Blow The Man Down Part 6

The whistler and Razee Reef had been blotted out by the fog.

"If this vessel is stopped five minutes in this tide-drift we shall lose our bearings, sir. I cannot leave this bridge for the present."

"I'm thinking you'll leave it for good!" blurted the secretary. "You're the first hired man who ever told Julius Marston to go bite his own thumb."

"I may be a hired man," retorted Mayo. "But I am also a licensed s.h.i.+pmaster. I must ask you to step down off the bridge."

"Does that go for all the rest of the--pa.s.sengers?" asked the secretary, angry in his turn. He dwelt on his last word. "It does--in a time like this!"

"Very well, I'll give them that word aft."

Captain Mayo caught a side glance from Mate McGaw after a time.

"I have often wondered," remarked the mate to n.o.body in particular, "how it is that so many d.a.m.n fools get rich on sh.o.r.e."

Captain Mayo did not express any opinion on the subject. He clutched the bridge rail and stared into the fog, and seemed to be having a lot of trouble in choking back some kind of emotion.

III - THE TAVERN OF THE SEAS

Now, Mister Macliver, you knows him quite well, He comes upon deck and he cuts a great swell; It's d.a.m.n your eyes there and it's d.a.m.n your eyes here, And straight to the gangway he takes a broad sheer.

--La Pique "Come-all-ye."

Into Sat.u.r.day Cove, all during that late afternoon, they came surging--spars and tackle limned against the on-sweeping pall of the gray fog--those wayfarers of the open main.

First to roll in past the ledgy portals of the haven were the venerable sea-wagons--the coasters known as the "Apple-treers." Their weatherwise skippers, old sea-dogs who could smell weather as bloodhounds sniff trails, had their noses in the air in good season that day, and knew that they must depend on a thinning wind to cuff them into port. One after the other, barnacled anchors splashed from catheads, dragging rusty chains from hawse-holes, and old, patched sails came sprawling down with chuckle of sheaves and lisp of running rigging.

A 'long-coast shanty explains the nickname, "Apple-treers":

O, what's the use of compa.s.s or a quadrant or a log?

Keep her loafin' on her mudhook in a norther or a fog.

But as soon's the chance is better, then well ratch her off once more, Keepin' clost enough for bearings from the apple-trees ash.o.r.e.

Therefore, the topsail schooners, the fore-and-afters, the Bluenose blunt-prows, came in early before the fog smooched out the loom of the trees and before it became necessary to guess at what the old card compa.s.ses had to reveal on the subject of courses.

And so, along with the rest of the coastwise ragtag, which was seeking harbor and holding-ground, came the ancient schooner _Polly_. Fog-masked by those illusory mists, she was a shadow s.h.i.+p like the others; but, more than the others, she seemed to be a ghost s.h.i.+p, for her lines and her rig informed any well-posted mariner that she must be a centenarian; with her grotesqueness accentuated by the fog pall, she seemed unreal--a picture from the past.

She had an out-thrust of snub bow and an upc.o.c.k of square stern, and sag of waist--all of which accurately revealed ripe antiquity, just as a bell-crowned beaver and a swallow-tail coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons would identify an old man in the ruck of newer fas.h.i.+ons. She had seams like the wrinkles in the parchment skin of extreme old age. She carried a wooden figurehead under her bowsprit, the face and bust of a woman on whom an ancient woodcarver had bestowed his notion of a beatific smile; the result was an idiotic simper. The glorious gilding had been worn off, the wood was gray and cracked. The _Polly's_ galley was entirely hidden under a deckload of s.h.i.+ngles and laths in bunches; the after-house was broad and loomed high above the rail in contrast to the mere cubbies which were provided for the other fore-and-afters in the flotilla which came ratching in toward Sat.u.r.day Cove.

The _Polly_, being old enough to be celebrated, had been the subject of a long-coast lyric of seventeen verses, any one of which was capable of producing most horrible profanity from Captain Epps Candage, her master, whenever he heard the ditty echoing over the waves, sung by a satirist aboard another craft.

In that drifting wind there was leisure; a man on board a lime-schooner at a fairly safe distance from the _Polly_ found inclination and lifted his voice:

"Ow-w-w, here comes the _Polly_ with a lopped-down sail, And Rubber-boot Epps, is a-settin' on her rail.

How-w-w long will she take to get to Boston town?

Can't just tell 'cause she's headin' up and down."

"You think that kind o' ky-yi is funny, do you, you walnut-nosed, blue-gilled, goggle-eyed son of a dough-faced americaneezus?" bellowed Captain Candage, from his post at the _Polly's_ wheel.

"Father!" remonstrated a girl who stood in the companionway, her elbows propped on the hatch combings. "Such language! You stop it!"

"It ain't half what I can do when I'm fair started," returned the captain.

"You never say such things on sh.o.r.e."

"Well, I ain't on sh.o.r.e now, be I? I'm on the high seas, and I'm talking to fit the occasion. Who's running this schooner, you or me?"

She met his testiness with a spirit of her own, "I'm on board here, where I don't want to be, because of your silly notions, father. I have the right to ask you to use decent language, and not shame us both."

Against the archaically homely background the beauty of the young girl appeared in most striking contrast. Her curls peeped out from under the white Dutch cap she wore. Her eyes sparkled with indignant protest, her face was piquant and was just then flushed, and her nose had the least bit of a natural uptilt, giving her the air of a young woman who had a will of her own to spice her amiability.

Captain Candage blinked at her over the spokes of the wheel, and in his father's heart acknowledged her charm, realizing more acutely that his motherless girl had become too much of a problem for his limited knowledge in the management of women.

He had not seen her grow up gradually, as other fathers had viewed their daughters, being able to meet daily problems in molding and mastery.

She seemed to reach development, mental and physical, in disconcerting phases while he was away on his voyages. Each time he met her he was obliged to get acquainted all over again, it appeared to him.

Captain Candage had owned up frankly to himself that he was not able to exercise any authority over his daughter when she was ash.o.r.e.

She was not wilful; she was not obstinate; she gave him affection. But she had become a young woman while his slow thoughts were cla.s.sing her still as a child. She was always ahead of all his calculations. In his absences she jumped from stage to stage of character--almost of ident.i.ty! He had never forgotten how he had brought back to her from New York, after one voyage, half a gunny sackful of tin toys, and discovered that in his absence, by advice and sanction of her aunt, who had become her foster-mother, she had let her dresses down to ankle-length and had become a young lady whom he called "Miss Candage" twice before he had managed to get his emotions straightened out. While he was wondering about the enormity of tin toys in the gunny sack at his feet, as he sat in the aunt's parlor; his daughter asked him to come as guest of honor with the Sunday-school cla.s.s's picnic which she was arranging as teacher. That gave him his opportunity to lie about the toys and allege that he had brought them for her scholars.

Captain Candage, on the deck of his s.h.i.+p, found that he was able to muster a little courage and bl.u.s.ter for a few minutes, but he did not dare to look at her for long while he was a.s.serting himself.

He looked at her then as she stood in the gloomy companionway, a radiant and rosy picture of healthy maidenhood. But the expression on her face was not comfortingly filial.

"Father, I must say it again. I can't help saying it. I am so unhappy.

You are misjudging me so cruelly."

"I done it because I thought it was right to do it. I haven't been tending and watching the way a father ought to tend and watch. I never seemed to be able to ketch up with you. Maybe I ain't right. Maybe I be!

At any rate, I'm going to stand on this tack, in your case, for a while longer."

"You have taken me away from my real home for this? This is no place for a girl! You are not the same as you are when you are on sh.o.r.e. I didn't know you could be so rough--and--wicked!"

"Hold on there, daughter! Snub cable right there! I'm an honest, G.o.d-fearing, hard-working man--paying a hundred cents on the dollar, and you know it."

"But what did you just shout--right out where everybody could hear you?"

"That--that was only pa.s.sing the compliments of the day as compared with what I can do when I get started proper. Do you think I'm going to let any snub-snooted wart-hog of a lime-duster sing--"

"Father!"

"What's a girl know about the things a father has to put up with when he goes to sea and earns money for her?"

"I am willing to work for myself. You took me right out of my good position in the millinery-store. You have made me leave all my young friends. Oh, I am so homesick!" Her self-reliance departed suddenly. She choked. She tucked her head into the hook of her arm and sobbed.

"Don't do that!" he pleaded, softening suddenly. "Please don't, Polly!"