A dollar a day is a Hoosier's pay,
Lowlands, lowlands, a-way, my John!
Yes, a dollar a day is a Hoosier's pay,
My dollar and a half a day.
--Old Pumping Song.
Before leaving New York Mayo made inquiries at offices of shipping brokers and trailed Captain Zoradus Wass to his lair in the loafers' room of a towboat office. Their conference was a gloomy one; neither had any comfort for the other. Mayo was laconic in his recital of events: he said that he had run away--and had come back. Of Marston and Marston's daughter he made no mention.
“I have been to see that fat whelp of a Fogg,” stated the old master mariner. “I ain't afraid of him. I had a good excuse; I said I wanted a job. I didn't let on to him that I advised you to slip your cable, but I might have curried favor with him by saying so. He seemed to be pretty well satisfied because you had skipped.”
“Captain Wass, that's the main thing I've come to talk over with you. Here's my ticket back home. But I feel that I ought to walk up to the United States marshal's office and surrender myself. And I want to ask you about the prospects of my getting bail. Can you help me?”
“I reckon if I saw you behind bars I'd do my best to get you out, son. But you steer away from here on a straight tack and mind your own business! When the United States wants you they'll come and get you--you needn't worry!”
“But I do worry, sir! I am dodging about the streets. I expect to feel a hand on my shoulder every moment. I can't endure the strain of the thing! I don't want anybody to think I'm a sneak.”
“As near's I can find out by nosing around a little that indictment is a secret one--even if it really was returned. And I'm half inclined to think there wasn't any indictment! Perhaps those officers were only sent out to get you and hold you as a witness. Fogg has been doing most of the talking about there being an indictment. However it is, if they don't want you just yet I wouldn't go up to a cell door, son, and holler and pound and ask to be let in. Law has quite a way of giving a man what he hollers for. You go away and let me do the peeking and listening for you around these parts. I'm collecting a little line of stuff on this water-front. Haven't much else to do, these days!”
“I reckon my first hunch was the right one, sir!' I'll go along home. If you hear anybody with a badge on inquiring for me tell him I'm fishing on the Ethel and May.”
“That's a mean job for you, son. But I guess I'd better not say anything about it, seeing what I have shanghaied you into.”
“It has not been your fault or mine, what has happened, sir. I am not whining!”
“By gad! I know you ain't! But get ready to growl when the right time comes, and keep your teeth filed! When it's our turn to bite we'll make a bulldog grip of it!” He emphasized the vigor of that grip in his farewell handshake.
But Mayo did not reflect with much enthusiasm on Captain Wass's metaphorical summons to combat.
Returning to Maquoit, the young man decided that he was more like a beaten dog slinking back with canine anxiety to nurse his wounds in secret.
His experiences had been too dreadful and too many in the last few days to be separated and assimilated. He had been like a man stunned by a fall--paralyzed by a blow. Now the agonizing tingle of memory and despair made his thoughts an exquisite torture. He tried to put Alma Marston out of those thoughts. He did not dare to try to find a place for her in the economy of his affairs. However, she and he had been down to the gates of death together, and he realized that the experience had had its effect on her nature; he believed that it had developed her character as well. Insistently the memory of her parting words was with him, and he knew, in spite of his brutal and furious efforts to condemn her, that love was not dead and that hope still lived.
He swung aboard the Ethel and May one afternoon, after he had waited patiently for her arrival with her fare.
“I have come back to fish with you, Captain Candage, until my troubles are straightened out--if they ever are.”
Captain Candage was silent, controlling some visible emotions.
“I have come back to be with folks who won't talk too much about those troubles,” he added, gloomily.
“Exactly,” agreed the skipper. “Nothing is ever gained by stirring up trouble after it has been well cooked. Swing the pot back over the fire, I say, and let it simmer till it cools off of itself. I thought you would come back.”
“Why?”
“Well, I knew they had taken away your papers. Furthermore, Polly has been saying that you would come back.”
“And why did she think so?” asked Mayo, in milder tones.
“She didn't say why,” admitted Captain Candage. “Maybe women see into things deeper than men do.”
“It seems like coming home--coming home when a man is sick and tired of everything in the world, sir.”
“Reckon my Polly had something like that in mind. She dropped a few hints that she hoped you'd come and get rested up from your troubles.”
“And she has gone back to her work, I suppose?”
“No, she is still on her job at Maquoit, sir--calls it her real job. She isn't a quitter, Polly isn't. She says they need her.”
“Like the song says, 'The flowers need the sunshine and the roses need the dew,' that's how they need her,” averred Oakum Otie. “Though them Hue and Cry women and children can't be said to be much like roses and geraniums! But they're more like it than they ever was before, since Miss Polly has taken hold of 'em. It's wonderful what a good girl can do when she tries, Captain Mayo!”
Resuming his life on the fishing-schooner was like slipping on a pair of old shoes, and Mayo was grateful for that New England stoicism which had greeted him in such matter-of-fact fashion.
“What you want to tell me is all right and what you don't want to tell me is still better,” stated Captain Candage. “Because when you ain't talking about it you ain't stirring it!”
So, in that fashion, he came back into the humble life of Maquoit. There had been no awkwardness in his meeting with Captain Candage; it had been man to man, and they understood how to dispense with words. But Mayo looked forward to his meeting with Polly Candage without feeling that equanimity which the father had inspired.
He felt an almost overmastering desire to confide to her his troubles of the heart. But he knew that he would not be able to do that. His little temple had been so cruelly profaned. His humiliation was too great.
He was conscious that some other reason was operating to hold him back from explaining to her; and because he did not understand just what it was he was ill at ease when he did come face to face with her. He was grateful for one circumstance--their first meeting was in the old fish-house at Maquoit, under the hundred curious eyes of the colony. He had rowed ashore in his dory and went to seek her in the midst of her activities. She put out both her hands and greeted him with frank pleasure and seemed to understand his constraint, to anticipate his own thoughts, to respect his reticence.
“I'm glad you have come back to wait till all your troubles are settled. The most consoling friends are those who know and who sympathize and who keep still! Now come with me and listen to the children and see what the women are doing. You will be proud and glad because you spoke up for them that day when we went over to Hue and Cry.”
After that there was no constraint between them; they kept their own affairs hidden from each other. The autumn passed and the long, chill evenings came, and when the fishing-schooner was in port at Maquoit, between trips, Mayo and the girl spent comfortable hours together, playing at cards under the widow's red-shaded lamp and under the widow's approving eyes.
“No, they ain't courting, either,” she informed the pestering neighbors. “Do you suppose I have been twice married and twice a widder not to know courting when I see it? It's 'Boyd this' and 'Polly that,' to be sure, the whole continyal time; but she is engaged to somebody else, because she has been wearing an engagement ring that has come to her since she has been here. She showed it to me, and she showed it to him! And as for him, everybody 'longcoast knows how dead gone on him that millionaire girl is! Now everybody mind their own business!”
As the days passed the widow's counsel seemed to apply to all the affairs of Maquoit; folks went at their business in good earnest.
The winter wind nipped, the wharf piles were sheathed with ice, and only hardy men were abroad on the waterfront of the coast city, but the crew of the Ethel and May were unusually cheerful that day.
The schooner had stayed on Cashes Banks and had ridden out a gale that had driven other fishermen to shelter. Then in the first lull she had sent her dories over the rail and had put down her trawls for a set, and a rousing set it was! It seemed as if the cod, hake, and haddock had been waiting for that gale to stop so that they might hunt for baited hooks and have a feast. Nearly every ganging-line had its prize. The bow pulley in each dory fairly chuckled with delight as the trawl line was pulled over it. Every three feet was a ganging-line. Each dory strung out a mile of trawl. And when the dories returned to the schooner and dumped the catch into the hold the little craft fairly wallowed under her load.
They caught the market bare; the gale had blown for nearly a week. Fish-houses bid spiritedly against one another, and when at last a trade was made and the schooner's crew began to pitchfork the fish into the winch buckets, and the buckets rose creaking out over the rail, the two captains went into the office of the fish-house to figure some mighty gratifying profits.
“Nothing like luck in the fishing game, gents,” observed the manager.
“Well, grit counts for something,” stated Captain Candage. “We've got a crew that ain't afraid of a little weather.”
“If that's the case, there may be something for you off-coast about now that's better than the fishing game.”
“What's that?” asked the old skipper.
“Wrecking. Seen the morning papers?”
“We've had something to do besides fool with papers.”
“That new Bee line steamer, Conomo, has been piled up on Razee Reef.”
“One time--this last time--she hugged too close!” snapped the young man. The others bent an inquiring gaze on him. But he did not explain. His thoughts were busy with the events of that day when the Bee line steamer started his troubles with Marston.
“Paper says she's considered a total loss,” went on the manager. “If that's so, and the underwriters give her up, there ought to be some fine picking for men with grit. The board of survey went out to her on a tug this morning.” He gave them their check, and they went aboard their schooner.
The affair of the Conomo was not mentioned between them until they were at sea on their way to the eastward again. The piece of news did not interest Mayo at first, except as a marine disaster that had no bearing on his own affairs.
Captain Candage was stumping the quarter-deck, puffing at his short, black pipe. “I don'no' as you feel anyways as I do about it, Captain Mayo, but it ain't going to be no great outset to us if we make a leg out to Razee and see what's going on there,” he suggested.
“I have no objections,” returned Mayo. “But the way things are managed nowadays in case of wrecks, I don't see much prospect of our getting in on the thing in any way.”
“Mebbe not; but in case they're going to abandon her there'll be some grabbing, and we might as well grab with the rest of 'em.”
“If they can't get her off some junk concern will gamble on her. But we'll make an excursion of it to see the sights, sir. We can afford a little trip after what we pulled down to-day.”
There was no hope of reaching the wreck before nightfall, so they jogged comfortably in the light westerly that had succeeded the gale.
Captain Candage took the first watch after the second dog-watch, and at two bells, or nine o'clock, in the evening, Mayo awoke and heard him give orders to “pinch her.” He heard the sails flap, and knew that the men were shortening in readiness to lay to. He slipped on his outer clothing and went on deck.
“We're here,” stated the old skipper, “and it looks like some other moskeeters had got here ahead of us, ready to stick in their little bills when they get a chance.”
It was a clear night, brilliant with stars. In contrast with the twinkling and pure lights of the heavens, there were dim reds and greens and yellow-white lights on the surface of the ocean. These lights rocked and oscillated and tossed as the giant surges swept past.
“I make out half a dozen sail--little fellers--and two tugs,” said Captain Candage. “But get your eye on the main squeeze!”
Mayo looked in the direction of the extended mittened hand.
“Some iceberg, hey?” commented the skipper.
A short half-mile away, a veritable ghost ship, loomed the wrecked Conomo. Spray had beaten over her and had congealed until she seemed like a mass of ice that had been molded into the shape of a ship. She gleamed, a spectral figure, under the starry heavens.
A single red light, a baleful blob of color, showed from her main rigging.
They surveyed her for some time.
“I should say she was spoke for,” was Captain Candage's opinion. “It's high tide now, and a spring tide at that, and them tugs is just loafing out there--ain't making a move to start her. We can tell more about the prospect in the morning.”
Then the two captains turned in, for the Ethel and May lay to docilely with a single helmsman at the wheel.
The crisp light of morning did not reveal anything especially new or important. There were half a dozen small schooners, fishermen, loafing under shortened canvas in the vicinity of the wreck. One of the tugs departed shoreward after a time.
Mayo had assured himself, through the schooner's telescope, that the remaining tug was named Seba J. Ransom.
“The captain of that fellow went mate with me on a fishing-steamer once,” he informed Captain Candage. “Jockey me down in reaching distance and I'll go aboard him in a dory. He may have some news.”
Captain Dodge was immensely pleased to see his old chum, and called him up into the pilot-house and gave him a cigar.
“It's only a loafing job,” he said. “I've got to stand by and take off her captain and crew in case of rough weather or anything breaks loose more'n what's already busted. They are still hanging by her so as to deliver her to the buyer.”
“Buyer?”
“Yep! To whatever junkman is fool enough to bid her in. She's stuck fast. Underwriters have gone back on that tug, and are going to auction her. I'm here to help keep off pirates and take her men ashore after she has been handed over. You a pirate, Mayo?” he asked, with a grin.
“I'm almost anything nowadays, if there's a dollar to be made,” returned the young man.
The Ransom's captain gave him a wink. “I'm on to what happened on board the Olenia” he confided. “Feller who was in the crew told me. You're good enough for old Marston's girl. Why haven't you gone up to New York and taken--”
“Cut that conversation, Dodge,” barked Mayo, his face hard and his jaw jutting threateningly. “Good day!” added the young man, slamming the pilot-house door behind him.
His schooner, standing off and on, picked him up.
“There's no use hanging around here,” he informed the old skipper. “They're going to junk her, if they can find anybody fool enough to bid. She'll be guarded till after the auction.”
Therefore the Ethel and May shook out all her canvas and headed full and by for Maquoit to secure her fresh supply of bait.
“It's a shame,” mourned Captain Candage, staring over the taffrail at the ice-sheathed steamer. “'Most new, and cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to build, if I remember right what the paper said when she was launched.”
“If she was making money they'll have another one in her place,” said Mayo.
“Don'no' about that, sir. The Bee line wasn't none too strong financially, I'm told--a lot of little fellers who put in what they could scrape and borrowed the rest. Depends on insurance and their courage what they do after this.” He offered another observation after he had tamped down a load in his black pipe. “Men will do 'most anything for money--enough money.”
“Seems as if I'd heard that statement before,” was Mayo's curt rejoinder.
“Oh, I know it ain't in any ways new. But the more I think over what has happened to the Conomo, the pickeder seems the point to that remark. And whilst I was standing off and on, waiting for you, I run close enough to that steamer to make out a few faces aboard her.”
Mayo glanced at him without comment.
“F'r instance, I saw Art Simpson. You know him, don't you?”
“He was captain of Mr. Marston's yacht once.”
“Why did he leave her?”
“I heard he had been discharged. That was what the broker said when he hired me.”
“Yes, that's what Simpson said. He made a business of going around and swearing about it. Seemed to want to have everybody 'longcoast hear him swear about it. When I see a man make too much of a business of swearing about another man I get suspicious. After Art Simpson worked his cards so as to get the job of second officer on board the new Conomo I got more suspicious. Now that I have seen how that steamer has been plunked fair and square on Razee, I'm almighty suspicious. I'm suspicious enough to believe that she banged during Art Simpson's watch.”
“What are you driving at, Captain Candage? Are you hinting that anybody would plant a man for a job of that kind?”
“Exactly what I'm hinting,” drawled the skipper.
“But putting a steamer on the rocks at this time of year!”
“No passengers--and plenty of life-boats for the crew, sir. I have been hearing a lot of talk about steamboat conditions since I have been carrying in fish.”
“I've found out a little something in that line myself,” admitted Mayo.
“There's one thing to be said about Blackbeard and Cap'n Teach and old Cap Kidd--they went out on the sea and tended to their own pirating; they didn't stay behind a desk and send out understrappers.”
Mayo, in spite of his bitter memories of Julius Mar-ston's attitude, felt impelled to palliate in some degree the apparent enormities of the steamboat magnates.
“I don't believe the big fellows know all that's done, Captain Candage. As responsible parties they wouldn't dare to have those things done. The understrappers, as you say, are anxious to make good and to earn their money, and when the word is passed on down to 'em they go at the job recklessly. I think it will be pretty hard to fix anything on the real principals. That's why I am out in the cold with my hands tied, just now.”
“I wish we were going to get into the Conomo matter a little, so that we could do some first-hand scouting. It looks to me like the rankest job to date, and it may be the opening for a general overhauling. When deviltry gets to running too hard it generally stubs its toes, sir.” Captain Candage found a responsive gleam in Mayo's eyes and he went on. “Of course, I didn't hear the talk, nor see the money pass, nor I wa'n't in the pilot-house when Art Simpson shut his eyes and let her slam. But having been a sailorman all my life, I smell nasty weather a long ways off. That steamer was wrecked a-purpose, and she was wrecked at a time o' year when she can't be salvaged. You don't have to advise the devil how to build a bonfire.”
Mayo did not offer any comment. He seemed to be much occupied by his thoughts.
Two days later a newspaper came into Mayo's hands at Maquoit, and he read that the wrecked steamer had been put up at auction by the underwriters. It was plain that the bidders had shared the insurance folks' general feeling of pessimism--she had been knocked down for two thousand five hundred dollars. The newspapers explained that only this ridiculous sum had been realized because experts had decided that in the first blow the steamer would slip off the ledges on which she was impaled and would go down like a plummet in the deep water from which old Razee cropped. Even the most reckless of gambling junkmen could not be expected to dare much of an investment in such a peek-a-boo game as that.
“But I wonder what was the matter with the expert who predicted that,” mused Mayo. “He doesn't know the old jaw teeth of Razee Reef as well as I do.”
When the Ethel and May set forth from Maquoit on her next trip to Cashes Banks, Mayo suggested--and he was a bit shamefaced when he did so--that they might as well go out of their way a little and see what the junkers were doing at Razee.
Captain Candage eyed his associate with rather quizzical expression. “Great minds travel, et cetry!” he chuckled. “I was just going to say that same thing to you. On your mind a little, is it?”
“Yes, and only a little. Of course, there can't be anything in it for us. Those junkers will stick to her till she ducks for deep water. But I've been wondering why they think she's going to duck. I seined around Razee for a while, and the old chap has teeth like a hyena--regular fangs.”
“Maybe they took Art Simpson's say-so,” remarked the old man, wrinkling his nose. “Art would be very encouraging about the prospects of saving her--that is to say, he would be so in case losing that steamer has turned his brain.”
“Guess there wasn't very much interest by the underwriters,” suggested Mayo. “They weren't stuck very hard, so I've found out. She was mostly owned in sixty-fourths, and with marine risks up to where they are, small owners don't insure. It's a wicked thing all through, Candage! That great, new steamer piled up there by somebody's devilishness! I believe as you do about the affair! I've been to sea so long that a boat means something to me besides iron and wood. There's something about 'em--something--”
“Almost human,” put in the old man. “I sorrowed over the Polly, but I didn't feel as bad as if she'd been new. It was sort of like when old folks die of natural causes--you know they have lived about as long as they can. It's sorrowful to have 'em go, but you have to feel reconciled. But I know just how it is with you in the case of that steamer, for I'm a sailor like you. It's just like getting a fine boy through college, seeing him start out full of life, and courage, and hopes, and prospects, and then seeing him drop dead at your feet.”
There was a quaver in the old man's tones. But Mayo, who knew the souls of mariners, understood. Under their hard shells there is imagination that has been nurtured in long, long thoughts. In the calms under starlit skies, in the black darkness when tossing surges swing beneath the keel, in the glimmering vistas of sun-lighted seas, sailors ponder while their more stolid brothers on land allow their souls to doze.
“You are right, Captain Candage. That's why I almost hate to go out to the Conomo. Those infernal ghouls of junkmen will be tearing her into bits instead of trying to put the breath of life back into her.”
The helpless steamer seemed more lonely than when they had visited her before. The mosquito fleet that had surrounded her, hoping for some stray pickings, had dispersed. A tug and a couple of lighters were stuck against her icy sides, and, like leeches, were sucking from her what they could. They were prosecuting their work industriously, for the sea was calm in one of those lulls between storms, a wintry truce that Atlantic coastwise toilers understand and depend on.
Mayo, his curiosity prompting him, determined to go on board one of the lighters and discover to what extremes the junk jackals were proceeding.
Two of his dorymen ferried him after the schooner had been hove to near the wreck.
“What's your business?” inquired a man who was bundled in a fur coat and seemed to be bossing operations.
“Nothing much,” confessed the young man from his dory, which was tossing alongside the lighter. “I'm only a fisherman.”
The swinging cranes of the lighters, winches purring, the little lifting-engines puffing in breathless staccato, were hoisting and dropping cargo--potatoes in sacks, and huge rolls of print paper. Mayo was a bit astonished to note that they were not stripping the steamer; not even her anchors and chains had been disturbed.
“Fend off!” commanded the boss.
Captain Dodge dropped one of the windows of his pilot-house and leaned on his elbows, thrusting his head out. The tug Seba J. Ransom was still on the job. She was tied up alongside the wreck, chafing her fenders against the ice-sheathed hull.
“Hello, Captain Mayo!” he called, a welcoming grin splitting his features. “Come aboard and have a cigar, and this time I'll keep the conversation on fish-scales and gurry-butts.”
The man in the fur coat glanced from one to the other, and was promptly placated. “Oh, this is a friend of yours, is he, Captain Dodge?”
“You bet he is. He's been my boss before now.”
“If that's the case make yourself at home anywhere. But you know what some of these fellows alongcoast who call themselves fishermen will do around a wreck when your back is turned!”
Mayo nodded amicably.
“Step on board,” invited the boss.
“I'm all right here in the dory, and I'm out from underfoot, sir. We're going along to the fishing-grounds in a jiffy. I'm only satisfying a sailor's curiosity. Wondered what you intended to do with this proposition.”
“We're only grabbing what's handy just now. Some of the cargo forward is above water. I'm in on this thing in a sort of queer way myself.” This keen-eyed young man who had been so heartily indorsed by the tugboat skipper afforded the man in the fur coat an opportunity for a little conversation about himself. “I'm the outside man for Todd & Simonton, of Boston, and bought on the jump after I'd swapped a wire or so with the house. Happened into that auction, and bought blind. I believe in a gamble myself. Then somebody wired to the concern that they had been stuck good and fine, and they gave me a sizzler of a call-down in a night message. A man can sit at desk in Boston and think up a whole lot of things that ain't so. Well, I've flown out here with what equipment I could scrape up in a hurry, and you can see what I'm doing! There's enough in sight in the way of loose cargo to square me with the concern. But, blast the luck! If Jake Simonton had a little grit and would back me I believe we'd make a killing.”
“Of course, it all depends on how she's resting and what will happen when the next blow comes,” said Mayo. “Have you been below?”
“I'm a hustler on a dicker, and a hellion on junk,” snapped the boss. “I'm no sailor, prophet, or marine architect. I simply know that she's full of water aft and has got something serious the matter with her innards. I'm pulling enough out to make Simonton sorry he sassed me in a night message. Only he will never let on that he's sorry. He never lets loose any boomerangs that will scale around and come back and hit him. He wants to be in a position to rasp me the next time I make a mistake in a gamble.”
“All the crew gone ashore--the Bee line men?”
“Sure--bag and baggage. We own her as she stands. That second officer had 'em shivering every time a wave slapped her. I was glad when he got away. He pretty nigh stampeded my men. Said she was liable to slide any minute.”
The drawling voice of Captain Dodge broke in above them. “Here comes the tug Resolute” he stated. “Mebbe it's another one of them night messages from your concern, Titus. May want you to put what you can carry of her in a paper bag and bring it to Boston.”
“You never can tell what they're going to do in Boston,” growled the outside man. “I get discouraged, sometimes, trying to be enterprising.”
He began to pace, looking worried, and did not reply to several questions that Mayo put to him. So the young man accepted Captain Dodge's invitation and climbed to the tugboat's pilot-house. He had a very human hankering to know what the coming of that tug from the main signified, and decided to hang around a little while longer, even at the risk of making Captain Candage impatient.
The Resolute brought a telegram, and the man in the fur coat slapped it open, took in its gist at one glance, and began to swear with great gusto.
He climbed into the Ransom's pilot-house, with the air of a man seeking comfort from friends, and fanned the sheet of paper wrathfully.
“Orders to resell. Get out from under. Take what I can get. Don't want the gamble. And here I have cleaned a good profit already.”
“Why don't you fire back a message advising 'em to hold on?” asked Captain Dodge.
“And have a gale come up in a few hours and knock her off'n this rock? That's what would happen. It would be just my luck. I'm only a hired man, gents. If my firm won't gamble, it ain't up to me. If I disobey orders and hold on, I'll be scared to death the first time the wind begins to blow. There's no use in ruining a fine set of nerves for a firm that won't appreciate the sacrifice, and I need nerve to keep on working for 'em. I say it ain't up to me. Me for shore as soon as I load those lighters. Every dollar I get by reselling is velvet, so let 'ergo!”
“What do they tell you to do about price?” ventured Mayo.
“Take the first offer--and hurry about it. They seem to have an idea that this steamer is standing on her head on the point of a needle, and that only a blind man will buy her.”
He went back to his crew, much disgusted, ordered the freshly arrived tug to wait for a tow, and spurred laggard toilers with sharp profanity.
“Somebody has been scaring his concern,” suggested Mayo, left alone with Captain Dodge.
“Perhaps so--but it may be good business to get scared, provided they can unload this onto somebody else for a little ready cash. This spell of weather can't last much longer. Look at that bank to s'uthard. I don't know just what is under her in the way of ledges--never knew much about old Razee. But my prediction is, she'll break in two as soon as the waves give her any motion.”
It was on the tip of Mayo's tongue to argue the matter with the tugboat man, but he took second thought and shut his mouth.
“You're probably right,” he admitted. “I'd better be moving. I don't see any fish jumping aboard our schooner. We've got to go and catch 'em. Good-by, Dodge.”
When his associate came in over the rail of the Ethel and May Captain Candage, from force of habit, having picked up his men, gave orders to let her off into the wind.
“Hold her all-aback!” commanded Mayo. “Excuse me, Captain Candage, for a cross-order, but I've got a bit of news I want you to hear before we leave. The junk crowd has got cold feet and are going to sell as she stands, as soon as they get cargoes for those lighters.”
“Well, she does lay in a bad way, and weather is making,” said the skipper, fiddling his forefinger under his nose dubiously.
“They haven't even skimmed the cream off her--probably will get all her cargo that's worth saving and some loose stuff in the rigging line. By gad! what a chance for a gamble!”
“It might be for a feller who had so much money he could kiss a slice of it good-by in case the Atlantic Ocean showed aces,” said the old man, revealing a sailor's familiarity with a popular game.
“There is such a thing as being desperate enough to stake your whole bundle,” declared Mayo. “Captain, I'm young, and I suppose I have got a young man's folly. I can't expect you to feel the way I feel about a gamble.”
“I may look old, but I haven't gone to seed yet,” grumbled the skipper. “What are you trying to get through you?”
“That fat man on that lighter has a telegram in his pocket from his folks in Boston, ordering him to take the first offer that is made for the Conomo as she stands. I'm fool enough to be willing to put in every dollar I've got, and take a chance.”
Captain Candage stared at his associate for a time, and then walked to the rail and took a long look at the steamer. “I never heard of a feller ever getting specially rich in the fishing game,” he remarked.
Mayo, wild thoughts urging him to desperate ventures, snapped out corroboration of that dictum..
“And I've known a lot of fellers to go broke in the wrecking game,” pursued Captain Candage. “How much have you got?” That question came unexpectedly.
“I've got rising six hundred dollars.” He was carrying his little hoard in his pocket, for a man operating from the hamlet of Maquoit must needs be his own banker.
“I've got rising six hundred in my own pocket,” said the skipper. “That fat man may have orders to take the first offer that's made, but we've got to make him one that's big enough so that he won't kick us overboard and then go hunt up a buyer on the main.”
The two Hue and Cry fishermen who had ferried the young man were nesting their dory on top of other dories, and just forward of the house, and were within hearing. Neither captain noted with what interest these men were listening, exchanging glances with the man at the wheel.
“And after we waggle our wad under his nose--and less than a thousand will be an insult, so I figger--what have we got left to operate with? It won't do us any good to sail round that steamer for the rest of the winter and admire her. What was you thinking, Mayo, of trying to work him for a snap bargain, now that he's here on the spot and anxious to sell, and then grabbing off a little quick profit by peddling her to somebody else?”
“No, sir!” cried the young man, with decision. “I've got my own good reasons for wanting to make this job the whole hog or not a bristle! I won't go into it on any other plan.”
“Well, we'll be into something, all right, after we invest our money--the whole lump. We'll most likely be in a scrape, not a dollar left to hire men or buy wrecking outfit.”
The two men finished lashing the dories and went forward.
“It's a wild scheme, and I'm a fool to be thinking about it, Captain Candage. But wild schemes appeal to me just now. I can make some more money by working hard and saving it, a few dollars at a time, but I never expect to see another chance like this. Oh yes, I see that bank in the south!” His eyes followed the skipper's gloomy stare. “By to-morrow at this time she may be forty fathoms under. But here's the way I feel.” He pulled out his wallet and slapped it down on the roof of the house. “All on the turn of one card! And there comes the blow that will turn it!” He pointed south into the slaty clouds.
Captain Candage paused in his patrol of the quarterdeck and gazed down on the wallet. Then he began to tug at his own. “I'm no dead one, even if my hair is gray,” he grumbled.
The two captains looked at the two wallets, and then at each other. The next moment their attention was fully taken up by another matter. Their crew of fifteen men came marching aft and lined up forward of the house. A spokesman stepped out.
“Excuse us, captings, for meddling into something that p'raps ain't none of our business. We ain't meaning to peek nor pry, but some of us couldn't help overhearing. We've cleaned out our pockets. Here it is--three hundred and sixty-eight dollars and thirty-seven cents. Will you let me step onto the quarter-deck and lay it down 'side of them wallets?” He accepted their amazed silence as consent, and made his deposit solemnly.
“But this is all a gamble, and a mighty uncertain one,” protested Mayo.
“We 'ain't never had no chance to be sports before in all our lives,” pleaded the man. “We wouldn't have had that money if you two heroes hadn't give us the chance you have. We wa'n't more'n half men before. Now we can hold up our heads. You'll make us feel mighty mean, as if we wasn't fit to be along with you, if you won't let us in.”
“You bet you can come in, boys!” shouted Captain Candage. “I know how you feel.”
“And another thing,” went on the spokesman. “We 'ain't had much time to talk this over; we rushed aft here as soon as we heard and had cleaned out our pockets. But we've said enough to each other so that we can tell you that all of us will turn to on that wreck with you and work for nothing till--till--well, whatever happens. Don't want wages! Don't need promises! And if she sinks, we'll sing a song and go back to fishing again.”
The man at the wheel let go the spokes and came forward and deposited a handful of money beside the rest. “There's mine. I wisht it was a million; it would go just as free.”
“Boys, I'd make a speech to you--but my throat is too full,” choked Mayo. “I know better, now, why something called me over to Hue and Cry last summer. Hard over with that wheel! Jockey her down toward the wreck!”
When they were within hailing distance of the lighter Mayo raised his megaphone. “Will you take fifteen hundred dollars--cash--now--for that wreck, as you leave her when you've loaded those lighters?” he shouted.
There was a long period of silence. Then the man in the fur coat replied, through his hollowed hands: “Yes--and blast the fools in Boston who are making me sell!”
