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

the Bee line steamer started his troubles with Marston.
"Paper says she's considered a total loss," went on the manager. "If that's so, and the underwriters give her up, there ought to be some fine picking for men with grit. The board of survey went out to her on a tug this morning." He gave them their check, and they went aboard their schooner.
The affair of the _Conomo_ was not mentioned between them until they were at sea on their way to the eastward again. The piece of news did not interest Mayo at first, except as a marine disaster that had no bearing on his own affairs.
Captain Candage was stumping the quarter-deck, puffing at his short, black pipe. "I don'no' as you feel anyways as I do about it, Captain Mayo, but it ain't going to be no great outset to us if we make a leg out to Razee and see what's going on there," he suggested.
"I have no objections," returned Mayo. "But the way things are managed nowadays in case of wrecks, I don't see much prospect of our getting in on the thing in any way."
"Mebbe not; but in case they're going to abandon her there'll be some grabbing, and we might as well grab with the rest of 'em."
"If they can't get her off some junk concern will gamble on her. But we'll make an excursion of it to see the sights, sir. We can afford a little trip after what we pulled down to-day."
There was no hope of reaching the wreck before nightfall, so they jogged comfortably in the light westerly that had succeeded the gale.
Captain Candage took the first watch after the second dog-watch, and at two bells, or nine o'clock, in the evening, Mayo awoke and heard him give orders to "pinch her." He heard the sails flap, and knew that the men were shortening in readiness to lay to. He slipped on his outer clothing and went on deck.
"We're here," stated the old skipper, "and it looks like some other moskeeters had got here ahead of us, ready to stick in their little bills when they get a chance."
It was a clear night, brilliant with stars. In contrast with the twinkling and pure lights of the heavens, there were dim reds and greens and yellow-white lights on the surface of the ocean. These lights rocked and oscillated and tossed as the giant surges swept past.
"I make out half a dozen sail--little fellers--and two tugs," said Captain Candage. "But get your eye on the main squeeze!"
Mayo looked in the direction of the extended mittened hand.
"Some iceberg, hey?" commented the skipper.
A short half-mile away, a veritable ghost ship, loomed the wrecked _Conomo_. Spray had beaten over her and had congealed until she seemed like a mass of ice that had been molded into the shape of a ship. She gleamed, a spectral figure, under the starry heavens.
A single red light, a baleful blob of color, showed from her main rigging.
They surveyed her for some time.
"I should say she was spoke for," was Captain Candage's opinion. "It's high tide now, and a spring tide at that, and them tugs is just loafing out there--ain't making a move to start her. We can tell more about the prospect in the morning."
Then the two captains turned in, for the _Ethel and May_ lay to docilely with a single helmsman at the wheel.
The crisp light of morning did not reveal anything especially new or important. There were half a dozen small schooners, fishermen, loafing under shortened canvas in the vicinity of the wreck. One of the tugs departed shoreward after a time.
Mayo had assured himself, through the schooner's telescope, that the remaining tug was named _Seba J. Ransom_.
"The captain of that fellow went mate with me on a fishing-steamer once," he informed Captain Candage. "Jockey me down in reaching distance and I'll go aboard him in a dory. He may have some news."
Captain Dodge was immensely pleased to see his old chum, and called him up into the pilot-house and gave him a cigar.
"It's only a loafing job," he said. "I've got to stand by and take off her captain and crew in case of rough weather or anything breaks loose more'n what's already busted. They are still hanging by her so as to deliver her to the buyer."
"Buyer?"
"Yep! To whatever junkman is fool enough to bid her in. She's stuck fast. Underwriters have gone back on that tug, and are going to auction her. I'm here to help keep off pirates and take her men ashore after she has been handed over. You a pirate, Mayo?" he asked, with a grin.
"I'm almost anything nowadays, if there's a dollar to be made," returned the young man.
The _Ransom's_ captain gave him a wink. "I'm on to what happened on board the _Olenia_" he confided. "Feller who was in the crew told me. You're good enough for old Marston's girl. Why haven't you gone up to New York and taken--"
"Cut that conversation, Dodge," barked Mayo, his face hard and his jaw jutting threateningly. "Good day!" added the young man, slamming the pilot-house door behind him.
His schooner, standing off and on, picked him up.
"There's no use hanging around here," he informed the old skipper. "They're going to junk her, if they can find anybody fool enough to bid. She'll be guarded till after the auction."
Therefore the _Ethel and May_ shook out all her canvas and headed full and by for Maquoit to secure her fresh supply of bait.
"It's a shame," mourned Captain Candage, staring over the taffrail at the ice-sheathed steamer. "'Most new, and cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to build, if I remember right what the paper said when she was launched."
"If she was making money they'll have another one in her place," said Mayo.
"Don'no' about that, sir. The Bee line wasn't none too strong financially, I'm told--a lot of little fellers who put in what they could scrape and borrowed the rest. Depends on insurance and their courage what they do after this." He offered another observation after he had tamped down a load in his black pipe. "Men will do 'most anything for money--enough money."
"Seems as if I'd heard that statement before," was Mayo's curt rejoinder.
"Oh, I know it ain't in any ways new. But the more I think over what has happened to the _Conomo_, the pickeder seems the point to that remark. And whilst I was standing off and on, waiting for you, I run close enough to that steamer to make out a few faces aboard her."
Mayo glanced at him without comment.
"F'r instance, I saw Art Simpson. You know him, don't you?"
"He was captain of Mr. Marston's yacht once."
"Why did he leave her?"
"I heard he had been discharged. That was what the broker said when he hired me."
"Yes, that's what Simpson said. He made a business of going around and swearing about it. Seemed to want to have everybody 'longcoast hear him swear about it. When I see a man make too much of a business of swearing about another man I get suspicious. After Art Simpson worked his cards so as to get the job of second officer on board the new _Conomo_ I got _more_ suspicious. Now that I have seen how that steamer has been plunked fair and square on Razee, I'm _almighty_ suspicious. I'm suspicious enough to believe that she banged during Art Simpson's watch."
"What are you driving at, Captain Candage? Are you hinting that anybody would plant a man for a job of that kind?"
"Exactly what I'm hinting," drawled the skipper.
"But putting a steamer on the rocks at this time of year!"
"No passengers--and plenty of life-boats for the crew, sir. I have been hearing a lot of talk about steamboat conditions since I have been carrying in fish."
"I've found out a little something in that line myself," admitted Mayo.
"There's one thing to be said about Blackbeard and Cap'n Teach and old Cap Kidd--they went out on the sea and tended to their own pirating; they didn't stay behind a desk and send out understrappers."
Mayo, in spite of his bitter memories of Julius Mar-ston's attitude, felt impelled to palliate in some degree the apparent enormities of the steamboat magnates.
"I don't believe the big fellows know all that's done, Captain Candage. As responsible parties they wouldn't dare to have those things done. The understrappers, as you say, are anxious to make good and to earn their money, and when the word is passed on down to 'em they go at the job recklessly. I think it will be pretty hard to fix anything on the real principals. That's why I am out in the cold with my hands tied, just now."
"I wish we were going to get into the _Conomo_ matter a little, so that we could do some first-hand scouting. It looks to me like the rankest job to date, and it may be the opening for a general overhauling. When deviltry gets to running too hard it generally stubs its toes, sir." Captain Candage found a responsive gleam in Mayo's eyes and he went on. "Of course, I didn't hear the talk, nor see the money pass, nor I wa'n't in the pilot-house when Art Simpson shut his eyes and let her slam. But having been a sailorman all my life, I smell nasty weather a long ways off. That steamer was wrecked a-purpose, and she was wrecked at a time o' year when she can't be salvaged. You don't have to advise the devil how to build a bonfire."
Mayo did not offer any comment. He seemed to be much occupied by his thoughts.
Two days later a newspaper came into Mayo's hands at Maquoit, and he read that the wrecked steamer had been put up at auction by the underwriters. It was plain that the bidders had shared the insurance folks' general feeling of pessimism--she had been knocked down for two thousand five hundred dollars. The newspapers explained that only this ridiculous sum had been realized because experts had decided that in the first blow the steamer would slip off the ledges on which she was impaled and would go down like a plummet in the deep water from which old Razee cropped. Even the most reckless of gambling junkmen could not be expected to dare much of an investment in such a peek-a-boo game as that.
"But I wonder what was the matter with the expert who predicted that," mused Mayo. "He doesn't know the old jaw teeth of Razee Reef as well as I do."
When the _Ethel and May_ set forth from Maquoit on her next trip to Cashes Banks, Mayo suggested--and he was a bit shamefaced when he did so--that they might as well go out of their way a little and see what the junkers were doing at Razee.
Captain Candage eyed his associate with rather quizzical expression. "Great minds travel, et cetry!" he chuckled. "I was just going to say that same thing to you. On your mind a little, is it?"
"Yes, and only a little. Of course, there can't be anything in it for us. Those junkers will stick to her till she ducks for deep water. But I've been wondering why they think she's going to duck. I seined around Razee for a while, and the old chap has teeth like a hyena--regular fangs."
"Maybe they took Art Simpson's say-so," remarked the old man, wrinkling his nose. "Art would be very encouraging about the prospects of saving her--that is to say, he would be so in case losing that steamer has turned his brain."
"Guess there wasn't very much interest by the underwriters," suggested Mayo. "They