Blow The Man Down Part 54

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, ash.o.r.e 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 ident.i.ty would be revealed promptly to any person who knew him. But while he sneaked in the purlieus of the city several of his 'longsh.o.r.e friends pa.s.sed him without a second look. One, a second engineer on a Union line freighter, whirled after pa.s.sing, and came back to him.

"Got a job, boy?"

"No, sir."

"We need coal-pa.s.sers 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 b.u.t.tonhole.

"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 n.i.g.g.e.r 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 c.o.o.n shows up with another man kick the two of 'em up the wharf."

"Will the pa.s.senger 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 pa.s.senger 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."

"Ya.s.s'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, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 pa.s.senger," said the young man, impatiently, and Mayo remembered what the captain had told the mate.