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

/> "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