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

it to a deck-hand. "Throw that to me when I'm on deck," he ordered. Then he came up the ladder.
"Heave, and I'll hoist up the bag," suggested Mayo at the rail.
"Wait till I get there," barked the visitor, still climbing. He caught the line after he had reached the rail and pulled up the case with some effort and great care.
"Look here, that bag isn't empty," said Mayo.
"Who said it was? I'm carrying around in it all I own in the world. I'm starting for New York as soon as this tug sets me ashore."
He picked up the case and started for the officers' quarters. Mayo went along, too.
"You afraid I'm going to steal her engine out of her? The few little things of mine I'm after were hidden away, and that's how I forgot 'em. Now don't insult me by following me around as if I was a thief."
"I don't know just what you are," muttered the young man. "There's something that looks mighty phony about this, but I haven't got you sized up just yet."
"I'll go back--go back right now. I supposed I was asking a favor of a gentleman and a brother officer." He started on his return to the ladder.
"Go get your stuff," commanded Mayo. "If your business here is all your own, I don't want to spy on you."
He went back to question the captain of the tug for information in regard to the _Ethel and May_.
"She's in Limeport," reported the captain, elbows on his window-sill. "Came past her in the inner harbor this morning. You've bit off quite a chunk here, haven't you? We all thought this storm had sluiced her. Made quite a stir up and down the water-front when old Can-dage blew along and reported that she had lived it out."
"Reckon some of the panic boys are talking in another key about the prospects out here, about now, aren't they?"
"Ain't so sure about that, sir," stated the towboat man, loafing into an easier attitude.
"Isn't there a feeling on shore that we are likely to make good on this proposition?" There was solicitude in Mayo's voice. He was acutely anxious. On the sentiment ashore depended Captain Candage's success.
"Can't say that I hear of any!"
"But the talk must--"
"There ain't very much talk--not now. It's generally reckoned that this packet is a gone goose and folks are talking about something else."
"But she is here--she is upright and fast! She is--"
The towboat man was not enough interested to listen to statements concerning the _Conomo's_ condition. "Look-a-here, son," he broke in, "do you think for a minute that this thing wouldn't have been grabbed up by the real people if there had been any show of a make? I know there isn't a show!"
"How do you know?" demanded Mayo, with indignation.
"Haven't I been talking with the representative of one of the biggest salvaging companies on the Atlantic coast? He's there in Limeport now--was aboard my tug this morning."
"How does he know?"
"Well, he does know. That's his business. And everybody in Limeport knows what he has said. He hasn't been bashful about expressing his opinion."
Mayo leaned over the rail, a baleful light in his eyes indicating what his own opinions regarding this unknown detractor were, just then.
"I'd like to know who this Lord Guess-so is--barking behind honest men's backs!"
"Mr. Fogg! That's him! Seems to know his business!"
"Fogg?"
"'Exactly!' That's his great word," explained the other, grinning. "Some chap, too, with cigars and language!"
"By the gods, now I know who chartered this tug!" he shouted. "What kind of a fool am I getting to be?"
He turned and ran toward the officers' quarters. He leaped into the main passageway and explored headlong the staterooms. There was no sign of his visitor.
At that moment, in the tumult of his thoughts, he had only a glimmering of an idea as to what might be the motive of the man's visit. But he was certain, now, that a wretch who had deliberately wrecked a rival steamer--if Candage's suspicions were correct--would do almost anything else for money.
A narrow companionway with brass rails led below to the crew's quarters. Mayo, coming to the head of it, saw the man hurrying to its foot. The captain grasped the rails and slid down with one swoop.
"What in the devil's name are you doing?" he gasped.
The intruder grabbed him and threw him to one side, and started up the companionway. He had dropped the suit-case to seize Mayo, and it bounced in a way to show that it was empty.
Mayo leaped and grasped the other's legs as he was mounting. The man kicked him ferociously in the breast before the attacker managed to pinion the legs in his arms. They went down together, rolling over and over.
The stranger was stocky and strong, his muscles toughened by a sailor's activities. Moreover, he seemed to be animated by something more than a mere grudge or desire to defend himself; he fought with frenzy, beating his fists into Mayo's face and sides as they rolled. Then he began to shout. He fairly screamed, struggling to release himself.
But his assailant was just as tough and just as desperate, and he had a younger man's superior agility. The other had forced the fight. Mayo proposed to hang to him until he discovered the meaning of this peculiar ferocity.
He flipped across his prisoner, clutched him by both ears, and rapped the man's head so smartly on the deck planks that his victim relaxed, half unconscious.
Then he opened staring eyes. "Let me go! Let me go! I quit. Run for it. Let me run. We're goners!" he squalled.
"Run? Why?" demanded the victor.
"Dynamite! I've planted it. The fuse is going."
"Where is it?"
"Below--somewhere. I've forgot. I, can't remember. My mind is gone. I'm too scared to think. Run!"
Mayo jumped up and yanked the man to his feet. "Take me to it!" he shouted.
"There ain't time. I guessed at the fuse--it may burn quicker than I reckoned."
The young man drove his fist into the other's face and knocked him down. Then he jerked him upright again.
"Take me where you've planted that dynamite or we'll stay here and go up together. And now you know I mean what I say."
The last blow had cowed his man; he raised his fist again.
The visitor leaped away from him and ran along the lower deck, Mayo at his heels. He led the way aft. In the gloom of betweendecks there gleamed a red spark. Mayo rushed to it, whipped off his cap, and snuffed the baleful glow. When he was sure that the fuse was dead he heard his man scrambling up the companion ladder. He pursued and caught the quarry as he gained the upper deck, and buffeted the man about the ears and forced him into a stateroom.
"This means state prison for you! You were guilty of barratry before, and you know it! How did you dare to try this last trick?"
"I had my orders."
"Orders from what man?"
"No matter. You needn't ask. I won't tell." The stranger was sullen, and had recovered some of his assurance, now that his fear of the dynamite was removed.
"You're a lunatic. You ought to have known you couldn't pull off a thing of this kind."
"I don't know about that! It was working pretty slick. If she had split and gone off these ledges, you couldn't have proved anything special. I've got good backing. You better let me go."
Mayo glared at him, deprived of speech by this effrontrery.
"You'd better come over with the big fellows," advised the man. "I can tell you right now that every hole in Limeport has been plugged against you. You can't hire equipment there, or get a cent's credit. It has all been nicely attended to. You're here fooling with a dead duck. You'd be better off if that dynamite had been let alone to split her."
The entire uselessness of words in a situation like this, the inadequacy of speech to meet such brazen boldness, checked Mayo's oath-peppered anathema. He pulled the key from the stateroom door and menaced the prisoner with his fist when the man started to follow him out.
"You don't dare to keep me aboard here! Take warning by what they have already done to you, Mayo! I'm sure of my backing."
"You'll have a chance to use it!" retorted the young man. He dodged out and locked the stateroom door.
"Your passenger is not going back with you, sir," he called down over the rail to the towboat captain.
"I take my orders from him."
"You are taking them from me now. Cast off!".
"Look here--"
"I mean what I say, sir. That man you brought out here is going to stay till I can put him into the hands of the police."
"What has he done?"
"The less you know about the matter the better it will be for yourself and your boat! You tell the man who chartered your tug--"
"You have him aboard, there!"
Mayo looked straight into the towboat man's eyes.
"You tell Mr. Fogg, who chartered your tug, that I have his man under lock and key and that the more riot he starts over the matter the better I will be satisfied. And don't bring any more passengers out here unless they are police officers." Then he roared in his master-mariner tones: "Cast off your lines, sir. You know what the admiralty law is!"
The captain nodded, closed his pilot-house window, and clanged his bell. Mayo knew by his mystified air that he was not wholly in the confidence of his passenger and his employer.
This bungling, barefaced attempt to destroy the steamer touched Mayo's pride as deeply as it stirred his wrath. Fogg evidently viewed the pretensions of the new ownership with contempt. He must have belief in his own power to ruin and to escape consequences, pondered the young man. He had put Mayo and his humble associates on the plane of the ordinary piratical wreckers of the coast-men who grabbed without law or right, who must be prepared to fight other pirates of the same ilk, and whose affairs could have no standing in a court of law.
Even more disquieting were the statements that the avenues of credit ashore had been closed. Malicious assertions could ruin the project more effectually than could dynamite. But now that the _Conomo_ had withstood the battering of a gale and bulked large on the reef, a visible pledge of value, it did seem that Captain Candage must be able to find somebody who would back them.
For two days Mayo waited with much impatience, he and his men doing such preliminary work as offered itself.
He expected that Fogg would send a relief expedition, but his apprehensions bore no fruit. His prisoner was sourly reticent and by the few words he did drop seemed to console himself with the certainty that retribution awaited Mayo.
On the third day came the schooner. She came listlessly, under a light wind, and her limp sails seemed to express discouragement and disappointment. Mayo, gazing across to her as she approached, received that impression, in spite of his hopes. He got a glimpse of Captain Candage's face as he came to the steamer's side in his dory, and his fears were confirmed.
"'Tain't no use," was the skipper's laconic report as he swung up the ladder.
"You mean to say you didn't get a rise out of anybody?"
"Nothing doing nowhere. There's a fat man named Fogg in Limeport, and he is spreading talk that we 'ain't got law or prospects. Got a few men to listen to me, but they shooed me off when they found