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

then gave way to his impulse. "Miss Polly, I haven't any right to trouble you with my affairs. I may seem impertinent. But you are a girl! Does a girl usually sit down and think over all the difficulties--when she doesn't get letters--and then make allowances?"
"I'm sure she does--when she loves anybody."
"And yet it may seem very strange. I am worried out of my senses. I don't know what to do."
She was silent for a long time, looking away from him and twisting her hands in her lap; she was plainly searching her soul for inspiration--and courage!
"You think she will understand the situation?" he insisted.
"She ought to."
"But no word from me! Silence for weeks!"
Her voice was low, but she evidently had found courage. "I have not heard one word--not a letter has come to me--since I left my aunt's home."
"Do you feel sure that he loves you just the same? You don't need letters?"
"Oh no! I don't need letters."
"But in my case?"
"I could see that she loves you very much. She stood out before them all, Captain Mayo. That sort of a girl does not need letters."
"You have put new courage in me. I believe you understand just how a girl would feel. You know a Yankee! He expects to find a friend just where he left him, in the matter of affection."
"A girl does not need to be a Yankee to be that way in her love."
"I can't sneak around to her by the back way--I can't do that!" he cried. "I don't want to be ashamed of myself. I don't want to bring more trouble to her. Don't you think she will wait for me until I can come--and come right!"
"She will wait for you, sir. It's the nature of women to wait--when they love."
"But I cannot ask her to wait forever. That's why I must go away and try to make good." He set his teeth, and his jaw muscles were ridged. "I believe a man can get what he goes after in the right spirit, Miss Polly." He swing off the porch and left her.
The fog was heavy on shore and sea that day, holding the _Ethel and May_ in port. He disappeared into the stifling mist, and the girl sat and stared into that vacancy for a long time.
Mayo rowed out to the schooner, which was anchored in the harbor roads. He was carrying his accounts to Captain Candage.
Standing and facing forward as he rowed, he came suddenly upon a big steam-yacht which had stolen into the cove through the fog and was anchored in his course. She was the _Sprite_, and he had formed a 'longshore acquaintance with her skipper that summer, meeting him in harbors where the _Sprite_ and _Olenia_ had been neighbors in the anchorage. He stopped rowing and allowed the dory to drift. He noted that the blue flag was flying at the main starboard spreader, announcing the absence of the owner, and he understood that he could call for the skipper without embarrassing that gentleman. One of the crew was putting covers on the brasswork forward.
"Compliments to Captain Trott, and tell him that Captain Mayo is at the gangway."
The skipper appeared promptly, replying to the hail before the sailor had stirred. "Come aboard, sir."
"I'll not bother you that much, captain. I can ask my question just as well from here. Do you know of any good opening for a man of my size?"
The captain of the _Sprite_ came to the rail and did not reply promptly.
"I have left the _Olenia_ and I'm looking for something."
Captain Trott started for the gangway. "Oh, you needn't trouble to come down, sir."
"I'd rather, Captain Mayo." After he had descended he squatted on the platform at the foot of the ladder and held the dory close, grasping the gunwale. "What are you doing for yourself these days?"
Mayo had no relish for a long story. "I'm waiting to grab in on something," he replied.
Captain Trott did not show any alacrity in getting to the subject which Mayo had broached. "It has set in pretty thick, hasn't it? I have been ordered in here to wait for my folks; they're visiting at some big estate up-river."
"But about the chance for a job, captain!"
"Look here! What kind of a run-in did you have with the _Olenia_ owner?"
Mayo opened his mouth and then promptly closed it. He could not reveal the nature of the trouble between himself and his former employer.
"We had words," he said, stiffly.
"Yes, I reckon so! But the rest of it!"
"That's all."
"You needn't tell me any more than you feel like doing, of course," said Captain Trott. "But I have to tell _you_ that Mr. Marston has come out with some pretty fierce talk for an owner to make. He has made quite a business of circulating that talk. I didn't realize that you are of so much importance in the world, Mayo," he added, dryly.
"I don't know what he is saying."
"Didn't you leave him in the night--without notice, or something of the kind?"
"It was an accident."
"I hope you have a good story to back you up, Captain Mayo, for I have liked you mighty well ever since meeting you first. What is behind it?"
"I can't tell you."
"But you can tell somebody--somebody who can straighten the thing out for you, can't you?"
"No, Captain Trott."
"Well, you know what has happened in your case, don't you?" The skipper of the _Sprite_ exhibited a little testiness at being barred out of Mayo's confidence.
The young man shook his head.
"Marston claims that you mutinied and deserted him--slipped away in the night--threw up your job on the high seas--left him to work to New York with a short crew--the mate as captain."
"That's an infernal lie!"
"Then come forward and show him up."
"I cannot talk about the case. I have my reasons--good ones!"
"I'm sorry for you, Mayo. You are done in the yachting game, I'm afraid. He'll blacklist you in every yacht club from Bar Harbor to Miami. I have heard my folks talking about it. He seems to have a terrible grudge--more than a big man usually bothers about in the case of a skipper."
Mayo set his oar against the edge of the platform and pushed off. The skipper called after him, but he was instantly swallowed up by the fog and did not reply.
On board the _Ethel and May_ his ragged but cheery crew were baiting up, hooking clams upon the ganging hooks, and coiling lines into tubs. The men grinned greeting when he swung over the rail. He scowled at them; he even turned a glowering look on Captain Candage when he met the latter on the quarter-deck.
"Yes, sir! I see how it is! You're getting cussed sick of this two-cent game here," said Candage, mournfully. "I don't blame ye. We ain't in your class, here, Captain Mayo." He took the papers which the young man held out to him. "I suppose this is the last time we'll share, you and me. I'll miss ye devilish bad. I'd rather go for nothing and let you have it all than lose ye. But, of course, it ain't no use to argue or coax."
Mayo went and sat on the rail, folding his arms, and did not reply. The old skipper trudged forward, his head bowed, his hands clutched behind his back. When he returned Mayo stood up and put his hand on the old man's shoulder.
"Captain Candage, please don't misunderstand me. Just at present I feel that the only friends I have in the world are here. Don't mind the way I acted just now when I came on board. I have had a lot of trouble--I'm having more of it. I'm not going to leave you just yet. I want to stay aboard until I can think it all over--can get my grip. That is, if you're satisfied to have it that way!"
"Satisfied! Jumping Cicero!" exploded Captain Can-dage. He took the dory and rowed ashore. He found his daughter gazing into the fog from the porch of the widow's cottage. "He is going to stay a while longer," he informed her, rapturously. "Something has happened. Do you suppose that girl has throwed him over?"
"Father, do you dare to chuckle because a friend is in trouble?"
"I'll laugh and slap my leg if he ever gets shet of that hity-tity girl," he rejoined, stoutly.
"I am astonished--I am ashamed of you, father!"
"Polly dear, be honest with your dad!" he pleaded. "Do you want to see him married off to her?"
"I certainly do. I only wish I might help him." Her lips were white, her voice trembled. She got up and hurried into the house.
"I'll be cussed if I understand wimmen," declared Captain Candage, fiddling his finger under his nose. "That feller she has picked out for herself must be the Emp'ror of Peeroo."
Captain Mayo did not come ashore again before the _Ethel and May_ sailed.
The fog cleared that night and they smashed out to the fishing-grounds ahead of a cracking breeze, and had their trawls down in the early dawn. At sundown, trailed by a wavering banner of screaming gulls who gobbled the "orts" tossed over by the busy crew cleaning their catch, they were docking at the city fish-house.
"Lucky again," commented Captain Candage, returning from his sharp dicker with the buyer. "The city critters are all hungry for haddock, and that's just what we hit to-day." He surveyed his gloomy partner with sympathetic concern. "Why don't you take a run uptown?" he suggested. "You're sticking too close to this packet for a young man. Furthermore, if you see a store open buy me a box of paper collars. Rowley hain't got my size!"
Mayo, unreconciled and uneasy, hating that day the sound of the flapping, sliding fish as they were pitchforked into the tubs for hoisting, annoyed by the yawling of pulleys and realizing that his nerves were not right at all, obeyed the suggestion. He had a secret errand of his own, yielding to a half-hope; he went to the general-delivery window of the post-office and asked for mail. He knew that love makes keen guesses. The _Olenia_ had visited that harbor frequently for mail. But there was nothing for him. He strolled about the streets, nursing his melancholy, forgetting Captain Candage's commission, envying the contentment shown by others.
In that mood he would have avoided Captain Zoradus Wass if he had spied that boisterously cheerful mariner in season. But the captain had him by the arm and was dancing him about the sidewalk, showing more affability than was his wont.
"Heifers o' Herod! youngster," shouted the grizzled master, "have you come looking for me?"
"No," faltered Mayo. "Did you want to see me?"
"Have worn taps off my boots to-day chasing from shipping commissioner's office to every hole and corner along the water-front. Heard you had quit aboard a yacht, and reckoned you had got sensible again and wanted real work."
"If you had asked down among the fish-houses you might have got on track of me, sir." Mayo's tone was somber.
"Fish! You fishing?" demanded Captain Wass, with incredulity.
"Yes, and on a chartered smack at that--shack-fishing on shares!" Mayo was sourly resolved to paint his low estate in black colors. "And I have concluded it's about all I'm fit for."
"That's fine, seaman-like talk to come from a young chap I have trained up to master's papers, giving him two years in my pilot-house. I was afraid you were going astern, you young cuss, when I heard you'd gone skipper of a yacht, but I didn't think it was as bad as all this."
"My yachting