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

weren't stuck very hard, so I've found out. She was mostly owned in sixty-fourths, and with marine risks up to where they are, small owners don't insure. It's a wicked thing all through, Candage! That great, new steamer piled up there by somebody's devilishness! I believe as you do about the affair! I've been to sea so long that a boat means something to me besides iron and wood. There's something about 'em--something--"
"Almost human," put in the old man. "I sorrowed over the _Polly_, but I didn't feel as bad as if she'd been new. It was sort of like when old folks die of natural causes--you know they have lived about as long as they can. It's sorrowful to have 'em go, but you have to feel reconciled. But I know just how it is with you in the case of that steamer, for I'm a sailor like you. It's just like getting a fine boy through college, seeing him start out full of life, and courage, and hopes, and prospects, and then seeing him drop dead at your feet."
There was a quaver in the old man's tones. But Mayo, who knew the souls of mariners, understood. Under their hard shells there is imagination that has been nurtured in long, long thoughts. In the calms under starlit skies, in the black darkness when tossing surges swing beneath the keel, in the glimmering vistas of sun-lighted seas, sailors ponder while their more stolid brothers on land allow their souls to doze.
"You are right, Captain Candage. That's why I almost hate to go out to the _Conomo_. Those infernal ghouls of junkmen will be tearing her into bits instead of trying to put the breath of life back into her."
The helpless steamer seemed more lonely than when they had visited her before. The mosquito fleet that had surrounded her, hoping for some stray pickings, had dispersed. A tug and a couple of lighters were stuck against her icy sides, and, like leeches, were sucking from her what they could. They were prosecuting their work industriously, for the sea was calm in one of those lulls between storms, a wintry truce that Atlantic coastwise toilers understand and depend on.
Mayo, his curiosity prompting him, determined to go on board one of the lighters and discover to what extremes the junk jackals were proceeding.
Two of his dorymen ferried him after the schooner had been hove to near the wreck.
"What's your business?" inquired a man who was bundled in a fur coat and seemed to be bossing operations.
"Nothing much," confessed the young man from his dory, which was tossing alongside the lighter. "I'm only a fisherman."
The swinging cranes of the lighters, winches purring, the little lifting-engines puffing in breathless staccato, were hoisting and dropping cargo--potatoes in sacks, and huge rolls of print paper. Mayo was a bit astonished to note that they were not stripping the steamer; not even her anchors and chains had been disturbed.
"Fend off!" commanded the boss.
Captain Dodge dropped one of the windows of his pilot-house and leaned on his elbows, thrusting his head out. The tug _Seba J. Ransom_ was still on the job. She was tied up alongside the wreck, chafing her fenders against the ice-sheathed hull.
"Hello, Captain Mayo!" he called, a welcoming grin splitting his features. "Come aboard and have a cigar, and this time I'll keep the conversation on fish-scales and gurry-butts."
The man in the fur coat glanced from one to the other, and was promptly placated. "Oh, this is a friend of yours, is he, Captain Dodge?"
"You bet he is. He's been my boss before now."
"If that's the case make yourself at home anywhere. But you know what some of these fellows alongcoast who call themselves fishermen will do around a wreck when your back is turned!"
Mayo nodded amicably.
"Step on board," invited the boss.
"I'm all right here in the dory, and I'm out from underfoot, sir. We're going along to the fishing-grounds in a jiffy. I'm only satisfying a sailor's curiosity. Wondered what you intended to do with this proposition."
"We're only grabbing what's handy just now. Some of the cargo forward is above water. I'm in on this thing in a sort of queer way myself." This keen-eyed young man who had been so heartily indorsed by the tugboat skipper afforded the man in the fur coat an opportunity for a little conversation about himself. "I'm the outside man for Todd & Simonton, of Boston, and bought on the jump after I'd swapped a wire or so with the house. Happened into that auction, and bought blind. I believe in a gamble myself. Then somebody wired to the concern that they had been stuck good and fine, and they gave me a sizzler of a call-down in a night message. A man can sit at desk in Boston and think up a whole lot of things that ain't so. Well, I've flown out here with what equipment I could scrape up in a hurry, and you can see what I'm doing! There's enough in sight in the way of loose cargo to square me with the concern. But, blast the luck! If Jake Simonton had a little grit and would back me I believe we'd make a killing."
"Of course, it all depends on how she's resting and what will happen when the next blow comes," said Mayo. "Have you been below?"
"I'm a hustler on a dicker, and a hellion on junk," snapped the boss. "I'm no sailor, prophet, or marine architect. I simply know that she's full of water aft and has got something serious the matter with her innards. I'm pulling enough out to make Simonton sorry he sassed me in a night message. Only he will never let on that he's sorry. He never lets loose any boomerangs that will scale around and come back and hit him. He wants to be in a position to rasp me the next time I make a mistake in a gamble."
"All the crew gone ashore--the Bee line men?"
"Sure--bag and baggage. We own her as she stands. That second officer had 'em shivering every time a wave slapped her. I was glad when he got away. He pretty nigh stampeded _my_ men. Said she was liable to slide any minute."
The drawling voice of Captain Dodge broke in above them. "Here comes the tug _Resolute_" he stated. "Mebbe it's another one of them night messages from your concern, Titus. May want you to put what you can carry of her in a paper bag and bring it to Boston."
"You never can tell what they're going to do in Boston," growled the outside man. "I get discouraged, sometimes, trying to be enterprising."
He began to pace, looking worried, and did not reply to several questions that Mayo put to him. So the young man accepted Captain Dodge's invitation and climbed to the tugboat's pilot-house. He had a very human hankering to know what the coming of that tug from the main signified, and decided to hang around a little while longer, even at the risk of making Captain Candage impatient.
The _Resolute_ brought a telegram, and the man in the fur coat slapped it open, took in its gist at one glance, and began to swear with great gusto.
He climbed into the _Ransom's_ pilot-house, with the air of a man seeking comfort from friends, and fanned the sheet of paper wrathfully.
"Orders to resell. Get out from under. Take what I can get. Don't want the gamble. And here I have cleaned a good profit already."
"Why don't you fire back a message advising 'em to hold on?" asked Captain Dodge.
"And have a gale come up in a few hours and knock her off'n this rock? That's what would happen. It would be just my luck. I'm only a hired man, gents. If my firm won't gamble, it ain't up to me. If I disobey orders and hold on, I'll be scared to death the first time the wind begins to blow. There's no use in ruining a fine set of nerves for a firm that won't appreciate the sacrifice, and I need nerve to keep on working for 'em. I say it ain't up to me. Me for shore as soon as I load those lighters. Every dollar I get by reselling is velvet, so let 'ergo!"
"What do they tell you to do about price?" ventured Mayo.
"Take the first offer--and hurry about it. They seem to have an idea that this steamer is standing on her head on the point of a needle, and that only a blind man will buy her."
He went back to his crew, much disgusted, ordered the freshly arrived tug to wait for a tow, and spurred laggard toilers with sharp profanity.
"Somebody has been scaring his concern," suggested Mayo, left alone with Captain Dodge.
"Perhaps so--but it may be good business to get scared, provided they can unload this onto somebody else for a little ready cash. This spell of weather can't last much longer. Look at that bank to s'uthard. I don't know just what is under her in the way of ledges--never knew much about old Razee. But my prediction is, she'll break in two as soon as the waves give her any motion."
It was on the tip of Mayo's tongue to argue the matter with the tugboat man, but he took second thought and shut his mouth.
"You're probably right," he admitted. "I'd better be moving. I don't see any fish jumping aboard our schooner. We've got to go and catch 'em. Good-by, Dodge."
When his associate came in over the rail of the _Ethel and May_ Captain Candage, from force of habit, having picked up his men, gave orders to let her off into the wind.
"Hold her all-aback!" commanded Mayo. "Excuse me, Captain Candage, for a cross-order, but I've got a bit of news I want you to hear before we leave. The junk crowd has got cold feet and are going to sell as she stands, as soon as they get cargoes for those lighters."
"Well, she does lay in a bad way, and weather is making," said the skipper, fiddling his forefinger under his nose dubiously.
"They haven't even skimmed the cream off her--probably will get all her cargo that's worth saving and some loose stuff in the rigging line. By gad! what a chance for a gamble!"
"It might be for a feller who had so much money he could kiss a slice of it good-by in case the Atlantic Ocean showed aces," said the old man, revealing a sailor's familiarity with a popular game.
"There is such a thing as being desperate enough to stake your whole bundle," declared Mayo. "Captain, I'm young, and I suppose I have got a young man's folly. I can't expect you to feel the way I feel about a gamble."
"I may look old, but I haven't gone to seed yet," grumbled the skipper. "What are you trying to get through you?"
"That fat man on that lighter has a telegram in his pocket from his folks in Boston, ordering him to take the first offer that is made for the _Conomo_ as she stands. I'm fool enough to be willing to put in every dollar I've got, and take a chance."
Captain Candage stared at his associate for a time, and then walked to the rail and took a long look at the steamer. "I never heard of a feller ever getting specially rich in the fishing game," he remarked.
Mayo, wild thoughts urging him to desperate ventures, snapped out corroboration of that dictum..
"And I've known a lot of fellers to go broke in the wrecking game," pursued Captain Candage. "How much have you got?" That question came unexpectedly.
"I've got rising six hundred dollars." He was