,
fiddling his finger under his nose. “That feller she has picked out for herself
must be the Emp'ror of Peeroo.”
Captain Mayo did not come ashore again before the Ethel and May
sailed.
The fog cleared that night and they smashed out to the fishing-grounds
ahead of a cracking breeze, and had their trawls down in the early dawn. At
sundown, trailed by a wavering banner of screaming gulls who gobbled the
“orts” tossed over by the busy crew cleaning their catch, they were docking
at the city fish-house.
“Lucky again,” commented Captain Candage, returning from his sharp
dicker with the buyer. “The city critters are all hungry for haddock, and
that's just what we hit to-day.” He surveyed his gloomy partner with
sympathetic concern. “Why don't you take a run uptown?” he suggested.
“You're sticking too close to this packet for a young man. Furthermore, if
you see a store open buy me a box of paper collars. Rowley hain't got my
size!”
Mayo, unreconciled and uneasy, hating that day the sound of the
flapping, sliding fish as they were pitchforked into the tubs for hoisting,
annoyed by the yawling of pulleys and realizing that his nerves were not
right at all, obeyed the suggestion. He had a secret errand of his own,
yielding to a half-hope; he went to the general-delivery window of the post-
office and asked for mail. He knew that love makes keen guesses. The
Olenia had visited that harbor frequently for mail. But there was nothing for

him. He strolled about the streets, nursing his melancholy, forgetting
Captain Candage's commission, envying the contentment shown by others.
In that mood he would have avoided Captain Zoradus Wass if he had
spied that boisterously cheerful mariner in season. But the captain had him
by the arm and was dancing him about the sidewalk, showing more
affability than was his wont.
“Heifers o' Herod! youngster,” shouted the grizzled master, “have you
come looking for me?”
“No,” faltered Mayo. “Did you want to see me?”
“Have worn taps off my boots to-day chasing from shipping
commissioner's office to every hole and corner along the water-front. Heard
you had quit aboard a yacht, and reckoned you had got sensible again and
wanted real work.”
“If you had asked down among the fish-houses you might have got on
track of me, sir.” Mayo's tone was somber.
“Fish! You fishing?” demanded Captain Wass, with incredulity.
“Yes, and on a chartered smack at that—shack-fishing on shares!” Mayo
was sourly resolved to paint his low estate in black colors. “And I have
concluded it's about all I'm fit for.”
“That's fine, seaman-like talk to come from a young chap I have trained
up to master's papers, giving him two years in my pilot-house. I was afraid
you were going astern, you young cuss, when I heard you'd gone skipper of
a yacht, but I didn't think it was as bad as all this.”
“My yachting business is done, sir.”
“Thank the bald-headed Nicodemus! There's hopes of you. Did anybody
tell you I've been looking for you?”
“No, sir!”
“Glad of it. Now I can tell you myself. Do you know where I am now?”
“I heard you were on a Vose line freighter, sir.”
“Don't know who told you that—but it wasn't Ananias. You're right. She's
the old Nequasset, handed back to me again because I'm the only one who
understands her cussed fool notions. First mate got drunk yesterday and
broke second mate's leg in the scuffle—one is in jail and t'other in the

hospital, and never neither of 'em will step aboard any ship with me again. I
sail at daybreak, bade to the Chesapeake for steel rails. Got your papers?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Come along. You're first mate.”
“Do you really want me, sir?”
“Want you? Confound it all, I've got you! In about half a day I'll have all
the yacht notions shaken out of you and the fish-scales stripped off, and
then you'll be what you was when I let you go—the smartest youngster I
ever trained.”
Mayo obeyed the thrust of the jubilant master's arm and went along. “I'll
go and explain to Captain Can-dage, my partner.”
“All right. I'll go along, too, and help you make it short.”
As they walked along Captain Wass inspected his companion critically.
“High living aboard Marston's yacht make you dyspeptic, son? You look
as if your vittles hadn't been agreeing with you.”
“My health is all right, sir.”
“Heard you had trouble with Marston,” proceeded the old skipper, with
brutal frankness. “Anybody who has trouble with that damnation pirate
comes well recommended to me. He is trying to steal every steamboat line
on this coast. Thank Gawd, he can never get his claws on the old Vose line.
Some great doings in the steamboat business are ahead, Mayo. Reckon it's a
good line to be in if you like fight and want to make your bigness.”
Mayo walked on in silence. He was troubled by this added information
that news of his affair with Marston had gained such wide currency.
However, he was glad that this new opportunity offered him a chance to
hide himself in the isolation of a freighter's pilot-house.
Captain Candage received the news with meek resignation. “I knowed it
would have to come,” he said. “Couldn't expect much else. Howsomever, it
ain't comforting.”
“Can't keep a good boy like this pawing around in fish gurry,” stated
Captain Wass.
“I know it, and I wish him well and all the best!”
Their leave-taking, presided over by the peremptory master of the
Nequasset, was short.

“I'll probably have a chance to see you when we come here again,” called
Mayo from the wharf, looking down into the mournful countenance of the
skipper. “Perhaps I'll have time to run down to Maquoit while we are
discharging. At any rate, explain it all for me, especially to your daughter.”
“I'll tell all concerned just what's right,” Captain Candage assured him.
“I'll tell her for you.”
She was on the beach when the skipper came rowing in alone from the
Ethel and May.
“He's gone,” he called to her. “Of course we couldn't keep him. He's too
smart to stay on a job like this.”
When they were on their way up to the widow's cottage he stole side-
glances at her, and her silence distressed him.
“Let's see! He says to me—if I can remember it right-he says, says he,
'Take my best respects and '—let's see—yes, 'take my best respects and love
to your Polly—'”
“Father! Please don't fib.”
“It's just as I remember it, dear. 'Especial,' he says. I remember that!
'Especial,' he says. And he looked mighty sad, dear, mighty sad.” He put his
arm about her. “There are a lot of sad things in this world for everybody,
Polly. Sometimes things get so blamed mixed up that I feel like going off
and climbing a tree!”

XV ~ THE RULES Of THE ROAD
Now the Dreadnought's a-sailing the Atlantic so wide,
Where the high, roaring seas roll along her black side.
Her sailors like lions walk the deck to and fro,
She's the Liverpool packet—O Lord let her go!
—Song of the Flash Packet.

On a day in early August the Nequasset came walloping laboriously up-
coast through a dungeon fog, steel rails her dragging burden, caution her
watchword.
The needle of her indicator marked “Half speed,” and it really meant half
speed. Captain Zoradus Wass made scripture of the rules laid down by the
Department of Commerce and Labor. There was no tricky slipping-over
under his sway—no finger-at-nose connivance between the pilot-house and
the chief engineer's grille platform. No, Captain Wass was not that kind of a
man, though the fog had held in front of him two days, vapor thick as
feathers in a tick, and he had averaged not much over six nautical miles an
hour, and was bitterly aware that the rate of freight on steel rails was sixty-
five cents a ton.
“And as I've been telling you, at sixty-five cents there's about as much
profit as there would be in swapping hard dollars from one hand to the other
and depending on what silver you can rub off,” said Captain Wass to First-
mate Mayo.
The captain was holding the knob of the whistle-pull In constant clutch.
Regularly every minute Nequasset's prolonged blast sounded, strictly
according to the rules of the road.
Her voice started with a complaining squawk, was full toned for a few
moments, then trailed off into more querulousness; the timbre of that tone
seemed to fit with Captain Wass's mood.
“It's tough times when a cargo-carrier has to figger so fine that she can
lose profit on account of what the men eat,” he went on. “If you're two days
late, minding rules in a fog, owners ask what the tophet's the matter with
you! This kind of business don't need steamboat men any longer; it calls for
boarding-house keepers who can cut sirloin steak off'n a critter clear to the

horn, and who are handy in turning sharp corners on left-overs. I'll buy a
book of cooking receets and try to turn in dividends.”
The captain was broad-bowed, like the Nequasset, he sagged on short
legs as if he carried a cargo fully as heavy as steel rails, his white whiskers
streamed away from his cutwater nose like the froth kicked up by the old
freighter's forefoot. He chewed slowly, conscientiously and continuously on
tobacco which bulged in his cheek; his jaws, moving as steadily as a
pendulum swings, seemed to set the time for the isochronal whistle-blast.
Sixty ruminating jaw-wags, then he spat into the fog, then the blast—
correct to the clock's tide!
The windows of the pilot-house were dropped into their casings, so that
all sounds might be admitted; the wet breeze beaded the skipper's whiskers
and dampened the mate's crisp hair. While the mate leaned from a window,
ear cocked for signals, the captain gave him more of the critical inspection
in which he had been indulging when occasion served.
Furthermore, Captain Wass went on pecking around the edges of a topic
which he had been attacking from time to time with clumsy attempt at artful
inquisition.
“As bad as it is on a freighter, I reckon you ain't sorry you're off that
yacht, son?”
“I'm not sorry, sir.”
“From what you told me, the owner was around meddling all the time.”
“I don't remember that I ever said so, sir.”
“Oh, I thought you did,” grunted Captain Wass, and he covered his
momentary check by sounding the whistle.
“Now that you are back in the steamboat business, of course you're a
steamboat man. Have the interests of your owners at heart,” he resumed.
“Certainly, sir.”
“It would be a lot of help to the regular steamboat men—the good old
stand-bys—if they could get some kind of a line on what them Wall Street
cusses are gunning through with Marston leading 'em—or, at leastways,
he's supposed to be leading. He hides away in the middle of the web and
lets the other spiders run and fetch. But it's Marston's scheme, you can bet
on that! What do you think?”

“I haven't thought anything about it, Captain Wass.” “But how could you
help thinking, catching a word here and a word there, aboard that yacht?”
“I never listened—I never heard anything.”
“But he had them other spiders aboard—seen 'em myself through my
spy-glass when you passed us one day in June.”
“I suppose they talked together aft, but my duty was forward, sir.”
“It's too bad you didn't have a flea put into your ear about getting a line
on Marston's scheme, whatever it is. You could have helped the real boys in
this game!”
Mayo did not reply.
Captain Wass showed a resolve to quit pecking at the edges and make a
dab at the center of the subject. He pulled the whistle, released the knob,
and turned back to the window, setting his elbows on the casing.
“Son, you ain't in love with that pirate Marston, are you?”
“No, sir!” replied the young man, with bitterness that could not be
doubted.
“Well, how about your being in love with his daughter?” The caustic
humor in the old skipper's tones robbed the question of some of its brutal
bluntness, and Mayo was accustomed to Captain Wass's brand of humor.
The young man did not turn his head for a few moments; he continued to
look into the fog as if intent on his duty; he was trying to get command of
himself, fully aware that resentment would not work in the case of Zoradus
Wass. When Mayo did face the skipper, the latter was discomposed in his
turn, for Mayo showed his even teeth in a cordial smile.
“Do you think I have been trying the chauffeur trick in order to catch an
heiress, sir?”
“Well, there's quite a gab-wireless operating along-coast and sailors don't
always keep their yawp closed after they have taken a man's money to keep
still,” stated Captain Wass, pointedly. “I wouldn't blame you for grabbing
in. You're good-looking enough to do what others have done in like cases.”
“Thank you, sir. What's the rest of the joke?”
“I never joke,” retorted the skipper, turning and pulling the whistle-cord.
Nequasset's squall rose and died down in her brazen throat. “Her name is

Alma?” he prodded. “Something of a clipper. If Marston ever makes you
general manager, put me into a better job than this, will you?”
“I will, sir!”
The skipper gave his mate a disgusted stare. “You're a devil of a man to
keep up a conversation with!” He spat against the wall of the fog and again
let loose the freighter's hoarse lament.
From somewhere, ahead, a horn wailed, dividing its call into two blasts.
“Port tack and headed acrost us,” snarled the master, after a sniff at the
air and a squint at the sluggish ripple.
“Why ain't the infernal fool anchored, instead of drifting around
underfoot? How does he bear, Mr. Mayo?” He was now back to pilot-house
formality with his mate.
“Two points and a half, starboard bow, sir. And there's another chap
giving one horn in about the same direction.”
“Another drifter—not wind enough for 'em to know what tack they're
really on. Well, there's always Article Twenty-seven to fall back on,”
grumbled the skipper. He quoted sarcastically in the tone in which that rule
is mouthed so often in pilot-houses along coast: '“Due regard shall be had to
all dangers of navigation and collision, and to any special circumstances
which may render a departure from the above rules necessary, and so forth
and et cetry. Meaning, thank the Lord, that a steamer can always run away
from a gad-slammed schooner, even at half speed. Hope if it ever comes to
a showdown the secretary of the bureau of commerce will agree with me.
Ease her off to starboard, Mr. Mayo, till we bring 'em abeam.”
The mate gave a quick glance at the compass. “East by nothe, Jack,” he
commanded.
“East by nothe, sir,” repeated the quartermaster in mechanical tones,
spinning the big wheel to the left.
It was evident that the Nequasset had considerable company on the sea
that day. A little abaft her beam a tugboat was blowing one long and two
short, indicating her tow. She had been their “chum” for some time, and
Mayo had occasionally taken her bearings by sound and compass and knew
that the freighter was slowly forging ahead. He figured, listening again to
the horns, that the Nequasset was headed to clear all.

“You take a skipper who studies his book and is always ready to look the
department in the eye, without flinching, he has to mind his own business
and mind the other fellow's, too,” said Captain Wass, continuing his
monologue of grouch. “Dodging here and there, keeping out of the way,
two days behind schedule, meat three times a day or else you can't keep a
crew, and everybody hearty at meal-time! My owners have never told me to
let the law go to hoot and ram her for all she's worth! But when I carry in
my accounts they seem to be trying to think up language that tells a man to
do a thing, and yet doesn't tell him. What's that?” He put his head far out of
the window.
Floating out of the fog came a dull, grunting sound, a faint and far-away
diapason, a marine whistle which announced a big chap.
“I should say it is a Union liner, sir—either the Triton or Neptune.”
They listened. They waited two long minutes for another signal.
“Seems to be taking up his full, legal time,” growled Captain Wass.
“Since Marston has gobbled that line maybe he has put on a special register
to keep tabs on tooting—thinks it's waste of steam and will reduce
dividends. Expects us little fellows to do the squawking!”
The big whistle boomed again, dead ahead, and so much nearer that it
provoked the skipper to lash out a round oath.
“He is reeling off eighteen knots for a gait, or you can use my head for a
rivet nut!” He yanked the cord and the freighter howled angrily. The other
replied with bellowing roar—autocratic, domineering. With irony, with
vindictiveness, Captain Wass pitched his voice in sarcastic nasal tone and
recited another rule—thereby trying to express his irate opinion of the
lawlessness of other men.
“Article Sixteen, Mr. Mayo! He probably carries it in his watch-case
instead of his girl's picture! Nice reading for a rainy day! 'A steam-vessel
hearing apparently forward of her beam the fog signal of a vessel, the
position of which is not ascertained, shall, so far as the circumstances of the
case permit, stop her engines and then navigate with caution until all danger
of collision is over.' Hooray for the rules!”
Captain Wass hooked a gnarled finger into the loop of the bell-pull and
yanked upward viciously. A dull clang sounded far below. He pulled again
and the vibration of the engine ceased.

“Gad rabbit it! I'll go the whole hog as the department orders! If he bangs
into me we'll see who comes off best at the hearing.”
He gave the bell-loop two quick jerks; then he shifted his hand to another
pull and the jingle bell sounded in the engine-room—the Nequasset was
ordered to make full speed astern.
The freighter shook and shivered when the screw began to reverse,
pulling at the frothing sea, clawing frantically to haul her to a stop. The
skipper then gave three resentful, protesting whistle-blasts.
But the reply he received from ahead was a hoarse, prolonged howl. In it
there was no hint that the big fellow proposed to heed the protest of the
three blasts. It was insistence on right of way, the insolence of the
swaggering express liner making time in competition with rivals; it hinted
confident opinion that smaller chaps would better get out of the way.
The on-comer had received a signal which served to justify that opinion.
Captain Wass had docilely announced that he was going full speed astern,
his whistle-blasts had declared that he had stepped off the sidewalk of the
ocean lane—as usual! The big fellows knew that the little chaps would do
it!
Mate Mayo leaned from the window, his jaw muscles tense, anxiety in
his eyes.
The big whistle now was fairly shaking the curtains of the mists and was
not giving him any comforting assurance that the liner was swinging to
avoid them.
The quartermaster was taking the situation more philosophically than his
superiors. He hummed:

Sez all the little fishes that swim to and fro,
She's the Liverpool packet—O Lord let her go!

“Does that gor-righteously fool ahead there think I blowed three whistles
to salute Marston's birthday or their last dividend, Mr. Mayo?” shouted
Captain Wass.
Fogs are freaky; ocean mists are often eerie in movements. There are
strata, there are eddying air-currents which rend the curtain or shred the
massing vapors. The men in the pilot-house of the Nequasset suddenly
found their range of vision widened. The fog did not clear; it became more

tenuous and showed an area of the sea. It was like a thin veil which
disclosed dimly what it distorted and magnified.
In a fog, experienced steamboat men always examine with earnest gaze
the line where fog and ocean merge. They do not stare up into the fog,
trying to distinguish the loom of an on-coming craft; they are able to
discern first of all the white line of foam marking the vessel's cutwater kick-
up or her wake.
“There she comes, sir!” announced the mate. He pointed his finger at a
foaming upthrust of tossing water.
“Yes, sir! Eighteen knots and both eyes shut!” But there was relief
mingled with the resentment. His quick glance informed him that the liner
would pass the Nequasset well to starboard—her bow showed a divergence
of at least two points from the freighter's course. But the next instant
Captain Wass yelped a shout of angry alarm. “Yes, both eyes shut!” he
repeated.
Right in line with the liner's threshing bow was a fisherman's Hampton
boat, disclosed as the fog drifted.
The passenger-steamer gave forth a half-dozen “woofs” from her whistle,
answering the freighter's staccato warning, but gave no signs of slowing.
But that they were making an attempt to dodge the mite in their path was
made known by a shout from their lookout and his shrill call: “Port! Hard
over!”
The fisherman had all the alertness of his kind, trained by dangers and
ever-present prospect of mischance to grab at desperate measures. He
leaped forward and pulled out his mast and tossed mast and sail overboard.
He knew that he must encounter the tremendous wash and wake of the
rushing hull. His shell of a boat, if made topheavy by the sail, would stand
small show.
“He's a goner!” gasped Captain Wass. “She's a-going to tramp him plumb
underfoot—unless she's going to get up a little more speed and jump over
him!” he added, moved to bitter sarcasm.
They saw the little boat go into eclipse behind the black prow, the first
lift of the churning waters flipping the cockleshell as a coin is snapped by
the thumb. The fisherman was not in view—he had thrown himself flat in
the bottom of his boat.

“He's under for keeps,” stated the skipper, with conviction. “If her bilge-
keel doesn't cooper him, her port propeller will!”
So rapidly was the liner moving, so abrupt her swoop to the right, that
she leaned far over and showed them the red of her huge bilge. Her high
speed enabled her to make an especially quick turn. As they gaped, her two
stacks swung almost into line. Her shearing bow menaced the Nequasset.
“The condemned old hellion is going to nail us, now!” bellowed Captain
Wass. In his panic and his fury he leaped up and down, pulling at the
whistle-cord.
She was almost upon them—only a few hundred yards of gray water
separated the two steamers.
She was the Triton!
Her name was disclosed on her bow. Her red hawse-holes showed like
glowering and savage eyes. There was indescribably brutal threat in this
sudden dart in their direction. It was as if a sea monster had swallowed an
insect in the shape of a Hampton boat and now sought a real mouthful. But
her great rudder swung to the quick pull of her steam steering-gear and
again she sheered, cutting a letter s. The movement brought her past the
stern of the Nequasset, a biscuit-toss away. The mighty surge of her roaring
passage lifted the freighter's bulk aft, and the huge wave that was crowded
between the two hulls crowned itself with frothing white and slapped a
good, generous ton of green water over the smaller steamer's superstructure.
Captain Wass grabbed down his megaphone; he wanted to submit a few
remarks which seemed to fit the incident.
But the captain of the Triton was beforehand with a celerity which
matched the up-to-date speed of his craft. He was bellowing through the
huge funnel which a quartermaster was holding for him. His language was
terrific. He cursed freighters in most able style. He asked why the
Nequasset was loafing there in the seaway without steering headway on
her! That amazing query took away Captain Wass's breath and all power to
retort. Asking that of a man who had obeyed the law to the letter! A fellow
who was banging through the fog at eighteen knots' speed blaming a
conscientious skipper because the latter had stopped so as to get out of the
way!

And, above all, going so fast when he asked the question that he was out
of ear-shot before suitable answer could be returned!
Captain Wass revolved those whirling thoughts in a brain which flamed
and showed its fires through the skipper's wide-propped eyes.
Then he banged his megaphone across the pilot-house. It rebounded
against him, and he kicked it into a corner. He began to whack his fist
against a broad placard which was tacked up under his license as master.
The cardboard was freshly white, and its tacks were bright, showing that it
had been recently added as a feature of the pilot-house. Big letters in red ink
at the top counseled, “Safety First.” Other big letters at the bottom warned,
“Take No Chances.” The center lettering advised shipmasters that in case of
accident the guilty parties would feel all the weight of Uncle Sam's heavy
palm; it was the latest output from the Department of Commerce and Labor,
and bore the signature of the honorable secretary of the bureau.
Mayo noted that his chief was wholly absorbed in this speechless
activity; therefore he pulled the bells which stopped the backward churning
and sent the freighter on her way. They passed the fisherman in the
Hampton boat; he was bailing his craft.
“That was a rather close call, sir! I am glad that I have been trained by
you to be a careful man. You took no chances!”
“And where have I got to by obeying the United States rules and never
taking chances, Mr. Mayo? At sixty-five I'm master of a freight-scow,
sassed by owners ashore and sassed on the high seas by fellows like that
one who just slammed past us! If that passenger-steamer had hit me the
lawyers would have shoved the tar end of the stick into my hands! It's all
for the good of the hellbent fellows the way things are arranged in this
world at the present time. I'll be lucky if he doesn't lodge complaint against
me when he gets to New York, saying that I got in his way!” He cut off a
fresh sliver of black plug and took his position at the whistle-pull. “You'd
better go get an heiress,” he advised his mate, sourly. “Being an old-
fashioned skipper in these days of steam-boating is what I'm too polite to
name. And as to being the other kind—well, you have just seen him whang
past!”
However, as they went wallowing up the coast, their old tub sagging with
the weight of the rails under her hatches, Mate Mayo felt considerable of a
young man's ambitious envy of that spick-and-span swaggerer who had

yelled anathema from the pilot-house of the Triton. It was real
steamboating, he reflected, even if the demands of owners and dividend-
seekers did compel a master to take his luck between his teeth and gallop
down the seas.

XVI ~ MILLIONS AND A MITE
To Tiffany's I took her,
I did not mind expense;
I bought her two gold ear-rings,
They cost me fifty cents.
And a-a-away, you santee!
My dear Annie!
O you New York girls!
Can't you dance the polka!
—Shanty, “The Lime Juicer.”

Mr. Ralph Bradish, using one of the booth telephones in the Wall Street
offices of Marston & Waller, earnestly asked the cashier of an up-town
restaurant, as a special favor, to hold for twenty-four hours the personal
check, amount twenty-five dollars, given by Mr. Bradish the evening
before.
Ten minutes later, with the utmost nonchalance and quite certain that the
document was as good as wheat, Mr. Bradish signed a check for one million
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
That amount in no measure astonished him. He was quite used to signing
smashing-big checks when he was called into the presence of Julius
Marston. Once, the amount named was two millions. And there had been
numbers and numbers of what Mr. Bradish mentally termed “piker
checks”—a hundred thousand, two and three hundred thousand. And he had
never been obliged to request any hold up on those checks for want of
funds. Because, in each instance, there had been a magic, printed line along
which Mr. Bradish had splashed his signature.
Before he blotted the ink on this check Bradish glanced, with only idle
curiosity, to note in what capacity he was serving this time. The printed line
announced to him that he was “Treasurer, the Paramount Coast
Transportation Company, Inc.” He remembered that in the past he had
signed as treasurer of the “Union Securities Company,” the “Amalgamated
Holding Company,” and for other corporations sponsoring railroads and big
industries with whose destinies Julius Marston, financier, appeared to have
much to do. It was evident that Financier Marston preferred to have a forty-

dollar-a-week clerk do the menial work of check-signing, or at least to have
that clerk's name in evidence instead of Marston's own.
That modesty about having his name appear in public on a check seemed
to attach to the business habits of Mr. Marston.
Mighty few person were ever admitted to this inner sanctuary where
Bradish sat facing his employer across the flat-topped desk. And men who
saw that employer outside his office did not turn their heads to stare after
him or point respectful finger at him or remark to somebody else, “There's
the big Julius Marston.” In the first place, Mr. Marston was not big in a
physical sense, and there was nothing about him which would attract
attention or cause him to be remarked in a crowd. And only a few persons
really knew him, anyway.
He sat in his massive chair; one hand propped on the arm, his elbow
akimbo, and with the other hand plucked slowly at the narrow strip of beard
which extended from his lower lip to the peaked end of his chin.
“Very well, Mr. Bradish,” he remarked, after the latter had lifted the
blotter from the check.
Bradish rose and bowed, and started to leave. He was a tall and shapely
young man, with a waist, with a carriage. His garb was up-to-the-minute
fashion—repressed. He was a study in brown, as to fabric of attire and its
accessories. One of those white-faced chaps who always look a bit bored,
with a touch of up-to-date cynicism! One of those fellows who listen much
and who say little!
“Just a moment, Bradish,” invited Marston, and the young man stopped.
“I like your way in these matters. You don't ask questions. You show no
silly interest in any check you sign.”
Bradish reflected an instant on the check in the restaurant cashier's
drawer, and pinched his thin lips a little more tightly.
“I'm quite sure you don't do any broadcast talking about the nature of
these special duties.” The financier pointed to the check. “I'll say quite
frankly that I didn't select you for this service until I had ascertained that
you did no talking about your own affairs in the office with my other
clerks.”
Bradish inclined his head respectfully.

“In financial matters it is necessary to pick men carefully. I trust you
understand my attitude. These transactions are quite legitimate. But modern
methods of high finance make it necessary to manipulate the details a little.
Your attitude in accepting these duties, as a matter of course is very
gratifying from a business standpoint. As a little mark of our confidence in
you, you will receive seventy-five dollars per week hereafter.”
“Thank you.”
Mr. Martson allowed himself a quick, dry smile. “This isn't a bribe, you
understand. There is nothing attached to this nominal service which requires
bribing. We merely want to make it worth while for a prudent and close-
mouthed young man to remain with us.”
A buzzer, as unobtrusive as were all the characteristics of Financier
Marston, sounded its meek purr.
“Yes,” he murmured into the receiver of the telephone which
communicated with the watchful picket of the Marston & Waller offices.
“Who? Oh, she may come in at once.”
“Wait here a moment, if you please, Mr. Bradish. It is my daughter who
has dropped in for a moment's word with me. I have something more for
you to attend to.”
Bradish walked to one of the windows. He stared sharply at the girl who
hurried in. Her hat and face were shrouded in an automobile veil, and the
cloistered light of the big room helped to conceal her features. But Bradish
seemed to recognize something about her in spite of the vagueness of
outline. When she spoke to her father the young man's eyes snapped in true
astonishment.
“I couldn't explain it very well over the telephone, papa, so I came right
down. Do forgive me if I bother you for just a minute.” She glanced quickly
at the young man beside the window, but found him merely an outline
against the light.
“Only one of our clerks,” said her father. “What is it, my girl?”
“It's Nan Burgess's house-party at Kingston! There's to be an automobile
parade—all decorated—at the fête, and I want to go in our big car, and have
it two days. I was afraid you'd say no if I asked you over the telephone, but
now that I'm right here, looking you in the eyes with all the coaxing power
of my soul, you just can't refuse, can you, papa?”

“I think perhaps I would have consented over the telephone, Alma.”
“Then I may take the car?” Her playful tones rose in ecstatic crescendo.
The impulsiveness of her nature was displayed by her manner in accepting
this favor. She danced to her father and threw her arms about him. She
exhibited as much delight as if he had bestowed upon her a gift of priceless
pearls. The exuberance of her joy appeared to annoy him a bit.
“Gently, gently, Alma! If you waste your thanks in this manner for a little
favor, what will you do some day for superlatives when you are really eager
to thank some-body for a big gift?”
“Oh, I'll always have thanks enough to go around—that's my disposition.
The folks who love me, I can love them twice as much. You're a dear old
dad, and I know you want me to run along so that you can go to making a
lot more money. So I'll just take myself out from underfoot.”
When she turned she glanced again at the person near the window, and
this time she got a good look at his face. Even the veil could not hide from
Bradish the color which spread into her cheeks. She was so conscious of her
embarrassment and of her appearance that she did not turn her face to her
father when he spoke to her.
“One moment, Alma! Seeing that my big car is going to have a two days'
vacation in the country, I may as well make it do one last business errand
for me.”
He called Bradish to the desk by a side jerk of the head.
“I want that check put into the hands of the brokerage firm of Mower
Brothers as quickly as possible. My car is at the door, and it may as well
take you along. Alma, allow this young man of ours to ride with you to the
place where I'm sending him.”
He did not present Bradish to Miss Marston. Bradish did not expect the
financier to do so. But this dismissal of him as a mere errand-boy—with the
young lady staring him out of countenance in a half-frightened way—did
cut the pride a bit, even in the case of a mere clerk. And this clerk was
pondering on the memory that only the night before he had clasped this
young lady—then a party unknown who was evidently bent upon an
escapade incog.—had encircled this selfsame maiden with his arms during
many blissful dances in one of the gorgeous Broadway public ball-rooms.

And he had regaled her and a girl friend on viands for which his twenty-
five-dollar check had scarcely sufficed to pay.
Bradish was pretty familiar with the phases and the oddities of the
dancing craze, but this contretemps rather staggered him.
They had asked no questions of each other during those dances. They had
been perfectly satisfied with the joy of the moment. She had looked at him
in a way and with a softness in her eyes which told him that she found him
pleasing in her sight. She had been enthusiastic, with that same exuberance
he had just witnessed, over his grace in the dance. They had promised to
meet again at the ball-room where social conventions did not prevent
healthy young folks from enjoying themselves.
“Good heavens!” she whispered to him, as she preceded him through the
door. “You work in my father's office?”
“You are surprised—a little shocked—and I don't blame you,” he
returned, humbly. “As for me, I am simply astounded. But I am not a
gossip.”
She stole a look at his pale, impassive face, and some of her father's
instinct in judging men seemed to reassure her.
“One must play a bit,” she sighed. “And it's so stupid most of the time,
among folks whom one knows very well. There are no more surprises.”
As he shut the door softly behind them Bradish heard Marston, once
more immersed in his affairs of business, directing over the telephone that
one Fletcher Fogg be located and sent to him.
“I apologize,” said Bradish, in the corridor. They were waiting for the
elevator.
“For what?” She lifted her eyebrows, and there was no hint of annoyance
in her dark eyes.
“For—well—seeing how the matter stands, it almost seems as if I had
presumed—was masquerading. I am only a clerk, and—”
“But you are a clerk in Julius Marston's offices,” she said, with pride,
“and that means that you are to be trusted. I require no apology from you,
Mr.—er—”
“My name is Ralph Bradish.”

“I dodged away from dullness last evening; I was hoping to have a bit of
a frolic. And I found a young gentleman who asked no impertinent
questions, who was very gracious, and who was a delight in the dance. It
was all very innocent—rather imprudent—but altogether lovely. There!”
“I thank you.”
“And—well, after Nan Burgess's house-party, I—”
She glanced up at him, provocation in her eyes.
“But I don't dare to hope, do I, that you will condescend to come again
and dance with me?”
“Julius Marston has taught his daughter to keep her promise, sir. If I
remember, I promised.”
He did not reply, for the elevator's grille door clashed open for them to
enter.
And in the elevator, and later in the car, he was silent, as became the
clerk of Marston's offices in the company of Marston's daughter when there
were listeners near.
Her eyes gave him distinct approval and her lips gave him a charming
smile when he alighted at his destination.
Bradish stood for a moment and gazed after the car when it threaded its
way into the Broadway traffic.
“She's a flighty young dame, with a new notion for every minute,” he
told himself. “You can see that plain enough. It's probably all jolly on her
part. However, in these days, if a fellow keeps his head steady and his feet
busy, there's no telling what the tango may lead to. This may be exactly,
what I've been paying tailors' bills for.”
Indicating that in these calculating times the spirit of youth in the ardor of
love at first sight is not as the poet of romance has painted it.

XVII ~ “EXACTLY!” SAID MR. FOGG
“O I am not a man o' war or privateer,” said he,
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we!
“But I'm an honest pirate a-looking for my fee,
Cruising down along the coast of the High Barbaree.”
—Shanty of the “Prince Luther.”

Mr. Fletcher Fogg privately and mentally and metaphorically slapped
himself on the back whenever he considered his many activities.
He was perfectly certain that he was the best little two-handed general
operator of an all-around character that any gentleman could secure when
that gentleman wanted a job done and did not care to give explicit
instructions as to the details of procedure.
The look of grief and regret that the fat face of Mr. Fogg could assume
when said gentleman—after the job was done—blamed the methods as
unsanctioned, even though the result had been achieved—that expression
was a study in humility—humility with its tongue in its cheek.
If Mr. Fogg could have advertised his business to suit himself—being not
a whit ashamed of his tactics—he would have issued a card inscribed about
as follows:

“Mr. FLETCHER FOGG: Promoting and demoting. Building and
busting. The whole inside of any financial or industrial
cheese cleaned out without disturbing the outside rind. All
still work done noiselessly. Plenty of brass bands for loud
work. Broad shoulders supplied to take on all the blame.”

Mr. Fogg, in the presence of Julius Marston, was properly obsequious,
but not a bit fawning. He wiped away the moisture patches beside his nose
with a purple handkerchief, and put it back into his outside breast pocket
with the corners sticking out like attentive ears. He crossed his legs and set
on his knee an ankle clothed in a purple silk stocking. On account of his
rotundity he was compelled to hold the ankle in place in the firm clutch of
his hand. He settled his purple tie with the other hand.

“I'm glad I was in reach when you wanted me,” he assured Mr. Marston.
“I'm just in on the Triton. And I want to tell you that you're running that
steamboat line in the way an American business man wants to have it run. If
I had been on any other line, sir, I wouldn't have been here to-day when you
were looking for me. Everything else on the coast prowling along half-
speed, but down slammed the old Triton, scattering 'em out from underfoot
like an auto going through a flock of chickens, but not a jar or a scrape or a
jolt, and into her dock, through two days of thick fog, exactly on the dot.
That's the way an American wants to be carried, sir.”
“I believe so, Mr. Fogg,” agreed Julius Marston. “And that's why we feel
it's going to be a good thing for all the coast lines to be under one
management—our management.”
“Exactly!”
“It's true progress—true benefit to travelers, stockholders, and all
concerned. Consolidation instead of rivalry. I believe in it.”
“Exactly!”
“As a broad-gauged business man—big enough to grasp big matters—
you have seen how consolidation effects reforms.”
“No two ways about it,” affirmed Mr. Fogg.
“That was very good missionary work you did in the matter of the Sound
& Cape line—very good indeed.”
“It's astonishing what high and lofty ideas some stockholders have about
properties they're interested in. In financial matters the poorest conclusion a
man can draw is that a stock will always continue to pay dividends simply
because it always has done so. I had to set off a pretty loud firecracker to
wake those Sound & Cape fellows up. I had to show 'em what damage the
new deals and competition and our combination would do to 'em if they
kept on sleeping on their stock certificates. Funny how hard it is to pry
some folks loose from their par-value notions.” Mr. Fogg delivered this
little disquisition on the intractability of stockholders with reproachful
vigor, staring blandly into the unwinking gaze of Mr. Marston. “I don't want
to praise my own humble efforts too much,” he went on, “but I truly believe
that inside another thirty days the Sound crowd would have been ready to
cash in at fifty, in spite of that minority bunch that was hollering for par.
That was only a big yawp from a few folks.”

“Fifty was a fair price in view of what's ahead in the way of competition,
but we have made it a five-eighths proposition in order to clinch the deal
promptly. I just sent one of our boys around with the check.”
Mr. Fogg beamed. He used his purple handkerchief on his cheeks once
more. He allowed to himself a few words of praise: “They'll understand
some day that I saved 'em from a bigger bump. But it's hard to show some
people.”
“Now, Mr. Fogg, we come to the matter of the Vose line. What's the
outlook?”
Mr. Fogg looked sad. “After weeks of chasing 'em, I can only say that
they're ugly and stubborn, simply blind to their best interests.”
“Insist on par, do they?”
“Worse than that. Old Vose and his sons and those old hornbeam
directors—retired sea-captains, you know, as hard as old turtles—they have
taken a stand against consolidation. They belong in the dark ages of
business. Old Vose had the impudence to tell me that forming this
steamboat combine was a crime, and that he wouldn't be a party to a
betrayal of the public. He won't come in; he won't sell; he's going to
compete.”
Mr. Marston stroked his strip of beard. “In order for our stock to be what
we intend it to be, the Paramount Coast Transportation has got to operate as
a complete monopoly, as you understand, Mr. Fogg. A beneficent monopoly
—consolidation benefiting all—but nevertheless a monopoly. With one line
holding out on us, we've got only a limping proposition.”
“Exactly!”
“What are we going to do about the Vose line?”
“Let it compete, sir. We can kill it in the end.”
“Possibly—probably. But that plan will not serve, Mr. Fogg.”
“It's business.”
“But it is not finance. I'm looking at this proposition solely as a financier,
Mr. Fogg. I hardly know one end of a steamboat from the other. I'm not
interested in rate-cutting problems. I don't know how long it would take to
put the Vose line under. But I do know this, as a financier, handling a big
deal, that the Paramount stock will not appeal to investors or the bonds to

banks unless we can launch our project as a clean, perfect combination,
every transportation charter locked up. I handle money, and I know all of
money's timidity and all of money's courage. You think the Vose directors
are able to hold their stockholders in line, do you?”
Mr. Fogg uncrossed his legs, put both feet on the floor, hooked his hands
across his paunch, and gazed up at the ceiling, evidently pondering
profoundly.
“I repeat, I'm not viewing this thing as a steamboating proposition, not
figuring what kind of tariffs will kill competition,” stated Mr. Marston. “I'm
not estimating what kind of tariffs will make a profit for the Paramount. I'd
as soon sell sugar over the counter. My associates expect me to make
money for them in another way—make it in big lumps and on a quick turn.
The Vose line, competing, kills us from the financial viewpoint.”
“Exactly.”
There was silence in the room for some time.
“There's never any telling what stockholders will do,” remarked Mr.
Fogg, his eyes still studying the panels of the ceiling.
Mr. Marston did not dispute that dictum.
His field-marshal slowly tipped down his head and gave his superior
another of those bland stares.
“So I'll go right ahead and see what they'll do, sir.”
He rose and kicked the legs of his trousers into place.
“You understand that in this affair, as in all matters where you have been
employed, there must be absolutely clean work. There must be no come-
back. Of course, I have instructed you to this effect regularly, but I wish to
have you remember that I have repeated the instructions, sir.”
“Exactly!” Mr. Fogg's eyes did not blink.
“You will be prepared to testify to that effect in case the need ever
arises.”
“Exactly!”
Mr. Fogg delivered that word like a countersign. Into it, in his interviews
with Julius Marston, he put understanding, humility, promise.
“May we expect quick action?” asked the financier. “The thing mustn't
hang fire. We have a lot of our nimble money tied up as it is.”

“Exactly!” returned Mr. Fogg, on his way to the door. “Quick action it
is!”
“This is probably the craziest idea that ever popped into a man's head
when that man was sitting in Julius Marston's office,” reflected Mr. Fogg,
marching through the anteroom of this temple of finance. “There's one thing
about it that's comforting—it's so wild-eyed it will never be blamed on to
Julius Marston as any of his getting up. And that's his principal lookout
when a deal is on. It seems to be up to me to deliver the goods.”
He sat down on a bench in the waiting-room and rubbed his knuckles
over his forehead.
“Just let me get this thing right end to,” he told himself. “How did the
idea happen to hit me, anyway? Oh, yes! Old Vose bragging to me that
every stockholder in the Vose line was behind him, and that the annual
meeting was about to come off, and then I would see what a condemned
poor show I stood to get even the toe of my boot into the crack of the
company door. He's a Maine corporation. I've known of cases where that
fact helped a lot. There are plenty of ifs and buts in this thing, but here
goes!”
He applied himself to one of the office telephones, asked for several
numbers, one after the other, and put questions with eagerness and rapidity.
The information he received seemed to disturb him considerably. He
came out of the booth and scrubbed his cheeks with his purple
handkerchief.
“Their annual meeting at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, four hundred
miles from here! Well, I suppose I ought to be thankful that it's not being
held right now,” Mr. Fogg informed himself, determined to fan that one
flicker of hope with both wings of his optimism. “But I've got to admit that
twenty-four hours is almighty scant time for a job of this sort, even when
the operator is the little Fogg boy himself. Damme, I haven't come to a full,
realizing sense yet of all I've got to do and how I'm going to do it.”
He hurried out, dove into an elevator, and was shot down to the street.
He was lucky enough to find a taxi at the curb.
“Grand Central,” he told the driver. “I've got five dollars that says you
can beat the Subway express and land me in season for the ten-o'clock
limited for Boston.”

As soon as it became evident to Mr. Fogg that his driver had seen his
duty and was going to do it, traffic squad be blowed, the promoter settled
back, and his thoughts began to revolve faster than the taxi's wheels.
“It's going to be like the mining-camp 'lulu hand,'” was his mental
preface to his plans. “It can be played only once in a sitting-in; it has got to
be backed with good bluff, but it's a peach when it works. And what am I a
promoter for? What have I studied foreign corporation laws for?”
Mr. Fogg took off his hat and mopped his bald spot, wrinkling his eyelids
in deep reflection.
“The idea is,” he mused, “I'm a candidate for the presidency of the Vose
line at to-morrow's meeting. But I haven't been elected yet!”
However, Mr. Fogg's preliminary sniffing at the affairs of the Vose line
had informed him where he could pick up at least ten scattered shares of
their stock. He figured that before midnight he would have them in his
possession. As to the next day and the next steps, well, the nerve of a real
American plunger clings to life until the sunset of all hopes, even as the
snake's tail, though the serpent's head be bruised beyond repair, is supposed
to wriggle until sunset.
He despatched a telegram at New Haven. He received a reply at
Providence, and he read it and felt like a gambler who has drawn a card to
fill his bobtail hand. When a design is brazen and the game is largely a
bluff, plain, lucky chance must be appealed to.
The telegram had been addressed to Attorney Sawyer Franklin, in a
Maine city. It had requested an appointment with Mr. Franklin on the
following morning.
The reply had stated that Mr. Franklin was critically ill in a hospital, but
that all matters of business would be attended to by his office force, as far
as was possible.
Attorney Sawyer Franklin, as Mr. Fogg, of course, was fully aware, was
clerk of the Vose line corporation, organized according to the Maine law as
a “foreign corporation,” under the more liberal regulations which have
attracted so many metropolitan promoters into the states of Maine and New
Jersey.

XVIII ~ HOW AN ANNUAL MEETING WAS
HELD—ONCE!
O, a ship she was rigged and ready for sea,
And all of her sailors were fishes to be!
Windy-y-weather,
Stormy-y-weather!
When the wind blows we're all together!
—The Fishes.

Fletcher Fogg, suave, dignified, radiating business importance, freshened
by a barber's ministrations, walked into the Franklin law-offices the next
morning at nine-thirty.
He announced himself to a girl typist, and she referred him to a young
man who came forth from a private room.
“I have power of attorney from Mr. Franklin to transact his routine
business,” explained the young man. “Of course, if it's a new case or a
question of law—”
“Neither, neither, my dear sir! Simply a matter of routine. But,” he leaned
close to the young man's ear, “strictly private.”
Mr. Fogg himself closed the door of the inner office when the two had
retired there.
“One of your matters to-day, I believe, is the annual meeting of the Vose
line. I am a stockholder.”
Fogg produced a packet of certificates and laid them on the desk.
“Are there to be any officers or other stockholders present?” he asked,
showing just a bit of solicitude, in spite of himself.
“I think not,” returned the young man. “Nothing has been said about it.
The proxies and instructions have been sent in, as usual, by registered
mail.” He indicated documents stacked on the desk. “I was just about to
begin on the matter.”
“I suppose our proxies run to the clerk of the corporation, as usual, with
full power of substitution, clerk to follow instructions,” said Mr. Fogg, a bit
pompously, using his complete knowledge of corporation routine.

“Yes, sir. We handle most of the corporation meetings that way when it's
all cut and dried. In this case, it's simply a re-election of the old officers.”
“Exactly!”
Mr. Fogg pulled his chair closer, dabbed his purple handkerchief on each
side of his nose, and inquired, kindly and confidentially: “My son, what's
your name?”
“David Boyne.”
“Law student here—secretary, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Exactly—and a long, hard pull ahead of you. It's too bad you're not in
New York, where a young man doesn't have to travel the whole way around,
but can cut a corner or two. I could give you a lot of examples of bright
young chaps who have grabbed in when the grabbing was good.
“But I haven't the time. You take my word for it. I'm a plain, outspoken
business man, and I'm in with the biggest financial interests in New York.
And I'm going to offer you the grandest opportunity of your life right now,
David.”
He picked up his certificates and arranged them in one hand, as a player
arranges his cards.
“I have here ten shares, say, and each share is owned by a different
individual—all good men. You don't know them, but I do. They are
connected with our big interests. And I'm right here as a stockholder. Do
you realize, David, that instructing you to hold this meeting without a single
stockholder present is really asking you to do something that's not strictly
legal?”
“We usually do it this way,” faltered Boyne.
“Exactly! Men like those who are running the Vose line are always
asking an innocent man to do something illegal. I'm going to come right to
the point with you, David. Those old moss-backs who have sent those
instructions are trying to wreck the Vose line. I want you to disregard those
instructions. I am anxious to be president and general manager of the line. I
want you to elect as directors these stockholders.” He tapped his finger on
the certificates.

The young man was both frightened and bewildered. He turned pale. “I
can't do that,” he gasped.
“Yes, you can. There are the proxies. It's up to you to vote 'em as you
want to. They allow full power of substitution, usual fashion!”
“But I can't disobey my instructions.”
“I say you can, if you've got grit enough to make a good thing for
yourself.”
“Such a thing was never done here.”
“Probably not. It's a new idea. But new things are being done right along
in high finance. You ought to be up where big things are happening every
day. You stand in with me, and I'll put you there. You see, I'm getting right
down to cases on this matter with you, David. Vote those proxies as I direct
and I'll hand you five thousand dollars inside of two hours, and will plant
you in a corking job with my people as soon as this thing calms down. I
could have palavered a long time before coming to business in this way, but
I see you're a bright young fellow and don't need a lot of hair-oil talk. I
don't ask you to hurt anybody in especial. You can elect the old treasurer—
we don't want to handle the money—this is no cheap brace game. But I
want a board of directors who will put me in as general manager until
certain reforms can be instituted so as to bring the line up to date. Five
thousand dollars, mind you, and then you'll be taken care of.”
“But I'll be put into state prison.”
“Nonsense, my boy! Why would you vote those proxies according to
your instructions? Why, because it would be for your interest to do so if I
hadn't come in here with a better proposition. Now it's for your interest to
vote 'em as I tell you. The most they can make out of it is a breach of trust,
and that amounts to nothing. With five thousand dollars in your mitt, you
wouldn't need to hang around here to take a lot of slurs. I'll slip you another
thousand for your expenses on a little trip till the air is all clear.”
Boyne stared at this blunt and forceful tempter; his hand which clutched
the chair-arms trembled; “I'm going to be still more frank with you, my boy.
And, by the way, you must know that I'm no mere four-flusher. You've
heard of Fletcher Fogg, eh? You knew who I was when you got that wire
from me yesterday?”
“Why, yes, I know of you through our corporation work, sir.”

“Exactly!” Mr. Fogg assumed even more unctuously the manner of an
old friend. “Now, as I say, I'm going to be frank—take you in on the ground
floor. Of course, they can have another—a special meeting of the Vose line
after a thirty days' notice to the stockholders. They will probably call that
meeting, and I don't care if they do. But I have an ambition to be general
manager of the line for those thirty days to make—well, I want to make a
little investigation of general conditions,” declared Mr. Fogg, resorting to
his purple handkerchief. “That's all I care to say. At the end of thirty days
we may—I'm speaking of the big interests I represent—we may decide to
buy the line and make it really worth something to the stockholders. You
understand, I hope. It's strictly business—it's all right—it's good
financiering. After it's all over and those old, hardshell directors wake up,
I'll venture to say they'll be pleased all around that this little turn has been
made. In the mean time, having been taken care of, you needn't mind
whether they're pleased or not.”
Boyne looked at the sheaf of certificates in Fogg's hand; he bent
frightened gaze on the documents stacked on the desk. They lay there
representing his responsibility, but they also represented opportunity. The
sight of them was a rebuke to the agitated thoughts of treason which
assailed him. But the mere papers had no voice to make that rebuke pointed.
Mr. Fogg did have a voice. “Five thousand dollars in your fist, my boy, as
soon as I can work the wire to New York—and there's no piker about the
man who can have five thousand flashed in here when he asks for it. You
can see what kind of men are behind me. What do you care about old man
Vose and his crowd?”
“There's Mr. Franklin! I'll be doing a mighty mean trick, Mr. Fogg. No,
I'll not do it.”
Mr. Fogg did not bluster. He was silent for some time. He pursed his lips
and stared at Boyne, and then he shifted his gaze to the ceiling.
“It's too bad—too bad for a young fellow to turn down such an
opportunity,” he sighed. “It can be done without you, Boyne, in another
way. The same result will happen. But you might as well be in on it. Now
let me tell you a few instances of how some of the big men in this country
got their start.”
Mr. Fogg was an excellent raconteur with a vivid imagination, and it did
not trouble his conscience because the narratives he imparted to this wide-

eyed youth were largely apocryphal.
“You see,” he put in at the end of the first tale, “what a flying start will do
for a man. Suppose that chap I've just told you about sat back and refused to
jump when the road was all open to him! You don't hear anybody knocking
that man nowadays, do you? And yet that's the trick he pulled to get his
start.”
With a similar snapper did Mr. Fogg touch up each one of his stories of
success.
“I—I didn't have any idea—I thought they managed it some other way,”
murmured David Boyne.
“Your horizon has been limited; you haven't been out in the world
enough to know, my son.”
“I have heard of all those men, of course. They're big men to-day.”
“You didn't think they got to be millionaires by saving the money out of
clerks' salaries, did you? Of course, Boyne, I admit that in this affair you'll
be up to a little sharp practice. But you're not stealing anything. Nobody can
lug off steamships in a vest pocket. It's only a deal—and deals are being
made every day.”
Fogg was a keen judge of his fellow-men. He knew weakness when he
saw it. He could determine from a man's lower lip and the set of his nose
whether that person were covetous. And he knew now what signified the
flush on Boyne's cheeks and the light in his eyes. However, there was
something else to reckon with.
“I will not betray Mr. Franklin's confidence in me. Positively, I will not,”
said the young man. “He's sick, and that would make it worse.”
“How sick is he?”
“He is very, very ill. It was an operation, and he has had a relapse. But
we hope he's coming out all right.”
“What hospital is he in?”
Boyne gave the name.
“I think I'll call up and ask when it is expected that he can see visitors,”
announced Fogg, with business briskness. “I wish Franklin had been here
on deck—Franklin, himself.”

“I don't believe Mr. Franklin would turn a trick of this sort,” asserted the
clerk. “I'd hate to face him, after doing it myself.”
“Franklin would be able to see further into a financial deal than a young
chap,” said Mr. Fogg, severely, and then he found his number and made his
call. “Good heavens!” he blurted, after a question. “I am in his office. Yes,
I'll tell Boyne.”
With a fine affectation of grief and surprise, he snapped the transmitter
upon the hook and whirled on Boyne. His back had been toward the young
man—he had spoken with hand across the receiver.
“He has just died—he's dead! Franklin has passed away.”
“I would have been notified,” gasped Boyne.
“They were just going to call you. You heard me say I'd inform you.”
“But I must call the hospital—offer my services. I must go up there.”
Mr. Fogg put out his hand and pressed the young man back into his chair.
“A lulu must be played quick and the pot raked sudden,” he reflected.
“Just a moment, my son. Now you're standing on your own bottom. You
won't have to explain to Mr. Franklin.”
He pointed to the clock. His stories had consumed time. The hour was
ten-thirty-five.
“That annual meeting of the Vose line was called for ten of the clock to-
day. Mr. Franklin was alive at that hour. He was the clerk of that
corporation. What happens now will not embarrass you so far as he's
concerned. Be sensible. Make a stroke for yourself. You're out of a job,
anyway. Go to it, now.”
Fogg spoke sharply, imperiously. He exerted over the young man all the
force of his personality.
“Five thousand dollars—protected by my interests—slipped out of sight
for a few months—it's easy. Sit down there and make up your records; vote
those proxies. Vote 'em, I say. This meeting was held at ten o'clock. Make
up your records.”
He stood over Boyne, arguing, promising, urging, and the young man, at
last, sweating, flushed, trembling, bent over his documents, sorted them,
and made up his records.

“We'll send on a copy to the office of the Vose line by registered mail,”
commanded Fogg. “Attest it as a copy of the true record by notary. When it
drops in on 'em I will be there, with my directors and my little story—and
the face of Uncle Vose will be worth looking at, though his language may
not be elevating. You come out with me, Boyne. I'm going to the telegraph
office.”
“But I must get in touch at once with Mr. Franklin's family—offer my
services,” pleaded the clerk.
“There isn't a thing you can do right now,” snapped the masterful
gentleman from New York. “I suggest that you close the office. Send the
girl home. You should do that much out of respect to your employer's
memory.”
Ten minutes later the record had been mailed and the flustered Boyne
was trotting around town with Mr. Fogg. The latter seemed to have a
tremendous amount of business on his hands. He hired a cab and was
hustled yon and thither, leaving the young man in the vehicle, with
instructions to stay there, whenever a stop was made. But at last Mr. Fogg
returned from an errand with some very tangible results. He put a packet of
bank-notes into Boyne's shaking hands.
“Did you ever see as much real money before, my son?” asked Fogg,
genially. “That's your five thousand. And here's five hundred toward that
expense money we promised. I'm suggesting that you leave town to-night.
Tuck that cash away on yourself and duck out of sight.”
Having secured the money and placed that powerful argument in the
young man's hands, Mr. Fogg's hurry and anxiety seemed to be over. When
he had seen the packet buttoned inside Boyne's coat he smiled.
“The trade is clinched and the job is done, son, and I feel sure that, being
a healthy young American citizen with plenty of cash to pay your way,
you're not going to let go that cash nor do any foolish squealing.”
“I've gone too far to back out,” admitted Boyne, patting the outside of his
coat. “But it seems like a dream.”
“I've heard a little piece of good news while I've been running around—
forgot to tell you,” said Fogg, in a matter-of-fact way. “That fool attendant
at the hospital must have misunderstood me, or I misunderstood him.
Franklin isn't dead.”

“He-isn't-dead?”
“No. Last report is that he's better this forenoon. But that's the way some
of these crazy attendants mix things up when anybody inquires at a hospital.
Now, of course, seeing that the registered copy is on its way and Franklin is
getting better, that's all the more reason why you don't care to hang around
these diggings and be annoyed. I've got a scheme. It will take you out of
town in a very quiet style. I have telephoned down to the docks, and there's
a Vose freighter in here discharging rails. Do you live at home or at a
boarding-place?”
“I board,” said Boyne, still wrestling with the sickening information that
he had betrayed an employer who was alive; somehow the sentiment that it
was equally base to betray a deceased employer had not impressed itself on
his benumbed conscience. He was now keenly aware that he feared to meet
up with a living and indignant Lawyer Franklin. Fogg questioned, and
Boyne gave his boarding-house address.
“We'll drive there, and I'll wait outside in the cab until you can scratch
together a gripful of your things. Don't load yourself down too much.
Remember, you've got plenty of cash in your pockets.”
A little later Fogg escorted the young man up the gang-plank of the
Nequasset, from whose hold the last of her load of clanging rails was being
derricked by panting windlass engines. To Captain Zoradus Wass, who was
lounging against the rail just outside the pilot-house, Mr. Fogg marched
with business promptitude, and spoke with assurance.
“Captain, my name is Fletcher Fogg. Within forty-eight hours the
directors of the Vose line will elect me president and general manager. That
news may be rather astonishing, but it's true.”
The veteran skipper did not reply. He shifted a certain bulge from one
cheek to the other.
“Well?” queried Fogg, a bit sharply.
“I ain't saying anything”
“You believe what I tell you, don't you?”
“I don't know you.”
“This young man is David Boyne, acting clerk of the Vose line
corporation. The annual meeting has just been held in this city. He made the

official records. He will tell you that a new board of directors has been
chosen—the old crowd is out.”
“That is so,” stated Boyne, obeying the prompting of Fogg's quick
glance.
“I don't know you, either.”
Mr. Fogg was not abashed. “It isn't especially necessary that you know
us. How soon do you leave?”
“We're going out light as soon as them rails are on the wharf.”
“I am sending Mr. Boyne with you on a tour of inspection, captain.
Please give him quarters and use him right.”
“Nothing doing till I get orders from the owners,” declared Captain Wass.
“Haven't I told you that I shall be general manager of this line to-morrow,
or next day, at the latest?”
“When you're general manager come around and give off your orders,
sir.”
“I'll do it. I'll come aboard in New York—”
“I'm ordered to Philadelphia,” prompted Captain Wass. “That's where
you'll find me.”
“Philadelphia, then! I'll come aboard and fire you.”
“Do just as you feel like doing.”
“You refuse to take along this young man?”
“This ain't a passenger-boat. I don't know you. Show orders from owners
—otherwise nothing doing.”
Mate Mayo had come out of his cabin, near at hand. With a young man's
quicker perception of possibilities and contingencies he realized that his
skipper might be letting an old man's obstinacy block common sense.
The first mate had an eye for men and their manners. He had been
listening to Mr. Fogg. That gentleman certainly seemed to know what he
was talking about. And young Mate Mayo, having a nose for news as well
as an eye for men, understood that the coast transportation business was in a
touchy state generally. He gave Mr. Fogg further inspection and decided
that a little skilful compromising was advisable.
“Captain Wass, will you step aside with me a moment?” asked the mate.

“What for?”
“I want to have a word with you.”
“Have it right here,” said the captain, tartly. “I never have any business
that's got to be whispered behind corners.” He scowled when his mate gave
him a wink, both suggestive and imploring. “Spit it out!”
“The law doesn't allow us to take passengers, as you suggest. And
naturally you don't like to act without orders from owners.” He looked at
Mr. Fogg as he spoke, plainly offering apology to that gentleman. “But we
need a second steward and—”
“We don't!” Captain Wass was blunt and tactless.
“I beg pardon—we really do. And we can sign this young man in a—a
sort of nominal way, and then when we get to Philadelphia we'll probably
find the matter all straightened out.”
“What's your name?” asked Mr. Fogg.
“Boyd Mayo, sir. First mate.”
“Mr. Mayo, you're a young man with a lot of common sense,” declared
Fogg.
To himself, staring at the young man, he said: “I'm going to play this
game out with two-spots, and here's one ready for the draw!”
“I'll see you in Philadelphia, Mr. Mayo,” he continued, aloud. “I am
exactly what I say I am. Captain Wass, you've got something coming to
you. Mr. Mayo, you've got something coming to you, also—and it's good!”
His assertiveness was compelling, and even the captain displayed
symptoms of being impressed. “It isn't at all necessary that my agent make
this trip with you, Captain Wass. Perhaps I had no distinct right to bring him
here. But I am a hustling sort of a business man and I want to get at matters
in short order. However, I ask no favors. Come on, Boyne!”
“We'll sign him on as steward to cover the law,” proffered the captain, as
terse in consent as he was in refusal.
“Very well,” agreed Fogg. “You've got an able first mate, sir.” He flipped
his watch out. “I've got a train to make, gentlemen. Good day!”
He took Boyne by the arm and led him to the ladder from the bridge.
“Son,” said he, “you dig into that Mayo chap till you know him up and
down and through and through. I'm going to use him. And you keep your

mouth shut about yourself.” He backed down the ladder, feeling his way
cautiously with his fat legs, trotted to the waiting cab, and was whirled
away.
At high noon the next day Fletcher Fogg marched into the general offices
of the Vose line in company with ten solid-looking citizens. Imperturbable
and smiling, he allowed President Vose to shriek anathema and to wave the
certified copy of the record of the annual meeting under the snub Fogg
nose.
“What you say doesn't change the situation in the least,” affirmed Mr.
Fogg. “You'll find the actual records of the meeting deposited in the usual
place in the state of your incorporation. If you think these new directors are
not lawfully and duly elected, you can apply to the courts.”
“You confounded thief, it's likely to take a year to get a decision. This is
damnable. It's piracy. You know what courts are!”
“Poke up your courts, then. It isn't my fault if they're slow.”
The new directors filed into the board-room and with great celerity
proceeded to elect Fletcher Fogg to be president and general manager of the
Vose line.
“What are you going to do?” pleaded the deposed executive head. “My
money is in here—my whole life is in it—my pride—my intention to see
that the public gets a square deal. You infernal rogue, what are you going to
do with my property?”
“That's my own business,” said Fletcher Fogg.
“You can't get away with it—you can't do it!” raged Vose. “I'll get at the
inside of how that meeting was conducted. You'd better take backwater right
now, Fogg, and save yourself. I'm not afraid to tell you what I'm going to
do. I'll have a temporary injunction issued. I'll prove fraud was used at that
meeting—bribery, yes, sir!”
Mr. Fogg smiled and sat down at the president's desk. “First he'll have to
find a young man by the name of David Boyne,” he told himself.
“Vose,” said the new president, “all you can show a court is the record of
an annual meeting, duly and legally held. And if the judge wants to have a
look at me he'll find me running this line a blamed sight better than you
have ever run it.”

“It's a cheap, plain trick,” bleated the aged steamship manager. “Your
crowd is going to sell out to the Paramount—it's your plot.”
“Oh no! We're not inviting injunctions and law and newspaper talk and
slurs and slander, Mr. Vose. If there's ever any selling out you'll be the first
to suggest it; I never shall. You see, I'm just as frank with you as you are
with me. Selling this line to the Paramount right now, just because the new
board is in, would be ragged work—very coarse work. Thank Heaven, I
have a proper respect for the law—and what it can do to bother a fool. I am
not a fool, Mr. Vose.”

XIX ~ THE PRIZE PACKAGE FROM MR.
FOGG
Our captain stood on his quarter-deck,
And a fine little man was he!
“Overhaul, overhaul, on your davit tackle fall,
And launch your boats to the sea,
Brave boys! And launch your boats to the sea.”
—The Whale.

A slowing, tug, tooting fussy and staccato blasts which Captain Wass
translated into commands to hold up, intercepted the Nequasset in Hampton
Roads.
Mr. Fletcher Fogg was a passenger on the tug. In a suit of natty gray, he
loomed conspicuously in the alley outside the tug's pilot-house. He cursed
roundly when he toilsomely climbed the ladder to the freighter's deck, for
the rusty sheathing smutched the knees of his trousers.
“I'm doing a little better than I promised you, captain,” he stated when he
arrived finally in the presence of the master. “I said Philadelphia. But here I
am. Do you know me now?”
“Your name is Fogg,” returned Captain Wass, exhibiting no special
delight.
“And I'm manager of this line. As it seems to be pretty hard for you to get
anything through that thick nut of yours, I'll ask you to glance at a paper
which will save argument.”
The paper was an attested notification, signed by the directors, stating in
laconic legal phrase what Mr. Fogg had just declared.
“You recognize my authority, do you?”
“Your bill o' lading reads O. K.,” assented the skipper.
“Very well! Exactly! Then you take your orders. Proceed to an anchorage
off Lambert Point below Norfolk, pick a berth well off the channel, and put
down both hooks. The boat is going out of commission. I find you're not
making any money for the owners.”
“It ain't my fault. With charters at—” began the master, indignantly.

“I haven't any time for a joint debate. You are laid off. Bring your
accounts to the main office as soon as you have turned the steamer over to
the caretaker—he'll come out from Norfolk.” Manager Fogg turned on his
heel to meet Mate Mayo. “You will report at the main offices, too, Mr.
Mayo. Have you master's papers?”
“I have, sir—Atlantic waters, Jacksonville to East-port.”
“Very good—you're going to be promoted. I shall put you aboard the
passenger-steamer Montana as captain.” He looked about sharply. “Where
is my agent?”
“There, in the quartermaster's cabin. We gave him that,” replied Captain
Wass, gruffly. “I'm glad I'm out of steamboating. I've learned how to run a
boarding-house and make money out of it.”
Mr. Fogg did not understand that sneer, and he paid no attention to the
captain's manner. He started for the cabin indicated.
“Well, you can swell around in gold braid now and catch your heiress,”
observed Captain Wass to his mate.
“I'm sorry, skipper,” said the young man, with real feeling. “You are the
man to be promoted, not I. It isn't right—it doesn't seem real.”
“There isn't any real steamboating on this coast any longer. It is—I don't
know what the devil it is,” snarled the veteran. “I have been sniffing and
scouting. I'd like to be a mouse in the wall of them New York offices and
hear what it is they're trying to do to us poor cusses. Ordered one day to
keep the law; ordered the next day to break the law; hounded by owners and
threatened by the government! I'm glad I'm out of it and glad you've got a
good job. That last I'm specially glad about. But keep your eye peeled.
There are queer doings round about you!”
Fogg entered the cabin and shut the door behind him. He found Boyne
sitting on a stool and looking somewhat apprehensive. “Hiding?” inquired
Fogg.
“I thought I wouldn't show myself till I was sure about who was on that
tug,” said the young man.
“That's the boy, David,” complimented Fogg, with real heartiness.
“You're no fool. Nothing like being careful. Pack your bag and go aboard
the tug.” He marched out.

“Philadelphia charter has been canceled, eh?” asked Captain Wass. The
tone of his voice did not invite amity.
“It has, sir.”
“Seems queer to turn down a cargo that's there waiting—and the old boat
can carry it cheaper than anybody else, the way I've got expenses fined
down.”
“Are you trying to tell me my business?”
“I have beep steamboating forty years, and I know a little something
about it.”
Mr. Fogg looked at the old mariner, eyes narrowed. He wanted to inform
Captain Wass that the latter knew altogether too much about steamboating
for the kind of work that was planned out along the coast in those ticklish
times.
“Then I ain't to expect anything special from now on?” asked the skipper.
In spite of his determination to be crusty and keep his upper lip stiff, he
could not repress a little wistfulness, and his eyes roved over the old
freighter with affection.
“Not a thing, sir!” Mr. Fogg was blunt and cool. He started for the ladder.
He slapped the shoulder of Mayo as he passed the young man. “Here's the
kind of chap we're looking for nowadays. The sooner you report, my boy,
the better for you.”
With Boyne following him, he climbed down the swaying ladder, and
was lifted from the lower rungs over the tug's rail to a secure footing.
After the lines had been cast off and the tug went floundering away at a
sharp angle, Captain Wass scuffed into his pilot-house and gave the bells.
“She seems to feel it—honest she does!” he told Mate Mayo. “She goes
off logy. She doesn't pick up her heels. Nor could I do it when I walked in
here. Going to be scrapped—the two of us! Cuss their picking and stealing
and fighting and financing. They ain't steam-boating any longer. They're
using good boats to play checkers in Wall Street with. Well, son,” he
mourned, hanging dispiritedly over the sill of the window and staring up the
wind-swept Chesapeake, “I ain't going to whine—but I shall miss the old
packet and the rumble and racket of the old machine down there in her
belly. I'd even take the job of watchman aboard her if he would hire me.”

“He seems to fancy me a bit. I'll ask him to hire you,” proffered the mate,
eagerly.
“I reckon you didn't get the look in his eye when he fired me,” said
Captain Wass. “I won't allow you to say a word to him about me. You go
ahead, boy, and take the job he has offered. But always remember that he's a
slick operator. See what he has done to Uncle Vose; and we haven't been
able to worm it out of that passenger how it was done, either. Financing in
these days comes pretty nigh to running without lights and under forced
draught. It gets a man to Prosperity Landing in a hurry, providing he doesn't
hit anything bigger than he is. They're going to haul up this freighter and
blame it on to me because I ain't making money for the owners. They'll
have plenty of figgers to show it. Look out that they don't lay something
worse and bigger to you. They're going to play a game with the Vose line, I
tell you! In the game of big finance, 'tag-gool,' making 'it' out of the little
chap who can't run very fast, seems to be almighty popular.”
He slowed the freighter to a snail's pace when he approached the dredged
channel, and at last the leadsman found suitable bottom. Both anchors were
let go.
The old skipper sounded the jingle, telling the chief engineer that the
engine-crew was released. In a speaking-tube the captain ordered both
boilers to be blown off.
“And there's the end of me as master of my ship,” he said.
Mate Mayo's eyes were wet, but words of sympathy to fit the case did not
come to his sailor tongue, and he was silent.
When the tug was near Newport News, Manager Fogg took David Boyne
apart from all ears which might hear. He gave the young man another
packet of money.
“The rest of your expenses for a good trip,” he said. “You seem to be a
chap who knows how to mind his own business—and able to get at the
other fellow's business in pretty fair shape. You haven't told such an awful
lot about young Mayo, but it's satisfactory to learn that he has lived such a
simple and every-day life that there isn't much to tell.”
“I never saw a man so sort of guileless,” affirmed Boyne. “Not that I
have had a lot of experience, but in a lawyer's office you are bound to see
considerable of human nature.”

“He is no doubt a very deserving young man—and I'm glad I can use
him,” said Fogg, not able to keep all the grimness out of his tones. “Now,
son,” he went on, after a moment of pondering, “you stay on board this tug
till I have been gone five minutes. There are a lot of sharp eyes around in
these times, and some of Vose's friends would be glad to run to him with a
story about me. After five minutes, you take your bag and walk to Dock
Seven and go aboard the freighter Ariel—go just as if you belonged there.
Tell the captain that you are Daniel Boyle—get the name—Daniel Boyle.
And never tell anybody until you hear from me that your name is David
Boyne. That freighter leaves to-night for Barbados with sugar machinery.
You'll have a nice trip.”
“I don't care how far away I get,” declared Boyne, rather bitterly. “I have
done a tough trick. I'm pretty much of a renegade. No, I don't care how far I
go.”
“Nor I, either,” agreed Fogg, but a smile relieved the brutality of the
speech. “You see, son, both of us have special reasons why it's just as well
for you to be away from these diggings for a time. If some folks get hold of
you they'll bother you with a lot of foolish questions. When you get tired of
Barbados go ahead and pick out another nice trip, and keep going, and later
on we'll find a good job for you up this way. Keep me posted. Good-by.”
The tug had docked and he hurried off and away.
“It's quite a game,” reflected Mr. Fogg. “I've bluffed a pot with one two-
spot. Work was a little coarse because it had to be done on short notice. The
work I do with my second two-spot is going to be smoother, and there won't
be so much beefing after the pot is raked in. Too much hollering, and your
game gets raided! I can see what would happen to me—Julius Marston
doing it—if I give the strong-arm squad an opening. But if they see the little
Fogg boy slip a card in the next deal he's going to make—well, I'll eat the
Montana, if that's the only way to get rid of her.”
Boyd Mayo lost no time in obeying his orders to report in New York. He
gave his name to a clerk at the offices of the Vose line and asked to see Mr.
Fogg. He presented himself a bit timorously. He was not at all sure of his
good fortune. It is rather bewildering for a young man to have the captaincy
of a twin-screw passenger racer popped at one as carelessly as tossing a
peanut to a child. He crushed his cap between trembling palms when he
followed the clerk into the inner office.

Mr. Fogg rose and greeted Mayo with great cordiality. “Good morning,
captain,” said the manager. “Allow me to hope that you're going to be as
lively in keeping to schedule time as you have been in getting here from
Norfolk.”
“I didn't feel like wasting much time, considering what was promised
me,” stammered Mayo, not yet sure of himself.
“Afraid I might change my mind?”
“It seemed too good to be true. I wanted to get here as soon as I could
and make sure that I had heard right, sir. Here are my papers.”
He laid them in the manager's hand. Fogg did not unfold them. He fanned
them, indicating a chair.
“Sit down, Captain Mayo. You understand that new management has
taken hold of the Vose line in order to get some life and snap into the
business. We have strong competition. A big syndicate is taking over the
other steamship properties, and we must hustle to keep up with the
procession. I'm laying off freighters that are not showing a proper profit—
I'm weeding out the moss-covered captains who are not up with the times.
That's why I'm putting you on the Montana in place of Jacobs.”
“He's a good man—one of the best,” ventured Mayo, loyalty to his kind
prompting him. “I'll be sorry to see him step aside, as glad as I am to be
promoted—and that's honest.”
“That's the way to talk; but we've got to have hustle and dash, and young
men can give us what we're after. It doesn't mean that you've got to take
reckless chances.”
“I hope not, Mr. Fogg. My training with Captain Wass has been the other
way. And if you could only give him—”
“Captain, you've got your own row to hoe. Keep your eye on it,” advised
the general manager, sharply. “I'm picking captains for the Vose boats, and I
think I understand my business. Now what I want to know is, do you have
confidence in me? Are you going to be loyal to me?”
“Yes, sir!” affirmed Mayo, impressed by his superior's brisk, brusque
business demeanor.
“Exactly! And the only talk I want you to turn loose is to the effect that
you believe I'm doing my best to make this line worth something to the
stockholders. Where are you stopping?”

Mayo named a little hotel around the corner.
“I'll put you aboard the Montana just as soon as I can arrange the details
of transfer. I may let Jacobs make another trip or so. Report here each
morning at nine. For the rest of the time keep within reach of the hotel
telephone.”
Mayo saluted and went out.
Fogg called the observer at the weather bureau on the telephone and
asked some questions. He was informed that the wind had swung into the
northwest and that the long-prevailing fog had been blown off the coast.
Mr. Fogg appeared to feel somewhat peevish over this sudden departure
of the weather phenomenon which bore his family name. He slammed the
receiver on to the hook and said a naughty word. A person overhearing
might have wondered a bit, for here was a steamboat manager cursing the
absence of the fog instead of preserving his profanity to expend on the
presence of the demoralizing mists. But the reign of the north wind in late
summer is never long; three days later the breeze shifted, and the gray
banks of the fog marched in from the open sea.
Mayo was awakened early by the clamor of the whistles of river craft, for
the little hotel was near the water-front. He saw the fog drifting in shredded
masses against the high buildings, shrouding the towers. He had been
waiting his call to duty with much impatience, finding the confinement of
the hotel irksome in the crisp days of sunlight, eager to be out and about
this splendid new duty which promised so much.
It was the Montana's sailing-day from the New York end.
He had gone to sleep thrilling with the earnest hope that he would be
called to take her out. But when he looked out into that morning, saw the
draping curtains of the stalking mists, heard the frantic squallings of craft in
the harbor, frenzied howls of alarm, hoarse hootings of protests and
warnings, he was suddenly and pointedy anxious to have his elevation to
the pilot-house of the Montana deferred. Better the smoky, cramped office
of the little hotel where he had been chafing in dismal waiting. He was
perfectly willing to sit there and study over again the advertising chromos
on the walls and gaze out on the everlasting procession of rumbling drays.
But at eight o'clock the telephone summoned him.

“This is General-Manager Fogg,” the voice informed him, though he did
not require the information; he knew those crisp tones. “I am speaking from
my apartments. Please proceed at once to the Montana. I'll come aboard
within an hour.”
“Do you expect me to take command—to—take her out to-day?” faltered
Mayo.
“Certainly. Captain Jacobs will transfer command as soon as I get down.”
Mayo had just been rejoicing in his heart because Jacobs would be
obliged to bear the responsibility of that day's sailing; he had been perfectly
sure that a new man would not be summoned under the conditions which
prevailed. He wanted to suggest to Manager Fogg that making the change
just then would be inadvisable. He cleared his throat and searched his soul
for words. But a sharp and decisive click told him that Mr. Fogg considered
the matter settled. He came away from the telephone, dizzy and troubled,
and he was not comforted when he recollected how Manager Fogg had
received meek suggestions in the past. He paid his modest account, took his
traveling-bag, and started for the Vose line pier.
When he saw her looming in the fog—his ship at last—he felt like
running away from her incontinently, instead of running toward her.
Mayo had all of a young man's zeal and ambition and courage—but he
had in full measure a sailor's caution and knowledge of conditions; he had
been trained by that master of caution, Captain Zoradus Wass. He was
really frightened as he stared up at the towering bow, the mighty flanks, the
graceful sweep of superstructure, and realized that he must guide this giant
and her freightage of human beings into the white void of the fog. In his
honesty he acknowledged to himself that he was frightened.
The whole great fabric fairly shouted responsibility at him.
He was confident of his ability. As chief mate he had mastered the
problems of courses and manoeuvers in the fog along that same route which
he must now take. But until then the supreme responsibility had devolved
upon another.
Men were rushing freight aboard on rattling trucks—parallel lines of
stevedores were working. There were many trunks, avant couriers of the
passengers.

He went aboard by the freight entrance and found his way to the row of
officers' staterooms. He recognized the gray-bearded veteran who was
pacing the alley outside the pilot-house, though the man was not in uniform;
it was the deposed master.
“Good morning, Captain Mayo,” he said, without any resentment in his
tones. “I congratulate you on your promotion.”
“I hope you understand that I didn't go hunting for this job,” blurted
Mayo.
“I believe it's merely a matter of new policy—so Manager Fogg tells me.
Understand me, too, Captain Mayo! I harbor no resentment, especially not
against you.”
He put out his hand in fine, manly fashion, and was so distinctly the best
type of the dignified, self-possessed sea-captain of the old school, that
Mayo fairly flinched at thought of replacing this man.
Captain Jacobs opened the door lettered “Captain.” “All my truck is out
and over the rail. I'll sit in with you, if you don't mind, until Mr. Fogg
arrives. You're going to have a thick passage, Captain Mayo.”
“It doesn't seem right to me—putting a new man on here in this fog,”
protested Mayo, warmly. “I ought to have her in clear weather till I know
her tricks. In a pinch, when you've got to know how a boat behaves, and
know it mighty sudden in order to avoid a smash, one false move puts you
into the hole.”
“They seem to be running steamboat lines from Wall Street nowadays,
instead of from the water-front,” said Captain Jacobs, dryly. “It's all in the
game as they're playing it in these times. There's nothing to be said by the
men in the pilot-house.”
“I'm a sailor, and a simple one. I think I know my job, Captain Jacobs, or
else I wouldn't accept this promotion. But I've got no swelled head. It's the
proper and sensible thing for you to take the Montana out tonight and let
me hang around the pilot-house and watch you. If I can prevail upon Mr.
Fogg to allow it, will you make another trip?”
“I would do it to help you, but I'll be blasted if I'll help Fogg—not if he
would get down now and beg me,” declared Captain Jacobs, showing
temper for the first time. “And if you had been pitchforked out as I've been

after all my years of honest service you'd feel just as I do, Captain Mayo.
You don't blame me, do you?”
“I can't blame you.”
“You know the courses, and you'll have the same staff as I've had. You'll
find every notation in the log accurate to the yard or the second. She's a
steady old girl and, knowing tide set and courses, as you do, you can
depend on her to the turn of a screw. You have my best wishes—but I'm
done.”
He put the fervor of final resolve into the declaration. But, with sailor's
fraternal spirit of helpfulness he sat down and went into the details of all the
Montana's few whims. He called in the mates and introduced them to the
new master. They seemed to be quiet, sturdy men who bore no malice
because a new policy had put a new man over them.
Then arrived General-Manager Fogg, and in this strictly business
presence Mayo did not presume to voice any of his doubts or his opinion of
his inefficiency.
The rather stiff and decidedly painful ceremony of speeding the former
commander was soon over, and Captain Jacobs departed.
“Why haven't you put on your uniform?” asked Fogg. “You have fixed
yourself out with a new one, of course?”
“Yes, sir.” Mayo's cheeks flushed slightly when he recollected how he
had strutted before the mirror in his room at the hotel. But he had been
ashamed to hurry into his gilt-incrusted coat in the presence of Captain
Jacobs.
“Get it on as soon as you can,” ordered the general manager. “I want you
to make a general inspection of the boat with me.”
They made the tour, and in spite of his misgivings, when he saw the mists
sweeping past the end of the pier Captain Mayo, receiving the salutes of
respectful subalterns, felt the proud joy of one who has at last arrived at the
goal of his ambition.
Master of the crack Montana, queen of the Vose fleet, at the age of
twenty-six!
He glanced into each of the splendid mirrors of the great saloon to make
sure of the gold letters on his cap.

The thick carpet seemed grateful to his step. The ship's orchestra was
rehearsing in its gallery.
If only that devilish fog would lift! But still it surged in from the sea, and
the glass, down to 29.40, promised no clearing weather.
“Safety to the minutest detail—that's my motto,” declared Manager Fogg.
“Order a fire drill.”
It was accomplished, and Mr. Fogg criticized the lack of snap. He was
rather severe after the life-boat drill, was over. He ordered a second
rehearsal. He commanded that the crew do it a third time. The warmth of
his insistence on this feature of shipboard discipline was very noticeable.
“And when you put those boats back see to it that every line is free and
coiled and every cover loose. It costs a lot of good money if you kill off
passengers in these days.” Then he hurried away. “I'll see you before
sailing-time,” he informed Captain Mayo.
The new skipper was glad to be alone and to have leisure for study of the
steamer's log-books. He had been accustomed to a freighter's slower time
on the courses. He did a little figuring. He found that at seventy-five
revolutions per minute the Montana would log off about the same speed
that the freighter made when doing her best. He resolved to make the fog an
excuse and slow down to the Nequasset's familiar rate of progress. He
reflected that he would feel pretty much at home under those circumstances.
He was heartened, and went about the ship looking less like a malefactor
doomed to execution.
When General-Manager Fogg, bustled on board a few minutes prior to
the advertised sailing-time at five o'clock, he commented on Captain
Mayo's improved demeanor.
“Getting one of the best jobs on this coast seemed to make considerable
of a mourner out of you. Perhaps a mirror has shown you how well you
look in that new uniform. At any rate, I'm glad to see you have chirked up.
And now I'll give you a piece of news that ought to make you look still
happier: I'm going along on this trip with you. If you show me that you can
do a good job in this kind of weather you needn't worry about your
position.”
The expression on Captain Mayo's face did not indicate unalloyed delight
when he heard this “good news.” Unaccustomed as he was to the ship, he

could not hope to make a smooth showing.
“And still you refuse to cheer up!” remonstrated the manager.
“I am glad you are going along, sir. Don't misunderstand me. But a sailor
is a pretty serious chap when he feels responsibility. I'm undertaking a big
stunt.”
“It's the best way to find out whether you're the man for the job—
whether you're the man I think you are. It's a test that beats sailing ships on
a puddle.”
“I'm glad you're aboard,” repeated the captain. “It's going to shade down
my responsibility just a little.”
“It is, is it?” cried Manager Fogg, his tones sharp. “Not by a blamed
sight! You're the captain of this craft. I'm a passenger. Don't try to shirk.
You aren't afraid, are you?”
They were standing beside the dripping rail outside the pilot-house. Far
below them, in the spacious depths of the steamer, a bugle sounded long-
drawn notes and the monotonous calls of stewards warned “All ashore!”
The gangways were withdrawn with dull “clackle” of wet chains over
pulleys, and Captain Mayo, after a swift glance at his watch, to make sure
of the time, ordered a quartermaster to sound the signal for “Cast off!” The
whistle yelped a gruff note, and, seeing that all was clear, the captain
yanked the auxiliary bell-pulls at the rail. Two for the port engine, two for
the starboard, and the Montana began to back into the gray pall which
shrouded the river.
Captain Mayo saw the lines of faces on the pier, husbands and wives,
mothers and sweethearts, bidding good-by to those who waved farewell
from the steamer's decks. He gathered himself with supreme grip of resolve.
It was up to him! He almost spoke it aloud.
Tremors of doubt did not agitate him any longer. It was unthinking faith,
nevertheless it was implicit confidence, that all those folks placed in him.
They were intrusting themselves to his vessel with the blind assurance of
travelers who pursue a regular route, not caring how the destination is
reached as long as they come to their journey's end.
The hoarse, long, warning blast which announced to all in the river that
the steamer was leaving her dock drowned out the shouts of farewell and
the strains of the gay air the orchestra was playing.

“See you later,” said General-Manager Fogg. “I think I'll have an early
dinner.”
Captain Mayo climbed the short ladder and entered his pilot-house.
It was up to him!

XX ~ TESTING OUT A MAN
Now the first land we made is call-ed The Deadman,
The Ramhead off Plymouth, Start, Portland and Wight.
We sail-ed by Beachy,
By Fairlee and Dungeness,
Until we came abreast of the South Foreland Light.
—Farewell and Adieu.

With starboard engine clawing her backward, and the port engine driving
her ahead, the Montana swung her huge bulk when she was free of the
penning piers. The churning propellers, offsetting, turned her in her tracks.
Then she began to feel her way out of the maze of the traffic.
The grim, silent men of the pilot-houses do not talk much even when
they are at liberty on shore. They are taciturn when on duty. They do not
relate their sensations when they are elbowing their way through the East
River in a fog; they haven't the language to do so.
A psychologist might make much out of the subject by discussing
concentration sublimated, human senses coordinating sight and sound on
the instant, a sort of sixth sense which must be passed on into the limbos of
guesswork as instinct.
The man in the pilot-house would not in the least understand a word of
what the psychologist was talking about.
The steamboat officer merely understands that he must be on his job!
The Montana added her voice to the bedlam of river yawp.
The fog was so dense that even the lookout posted at her fore windlasses
was a hazy figure as seen from the pilot-house. A squat ferryboat, which
was headed across the river straight at the slip where her shore gong 'was
hailing her, splashed under the steamer's bows, two tugs loafed
nonchalantly across in the other direction—saucy sparrows of the river
traffic, always underfoot and dodging out of danger by a breathless margin.
Whistle-blasts piped or roared singly and in pairs, a duet of steam voices,
or blended at times into a puzzling chorus.
A steamer's whistle in the fog conveys little information except to
announce that a steam-propelled craft is somewhere yonder in the white

blank, unseen, under way. No craft is allowed to sound passing signals
unless the vessel she is signaling is in plain sight.
Captain Mayo could see nothing—even the surface of the water was
almost indistinguishable.
Ahead, behind, to right and left, everything that could toot was busy and
vociferous. Here and there a duet of three staccato blasts indicated that
neighbors were threatening to collide and were crawfishing to the best of
their ability.
Twice the big steamer stopped her engines and drifted until the squabble
ahead of her seemed to have been settled.
A halt mixes the notations of the log, but the mates of the steamer made
the Battery signals, and after a time the spidery outlines of the first great
bridge gave assurance that their allowances were correct.
Providentially there was a shredding of the fog at Hell Gate, a shore-
breeze flicking the mists off the surface of the water.
Then was revealed the situation which lay behind the particularly
emphatic and uproarious “one long and two short” blasts of a violent
whistle. A Lehigh Valley tug was coming down the five-knot current with
three light barges, which the drift had skeowowed until they were taking up
the entire channel. With their cables, the tug and tow stretched for at least
four thousand feet, almost a mile of dangerous drag.
“Our good luck, sir,” vouchsafed the first mate. “She was howling so
loud, blamed if I could tell whether she was coming or going. She's got no
business coming down the Sound.”
Captain Mayo, his teeth set hard, his rigid face dripping with moisture, as
he stood in the open window, stopped the engines of his giant charge and
jingled for full speed astern in order to halt her. He had no desire to battle
for possession of the channel with what he saw ahead.
At that moment Manager Fogg came into the pilothouse, disregarding the
“No Admittance” sign by authority of his position. He lighted a cigar and
displayed the contented air of a man who has fed fully.
“You have been making a pretty slow drag of it, haven't you, Captain
Mayo? I've had time to eat dinner—and I'm quite a feeder at that! And we
haven't made the Gate yet!”

“We couldn't do a stroke better and be safe,” said the captain over his
shoulder, his eyes on the tow.
“What's the matter now?”
“A tug and three barges in the way.”
“Do you mean to say you're holding up a Vose liner with eight hundred
passengers, waiting for a tugboat? Look here, Mayo, we've got to hustle
folks to where they want to go, and get them there in time.”
“That tow is coming down with the current and has the right of way, sir.
And there's no chance of passing, for she's sweeping the channel.”
“I don't believe there's any law that makes a passenger-boat hold up for
scows,” grumbled Fogg. “If there is one, a good man knows how to get
around it and keep up his schedule.” He paced the pilot-house at the
extreme rear, puffing his cigar.
He grunted when Mayo gave the go-ahead bells and the throb of the
engines began.
“Now ram her along, boy. People in these days don't want to waste time
on the road. They're even speeding up the automobile hearses.”
Captain Mayo did not reply. He was grateful that the dangers of Hell
Gate had been revealed. The mists hung in wisps against North Brother
Island when he swung into the channel of the Gate, and he could see, far
ahead, the shaft of the lighthouse. It was a stretch where close figuring was
needed, and this freak of the mists had given him a fine chance. He jingled
for full speed and took a peep to note the bearing of Sunken Meadow
spindle.
“Nothe-east, five-eighths east!” he directed the quartermaster at the
wheel.
The man repeated the command mechanically and brought her to her
course for the Middle Ground passage.
After they had rounded North Brother, Whitestone Point tower was
revealed. It really seemed as if the fog were clearing, and even in the
channel between Execution Rocks and Sands Point his hopes were rising.
But in the wider waters off Race Rock the Montana drove her black snout
once more into the white pall, and her whistle began to bray again.
The young captain sighed. “East, a half nothe!”

“East, a half nothe, it is, sir!”
At least, he had conquered East River, the Gate, and the narrows beyond,
and had many miles straight ahead to the whistler off Point Judith. He was
resolved to be thankful for small favors.
He hoped that with the coming of the night and on account of the
prevalence of the fog he would find that shipping of the ordinary sort had
stopped moving. However, in a few minutes he heard telltale whistles
ahead, and he signaled half speed. A lumbering old lighter with a yawing
derrick passed close aboard. An auxiliary fisherman, his exhaust snapping
like a machine-gun, and seeming to depend on that noise for warning, was
overtaken.
“Can you leave that window for a minute, Captain Mayo?” asked the
general manager.
The captain promptly joined Mr. Fogg at the rear of the spacious pilot-
house.
“See here, Cap,” remonstrated his superior, “I came down through these
waters on the Triton of the Union line the other day, and she made her time.
What's the matter with us?”
“I'm obeying the law, sir. And there are new warnings just issued.” He
pointed to the placard headed “Safety First” in big, red letters. “The word
has been passed that the first captain who is caught with the goods will be
made an example of.”
“Is that so?” commented Fogg, studying the end of his cigar. His tone
was a bit peculiar. “But the Triton came along.”
“And she nigh rammed the Nequasset in the fog the last trip I made up
the coast. It was simply touch and go, Mr. Fogg, and all her fault. We were
following the rules to the letter.”
“And that's one way of spoiling the business of a steamboat line,”
snapped Fogg. He added, to himself, “But it isn't my way!”
“I'm sorry, but I have been trained to believe that a record for safety is
better than all records for speed, sir.”
“I let Jacobs go because he was old-fashioned, Mayo. This is the age of
taking chances—taking chances and getting there! Business, politics,
railroading, and steam-boating. The people expect it. The right folks do it.”

“You are general manager of this line, Mr. Fogg. Do you order me to
make schedule time, no matter what conditions are?”
“You are the captain of this boat. I simply want you to deliver up-to-date
goods. As to how you do it, that is not my business. I'm not a sea-captain,
and I don't presume to advise as to details.”
Captain Mayo was young, He knew the 'longcoast game. He was
ambitious. Opportunity had presented itself. He understood the unreasoning
temper of those who sought dividends without bothering much about
details. He knew how other passenger captains were making good with the
powers who controlled transportation interests. He confessed to himself that
he had envied the master of the rushing Triton who had swaggered past as if
he owned the sea.
Till then Mayo had been the meek and apologetic passer-by along the
ocean lane, expecting to be crowded to one side, dodging when the big
fellow bawled for open road.
He remembered with what haste he always manouvered the old
Nequasset out of the way of harm when he heard the lordly summons of the
passenger liners. Was not that the general method of the freighter skippers?
Why should he not expect them to get out of his way, now that he was one
of the swaggerers of the sea? Let them do the worrying now, as he had done
the worrying and dodging in the past! He stepped back to his window, those
reflections whirling in his brain.
“This is no freighter,” he told himself. “Fogg is right. If I don't deliver the
goods somebody else will be called on to do it, so what's the use? I'll play
the game. Just remember—will you, Mayo—that you've got your heart's
wish, and are captain of the Montana. If I lose this job on account of a
placard with red letters, I'll kick myself on board a towboat, and stay there
the rest of my life.”
He yanked a log-book from the rack and noted the steamer's average
speed from the entries. He signaled to the engine-room through the
speaking-tube.
“Give her two hundred a minute, chief!” he ordered.
And fifteen seconds later, her engines pulsing rhythmically, the big craft
was splitting fog and water at express speed, howling for little fellows to
get out from underfoot.

Down in the gleaming depths of her the orchestra was lilting a gay waltz,
silver clattered over the white napery of the dining-room, men and women
laughed and chattered and flirted; men wrote telegrams, making
appointments for the morrow at early hours, and the wireless flashed them
forth. They were sent with the certainty on the part of the senders that no
man in these days waits for tide or fog. The frothing waters flashed past in
the night outside, and they who ventured forth upon the dripping decks
glanced at the fan of white spume spreading into the fog, and were glad to
return to cozy chairs and the radiance of the saloon.
High up forward, in the pilot-house, were the eyes and the brains of this
rushing monster. It was dark there except for the soft, yellow gleam of the
binnacle lights. It was silent but for the low voice of a mate who announced
his notations.
Occasionally the mates glanced at each other in the gloom when a
steamer's whistle sounded ahead. This young captain seemed to be a chap
who carried his nerve with him! They were used to the more cautious
system of Captain Jacobs.
The master did not reduce speed. He leaned far out, his hand at his ear.
The third time an unknown sounded her blast he took a quick glance at the
compass.
“Two points shift—so she shows,” he said aloud. “We'll pass her all
right.”
The change in the direction of the sound had assured him. A few minutes
later the whistle voiced a location safely abeam. But the next whistle they
heard sounded dead ahead, and increased in volume of sound only
gradually. They were overtaking a vessel headed in the same direction.
Captain Mayo pulled the cord oftener and sounded more prolonged, more
imperious hoots. He ordered no change in his course. He was headed for the
Point Judith whistler, and did not propose to take chances on fumbling by
any detours. The craft ahead at last seemed to recognize the voice of its
master. The sound of the whistle showed that it had swung off the course.
The mate mumbled notations.
“All ears out!” ordered the captain. “We ought to make that whistler!”
And in the next breath he said: “There she is!” He pointed a wet hand ahead
and slightly to port. A queer, booming grunt came to them. “You're all right,

old girl,” he declared. “Jacobs wasn't over-praising you.” He reached over
the sill and patted the woodwork of his giant pet. He turned to the
quartermaster. “East, five-eighths south,” was his direction.
“East, five-eighths south, sir!”
“What's the next we make, captain?” asked the general manager from the
gloom at the rear of the pilot-house.
“Sow and Pigs Lightship, entrance of Vineyard Sound, sir.”
“Good work! I'm going to take a turn below. See you again! What can I
tell any uneasy gentleman who is afraid he'll miss a business appointment in
the morning?”
“Tell him we'll be on time to the dot,” declared the captain, quietly.
Mr. Fogg closed the pilot-house door behind himself and chuckled when
he eased his way down the slippery ladder.
Mr. Fogg sauntered through the brilliantly lighted saloon, hands in his
pockets, giving forth an impression of a man entirely at ease. Nobody
appeared to recognize the new general manager of the Vose line, and he
attracted no special attention. But if any one had been sufficiently interested
in Mr. Fogg to note him closely it would have been observed that his mouth
worked nervously when he stood at the head of the grand stairway and
stared about him. His jowls sagged. When he pulled out his handkerchief
his hand trembled.
He descended the stairs to the main-deck and peered about in the
smoking-quarters, running his eyes over the faces of the men gathered
there. All at once he lifted his chin with a little jerk and climbed the stairs
again. A big man tossed away a cigar and followed at a respectful distance.
He pursued Mr. Fogg through the saloon and down a corridor and went into
a stateroom on the general manager's heels.
“By gad, Burkett, I'm getting cold chills!” exploded Mr. Fogg, as soon as
the door was closed.
“Don't understand just why.”
“Those people out there—I've just been looking 'em over. It's monkeying
with too big a proposition, Burkett. You can't reckon ahead on a thing like
this.”
“Sure you can. I've doped it right.”

“Oh, I know you understand what you're talking about, but—”
“Well, I ought to know. I've been pilot for the re-survey party on the
shoals for the last two months. I know every inch of the bottom.”
“But the panic. There's bound to be one. The rest of 'em won't
understand, Burkett. It's going to be awful on board here. I'll be here
myself. I can't stand it.”
“Look here, governor; there won't be any panic. She'll slide into the sand
like a baby nestling down into a crib. There isn't a pebble in that sand for
miles. Half of this bunch of passengers will be abed and asleep. They won't
wake up. The rest will never know anything special except that the engines
have stopped. And that ain't anything unusual in a fog. It's a quiet night—
not a ripple. Nothing to hurt us. The wireless will bring the revenue cutter
out from Wood's Hole, and she'll stand by till morning and take 'em off.”
“The theory is good. It's mostly my own idea, and I'm proud of it, and I
was mighty glad to find a man of your experience to back me up with the
practical details,” said Fogg, trying to fortify his faith with words but
failing. “But now that it's coming down to cases I'm afraid of it.”
“Well, it's up to you, of course, governor. I insist it can be done, and done
smooth, and you'll lay off this steamer nice, slick, and easy! That will put a
crimp into the Vose line and make them stockholders take notice the next
time a fair offer is made.”
“It's the thing to do, and I know it. The conditions are just right, and
we've got a green captain to make the goat of. All set! But it's an awful
thing to monkey with—eight hundred people, and no knowing how they'll
take it! It came over me while I stood there and looked at 'em!”
“Sand is sand, and the whole, round earth is braced up under that sand.
She can't sink. She'll simply gouge her way like a plow into a furrow, and
there she'll stick, sitting straight, solid as an island—and it will be a devil of
a while before they'll be able to dig her out. It's a crimp for the Vose line, I
say, governor!” Malevolence glowed in Burkett's little eyes.
“Of course, the money I'm getting for this job looks good to me,
governor, but my chance to put a wallop into anything that old Vose and his
sons are interested in looks just as good. I wouldn't be in this just for the
money end of it. I'm no pirate, but when they kicked me out of the pilot-

house and posted me up and down this coast, they put themselves in line to
get what's coming to 'em from me.”
“But have you considered every side of it?” pleaded Fogg. “You're the
practical man in this proposition. What can happen?”
“If you do exactly what I tell you to do nothing can happen but what's on
our program. Just let me stiffen you up by running the thing over once
more.”
He pulled a hand-smutched, folded chart from his breast pocket and
spread it over his knees. With blunt forefinger he indicated the points to
which he made reference in his explanation.
“When he fetches Nobska horn on his port, bearing nor'west by west,
he'll shift his course. After about five miles he's due to shift again, swinging
six points to nor-rard. You'll hear the mate name the bearing of West Chop
steam-whistle. Then you walk right up to the left of the compass and stand
there. You may hear a little tongue-clattering for a few seconds. There'll be
a little cussing, maybe, but you won't be cussed, of course. You stand right
there, calm and cool, never batting an eyelid. And then it will happen, and
when it does happen it will be a surprise-party all right.”
“It's wrecking a seven-thousand-ton passenger-steamer in the night!”
mourned the general manager.
“It isn't! It's putting her into a safe cradle.”
“But at this speed!”
“That chap in the pilot-house is no fool. He'll get his hint in time to save
her from real damage. You needn't worry!”
Fogg opened his traveling-bag and lifted out a strip of metal. He handled
it as gingerly as if it were a reptile, and he looked at it with an air as if he
feared it would bite him.
“That's the little joker,” said Burkett. “About two points deviation by
local attraction will do the business!”
“I'm tempted to throw it overboard and call it all off, Burkett. I have put
through a good many deals in my life in the big game, but this looks almost
too raw. I can't help it! I feel a hunch as if something was going to miscue.”
“I've got no more to say, governor.”

“My crowd doesn't ask questions of me, but they expect results. If I don't
do it, I suppose I'll kick myself in the morning.” He cocked up his ear and
listened to the bawling of the liner's great whistle. “But it seems different in
the night.”
“You ain't leaving any tracks,” encouraged Burkett. “And this being his
first run makes it more plausible. You're here all naturally, yourself. It might
seem rather queer if you made another trip. It's his first run on her, I remind
you. If he makes a slip-up it won't surprise the wise guys-a mite.”
“It seems to be all set—I've got to admit it. By gad, Burkett, I have
always put a thing through when I've started on it! That's why they call in
the little Fogg boy. I'd rather apologize to my conscience than to—Well,
never mind who he is.” He tucked the strip of metal into his inside coat
pocket and buttoned the coat. “Blast it! nothing that's very bad can happen
in this calm sea—and that last life-boat drill went off fine. Here goes!”
declared Fogg, with desperate emphasis.
“That's the boy!” declared Burkett, encouraged to familiarity by their
association in mischief.
The general manager found the night black when he edged his way along
the wet deck to the pilot-house. The steamer's lights made blurred patches
in the fog. Now she seemed to have the sea to herself; there were no
answering whistles.
“I'm back again, Captain Mayo,” he said, as he closed the door against
the night. “I hope I won't bother you folks here. I'll stay out from
underfoot.” He sat down on a transom at the extreme rear of the house and
smoked his cigar with nervous vehemence.
Another quartermaster succeeded the man at the wheel, the mate made
his notations of dead reckoning and pricked the chart, the usual routine was
proceeded with. Mayo continued at the window, head out-thrust, except
when he glanced at chart or compass or noted the dials which marked the
screws' revolutions.
Every now and then he put his ear to the submarine-signal receiver. At
last he heard the faint, far throb of the Sow and Pigs submarine bell—seven
strokes, with the four seconds' interval, then the seven strokes repeated.
A bit later he got, sweet and low as an elfland horn, the lightship's chime
whistle. It was dead ahead, which was not exactly to his calculation. The

tide set had served stronger than he had reckoned. He ordered the helmsman
to ease her off a half-point, in order to make safe offing for the turn into
Vineyard Sound.
Well up in the sound the bell of Tarpaulin Cove reassured him, and after a
time he heard the unmistakable blast of the great reed horn of Nobska
uttering its triple hoot like a giant owl perched somewhere in the mists.
“Nobska,” said the mate. “We are certainly coming on, sir.”
“Nobly,” agreed Captain Mayo, allowing himself a moment of jubilation,
even though the dreaded shoals were ahead.
“Are you going to keep this speed across the shoals, Captain Mayo?”
asked the general manager, displaying real deference.
“No, sir!” stated the captain with decision, bracing himself to give Mr.
Fogg a sharp word or two if that gentleman advanced any more of his
“business man's reasons” for speed. “It would not be showing due care.”
“I'm glad to hear you say that,” affirmed Mr. Fogg, heartily. “It may be a
little out of place, right now, but I want you to know that I feel that I have
picked out just the right man to command this ship. I'm glad of a chance to
say this where your mates can hear me.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fogg,” returned the young man, gratefully. “This is a
soul-racking job, and I'm glad you are here to see what we are up against. I
don't feel that we'll be wasting much time in crossing the shoals if we go
carefully. We can let her out after we swing east of Monomoy. She's a grand
old packet.”
In the gloom Fogg ran his fingers gingerly over the outside of his coat to
make sure that the strip of metal was in its place.
There was silence in the pilot-house after that. Ahead there was ticklish
navigation. There were the narrow slues, the crowding shoals, the blind
turns of Nantucket Sound, dreaded in all weathers, but a mariner's horror in
a fog.
Nobska's clarion call drew slowly abeam to port, and after due lapse of
time West Chop's steam-whistle lifted its guiding voice in the mists ahead.
“Better use the pelorus and be careful about West Chop's bearing after we
pass her, Mr. Bangs,” Captain Mayo warned his first mate.

As a sailor well knows, the bearing of West Chop gives the compass
direction for passage between the shoals known as Hedge Fence and Squash
Meadow—a ten-mile run to Cross Rip Lightship. In a fog it is vitally
important to have West Chop exact to the eighth of a point.
Fogg was glad that he was alone where he sat. He trembled so violently
that he set an unlighted cigar between his teeth to keep them from rattling
together.
The mate was outlined against the window, his eyes on the instrument,
his ear cocked. Every half-minute West Chop's whistle hooted.
“Right, sir!” the mate reported at last, speaking briskly. “I make it west
by nothe, five-eighths nothe.”
Fogg rose and half staggered forward, taking a position just to the left of
the wheel and compass.
“East by south, five-eighths south,” the captain directed the helmsman.
“Careful attention, sir. Tide is flood, four knots. Make the course good!”
The quartermaster repeated and twirled his wheel for the usual number of
revolutions to allow a three-points change.
Captain Mayo stepped back and glanced at the compass to make certain
that his helmsman was finding his course properly. “What in tophet's name
is the matter with you, man?” he shouted. “Bring this ship around! Bring
her around!” He grabbed the wheel and spun it. “You're slower than the
devil drawing molasses,” raged Mayo, forgetting his dignity.
“She must have yawed,” protested the man. “I had her on her course, sir.
I supposed I had her over.”
“You are not to suppose. You are to keep your eyes on that compass card
and move quicker when I give an order.”
The helmsman's eyes bulged as he stared at the compass. While he had
winked his eyes, so it seemed to him, the true course had fairly straddled
away from the lubber line.
In his frantic haste Captain Mayo put her over too far. He helped the man
set her on the right course. Then he signaled half speed. The devious and
the narrow paths were ahead of them..
“That's an almighty funny jump the old dame made then,” pondered the
quartermaster. But he was too well trained to argue with a captain. He

accepted the fault as his own, and now that she was on her course, he held
her there doggedly.
Even the Montana's half speed was a respectable gait, and the silent crew
in her pilot-house could hear the sea lathering along her sides.
“What do you make of that, Mr. Bangs?” the captain asked, after a
prolonged period of listening.
“Bell, sir!”
“But the only bell in that direction would be on Hedge Fence Lightship in
case her whistle has been disabled.”
“Sounds to me like a vessel at anchor.”
“But it's right in the fairway.” Captain Mayo convinced himself by a
glance at the compass. “No craft would drop her hook in the fairway. That's
no bell on the Hedge Fence,” reflected the captain. “It's a schooner's bell.
But sound often gets freaky in a fog. We're on our course to the fraction,
and we've got to keep going!”
And after a moment the bell ceased its clangor. It was a distant sound,
and its location was indefinite even to a sharp ear.
“It strikes me that sounds in general are a little warded all of a sudden,”
said the captain to his mate. “I'll swear that I can hear Hedge Fence's five-
second blasts now. But there she howls off the starboard bow. The clouds
must be giving us an echo. We've got to leave it to the compass.”
A skilful mariner is careful about forsaking the steady finger of a proved
compass in order to chase sounds around the corner in foggy weather. He
understands that air strata raise the dickens with whistle-blasts. There are
zones of silence—there is divergence of sound.
Fogg held his position, his legs braced, and nobody paid any especial
attention to him. They in the pilothouse were too busy with other affairs.
There is one sound in thick weather that tells a navigator much. It is the
echo of his own whistle.
The big steamer was hoarsely hooting her way.
Suddenly there was a sound which fairly flew up and hit Captain Mayo in
the face. It was an echo. It was the sound of the Montana's whistle-blast
flung back at him from some object so near at hand that there was barely a
clock-tick between whistle and echo.

The captain yelped a great oath and yanked his bell-pulls furiously. “That
echo came from a schooner's sails,” he shouted.
Then, dead ahead, clanged her bell. The next instant, plunging along at
least eight miles an hour, in spite of engines clawing at full speed astern, the
towering bow smashed into the obstacle in her path.
It was a mighty shock which sent a tremor from stem to stern of the great
fabric. They saw that they hit her—a three-masted schooner at anchor, with
her sails set, dingy canvas wet and idle in the foggy, breathless night. But
their impact against her was almost as if they had hit a pier. The collision
sent them reeling about the pilot-house. As they drove past they saw her go
down, her stern a splintered mass of wreckage, in which men were
frantically struggling.
“That's a granite-lugger! See her go down, like a stone!” gasped Mate
Bangs. “My God! What do you suppose she has done to us forward?”
“Get there. Get there!” roared Captain Mayo. “Get there and report, sir!”
But before the chief mate was half-way down the ladder on his way the
wailing voice of the lookout reported disaster. “Hole under the water-line
forward,” he cried.
“There are men in the water back there, sir,” said a quartermaster.
“We're making water fast in the forward compartment,” came a voice
through the speaking-tube.
Already they in the pilot-house could hear the ululation of women in the
depths of the ship, and then the husky clamor of the many voices of men
drowned the shriller cries.
Captain Mayo had seen the survivors from the schooner struggling in the
water. But he rang for full speed ahead and ordered the quartermaster to aim
her into the north, knowing that land lay in that direction.
“Eight hundred lives on my shoulders and a hole in her,” he told himself,
while all his world of hope and ambition seemed rocking to ruin. “I can't
wait to pick up those poor devils.”
In a few minutes—in so few minutes that all his calculations as to his
location were upset—the Montana plowed herself to a shuddering halt on a
shoal, her bow lifting slightly. And when the engines were stopped she
rested there, sturdily upright, steady as an island. But in her saloon the men
and women who fought and screamed and cursed, beating to and fro in

windrows of humanity like waves in a cavern, were convinced that the
shuddering shock had signaled the doom of the vessel. Half-dressed men,
still dizzy with sleep, confused by dreams which blended with the terrible
reality, trampled the helpless underfoot, seeking exit from the saloon.
The hideous uproar which announced panic was a loud call to the master
of the vessel. He understood what havoc might be wrought by the brutal
senselessness of the struggle. He ran from the pilot-house, stepping on the
feet of the general manager, who was stumbling about in bewildered
fashion.
“Call all the crew to stations and guard the exits,” Captain Mayo
commanded the second mate.
On his precipitate way to the saloon the captain passed the room of the
wireless operator, and the tense crackle of the spark told him that the SOS
signal was winging its beseeching flight through the night.
Three men, half dressed, with life-preservers buckled on in hit-or-miss
fashion, met him on the deck, dodged his angry clutch, and leaped over the
rail into the sea, yelling with all the power of their lungs.
A quartermaster was at the captain's heels.
“Get over a life-boat on each side and attend to those idiots!” roared
Mayo.
He thrust his way into a crowded corridor, beating frantic men back with
his fists, adjuring, assuring, appealing, threatening. He mounted upon a
chair in the saloon. He fairly outbellowed the rest of them. Men of the sea
are trained to shout against the tempest.
“You are safe! Keep quiet! Sit down! This steamer is ashore on a sand-
bank. She's as solid as Bunker Hill.” He shouted these assurances over and
over.
They began to look at him, to pay heed to him. His uniform marked his
identity.
“You lie!” screamed an excited man. “We're out to sea! We're sinking!
Where are your life-boats?”
Bedlam began again. Like the fool who shouts “Fire!” in a throng, this
brainless individual revived all the fears of the frenzied passengers.

Mayo realized that heroic action was necessary. He leaped down from the
chair, seized the man who had shouted, and beat the fellow's face with the
flat of his hard hand.
That scene of conflict was startling enough to serve as a real jolt to their
attention. They hushed their cries; they looked on, impressed, cowed.
“If there's any other man in this crowd who wants to tell me I'm a liar, let
him stand out and say so,” shouted Captain Mayo. “You're making fools of
yourselves. There's no danger.”
He released the pallid and trembling man of whom he had made an
example and stepped on to a chair. He put up his hand, dominating them
until he had secured absolute silence.
“You—you—you!” he said, crisply, darting finger here and there,
pointing out individuals. “You seem to have more level heads than the rest,
you men! Go forward where the man is casting the lead. Cast the lead
yourselves. Come back here and report to these passengers, as their
committee. I'm telling you the truth. There's no water under us to speak of.”
He remained in the saloon until his committee returned.
The man who reported looked a bit sheepish. “The captain is right, ladies
and gentlemen. We could even see the sand where she has plowed it up—
they've got lanterns over the rail. There's no danger.”
A steward trotted to Captain Mayo and handed him a slip of paper. The
captain read the message and shook the paper in the faces of the throng.
“The revenue cutter Acushnet has our wireless call and is starting, and the
Itasca will follow. I advise you to go to bed and go to sleep. You're
perfectly, absolutely safe. You will be transferred when it's daylight. Now
be men and women!”
He hurried out on deck. His men were hoisting aboard the three dripping,
sputtering passengers who had run amuck.
“And those same men would look after a runaway horse and sneer that he
didn't have any brains,” remarked Captain Mayo, disgustedly.
For the next half-hour he was a busy man. He investigated the Montana's
wound, first of all. He found her flooded forward—her nose anchored into
the sand with a rock-of-ages solidity.
His heart sank when he realized what her plight meant from the wrecking
and salvage viewpoint. In those shifting sands, winnowed constantly by the

rushing currents of the sound, digging her out might be a Gargantuan task,
working her free a hopeless undertaking.
His tour of investigation showed him that except for her smashed bow
the steamer was intact. Her helplessness there in the sand was the more
pitiable on that account.
He had not begun to take account of stock of his own responsibility for
this disaster. The whirl of events had been too dizzying. As master of the
ship he would be held to account for her mishap. But to what extent had he
been negligent? He could not figure it out. He realized that excitement plays
strange pranks with a man's consciousness of linked events or of the
passage of time. He could not understand why the steamer piled up so
quickly after the collision. According to his ample knowledge of the shoals,
he had been on his true course and well off the dangerous shallows.
His first mate met him amidship. “I sent off one of our life-boats, sir.
Told 'em to go back and hunt for the men we saw in the water. They found
two. Others seem to be gone.”
“I'm glad you thought of it, Mr. Bangs. I ought to have attended to it,
myself.”
“You had enough on your hands, sir, as it was. She was the Lucretia M.
Warren, with granite from Vinal-haven. That's what gave us such an awful
tunk.”
“Who are the men?”
“Mate and a sailor. They've had some hot drinks, and are coming along
all right.”
“We'll have a word with them, Mr. Bangs.”
The survivors of the Warren were forward in the crew's quarters, and they
were still dazed. They had not recovered from their fright; they were sullen.
“I'm sorry, men! Sailor to sailor, you know what I mean if I don't say any
more. It's bad business on both sides. But what were you doing in the
fairway?”
“We wa'n't in the fairway,” protested a grizzled man, evidently the mate.
He was uneasy in his borrowed clothes—he had surrendered his own
garments to a pantryman who had volunteered to dry them.
“You must have been,” insisted Captain Mayo.

“I know we was all of two miles north of the regular course. I 'ain't sailed
across these shoals for thirty years not to know soundings when I make 'em
myself. Furthermore, she'll speak for herself, where she's sunk.”
The captain could not gainsay that dictum.
The mate scowled at the young man.
“I've got a question of my own. What ye doing, yourself, all of two miles
out of your course, whanging along, tooting your old whistle as if you
owned the sea and had rollers under you to go across dry ground with, too?”
“I was not two miles out of my course,” protested the captain, and yet the
sickening feeling came to him that there had been some dreadful error,
somewhere, somehow.
“When they put these steamers into the hands of real men instead of
having dudes and kids run 'em, then shipping will stand a fair show on this
coast,” declared the mate, casting a disparaging glance at Mayo's new
uniform. “It was my watch on deck, and I know what I'm talking about. You
came belting along straight at us, two points out of your course, and I
thought the fog was playing tricks, and I didn't believe my own ears. You
have drowned my captain and four honest men. When I stand up in court
they'll get the straight facts from me, I can tell you that. And they tell me it's
your first trip. I might have knowed it was some greenhorn, when I heard
you coming two points off your course. You'd better take off them clothes. I
reckon you've made your last trip, too!”
It was the querulous railing of a man who had been near death; it was the
everlasting grouch of the sailing-man against the lordly steamboater. Mayo
had no heart for rebuke or retort. What had happened to him, anyway? This
old schooner man seemed to know exactly what he was talking about.
“If you don't believe what I'm telling you, go out on deck and see if you
can't hear the Hedge Fence whistle,” advised the mate, sourly. “If she don't
bear south of east I'll eat that suit they're drying out for me. And that will
show you that you're two miles to the norrard of where you ought to be.”
On his way to the pilot-house Captain Mayo did hear the hollow voice of
the distant whistle, with its double blast and its long interval of silence. The
sound came from abaft his beam and his disquietude increased.
Then the acute realization was forced in upon him that he had the general
manager of the line to face. The captain had not caught sight of his superior

during the excitement; he wondered now why Mr. Fogg had effaced himself
so carefully.
The red coal of a cigar glowed in a corner of the pilothouse. From that
corner came curt inquiry: “Well, Captain Mayo, what have you got to say
about this?”
“I think I'll do my talking after I have had daylight on the proposition,
sir.”
“Don't you have any idea how you happened to be off your course so
far?” asked Fogg, his anxiety noticeable in his tones.
“How do you know I was off my course?”
“Well—er—why, well, you wouldn't be aground, would you, if you
hadn't lost your way?”
“I didn't lose my way, Mr. Fogg.”
“What did happen, then?”
“That's for me to find out.”
“I'm not going to say anything to you yet, Captain Mayo. It's too sudden
—too big a blow. It's going to paralyze the Vose line.” Mr. Fogg said this
briskly, as if he were passing small talk on the weather.
“I'm thankful that you're taking the thing so calmly, sir. I've been
dreading to meet you.”
“Oh—a business man in these days can't allow himself to fly to pieces
over setbacks. Optimism is half the battle.”
But Mayo, sitting there in that dark pilot-house for the rest of the night,
staring out into the blank wall of the fog and surveying the wreck of his
hopes, was decidedly not optimistic.

XXI ~ BITTER PROOF BY MORNING LIGHT
Bad news, bad news to our captain came
That grieved him very sore;
But when he knew that all of it was true,
It grieved him ten time more,
Brave boys!
It grieved him ten times more!
—Cold Greenland.

Morning brought to him neither cheer nor counsel. The winds swept the
fog off the seas, and the brightness of the sunshine only mocked the gloom
of Captain Mayo's thoughts.
He was most unmistakably far off his course. He took his bearings
carefully, and he groped through his memory and his experience for reasons
which would explain how he came to be away up there on Hedge Fence.
Two of the masts of the sunken stone-schooner showed above the sea, two
depressing monuments of disaster. He took further bearings and tested his
compass with minute care. So far as he could determine it was correct to the
dot.
It was a busy forenoon for all on board the steamer. The revenue cutters
took off the passengers. Representatives of the underwriters came out from
Wood's Hole on a tug. The huge Montana, set solidly into its bed of sand,
loomed against the sky, mute witness of somebody's inefficiency or
mistake.
Late in the day Captain Mayo and General-Manager Fogg locked
themselves in the captain's cabin to have it out.
When the master had finished his statement Mr. Fogg flicked the ash
from his cigar, studied the glowing end for a time, and narrowed his eyes.
“So, summing it all up, it happened, and you don't know just how it
happened. You were off your course and don't know how you happened to
be off your course. You don't expect us to defend you before the steamboat
inspectors, with that for an explanation, Mayo?”
“All I can do is to tell the truth at the hearing, sir.”

“They'll break you, sure as a mule wags ears. There are five dead men
inside that wreck yonder. Don't you reckon you'll be indicted for
manslaughter?”
“I shall claim that the collision was unavoidable.”
“But you were off your course—were in a place you had no business to
be in. That knocks your defense all to the devil. You are in almighty bad,
Mayo. You must wake up to it.”
The young man was pale and rigid and silent.
“The Vose line is in bad enough as it is, without trying to defend you. I
suppose I'll be blamed for putting on a young captain. Mayo, I am older
than you are and wiser about the law and such matters. Why don't you duck
out from under, eh?”
“You mean run away?”
“I wouldn't put it quite as bluntly as that. I mean, go away and keep out
of sight till it quiets down. If you stay they'll put you on the rack and get
you all tangled up by firing questions at you. And what will you gain by
going through the muss? You've got to agree with me that the inspectors
will suspend you—revoke your license. Here's this steamer here, talking for
herself. If you stay around underfoot, and all the evidence is brought out at
the hearing, then the Federal grand jury will take the thing up, probably.
They'll have a manslaughter case against you.”
Still Captain Mayo did not speak.
“If you simply drop out of sight I don't believe they'll chase you.
Personally, having watched you last night, I don't believe you are guilty of
any very bad break. It simply happened wrong. We don't want all the
notoriety a court trial would bring to the line. And here's what I'll do, Mayo.
I'll slip you a few hundred for expenses so that you can go away and grab
into the shipping game somewhere else. A fellow like you can land on his
feet.”
“Mr. Fogg, a renegade steamboat man stands a mighty poor show. I may
be suspended, and worse may happen to me, but I'm not going to ruin
myself and my good name by running away. That's confession! It's
wrecking all my prospects forever—and I have worked too hard for what
I've got. I'm going to stay here and face the music—tell my story like a
man.”

“It will make a fine story—and you have told me yourself that they are
just waiting to make a smashing example of somebody,” sneered Fogg.
“You, a cub captain, broke the navigation rules last night by running at least
fifteen knots in the fog. Your log and the testimony of your mates will show
that. I'm not blaming you, son. I'm showing you how it looks! You got off
your course and rammed a schooner at anchor, and you didn't even stop to
pick up her men. I saw that much. Mayo, the only sensible thing for you to
do is to duck out from under. It will save the line from a lot of scandal and
bad advertising. By gad! if you don't do that much for us, after the offer I've
just made you, I'll go onto the stand and testify against you.”
“You seem to be mighty ready and anxious to make me the goat in this
thing,” blazed the young man, his temper getting away from him. He had
been without sleep for many hours, his soul had been crucified by the bitter
experiences he had been through.
“Are you looking for a fight?”
“No, Mr. Fogg, I'm looking for a square deal. I haven't done anything
intentionally to make me a fugitive from justice. I won't run away.”
“You won't be the first witness who has helped big interests by keeping
out of sight and out of reach of the lawyers. It's business, Mayo.”
“It may be, Mr. Fogg. I don't know the inside of the big deals. I'm only a
sailor. I associate with sailors. And I've got a little pride in my good name.”
Mr. Fogg looked at this recalcitrant with scorn. He wanted to tell this
stubborn individual that he was merely a two-spot in the big game which
was being played. But the expression on Mayo's face encouraged neither
levity nor sneers.
“I'll give you a thousand dollars expense money for your trip and will
talk job with you next year after you get your license back,” proffered the
general manager.
Captain Mayo fixed flaming eyes on the tempter. “What special, private
reason have you got for wanting to bribe me?” demanded the young man,
with such heat that Fogg flinched. “You are making something very
mysterious out of what should be open and aboveboard. That may be Wall
Street tactics, Mr. Fogg, but it doesn't go with a sailor who has earned a
master's papers and is proud of it.”

“Well, pass on then,” directed Fogg. “There's a tug alongside to take the
underwriters back to Wood's Hole. Go along—to jail, or wherever it is
you'll fetch up.”
“I shall stay aboard this ship as her captain until I am relieved according
to the formalities of the admiralty law,” declared Captain Mayo, with
dignity. “I don't propose to run away from duty or punishment, Mr. Fogg.”
The general manager pursed a contemptuous mouth and departed from
the cabin. He went away on the tug without further word to Mayo.
During the next two days small craft buzzed about the stricken giant like
flies around a carcass. There were insurance men, wreckers with plans and
projects, sightseers, stockholders—and one visitor was Captain Zoradus
Wass.
“Nothing else to do just now, boy, except to come and sympathize with
you.” He clucked his tongue against his teeth as he looked the steamer over.
It was condolence without words. “Now tell me the story of it—with all the
fine details,” he demanded, after they were closeted in the captain's cabin.
He sat with elbows on his knees and gazed at the floor during the recital,
and he continued to gaze at the floor for some time after Mayo had ceased
speaking.
“I admit that the quartermaster let her off for just a minute—less than a
minute,” repeated the young man. “I had only just looked away for an
instant. I helped him put her over. We couldn't have done more than cut a
letter S for a few lengths. But the more I think of it, the queerer it seems.
Two points off, almost in a finger-snap!”
“Tell that part of it over and over again, while I shut my eyes and get it
fixed in my mind as if I had seen it,” requested Captain Wass. “Who was
there, where did they stand, and so forth and et cetry. When a thing happens
and you can't figger it out, it's usually because you haven't pawed over the
details carefully enough. Go ahead! I'm a good listener.”
But after he had listened he had no comments to make. He went out of
the cabin after a few minutes' wait which was devoted to deep meditation,
and strolled about the ship, hands behind his back, scuffing his feet. A half-
hour later, meeting Captain Mayo on his rounds, the veteran inquired:
“How do you happen to have Oliver Burkett aboard here?” “I don't know
him.”

“You ought to know him. He is the captain the Vose line fired off the
Nirvana three years ago. He gave the go-ahead and a jingle when he was
making dock, and chewed up four fishing-boats and part of the pier. He had
to choose between admitting that he was drunk, crazy, or bribed by the
opposition. And I guess they figured that he was all three. Was he aboard
here the night it happened?”
“I don't know, sir.”
“According to my notion it's worth finding out,” growled Captain Wass.
“I'm not seeing very far into this thing as yet, son, and I'll admit it. But if
dirty work was done to you, Burkett would have been a handier tool for
Fogg than a Stillson wrench in a plumbing job. No, don't ask me questions
now. I haven't got any consolation for you or confidence in myself. I'm only
thinking.”
The next day the wounded Montana was formally surrendered to the
underwriters.
Captain Boyd Mayo was ordered to appear before the United States
inspectors, and he went and told his story as best he could. But his best was
an unconvincing tale, after all. He left the hearing after his testimony and
walked down to the little hotel by the water-front to wait for news.
Captain Wass came bustling down to the little hotel, plumping along at an
extra rate of speed, setting his heels down hard, a moving monument of
gloom.
His protégé, removing disconsolate gaze from the dusty chromos on the
office walls, did not require verbal report; Captain Wass's demeanor told all.
“And you couldn't expect much of anything else,” declared the old man.
“I made the best talk I could for you after you had finished your testimony
and had gone out. But it was no use, son! The department has been laying
for a victim. Both of us have known that right along. They have soaked it to
you good and proper.”
“How long am I suspended for?” faltered Mayo.
“That's the point! Indefinitely. You were meat. Everybody watching the
case. They trimmed you.”
Mayo set his hands into his thick hair, propped his head, and stared at the
floor.

“Indefinitely doesn't mean forever, but there ain't much comfort in that.
I'll tell you what it does mean, boy. It means that if there has been crooked
work we've got to show it up in order to reinstate you. And now get a good
brace on yourself. I've taken a peek in at the United States court.”
The young man, without lifting his head, gave the veteran a piteous side-
glance.
“Fletcher Fogg is buzzing around the outside of that hive. He has Burkett
along for an understrapper. They are marshaling in witnesses before the
grand jury—those men from the Warren, and you know what they'll say, of
course! Your mates and quartermasters, too! Mayo, they're going to railroad
you to Atlanta penitentiary. They have put something over on you because
you are young and they figured that you'd be a little green. It seemed queer
to me when Fogg was so mighty nice to you all of a sudden. But they don't
lay off a man like Jacobs and put in a new man just to be nice. They either
felt they couldn't work Jacobs, or else they felt a green man would give 'em
a good excuse for what happened.”
“But they couldn't arrange to have a schooner—”
“That was probably more than they figured on. But as long as it has
happened they're going to use it to best advantage. You're going to have
both tin cans tied to you, son. Every cussed bit of influence is going to be
used against you. Poor devils on the outside, like you and I, don't
understand just how slick the ways can be greased. Mayo, I'm going to give
you good advice. Duck out!”
“Run away like a confessed criminal? That's the advice Fogg gave me. I
don't think your advice is good, Captain Wass. I won't run away.”
“It may not be good advice. I ain't wise enough to know everything that's
best. But if they put you behind the bars in Atlanta, son, you'll stay there till
your term is up. No matter what is found out in your case, it will take
money and a lot of time to get the truth before the right people. But if you
ain't in prison, and we can get a line on this case and dig up even a part of
the truth, then you've got a fighting chance in the open. If we can get just
enough to make 'em afraid to put you onto the witness-stand, that much
may make 'em quit their barking. You're a sailor, boy! You know a sailor
can't do much when his hands are tied. Stay outside the penitentiary and
help me fight this thing.”

“I don't know what to do,” mourned the young man. “I'm all in a whirl.
I'm no coward, Captain Wass. I'm willing to face the music. But I'm so
helpless.”
“Stay outside jail till the fog lifts a bit in this case,” adjured his mentor.
“Are you going to lie down and stick up your legs to have 'em tied, like a
calf bound for market? Here are a few things you can do if you duck out of
sight for a little while. I'll go ahead and—”
Suddenly he checked himself. He was facing the window, which
commanded a considerable section of street. He wasted no further breath on
good advice.
“I know those men coming down there,” he cried. “They're bailiffs. I saw
them around the court-house. They're after you, Mayo! You run! Get away!
There must be a back door here. Scoot!” He pulled the unresisting
scapegoat out of his chair and hustled him to the rear of the office.
A young man may have the best intentions. He may resolve to be a
martyr, to bow to the law's majesty. But at that moment Mayo was receiving
imperious command from the shipmaster whose orders he had obeyed for
so long that obedience was second nature. And panic seized him! Men were
at hand to arrest him. There was no time to reason the thing out. Flight is
the first impulse of innocence persecuted. Manly resolve melted. He ran.
“I'll stay behind and bluff 'em off! I'll say you're just out for a minute,
that I'm waiting here for you,” cried Captain Wass. “That will give you a
start. Try the docks. You may find one of the boys who will help.”
Mayo escaped into a yard, dodged down an alley, planning his
movements as he hurried, having a mariner's quickness of thought in an
emergency.
He made directly for the pier where steam-vessels took water. A huge
ocean-going tug was just getting ready to leave her berth under the water-
hose. Her gruff whistle-call had ordered hawsers cast off. Mayo's 'longcoast
acquaintance was fairly extensive. This was a coal-barge tug, and he waved
quick greeting to the familiar face in her pilot-house and leaped aboard. He
climbed the forward ladder nimbly.
“I reckon you'll have to make it hello and good-by in one breath, mate,”
advised the skipper. “I'm off to take a light tow down-coast. Norfolk next
stop.”

“Let her go—sooner the better,” gasped the fugitive. “I'll explain why as
soon as you are out of the dock.”
“You don't say that you want to take the trip?”
“I've got to take it.”
The skipper cocked an eyebrow and pulled his bell. “Make yourself to
home, mate,” he advised. “I hope you ain't in so much of a hurry to get
there as you seem to be, for I've got three barges to tow.”
Mayo sat down on the rear transom and was hidden from all eyes on the
pier.
There was no opportunity for an explanation until the barges had been
picked up, for there was much manouver-ing and much tooting. But he
found ready sympathy after he had explained.
“The law sharps are always hankering to catch a poor cuss who is trying
to navigate these waters and suit the inspectors and the owners at the same
time,” admitted the master of the tug. “I have read everything the papers
had to say about your case, and I figured they didn't give you a fair show.
Newspapers and lawyers and owners don't understand what a fellow is up
against. I'm glad you're aboard, mate, because I want to hear your side, with
all the details.”
The threshing over of the matter occupied many hours of the long wallow
down the Jersey coast, and the tug captain weighed all features of the case
with the care of a man who has plenty of time on his hands and with the
zest a mariner displays in considering the affairs of his kind of folk.
“If I didn't know you pretty well, Mayo, and know what kind of a man
you got your training with, I might think—just as those law sharps will
probably say—that you were criminally careless or didn't know your
business. But that dodge she made on you! Two points off her course!
You've got to put your finger right on there and hold it! Let me tell you
something. It was a queer thing in my own case. That was a queer thing in
your case. Stand two queer things in our business up beside each other and
squint at 'em and you may learn something.”
“She was on her course—I put her there with my own hands,” persisted
Mayo.
“Sure! You know your business. If this thing was going to be left to the
bunch that know you, you'd go clear. But here's what happened in my case:

I had a new man in the wheel-house, here, and he almost rammed me into
Cuttyhunk, gave me a touch and go with the Pollock Rip Lightship, and had
me headed toward Nauset when the fog lifted. And he was steering my
courses to the thinness of a hair, at that! Say, I took a sudden tumble and
frisked that chap and dragged a toad-stabber knife out of his pocket—one of
those regular foot-long knives. It had been yawing off that compass all the
way from a point to a point and a half. When did you shift wheel-watch?”
“Before we made Vineyard Sound.”
“And no trouble coming up the sound?”
“Made Nobska and West Chop to the dot.”
“Then perhaps your general manager, who was in that pilot-house, had an
iron gizzard inside him. Most of them Wall Street fellows do have!” said the
skipper, with sarcasm.
“There's something going on in the steamboat business that I can't
understand,” declared Mayo. “It's high up; it hasn't to do with us chaps, who
have to take the kicks. Fogg brought a man aboard the old Nequasset, and
he didn't bring along a good explanation to go with that man. I have been
wondering ever since how it happened that Fogg got to be general manager
of the Vose line so almighty sudden.”
“Them high financiers play a big game, mate. And if you happened to be
a marked card in it, they'd tear you up and toss you under the table without
thinking twice. If you'll take a tip from me, you lay low and do a lot of
thinking while Uncle Zoradus does his scouting. What are you going to do
when you get to Norfolk?”
“I haven't thought.”
“Well, the both of us better think, and think hard, mate. If the United
States is really after you there'll be a sharp eye at every knot-hole. I can't
afford to let 'em get in a crack at me for what I've done.”
“I'll jump overboard outside the capes before I'll put you in wrong,”
asserted Mayo, with deep feeling.
That night the captain of the tug took a trick at the wheel in person.
His guest lay on the transom, smoking the skipper's spare pipe, and
racking his mind for ways and means. After a time he was conscious that
the captain was growling a bit of a song to relieve the tedium of his task. He
sang the same words over and over—a tried and true Chesapeake shanty:

“Oh, I sailed aboard a lugger, and I shipped aboard a scow,
And I sailed aboard a peanut-shell that had a razor bow.
Needle in a haystack, brick into a wall!
A nigger man in Norfolk, he ain't no 'count at all!”

Mayo rolled off the transom and went to the captain's side. “There's more
truth than poetry in that song of yours, sir,” he said. “You have given me an
idea. A nigger in Norfolk doesn't attract much attention. And I haven't got to
be one of the black ones, either. Don't you suppose there's something aboard
here I can use to stain my face with?”
“My cook is a great operator as a tattoo artist.”
“I don't think I want to make the disguise permanent, sir,” stated the
young man, with a smile.
“What I mean is, he may have something in his kit that he can use to
paint you with. What's your idea—stay there? I'm afraid they'll nail you.” >
“I'll stay there just long enough to ship before the mast on a schooner.
There isn't time to think up any better plan just now. Anything to keep out
of sight until I can make up my mind about what's really best to be done.”
“We'll have that cook up here,” offered the captain. “He's safe.”
The cook took prompt and professional interest in the matter. “Sure!” he
said. “I've got a stain that will sink in and stay put for a long time, if no
grease paint is used. Only you mustn't wash your face.”
“There's no danger of a fellow having any inducement to do that when
he's before the mast on a schooner in these days,” declared the tug captain,
dryly.
An hour later, Captain Boyd Mayo, late of the crack liner Montana, was a
very passable mulatto, his crisply curling hair adding to the disguise. He
swapped his neat suit of brown with a deck-hand, and received some
particularly unkempt garments.
The next night, when the tug was berthed at the water station, he slipped
off into the darkness, as homeless and as disconsolate as an abandoned dog.