Blow The Man Down 2~ Then Captain Mayo Sees Shoals
18
Literature · Romance
Blow The Man Down 2
~ Then Captain Mayo Sees Shoals
DayEnglish
There's naught upon the stern, there's naught upon the lee,
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we.
But there's a lofty ship to windward,
And she's sailing fast and free,
Sailing down along the coast of the high Barbaree.
--Ancient Shanty.
The skipper of the Olenia found himself dabbling in guesses and wonderment more than is good for a man who is expected to obey without asking the reason why.
That cruise seemed to be a series of spasmodic alternations between leisurely loafing and hustling haste.
There were days when he was ordered to amble along at half speed offshore. Then for hours together Julius Marston and his two especial and close companions, men of affairs, plainly, men of his kind, bunched themselves close together in their hammock chairs under the poop awning and talked interminably. Alma Marston and her young friends, chaperoned by an amiable aunt--so Captain Mayo understood her status in the party--remained considerately away from the earnest group of three. Arthur Beveridge attached himself to the young folks.
From the bridge the captain caught glimpses of all this shipboard routine. The yacht's saunterings offshore seemed a part of the summer vacation.
But the occasional hurryings into harbors, the conferences below with men who came and went with more or less attempt at secrecy, did not fit with the vacation side of the cruise.
These conferences were often followed by orders to the captain to thread inner reaches of the coast and to visit unfrequented harbors.
Captain Mayo had been prepared for these trips, although he had not been informed of the reason. It was his first season on the yacht Olenia. The shipping broker who had hired him had been searching in his inquiries as to Mayo's knowledge of the byways of the coast. The young man who had captained fishermen and coasters ever since he was seventeen years old had found it easy to convince the shipping broker, and the shipping broker had sent him on board the yacht without the formality of an interview with the owner.
Mayo was informed curtly that there was no need of an interview. He was told that Julius Marston never bothered with details.
When Julius Marston had come on board with his party he merely nodded grim acknowledgment of the salute of his yacht's master, who stood at the gangway, cap in hand.
The owner had never shown any interest in the management of the yacht; he had remained abaft the main gangway; he had never called the captain into conference regarding any movements of the Olenia.
Captain Mayo, pacing the bridge in the forenoon watch, trying to grasp the full measure of his fortune after troubled dreams of his master's daughter, recollected that he had never heard the sound of Julius Marston's voice. So far as personal contact was concerned, the yacht's skipper was evidently as much a matter of indifference to the owner as the yacht's funnel.
Orders were always brought forward by a pale young man who was taciturn even to rudeness, and by that trait seemed to commend himself to Marston as a safe secretary.
At first, Alma Marston had brought her friends to the bridge. But after the novelty was gone they seemed to prefer the comfort of chairs astern or the saloon couches.
For a time the attentive Beveridge had followed her when she came forward; and then Beveridge discovered that she quite disregarded him in her quest for information from the tall young man in uniform. She came alone.
And after that what had happened happened.
She came alone that forenoon. He saw her coming. He had stolen a glance aft every time he turned in his walk at the end of the bridge. He leaned low and reached down his hand to assist her up the ladder.
“I have been nigh crazy all morning. But I had to wait a decent time and listen to their gossip after breakfast,” she told him, her face close to his as she came up the ladder. “And, besides, my father is snappy to-day. He scolded me last night for neglecting my guests. Just as if I were called on to sit all day and listen to Nan Burgess appraise her lovers or to sing a song every time Wally Dalton has his relapse of lovesickness. He has come away to forget her, you know.” She chuckled, uttering her funny little gurgle of a laugh which stirred in him, always, a desire to smother it with kisses.
They went to the end of the bridge, apart from the man at the wheel.
“I hurried to go to sleep last night so that I could dream of you, my own big boy.”
“I walked the bridge until after daylight. I wanted to stay awake. I could not bear to let sleep take away my thoughts.”
“What is there like love to make this world full of happiness? How bright the sun is! How the waves sparkle! Those folks sitting back there are looking at the same things we are--or they can look, though they don't seem to have sense enough. And about all they notice is that it's daylight instead of night. My father and those men are talking about money--just money--that's all. And Wally has a headache from drinking too much Scotch. And Nan Burgess doesn't love anybody who loves her, But for us--oh, this glorious world!”
She put out her arms toward the sun and stared boldly at that blazing orb, as though she were not satisfied with what her eyes could behold, but desired to grasp and feel some of the glory of outdoors. If Captain Mayo had been as well versed in psychology as he was in navigation he might have drawn a few disquieting deductions from this frank and unconscious expression of the mood of the materialist. She emphasized that mood by word.
“I'll show you my little clasp-book some day, big boy. It's where I write my verses. I don't show them to anybody. You see, I'm telling you my secrets! We must tell each other our secrets, you and I! I have put my philosophy of living into four lines. Listen!
“The future? Why perplex the soul? The past? Forget its woe and strife! Let's thread each day, a perfect whole, Upon our rosary of Life.”
“It's beautiful,” he told her.
“Isn't it good philosophy?”
“Yes,” he admitted, not daring to doubt the high priestess of the new cult to which he had been commandeered.
“It saves all this foolish worry. Most of the folks I know are always talking about the bad things which have happened to them or are peering forward and hoping that good things will happen, and they never once look down and admire a golden moment which Fate has dropped into their hands. You see, I'm poetical this morning. Why shouldn't I be? We love each other.”
“I don't know how to talk,” he stammered. “I'm only a sailor. I never said a word about love to any girl in my life.”
“Are you sure you have never loved anybody? Remember, we must tell each other our secrets.”
“Never,” he declared with convincing firmness.
She surveyed him, showing the satisfaction a gold-seeker would exhibit in appraising a nugget of virgin ore. “But you are so big and fine! And you must have met so many pretty girls!”
He was not restive under this quizzing. “I have told you the truth, Miss Marston.”
“For shame, big boy! 'Miss Marston,' indeed! I am Alma--Alma to you. Say it! Say it nicely!”
He flushed. He stole a shamefaced glance at the-wheelsman and made a quick and apprehensive survey of the sacred regions aft.
“Are you afraid, after all I have said to you?”
“No, but it seems--I can hardly believe--”
“Say it.”
“Alma,” he gulped. “Alma, I love you.”
“You need some lessons, big boy. You are so awkward I think you are telling me the truth about the other girls.”
He did not dare to ask her whether she had loved any one else. With all the passionate jealousy of his soul he wanted to ask her. She, who was so sure that she could instruct him, must have loved somebody. He tried to comfort himself by the thought that her knowledge arose from the efforts either men had made to win her.
“We have our To-day,” she murmured. “Golden hours till the moon comes up--and then perhaps a few silver ones! I don't care what Arthur guesses. My father is too busy talking money with those men to guess. I'm going to be with you all I can. I can arrange it. I'm studying navigation.”
She snuggled against the rail, luxuriating in the sunshine.
“Who are you?” she asked, bluntly.
That question, coming after the pledging of their affection, astonished him like the loom of a ledge in mid-channel.
“It's enough for me that you are just as you are, boy! But you're not a prince in disguise, are you?”
“I'm only a Yankee sailor,” he told her. “But if you won't think that I'm trying to trade on what my folks have been before me, I'll say that my grandfather was Gamaliel Mayo of Mayoport.”
“That sounds good, but I never heard of him. With all my philosophy, I'm a poor student of history, sweetheart.” Her tone and the name she gave him took the sting out of her confession.
“I don't believe he played a great part in history. But he built sixteen ships in his day, and our house flag circled the world many times. Sixteen big ships, and the last one was the Harvest Home, the China clipper that paid for herself three times before an Indian Ocean monsoon swallowed her.”
“Well, if he made all that money, are you going to sea for the fun of it?”
“There are no more Yankee wooden ships on the sea. My poor father thought he was wise when the wooden ships were crowded off. He put his money into railroads--and you know what has happened to most of the folks who have put their money into new railroads.”
“I'm afraid I don't know much about business.”
“The hawks caught the doves. It was a game that was played all over New England. The folks whose money built the roads were squeezed out. Long before my mother died our money was gone, but my father and I did not allow her to know it. We mortgaged and gave her what she had always been used to. And when my father died there was nothing!”
Her eyes glistened. “That's chivalry,” she cried. “That's the spirit of the knights of old when women were concerned. I adore you for what you did!”
“It was the way my father and I looked at it,” he said, mildly. “My father was not a very practical man, but I always agreed with him. And I am happy now, earning my own living. Why should I think my grandfather ought to have worked all his life so that I would not need to work?”
“I suppose it's different with a big, strong man and a woman. She needs so much that a man must give her.”
Captain Mayo became promptly silent, crestfallen, and embarrassed. He stared aft, he looked at the splendid yacht whose finances he managed and whose extravagance he knew. He saw the girl at his side, and blinked at the gems which flashed in the sunlight as her fingers tucked up the locks of hair where the breeze had wantoned.
“I think my father works because he loves it,” she said. “I wish he would rest and enjoy other things more. If mother had lived to influence him perhaps he would see something else in life instead of merely piling up money. But he doesn't listen to me. He gives me money and tells me to go and play. I miss my mother, boy! I haven't anybody to talk with--who understands!”
There were tears in her eyes, and he was grateful for them. He felt that she had depths in her nature. But keen realization of his position, compared with hers, distressed him. She stood there, luxury incarnate, mistress of all that money could give her.
“Anybody can make money,” she declared. “My father and those men are sitting there and building plans to bring them thousands and thousands of dollars. All they need to do is put their heads together and plan. Every now and then I hear a few words. They're going to own all the steamboats--or something of that kind. Anybody can make money, I say, but there are so few who know how to enjoy it.”
“I have been doing a lot of thinking since last night--Alma.” He hesitated when he came to her name, and then blurted it out.
“Do you think it is real lover-like to treat my name as if it were a hurdle that you must leap over?” she asked, with her aggravating little chuckle. “Oh, you have so much to learn!”
“I'm afraid so. I have a great many things ahead of me to learn and do. I have been thinking. I have been afraid of the men who sit and scheme and put all their minds on making money. They did bitter things to us, and we didn't understand until it was all over. But I must go among them and watch them and learn how to make money.”
“Don't be like the others, now, and talk money--money,” she said, pettishly. “Money and their love-affairs--that's the talk I have heard from men ever since I was allowed to come into the drawing-room out of the nursery!”
“But I must talk money a little, dear. I have my way to make in the world.”
“Thrifty, practical, and Yankee!” she jested. “I suppose you can't help it!”
“It isn't for myself--it's for you!” he returned, wistfully, and with a voice and demeanor he offered himself as Love's sacrifice before her--the old story of utter devotion--the ancient sacrifice.
“I have all I want,” she insisted.
“But I must be able to give you what you want!”
“I warn you that I hate money-grubbers! They haven't a spark of romance in them. Boyd, you'd be like all the rest in a little while. You mustn't do it.”
“But I must have position--means before I dare to go to your father--if I ever shall be able to go to him!”
“Go to him for what?”
“To ask him--to say--to--well, when we feel that I'm in a position where we can be married--”
“Of course we shall be married some day, boy, but all that will take care of itself when the time comes. But now you are-- How old are you, Boyd?”
“Twenty-six.”
“And I am nineteen. And what has marriage to do with the love we are enjoying right now?”
“When folks are in love they want to get married.”
“Granted! But when lovers are wise they will treat romance at first as the epicure treats his glass of good wine. They will pour it slowly and hold the glass up against the light and admire its color!” In her gay mood she pinched together thumb and forefinger and lifted an imaginary glass to the sun. “Then they will sniff the bouquet. Ah-h-h, how fragrant! And after a time they will take a little sip--just a weeny little sip and hold it on the tongue for ever so long. For, when it is swallowed, what good? Oh, boy, here are you--talking first of all about marriage! Talking of the good wine of life and love as if it were a fluid simply to satisfy thirst. We are going to love, first of all! Come, I will teach you.”
He did not know what to say to her. There was a species of abandon in her gaiety. Her exotic language embarrassed one who had been used to mariners' laconic directness of speech. She looked at him, teasing him with her eyes. He was a bit relieved when the pale-faced secretary came dragging himself up the ladder and broke in on the tête-à-tête.
“Mr. Marston's orders are, Captain Mayo, that you turn here and go west. Do you know the usual course of the Bee line steamers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He requests you to turn in toward shore and follow that course.”
“Very well, sir.” Captain Mayo walked to the wheel. “Nor' nor'west, Billy, until I can give you the exact course.”
“Nor' nor'west!” repeated the wheelsman, throwing her hard over, and the Olenia came about with a rail-dipping swerve and retraced her way along her own wake of white suds.
Miss Marston preceded the captain down the ladder and went into the chart-room. “A kiss--quick!” she whispered.
He held her close to him for a long moment.
“You are a most obedient captain,” she said.
When he released her and went at his task, she leaned upon his shoulder and watched him as he straddled his parallels across the chart.
“We'll run to Razee Reef,” he told her, eager to make her a partner in all his little concerns. “The Bee boats fetch the whistler there so as to lay off their next leg. I didn't know that Mr. Marston was interested in the Bee line.”
“I heard him talking about that line,” she said, indifferently. “Sometimes I listen when I have nothing else to do. He used a naughty word about somebody connected with that company--and it's so seldom that he allows himself to swear I listened to see what it was all about. I don't know even now. I don't understand such things. But he said if he couldn't buy 'em he'd bu'st 'em. Those were his words. Not very elegant language. But it's all I remember.”
Before he left the chart-room Mayo took a squint at the barometer. “I'm sorry he has ordered me in toward the coast,” he said. “The glass is too far below thirty to suit me. I think it means fog.”
“But it's so clear and beautiful,” she protested.
“It's always especially beautiful at sea before something bad happens,” he explained, smiling. “And there has been a big fog-bank off to s'uth'ard for two days. It's a good deal like life, dear. All lovely, and then the fog shuts in!”
“But I would be happy with you in the fog,” she assured him.
He glowed at her words and answered with his eyes.
She would have followed him back upon the bridge, but the steward intercepted her. He had waited outside the chart-room.
“Mr. Marston's compliments, Miss Marston! He requests you to join him at cards.”
She pouted as she gave back Mayo's look of annoyance, and then obeyed the mandate.
Mr. Marston was stroking his narrow strip of chin beard with thumb and forefinger when she arrived on the quarter-deck. The men of business were below, and he motioned to a hammock chair beside him.
“Alma, for the rest of this cruise I want you to stay back here with our guests where you belong,” he commanded with the directness of attack employed by Julius Marston in his dealings with those of his ménage.
“What do you mean, father?”
“That--exactly. I was explicit, was I not?”
“But you do not intimate that--that I have--”
“Well?” Mr. Marston believed in allowing others to expose their sentiments before he uncovered his own.
“You don't suggest that there is anything wrong in my being on the bridge where I enjoy myself so much. I am trying to learn something about navigation.”
“I am paying that fellow up there to attend to all that.”
“And it gets tiresome back here.”
“You selected your own company for the cruise--and there is Mr. Beveridge ready to amuse you at any time.”
“Mr. Beveridge amuses me--distinctly amuses me,” she retorted. “But there is such a thing as becoming wearied even of such a joke as Mr. Beveridge.”
“You will please employ a more respectful tone when you refer to that gentleman,” said her father, with severity. But he promptly fell back into his usual mood when she came into his affairs. He was patronizingly tolerant. “Your friend, Miss Burgess, has been joking about your sudden devotion to navigation, Alma.”
“Nan Burgess cannot keep her tongue still, even about herself.”
“I know, but I do not intend to have you give occasion even for jokes. Of course, I understand. I know your whims. You are interested, personally, in that gold-braided chap about as much as you would be interested in that brass thing where the compass is--whatever they call it.”
“But he's a gentleman!” she cried, her interest making her unwary. “His grandfather was--”
“Alma!” snapped Julius Marston. His eyes opened wide. He looked her up and down. “I have heard before that an ocean trip makes women silly, I am inclined to believe it. I don't care a curse who that fellow's grandfather was. You are my daughter--and you keep off that bridge!”
The men of business were coming up the companion-way, and she rose and hurried to her stateroom.
“I don't dare to meet Nan Burgess just now,” she told herself. “Friendships can be broken by saying certain things--and I feel perfectly capable of saying just those things to her at this moment.”
In the late afternoon the Olenia, the shore-line looming to starboard, shaped her course to meet and pass a big steamer which came rolling down the sea with a banner of black smoke flaunting behind her.
The fog which Captain Mayo had predicted was coming. Wisps of it trailed over the waves--skirmishers sent ahead of the main body which marched in mass more slowly behind.
A whistling buoy, with its grim grunt, told all mariners to 'ware Razee Reef, which was lifting its jagged, black bulk against the sky-line. With that fog coming, Captain Mayo needed to take exact bearings from Razee, for he had decided to run for harbor that night. That coastline, to whose inside course Marston's orders had sent the yacht, was too dangerous to be negotiated in a night which was fog-wrapped. Therefore, the captain took the whistler nearly dead on, leaving to the larger steamer plenty of room in the open sea.
With considerable amazement Mayo noticed that the other fellow was edging toward the whistler at a sharper angle than any one needed. That course, if persisted in, would pinch the yacht in dangerous waters. Mayo gave the on-coming steamer one whistle, indicating his intention to pass to starboard. After a delay he was answered by two hoarse hoots--a most flagrant breach of the rules of the road.
“That must be a mistake,” Captain Mayo informed Mate McGaw.
“That's a polite name for it, sir,” averred Mr. McGaw, after he had shifted the lump in his cheek.
“Of course he doesn't mean it, Mr. McGaw.”
“Then why isn't he giving us elbow-room on the outside of that buoy, sir?”
“I can't swing and cross his bows now. If he should hit us we'd be the ones held for the accident.”
Again Mayo gave the obstinate steamer a single whistle-blast.
“If he cross-signals me again I'll report him,” he informed the mate. “Pay close attention, Mr. McGaw, and you, too, Billy. We may have to go before the inspectors.”
But the big chap ahead of them did not deign to reply. He kept on straight at the whistler.
“Compliments of Mr. Marston!” called the secretary from the bridge ladder. “What steamer is that?”
“Conorno of the Bee line, sir,” stated Captain Mayo over his shoulder. Then he ripped out a good, hearty, deep-water oath. According to appearances, incredible as the situation seemed, the Conorno proposed to drive the yacht inside the whistler.
Mayo ran to the wheel and yanked the bell-pull furiously. There were four quick clangs in the engine-room, and in a moment the Olenia began to quiver in all her fabric. Going full speed ahead, Mayo had called for full speed astern. Then he sounded three whistles, signaling as the rules of the road provide. The yacht's twin screws churned a yeasty riot under her counter, and while she was laboring thus in her own wallow, trembling like some living thing in the extremity of terror, the big steamer swept past. Froth from the creamy surges at her bows flicked spray contemptuously upon Julius Marston and his guests on the Olenia's quarter-deck. Men grinned down upon them from the high windows of the steamer's pilot-house.
A jeering voice boomed through a megaphone: “Keep out of the way of the Bee line! Take the hint!”
An officer pointed his finger at Marston's house flag, snapping from the yacht's main truck. The blue fish-tail with its letter “M” had revealed the yacht's identity to searching glasses.
“Better make it black! Skull and cross-bones!” volunteered the megaphone operator.
On she went down the sea and the Olenia tossed in the turbulent wake of the kicking screws.
Then, for the first time, Captain Mayo heard the sound of Julius Marston's voice. The magnate stood up, shook his fist at his staring captain, and yelled, “What in damnation do you think you are doing?”
It was amazing, insulting, and, under the circumstances as Mayo knew them, an unjust query. The master of the Olenia did not reply. He was not prepared to deliver any long-distance explanation. Furthermore, the yacht demanded all his attention just then. He gave his orders and she forged ahead to round the whistler.
“Nor'west by west, half west, Billy. And cut it fine!”
The fog had fairly leaped upon them from the sea. The land-breeze had been holding back the wall of vapor, damming it in a dun bank to southward. The breeze had let go. The fog had seized its opportunity.
“Saturday Cove for us to-night, Mr. McGaw,” said the master. “Keep your eye over Billy's shoulder.”
Then the secretary appeared again on the ladder. This time he did not bring any “compliments.”
“Mr. Marston wants you to report aft at once,” he announced, brusquely.
Mayo hesitated a moment. They were driving into blankness which had shut down with that smothering density which mariners call “a dungeon fog.” Saturday Cove's entrance was a distant and a small target. In spite of steersman and mate, his was the sole responsibility.
“Will you please explain to Mr. Marston that I cannot leave the bridge?”
“You have straight orders from him, captain! You'd better stop the boat and report.”
The skipper of the Olenia was having his first taste of the unreasoning whim of the autocrat who was entitled to break into shipboard discipline, even in a critical moment. Mayo felt exasperation surging in him, but he was willing to explain.
The whistler and Razee Reef had been blotted out by the fog.
“If this vessel is stopped five minutes in this tide-drift we shall lose our bearings, sir. I cannot leave this bridge for the present.”
“I'm thinking you'll leave it for good!” blurted the secretary. “You're the first hired man who ever told Julius Marston to go bite his own thumb.”
“I may be a hired man,” retorted Mayo. “But I am also a licensed shipmaster. I must ask you to step down off the bridge.”
“Does that go for all the rest of the--passengers?” asked the secretary, angry in his turn. He dwelt on his last word. “It does--in a time like this!”
“Very well, I'll give them that word aft.”
Captain Mayo caught a side glance from Mate McGaw after a time.
“I have often wondered,” remarked the mate to nobody in particular, “how it is that so many damn fools get rich on shore.”
Captain Mayo did not express any opinion on the subject. He clutched the bridge rail and stared into the fog, and seemed to be having a lot of trouble in choking back some kind of emotion.
