Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast

VII ~ INTO THE MESS FROM EASTWARD

For the first few moments, after being snatched up in that fashion, Mayo hung from the dolphin-striker without motion, like a man paralyzed. He was astounded by the suddenness of this abduction. He was afraid to struggle. Momentarily he expected that the fabric would let go and that he would be rolled under the forefoot of the schooner. Then he began to grow faint from lack of breath; he was nearly garroted by his collar. Carefully he raised his hands and set them about a stay above his head and lifted himself so that he might ease his throat from the throttling grip of the collar. He dangled there over the water for some time, feeling that he had not strength enough, after his choking, to lift himself into the chains or to swing to the foot-rope.

He glanced up and saw the figurehead; it seemed to be simpering at him with an irritating smile. There was something of bland triumph in that grin. In the upset of his feelings there was personal and provoking aggravation in the expression of the figurehead. He swore at it as if it were something human. His anger helped him, gave him strength. He began to swing himself, and at last was able to throw a foot over a stay.

He rested for a time and then gave himself another hoist and was able to get astride the bowsprit. He judged that they must be outside the headland of Saturday Cove, because the breeze was stronger and the sea gurgled and showed white threads of foam against the blunt bows. His struggles had consumed more time than he had realized in the dazed condition produced by his choking collar.

He heard the popping of a motor-boat's engine far astern, and was cheered by the prompt conviction that pursuit was on. Therefore, he made haste to get in touch with the Polly's master. He scrambled inboard along the bowsprit and fumbled his way aft over the piles of lumber, obliged to move slowly for fear of pitfalls, Once or twice he shouted, but he received no answer, He perceived three dim figures on the quarter-deck when he arrived there—three men. Captain Candage was stamping to and fro.

“Who in the devil's name are you?” bawled the old skipper. “Get off'm here! This ain't a passenger-bo't.”

“I'll get off mighty sudden and be glad to,” retorted Mayo.

“Well, I'll be hackmetacked!” exploded Mr. Speed shoving his face over the wheel. “It's—”

“Shut up!” roared the master. “How comes it you're aboard here as a stowaway?”

“Don't talk foolishness,” snapped Captain Mayo “Your old martingale spikes hooked me up. Heave to and let me off!”

“Heave to it is!” echoed Oakum Otie, beginning to whirl the tiller.

Captain Candage turned on his mate with the violence of a thunderclap. “Gad swigger your pelt, who's giving off orders aboard here? Hold on your course!”

“But this is—”

“Shut up!” It was a blast of vocal effort. “Hold your course!”

“And I say, heave to and let that motor-boat take me off,” insisted Mayo.

Captain Candage leaned close enough to note the yacht skipper's uniform coat. “Who do you think you're ordering around, you gilt-striped, monkey-doodle dandy?”

“That motor-boat is coming after me.”

“Think you're of all that importance, hey? No, sir! It's a pack of 'em chasing me to make me go back into port and be sued and libeled and attached by cheap lawyers.”

“You ought to be seized and libeled! You had no business ratching out of that harbor in the dark.”

“Ought to have taken a rising vote of dudes, hey, to find out whether I had the right to h'ist my mudhook or not?”

“I'm not here to argue. You can do that in court. I tell you to come into the wind and wait for that boat.”

“You'd better, Cap Candage,” bleated Oakum Otie. “This is—”

“Shut up! I'm running my own schooner, Mr. Speed.”

“But he is one of the—”

“I don't care if he is one of the Apostles. I know my own business. Shut up! Hold her on her course!”

He took two turns along the quarter-deck, squinting up into the night.

“Look here, Candage, you and I are going to have a lot of trouble with each other if you don't show some common sense. I must get back to my yacht.”

“Jump overboard and swim back. I ain't preventing. I didn't ask you on board. You can leave when you get ready. But this schooner is bound for New York, they're in a hurry for this lumber, and I ain't stopping at way stations!” He took another look at the weather, licked his thumb, and held it against the breeze. “Sou'west by sou', and let her run! And shut up!” he commanded his mate.

Mayo grabbed one of the yawl davits and sprang to the rail.

“We're some bigger than a needle, but so long as the haystack stays thick enough I guess we needn't worry!” remarked Captain Candage, cocking his ear to listen to the motor-boat's exhaust.

“Hoi-oi!” shouted Mayo into the night astern. He knew that men hear indistinctly over the noise of a gasoline-engine, but he had resolved to keep shouting.

“This way, men! This way with that boat!”

“'Vast heaving on that howl!” commanded Candage.

But Mayo persisted with all his might. His attention was confined wholly to his efforts, and he was not prepared for the sudden attack from behind. The master of the Polly seized Mayo's legs and yanked him backward to the deck. The young man fell heavily, and his head thumped the planks with violence which flung him into insensibility.

When he opened his eyes he looked up and saw a hanging-lamp that creaked on its gimbals as it swayed to the roll of the schooner. He was in the Polly's cabin. Next he was conscious that he was unable to move. He was seated on the floor, his back against a stanchion, his hands lashed behind him by bonds which confined him to the upright support. But the most uncomfortable feature of his predicament was a marlinespike which was stuck into his mouth like a bit provided for a fractious horse, and was secured by lashings behind his head. He was effectually gagged. Furthermore, the back of his head ached in most acute fashion. He rolled his eyes about and discovered that he had a companion in misery. A very pretty young woman was seated on a camp-chair across the cabin. Her face expressed much sympathy.

He gurgled a wordless appeal for help, and then perceived that she was lashed into her chair.

“I wish I could take that awful thing out of your mouth, sir.”

He gave her a look which assured her that he shared in her desire.

“My father has tied me into this chair. I tried to make him stop his dreadful talk when the boats came and burned the lights. He put me down here and made a prisoner of me. It is terrible, all that has been happening. I can't understand! I hope you will not think too hard of my father, sir. Honestly, he seems to be out of his right mind.”

He wanted to return some comforting reply to this wistful appeal, but he could only roll his head against the stanchion and make inarticulate sounds.

“He seemed to be very bitter when he brought you below. I could not make him listen to reason. I have been thinking—and perhaps you're the gentleman who led the singing which made him so angry?”

Mayo shook his head violently in protest at this suspicion.

“I didn't mind,” she assured him. “I knew it was only in fun.” She pondered for a few minutes. “Perhaps they wouldn't have teased one of their city girl friends in that way—but I suppose men must have a good time when they are away from home. Only—it has made it hard for me!” There were tears in her eyes.

Mayo's face grew purple as he tried to speak past the restraining spike and make her understand his sentiments on the subject of that serenade.

“Don't try to talk, sir. I'm so sorry. It is shameful!”

There was silence in the cabin after that for a long time. He looked up at the swinging lamp, his gaze wandered about the homely cabin. But his eyes kept returning to her face. He could not use his tongue, and he tried to tell her by his glances, apologetic little starings, that he was sorry for her in her grief. She met those glances with manifest embarrassment.

After an absence which was prolonged to suit his own sour will in the matter, Captain Candage came stamping stormily down the companionway. He stood between his captives and glowered, first at one and then at the other.

“Both of ye blaming me, I reckon, for what couldn't be helped.”

“Father, listen to me now, if you have any sense left in you,” cried the girl, with passion. “Take that horrible thing out of that gentleman's mouth.”

“It has come to a pretty pass in this world when an honest man can't carry on his own private business without having to tie up meddlers so as to have a little peace.” He walked close to Mayo and shook a monitory finger under the young man's nose. “Now, what did ye come on board here for, messing into my affairs?”

The indignant captain put forth his best efforts to make suitable retort, but could only emit a series of “guggles.”

“And now on top of it all I am told by my mate, who never gets around to do anything that ought to be done till it's two days too late, that you are one of the Mayos! Why wasn't I informed? I might have made arrangements to show you some favors. I might have hove to and taken a chance, considering who you was. And now it's too late. Everybody seems to be ready to impose on me!”

Again Mayo tried to speak.

“Why don't you shut up that gobbling and talk sense?” shouted the irate skipper, with maddening disregard of the captive's predicament.

“Father, are you completely crazy? You haven't taken that spike out of his mouth.”

“Expect a man to remember everything when he is all wrapped in his own business and everybody trying to meddle with it?” grumbled Candage. He fumbled in his pocket and produced a knife. He slashed away the rope yarn which lashed the marlinespike. “If you can talk sense I'll help you do it! I reckon you can holler all you want to now. Them dudes can't find their own mouths in a fog, much less this schooner. Now talk up!”

Mayo worked his aching jaws and found his voice. “You know how I happened to get aboard, Captain Candage. I am skipper of the Olenia. Put back with me if you want to save trouble.”

“Not by a tin hoopus, sir! I ain't going about and tackle them reefs in this fog. I've got open sea ahead, and I shall keep going!”

Mayo was a sailor who knew that coast, and he admitted to himself that Candage's stubbornness was justified.

“I ain't responsible for your getting aboard here. I'll land you as soon as I can—and that covers the law, sir.”

During a prolonged silence the two men stared at each other.

“At any rate, Captain Candage, I trust you will not consider that you have a right to keep me tied up here any longer.”

“Now that there's a better understanding about who is boss aboard here, I don't know as I'm afraid to have you at large,” admitted the skipper. “I only warn you to remember your manners and don't forget that I'm captain.”

He flourished his clasp-knife and bent and cut the lashings. Then he strode across the cabin and performed like service for his daughter.

“I reckon I can afford to have you loose, too, now that you can't tell me my business in front of a lot of skylarkers throwing kisses right and left!”

“Father! Oh, oh!” She put her hands to her face.

Captain Candage seemed to be having some trouble in keeping up his rôle of a bucko shipmaster; he shifted his eyes from Mayo's scowl and surveyed his daughter with uncertainty while he scratched his ear.

“When a man ain't boss on his own schooner he might as well stop going to sea,” he muttered. “Some folks knows it's the truth, being in a position to know, and others has to be showed!” He went stamping up the companionway into the night.

Captain Mayo waited, for some minutes. The girl did not lift her head.

“About that—What he said about—You understand! I know better!” he faltered.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, gratefully, still hiding her face from him.

“Men sometimes do very foolish things.”

“I didn't know my father could be like this.”

“I was thinking about the men who came and annoyed him. I can understand how he felt, because I am 'a 'native' myself.”

“I thought you were from outside.”

“My name is Boyd Mayo. I'm from Mayoport.”

She looked up at him with frank interest.

“My folks built this schooner,” he stated, with modest pride.

“I'm Polly Candage—I'm named for it.”

“It's too bad!” he blurted. “I don't mean to say but what the name is all right,” he explained, awkwardly, “but I don't think that either of us is particularly proud of this old hooker right at the present moment.” He went across the cabin and sat down on a transom and, tested the bump on the back of his head with cautious palm.

She did not reply, and he set his elbows on his knees and proceeded to nurse his private grouch in silence, quite excluding his companion from his thoughts. Now that he had been snatched so summarily from his hateful position on board the Olenia, his desire to leave her was not so keen. After Mayo's declaration to the owner, Marston might readily conclude that his skipper had deserted. His reputation and his license as a shipmaster were in jeopardy, and he had already had a bitter taste of Marston's intolerance of shortcomings. If Marston cared to bother about breaking such a humble citizen, malice had a handy weapon. But most of all was Mayo concerned with the view Alma Marston would take of the situation. She would either believe that he had fallen overboard in the skirmish with the attacking Polly or had deserted without warning—and in the case of a lover both suppositions were agonizing. His distress was so apparent that the girl, from her seat on the opposite transom, extended sympathy in the glances she dared to give him.

“How did you tear your coat so badly in the back?” she ventured at last.

“Spikes your excellent father left sticking out of his martingale,” he said, a sort of boyish resentment in his tones.

“Then it is only right that I should offer to mend it for you.”

She hurried to a locker, as if glad of an excuse to occupy herself. She produced her little sewing-basket and then came to him and held out her hand.

“Take it off, please.”

“You needn't trouble,” he expostulated, still gruff.

“I insist. Please let me do a little something to make up for the Polly's naughtiness.”

“It will be all right until I can get ashore—and perhaps I'll never have need to wear the coat again, anyway.”

“Won't you allow me to be doing something that will take my mind off my troubles, sir?” Then she snapped her finger into her palm and there was a spirit of matronly command in her voice, in spite of her youth. “I insist, I say! Take off your coat.”

He obeyed, a little grin crinkling at the corners of his mouth—a flicker of light in his general gloom. After he had placed the coat in her hands he sat down on the transom and watched her busy fingers. She worked deftly. She closed in the rents and then darned the raveled places with bits of the thread pulled from the coat itself.

“You are making it look almost as good as new.”

“A country girl must know how to patch and darn. The folks in the country haven't as many things to throw away as the city folks have.”

“But that—what you are doing—that's real art.”

“My aunt does dressmaking and I have helped her. And lately I have been working in a millinery-shop. Any girl ought to know how to use her needle.”

He remembered what Mr. Speed had said about the reason for her presence on the Polly. He cast a disparaging glance around the bare cabin and decided in his mind that Mr. Speed had reported truthfully and with full knowledge of the facts. Surely no girl would choose that sort of thing for a summer vacation.

She bent her head lower over her work and he was conscious of warmer sympathy for her; their troubled affairs of the heart were in similar plight. He felt an impulse to say something to console her and knew that he would welcome understanding and consolation from her; promptly he was afraid of his own tongue, and set curb upon all speech.

“A man never knows how far he may go in making fool talk when he gets started,” he reflected. “Feeling the way I do to-night, I'd better keep the conversation kedge well hooked.”

Now that her hands were busy, she did not find the silence embarrassing. Mayo returned to his ugly meditations.

After a time he was obliged to shift himself on the transom. The schooner was heeling in a manner which showed the thrust of wind. He glanced up and saw that the rain was smearing broad splashes on the dingy glass of the windows. The companion hatch was open, and when he cocked his ear, with mariner's interest in weather, he heard the wind gasping in the open space with a queer “guffle” in its tone.

Instinctively he began to look about the cabin for a barometer.

Already that day the Olenia's glass had warned him by its downward tendency. He wondered whether further reading would indicate something more ominous than fog.

Across the cabin he noted some sort of an instrument swinging from a hook on a carline. He investigated. It was a makeshift barometer, the advertising gift of a yeast company. The contents of its tube were roiled to the height of the mark which was lettered “Tornado.”

“You can't tell nothing from that!” Captain Candage had come down into the cabin and stood behind his involuntary guest. “It has registered 'Tornado' ever since the glass got cracked. And even at that, it's about as reliable as any of the rest of them tinkerdiddle things.”

“Haven't you a regular barometer—an aneroid?” inquired Captain Mayo.

“I can smell all the weather I need to without bothering with one of them contrivances,” declared the master of the schooner, in lordly manner. He began to pull dirty oilskins out of a locker.

Mayo hurried up the companionway and put out his head. There were both weight and menace in the wind which hooted past his ears. The fog was gone, but the night was black, without glimmer of stars. The white crests of the waves which galloped alongside flaked the darkness with ominous signalings.

“If you can smell weather, Captain Candage, your nose ought to tell you that this promises to be something pretty nasty.”

“Oh, it might be called nasty by lubbers on a gingerbread yacht, but I have sailed the seas in my day and season, and I don't run for an inshore puddle every time the wind whickers a little.” He was fumbling with a button under his crisp roll of chin beard and gave the other man a stare of superiority.

“You don't class me with yacht-lubbers, do you?”

“Well, you was just on a yacht, wasn't you?”

“Look here, Captain Candage, you may just as well understand, now and here, that I'm one of your kind of sailors. Excuse me for personal talk, but I want to inform you that from fifteen to twenty I was a Grand-Banksman. Last season I was captain of the beam trawler Laura and Marion. And I have steamboated in the Sound and have been a first mate in the hard-pine trade in Southern waters. I have had a chance to find out more or less about weather.”

“Un-huh!” remarked the skipper, feigning indifference. “What about it?”

“I tell you that you have no business running out into this mess that is making from east'ard.”

“If you have been so much and so mighty in your time, then you understand that a captain takes orders from nobody when he's on board his own vessel.”

“I understand perfectly well, sir. I'm not giving orders. But my own life is worth something to me and I have a right to tell you that you are taking foolhardy chances. And you know it, too!”

Captain Candage's gaze shifted. He was a coaster and he was naturally cautious, as Apple-treers are obliged to be. He knew perfectly well that he was in the presence of a man who knew! He had not the assurance to dispute that man, though his general grudge against all the world at that moment prompted him.

“I got out because they drove me out,” he growled.

“A man can't afford to be childish when he is in command of a vessel, sir. You are too old a skipper to deny that.”

“I was so mad I didn't stop to smell weather,” admitted the master, bracing himself to meet a fresh list of the heeling Polly. He evidently felt that he ought to defend his own sagacity and absolve himself from mariner's culpability.

“Very well! Let it go at that! But what are you going to do?”

“I can't beat back to Saturday Cove against this wind—not now! She would rack her blamed old butts out.”

“Then run her for Lumbo Reach. You can quarter a following sea. She ought to ride fairly easy.”

“That's a narrow stab in a night as black as this one is.”

“I'll make a cross-bearing for you. Where's your chart?” Mayo exhibited a sailor's alert anxiety to be helpful.

“I 'ain't ever needed a chart—not for this coast.”

“Then I'll have to guess at it, sir.” He closed his eyes in order to concentrate. “You gave a course of sou'west by sou'. Let's see—it was nine-fifteen when I just looked and we must have logged—”

“It ain't no use to stab for such a hole in the wall as Lumbo Reach,” declared Candage in discouraged tones.

“But you've got your compass and I can—”

“There ain't no depending on my compass within two points and a half.”

“Confound it, I can make allowance, sir, if you'll tell me your deviation!”

“But it's a card compass and spins so bad in a seaway there ain't no telling, anyway. In my coasting I haven't had to be particular.”

“Not as long as you had an apple-tree in sight,” jeered Mayo, beginning to lose his temper.

“I don't dare to run in the direction of anything that is solid—we'll hit it sure, 'n' hell-fire will toast corn bread. We've got to stay to sea!”

Captain Mayo set his teeth and clenched his fists and took a few turns up and down the cabin. He looked up into the night through the open hatch of the companion-way. The pale glimmer of the swinging lamp tossed a mild flare against the blackness and lighted two faces which were limned against that pall. Both Oakum Otie and Smut-nosed Dolph were at the wheel. Their united strength was needed because the schooner was yawing madly every now and then when the mightier surges of the frothing sea hoisted her counter, chasing behind her like wild horses. Those faces, when Mayo looked on them, were very solemn. The two were crouching like men who were anxious to hide from a savage beast. They grunted as they struggled with the wheel, trying to hold her up when the Polly tobogganed with rushes that were almost breath-checking.

Mayo hastened to the girl. “I must have my coat, Miss Candage. I thank you. It will do now.”

She held it open for his arms, as a maid might aid her knight with his armor. “Are we in danger?” she asked, tremulously.

“I hope not—only it is uncomfortable—and needless,” he said, with some irritation.

“Must I stay down here—alone?”

“I would! It's only a summer blow, Miss Candage. I'm sure we'll be all right.”

Captain Candage had gone on deck, rattling away in his stiff oilskins.

Mayo followed, but the master came down a few steps into the companionway and intercepted the volunteer, showing a final smolder of his surliness.

“I want to notify you that I can run my own bo't, sir!”

“Yes, run it with a yeast barometer, a straw bottom, a pinwheel compass, and your general cussedness of disposition,” shouted Mayo into the whirl of the wind, his anxiety whetting his much-tried temper.

“If you're feeling that way, I don't want you up here.”

“I'm feeling worse than you'll ever understand, you stubborn old fool!”

“I let one man call me a fool to-day and I didn't make back talk—but I know where to draw the line,” warned Candage.

“Look here, I propose to start in with you right now, sir, on a basis you'll understand! I say you're a fool and need a guardian—and from now on I'm going to make my bigness aboard here! Get out of my way!”

Captain Mayo then emphasized his opinion of Captain Candage by elbowing the master to one side and leaping out on deck.

“That may be mutiny,” stated Mr. Speed through set teeth, checking the startled exclamation from his helper at the wheel. “But, by the Judas I-scarrot, it's a Mayo that's doing it! Remember that, Dolph!”

VIII ~ LIKE BUGS UNDER A THIMBLE

Captain Mayo strode straight to the men at the wheel. “Give me those spokes!” he commanded. “I'll take her! Get in your washing, boys!”

“Ay, ay, sir!” assented Mr. Speed, giving the resisting Dolph a violent shove.

When Captain Candage began to curse, Captain Mayo showed that he had a voice and vocabulary of his own. He fairly roared down the master of the Polly.

“Now shut up!” he ordered the dumfounded skipper, who faced him, mouth agape. “This is no time for any more foolishness. It's a case of work together to save our lives. Down with 'em, boys!”

“That's right,” declared the mate. “She don't need much of anything on her except a double-reefed mitten with the thumb brailed up.”

The wind had not attained the velocity of a gale, but it did have an ugly growl which suggested further violence. Mayo braced himself, ready to bring the schooner about in order to give the crew an opportunity to shorten sail.

Captain Candage, deposed as autocrat for the moment, seemed to be uncertain as to his duties.

Mayo, understanding mariner nature, felt some contrition and was prompted by saner second thought.

“You'd better take the wheel, Captain Candage. You know her tricks better than I do in a seaway. I'll help the boys take in sail.”

The master obeyed with alacrity. He seemed to be cowed. Anger no longer blinded him to their predicament.

“Just say what you want done, and I'll try to do it,” he told Mayo, in a voice which had become suddenly mild and rather beseeching. Then he called to his daughter, who had come to the foot of the companion steps, “Better blow out that cabin light, Polly girl! She's li'ble to dance bad, and we don't want to run the chance of fire.”

Mayo got a glimpse at her face as he hurried upon the house on his way to the main halyards. Her face was pale, but there was the firm spirit of her Yankee ancestry of the sea in her poise and in her very silence in that crisis. She obeyed without complaint or question and the cabin was dark; even the glimmer of the light had held something of cheer. Now the gloom was somber and depressing.

The schooner came round with a sort of scared hurry when the master threw the wheel hard over and trod on the spokes with all his weight. As soon as the bellying mainsail began to flap, the three men let it go on the run. They kept up the jumbo sail, as the main jib is called; they reefed the foresail down to its smallest compass.

Mayo, young, nimble, and eager, singly knotted more reef points than both his helpers together, and his crisp commands were obeyed unquestioningly.

“He sartinly is chain lightning in pants,” confided Dolph to Otie.

“He knows his card,” said Otie to Dolph.

Captain Mayo led the way aft, crawling over the shingles and laths.

“I hope it's your judgment, sir, that we'd better keep her into the wind as she is and try to ride this thing out,” he suggested to the master.

“It is my judgment, sir,” returned Captain Candage, with official gravity.

Hove to, the old Polly rode in fairly comfortable style. She was deep with her load of lumber, but the lumber made her buoyant and she lifted easily. Her breadth of beam helped to steady her in the sweeping seas—but Captain Mayo clung to a mainstay and faced the wind and the driving rain and knew that the open Atlantic was no place for the Polly on a night like that.

Spume from the crested breakers at her wallowing bow salted the rain on his dripping face. It was an unseasonable tempest, scarcely to be looked for at that time of year. But he had had frequent experience with the vagaries of easterlies, and he knew that a summer easterly, when it comes, holds menacing possibilities.

“They knowed how to build schooners when your old sirs built this one at Mayoport,” declared Captain Candage, trying to put a conciliatory tone into his voice when he bellowed against the blast. “She'll live where one of these fancy yachts of twice her size would be smothered.”

Mayo did not answer. He leaped upon the house and helped Dolph and Otie furl the mainsail that lay sprawled in the lazy-jaeks. They took their time; the more imminent danger seemed to be over.

“I never knowed a summer blow to amount to much,” observed Mr. Speed, trying to perk up, though he was hanging on by both hands to avoid bring blown off the slippery house.

“It depends on whether there's an extra special squall knotted into it somewhere to windward,” said Mayo, in a lull of the wind. “Then it can amount to a devil of a lot, Mr. Speed!”

The schooner washed her nose in a curving billow that came inboard and swept aft. With her small area of exposed sail and with the wind buffeting her, she had halted and paid off, lacking steerageway. She got several wallops of the same sort before she had gathered herself enough to head into the wind.

Again she paid off, as if trying to avoid a volleying gust, and another wave crested itself ahead of the blunt bows and then seemed to explode, dropping tons of water on deck. Laths, lumber, and bunches of shingles were ripped loose and went into the sea. The Polly appeared to be showing sagacity of her own in that crisis; she was jettisoning cargo for her own salvation.

“Good Cephas! this is going to lose us our decklo'd,” wailed the master. “We'd better let her run!” “Don't you do it, sir! You'll never get her about!” Mayo had given over his work on the sail and was listening. Above the scream of the passing gusts which assailed him he was hearing a dull and solemn roar to windward. He suspected what that sound indicated. He had heard it before in his experience. He tried to peer into the driving storm, dragging the rain from his eyes with his fingers. Then nature held a torch for him. A vivid shaft of lightning crinkled overhead and spread a broad flare of illumination across the sea. His suspicions, which had been stirred by that sullen roar, were now verified. He saw a low wall of white water, rolling and frothing. It was a summer “spitter” trampling the waves.

A spitter is a freak in a regular tempest—a midsummer madness of weather upheaval. It is a thunderbolt of wind, a concentration of gale, a whirling dervish of disaster—wind compactly bunched into one almighty blast—wind enough to last a regular gale for a whole day if the stock were spent thriftily.

“Don't ease her an inch!” screamed Mayo.

But just then another surging sea climbed aboard and picked up more of the laths and more of the shingles, and frolicked away into the night with the plunder. Captain Candage's sense of thrift got a more vital jab than did his sense of fear. His eyes were on his wheel, and he had not seen the wall of white spume.

“That decklo'd has got to be lashed,” he muttered. He decided to run with the wind till that work could be performed. He threw his helm hard over. Mayo had been riding the main boom astraddle, hitching himself toward the captain, to make him hear. When the volunteer saw the master of the Polly trying to turn tail to the foe in that fashion, he leaped to the wheel, but he was too late. The schooner had paid off too much. The yelling spitter caught them as they were poised broadside on the top of a wave, before the sluggish craft had made her full turn.

What happened then might have served as confirmation of mariners' superstition that a veritable demon reigns in the heart of the tempest. The attack on the old Polly showed devilish intelligence in team-work. A crashing curler took advantage of the loosened deckload and smashed the schooner a longside buffet which sent all the lumber in a sliding drive against the lee rail and rigging. The mainsail had been only partly secured; the spitter blew into the flapping canvas with all its force and the sail snapped free and bellied out.

The next instant the Polly was tripped!

She went over with all the helpless, dead-weight violence of a man who has caught his toe on a drooping clothes line in the dark.

The four men who were on deck were sailors and they did not need orders when they felt that soul-sickening swing of her as she toppled. Instinctively, with one accord, they dived for the cabin companionway.

Undoubtedly, as a sailor, the first thought of each was that the schooner was going on to her beam-ends. Therefore, to remain on deck meant that they would either slide into the water or that a smashing wave would carry them off.

They went tumbling down together in the darkness, and all four of them, with impulse of preservation as instant and true as that of the trap-door spider, set their hands to the closing of the hatch and the folding leaves of the door.

Captain Mayo, his clutch still on a knob, found himself pulled under water without understanding at first just what had happened. He let go his grip and came up to the surface, spouting. He heard the girl shriek in extremity of terror, so near him that her breath swept his face. He put out his arm and caught her while he was floundering for a footing. When he found something on which to stand and had steadied himself, he could not comprehend just what had happened; the floor he was standing on had queer irregularities.

“We've gone over!” squalled Mr. Speed in the black darkness. “We've gone clear over. We're upside down. We're standing on the ceiling!”

Then Mayo trod about a bit and convinced himself that the irregularities under his feet were the beams and carlines.

The Polly had been tripped in good earnest! Mr. Speed was right—she was squarely upside down!

Even in that moment of stress Mayo could figure out how it had happened. The spitter must have ripped all her rotten canvas off her spars as she rolled and there had been no brace to hold her on her beam-ends when she went over.

Captain Candage was spouting, splashing near at hand, and was bellowing his fears. Then he began to call for his daughter in piteous fashion.

“Are you drownded, Polly darling?” he shouted.

“I have her safe, sir,” Mayo assured him in husky tones, trying to clear the water from his throat. “Stand on a beam. You can get half of your body above water.”

“It's all off with us,” gasped the master. “We're spoke for.”

Such utter and impenetrable blackness Mayo had never experienced before. Their voices boomed dully, as if they were in a huge hogshead which had been headed over.

'“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,'” quavered the cook. “If anybody knows a better prayer I wish he'd say it.”

“Plumb over—upside down! Worse off than flies in a puddle of Porty Reek molasses,” mourned Mr. Speed.

The master joined the mate in lamentation. “I have brought my baby to this! I have brought my Polly here! God forgive me. Can't you speak to me, Polly?”

Mayo found the girl very quiet in the hook of his arm, and he put his free hand against her cheek. She did not move under his touch.

“She has fainted, sir.”

“No, she's dead! She's dead!” Candage began to weep and started to splash his way across the cabin, directed by Mayo's voice.

“She is all right—she is breathing,” the young man assured the father. “Here! This way, captain! Take her. Hold her up. I want to see whether anything can be done for us.”

“Nothing can be done!” whimpered Candage. “We're goners.”

“We're goners,” averred Oakum Otie.

“We're goners,” echoed Dolph.

Mayo gave the girl into the groping arms of her father and stood for a few moments reflecting on their desperate plight. He was not hopeful. In his heart he agreed with the convictions which his mates were expressing in childish falsetto. But being a young sailor who found his head above water, he resolved to keep on battling in that emergency; the adage of the coastwise mariner is: “Don't die till Davy Jones sets his final pinch on your weasen!”

First of all, he gave full consideration to what had happened. The Polly had been whipped over so quickly that she had been transformed into a sort of diving-bell.{*} That is to say, a considerable amount of air had been captured and was now retained in her. It was compressed by the water which was forced up from below through the windows and the shattered skylight. The pressure on Mayo's temples afforded him information on this point. The Polly was floating, and he felt comforting confidence that she would continue to float for some time. But this prospect did not insure safety or promise life to the unfortunates who had been trapped in her bowels. The air must either escape gradually or become vitiated as they breathed it.