Blow The Man Down Part 7

She looked up and smiled--a pleading, wan little smile. "I didn't mean to give way to it, popsy dear. I don't intend to do anything to make you angry or sorry. I have tried to be a good girl. I am a good girl. But it breaks my heart when you don't trust me."

"They were courting you," he stammered. "Them sh.o.r.e dudes was hanging around you. I ain't doubting you, Polly. But you 'ain't got no mother.

I was afraid. I know I've been a fool about it. But I was afraid!" Tears sprinkled his bronzed cheeks. "I haven't been much of a father because I've had to go sailing and earn money. But I thought I'd take you away till-till I could sort of plan on something."

She gazed at him, softening visibly.

"Oh, Polly," he said, his voice breaking, "you don't know how pretty you are-you don't know how afraid I am!"

"But you can trust me, father," she promised, after a pause, with simple dignity. "I know I am only a country girl, not wise, perhaps, but I know what is right and what is wrong. Can't you understand how terribly you have hurt my pride and my self-respect by forcing me to come and be penned up here as if I were a shameless girl who could not take care of herself?"

"I reckon I have done wrong, Polly. But I don't know much-not about women folk. I was trying to do right-because you're all I have in this world."

"I hope you will think it all over," she advised, earnestly. "You will understand after a time, father, I'm sure. Then you will let me go back and you will trust me-as your own daughter should be trusted. That's the right way to make girls good-let them know that they can be trusted."

"You are probably right," he admitted. "I will think it all over.

As soon as we get in and anch.o.r.ed I'll sit down and give it a good overhauling in my mind. Maybe-"

She took advantage of his pause. "We are going into a harbor, are we, father?"

"Yes. Right ahead of us."

"I wish you would put me ash.o.r.e and send me back. I shall lose my position in the store if I stay away too long."

His obstinacy showed again, promptly. "I don't want you in that millinery-shop. I'm told that dude drummers pester girls in stores."

"They do not trouble me, father. Haven't you any confidence in your own daughter?"

"Yes, I have," he said, firmly, and then added, "but I keep thinking of the dudes and then I get afraid."

She gave him quick a glance, plainly tempted to make an impatient retort, and then turned and went down into the cabin.

"Don't be mad with me, Polly," he called after her. "I guess, maybe, I'm all wrong. I'm going to think it over; I ain't promising nothing sure, but it won't be none surprising if I set you ash.o.r.e here and send you back home. Don't cry, little girl." There were tears in his voice as well as in his eyes.

The lime-schooner vocalist felt an impulse to voice another verse:

"Ow-w-w, here comes the _Polly_ in the middle of the road, Towed by a mule and paving-blocks her load.

Devil is a-waiting and the devil may as well, 'Cause he'll never get them paving-blocks to finish paving h.e.l.l."

Captain Candage left his wheel and strode to the rail. All the softness was gone from his face and his voice.

"You horn-jawed, muck-faced jezebo of a sea-sculpin, you dare to yap out any more of that sculch and I'll come aboard you after we anchor and jump down your gullet and gallop the etarnal innards out of ye! Don't you know that I've got ladies aboard here?"

"It don't sound like it," returned the songster.

"Well, you hear what _I_ sound like! Half-hitch them jaw taakuls of yours!"

Captain Candage's meditations were not disturbed after that.

With the a.s.sistance of his one helper aboard ship, "Oak.u.m Otie," a gray and whiskered individual who combined in one person the various offices of first mate, second mate, A-1 seaman, and hand before the mast-as well as the skipper's boon companion-the _Polly_ was manoeuvered to her anchorage in Sat.u.r.day Cove and was snugged for the night. Smoke began to curl in blue wreaths from her galley funnel, and there were occasional glimpses of the cook, a sallow-complexioned, one-eyed youth whose chief and everlasting decoration provided him with the nickname of "s.m.u.t-nosed Dolph."

Then came some of the ocean aristocrats to join the humbler guests in that tavern of the seas.

Avant couriers of a metropolitan yacht club, on its annual cruise, arrived, jockeying in with billowing mountains of snowy canvas spread to catch the last whispers of the breeze. Later arrivals, after the breeze failed, were towed in by the smart motor craft of the fleet. One by one, as the anchors splashed, bra.s.s cannons barked salute and were answered by the commodore's gun.

Captain Candage sat on the edge of the _Polly's_ house and snapped an involuntary and wrathful wink every time a cannon banged. In that hill-bound harbor, where the fog had ma.s.sed, every noise was magnified as by a sounding-board. There were cheery hails, yachtsmen bawled over the mist-gemmed bra.s.s rails interchange of the day's experiences, and frisking yacht tenders, barking staccato exhausts, began to carry men to and fro on errands of sociability. In the silences Captain Candage could hear the popping of champagne corks.

"Them fellers certainly live high and sleep in the garret," observed Oak.u.m Otie. He was seated cross-legged on the top of the house and was hammering down the lumps in a freshly twisted eye-splice with the end of a marlinespike.

"It has always been a wonder to me," growled Captain Candage, "how dudes who don't seem to have no more wit than them fellows haw-hawing over there, and swigging liquor by the cart-load, ever make money the way they do so as to afford all this."

On that point Captain Candage might have found Mate McGaw of the _Olenia_ willing to engage in profitable discussion and amicable understanding!

"They don't make it-they don't know enough to make it," stated Otie, with the conviction of a man who knew exactly what he was talking about.

"It has all been left to 'em by their fathers."

The bearded and brown men of the apple-tree crews leaned the patched elbows of their old coats on the rails and gloomily surveyed the conviviality on board the plaything crafts. Remarks which they exchanged with one another were framed to indicate a sort of lofty scorn for these frolickers of the sea. The coasting skippers, most of whom wore hard hats, as if they did not want to be confounded with those foppish yacht captains, patrolled their quarter-decks and spat disdainfully over their rails.

Everlastingly there was the clank of pumps on board the Apple-treers, and the pumps were tackling the everlasting leaks. Water reddened by contact with bricks, water made turbid by percolation through paving-blocks, splashed continuously from hiccuping scuppers.

Captain Ranse Lougee of the topsail schooner _Belvedere_, laden with fish sc.r.a.ps for a Boston glue-factory, dropped over the counter into his dory and came rowing to the _Polly_, standing up and facing forward and swaying with the fisherman's stroke.

He straddled easily over the schooner's scant freeboard and came aft, and was greeted cordially by Captain Candage.

"Thought I'd show them frosted-cakers that there's a little sociability amongst the gents in the coasting trade, too," he informed his host. "Furthermore, I want to borry the ex-act time o' day. _And_, furthermore, I'm glad to get away from that cussed aromy on board the _Belvedere_ and sort of air out my nose once in a while. What's the good word, Cap?"

Captain Candage replied to the commonplaces of the other skipper in abstracted fashion. He had viewed Lougee's approach with interest, and now he was plainly pondering in regard to something wholly outside this chatter.

"Captain Lougee," he broke in, suddenly, in low tones, "I want you should come forward with me out of hearing of anybody below. I've got a little taakul I want you to help me overhaul."

The two walked forward over the deckload and sat on the fore-gaff, which sprawled carelessly where it had fallen when the halyards were let run.

"My daughter is below, there," explained Captain Candage.

"Vacation trip, eh?"

"I don't think it can be called that, Captain Lougee," stated the host, dryly. "She is having about as good a time as a canary-bird would have in a corn-popper over a hot fire."

"What did she come for, then?"

"I made her come. I shanghaied her."

"That's no way to treat wimmen folks," declared Captain Lougee. "I've raised five daughters and I know what I'm talking about."

"I know you have raised five girls, and they're smart as tophet and right as a trivet--and that's why I have grabbed right in on the subject as I have. I was glad to see you coming aboard, Captain Lougee. I want some advice from a man who knows."

"Then I'm the man to ask, Captain Candage."

"Last time I was home--where she has been living with her Aunt Zilpah--I ketched her!" confessed Candage. His voice was hoa.r.s.e. His fingers, bent and calloused with rope-pulling, trembled as he fingered the seam of his trousers.