Blow The Man Down Part 26

"Get off! I don't care where you go!" He crowded past Mayo, seized his daughter's arm, and led her aft.

She seemed to have expended all her determination in her sensational outburst.

The captain met her pleading gaze as she turned to leave. "It's for the best," he declared, bravely. "I'll make good!"

The pathetic castaways from the _Polly_ made a little group at the gangway, standing close to the rail, as if they feared to step upon the white deck. Mate McGaw intercepted Mayo as he was about to join them.

"Hadn't I better stretch Section Two of the collision act a mite and scare him with the prospect of a thousand-dollar fine?" asked the mate, eagerly. "My glory, Captain Mayo, I'm so weak I can hardly stand up!

Who'd have thought it?"

"We'll go aboard the schooner, Mr. McGaw. It's the place for us."

"Maybe it is, but I'll speak up if you say the word, and make him set you ash.o.r.e--even if I leave along with you?"

"Keep your job, sir. Will you pick up my few little belongings in my stateroom and bring them to me, Mr. McGaw? I'd better stay here on deck with my friends." He emphasized the last word, and Captain Candage gave him a grateful look. "I'm sorry, mates! I can't say any more!" Captain Mayo did not allow himself to make further comment on the melancholy situation. The others were silent; the affair was out of their reckoning; they had no words to fit the case. Polly Candage stood looking out to sea. He had hoped that she would give him a glance of understanding sympathy, at least. But she did not, not even when he helped her down the steps into the tender.

Mate McGaw came with the captain's bag and belongings, and promptly received orders from the owner from the quarter-deck.

"Go on to the bridge and hail that schooner. Tell her we are headed for New York and can't be bothered by these persons!"

Mr. McGaw grasped Mayo's hand in farewell, and then he hurried to his duty. His megaphoned message echoed over their heads while the tender was on its way.

"Ay, ay, sir!" returned the fishing-skipper, with hearty bellow. "Glad to help sailors in trouble."

"And that shows you--" blurted Captain Candage, and stopped his say in the middle of his outburst when his daughter shoved a significant fist against his ribs.

Captain Mayo turned his head once while the tender was hastening toward the schooner. But there were no women in sight on the yacht's deck.

There was an instant's flutter of white from a stateroom port, but he was not sure whether it was a handkerchief or the end of a wind-waved curtain. He faced about resolutely and did not look behind again. Shame, misery, hopelessness--he did not know which emotion was stinging him most poignantly. The oarsmen in the tender were gazing upward innocently while they rowed, but he perceived that they were hiding grins. His humiliation in that amazing fashion would be the forecastle jest.

Through him these new friends of his had been subjected to insult. He felt that he understood what Polly Candage's silence meant.

The next moment he felt the pat of a little hand on the fist he was clenching on his knee.

"Poor boy!" she whispered. "I understand! It will come out right if you don't lose courage."

But she was not looking at him when he gave her a quick side-glance.

The fisherman had come into the wind, rocking on the long swell, dingy sails flapping, salt-stained sides dipping and flashing wet gleams as she rolled. Her men were rigging a ladder over the side.

"I want to say whilst we're here together and there's time to say it,"

announced Captain Candage, "that we are one and all mighty much obliged for that invite you gave us to come aboard the yacht, sir, and we all know that if--well, if things had been different from what they was you would have used us all right. And what I might say about yachts and the kind of critters that own 'em I ain't a-going to say."

"You are improving right along, father," observed Polly Candage, dryly.

"Still, I have my own idees on the subject. But that's neither here nor there. You're a native and I'm a native, and I want ye should just look at that face leaning over the lee rail, there, and then say that now we know that we're among real friends."

It was a rubicund and welcoming countenance under the edge of a rusty black oilskin sou'wester hat, and the man was manifestly the skipper.

Every once in a while he flourished his arm encouragingly.

"Hearty welcome aboard the _Reuben and Esther_," he called out when the tender swung to the foot of the ladder. "What schooner is she, there?"

"Poor old _Polly_," stated the master, first up the ladder. In his haste to greet the fishing-skipper he left his daughter to the care of Captain Mayo.

"That's too bad--too bad!" clucked the fishing-skipper, full measure of sympathy in his demeanor. "She was old, but she was able, sir!"

"And here's another poor Polly," stated Captain Candage. "I was fool enough to take her out of a good home for a trip to sea."

The skipper ducked salute. "Make yourself to home, miss. Go below. House is yours!"

Then the schooner lurched away on her sh.o.r.eward tack, and the insolent yacht marched off down across the shimmering waves.

Mayo shook hands with the solicitous fisherman in rather dreamy and indifferent fashion. He realized that he was faint with hunger, but he refused to eat. Fatigue and grief demanded their toll in more imperious fashion than hunger. He lay down in the sun in the lee alley, put his head on his crossed arms, and blessed sleep blotted out his bitter thoughts.

XI - A VOICE FROM HUE AND CRY

But when the money's all gone and spent, And there's none to be borrowed and none to be lent, In comes old Grouchy with a frown, Saying, "Get up, Jack, let John sit down."

For it's now we're outward bound, Hur-rah, we're outward bound!

--Song of the Dog and Bell.

Captain Mayo, when he woke, had it promptly conveyed to him that hospitality on board the _Reuben and Esther_ had watchful eyes. While he was rubbing feeling back into his stiffened limbs, sitting there in the lee alley, the cook came lugging a pot of hot coffee and a plate heaped with food.

"Thought you'd rather have it here than in the cuddy. The miss is asleep in the house," whispered the cook.

Captain Candage came to Mayo while the latter was eating and sat down on the deck. Gloom had settled on the schooner's master. "I don't want to bother you with my troubles, seeing that you've got aplenty of your own, sir. But I'm needing a little advice. I have lost a schooner that has been my home ever since I was big enough to heave a dunnage-bag over the rail, and not a cent of insurance. Insurance would have et up all my profits. What do you think of my chances to make a dollar over and above providing I hire a tugboat and try to salvage?"

"According to my notion your chances would be poor, sir. Claims in such cases usually eat up all a craft is worth. Besides, you may find those yachtsmen on your back for damages, providing you get her in where she can be libeled."

"I shouldn't wonder a mite," admitted Captain Can-dage. "The more some folks have the more they keep trying to git."

"I was looking her bottom over while we sat there, and it must be owned up that her years have told on her."

"I hate to let her go."

"That's natural, sir. But I have an idea that she will be reported as a menace to navigation, and that a coastguard cutter will blow her up before you can get around to make your salvage arrangements."

"When a man is down they all jump on him."

"I can agree with you there," affirmed Captain Mayo, mournfully.

"She showed grit--that girl," ventured Candage, giving the other man keen survey from under his grizzled brows.

"I must ask you to furl sail on that subject, sir," snapped Mayo, with sailor bluntness.

"I only said it complimentary. Lots of times girls have more grit than they are given credit for. You think they're just girls, and then you find out that they are hero-ines! I thought I had some grit, but my own Polly has shamed me. I was just down watching her--she's asleep in Cap'n Sinnett's bunk. Made the tears come up into my eyes, sir, to ponder on what she has been through on account of my cussed foolishness. Of course, you haven't been told. But confession is good for a man, and I'm going to own up. I took her with me to get her away from a fellow who is courting her."

Mayo did not offer comment. He wanted to advise the skipper to keep still on that subject, too.