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

what I mean if I don't say any more. It's bad business on both sides. But what were you doing in the fairway?"
"We wa'n't in the fairway," protested a grizzled man, evidently the mate. He was uneasy in his borrowed clothes--he had surrendered his own garments to a pantryman who had volunteered to dry them.
"You must have been," insisted Captain Mayo.
"I know we was all of two miles north of the regular course. I 'ain't sailed across these shoals for thirty years not to know soundings when I make 'em myself. Furthermore, she'll speak for herself, where she's sunk."
The captain could not gainsay that dictum.
The mate scowled at the young man.
"I've got a question of my own. What ye doing, yourself, all of two miles out of your course, whanging along, tooting your old whistle as if you owned the sea and had rollers under you to go across dry ground with, too?"
"I was not two miles out of my course," protested the captain, and yet the sickening feeling came to him that there had been some dreadful error, somewhere, somehow.
"When they put these steamers into the hands of real men instead of having dudes and kids run 'em, then shipping will stand a fair show on this coast," declared the mate, casting a disparaging glance at Mayo's new uniform. "It was my watch on deck, and I know what I'm talking about. You came belting along straight at us, two points out of your course, and I thought the fog was playing tricks, and I didn't believe my own ears. You have drowned my captain and four honest men. When I stand up in court they'll get the straight facts from me, I can tell you that. And they tell me it's your first trip. I might have knowed it was some greenhorn, when I heard you coming two points off your course. You'd better take off them clothes. I reckon you've made your _last_ trip, too!"
It was the querulous railing of a man who had been near death; it was the everlasting grouch of the sailing-man against the lordly steamboater. Mayo had no heart for rebuke or retort. What had happened to him, anyway? This old schooner man seemed to know exactly what he was talking about.
"If you don't believe what I'm telling you, go out on deck and see if you can't hear the Hedge Fence whistle," advised the mate, sourly. "If she don't bear south of east I'll eat that suit they're drying out for me. And that will show you that you're two miles to the norrard of where you ought to be."
On his way to the pilot-house Captain Mayo did hear the hollow voice of the distant whistle, with its double blast and its long interval of silence. The sound came from abaft his beam and his disquietude increased.
Then the acute realization was forced in upon him that he had the general manager of the line to face. The captain had not caught sight of his superior during the excitement; he wondered now why Mr. Fogg had effaced himself so carefully.
The red coal of a cigar glowed in a corner of the pilothouse. From that corner came curt inquiry: "Well, Captain Mayo, what have you got to say about this?"
"I think I'll do my talking after I have had daylight on the proposition, sir."
"Don't you have any idea how you happened to be off your course so far?" asked Fogg, his anxiety noticeable in his tones.
"How do you know I was off my course?"
"Well--er--why, well, you wouldn't be aground, would you, if you hadn't lost your way?"
"I didn't lose my way, Mr. Fogg."
"What did happen, then?"
"That's for me to find out."
"I'm not going to say anything to you yet, Captain Mayo. It's too sudden--too big a blow. It's going to paralyze the Vose line." Mr. Fogg said this briskly, as if he were passing small talk on the weather.
"I'm thankful that you're taking the thing so calmly, sir. I've been dreading to meet you."
"Oh--a business man in these days can't allow himself to fly to pieces over setbacks. Optimism is half the battle."
But Mayo, sitting there in that dark pilot-house for the rest of the night, staring out into the blank wall of the fog and surveying the wreck of his hopes, was decidedly not optimistic.


XXI ~ BITTER PROOF BY MORNING LIGHT
Bad news, bad news to our captain came
That grieved him very sore;
But when he knew that all of it was true,
It grieved him ten time more,
Brave boys!
It grieved him ten times more!
--Cold Greenland.
Morning brought to him neither cheer nor counsel. The winds swept the fog off the seas, and the brightness of the sunshine only mocked the gloom of Captain Mayo's thoughts.
He was most unmistakably far off his course. He took his bearings carefully, and he groped through his memory and his experience for reasons which would explain how he came to be away up there on Hedge Fence. Two of the masts of the sunken stone-schooner showed above the sea, two depressing monuments of disaster. He took further bearings and tested his compass with minute care. So far as he could determine it was correct to the dot.
It was a busy forenoon for all on board the steamer. The revenue cutters took off the passengers. Representatives of the underwriters came out from Wood's Hole on a tug. The huge _Montana_, set solidly into its bed of sand, loomed against the sky, mute witness of somebody's inefficiency or mistake.
Late in the day Captain Mayo and General-Manager Fogg locked themselves in the captain's cabin to have it out.
When the master had finished his statement Mr. Fogg flicked the ash from his cigar, studied the glowing end for a time, and narrowed his eyes.
"So, summing it all up, it happened, and you don't know just how it happened. You were off your course and don't know how you happened to be off your course. You don't expect us to defend you before the steamboat inspectors, with that for an explanation, Mayo?"
"All I can do is to tell the truth at the hearing, sir."
"They'll break you, sure as a mule wags ears. There are five dead men inside that wreck yonder. Don't you reckon you'll be indicted for manslaughter?"
"I shall claim that the collision was unavoidable."
"But you were off your course--were in a place you had no business to be in. That knocks your defense all to the devil. You are in almighty bad, Mayo. You must wake up to it."
The young man was pale and rigid and silent.
"The Vose line is in bad enough as it is, without trying to defend you. I suppose I'll be blamed for putting on a young captain. Mayo, I am older than you are and wiser about the law and such matters. Why don't you duck out from under, eh?"
"You mean run away?"
"I wouldn't put it quite as bluntly as that. I mean, go away and keep out of sight till it quiets down. If you stay they'll put you on the rack and get you all tangled up by firing questions at you. And what will you gain by going through the muss? You've got to agree with me that the inspectors will suspend you--revoke your license. Here's this steamer here, talking for herself. If you stay around underfoot, and all the evidence is brought out at the hearing, then the Federal grand jury will take the thing up, probably. They'll have a manslaughter case against you."
Still Captain Mayo did not speak.
"If you simply drop out of sight I don't believe they'll chase you. Personally, having watched you last night, I don't believe you are guilty of any very bad break. It simply happened wrong. We don't want all the notoriety a court trial would bring to the line. And here's what I'll do, Mayo. I'll slip you a few hundred for expenses so that you can go away and grab into the shipping game somewhere else. A fellow like you can land on his feet."
"Mr. Fogg, a renegade steamboat man stands a mighty poor show. I may be suspended, and worse may happen to me, but I'm not going to ruin myself and my good name by running away. That's confession! It's wrecking all my prospects forever--and I have worked too hard for what I've got. I'm going to stay here and face the music--tell my story like a man."
"It will make a fine story--and you have told me yourself that they are just waiting to make a smashing example of somebody," sneered Fogg. "You, a cub captain, broke the navigation rules last night by running at least fifteen knots in the fog. Your log and the testimony of your mates will show that. I'm not blaming you, son. I'm showing you how it looks! You got off your course and rammed a schooner at anchor, and you didn't even stop to pick up her men. I saw that much. Mayo, the only sensible thing for you to do is to duck out from under. It will save the line from a lot of scandal and bad advertising. By gad! if you don't do that much for us, after the offer I've just made you, I'll go onto the stand and testify against you."
"You seem to be mighty ready and anxious to make me the goat in this thing," blazed the young man, his temper getting away from him. He had been without sleep for many hours, his soul had been crucified by the bitter experiences he had been through.
"Are you looking for a fight?"
"No, Mr. Fogg, I'm looking for a square deal. I haven't done anything intentionally to make me a fugitive from justice. I won't run away."
"You won't be the first witness who has helped big interests by keeping out of sight and out of reach of the lawyers. It's business, Mayo."
"It may be, Mr. Fogg. I don't know the inside of the big deals. I'm only a sailor. I associate with sailors. And I've got a little pride in my good name."
Mr. Fogg looked at this recalcitrant with scorn. He wanted to tell this stubborn individual that he was merely a two-spot in the big game which was being played. But the expression on Mayo's face encouraged neither levity nor sneers.
"I'll give you a thousand dollars expense money for your trip and will talk job with you next year after you get your license back," proffered the general manager.
Captain Mayo fixed flaming eyes on the tempter. "What special, private reason have you got for wanting to bribe me?" demanded the young man, with such heat that Fogg flinched. "You are making something very mysterious out of what should be open and aboveboard. That may be Wall Street tactics, Mr. Fogg, but it doesn't go with a sailor who has earned a master's papers and is proud of it."
"Well, pass on then," directed Fogg. "There's a tug alongside to take the underwriters back to Wood's Hole. Go along--to jail, or wherever it is you'll fetch up."
"I shall stay aboard this ship as her captain until I am relieved according to the formalities