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

hate me! Now wouldn't you?"
"Perhaps--probably I wouldn't hate you," she stammered. "But I'd think more of you if you--yes, I'm sure I'd think more of you if you didn't take advantage of my foolishness."
"That's it, exactly! Any man, if I told him about this situation, would say that I'm a fool not to use every tool I can get hold of. But you understand better! I'm glad I came to talk with you. I have been dreadfully tempted. Your advice is keeping me straight!"
"I have not advised you, Boyd!"
"You don't need to use words! It's your instinct telling me what is right to do. You wouldn't think it was a square deal for me to use these papers, would you?"
"If you love her so much that you're willing to sacrifice yourself and your work and--"
"Say it, Polly! I'm sacrificing your father, too! It's for a notion--not much else!"
"No, it must be because you love her so much. You are afraid she will think less of you if you take advantage of her. I think your stand is noble, Boyd!"
"I don't! I think it's infernal foolishness, and I wish the Mayo breed didn't have so much of that cursed stiff-necked conscience! Our family wouldn't be where it is to-day." He spoke with so much heat that she turned-wondering eyes on him.
"But it's for her sake, Boyd! It's--"
"Nothing of the sort! That is, it isn't as you think it is."
"I only think you love her."
"I don't want you to say that--or believe it!" he raved. "If you only knew--if I could tell you--you'd see that it's insulting my common sense to say that I'm in love with Alma Marston. I don't love her! I--I don't know just where I stand. I don't know what's the matter with me. I'm in the most damnable position a man can be in. And I'm talking like a fool. Isn't that so?"
"I don't understand you," she faltered.
"Of course you don't. I reckon I'm a lunatic. I'll be rolling over here and biting the grass next!"
His passion puzzled her. His flaming eyes, his rough beard, his rage, and all the uncouth personality of him shocked her.
"Boyd, what--whatever is the matter? I'm afraid."
"I don't blame you. I'm afraid of myself these days!" He shook his swollen fists over his head.
"It ought to encourage you because she is trying to help you!"
"Be still!" he roared. "You don't know what you're talking about. Help me! There are women who can help a man--do help a man, every turn he makes. There are other women who keep kicking him down into damnation even when they think they are helping. I'm not going to stay here any longer. I mustn't stay, Polly. I'll be saying things worse than what I have said. What I said about women doesn't refer to you! You are true and good, and I envy that man, whoever he is."
He started down the slope toward the beach.
"Are you going back to the wreck?" she asked, plaintively.
"To the wreck!"
"But wait!" She could not control either her feelings or her voice.
"I can't wait. I don't dare to stay another minute!"
She called again and he halted at a little distance and faced her. He was absolutely savage in demeanor and tone.
"Remember what I said about her! Don't insult my common sense! She is--Oh, no matter!" He shook his fists again and went on his way.
She stood on the hillside and watched him row out to the little schooner. And through her tears she did not know whether he waved salute to her with those poor, work-worn hands, or again shook his fists. He made some sort of a flourish over the rail of the quarter-deck. The grieving and mystified girl was somberly certain that his troubles had touched Mayo's wits.


XXXI ~ THE BIG FELLOW HIMSELF
Will had promised his Sue that this trip, if well ended,
Should coil up his ropes and he'd anchor on shore.
When his pockets were lined, why his life should be mended,
The laws he had broken he'd never break more.
--Will Watch.
They needed food, lease-money for their hired equipment was due, and the dependents at Maquoit must be looked after.
Pride and hope had inspired the crew at Razee to salvage the _Conomo_ intact. Material removed from her would immediately become junk to be valued at junk prices, instead of being a valuable and active asset on board. But there was no other resource in sight. No word came from Captain Wass; and Mayo had put little confidence in that possibility, anyway.
There was nothing else to do--they must sell off something on which they could realize quickly.
In the estimation of many practical men this procedure would have been a warrantable makeshift, its sole drawback being a sacrifice of values. But to the captains on Razee it seemed like the beginning of complete surrender; it was the first step toward the dismantling of the steamship. It was making a junk-pile of her, and they confessed to themselves that they would probably be obliged to keep on in the work of destruction. In the past their bitterest toil had been spiced with the hope of big achievement; the work they now set themselves to do was melancholy drudgery.
They brought the _Ethel and May_ alongside and loaded into her the anchors, chains, spare cables, and several of the life-boats. Mayo took charge of the expedition to the main.
The little schooner, sagging low with her burden, wallowed up the harbor of Limeport just before sunset, one afternoon. Early June was abroad on the seas and the pioneer yachting cruisers had been coaxed to the eastward; Mayo saw several fine craft anchored inside the breakwater and paid little attention to them. He paced the narrow confines of his quarter-deck and felt the same kind of shame a ruined man feels when he is on his way to the pawnshop for the first time. He had his head down; he hated to look forward at the telltale cargo of the schooner.
"By ginger! here's an old friend of yours, this yacht!" called Mr. Speed, who was at the wheel.
They were making a reach across the harbor to an anchorage well up toward the wharves, and were passing under the stern of a big yacht. Mayo looked up. It was the _Olenia_.
"But excuse me for calling it a friend, Captain Mayo," bawled the mate, with open-water disregard of the possibilities of revelation in his far-carrying voice.
A man rose from a chair on the yacht's quarter-deck and came to the rail. Though the schooner passed hardly a biscuit-toss away, the man leveled marine glasses, evidently to make sure that what he had guessed, after Mr. Speed's remark, was true.
Mayo felt an impulse to turn his back, to dodge below. But he did not retreat; he walked to his own humble rail and scowled up into the countenance of Julius Mar-ston. The schooner was sluggish and the breeze was light, and the two men had time for a prolonged interchange of visual rancor.
"I didn't mean to holler so loud, Captain Mayo," barked Oakum Otie, in still more resonant manner, to offer apology. "But seeing her, and remembering last time I laid eyes on her--"
"Shut up!" commanded the master. "I'll take the wheel. Go forward and clear cable, and stand by for the word!"
He looked behind, in spite of himself, and saw that a motor-tender had come away from the _Olenia_. It foamed along in the wake of the schooner. It circled her after it had passed, and kept up those manouvers until the schooner's anchor was let go. Then the tender came to the side and stopped. The mate and engineer in her were new men; Mayo did not know them. The mate tipped respectful salute and stated that Mr. Marston had sent them to bring Captain Mayo on board the yacht at once.
"My compliments to Mr. Marston. But I am not able to come."
They went away, but returned in a short time, and the mate handed a note over the rail. It was a curt statement, dictated and typewritten, that Mr. Marston wished to see Captain Mayo on business connected with the _Conomo_, and that if Captain Mayo were not able to transact that business Mr. Marston would be obliged to hunt up some other party who could do business regarding the _Conomo_. Remembering that he had the interests of others to consider, Mayo dropped into the tender, sullen, resentful, wondering what new test of his endurance was to be made, and feeling peculiarly ill-equipped, in his present condition of courage and temper, to meet Julius Marston.
The latter had himself under full restraint when they met on the yacht's quarter-deck, and Mayo was more fully conscious of his own inadequacy.
"Below, if you please, captain." He led the way, even while he uttered the invitation.
No one was visible in the saloon. In the luxury of that interior the unkempt visitor seemed especially strange, particularly out of place.
"You will excuse what has seemed to be my hurry in getting you over here, sir, but I take it that your sailing into this port just now coincides with the arrival of the Vose crowd in this city to-day."
Mr. Fletcher Fogg first, and now Mr. Fogg's employer, had given advance information which anticipated Mayo's knowledge. The young man had been having some special training in dissimulation, and he did not betray any surprise. He bowed.
"It's better for you to talk with me before you allow them to make a fool of you. I am prepared to take that steamer off your hands, as she stands, at a fair appraisal, and I will give bonds to assume all expenses of the suit brought by the underwriters."
"There has been no suit brought by the underwriters."
Mr. Marston raised his eyebrows. "Oh! I must remember that you are considerably out of the world. The underwriters make claim that the vessel was not legally surrendered by them. Have you documents showing release? If so, I'll be willing to pay you about double what otherwise I shall feel like offering. Take a disputed title in an admiralty case and it's touchy business."
Mayo remembered the haphazard manner in which the steamer had been transferred, and he did not reply.
Marston's manner was that of calm, collected, cool business; his air carried weight. More than ever did Mayo feel his own pitiful weakness in these big affairs where more than honest hard work counted in the final adjustment.
"How much did you pay your big lawyers to stir up this suit by the underwriters?" he blurted, and Marston's eyelids flicked, in spite of his impassivity. There was instinct of the animal at bay, rather than any knowledge, behind Mayo's question.
"Why should you suggest that I have anything to do with such a suit?"
"You seem almighty ready to assume all liability."
"I'm not here to have childish disputes with you, sir. This is straight business."
"Very well. What do you want?"
"Have you documents, as I have suggested?"
"I have my bill of sale. I take it for granted that the folks who sold to me are backed by papers from the underwriters."
"That's where you are in error, unfortunately. You are all made party to a suit. Time clause, actual abandonment, right of redemption--all those