Blow the Man Down, Holman Day [e ink epub reader TXT] 📗

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.