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

batten the fore-hatch, and later performed similar service on the hatch aft. The main-hatch continued to gulp the black food which the chute fed to it.
Suddenly a tall young man appeared to Mayo. The stranger was smartly dressed, and his spick-and-span garb contrasted strangely with the general riot of dirt aboard the schooner. He trod gingerly over the dust-coated planks and carried two suit-cases.
"Here, George," he commanded. "Take these to my stateroom."
Mayo hesitated.
"I'm going as passenger," said the young man, impatiently, and Mayo remembered what the captain had told the mate.
Passengers on coal-schooners, sailing as friends of the master, were not unknown on the coast, but Mayo judged, from what he had heard, that this person was not a friend, and had wondered a bit.
"I am not allowed to go aft, sir, without orders from the mate."
"Where is the mate?"
"I think he is below, sir."
"Asleep?"
"I wouldn't wonder."
Mayo did not trouble to use his dialect on this stranger, a mere passenger, who spoke as if he were addressing a car-porter. The tone produced instant irritation, resentment in the man who had so recently been master of his ship.
The passenger set down his baggage and pondered a moment. He looked Mayo over in calculating fashion; he stared up the wharf. Then he picked up his bags and hurried along the port alley and disappeared down the companionway.
He returned in a few moments, came into the waist of the vessel, and made careful survey of all about him. There were two sailors far forward, merely dim shadows. For some reason general conditions on the schooner seemed to satisfy the stranger.
"The thing is breaking about right--about as I reckoned it would," he said aloud. "Look here, George, how much talking do you do about things you see?"
"Talking to who, sir?"
"Why, to your boss--the captain--the mate."
"A sailor before the mast is pretty careful not to say anything to a captain or the mates unless they speak to him first, sir."
"George, I'm not going to do anything but what is perfectly all right, you understand. You'll not get into any trouble over it. But what you don't see you can't tell, no matter if questions are asked later on. Here, take this!" He crowded two silver dollars into Mayo's hands and gave him a push. "You trot forward and stay there about five minutes, that's the boy! It's all right. It's a little of my own private business. Go ahead!"
Mayo went. He reflected that it was none of his affair what a passenger did aboard the vessel. It was precious little interest he took in the craft, anyway, except as a temporary refuge. He turned away and put the money in his pocket, the darkness hiding his smile.
He did not look toward the wharf. He strolled on past the forward house, where the engineer was stoking his boiler, getting up steam for the schooner's windlass engine. When he patrolled aft again, after a conscientious wait, he found the passenger leaning against the coachhouse door, smoking a cigarette. The electric light showed his face, and it wore a look of peculiar satisfaction.
Just then some one fumbled inside the coach-house door at the stranger's back, and when the latter stepped away the first mate appeared, yawning.
"I'm the passenger--Mr. Bradish," the young man explained, promptly. "I just made myself at home, put my stuff in a stateroom, and locked the door and took the key. Is that all right?"
"May be just as well to lock it while we're at dock and stevedores are aboard," agreed the mate.
"How soon do we pull out of here?"
The mate yawned again and peered up into the sky, where the first gray of the summer dawn was showing over the cranes of the coal-pockets. "In about a half-hour, I should say. Just as soon as the tug can use daylight to put us into the stream."
The roar of the coal in the main-hatch chute had ceased. The schooner was loaded.
"Go strike eight bells, Jeff, and turn in!" ordered the mate, speaking to Mayo.
"Well, I'll stay outside, here, and watch the sun rise," said Bradish. "It will be a new experience."
"It's an almighty dirty place for loafing till we get into the stream and clean ship, sir. I should think taking an excursion on a coal-lugger would be another new experience!" There was just a hint of grim sarcasm in his tone.
"The doctor ordered me to get out and away where I wouldn't hear of business or see business, and a friend of mine told me there were plenty of room and comfort aboard one of these big schooners. That cabin and the staterooms, they're fine!"
"Oh, they have to give a master a good home these days. That's a Winton carpet in the saloon," declared the mate, with pride. "And we've got a one-eyed cook who can certainly sling grub together. Yes, for a cheap vacation I dun'no' but a schooner is all right!"
The two were getting on most amicably when Mayo went forward. He was dog-tired and turned in on tie bare boards of his fo'cas'le berth.
No bedding is furnished men before the mast on the coal-carriers.
If a man wants anything between himself and the boards he must bring it with him, and few do so. At the end of each trip a crew is discharged and new men are hired, in order to save paying wages while a vessel is in port loading or discharging. Therefore, a coastwise schooner harbors only transients, for whom the fo'cas'le is merely a shelter between watches.
But Mayo was a sailor, and the bare boards served him better than bedding in which some dusky and dirty son of Ham had nestled. He laid himself down and slept soundly.
The second mate turned out the watch below at four bells--six in the morning. The schooner was in the stream and all hands were needed to work hose and brooms and clear off the coal-dust. Mayo toiled in the wallow of black water till his muscles ached.
There was one happy respite--they knocked off long enough to eat breakfast. It was sent out to them from the cook-house in one huge, metal pan without dishes or knives or forks.
A white cook wash dishes for negroes?
Mayo knew the custom which prevailed on board the schooners between the coal ports and the New England cities, and he fished for food with his fingers and cut meat with his jack-knife with proper meekness.
When he was back at his scrubbing again the cook passed aft, bearing the zinc-lined hamper which contained the breakfast for the cabin table. That this cook had the complete vocabulary of others of his ilk was revealed when the man with the hose narrowly missed drenching the hamper.
"That's right, cook!" roared Captain Downs, climbing ponderously on board from his yawl. "Talk up to the loafing, cock-eyed, pot-colored sons of a coal-scuttle when I ain't here to do it. Turn away that hose, you mule-eared Fiji!" He turned on Mayo, who stood at one side and was poising his scrubbing-broom to allow the master to pass. "Get to work, there, yellow pup! Get to work!"
Ordinarily the skipper addresses one of his sailors only through the mate. But there was no mate handy just then.
"One hand for the owners and one hand for yourself when you're aloft, but on deck it's both hands for the owners," he stated, as he plodded aft, giving forth the aphorism for the benefit of all within hearing.
The passenger was still on deck, and Mayo heard Captain Downs greet him rather brusquely.
Then the cook's hand-bell announced breakfast, and before the captain and his guest reappeared on deck a tug had the _Alden's_ hawser and was towing her down the dredged channel on the way to Hampton Roads and to sea.
Mayo went at his new tasks so handily that he passed muster as an able seaman. If a sailor aboard a big schooner of these days is quick, willing, and strong he does not need the qualities and the knowledge which made a man an "A. B." in the old times.
While the schooner was on her way behind the tug they hoisted her sails, a long cable called "the messenger" enabling the steam-winch forward to do all the work. Mayo was assigned to the jigger-mast, and went aloft to shake out the topsail. It was a dizzy height, and the task tried his spirit, for the sail was heavy, and he found it difficult to keep his balance while he was tugging at the folds of the canvas. He was obliged to work alone--there was only one man to a mast, and very tiny insects did his mates appear when Mayo glanced forward along the range of the masts.
The tug dropped them off the Tail of the Horseshoe; a smashing sou'wester was serving them.
With all her washing set, the schooner went plowing out past the capes, and Mayo was given his welcome watch below; he was so sleepy that his head swam.
When he turned out he was ordered to take his trick at the wheel. The schooner had made her offing and was headed for her northward run along the coast, which showed as a thin thread of white along the flashing blue of the sea.
Mayo took the course from the gaunt, sooty Jamaican who stepped away from the wheel; he set his gaze on the compass and had plenty to occupy his hands and his mind, for a big schooner which is logging off six or eight knots in a following sea is somewhat of a proposition for a steersman. Occasionally he was obliged to climb bodily upon the wheel in order to hold the vessel up to her course.
Captain Downs was pacing steadily from rail to rail between the wheel and the house. At each turn he glanced up for a squint at the sails. It was the regular patrol of a schooner captain.
In spite of his absorption in his task, Mayo could not resist taking an occasional swift peep at the passenger. The young man's demeanor had become so peculiar that it attracted attention. He looked worried, ill at ease, smoked his cigarettes nervously, flung over the rail one which he had just lighted, and started for the captain, his mouth open. Then he turned away, shielded a match under the hood of the companionway, and touched off another cigarette. He was plainly wrestling with a problem that distressed him very much.
At last he hurried below. He came up almost immediately. He had the air of a man who had made up his mind to have a disagreeable matter over with.
"Captain Downs," he blurted, stepping in front of Old Mull and halting that astonished skipper, "will you please step down into the cabin with me for a few moments? I've something to tell you."
"Well, tell it--tell it here!" barked the captain.
"It's very private, sir!"
"I don't know of any privater place than this quarterdeck, fifteen miles offshore."
"But the--the man at the wheel!"
"Good Josephus! That ain't a man! That's a nigger sailor steering my schooner. Tell your tale, Mr. Bradish. Tell it right here. That fellow don't count any more 'n that rudder-head counts."
"If you could step down into the cabin, I--"
"My place is on this quarter-deck, sir. If you've got anything to say to me, say it!" He began to pace again.
Bradish caught step, after a scuff or two.
"I hope you're going to take this thing right, Captain Downs. It may sound queer to you at first," he stammered.
"Well, well, well, tell it to me--tell it! Then I will let you know whether it sounds queer or not."
"I brought another passenger on