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

it can be called that, Captain Lougee," stated the host, dryly. "She is having about as good a time as a canary-bird would have in a corn-popper over a hot fire."
"What did she come for, then?"
"I made her come. I shanghaied her."
"That's no way to treat wimmen folks," declared Captain Lougee. "I've raised five daughters and I know what I'm talking about."
"I know you have raised five girls, and they're smart as tophet and right as a trivet--and that's why I have grabbed right in on the subject as I have. I was glad to see you coming aboard, Captain Lougee. I want some advice from a man who knows."
"Then I'm the man to ask, Captain Candage."
"Last time I was home--where she has been living with her Aunt Zilpah--I ketched her!" confessed Candage. His voice was hoarse. His fingers, bent and calloused with rope-pulling, trembled as he fingered the seam of his trousers.
"You don't tell!" Lougee clucked, solicitously.
"Yes, I ketched her buggy-riding!"
"Alone?"
"No, there was a gang of 'em in a beach-wagon. They was going to a party. And I ketched her dancing with a fellow at that party."
"Well, go ahead now that you've got started! Shake out the mainsail!"
"That's about all there is to it--except that a fellow has been beauing her home from Sunday-school concerts with a lantern. Yes, I reckon that is about all to date and present writing," confessed Candage.
"What else do you suspect?"
"Nothing. Of course, there's no telling what it will grow to be--with dudes a-pestering her the way they do."
"There ain't any telling about anything in this world, is there?" demanded Captain Lougee, very sharply.
"I reckon not--not for sure!"
"Do you mean to say that because your girl--like any girl should--has been having a little innocent fun with young folks, you have dragged her on board this old hooker, shaming her and making her ridiculous?"
"I have been trying to do my duty as a father," stated Captain Candage, stoutly, and avoiding the flaming gaze of his guest.
Captain Lougee straightened his leg so as to come at his trousers pocket, produced a plug of tobacco, and gnawed a chew off a corner, after careful inspection to find a likely spot for a bite.
"I need to have something in my mouth about this time--something soothing to the tongue and, as you might say, sort of confining, so that too much language won't bu'st out all at once," he averred, speaking with effort as he tried to lodge the huge hunk of tobacco into a comfortable position. "I have raised five nice girls, and I have always treated 'em as if they had common sense along with woman's nat'ral goodness and consid'able more self-reliance than a Leghorn pullet. And I used 'em like they had the ordinary rights and privileges of human beings. And they are growed up and a credit to the family. And I haven't got to look back over my record and reflect that I was either a Chinyman or a Turkeyman. No, sir! I have been a father--and my girls can come and sit on my knee to-day and get my advice, and think it's worth something."
He rose and walked toward his dory.
"But hold on," called Captain Candage. "You haven't told me what you think."
"Haven't I? I thought I had, making it mild and pleasant. But if you need a little something more plain and direct, I'll remark--still making it mild and pleasant--that you're a damned old fool! And now I'll go back and be sociable with them fish scraps. I believe they will smell better after this!" He leaped into his dory and rowed away.
Captain Candage offered no rejoinder to that terse and meaty summing up. Naturally, he was as ready with his tongue as Captain Ranse Lougee or any other man alongshore. But in this case the master of the _Polly_ was not sure of his ground. He knew that Captain Lougee had qualified as father of five. In the judgment of a mariner experience counts. And he did not resent the manner of Captain Lougee because that skipper's brutal bluntness was well known by his friends. Captain Candage had asked and he had received. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared after the departing caller and pondered.
"Maybe he is right. He probably _is_ right. But it wouldn't be shipboard discipline if I told her that I have been wrong. I reckon I'll go aft and be pleasant and genteel, hoping that nothing will happen to rile my feelings. Now that my feelings are calm and peaceful, and having taken course and bearings from a father of five, I'll probably say to her, 'You'd better trot along home, sissy, seeing that I have told you how to mind your eye after this.'"


IV ~ OVER THE "POLLY'S" RAIL
O Stormy was a good old man!
To my way you storm along!
Physog tough as an old tin pan,
Ay, ay, ay, Mister Storm-along!
--Storm-along Shanty.
Without paying much attention to the disturber, Captain Candage had been a bit nettled during his meditation. A speed boat from one of the yachts kept circling the _Polly_, carrying a creaming smother of water under its upcocked bow. It was a noisy gnat of a boat and it kicked a contemptuous wake against the rust-streaked old wagon.
When it swept under the counter, after Captain Candage was back on his quarter-deck, he gave it a stare over the rail, and his expression was distinctly unamiable.
"They probably wasted more money on that doostra-bulus than this schooner would sell for in the market today," he informed Otie.
"They don't care how money goes so long as they didn't have to sweat earning it. Slinging it like they'd sling beans!"
Back on its circling course swished the darting tender. This time the purring motor whined into silence and the boat came drifting alongside.
"On board _Polly!_" hailed one of the yachtsmen, a man with owner's insignia on his cap.
The master of the old schooner stuck his lowering visage farther over the rail, but he did not reply.
"Isn't this _Polly_ the real one?"
"No, it's only a chromo painting of it."
"Thank you! You're a gentleman!" snapped the yachtsman.
"Oh, hold on, Paul," urged one of the men in the tender. "There's a right way to handle these old boys." He stood up. "We're much interested in this packet, captain."
"That's why you have been making a holy show of her, playing ring around a rosy, hey?"
"But tell me, isn't this the old shallop that was a privateer in the war of eighteen twelve?"
"Nobody aboard here has ever said she wasn't."
"Well, sir, may we not come on board and look her over?"
"No sir, you can't."
"Now, look here, captain--"
"I'm looking!" declared the master of the _Polly_ in ominous tones.
"We don't mean to annoy you, captain."
"Folks who don't know any better do a lot of things without meaning to."
Captain Candage regularly entertained a sea-toiler's resentment for men who used the ocean as a mere playground. But more especially, during those later days, his general temper was touchy in regard to dapper young men, for he had faced a problem of the home which had tried his soul. He felt an unreasoning choler rising in him in respect to these chaps, who seemed to have no troubles of their own.
"I am a writer," explained the other. "If I may be allowed on board I'll take a few pictures and--"
"And make fun of me and my bo't by putting a piece in the paper to tickle city dudes. Fend off!" he commanded, noticing that the tender was drifting toward the schooner's side and that one of the crew had set a boat-hook against the main chain-plate.
"Don't bother with the old crab," advised the owner, sourly.
But the other persisted, courteously, even humbly. "I am afraid you do not understand me, captain. I would as soon make jest of my mother as of this noble old relic."
"Go ahead! Call it names!"
"I am taking off my hat to it," he declared, whipping his cap from his head. "My father's grandfather was in the war of eighteen twelve. I want to honor this old patriot here with the best tribute my pen can pay. If you will allow me to come on board I shall feel as though I were stepping upon a sacred spot, and I can assure you that my friends, here, have just as much respect for this craft as I have."
But this honest appeal did not soften Captain Candage. He did not understand exactly from what source this general rancor of his flowed. At the same time he was conscious of the chief reason why he did not want to allow these visitors to rummage aboard the schooner. They would meet his daughter, and he was afraid, and he was bitterly ashamed of himself because he was afraid. Dimly he was aware that this everlasting fear on her account constituted an insult to her. The finer impulse to protect her privacy was not actuating him; he knew that, too. He was merely foolishly afraid to trust her in the company of young men, and the combination of his emotions produced the simplest product of mental upheaval--unreasonable wrath.
"Fend off, I say," he commanded.
"Again I beg you, captain, with all respect, please may we come on board?"
"You get away from here and tend to your own business, if you've got any, or I'll heave a bunch of shingles at you!" roared the skipper.
"Father!" The voice expressed indignant reproof. "Father, I am ashamed of you!"
The girl came to the rail, and the yachtsmen stared at her as if she were Aphrodite risen from the sea instead of a mighty pretty girl emerging from a dark companion-way. She had appeared so suddenly! She was so manifestly incongruous in her surroundings.
"Mother o' mermaids!" muttered the yacht-owner in the ear of the man nearest. "Is the old rat still privateering?"
The men in the tender stood up and removed their caps.
"You have insulted these gentlemen, father!"
Captain Candage knew it, and that fact did not soften his anger in the least. At the same time this appearance of his own daughter to read him a lesson in manners in public was presumption too preposterous to be endured; her daring gave him something tangible for his resentment to attack.
He turned on her. "You go below where you belong."
"I belong up here just now."
"Down below with you!"
"I'll not go until you apologize to these gentlemen, father!"
"You ain't ashore now, miss, to tell me when to wipe my feet and not muss the tidies! You're on the high seas, and I'm cap'n of this vessel. Below, I say!"
"These gentlemen know the _Polly_, and they will find out the name of the man who commands her, and I don't propose to have it said that the Candages are heathens," she declared, firmly. "If you do not apologize, father, I shall apologize for you." She tried to crowd past him to the rail, but he clapped his brown hand over her mouth and pushed her back. His natural impulse as commander of his craft dominated his feelings as a father.
"I'll teach ye shipboard discipline, Polly Candage," he growled, "even if I have to take ye acrost my knee."
"Hold on there, if you please, captain," called the spokesman of the yachtsmen.
Captain Candage was hustling his daughter toward the companionway. But there was authority in the tone,