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

and he paused and jutted a challenging chin over his shoulder.
"What have any of you critters got to say about my private business?"
The formality of the man in the tender was a bit exaggerated in his reply. "Only this, sir. We are going away at once before we bring any more trouble upon this young lady, to whom we tender our most respectful compliments. We do not know any other way of helping her. Our protests, being the protests of gentlemen, might not be able to penetrate; it takes a drill to get through the hide of a rhinoceros!"
The skipper of the _Polly_ did not trouble himself about the finer shadings in that little speech, but of one fact he felt sure: he had been called a rhinoceros. He released his daughter, yanked the marlinespike away from Otie, who had been holding himself in the background as a reserve force, and stamped to the rail. He poised his weapon, fanning it to and fro to take sure aim. But the engineer had thrown in his clutch and the speed boat foamed off before the captain got the range, and he was too thrifty to heave a perfectly good marlinespike after a target he could not hit, angry as he was.
The girl faced her father. There was no doubting her mood. She was a rebel. Indignation set up its flaming standards on her cheeks, and the signal-flames of combat sparkled in her eyes.
"How did you dare to do such a thing to me--those gentlemen looking on? Father, have you lost your mind?"
Otie expressed the opinion tinder his breath that the captain, on the contrary, had "lost his number."
Otie's superior officer was stamping around the quarterdeck, kicking at loose objects, and avoiding his daughter's resentful gaze. There was a note of insincerity in his bluster, as if he wanted to hide embarrassment in a cloud of his own vaporings, as a squid colors water when it fears capture.
"After this you call me Cap'n Candage," he commanded. "After this I'm Cap'n Candage on the high seas, and I propose to run my own quarter-deck. And when I let a crowd of dudes traipse on board here to peek and spy and grin and flirt with you, you'll have clamshells for finger-nails. Now, my lady, I don't want any back talk!"
"But I am going to talk to you, father!"
"Remember that I'm a Candage, and back talk--"
"So am I a Candage--and I have just been ashamed of it!"
"I'm going to have discipline on my own quarterdeck."
"Back talk, quarter-deck discipline, calling you captain! Fol-de-rol and fiddlesticks! I'm your own daughter and you're my father. And you have brought us both to shame! There! I don't want to stay on this old hulk, and I'm not going to stay. I am going home to Aunt Zilpah."
"I had made up my mind to let you go. My temper was mild and sweet till those jeehoofered, gold-trimmed sons of a striped--"
"Father!"
"I had made up my mind to let you go. But I ain't going to give in to a mutiny right before the face and eyes of my own crew."
Smut-nosed Dolph had arrived with the supper-dishes balanced in his arms while he crawled over the deckload. He was listening with the utmost interest.
"Your Aunt Zilpah has aided and abetted you in your flirting," raged the captain. "My own sister, taking advantage of my being off to sea trying to earn money--"
"Do you mean to insult everybody in this world, father? I shall go home, I say. I'm miserable here."
"I'll see to it that you ain't off gamboling and galley-westing with dudes!"
In spite of her spirit the girl was not able to bandy retort longer with this hard-shelled mariner, whose weapon among his kind for years had been a rude tongue. Shocked grief put an end to her poor little rebellion. Tears came.
"You are giving these two men a budget to carry home and spread about the village! Oh, father, you are wicked--wicked!" She put her hands to her face, sobbed, and then ran away down into the gloomy cabin.
There was a long silence on the quarter-deck. Otie recovered his marlinespike and began to pound the eye-bolt.
"Without presuming, preaching, or poking into things that ain't none of my business, I want to say that I don't blame you one mite, cap'n," he volunteered. "No matter what she says, she wasn't to be trusted among them dudes on shore, and I speak from observation and, being an old bach, I can speak impartial. The dudes on the water is just as bad. Them fellows were flirting with her all the time they was 'longside. Real men that means decent ain't called on to keep whisking their caps off and on all the time a woman is in sight--and I see one of 'em wink at her."
Captain Candage was in a mood to accept this comfort from Oakum Otie, and to put out of his contrite conscience the memory of what Captain Ranse Lougee had said.
"Don't you worry! I've got her now where I can keep my eye on her, and I'm cap'n of my own vessel--don't nobody ever forget that!" He shook his fist at the gaping cook. "What ye standing there for, like a hen-coop with the door open and letting my vittels cool off? Hiper your boots! Down below with you and dish that supper onto the table!"
The skipper lingered on deck, his hand at his ear.
The fog was settling over the inner harbor. In the dim vastness seaward a steamer was hooting. Each prolonged blast, at half-minute intervals, sounded nearer. The sound was deep, full-toned, a mighty diapason.
"What big fellow can it be that's coming in here?" the captain grunted.
"Most likely only another tin skimmer of a yacht," suggested the mate, tossing the eye-splice and the marline-spike into the open hatch of the lazaret. "You know what they like to do, them play-critters! They stick on a whistle that's big enough for Seguin fog-horn." He squinted under the edge of his palm and waited. "There she looms. What did I tell ye? Nothing but a yacht."
"But she's a bouncer," remarked the skipper. "What do you make her?"
"O--L," spelled Otie--"O--L--_Olenia_. Must be a local pilot aboard. None of them New York spiffer captains could find Saturday Cove through the feather-tide that's outside just now."
"Well, whether they can or whether they can't isn't of any interest to me," stated the skipper, with fine indifference. "I'd hate to be in a tight place and have to depend on one of them gilded dudes! I smell supper. Come on!"
He was a little uncertain as to what demeanor he ought to assume below, but he clumped down the companion-way with considerable show of confidence, and Otie followed.
The captain cast a sharp glance at his daughter. He had been afraid that he would find her crying, and he did not know how to handle such cases with any certainty.
But she had dried her eyes and she gave him no very amiable look--rather, she hinted defiance. He felt more at ease. In his opinion, any person who had spirit enough left for fight was in a mood to keep on enjoying life.
"Perhaps I went a mite too far, Polly," he admitted. He was mild, but he preserved a little touch of surliness in order that she might not conclude that her victory was won. "But seeing that I brought you off to sea to get you away from flirting--"
"Don't you dare to say that about me!" She beat her round little fist on the table. "Don't you dare!"
"I don't mean that you ever done it! The dudes done it! I want to do right by you, Polly. I've been to sea so long that I don't know much about ways and manners, I reckon. I can't get a good line on things as I ought to. I'm an old fool, I reckon." His voice trembled. "But it made me mad to have you stram up there on deck and call me names before 'em."
She did not reply.
"I have always worked hard for you--sailing the seas and going without things myself, so that you could have 'em--doing the best I could ever after your poor mother passed on."
"I am grateful to you, father. But you don't understand a girl--oh, you don't understand! But let's not talk about it any more--not now."
"I ain't saying to-night--I ain't making promises! But maybe--we'll see how things shape up--maybe I'll send you back home. Maybe it 'll be to-morrow. We'll see how the stage runs to the train, and so forth!"
"I am going to leave it all to you, father. I'm sure you mean to do right." She served the food as mistress at the board.
"It seems homelike with you here," said Captain Can-dage, meekly and wistfully.
"I will stay with you, father, if it will make you happier."
"I sha'n't listen to anything of the sort. It ain't no place aboard here for a girl."
Through the open port they heard the frequent clanging of the steam-yacht's engine-room bell and the riot of her swishing screws as she eased herself into an anchorage. She was very near them--so near that they could hear the chatter of the voices of gay folk.
"What boat is that, father?"
"Another frosted-caker! I can't remember the name."
"It's the _Oilyena_ or something like that. I forget fancy names pretty quick," Otie informed her.
"Well, it ain't much use to load your mind down with that kind of sculch," stated Captain Candage, poising a potato on his fork-tines and peeling it, his elbows on the table. "That yacht and the kind of folks that's aboard that yacht ain't of any account to folks like us."
The memory of some remarks which are uttered with peculiar fervor remains with the utterer. Some time later--long after--Captain Candage remembered that remark and informed himself that, outside of weather predictions, he was a mighty poor prophet.


V ~ ON THE BRIDGE OF YACHT "_OLENIA_"
O the times are hard and the wages low,
Leave her, bullies, leave her!
I guess it's time for us to go,
It's time for us to leave her.
--Across the Western Ocean.
Captain Mayo was not finding responsibility his chief worry while the _Olenia_ was making port.
It was a real mariner's job to drive her through the fog, stab the harbor entrance, and hunt out elbow-room for her in a crowded anchorage. But all that was in the line of the day's work. While he watched the compass, estimated tide drift, allowed for reduced speed, and listened for the echoes which would tell him his distance from the rocky shore, he was engaged in the more absorbing occupation of canvassing his personal affairs.
As the hired master of a private yacht he might have overlooked that affront from the owner, even though it was delivered to a captain on the bridge.
But love has a pride of its own. He had been abused like a lackey in the hearing of Alma Marston. It was evident that the owner had not finished the job. Mayo knew that he had merely postponed his evil moment by sending back a reply which would undoubtedly seem like insubordination in the judgment of a man who did not understand ship discipline and etiquette of the sea.
It was evident that Marston intended to call him "upon the carpet" on