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

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