Blow The Man Down Part 36

Mayo went and sat on the rail, folding his arms, and did not reply. The old skipper trudged forward, his head bowed, his hands clutched behind his back. When he returned Mayo stood up and put his hand on the old man's shoulder.

"Captain Candage, please don't misunderstand me. Just at present I feel that the only friends I have in the world are here. Don't mind the way I acted just now when I came on board. I have had a lot of trouble--I'm having more of it. I'm not going to leave you just yet. I want to stay aboard until I can think it all over--can get my grip. That is, if you're satisfied to have it that way!"

"Satisfied! Jumping Cicero!" exploded Captain Can-dage. He took the dory and rowed ash.o.r.e. He found his daughter gazing into the fog from the porch of the widow's cottage. "He is going to stay a while longer," he informed her, rapturously. "Something has happened. Do you suppose that girl has throwed him over?"

"Father, do you dare to chuckle because a friend is in trouble?"

"I'll laugh and slap my leg if he ever gets shet of that hity-t.i.ty girl," he rejoined, stoutly.

"I am astonished--I am ashamed of you, father!"

"Polly dear, be honest with your dad!" he pleaded. "Do you want to see him married off to her?"

"I certainly do. I only wish I might help him." Her lips were white, her voice trembled. She got up and hurried into the house.

"I'll be cussed if I understand wimmen," declared Captain Candage, fiddling his finger under his nose. "That feller she has picked out for herself must be the Emp'ror of Peeroo."

Captain Mayo did not come ash.o.r.e again before the _Ethel and May_ sailed.

The fog cleared that night and they smashed out to the fishing-grounds ahead of a cracking breeze, and had their trawls down in the early dawn.

At sundown, trailed by a wavering banner of screaming gulls who gobbled the "orts" tossed over by the busy crew cleaning their catch, they were docking at the city fish-house.

"Lucky again," commented Captain Candage, returning from his sharp d.i.c.ker with the buyer. "The city critters are all hungry for haddock, and that's just what we hit to-day." He surveyed his gloomy partner with sympathetic concern. "Why don't you take a run uptown?" he suggested.

"You're sticking too close to this packet for a young man. Furthermore, if you see a store open buy me a box of paper collars. Rowley hain't got my size!"

Mayo, unreconciled and uneasy, hating that day the sound of the flapping, sliding fish as they were pitchforked into the tubs for hoisting, annoyed by the yawling of pulleys and realizing that his nerves were not right at all, obeyed the suggestion. He had a secret errand of his own, yielding to a half-hope; he went to the general-delivery window of the post-office and asked for mail. He knew that love makes keen guesses. The _Olenia_ had visited that harbor frequently for mail. But there was nothing for him. He strolled about the streets, nursing his melancholy, forgetting Captain Candage's commission, envying the contentment shown by others.

In that mood he would have avoided Captain Zoradus Wa.s.s if he had spied that boisterously cheerful mariner in season. But the captain had him by the arm and was dancing him about the sidewalk, showing more affability than was his wont.

"Heifers o' Herod! youngster," shouted the grizzled master, "have you come looking for me?"

"No," faltered Mayo. "Did you want to see me?"

"Have worn taps off my boots to-day chasing from shipping commissioner's office to every hole and corner along the water-front. Heard you had quit aboard a yacht, and reckoned you had got sensible again and wanted real work."

"If you had asked down among the fish-houses you might have got on track of me, sir." Mayo's tone was somber.

"Fish! You fishing?" demanded Captain Wa.s.s, with incredulity.

"Yes, and on a chartered smack at that--shack-fishing on shares!" Mayo was sourly resolved to paint his low estate in black colors. "And I have concluded it's about all I'm fit for."

"That's fine, seaman-like talk to come from a young chap I have trained up to master's papers, giving him two years in my pilot-house. I was afraid you were going astern, you young cuss, when I heard you'd gone skipper of a yacht, but I didn't think it was as bad as all this."

"My yachting business is done, sir."

"Thank the bald-headed Nicodemus! There's hopes of you. Did anybody tell you I've been looking for you?"

"No, sir!"

"Glad of it. Now I can tell you myself. Do you know where I am now?"

"I heard you were on a Vose line freighter, sir."

"Don't know who told you that--but it wasn't Ananias. You're right.

She's the old _Nequa.s.set_, handed back to me again because I'm the only one who understands her cussed fool notions. First mate got drunk yesterday and broke second mate's leg in the scuffle--one is in jail and t'other in the hospital, and never neither of 'em will step aboard any ship with me again. I sail at daybreak, bade to the Chesapeake for steel rails. Got your papers?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Come along. You're first mate."

"Do you really want me, sir?"

"Want you? Confound it all, I've got you! In about half a day I'll have all the yacht notions shaken out of you and the fish-scales stripped off, and then you'll be what you was when I let you go--the smartest youngster I ever trained."

Mayo obeyed the thrust of the jubilant master's arm and went along.

"I'll go and explain to Captain Can-dage, my partner."

"All right. I'll go along, too, and help you make it short."

As they walked along Captain Wa.s.s inspected his companion critically.

"High living aboard Marston's yacht make you dyspeptic, son? You look as if your vittles hadn't been agreeing with you."

"My health is all right, sir."

"Heard you had trouble with Marston," proceeded the old skipper, with brutal frankness. "Anybody who has trouble with that d.a.m.nation pirate comes well recommended to me. He is trying to steal every steamboat line on this coast. Thank Gawd, he can never get his claws on the old Vose line. Some great doings in the steamboat business are ahead, Mayo.

Reckon it's a good line to be in if you like fight and want to make your bigness."

Mayo walked on in silence. He was troubled by this added information that news of his affair with Marston had gained such wide currency.

However, he was glad that this new opportunity offered him a chance to hide himself in the isolation of a freighter's pilot-house.

Captain Candage received the news with meek resignation. "I knowed it would have to come," he said. "Couldn't expect much else. Howsomever, it ain't comforting."

"Can't keep a good boy like this pawing around in fish gurry," stated Captain Wa.s.s.

"I know it, and I wish him well and all the best!"

Their leave-taking, presided over by the peremptory master of the _Nequa.s.set_, was short.

"I'll probably have a chance to see you when we come here again," called Mayo from the wharf, looking down into the mournful countenance of the skipper. "Perhaps I'll have time to run down to Maquoit while we are discharging. At any rate, explain it all for me, especially to your daughter."

"I'll tell all concerned just what's right," Captain Candage a.s.sured him. "I'll tell her for you."

She was on the beach when the skipper came rowing in alone from the _Ethel and May_.

"He's gone," he called to her. "Of course we couldn't keep him. He's too smart to stay on a job like this."

When they were on their way up to the widow's cottage he stole side-glances at her, and her silence distressed him.