Blow The Man Down Part 9

"Go ahead! Call it names!"

"I am taking off my hat to it," he declared, whipping his cap from his head. "My father's grandfather was in the war of eighteen twelve. I want to honor this old patriot here with the best tribute my pen can pay.

If you will allow me to come on board I shall feel as though I were stepping upon a sacred spot, and I can a.s.sure you that my friends, here, have just as much respect for this craft as I have."

But this honest appeal did not soften Captain Candage. He did not understand exactly from what source this general rancor of his flowed.

At the same time he was conscious of the chief reason why he did not want to allow these visitors to rummage aboard the schooner. They would meet his daughter, and he was afraid, and he was bitterly ashamed of himself because he was afraid. Dimly he was aware that this everlasting fear on her account const.i.tuted an insult to her. The finer impulse to protect her privacy was not actuating him; he knew that, too. He was merely foolishly afraid to trust her in the company of young men, and the combination of his emotions produced the simplest product of mental upheaval--unreasonable wrath.

"Fend off, I say," he commanded.

"Again I beg you, captain, with all respect, please may we come on board?"

"You get away from here and tend to your own business, if you've got any, or I'll heave a bunch of s.h.i.+ngles at you!" roared the skipper.

"Father!" The voice expressed indignant reproof. "Father, I am ashamed of you!"

The girl came to the rail, and the yachtsmen stared at her as if she were Aphrodite risen from the sea instead of a mighty pretty girl emerging from a dark companion-way. She had appeared so suddenly! She was so manifestly incongruous in her surroundings.

"Mother o' mermaids!" muttered the yacht-owner in the ear of the man nearest. "Is the old rat still privateering?"

The men in the tender stood up and removed their caps.

"You have insulted these gentlemen, father!"

Captain Candage knew it, and that fact did not soften his anger in the least. At the same time this appearance of his own daughter to read him a lesson in manners in public was presumption too preposterous to be endured; her daring gave him something tangible for his resentment to attack.

He turned on her. "You go below where you belong."

"I belong up here just now."

"Down below with you!"

"I'll not go until you apologize to these gentlemen, father!"

"You ain't ash.o.r.e now, miss, to tell me when to wipe my feet and not muss the tidies! You're on the high seas, and I'm cap'n of this vessel.

Below, I say!"

"These gentlemen know the _Polly_, and they will find out the name of the man who commands her, and I don't propose to have it said that the Candages are heathens," she declared, firmly. "If you do not apologize, father, I shall apologize for you." She tried to crowd past him to the rail, but he clapped his brown hand over her mouth and pushed her back.

His natural impulse as commander of his craft dominated his feelings as a father.

"I'll teach ye s.h.i.+pboard discipline, Polly Candage," he growled, "even if I have to take ye acrost my knee."

"Hold on there, if you please, captain," called the spokesman of the yachtsmen.

Captain Candage was hustling his daughter toward the companionway. But there was authority in the tone, and he paused and jutted a challenging chin over his shoulder.

"What have any of you critters got to say about my private business?"

The formality of the man in the tender was a bit exaggerated in his reply. "Only this, sir. We are going away at once before we bring any more trouble upon this young lady, to whom we tender our most respectful compliments. We do not know any other way of helping her. Our protests, being the protests of gentlemen, might not be able to penetrate; it takes a drill to get through the hide of a rhinoceros!"

The skipper of the _Polly_ did not trouble himself about the finer shadings in that little speech, but of one fact he felt sure: he had been called a rhinoceros. He released his daughter, yanked the marlinespike away from Otie, who had been holding himself in the background as a reserve force, and stamped to the rail. He poised his weapon, fanning it to and fro to take sure aim. But the engineer had thrown in his clutch and the speed boat foamed off before the captain got the range, and he was too thrifty to heave a perfectly good marlinespike after a target he could not hit, angry as he was.

The girl faced her father. There was no doubting her mood. She was a rebel. Indignation set up its flaming standards on her cheeks, and the signal-flames of combat sparkled in her eyes.

"How did you dare to do such a thing to me--those gentlemen looking on?

Father, have you lost your mind?"

Otie expressed the opinion tinder his breath that the captain, on the contrary, had "lost his number."

Otie's superior officer was stamping around the quarterdeck, kicking at loose objects, and avoiding his daughter's resentful gaze. There was a note of insincerity in his bl.u.s.ter, as if he wanted to hide embarra.s.sment in a cloud of his own vaporings, as a squid colors water when it fears capture.

"After this you call me Cap'n Candage," he commanded. "After this I'm Cap'n Candage on the high seas, and I propose to run my own quarter-deck. And when I let a crowd of dudes traipse on board here to peek and spy and grin and flirt with you, you'll have clamsh.e.l.ls for finger-nails. Now, my lady, I don't want any back talk!"

"But I am going to talk to you, father!"

"Remember that I'm a Candage, and back talk--"

"So am I a Candage--and I have just been ashamed of it!"

"I'm going to have discipline on my own quarterdeck."

"Back talk, quarter-deck discipline, calling you captain! Fol-de-rol and fiddlesticks! I'm your own daughter and you're my father. And you have brought us both to shame! There! I don't want to stay on this old hulk, and I'm not going to stay. I am going home to Aunt Zilpah."

"I had made up my mind to let you go. My temper was mild and sweet till those jeehoofered, gold-trimmed sons of a striped--"

"Father!"

"I had made up my mind to let you go. But I ain't going to give in to a mutiny right before the face and eyes of my own crew."

s.m.u.t-nosed Dolph had arrived with the supper-dishes balanced in his arms while he crawled over the deckload. He was listening with the utmost interest.

"Your Aunt Zilpah has aided and abetted you in your flirting," raged the captain. "My own sister, taking advantage of my being off to sea trying to earn money--"

"Do you mean to insult everybody in this world, father? I shall go home, I say. I'm miserable here."

"I'll see to it that you ain't off gamboling and galley-westing with dudes!"

In spite of her spirit the girl was not able to bandy retort longer with this hard-sh.e.l.led mariner, whose weapon among his kind for years had been a rude tongue. Shocked grief put an end to her poor little rebellion. Tears came.

"You are giving these two men a budget to carry home and spread about the village! Oh, father, you are wicked--wicked!" She put her hands to her face, sobbed, and then ran away down into the gloomy cabin.

There was a long silence on the quarter-deck. Otie recovered his marlinespike and began to pound the eye-bolt.

"Without presuming, preaching, or poking into things that ain't none of my business, I want to say that I don't blame you one mite, cap'n," he volunteered. "No matter what she says, she wasn't to be trusted among them dudes on sh.o.r.e, and I speak from observation and, being an old bach, I can speak impartial. The dudes on the water is just as bad. Them fellows were flirting with her all the time they was 'longside. Real men that means decent ain't called on to keep whisking their caps off and on all the time a woman is in sight--and I see one of 'em wink at her."

Captain Candage was in a mood to accept this comfort from Oak.u.m Otie, and to put out of his contrite conscience the memory of what Captain Ranse Lougee had said.

"Don't you worry! I've got her now where I can keep my eye on her, and I'm cap'n of my own vessel--don't n.o.body ever forget that!" He shook his fist at the gaping cook. "What ye standing there for, like a hen-coop with the door open and letting my vittels cool off? Hiper your boots!

Down below with you and dish that supper onto the table!"