Blow The Man Down Part 74

Resuming his life on the fis.h.i.+ng-schooner was like slipping on a pair of old shoes, and Mayo was grateful for that New England stoicism which had greeted him in such matter-of-fact fas.h.i.+on.

"What you want to tell me is all right and what you don't want to tell me is still better," stated Captain Candage. "Because when you ain't talking about it you ain't stirring it!"

So, in that fas.h.i.+on, he came back into the humble life of Maquoit. There had been no awkwardness in his meeting with Captain Candage; it had been man to man, and they understood how to dispense with words. But Mayo looked forward to his meeting with Polly Candage without feeling that equanimity which the father had inspired.

He felt an almost overmastering desire to confide to her his troubles of the heart. But he knew that he would not be able to do that. His little temple had been so cruelly profaned. His humiliation was too great.

He was conscious that some other reason was operating to hold him back from explaining to her; and because he did not understand just what it was he was ill at ease when he did come face to face with her. He was grateful for one circ.u.mstance--their first meeting was in the old fish-house at Maquoit, under the hundred curious eyes of the colony. He had rowed ash.o.r.e in his dory and went to seek her in the midst of her activities. She put out both her hands and greeted him with frank pleasure and seemed to understand his constraint, to antic.i.p.ate his own thoughts, to respect his reticence.

"I'm glad you have come back to wait till all your troubles are settled.

The most consoling friends are those who know and who sympathize and who keep still! Now come with me and listen to the children and see what the women are doing. You will be proud and glad because you spoke up for them that day when we went over to Hue and Cry."

After that there was no constraint between them; they kept their own affairs hidden from each other. The autumn pa.s.sed and the long, chill evenings came, and when the fis.h.i.+ng-schooner was in port at Maquoit, between trips, Mayo and the girl spent comfortable hours together, playing at cards under the widow's red-shaded lamp and under the widow's approving eyes.

"No, they ain't courting, either," she informed the pestering neighbors.

"Do you suppose I have been twice married and twice a widder not to know courting when I see it? It's 'Boyd this' and 'Polly that,' to be sure, the whole continyal time; but she is engaged to somebody else, because she has been wearing an engagement ring that has come to her since she has been here. She showed it to me, and she showed it to him! And as for him, everybody 'longcoast knows how dead gone on him that millionaire girl is! Now everybody mind their own business!"

As the days pa.s.sed the widow's counsel seemed to apply to all the affairs of Maquoit; folks went at their business in good earnest.

The winter wind nipped, the wharf piles were sheathed with ice, and only hardy men were abroad on the waterfront of the coast city, but the crew of the _Ethel and May_ were unusually cheerful that day.

The schooner had stayed on Cashes Banks and had ridden out a gale that had driven other fishermen to shelter. Then in the first lull she had sent her dories over the rail and had put down her trawls for a set, and a rousing set it was! It seemed as if the cod, hake, and haddock had been waiting for that gale to stop so that they might hunt for baited hooks and have a feast. Nearly every ganging-line had its prize. The bow pulley in each dory fairly chuckled with delight as the trawl line was pulled over it. Every three feet was a ganging-line. Each dory strung out a mile of trawl. And when the dories returned to the schooner and dumped the catch into the hold the little craft fairly wallowed under her load.

They caught the market bare; the gale had blown for nearly a week.

Fish-houses bid spiritedly against one another, and when at last a trade was made and the schooner's crew began to pitchfork the fish into the winch buckets, and the buckets rose creaking out over the rail, the two captains went into the office of the fish-house to figure some mighty gratifying profits.

"Nothing like luck in the fis.h.i.+ng game, gents," observed the manager.

"Well, grit counts for something," stated Captain Candage. "We've got a crew that ain't afraid of a little weather."

"If that's the case, there may be something for you off-coast about now that's better than the fis.h.i.+ng game."

"What's that?" asked the old skipper.

"Wrecking. Seen the morning papers?"

"We've had something to do besides fool with papers."

"That new Bee line steamer, _Conomo_, has been piled up on Razee Reef."

"One time--this last time--she hugged too close!" snapped the young man.

The others bent an inquiring gaze on him. But he did not explain. His thoughts were busy with the events of that day when the Bee line steamer started his troubles with Marston.

"Paper says she's considered a total loss," went on the manager. "If that's so, and the underwriters give her up, there ought to be some fine picking for men with grit. The board of survey went out to her on a tug this morning." He gave them their check, and they went aboard their schooner.

The affair of the _Conomo_ was not mentioned between them until they were at sea on their way to the eastward again. The piece of news did not interest Mayo at first, except as a marine disaster that had no bearing on his own affairs.

Captain Candage was stumping the quarter-deck, puffing at his short, black pipe. "I don'no' as you feel anyways as I do about it, Captain Mayo, but it ain't going to be no great outset to us if we make a leg out to Razee and see what's going on there," he suggested.

"I have no objections," returned Mayo. "But the way things are managed nowadays in case of wrecks, I don't see much prospect of our getting in on the thing in any way."

"Mebbe not; but in case they're going to abandon her there'll be some grabbing, and we might as well grab with the rest of 'em."

"If they can't get her off some junk concern will gamble on her. But we'll make an excursion of it to see the sights, sir. We can afford a little trip after what we pulled down to-day."

There was no hope of reaching the wreck before nightfall, so they jogged comfortably in the light westerly that had succeeded the gale.

Captain Candage took the first watch after the second dog-watch, and at two bells, or nine o'clock, in the evening, Mayo awoke and heard him give orders to "pinch her." He heard the sails flap, and knew that the men were shortening in readiness to lay to. He slipped on his outer clothing and went on deck.

"We're here," stated the old skipper, "and it looks like some other moskeeters had got here ahead of us, ready to stick in their little bills when they get a chance."

It was a clear night, brilliant with stars. In contrast with the twinkling and pure lights of the heavens, there were dim reds and greens and yellow-white lights on the surface of the ocean. These lights rocked and oscillated and tossed as the giant surges swept past.

"I make out half a dozen sail--little fellers--and two tugs," said Captain Candage. "But get your eye on the main squeeze!"

Mayo looked in the direction of the extended mittened hand.

"Some iceberg, hey?" commented the skipper.

A short half-mile away, a veritable ghost s.h.i.+p, loomed the wrecked _Conomo_. Spray had beaten over her and had congealed until she seemed like a ma.s.s of ice that had been molded into the shape of a s.h.i.+p. She gleamed, a spectral figure, under the starry heavens.

A single red light, a baleful blob of color, showed from her main rigging.

They surveyed her for some time.

"I should say she was spoke for," was Captain Candage's opinion. "It's high tide now, and a spring tide at that, and them tugs is just loafing out there--ain't making a move to start her. We can tell more about the prospect in the morning."

Then the two captains turned in, for the _Ethel and May_ lay to docilely with a single helmsman at the wheel.

The crisp light of morning did not reveal anything especially new or important. There were half a dozen small schooners, fishermen, loafing under shortened canvas in the vicinity of the wreck. One of the tugs departed sh.o.r.eward after a time.

Mayo had a.s.sured himself, through the schooner's telescope, that the remaining tug was named _Seba J. Ransom_.

"The captain of that fellow went mate with me on a fis.h.i.+ng-steamer once," he informed Captain Candage. "Jockey me down in reaching distance and I'll go aboard him in a dory. He may have some news."

Captain Dodge was immensely pleased to see his old chum, and called him up into the pilot-house and gave him a cigar.

"It's only a loafing job," he said. "I've got to stand by and take off her captain and crew in case of rough weather or anything breaks loose more'n what's already busted. They are still hanging by her so as to deliver her to the buyer."

"Buyer?"

"Yep! To whatever junkman is fool enough to bid her in. She's stuck fast. Underwriters have gone back on that tug, and are going to auction her. I'm here to help keep off pirates and take her men ash.o.r.e after she has been handed over. You a pirate, Mayo?" he asked, with a grin.

"I'm almost anything nowadays, if there's a dollar to be made,"

returned the young man.

The _Ransom's_ captain gave him a wink. "I'm on to what happened on board the _Olenia_" he confided. "Feller who was in the crew told me.

You're good enough for old Marston's girl. Why haven't you gone up to New York and taken--"