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

new man in the wheel-house, here, and he almost rammed me into Cuttyhunk, gave me a touch and go with the Pollock Rip Lightship, and had me headed toward Nauset when the fog lifted. And he was steering my courses to the thinness of a hair, at that! Say, I took a sudden tumble and frisked that chap and dragged a toad-stabber knife out of his pocket--one of those regular foot-long knives. It had been yawing off that compass all the way from a point to a point and a half. When did you shift wheel-watch?"
"Before we made Vineyard Sound."
"And no trouble coming up the sound?"
"Made Nobska and West Chop to the dot."
"Then perhaps your general manager, who was in that pilot-house, had an iron gizzard inside him. Most of them Wall Street fellows do have!" said the skipper, with sarcasm.
"There's something going on in the steamboat business that I can't understand," declared Mayo. "It's high up; it hasn't to do with us chaps, who have to take the kicks. Fogg brought a man aboard the old _Nequasset_, and he didn't bring along a good explanation to go with that man. I have been wondering ever since how it happened that Fogg got to be general manager of the Vose line so almighty sudden."
"Them high financiers play a big game, mate. And if you happened to be a marked card in it, they'd tear you up and toss you under the table without thinking twice. If you'll take a tip from me, you lay low and do a lot of thinking while Uncle Zoradus does his scouting. What are you going to do when you get to Norfolk?"
"I haven't thought."
"Well, the both of us better think, and think hard, mate. If the United States is really after you there'll be a sharp eye at every knot-hole. I can't afford to let 'em get in a crack at me for what I've done."
"I'll jump overboard outside the capes before I'll put you in wrong," asserted Mayo, with deep feeling.
That night the captain of the tug took a trick at the wheel in person.
His guest lay on the transom, smoking the skipper's spare pipe, and racking his mind for ways and means. After a time he was conscious that the captain was growling a bit of a song to relieve the tedium of his task. He sang the same words over and over--a tried and true Chesapeake shanty:
"Oh, I sailed aboard a lugger, and I shipped aboard a scow,
And I sailed aboard a peanut-shell that had a razor bow.
Needle in a haystack, brick into a wall!
A nigger man in Norfolk, he ain't no 'count at all!"
Mayo rolled off the transom and went to the captain's side. "There's more truth than poetry in that song of yours, sir," he said. "You have given me an idea. A nigger in Norfolk doesn't attract much attention. And I haven't got to be one of the black ones, either. Don't you suppose there's something aboard here I can use to stain my face with?"
"My cook is a great operator as a tattoo artist."
"I don't think I want to make the disguise permanent, sir," stated the young man, with a smile.
"What I mean is, he may have something in his kit that he can use to paint you with. What's your idea--stay there? I'm afraid they'll nail you." >
"I'll stay there just long enough to ship before the mast on a schooner. There isn't time to think up any better plan just now. Anything to keep out of sight until I can make up my mind about what's really best to be done."
"We'll have that cook up here," offered the captain. "He's safe."
The cook took prompt and professional interest in the matter. "Sure!" he said. "I've got a stain that will sink in and stay put for a long time, if no grease paint is used. Only you mustn't wash your face."
"There's no danger of a fellow having any inducement to do that when he's before the mast on a schooner in these days," declared the tug captain, dryly.
An hour later, Captain Boyd Mayo, late of the crack liner _Montana_, was a very passable mulatto, his crisply curling hair adding to the disguise. He swapped his neat suit of brown with a deck-hand, and received some particularly unkempt garments.
The next night, when the tug was berthed at the water station, he slipped off into the darkness, as homeless and as disconsolate as an abandoned dog.


XXII ~ SPECIAL BUSINESS OF A PASSENGER
O Ranzo was no sailor,
He shipped on board a whaler.
O pity Reuben Ran-zo, Ran-zo, boys!
O poor old Reuben Ranzo, Ranzo, boys!
--Reuben Ranzo.
Captain Mayo kept out of the region of the white lights for some time. He had a pretty wide acquaintance in the Virginia port, and he knew the beaten paths of the steamboating transients, ashore for a bit of a blow.
He lurked in alleys, feeling especially disreputable. He was not at all sure that his make-up was effective. His own self-consciousness convinced him that he was a glaring fraud, whose identity would be revealed promptly to any person who knew him. But while he sneaked in the purlieus of the city several of his 'longshore friends passed him without a second look. One, a second engineer on a Union line freighter, whirled after passing, and came back to him.
"Got a job, boy?"
"No, sir."
"We need coal-passers on the _Drummond_. She's in the stream. Come aboard in the morning."
But it was not according to Mayo's calculation, messing with steamboat men. "Ah doan' conclude ah wants no sech job," he drawled.
"No, of course you don't want to work, you blasted yaller mutt!" snapped the engineer. He marched on, cursing, and Mayo was encouraged, for the man had given him a thorough looking-over.
He went out onto the wider streets. He was looking for a roving schooner captain, reckoning he would know one of that gentry by the cut of his jib.
A ponderous man came stumping down the sidewalk, swinging his shoulders.
"He's one of 'em," decided Mayo. The round-crowned soft hat, undented, the flapping trouser legs, the gait recognized readily by one who has ever seen a master mariner patrol his quarter-deck--all these marked him as a safe man to tackle. He stopped, dragged a match against the brick side of a building, and relighted his cigar. But before Mayo could reach him a colored man hurried up and accosted the big gentleman, whipping off his hat and bowing with smug humility. Mayo hung up at a little distance. He recognized the colored man; he was one of the numerous Norfolk runners who furnish crews for vessels. He wore pearl-gray trousers, a tailed coat, and had a pink in his buttonhole.
"Ah done have to say that ah doan' get that number seven man up to now, Cap'n Downs, though I have squitulate for him all up and down. But ah done expect--"
Captain Downs scowled over his scooped hands, puffing hard at his cigar. He threw away the match.
"Look-a-here! you've been chasing me two days with new stories about that seventh man. Haven't you known me long enough to know that you can't trim me for another fee?"
"Cap'n Downs, you done know yo'self the present lucidateness of the sailorman supply."
"I know that if you don't get that man aboard my schooner to-night or the first thing to-morrow morning you'll never put another one aboard for me. You go hustle! And look here! I see you making up your mouth! Not another cent!"
The colored man backed off and went away.
Mayo accosted the captain when that fuming gentleman came lunging along the sidewalk. "Ah done lak to have that job, cap'n," he pleaded.
"You a sailor?"
"Yas, sir."
"How is it you ain't hiring through the regular runners?"
"Ah doan' lak to give all my money to a dude nigger to go spotein' on."
"Well, there's something in that," acknowledged Captain Downs, softening a bit. "I haven't got much use for that kind myself. You come along. But if you ain't A-1, shipshape, and seamanlike and come aboard my vessel to loaf on your job you'll wish you were in tophet with the torches lighted. Got any dunnage laying around anywhere?"
"No, sir."
"Well, then, I guess you're a regular sailor, all right, the way the breed runs nowadays. That sounds perfectly natural." The captain led the way down to a public landing, where a power-yawl, with engineer and a mate, was in waiting. "Will she go into the stream to-night, Mr. Dodge?" asked Captain Downs, curtly.
"No, sir! About four hundred tons still to come."
Schooner captains keep religiously away from their vessels as long as the crafts lie at the coal-docks.
"Come up for me in the morning as soon as she is in the stream. Here's a man to fill the crew. If that coon shows up with another man kick the two of 'em up the wharf."
"Will the passenger come aboard with you, sir?"
"He called me up at the hotel about supper-time and said something about wanting to come aboard at the dock. I tried to tell him it was foolish, but it's safe to reckon that a man who wants to sail as passenger from here to Boston on a coal-schooner is a fool, anyway. If he shows up, let him come aboard." Captain Downs swung away and the night closed in behind him.
Mayo took his place in the yawl and preserved meek and proper silence during the trip down the harbor.
When they swung under the counter of the schooner which was their destination, the young man noted that she was the _Drusilla M. Alden_, a five-master, of no very enviable record along the coast, so far as the methods and manners of her master went; Mayo had heard of her master, whose nickname was "Old Mull." He had not recognized him under the name of Captain Downs when the runner had addressed him.
The new member of the crew followed the mate up the ladder--only a few steps, for the huge schooner, with most of her cargo aboard, showed less than ten feet of freeboard amidships.
"Sleepy, George?" asked the mate, when they were on deck.
"No, sir."
"Then you may as well go on this watch."
"Yass'r!"
"We'll call it now eight bells, midnight. You'll go off watch eight bells, morning."
Mayo knew that the hour was not much later than eleven, but he did not protest; he knew something about the procedure aboard coastwise coal-schooners.
Search-lights bent steady glare upon the chutes down which rushed the streams of coal, black dust swirling in the white radiance. The great pockets at Lambert Point are never idle. High above, on the railway, trains of coal-cars racketed. Under his feet the fabric of the vessel trembled as the chutes fed her through the three hatches. Sweating, coal-blackened men toiled in the depths of her, revealed below hatches by the electric lights, pecking at the avalanche with their shovels, trimming cargo.
The young man exchanged a few listless words with the two negroes who were on deck, his mates of the watch.
They were plainly not interested in him, and he avoided them.
The hours dragged. He helped to close and