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

to be whispered behind corners." He scowled when his mate gave him a wink, both suggestive and imploring. "Spit it out!"
"The law doesn't allow us to take passengers, as you suggest. And naturally you don't like to act without orders from owners." He looked at Mr. Fogg as he spoke, plainly offering apology to that gentleman. "But we need a second steward and--"
"We don't!" Captain Wass was blunt and tactless.
"I beg pardon--we really do. And we can sign this young man in a--a sort of nominal way, and then when we get to Philadelphia we'll probably find the matter all straightened out."
"What's your name?" asked Mr. Fogg.
"Boyd Mayo, sir. First mate."
"Mr. Mayo, you're a young man with a lot of common sense," declared Fogg.
To himself, staring at the young man, he said: "I'm going to play this game out with two-spots, and here's one ready for the draw!"
"I'll see you in Philadelphia, Mr. Mayo," he continued, aloud. "I am exactly what I say I am. Captain Wass, you've got something coming to you. Mr. Mayo, you've got something coming to you, also--and it's good!" His assertiveness was compelling, and even the captain displayed symptoms of being impressed. "It isn't at all necessary that my agent make this trip with you, Captain Wass. Perhaps I had no distinct right to bring him here. But I am a hustling sort of a business man and I want to get at matters in short order. However, I ask no favors. Come on, Boyne!"
"We'll sign him on as steward to cover the law," proffered the captain, as terse in consent as he was in refusal.
"Very well," agreed Fogg. "You've got an able first mate, sir." He flipped his watch out. "I've got a train to make, gentlemen. Good day!"
He took Boyne by the arm and led him to the ladder from the bridge. "Son," said he, "you dig into that Mayo chap till you know him up and down and through and through. I'm going to use him. And you keep your mouth shut about yourself." He backed down the ladder, feeling his way cautiously with his fat legs, trotted to the waiting cab, and was whirled away.
At high noon the next day Fletcher Fogg marched into the general offices of the Vose line in company with ten solid-looking citizens. Imperturbable and smiling, he allowed President Vose to shriek anathema and to wave the certified copy of the record of the annual meeting under the snub Fogg nose.
"What you say doesn't change the situation in the least," affirmed Mr. Fogg. "You'll find the actual records of the meeting deposited in the usual place in the state of your incorporation. If you think these new directors are not lawfully and duly elected, you can apply to the courts."
"You confounded thief, it's likely to take a year to get a decision. This is damnable. It's piracy. You know what courts are!"
"Poke up your courts, then. It isn't my fault if they're slow."
The new directors filed into the board-room and with great celerity proceeded to elect Fletcher Fogg to be president and general manager of the Vose line.
"What are you going to do?" pleaded the deposed executive head. "My money is in here--my whole life is in it--my pride--my intention to see that the public gets a square deal. You infernal rogue, what are you going to do with my property?"
"That's my own business," said Fletcher Fogg.
"You can't get away with it--you can't do it!" raged Vose. "I'll get at the inside of how that meeting was conducted. You'd better take backwater right now, Fogg, and save yourself. I'm not afraid to tell you what I'm going to do. I'll have a temporary injunction issued. I'll prove fraud was used at that meeting--bribery, yes, sir!"
Mr. Fogg smiled and sat down at the president's desk. "First he'll have to find a young man by the name of David Boyne," he told himself.
"Vose," said the new president, "all you can show a court is the record of an annual meeting, duly and legally held. And if the judge wants to have a look at me he'll find me running this line a blamed sight better than you have ever run it."
"It's a cheap, plain trick," bleated the aged steamship manager. "Your crowd is going to sell out to the Paramount--it's your plot."
"Oh no! We're not inviting injunctions and law and newspaper talk and slurs and slander, Mr. Vose. If there's ever any selling out you'll be the first to suggest it; I never shall. You see, I'm just as frank with you as you are with me. Selling this line to the Paramount right now, just because the new board is in, would be ragged work--very coarse work. Thank Heaven, I have a proper respect for the law--and what it can do to bother a fool. I am not a fool, Mr. Vose."


XIX ~ THE PRIZE PACKAGE FROM MR. FOGG
Our captain stood on his quarter-deck,
And a fine little man was he!
"Overhaul, overhaul, on your davit tackle fall,
And launch your boats to the sea,
Brave boys! And launch your boats to the sea."
--The Whale.
A slowing, tug, tooting fussy and staccato blasts which Captain Wass translated into commands to hold up, intercepted the _Nequasset_ in Hampton Roads.
Mr. Fletcher Fogg was a passenger on the tug. In a suit of natty gray, he loomed conspicuously in the alley outside the tug's pilot-house. He cursed roundly when he toilsomely climbed the ladder to the freighter's deck, for the rusty sheathing smutched the knees of his trousers.
"I'm doing a little better than I promised you, captain," he stated when he arrived finally in the presence of the master. "I said Philadelphia. But here I am. Do you know me now?"
"Your name is Fogg," returned Captain Wass, exhibiting no special delight.
"And I'm manager of this line. As it seems to be pretty hard for you to get anything through that thick nut of yours, I'll ask you to glance at a paper which will save argument."
The paper was an attested notification, signed by the directors, stating in laconic legal phrase what Mr. Fogg had just declared.
"You recognize my authority, do you?"
"Your bill o' lading reads O. K.," assented the skipper.
"Very well! Exactly! Then you take your orders. Proceed to an anchorage off Lambert Point below Norfolk, pick a berth well off the channel, and put down both hooks. The boat is going out of commission. I find you're not making any money for the owners."
"It ain't my fault. With charters at--" began the master, indignantly.
"I haven't any time for a joint debate. You are laid off. Bring your accounts to the main office as soon as you have turned the steamer over to the caretaker--he'll come out from Norfolk." Manager Fogg turned on his heel to meet Mate Mayo. "You will report at the main offices, too, Mr. Mayo. Have you master's papers?"
"I have, sir--Atlantic waters, Jacksonville to East-port."
"Very good--you're going to be promoted. I shall put you aboard the passenger-steamer _Montana_ as captain." He looked about sharply. "Where is my agent?"
"There, in the quartermaster's cabin. We gave him that," replied Captain Wass, gruffly. "I'm glad I'm out of steamboating. I've learned how to run a boarding-house and make money out of it."
Mr. Fogg did not understand that sneer, and he paid no attention to the captain's manner. He started for the cabin indicated.
"Well, you can swell around in gold braid now and catch your heiress," observed Captain Wass to his mate.
"I'm sorry, skipper," said the young man, with real feeling. "You are the man to be promoted, not I. It isn't right--it doesn't seem real."
"There isn't any real steamboating on this coast any longer. It is--I don't know what the devil it is," snarled the veteran. "I have been sniffing and scouting. I'd like to be a mouse in the wall of them New York offices and hear what it is they're trying to do to us poor cusses. Ordered one day to keep the law; ordered the next day to break the law; hounded by owners and threatened by the government! I'm glad I'm out of it and glad you've got a good job. That last I'm specially glad about. But keep your eye peeled. There are queer doings round about you!"
Fogg entered the cabin and shut the door behind him. He found Boyne sitting on a stool and looking somewhat apprehensive. "Hiding?" inquired Fogg.
"I thought I wouldn't show myself till I was sure about who was on that tug," said the young man.
"That's the boy, David," complimented Fogg, with real heartiness. "You're no fool. Nothing like being careful. Pack your bag and go aboard the tug." He marched out.
"Philadelphia charter has been canceled, eh?" asked Captain Wass. The tone of his voice did not invite amity.
"It has, sir."
"Seems queer to turn down a cargo that's there waiting--and the old boat can carry it cheaper than anybody else, the way I've got expenses fined down."
"Are you trying to tell me my business?"
"I have beep steamboating forty years, and I know a little something about it."
Mr. Fogg looked at the old mariner, eyes narrowed. He wanted to inform Captain Wass that the latter knew altogether too much about steamboating for the kind of work that was planned out along the coast in those ticklish times.
"Then I ain't to expect anything special from now on?" asked the skipper. In spite of his determination to be crusty and keep his upper lip stiff, he could not repress a little wistfulness, and his eyes roved over the old freighter with affection.
"Not a thing, sir!" Mr. Fogg was blunt and cool. He started for the ladder. He slapped the shoulder of Mayo as he passed the young man. "Here's the kind of chap we're looking for nowadays. The sooner you report, my boy, the better for you."
With Boyne following him, he climbed down the swaying ladder, and was lifted from the lower rungs over the tug's rail to a secure footing.
After the lines had been cast off and the tug went floundering away at a sharp angle, Captain Wass scuffed into his pilot-house and gave the bells.
"She seems to feel it--honest she does!" he told Mate Mayo. "She goes off logy. She doesn't pick up her heels. Nor could I do it when I walked in here. Going to be scrapped--the two of us! Cuss their picking and stealing and fighting and financing. They ain't steam-boating any longer. They're using good boats to play checkers in Wall Street with. Well, son," he mourned, hanging dispiritedly over the sill of the window and staring up the wind-swept Chesapeake, "I ain't going to whine--but I shall miss the old packet and the rumble and racket of the old machine down there in her belly. I'd even take the job of watchman aboard her if he would hire me."
"He seems to fancy me a bit. I'll ask him to hire you," proffered the mate, eagerly.
"I reckon you didn't get the look in his eye when he fired me," said Captain Wass. "I won't allow you to say a word to him about me. You go ahead, boy, and take the