Blow The Man Down 22~ Special Business of a Passenger
18
Literature · Romance
Blow The Man Down 22
~ Special Business of a Passenger
DayEnglish
O Ranzo was no sailor,
He shipped on board a whaler.
O pity Reuben Ran-zo, Ran-zo, boys!
O poor old Reuben Ranzo, Ranzo, boys!
--Reuben Ranzo.
Captain Mayo kept out of the region of the white lights for some time. He had a pretty wide acquaintance in the Virginia port, and he knew the beaten paths of the steamboating transients, ashore for a bit of a blow.
He lurked in alleys, feeling especially disreputable. He was not at all sure that his make-up was effective. His own self-consciousness convinced him that he was a glaring fraud, whose identity would be revealed promptly to any person who knew him. But while he sneaked in the purlieus of the city several of his 'longshore friends passed him without a second look. One, a second engineer on a Union line freighter, whirled after passing, and came back to him.
“Got a job, boy?”
“No, sir.”
“We need coal-passers on the Drummond. She's in the stream. Come aboard in the morning.”
But it was not according to Mayo's calculation, messing with steamboat men. “Ah doan' conclude ah wants no sech job,” he drawled.
“No, of course you don't want to work, you blasted yaller mutt!” snapped the engineer. He marched on, cursing, and Mayo was encouraged, for the man had given him a thorough looking-over.
He went out onto the wider streets. He was looking for a roving schooner captain, reckoning he would know one of that gentry by the cut of his jib.
A ponderous man came stumping down the sidewalk, swinging his shoulders.
“He's one of 'em,” decided Mayo. The round-crowned soft hat, undented, the flapping trouser legs, the gait recognized readily by one who has ever seen a master mariner patrol his quarter-deck--all these marked him as a safe man to tackle. He stopped, dragged a match against the brick side of a building, and relighted his cigar. But before Mayo could reach him a colored man hurried up and accosted the big gentleman, whipping off his hat and bowing with smug humility. Mayo hung up at a little distance. He recognized the colored man; he was one of the numerous Norfolk runners who furnish crews for vessels. He wore pearl-gray trousers, a tailed coat, and had a pink in his buttonhole.
“Ah done have to say that ah doan' get that number seven man up to now, Cap'n Downs, though I have squitulate for him all up and down. But ah done expect--”
Captain Downs scowled over his scooped hands, puffing hard at his cigar. He threw away the match.
“Look-a-here! you've been chasing me two days with new stories about that seventh man. Haven't you known me long enough to know that you can't trim me for another fee?”
“Cap'n Downs, you done know yo'self the present lucidateness of the sailorman supply.”
“I know that if you don't get that man aboard my schooner to-night or the first thing to-morrow morning you'll never put another one aboard for me. You go hustle! And look here! I see you making up your mouth! Not another cent!”
The colored man backed off and went away.
Mayo accosted the captain when that fuming gentleman came lunging along the sidewalk. “Ah done lak to have that job, cap'n,” he pleaded.
“You a sailor?”
“Yas, sir.”
“How is it you ain't hiring through the regular runners?”
“Ah doan' lak to give all my money to a dude nigger to go spotein' on.”
“Well, there's something in that,” acknowledged Captain Downs, softening a bit. “I haven't got much use for that kind myself. You come along. But if you ain't A-1, shipshape, and seamanlike and come aboard my vessel to loaf on your job you'll wish you were in tophet with the torches lighted. Got any dunnage laying around anywhere?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, then, I guess you're a regular sailor, all right, the way the breed runs nowadays. That sounds perfectly natural.” The captain led the way down to a public landing, where a power-yawl, with engineer and a mate, was in waiting. “Will she go into the stream to-night, Mr. Dodge?” asked Captain Downs, curtly.
“No, sir! About four hundred tons still to come.”
Schooner captains keep religiously away from their vessels as long as the crafts lie at the coal-docks.
“Come up for me in the morning as soon as she is in the stream. Here's a man to fill the crew. If that coon shows up with another man kick the two of 'em up the wharf.”
“Will the passenger come aboard with you, sir?”
“He called me up at the hotel about supper-time and said something about wanting to come aboard at the dock. I tried to tell him it was foolish, but it's safe to reckon that a man who wants to sail as passenger from here to Boston on a coal-schooner is a fool, anyway. If he shows up, let him come aboard.” Captain Downs swung away and the night closed in behind him.
Mayo took his place in the yawl and preserved meek and proper silence during the trip down the harbor.
When they swung under the counter of the schooner which was their destination, the young man noted that she was the Drusilla M. Alden, a five-master, of no very enviable record along the coast, so far as the methods and manners of her master went; Mayo had heard of her master, whose nickname was “Old Mull.” He had not recognized him under the name of Captain Downs when the runner had addressed him.
The new member of the crew followed the mate up the ladder--only a few steps, for the huge schooner, with most of her cargo aboard, showed less than ten feet of freeboard amidships.
“Sleepy, George?” asked the mate, when they were on deck.
“No, sir.”
“Then you may as well go on this watch.”
“Yass'r!”
“We'll call it now eight bells, midnight. You'll go off watch eight bells, morning.”
Mayo knew that the hour was not much later than eleven, but he did not protest; he knew something about the procedure aboard coastwise coal-schooners.
Search-lights bent steady glare upon the chutes down which rushed the streams of coal, black dust swirling in the white radiance. The great pockets at Lambert Point are never idle. High above, on the railway, trains of coal-cars racketed. Under his feet the fabric of the vessel trembled as the chutes fed her through the three hatches. Sweating, coal-blackened men toiled in the depths of her, revealed below hatches by the electric lights, pecking at the avalanche with their shovels, trimming cargo.
The young man exchanged a few listless words with the two negroes who were on deck, his mates of the watch.
They were plainly not interested in him, and he avoided them.
The hours dragged. He helped to close and batten the fore-hatch, and later performed similar service on the hatch aft. The main-hatch continued to gulp the black food which the chute fed to it.
Suddenly a tall young man appeared to Mayo. The stranger was smartly dressed, and his spick-and-span garb contrasted strangely with the general riot of dirt aboard the schooner. He trod gingerly over the dust-coated planks and carried two suit-cases.
“Here, George,” he commanded. “Take these to my stateroom.”
Mayo hesitated.
“I'm going as passenger,” said the young man, impatiently, and Mayo remembered what the captain had told the mate.
Passengers on coal-schooners, sailing as friends of the master, were not unknown on the coast, but Mayo judged, from what he had heard, that this person was not a friend, and had wondered a bit.
“I am not allowed to go aft, sir, without orders from the mate.”
“Where is the mate?”
“I think he is below, sir.”
“Asleep?”
“I wouldn't wonder.”
Mayo did not trouble to use his dialect on this stranger, a mere passenger, who spoke as if he were addressing a car-porter. The tone produced instant irritation, resentment in the man who had so recently been master of his ship.
The passenger set down his baggage and pondered a moment. He looked Mayo over in calculating fashion; he stared up the wharf. Then he picked up his bags and hurried along the port alley and disappeared down the companionway.
He returned in a few moments, came into the waist of the vessel, and made careful survey of all about him. There were two sailors far forward, merely dim shadows. For some reason general conditions on the schooner seemed to satisfy the stranger.
“The thing is breaking about right--about as I reckoned it would,” he said aloud. “Look here, George, how much talking do you do about things you see?”
“Talking to who, sir?”
“Why, to your boss--the captain--the mate.”
“A sailor before the mast is pretty careful not to say anything to a captain or the mates unless they speak to him first, sir.”
“George, I'm not going to do anything but what is perfectly all right, you understand. You'll not get into any trouble over it. But what you don't see you can't tell, no matter if questions are asked later on. Here, take this!” He crowded two silver dollars into Mayo's hands and gave him a push. “You trot forward and stay there about five minutes, that's the boy! It's all right. It's a little of my own private business. Go ahead!”
Mayo went. He reflected that it was none of his affair what a passenger did aboard the vessel. It was precious little interest he took in the craft, anyway, except as a temporary refuge. He turned away and put the money in his pocket, the darkness hiding his smile.
He did not look toward the wharf. He strolled on past the forward house, where the engineer was stoking his boiler, getting up steam for the schooner's windlass engine. When he patrolled aft again, after a conscientious wait, he found the passenger leaning against the coachhouse door, smoking a cigarette. The electric light showed his face, and it wore a look of peculiar satisfaction.
Just then some one fumbled inside the coach-house door at the stranger's back, and when the latter stepped away the first mate appeared, yawning.
“I'm the passenger--Mr. Bradish,” the young man explained, promptly. “I just made myself at home, put my stuff in a stateroom, and locked the door and took the key. Is that all right?”
“May be just as well to lock it while we're at dock and stevedores are aboard,” agreed the mate.
“How soon do we pull out of here?”
The mate yawned again and peered up into the sky, where the first gray of the summer dawn was showing over the cranes of the coal-pockets. “In about a half-hour, I should say. Just as soon as the tug can use daylight to put us into the stream.”
The roar of the coal in the main-hatch chute had ceased. The schooner was loaded.
“Go strike eight bells, Jeff, and turn in!” ordered the mate, speaking to Mayo.
“Well, I'll stay outside, here, and watch the sun rise,” said Bradish. “It will be a new experience.”
“It's an almighty dirty place for loafing till we get into the stream and clean ship, sir. I should think taking an excursion on a coal-lugger would be another new experience!” There was just a hint of grim sarcasm in his tone.
“The doctor ordered me to get out and away where I wouldn't hear of business or see business, and a friend of mine told me there were plenty of room and comfort aboard one of these big schooners. That cabin and the staterooms, they're fine!”
“Oh, they have to give a master a good home these days. That's a Winton carpet in the saloon,” declared the mate, with pride. “And we've got a one-eyed cook who can certainly sling grub together. Yes, for a cheap vacation I dun'no' but a schooner is all right!”
The two were getting on most amicably when Mayo went forward. He was dog-tired and turned in on tie bare boards of his fo'cas'le berth.
No bedding is furnished men before the mast on the coal-carriers.
If a man wants anything between himself and the boards he must bring it with him, and few do so. At the end of each trip a crew is discharged and new men are hired, in order to save paying wages while a vessel is in port loading or discharging. Therefore, a coastwise schooner harbors only transients, for whom the fo'cas'le is merely a shelter between watches.
But Mayo was a sailor, and the bare boards served him better than bedding in which some dusky and dirty son of Ham had nestled. He laid himself down and slept soundly.
The second mate turned out the watch below at four bells--six in the morning. The schooner was in the stream and all hands were needed to work hose and brooms and clear off the coal-dust. Mayo toiled in the wallow of black water till his muscles ached.
There was one happy respite--they knocked off long enough to eat breakfast. It was sent out to them from the cook-house in one huge, metal pan without dishes or knives or forks.
A white cook wash dishes for negroes?
Mayo knew the custom which prevailed on board the schooners between the coal ports and the New England cities, and he fished for food with his fingers and cut meat with his jack-knife with proper meekness.
When he was back at his scrubbing again the cook passed aft, bearing the zinc-lined hamper which contained the breakfast for the cabin table. That this cook had the complete vocabulary of others of his ilk was revealed when the man with the hose narrowly missed drenching the hamper.
“That's right, cook!” roared Captain Downs, climbing ponderously on board from his yawl. “Talk up to the loafing, cock-eyed, pot-colored sons of a coal-scuttle when I ain't here to do it. Turn away that hose, you mule-eared Fiji!” He turned on Mayo, who stood at one side and was poising his scrubbing-broom to allow the master to pass. “Get to work, there, yellow pup! Get to work!”
Ordinarily the skipper addresses one of his sailors only through the mate. But there was no mate handy just then.
“One hand for the owners and one hand for yourself when you're aloft, but on deck it's both hands for the owners,” he stated, as he plodded aft, giving forth the aphorism for the benefit of all within hearing.
The passenger was still on deck, and Mayo heard Captain Downs greet him rather brusquely.
Then the cook's hand-bell announced breakfast, and before the captain and his guest reappeared on deck a tug had the Alden's hawser and was towing her down the dredged channel on the way to Hampton Roads and to sea.
Mayo went at his new tasks so handily that he passed muster as an able seaman. If a sailor aboard a big schooner of these days is quick, willing, and strong he does not need the qualities and the knowledge which made a man an “A. B.” in the old times.
While the schooner was on her way behind the tug they hoisted her sails, a long cable called “the messenger” enabling the steam-winch forward to do all the work. Mayo was assigned to the jigger-mast, and went aloft to shake out the topsail. It was a dizzy height, and the task tried his spirit, for the sail was heavy, and he found it difficult to keep his balance while he was tugging at the folds of the canvas. He was obliged to work alone--there was only one man to a mast, and very tiny insects did his mates appear when Mayo glanced forward along the range of the masts.
The tug dropped them off the Tail of the Horseshoe; a smashing sou'wester was serving them.
With all her washing set, the schooner went plowing out past the capes, and Mayo was given his welcome watch below; he was so sleepy that his head swam.
When he turned out he was ordered to take his trick at the wheel. The schooner had made her offing and was headed for her northward run along the coast, which showed as a thin thread of white along the flashing blue of the sea.
Mayo took the course from the gaunt, sooty Jamaican who stepped away from the wheel; he set his gaze on the compass and had plenty to occupy his hands and his mind, for a big schooner which is logging off six or eight knots in a following sea is somewhat of a proposition for a steersman. Occasionally he was obliged to climb bodily upon the wheel in order to hold the vessel up to her course.
Captain Downs was pacing steadily from rail to rail between the wheel and the house. At each turn he glanced up for a squint at the sails. It was the regular patrol of a schooner captain.
In spite of his absorption in his task, Mayo could not resist taking an occasional swift peep at the passenger. The young man's demeanor had become so peculiar that it attracted attention. He looked worried, ill at ease, smoked his cigarettes nervously, flung over the rail one which he had just lighted, and started for the captain, his mouth open. Then he turned away, shielded a match under the hood of the companionway, and touched off another cigarette. He was plainly wrestling with a problem that distressed him very much.
At last he hurried below. He came up almost immediately. He had the air of a man who had made up his mind to have a disagreeable matter over with.
“Captain Downs,” he blurted, stepping in front of Old Mull and halting that astonished skipper, “will you please step down into the cabin with me for a few moments? I've something to tell you.”
“Well, tell it--tell it here!” barked the captain.
“It's very private, sir!”
“I don't know of any privater place than this quarterdeck, fifteen miles offshore.”
“But the--the man at the wheel!”
“Good Josephus! That ain't a man! That's a nigger sailor steering my schooner. Tell your tale, Mr. Bradish. Tell it right here. That fellow don't count any more 'n that rudder-head counts.”
“If you could step down into the cabin, I--”
“My place is on this quarter-deck, sir. If you've got anything to say to me, say it!” He began to pace again.
Bradish caught step, after a scuff or two.
“I hope you're going to take this thing right, Captain Downs. It may sound queer to you at first,” he stammered.
“Well, well, well, tell it to me--tell it! Then I will let you know whether it sounds queer or not.”
“I brought another passenger on board with me. She is locked in a stateroom.”
Old Mull stopped his patrol with a jerk. “She?” he demanded. “You mean to tell me you've got a woman aboard here?”
“We're engaged--we want to get married. So she came along--”
“Then why in tophet didn't ye go get married? You don't think this is a parsonage, do you?”
“There were reasons why we couldn't get married ashore. You have to have licenses, and questions are asked, and we were afraid it would be found out before we could arrange it.”
“So this is an elopement, hey?”
“Well, the young lady's father has foolish ideas about a husband for his daughter, and she doesn't agree with him.”
“Who is her father?”
“I don't intend to tell you, sir. That hasn't anything to do with the matter.”
Captain Downs looked his passenger up and down with great disfavor. “And what's your general idea in loading yourselves onto me in this fashion?”
“You have the right, as captain of a ship outside the three-mile limit, to marry folks in an emergency.”
“I ain't sure that I've got any such right, and I ain't at all certain about the emergency, Mr. Bradish. I ain't going to stick my head into a scrape.”
“But there can't be any scrape for you. You simply exercise your right and marry us and enter it in your log and give us a paper. It will be enough of a marriage so that we can't be separated.”
“Want to hold a hand you can bluff her father with, hey? I don't approve of any such tactics in matrimony.”
“I wouldn't be doing this if there were any other safe way for us,” protested Bradish, earnestly. “I'm no cheap fellow. I hold down a good job, sir. But the trouble is I work for her father--and you know how it always is in a case like that. He can't see me!”
“Rich, eh?”
“Yes, sir!” Bradish made the admission rather sullenly.
“It's usually the case when there's eloping done!”
“But this will not seem like eloping when it's reported right in the newspapers. Marriage at sea--it will seem like a romantic way of getting rid of the fuss of a church wedding. We'll put out a statement of that sort. It will give her father a chance to stop all the gossip. He'll be glad if you perform the ceremony.”
“Say, young fellow, you're not rehearsing the stuff on me that you used on the girl, are you? Well, it doesn't go!
“Captain Downs, you must understand how bull-headed some rich men are in matters of this kind. I am active and enterprising. I'll be a handy man for him. He likes me in a business way--he has said so. He'll be all right after he gets cooled down.”
“More rehearsal! But I ain't in love with you like that girl is.”
“We're in a terrible position, captain! Perhaps it wasn't a wise thing to do. But it will come out all right if you marry us.”
“What's her name?”
“I can't tell you.”
“How in the devil can I marry you and her if I don't know her name?”
“But you haven't promised that you will do your part! I don't want to expose this whole thing and then be turned down.”
“I ain't making any rash promises,” stated Captain Downs, walking to the rail and taking a squint at the top-hamper. “Besides,” he added, on his tramp past to the other rail, “he may be an owner into this schooner property, for all I know. Sixteenths of her are scattered from tophet to Tar Hollow!”
“You needn't worry about his owning schooner property! He is doing quite a little job at putting you fellows out of business!”
Curiosity and something else gleamed in Captain Downs's eyes. “Chance for me to rasp him, hey, by wishing you onto the family?”
This new idea in the situation appealed instantly to Bradish as a possibility to be worked. “Promise man to man that you'll perform the marriage, and I'll tell you his name; then you'll be glad that you have promised,” he said, eagerly.
“I don't reckon I'd try to get even with Judas I-scarrot himself by stealing his daughter away from him, sir. There's the girl to be considered in all such cases!”
“But this isn't stealing! We're in love.”
“Maybe, but you ain't fooling me very much, young fellow. I don't say but what you like her all right, but you're after something else, too.”
“A man has to make his way in the world as best he can.”
“That plan seems to be pretty fashionable among you financing fellows nowadays. But I'm a pretty good judge of men and you can't fool me, I say. Now how did you fool the girl?”
It was blunt and insulting query, but Bradish did not have the courage to resent it; he had too much need of placating this despot. The lover hesitated and glanced apprehensively at the man at the wheel.
“Don't mind that nigger!” yelped Captain Downs, “How did you ever get nigh enough to that girl to horn-swoggle her into this foolishness?”
“We met at dances. We were attracted to each other,” explained Bradish, meekly.
“Huh! Yes, they tell me that girls are crazy over hoof-shaking these days, and I suppose it's easy to go on from there into a general state of plumb lunacy,” commented Old Mull, with disgust. “You show you ain't really in love with her, young man. You'd never allow her to cut up this caper if you were!”
He stuck an unlighted cigar in his mouth and continued to patrol his quarter-deck, muttering.
Bradish lighted a cigarette, tossed it away after two puffs, and leaned against the house, studying his fingertips, scowling and sullen.
Mayo had heard all the conversation, but his interest in the identity of these persons was limited; New York was full of rich men, and there were many silly daughters.
“Look here,” suggested the captain, unamiably, “whatever is done later, there's something to be done now. It's cruelty to animals to keep that girl shut up in that stateroom any longer.”
“She didn't want to come out and show herself till I had had a talk with you, sir. I have spoken to her through the door a few times.” He straightened himself and assumed dignity. “Captain Downs, I call it to your attention--I want you to remember that I have observed all the proprieties since I have been on board.”
Captain Downs snorted. “Proprieties--poosh! You have got her into a nice scrape! And she's down there locked in like a cat, and probably starving!”
“She doesn't care to eat. I think she isn't feeling very well.”
“I shouldn't think she would! Go bring her up here, where she can get some fresh air. I'll talk to her.”
After a moment's hesitation Bradish went below. He returned in a little while.
In spite of his efforts to pretend obliviousness Mayo stared hard at the companionway, eager to look on the face of the girl. But she did not follow her lover.
“She doesn't feel well enough to come on deck,” reported Bradish. “But she is in the saloon. Captain Downs, won't you go and talk to her and say something to make her feel easy in her mind? She is very nervous. She is frightened.”
“I'm not much of a ladies' man,” stated Old Mull. But he pulled off his cap and smoothed his grizzled hair.
“And if you could only say that you're going to help us!” pleaded the lover. “We throw ourselves on your mercy, sir.”
“I ain't much good as a life-raft in this love business.” He started for the companionway.
“But don't tell her that you will not marry us--not just now. Wait till she is calmer.”
“Oh, I sha'n't tell her! Don't worry!” said Captain Downs, with a grim set to his mouth. “All she, or you, gets out of me can be put in a flea's eye.”
He disappeared down the steps, and Bradish followed. A mate had come aft, obeying the master's hand-flourish, and he took up the watch. In a little while Mayo was relieved. He went forward, conscious that he was a bit irritated and disappointed because he had not seen the heroine of this love adventure, and wondering just a bit at his interest in that young lady.
An hour later Mayo, coiling down lines in the alley outside the engine-room, overheard a bulletin delivered by the one-eyed cook to the engineer.
The cook had trotted forward, his sound eye bulging out and thus mutely expressing much astonishment. “There's a dame aft. I've been making tea and toast for her.”
“Well, you act as if it was the first woman you'd ever seen. What's the special excitement about a skirt going along as passenger?”
“She wa'n't expected to be aboard. I heard the old man talking with her. The flash gent that's passenger has rung her in somehow. I didn't get all the drift be-cause the old man only sort of purred while I was in hearing distance. But I caught enough to know that it ain't according to schedule.”
“Good looker?” The engineer was showing a bit of interest.
“She sure is!” declared the cook, demonstrating that one eye is as handy, sometimes, as two. “Peaches and cream, molasses-candy hair, hands as white as pastry flour. Looks good enough to eat.”
“Nobody would ever guess you are a cook, hearing you describe a girl,” sneered the engineer.
“There's a mystery about her. I heard her kind of taking on before the dude hushed her up. She was saying something about being sorry that she had come, and that she wished she was back, and that she had always done things on the impulse, and didn't stop to think, and so forth, and couldn't the ship be turned around.”
Mayo forgot himself. He stopped coiling ropes and stood there and listened eagerly until the cook's indignant eye chanced to take a swing in his direction.
“Do you see who's standing there butting in on the private talk of two gents?” he asked the engineer. “Hand me that grate-poker--the hot one. I'll show that nigger where he belongs.”
But Mayo retreated in a hurry, knowing that he was not permitted to protest either by word or by look. However, the cook had given him something else besides an insult--he had retailed gossip which kept the young man's thoughts busy.
In spite of his rather contemptuous opinion of the wit of a girl who would hazard such a silly adventure, he found himself pitying her plight, guessing that she was really sorry. But as to what was going on in the master's cabin he had no way of ascertaining. He wondered whether Captain Downs would marry the couple in such equivocal fashion.
At any rate, pondered Mayo, how did it happen to be any affair of his? He had troubles enough of his own to occupy his sole attention.
Their spanking wind from the sou'west let go just as dusk shut down. A yellowish scud dimmed the stars. Mayo heard one of the mates say that the glass had dropped. He smelled nasty weather himself, having the sailor's keen instinct. The topsails were ordered in, and he climbed aloft and had a long, lone struggle before he got the heavy canvas folded and lashed.
When he reached the deck a mate commanded him to fasten the canvas covers over the skylights of the house. The work brought him within range of the conversation which Captain Downs and Bradish were carrying on, pacing the deck together.
“Of course I don't want to throw down anybody, captain,” Bradish was saying. There was an obsequious note in his voice; it was the tone of a man who was affecting confidential cordiality in order to get on--to win a favor. “But I have a lot of sympathy for you and for the rest of the schooner people. I have been right there in the office, and have had a finger in the pie, and I've seen what has been done in a good many cases. Of course, you understand, this is all between us! I'm not giving away any of the office secrets to be used against the big fellows. But I'm willing to show that I'm a friend of yours. And I know you'll be a friend of mine, and keep mum. All is, you can get wise from what I tell you and can keep your eyes peeled from now on.”
Mayo heard fragmentary explanation of how the combination of steamboat and barge interests had operated to leave only pickings to the schooners. The two men were tramping the deck together, and at the turns were too far away from him to be heard distinctly.
“But they're putting over the biggest job of all just now,” proceeded Bradish. “Confound it, Captain Downs, I'm not to be blamed for running away with a man's daughter after watching him operate as long as I have. His motto is, 'Go after it when you see a thing you want in this world.' I've been trained to that system. I've got just as much right to go after a thing as he. I'm treasurer of the Paramount--that's the trust with which they intend to smash the opposition. My job is to ask no questions and to sign checks when they tell me to, and Heaven only knows what kind of a goat it will make of me if they ever have a show-down in the courts! They worked some kind of a shenanigan to grab off the Vose line; I wired a pot of money to Fletcher Fogg, who was doing the dirty work, and it was paid to a clerk to work proxies at the annual meeting. And then Fogg put up some kind of a job on a greenhorn captain--worked a flip trick on the fellow and made him shove the Montana onto the sands. I suppose they'll have the Vose line at their price before I get back.”
Mayo sat there in the shadow, squatting on legs which trembled.
This babbler--tongue loosened by his new liberty and by the antagonism his small nature was developing, anticipating his employer's enmity--had dropped a word of what Mayo knew must be the truth. It had been a trick--and Fletcher Fogg had worked it! Mayo did not know who Fletcher Fogg's employer might be. From what office this tattler came he did not know; but it was evident that Bradish was cognizant of the trick. As a result of that trick, an honest man had been ruined and blacklisted, deprived of opportunity to work in his profession, was a fugitive, a despised sailor, kicked to the Very bottom of the ladder he had climbed so patiently and honorably.
Furious passion bowled over Mayo's prudence. He leaped down from the top of the house and presented himself in front of the two men.
“I heard it--I couldn't help hearing it!” he stuttered.
“Here's a nigger gone crazy!” yelped Captain Downs. “Ahoy, there, for'ard! Tumble aft with a rope!”
“I'm no nigger, and I'm not crazy!” shouted Mayo.
The swinging lantern in the companionway lighted him dimly. But in the gloom his dusky hue was only the more accentuated. His excitement seemed that of a man whose wits had been touched.
“I knew it was a trick. But what was the trick?” he demanded, starting toward Bradish, his clutching hands outspread.
Captain Downs kicked at this obstreperous sailor, and at the same time fanned a blow at his head with open palm.
Mayo avoided both the foot and the hand. “What does the law say about striking a sailor, captain? Hold on, there! I'm just as good a man as you are. Don't you tell those men to lay hands on me.” He backed away from the sailors who came running aft, with the second mate marshaling them. He stripped up his sleeve and held his arm across the radiance of the binnacle light. “That's a white man's skin, isn't it?” he demanded.
“What kind of play-acting is all this?” asked Old Mull, with astonished indignation.
In that crisis Mayo controlled his tongue after a mighty effort to steady himself. He was prompted to obey his mood and announce his identity with all the fury that was in him. But here stood the man who had served as one of the tools of his enemies, whoever they were. For his weapon against this man Mayo had only a few words of gossip which had been dropped in an unwary moment; he realized his position; he regretted his passionate haste. He was not ready to put himself into the power of his enemies by telling this man who he was; he remembered that he was running away from the law.
Bradish gaped at this intruder without seeming to understand what it all meant.
“Passengers better get below out of the muss,” advised Captain Downs. “Here's a crazy nigger, mate. Grab him and tie him up.”
Mayo backed to the rack at the rail and pulled out two belaying-pins, mighty weapons, one for each hand.
Bradish hurried away into the depths of the house, manifestly glad to get out from underfoot.
“Don't you allow those niggers to lay their hands on me,” repeated the man at bay. “Captain Downs, let me have a word to you in private.” He had desperately decided on making a confidant of one of his kind. He bitterly needed the help a master mariner could give him.
“Get at him!” roared the skipper. “Go in, you niggers!”
“By the gods! you'll be short-handed, sir. I'll kill 'em!”
That threat was more effective than mere bluster. Captain Downs instinctively squinted aloft at the scud which was dimming the stars; he sniffed at the volleying wind.
“One word to you, and you'll understand, sir!” pleaded Mayo. He put the pins back into the rack and walked straight to the captain.
There was no menace in his action, and the mate did not interfere.
“Just a word or two to you, sir, to show you that I have done more than throw my hat into the door of the Masters and Mates Association.” He leaned close and whispered. “Now let me tell you something else--in private?” he urged in low tones.
Captain Downs glanced again at the bared arm and surveyed this sailor with more careful scrutiny. “You go around and come into the for'ard cabin through the coach-house door,” he commanded, after a little hesitation.
Mayo bowed and hurried away down the lee alley.
That cabin designated as the place of conference was the dining-saloon of the schooner. He waited there until Captain Downs, moving his bulk more deliberately, trudged down the main companionway and came into the apartment through its after-door which no sailor was allowed to profane.
“Can anybody--in there--hear?” asked Mayo, cautiously. He pointed to the main saloon.
“She's in her stateroom and he's talking through the door,” grunted the skipper. “Now what's on your mind?”
Mayo reached his hand into an inside pocket of his shirt and drew forth a document. He laid it in Captain Downs's hand. The skipper sat down at the table, pulled out his spectacles, and adjusted them on his bulging nose in leisurely fashion, spread the paper on the red damask cloth, and studied it. He tipped down his head and stared at Mayo over the edge of his glasses with true astonishment.
“This your name in these master's papers?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir.”
“You're--you claim to be the Captain Mayo who smashed the Montana?”
“I'm the man, sir. I hung on to my papers, even though they have been canceled.”
“How do I know about these papers? How do I know your name is Mayo? You might have stolen 'em--though, for that matter, you might just as well carry a dynamite bomb around in your pocket, for all the good they'll do you.”
“That's the point, sir. They merely prove my identity. Nobody else would want them. Captain Downs, I'm running away from the law. I own up to you. Let me tell you how it happened.”
“Make it short,” snapped the captain, showing no great amiability toward this plucked and discredited master. “The wind is breezing up.”
He told his story concisely and in manly fashion, standing up while Captain Downs sat and stared over his spectacles, drumming his stubby fingers on the red damask.
“There, sir, that's why I am here and how I happened to get here,” Mayo concluded.
“I ain't prepared to say it isn't so,” admitted Old Mull at last, “no matter how foolish it sounds. And I'm wondering if next I'll find the King of Peruvia or the Queen of Sheba aboard this schooner. New folks are piling in fast! I know Captain Wass pretty well, though I never laid eye on you to know you. Where's that wart on his face?”
“Starboard side of his nose, sir.”
“What does he do, whittle off his chaw or bite the plug?”
“Neither. Chews fine cut.”
“What's his favorite line of talk?”
“Reciting the pilot rules and jawing because the big fellows slam along without observing them.”
“Last remark showing that you have been in the pilothouse along with Captain Wass! Examination is over and you rank one hundred and the board stands adjourned!” He rose and shook hands with Mayo. “Now what can I do for you?”
“I don't suppose you can do much of anything, Captain Downs. But I'm going to ask you this, master to masted. Don't let a soul aboard this schooner know who I am--especially those two back there!” He pointed to the door of the main saloon.
“Seems to be more or less of a masked-ball party aboard here!” growled the skipper.
“That man you call Bradish, whoever he is, knows what kind of a game they played on me. I want to get it out of him. If he knows who I am he won't loosen! I was a fool to break in as I did. He was coming across to you.”
“Seemed to be pretty gossipy,” admitted the captain. “Is trying to be my special chum so as to work me!”
“Don't you suppose you can get some more out of him?”
“Might be done.”
“I feel that it's sailors against the shore pirates this time, sir. Won't you call that man out here and ask him some questions and allow me to listen?”
“Under the circumstances I'll do it. Sailors first is my motto. You step into the mate's stateroom, there, and put ear to the crack o' the door.”
But when Bradish appeared, answering the captain's summons, all his chattiness had left him. He declared that he knew nothing about the trouble in the Montana case.
“But you said something about a scheme to fool a green captain?”
“It was only gossip--I probably got it wrong. I have thought it over and really can't remember where I heard it or much about it. Might have been just newspaper faking.”
He kept peering about the dimly lighted room.
“You needn't worry, young man. That nigger isn't here.”
“But he said he was a white man. And how does he come to be interested?”
“It's a nigger gone crazy about that case--he has probably been reading fake stories in the papers, too,” stated Captain Downs, grimly. “I must remind you again, Bradish, that you were talking to me in pretty lively style.”
“Oh, a man lets out a lot of guesswork when he is nervous about his own business.”
“Well, I might fix it so that you'd be a little less nervous, providing you'll show a more willing disposition when I ask you a few questions,” probed the skipper. But this insistence alarmed Bradish and his blinking eyes revealed his fears and suspicions.
“I don't know anything about the Montana case. I don't intend to do any talking about it.”
Captain Downs tapped harder on the table, scowled, and was silent.
“Anything else, sir?” inquired Bradish, after a pause.
“Guess not, if that's the way you feel about it!” snapped Captain Downs.
Bradish went back into the main saloon, and the eavesdropper ventured forth.
“I don't know just what the dickens to do about you, now that I know who you are,” confessed the master, looking Mayo up and down.
“There isn't anything to do except let me go back to my work, sir.”
“I'm in a devil of a position. You're a captain.”
“I shipped on board here before the mast, Captain Downs, and knew exactly what I was doing. I'll take my medicine.”
“I don't like to have you go for'ard there among those cattle, Mayo.”
“Captain Downs, it was wrong for me to make the break I did on your quarter-deck. I ought to have kept still; but the thing came to me so sudden that I went all to pieces. I'd like to step back into the crew and have you forget that I'm Boyd Mayo. I'll sneak ashore in Boston and lose myself.”
The captain tipped up his cap and scratched the side of his head. “Seems as if I remember you being at the wheel, Mayo, when that fellow was unloading some pretty important information on to me.”
“I couldn't help hearing, sir.”
“So you know he's eloping with a girl?” The old skipper lowered his voice.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you ever hear of such a cussed, infernal performance? And I have talked with the girl, and she really doesn't seem to be that sort at all. She's flighty, you can see that. She has been left to run loose too much, like a lot of girls in society are running loose nowadays. They think of a thing that's different, and, biff! they go do it. She is wishing she hadn't done this. That shows some sense.” He studied the young man. “Do you know anything about this right a captain has to perform marriage ceremonies?”
“Nothing special.”
“It will probably be a good thing for that girl to be married and settled down. She seems to have picked out Bradish. Mayo, you're one of my kind, and I want to help you. I'll take a chance on my right to perform the ceremony. What say if we get Bradish back in here and swap a marriage for what he can tell us about the Montana business?”
“Captain Downs, a fellow who will put up a job of this kind on a girl, no matter if she has encouraged him, is a cheap pup,” declared Mayo, promptly and firmly. “I don't want to buy back my papers in any such fashion.”
“Then you don't approve of my marrying them?”
“I haven't any right to tell you what you shall do, sir. I'm talking merely for myself.”
Captain Downs pondered. “If he's her father's right-hand man, he's probably just as good as most of the land pirates who have been courting her. If she goes home married, even if it is only marriage on the high seas, contract between willing persons with witnesses and the master of the vessel officiating, as I believe it's allowed, she'll have her good name protected, and that means a lot. I don't know as I have any right to stand out and block their way, seeing how far it has gone. What do you think, Mayo?”
“I don't believe I want to make any suggestions, sir.”
At that moment the door aft opened. Mayo was near the door of the mate's stateroom in the shadows, and he dodged back into his retreat. He heard Bradish's voice.
“Captain Downs, this young lady has something to say to you and I hope you'll listen!”
Then the girl's voice! It was impetuous outburst. She hurried her words as if she feared to wait for second and saner reflection.
“Captain Downs, I cannot wait any longer. You must act. I beg of you. I have made up my mind. I am ready!”
“Ready to get married, you mean?”
“Yes! Now that my mind is made up, please hurry!”
Her tone was high-pitched, tears were close behind her desperation, her words rushed almost incoherently. But Mayo, staring sightlessly in the black darkness of the little stateroom, his hearing keen, knew that voice. He could not restrain himself. He pulled the door wide open.
The girl was Alma Marston.
Her eyes were bright, her cheeks were flushed, and it was plain that her impulsive nature was flaming with determination. The shadows were deep in the corners of the saloon, and the man in the stateroom door was not noticed by the three who stood there in the patch of light cast by the swinging lamp.
“I ask you--I beg you--I have made up my mind! I must have it over with.”
“Don't have hysterics! This is no thing to be rushed.”
“You must.”
“You're talking to a captain aboard his own vessel, ma'am!”
From Mayo's choking throat came some sort of sound and the girl glanced in his direction, but it was a hasty and indifferent gaze. Her own affairs were engrossing her. He reeled back into the little room, and the swing of the schooner shut the door.
“You are captain! You have the power! That's why I am talking to you, sir!”
“But when you talked with me a little while ago you were crawfishing!” was Captain Downs's blunt objection.
“I am sorry I have been so imprudent. I ought not to be here. I have said so. I do too many things on impulse. Now I want to be married!”
“More impulse, eh?”
“I must be able to face my father.”
There was silence in the saloon.
Mayo shoved trembling fingers into his mouth and bit upon them to keep back what his horrified reason warned him would be a scream of protest. In spite of what his eyes and ears told him, it all seemed to be some sort of hideous unreality.
“It's a big responsibility,” proceeded Captain Downs, mumbling his words and talking half to himself in his uncertainty. “I've been trying to get some light on it from another--from a man who ought to understand more about it than what I do. It's too much of a problem for a man to wrassle with all alone.”
He turned his back on them, gazed at the stateroom door, tipped his cap awry, and scratched his head more vigorously than he had in his past ponderings.
“Say, you in there! Mate!” he called, clumsily preserving Mayo's incognito. “I'm in a pinch. Say what you really think!”
There was no word from the stateroom.
“You're an unprejudiced party,” insisted the skipper. “You have good judgment. Now what?”
“Who is that, in there?” demanded Bradish.
“Why should this person, whoever he is, have any-thing to say about my affairs?” asked the girl.
“Because I'm asking him to say!” yelped the skipper, showing anger. “I'm running this! Don't try to tell me my own business!” He walked toward the door. “Speak up, mate!”
“It's an insult to me--asking strangers about my private affairs!” The protest of the girl was a furious outburst.
“I resent it, captain! Most bitterly resent it,” stated Bradish.
The old skipper walked back toward them. “Resent it as much as you condemned like, sir! You're here asking favors of me. I want to do what is right for all concerned. You ought to be married--I admit that. But what sort of a position does it leave me in? Are you going to tell me this girl's name?”
“I'm Alma Marston!” She volleyed the name at him with hysterical violence, but he did not seem to be impressed. “I am Julius Marston's daughter!”
The skipper looked her up and down.
“Now you will be so good as to proceed about your duty!” she commanded, haughtily.
“Well, you can't expect me to show any special neighborly kindness to the Wall Street gouger who kept me tied up without a charter two months last spring with his steamboat combinations and his dicker deals!”
“How are we to take that, sir?” asked Bradish.
The girl was staring with frank wonder at this hard-shelled mariner whom she had not been able to impress by her name or her manner.
“Just as you want to.”
“I demand an explanation.”
“Well, I'll give it to you, seeing that I'm perfectly willing to. Take it one way, and I'm willing to wallop Julius Marston by handing him the kind of a son-in-law you'd make; take it the other way, and I ain't particular about doing anything to accommodate anybody in the Marston family.” He eyed them sardonically.
“So, you see, I'm betwixt and between in the matter! It's like settling a question by flipping a cent. And I'll tell you what I'm going to do!” He smacked his palm on the table. He strode back toward the stateroom door. “Mate, ahoy, there! Sailor to sailor, now, and remember that you have asked something of me! If you were captain of this schooner would you marry off these two?”
They waited in silence, in which they heard the whummle and screech of the wind outside and the angry squalling of the sheathing of the plunging schooner's cabin walls.
The voice which replied to Captain Downs's query did not sound human. It was a sort of muffled wail, but there was no mistaking its positiveness.
“No!” said the man behind the door.
Back to the table lurched Captain Downs. He pounded down his fist. “That settles it with me!” Then he poised his big hand on the edge of the table-cover. “I was ready to tip one way or the other and it needed only a little push. I have tipped.” Down came the palm flat on the table-cloth with final and decisive firmness. “Young man,” he informed Bradish, “there's an extra stateroom, there, off this dining-saloon. You take it!”
“What can I tell my father?” wailed the girl, the fire of her determination suddenly quenched by sobbing helplessness.
“You can tell him that I temporarily adopted you as my daughter at three bells on this particular evening, and I'll go to him and back you up if it becomes necessary.” He opened the door leading aft and bowed. “Now, you trot along to your stateroom, sissy!”
After hesitating a few moments she hurried away. The skipper locked the door and slipped the key into his pocket.
“Do you think I'm going to--” began Bradish, angrily.
“I ain't wasting any thoughts on you, sir. I'm saving 'em all for the Drusilla M. Alden just now.”
The craft's plunging roll gave evidence that the sea was making. At that instant the first mate came down a few steps of the forward companionway, entering through the coach-house door.
“She's breezing up fresh from east'ard, sir!” he reported.
“So I've judged from the way this sheathing is talking up. I'll be on deck at once, Mr. Dodge.”
That report was a summons to a sailor; Mayo came staggering out of the stateroom. He looked neither to right nor left nor at either of the men in the saloon. He stumbled toward the companionway, reaching his hands in front of him after the fashion in which a man gropes in the dark.
“Are you letting a nigger--and a crazy one at that--decide the biggest thing in my life?” raged Bradish.
“I know what I'm doing,” Captain Downs assured him. But the skipper was manifestly amazed by the expression he saw on Mayo's face.
“I won't stand for it! Here, you!” Bradish rushed across the room and intercepted Mayo.
“Come away from that man!” commanded the skipper.
But Bradish was not in a mood to obey authority. “There's something behind this and I propose to be let in on it! Stop, you!” He pushed Mayo back, but the latter's face did not change its expression of dull, blank, utter despair which saw not and heard not. Mayo recovered himself and came on again, looking into vacancy.
“If you have a grudge against me, by the gods, I'll wake you up and make you explain it!” shouted Bradish. He drew back his arm and drove a quick punch squarely against the expressionless face. The blow came with a lurch of the vessel and Mayo fell flat on his back. He went down as stiffly as he had walked, with as little effort to save himself as a store dummy would have made.
But he was another man when he came upon his feet.
Bradish had awakened him!
The master of the Alden hurried around the table, roaring oaths, and tried to get between them, but he was an unwieldy man on his short legs. Before he was in arm's-length they were at each other, dodging here and there.
Bradish was no shrimp of an adversary; he was taller than his antagonist, and handled his fists like a man who had been trained as an amateur boxer.
They fought up and down the cabin, battering each other's face.
The indignant master threatened them with an upraised chair, tried to strike down their hands with it, but they were in no mood to mind a mediator. They fought like maddened cats, banging against the cabin walls, whirling in a crazy rigadoon to find an opening for their fists; Captain Downs was not nimble enough to catch them. Uttering awful profanity, he threatened to shoot both of them and rushed into the main saloon, unlocking the door.
“I'm coming back with a gun!” he promised. But the fight ended suddenly in a wrestling trick.
Mayo closed in, got Bradish's right hand in a grip, and doubled the arm behind his adversary's back. Then he tripped the city man and laid him backward over the table and against its edge with a violence that brought a yell of pain and made Bradish limp and passive. Mayo held him there.
“My grudge, eh? My grudge!” the victor panted. “Because you wouldn't tell me how the sneaks ruined me? No! The girl isn't here now. I'll tell you! It's because you stole her self-respect and her good name, and it makes you too dirty a dog to be her husband!”
He picked up Bradish and threw him on the floor. When he turned he saw the girl's white, agonized, frightened face at the crack of the saloon door.
“Captain Downs!” she shrieked, “that negro is killing him. He's killing Ralph!”
The victor turned his back on her and lurched around the table on his way out. He stroked blood from his face with his palm, and was glad that she had not recognized him; and yet, her failure to do so, even though he was such a pitiable figure of the man she had known, was one more slash of the whip of anguish across his raw soul. For a moment they had stood there, face to face, and only blank unrecognition greeted him; it made this horrible contretemps seem all the more unreal.
Mayo did not pause to listen to the ravings of Captain Downs, who came thrusting past her. Dizzy, bleeding, half blind, he rushed up the forward companionway and went into the black night on deck.
The mate was bawling for all hands to shorten sail, and Mayo took his place with the toilers, who were manning sheets and downhauls.
