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

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