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

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