Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast

XXIV ~ DOWN A GALLOPING SEA

With anxiety that was almost despairing Mayo looked up at the shrouds, stays, and halyards, which were set like nets to right and left and overhead.

A big roller tumbled inboard and filled the space forward of the break of the main-deck. The swirling water touched the sides of the long-boat and then receded when the stricken schooner struggled up from the welter. A scuttle-butt was torn from its lashings and went by the board, and other flotsam followed it.

Mayo found that spectacle encouraging. But the longboat sat high in its chocks; when it did float it might be too late.

Another wave roared past, and the long-boat quivered. Then Mayo took a chance without reckoning on consequences. He made a double turn of the cable around his forearm and leaped out of the boat and stood on deck, his shoulder against the stem. The next wave washed him to his waist, tore at him, beat him against the long-boat's shoe, but he clung fast and lifted and pushed with all his strength.

That push did it!

The boat needed just that impetus to free her from the chocks. She lifted and rushed stern foremost to lee, and the young man dragged after her.

When the boat dipped and halted in a hollow of the sea he clutched the bow and clambered in. Tugging mightily, he managed to dump the sea-anchor over.

The next wave caught her on the quarter and slopped a barrel of water into her. But she kept right side up, and in a few moments the cable straightened and she rode head into the tumult of the ocean; the sea-anchor was dragging and performing its service.

Mayo was obliged to kick the two men with considerable heartiness before he could stir them to bailing with the buckets. The bedraggled cat fled to the shelter of the girl's arms. Mayo struggled aft, in order to take his weight from the bow of the boat, and when he sat down beside the girl she was “mothering” the animal.

“It's coming in faster than I can throw it out!” wailed Bradish.

“Bail faster, then! Bail or drown!”

“She's leaking,” announced the cook. “She has been on deck so long she has got all dried out.”

“Bail or drown!” repeated Mayo. To the girl he said: “This seems to be the only way of getting work out of cowards. They'll have to do it. I'm about done for.”

The waves were lifting and dropping them in dizzying fashion. There was suddenly a more violent tossing of the water.

“That's the old packet! She went under then!” Mayo explained. “Thank the Lord we are out of her clutches! I was afraid we were stuck there.”

“Is there any hope for us now?” she inquired.

“I don't know. If the boat stays afloat and the wind doesn't haul and knock this sea crossways, if somebody sees us in the morning, if we don't get rolled onto the coast in the breakers and—” He did not finish.

“It seems that a lot of things can happen at sea,” she suggested.

“That fact has been proved to me in the past few weeks.”

“You mean in the past few hours, don't you?”

“Miss Marston, what has happened on that schooner is a part of the business, and a sailor must take it as it comes along. I wish nothing worse had happened to me than what's happening now.”

She made no reply.

“But no matter about it,” he said, curtly.

The two men, kneeling amidships, clutching a thwart and bailing with their free hands, toiled away; even Bradish had wakened to the fact that he was working for his own salvation.

In the obscurity the waves which rose ahead seemed like mountains topped with snow. Hollows and hills of water swept past on their right and left. But the crests of the waves were not breaking, and this fact meant respite from immediate danger.

“I'm sorry it was all left to you to do,” ventured the girl, breaking a long silence. “I thought Ralph had more man in him,” she added, bitterly. “I feel that he ought to apologize to you for—for several things.”

He, on his part, did not reply to that. He was afraid that she intended to draw him into argument or explanation. Just what he would be able to say to her on that topic was not clear to him.

“It seems as if years had gone by instead of hours. It seems as if I had lived half a life since I left home. It seems as if I had changed my nature and had grown up to see things in a different light. It is all very strange to me.”

He did not know whether she were talking to herself or to him. He did not offer comment.

There was a long period of silence. The sound of rushing waters filled, that silence and made their conversation audible only to themselves when they talked.

“I don't understand how you happened to be on that schooner—as—as you were,” she said, hesitating.

“I didn't rig myself out this way to play any practical jokes, Miss Marston,” he returned, bitterly.

“I would like to know how it all happened—your side of it.”

“I have talked too much already.”

There was no more conversation for a long time. He wondered how she had mustered courage to talk at all. They were in a predicament to try the courage of even a seasoned seaman. In the night, tossed by that wild sea, drifting they knew not where, she had apparently disregarded danger. He asked himself if she had not merely exhibited feminine ignorance of what their situation meant. He had often seen cases where apparent bravado was based on such ignorance.

“I must say that you told me at least one truth a while ago—you are not a coward,” he said at last.

She was comforting the wretched cat. “But I am miserably frightened,” she admitted. “I don't dare to think about the thing. I don't dare to look at the waves. I talked to you so as to take my mind off my troubles. I didn't mean to be prying.”

“I'll tell you what has been done to me,” he blurted. “Hearing somebody's troubles may take your mind off your own.”

While the two men amidships bailed doggedly and weariedly, he told his story as briefly as he could. The gray dawn showed her face to him after a time, and he was peculiarly comforted by the sympathy he saw there. He did not communicate to her any suspicions he may have entertained. With sailor directness he related how he had hoped, and how all had been snatched away from him. But on one topic the mouths of both seemed to be sealed!

After a time Bradish and the cook were enabled to rest from the work of bailing. The planks of the boat swelled and the leak was stopped.

“You'd better crawl aft here and sit beside Miss Marston,” advised Mayo. “Be careful how you move.”

He passed Bradish and took the latter's place with the cook, and felt a sense of relief; he had feared that the one, the dreaded topic would force itself upon him.

“I don't see no sense in prolonging all this agony,” averred his despondent companion. “We ain't ever going to get out of this alive. We're drifting in on the coast, and you know what that means.”

“You may jump overboard any time you see fit,” said the skipper of the craft. “I don't need you any longer for bailing!”

“If that's the way you feel about it, you won't get rid of me so easy,” declared the cook, malevolence in his single eye.

Mayo noticed, with some surprise, that after the two had exchanged a few words there was silence between Bradish and the girl. The New-Yorker was pale and trembling, and his jaw still sagged, and he threw glances to right and left as the surges galloped under them. He was plainly and wholly occupied with his fears.

When day came at last without rain, but with heavy skies, in which masses of vapor dragged, Mayo began eager search of the sea. He had no way of determining their whereabouts; he hoped they were far enough off-shore to be in the track of traffic. However, he could see no sail, no encouraging trail of smoke. But after a time he did behold something which was not encouraging. He stood up and balanced himself and gazed westward, in the direction in which they were drifting; every now and then a lifting wave enabled him to command a wide expanse of the sea.

He saw a white ribbon of foam that stretched its way north and south into the obscurity of the mists. He did not report this finding at once. He looked at his companions and pondered.

“I think you have something to say to me,” suggested the girl.

“I suppose I ought to say it. I've been wondering just how it ought to be said. It's not pleasant news.”

“I am prepared to hear anything, Captain Mayo. Nothing matters a great deal just now.”

“We are being driven on to the coast. I don't know whether it's the Delaware or the New Jersey coast. It doesn't make much difference. The breakers are just as bad in one place as in the other.”

“Why don't you anchor this boat? Are you going to let it go ashore and be wrecked?” asked Bradish, with anger that was childish.

“The anchor seems to have been overlooked when we started on this little excursion. As I remember it, there was some hurry and bustle,” returned Mayo, dryly.

“Why didn't you remember it? You got us into this scrape. You slammed and bossed everybody around. You didn't give anybody else a chance to think. You call yourself a sailor! You're a devil of a sailor to come off without an anchor.”

“I suppose so,” admitted Mayo.

“And there wasn't any sense, in coming off in this little boat. We ought to have stayed on the schooner.”

“Ralph!” protested the girl. “Have you completely lost your mind? Don't you know that the schooner sank almost the minute we left it?”

“Mr. Bradish's mind was very much occupied at the time,” said Captain Mayo.

“I don't believe the schooner sank. What does a girl know about such things? That fellow got scared, that's the trouble. There isn't any sense in leaving a big boat in a storm. We would have been taken off before this. We would have been all right. This is what comes of letting a fool boss you around when he is scared,” he raved.

“You are the fool!” she cried, with passion. “Captain Mayo saved us.”

“Saved us from what? Here we are going into the breakers—and he says so—and there's no anchor on here. He took everything out of my hands. Now why doesn't he do something?”

“Don't pay any attention to him,” she pleaded.

“We are going to be drowned! You can't deny it, can you? We're going to die!” He pulled a trembling hand from between his knees, where he had held both hands pinched in order to steady them. He shook his fist at Mayo. “Own up, now. We're going to die, aren't we?”

“I think it's right to tell the truth at this stage,” said Mayo, in steady tones. “We're not children. Yonder is a beach with sand-reefs and breakers, and when we strike the sand this boat will go over and over and we shall be tossed out. The waves will throw us up and haul us back like a cat playing with mice. And we stand about the same chance as mice.”

“And that's the best you can do for us—and you call yourself a sailor!” whined Bradish.

“I'm only a poor chap who has done his best as it came to his hand to do,” said the young man, seeking the girl's eyes with his.

She gazed at him for a moment and then put both hands to her face and began to sob.

“It's a hard thing to face, but we'd better understand the truth and be as brave as we can,” said Mayo, gently.

“For myself I ain't a mite surprised,” averred the cook. “I had my hunch! I was resigned. But my plans was interfered with. I wanted to go down in good, deep, green, clean water like a sailor ought to. And now I'm going to get mauled into the sand and have a painful death.”

“Shut up!” barked Mayo.

The girl was trembling, and he feared collapse.

Bradish began to blubber. “I'm not prepared to die,” he protested.

Mayo studied his passenger for some time, wrinkling his brows. “Bradish, listen to me a moment!”

The New-Yorker gave him as much attention as terror and grief permitted.

“There isn't much we can do just now to fix up our general earthly affairs. But we may as well clean the slate between us two. That will help our consciences a little. I haven't any quarrel with you any more. We won't be mushy about it. But let's cross it off.”

“It's all over,” mourned Bradish. “So what's the use of bearing grudges?”

“I suppose it's true that the court has indicted me for manslaughter. Bradish, tell me, man to man, whether I've got to go into those breakers with that on my conscience!”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do! You know whether those men of the schooner Warren were drowned by any criminal mistake of mine or not!”

Bradish did not speak.

“You wouldn't have said as much to Captain Downs if you hadn't known something,” insisted the victim of the plot.

“It was only what Burkett let drop when he came after some money. I suppose he thought it was safe to talk to me. But what's the good of my giving you guesswork? I don't know anything definite. I don't understand sailor matters.”

“Bradish, what Burkett said—was it something about the compass—about putting a job over on me by monkeying with the compass?”

“It was something like that.” His tone exhibited indifference; it was evident that he was more occupied with his terror than with his confession.

“Didn't Burkett say something about a magnet?”

“He got off some kind of a joke about Fogg in the pilot-house and fog outside—but that the Fogg inside did the business. And he said something about Fogg's iron wishbone.”

“So that was the way it was done—and done by the general manager of the line!” cried Mayo. “The general manager himself! It's no wonder I have smashed that suspicion between the eyes every time it bobbed up! I suspected—but I didn't dare to suspect! Is that some of your high finance, Bradish?”

“No, it isn't,” declared the New-Yorker, with heat. “It's an understrapper like Fogg going ahead and producing results, so he calls it. The big men never bother with the details.”

“The details! Taking away from me all I have worked for—my reputation as a master, my papers, my standing—my liberty. By the gods, I'm going to live! I'm going through those breakers! I'll face that gang like a man who has fought his way back from hell,” raged the victim.

“This—this was none of my father's business! It could not have been,” expostulated Miss Marston.

“Your father never knows anything about the details of Fogg's operations,” declared Bradish.

“He ought to know,” insisted the maddened scapegoat. “He gives off his orders, doesn't he? He sits in the middle of the web. What if he did know how Fogg was operating?”

“Probably wouldn't stand for it! But he doesn't know. And the Angel Gabriel himself wouldn't get a chance to tell him!” declared the clerk.

“A put-up job, then, is it—and all called high finance!” jeered Mayo.

“High finance isn't to blame for tricks the field-workers put out so that they can earn their money quick and easy. What's the good of pestering me with questions at this awful time? I'm going to die! I'm going to die!” he wailed.

Miss Marston slid from the seat to her knees, in order that she might be able to reach her hand to Mayo. “Will you let this handclasp tell you all I feel about it—all your trouble, all your brave work in this terrible time? I am so frightened, Captain Mayo! But I'm going to keep my eyes on you—and I'll be ashamed to show you how frightened I am.”

He returned the fervent clasp of her fingers with gentle pressure and reassuring smile. “Honestly, I feel too ugly to die just now. Let's keep on hoping.”

But when he stood up and beheld the white mountains of water between their little boat and the shore, and realized what would happen when they were in that savage tumult, with the undertow dragging and the surges lashing, he felt no hope within himself.

From the appearance of the coast he could not determine their probable location. The land was barren and sandy. There seemed to be no inlet. As far as he could see the line of frothing white was unbroken. The sea foamed across broad shallows, where no boat could possibly remain upright and no human being could hope to live.

Nevertheless, he remained standing and peered under his hand, resolved to be alert till the last, determined to grasp any opportunity.

All at once he beheld certain black lines in perpendicular silhouette against the foam. At first he was not certain just what they could be, and he observed them narrowly as the boat tossed on its way.

At last their identity was revealed. They were weir-stakes. The weir itself was evidently dismantled. Such stakes as remained were set some distance from one another, like fence-posts located irregularly.

He made hasty observation of bearings as the boat drifted, and was certain that the sea would carry them down past the stakes. How near they would pass depended on the vagary of the waves and the tide. He realized that three men, even if they were able seamen, could do little in the way of rowing or guiding the longboat in the welter of that sea, now surging madly over the shoals. He knew that there was not much water under the keel, for the ocean was turbid with swirling sand, and the waves were more mountainous, heaped high by the friction of the water on the bottom. Every now and then the crest of a roller flaunted a banner of bursting spray, showing breakers near at hand.

Mayo hurried to the bow of the boat and pulled free a long stretch of cable. He made a bowline slip-knot, opened a noose as large as he could handle, coiled the rest of the cable carefully, and poised himself on a thwart.

“What now?” asked the cook.

“No matter,” returned Mayo. His project was such a gamble that he did not care to canvass it in advance.

The nearer they drove to the stakes the more unattainable those objects seemed. They projected high above the water.

The cook perceived them and got up on his knees and squinted. “Huh!” he sniffed. “You'll never make it. It can't be done!”

In his fierce anxiety Mayo heaved his noose too soon, and it fell short. He dragged in the cable with all his quickness and strength and threw the noose again. The rope hit the stake three-quarters of the way up and fell into the sea.

“It needs a cowboy for that work,” muttered the cook.

Mayo recovered his noose and poised himself again.

In the shallows where they were the boat which bore him became a veritable bucking bronco. It was flung high, it swooped down into the hollows. He made a desperate try for the next stake in line. The noose caught, and he snubbed quickly. The top of the stake came away with a dull crack of rotten wood when the next wave lifted the boat.

Mayo pulled in his rope hand over hand with frantic haste. He was obliged to free the broken stake from the noose and pull his extemporized lasso into position again. He made a wider noose. His failure had taught a point or two. He waited till the boat was on the top of a wave. He curbed his desperate impatience, set his teeth, and whirled the noose about his head in a widening circle. Then he cast just as the boat began to drop. The rope encircled the stake, dropped to the water, and he paid out all his free cable so that a good length of the heavy rope might lie in the water and form a makeshift bridle. When he snubbed carefully the noose drew close around the stake, and the latter held. The waves which rode under them were terrific, and Mayo's heart came into his mouth every time a tug and shock indicated that the rope had come taut.

However, after five minutes of anxious waiting, kneeling in the bow, his eyes on the cable, he found his courage rising and his hopes glowing.

“Does it mean—” gasped the girl, when he turned and looked at her.

“I don't know just what it will mean in the end, Miss Marston,” he said, with emotion. “But it's a reprieve while that rope holds.”

Bradish sat clutching the gunwale with both hands, staring over his shoulder at the waters frothing and roaring on the shore. The girl glanced at him occasionally with a certain wonderment in her expression. It seemed to Mayo that she was trying to assure herself that Bradish was some person whom she knew. But she did not appear to have much success in making him seem real. She spoke to him once or twice in an undertone, but he did not answer. Then she turned her back on him.

Suddenly Mayo leaped up and shouted.

A man was running along the sandy crest of a low hill near the beach. He disappeared in a little structure that was no larger than a sentry-box.

“There's a coast-guard patrol from the life-saving station. There must be one somewhere along here!”

The man rushed out and flourished his arms.

“He has telephoned,” explained Mayo. “Those are the boys! There's hope for us!”

There was more than hope—there was rescue after some hours of dreary and anxious waiting.

The life-boat came frothing down the sea from the distant inlet, and they were lifted on board by strong arms.

And then Alma Marston gave Mayo the strangest look he had ever received from a woman's eyes. But her lips grew white and her eyes closed, and she lapsed into unconsciousness while he folded a blanket about her.

“You must have had quite a job of it, managing a woman through this scrape,” suggested the captain of the crew.

“It's just the other way,” declared Mayo. “I'm giving her credit for saving the whole of us.”

“How's that?”

“I might find it a little hard to make you understand, captain. Let it stand as I have said it.”

XXV ~ A GIRL AND HER DEBT OF HONOR

Mayo was promptly informed that Captain Downs and the crew of the Alden were safe.

“He caught our flare, got his motor to working, and made the inlet by a lucky stab,” explained the coast-station captain. “But he didn't reckon he'd ever see you folks again. How did it happen he didn't tell me there was a woman aboard?”

“You'll have to ask him.”

“Who is she?”

“You'll have to ask him that, too. I'm only a sailor.”

The captain looked him over with considerable suspicion: His shirt was torn and his white skin was revealed. The drenching by rain and spray had played havoc with his disguise; most of the coloring had been washed away.

“Have you got anything special to say about yourself?”

“No, sir.”

The captain turned his back on his men and leaned close to Mayo. “They have had your picture in the paper this week,” he said. “You're the captain they are wanting in that Montana case. They're after you. I've got to report on this thing, you understand!”

“Very well, captain.”

“But I reckon we'll talk it all over after we get to the station,” said the master, kindly. “There may be something in it that I don't understand.”

“There's considerable in it that I don't understand myself, just now, but I'm going to find out,” declared Captain Mayo.

They placed Ahpa Marston in the care of the station captain's wife as soon as they were safely on shore in the inlet. Fortunate chance had sent the woman to the station that day on a visit to her husband.

Captain Downs, fed and warmed, watched the new arrivals eat beside the kitchen stove and listened to the story Mayo had for him.

The bedraggled cat lapped milk, protected from the resentful jealousy of the station's regular feline attaché by the one-eyed cook.

And afterward, closeted with Captain Downs and the station captain, Mayo went over his case.

“I must say you seem to be pretty hard and fast ashore in mighty sloppy water,” commented the coastguard captain. “It isn't my especial business—but what do you propose to do?”

“Go to New York and take what they're going to hand me, I suppose. I ought to have stayed there and faced the music. I have put myself in bad by running away. But I was rattled.”

“The best of us get rattled,” said the host, consolingly. “I'm not a policeman, sheriff, or detective, mate. I'll report this case as Captain Downs and so many souls saved from the schooner Alden. You'd better trot along up to the city and face 'em as a man should. I'll rig you out in some of my clothes. Your old friend, Wass, meant well by rushing you away, but I've always found that in a man's fight you can't do much unless you're close enough to t'other fellow to hit him when he reaches for you.”

A half-hour later, made presentable in the coast-guard captain's liberty suit, Mayo walked through the kitchen. Bradish and the cook were still in front of the stove.

The captain's wife, standing in a door which admitted to an inner room, put up a finger to signal the young man and then nodded her head in invitation. “The young lady wants to see you, sir,” she informed him in a whisper, when he stepped to her side. “Go in!” She closed the door behind him and remained in the kitchen.

He stood in the middle of the room and gazed at the girl for some time, and neither of them spoke. She was swathed in blankets and was huddled in a big chair; her face was wan and her eyes showed her weariness. But her voice was firm and earnest when she addressed him.

“Captain Mayo, what I am going to say to you will sound very strange. Tell me that you'll listen to me as you would listen to a man.”

“I'm afraid—” he stammered.

“It's too bad that man and woman can seldom meet on the plane where man and man meet. But I don't want to be considered a girl just now. I'm one human being, and you're another, and I owe something to you which must be paid, or I shall be disgraced by a debt which will worry me all my life.” She put out her hands and knotted the fingers together in appeal. “Understand me—help me!”

He was ill at ease. He feared with all his soul to meet the one great subject.

“When we thought we were going to die I told you it seemed as if I had lived a life in a few hours—that I did not seem like the same person as I looked into my thoughts. Captain Mayo, that is true. It is more apparent to me now when I have had time to search my soul. Oh, I am not the Alma Marston who has been spoiled and indulged—a fool leaping here and there with every impulse—watching a girl in my set do a silly thing and then doing a sillier thing in order to astonish her. That has been our life in the city. I never knew what it meant to be a mere human being, near death. You know you saved me from that death!”

“I only did what a man ought to do, Miss Marston.”

“Perhaps. But you did it, that's the point. There are other men—” She hesitated. “I have had a talk with Mr. Bradish,” she told him. “It was a mistake. You saved me from that mistake. You did it in the cabin of the schooner. He has told me. It was better for me than saving my life.”

“But because a man isn't a sailor—isn't used to danger—” he expostulated.

“That is not it. I say I have just had a talk with Mr. Bradish! I have found out exactly what he is. I did not find it out when I danced with him. But now that I have come near to dying with him I have found him out.” The red banners in her cheeks signaled both shame and indignation. “A coward will show all his nature before he gets himself in hand again, and Mr. Bradish has shown me that he is willing to ruin and disgrace me in order to make profit for himself. And there is no more to be said about him!” She paused.

“Captain Mayo, I know what idea you must have of me—of a girl who would do what I have done! But you don't have half the scorn for me I have for myself—for the girl I was. But I have my self-respect now! I respect the woman that I am at this moment after that experience! Perhaps you don't understand. I do! I'm glad I have that self-respect. I shall face what is ahead of me. I shall do right from now on.” She spoke quickly and passionately, and he wanted to say something, but his sailor tongue halted. “I am not going to bring up a certain matter—not now! It's too sacred. I am too miserably ashamed! Again, Captain Mayo, I say that I want to stand with you as man to man! I want to render service for what you have done for me. You have lost everything out of your life that you value. I want you to have it back. Will you listen to me now?”

“Yes, Miss Marston.”

“You go to my father with a letter from me. I do not believe he knows what kind of methods have been practised by his understrappers, but he can find out. You tell him that he must find out—that he must make them confess. You tell him that this is a man's fight, and that you are fighting back with all the strength that you can command. You tell him that you have me hidden, and that I cannot get away—as my own letter will tell him. You tell him that he must make a fair exchange with you—give you back what is yours before he can have what is his.”

Mayo walked backward limply, feeling for the wall with his hands behind him, and leaned against it.

“You are single-handed—it's a big game they play up in the city when they are after money—and you must take what cards are offered,” she insisted, displaying the shrewdness of the Marston nature.

“You mean to say that I'm going to your father as if I were holding you for ransom?” he gasped.

“Something like that,” she returned, eagerly. “The only way you'll get what you want—and get it quickly—is by a good bluff. I have had some good samples of your courage, Captain Mayo. You can do it beautifully.”

“But I'm not going to do it!”

“I say you are!”

“Not by a—” His feelings were carrying him away. He was forgetting that these dealings were with an impulsive girl. His anger was mounting. She was putting him on the plane of a blackleg.

“Go ahead and talk as strongly as you like, Captain Mayo. It will make it seem like man's business between us.”

“Those tricks may be all right in Wall Street, but they don't do for me. And you've got a pretty poor opinion of me if you think I'll do it.”

“Don't be quixotic,” she protested, impatiently. “We are living in up-to-date times, Captain Mayo. Some of those underlings have played a nasty trick on you. They must be exposed.”

“This is a girl's crazy notion!”

“Captain Mayo, is this the way you help me pay my debt?”

“You don't owe me anything.”

“And now you pay me an insult! Are my honor as a girl and my life worth nothing? You have saved both.”

“I don't know how to talk to you. I haven't had any experience in talking with women. I simply say that I'm not going to your father in any such manner. Certainly not!”

“Don't you realize what I have offered you?” she pleaded. “You are throwing my sacrifice in my face. As the case stands now, I can hurry off to the home of some girl friend and make up a little story of a foolish lark, and my father will never know what has been happening. He expects me to do a lot of silly things.”

“That's your business—and his,” he returned, dryly.

“Captain Mayo, I have been trying to show you that I am fit to be considered something besides a silly girl. I wanted you to know that I have a sense of obligation. The plan may seem like a girl's romantic notion. But it isn't. It's bold, and your case heeds boldness. I was trying to show you that I'm not a coward. I was going to confess to my father what I have done and start on the level with him. You throw it all in my face—you insult my plan by calling it crazy.”

“It is,” he insisted, doggedly. “And I'm in bad enough as it is!”

“Oh, you're afraid, then?”

He frowned. Her sneer seemed gratuitous injury.

He did not understand that variety of feminine guile which seeks to goad to action one who refuses to be led.

“I admire boldness in a man when his case is desperate and he is trying to save himself. I have lived among men who are bold in going after what they want.”

“I have had a little experience with that kind of land pirates, and I don't like the system.”

“I shall not make any unnecessary sacrifices,” she de-clared, tartly, but there were tears in her eyes. “I did what I could to help you when you were trying to save me. Why are you so ungenerous as to refuse to help me now?”

“It's taking advantage of you—of your position.”

“But I offer it—I beg of you to do it.”

“I will not do it.”

“You absolutely refuse?”

“Yes, Miss Marston.”

“Then I shall leave you to your own fate, Captain Mayo. You don't expect me to go to my father with the story, do you?”

“Certainly not'.”

“I shall go ahead now and protect myself the best I can. I am sure that Captain Downs will keep my secret. I shall forget that I ever sailed on that schooner. I suppose you will black yourself up and run away again!”

“I am going to New York.”

“To be put in jail?”

“Probably.”

“You make me very angry. After you have shown that you can fight, just when you ought to fight the hardest you slink bade to be whipped.”

“Yes, Miss Marston, if you care to put it that way.”

“Then, good-by!”

“Good-by!”

Perhaps each expected that the other would break the wall of reserve at this moment of parting. He hesitated a moment—an awkward instant—then he bowed and left the room.

Captain Downs walked with Mayo for a distance across the sand-dunes when the latter started to make his way to the nearest railroad station. The captain intended to remain at the inlet tmtil a representative of the Alden's owners arrived.

They left Bradish still huddled behind the stove in the kitchen.

“Unless my eyes have gone back on me, Captain Mayo, my notion is that the dude is wasting his time hanging around that girl any more,” suggested Captain Downs. “She has had him out on the marine railway of love, has made proper survey, and has decided that she would hate to sail the sea of matrimony with him. Don't you think that's so?”

“I think you're a good judge of what you see, Captain Downs.”

“I reckon that you and I as gents and master mariners are going to keep mum about her being aboard the Alden?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“The coast-guard crew don't know who she is, and they can't find out. So she can go home and mind her business from this time out. 'Most every woman does one infernal fool thing in her life—and then is all right ever after. But now a word on some subject that's sensible! What are you going to do?”

“Stick my head into the noose. It's about the only thing I can do.”

“But you'll talk up to 'em, of course?”

“I'll play what few cards I hold as best I know, sir. The most I can hope for is to make 'em drop that manslaughter case. Perhaps I can say enough so that they'll be afraid to bring me to trial. As to getting my papers back, I'm afraid that's out of the question. I'll have to start life over in something else.”

“Mayo, why don't you go to the captain's office?” He promptly answered the young man's glance of inquiry. “Julius Marston himself is the supreme boss of that steamship-consolidation business. Bradish gave all that part away, telling about those checks; though, of course, we all knew about Marston before. It is probably likely that Marston gives true courses to his understrappers. If they take fisherman's cuts between buoys in order to get there quick, I'll bet he doesn't know about it. Go to him and tell him, man to man, what has happened to you.”

“There are two reasons why I shall probably never see Mr. Marston,” returned Mayo, grimly. “First, I'll be arrested before I can get across New York to his office; second, I'll never get farther than the outer office. He's guarded like the Czar of Russia, so they tell me.”

“Does his girl know anything about your case?”

“I blabbed it to her—like a fool—when we were in the boat. Why is it that when a man is drunk or excited or in trouble, he'll blow the whole story of his life to a woman?” growled Mayo.

“I've thought that over some, myself,” admitted Captain Downs. “Especially on occasions when I've come to and realized what I've let out. I suppose it's this—more or less: A man don't tell his troubles to another man, for he knows that the other man is usually in'ardly glad of it because any friend is in trouble. But a woman's sympathy is like a flaxseed poultice—it soothes the ache and draws at the same time.”

Mayo trudged on in silence, kicking the sand.

“Seems to me the smallest thing that girl could have done was to offer to get you a hearing with her old man. It was some chore you did for her, mate!”

“I had to save myself. A few more in the party didn't matter.”

“These society girls think of themselves first, of course! I don't suppose you give a hoot for my advice, Captain Mayo, but I'm talking to you in the best spirit in the world.”

“I know you are, Captain Downs,” declared the young man, his sullenness departing. “I didn't mean to show bristles to you! I'll try to see Marston. It 'll be a hard stunt. But I'm in the mood to try anything. By gad! if they lug me to jail, I'll go kicking!”

“That's the spirit, boy. And if you can get in a few kicks where Julius Marston can see 'em they may count. He's the boss! I don't think I'll go any farther with you. This is too hard footing for an old waddler like me. Good luck!”

They shook hands and turned their backs on each other with sailor repression in the matter of the emotions.

The young man went on his way, wondering in numbed despair how he could have left Alma Marston with merely a curt word of farewell.

Mayo lurked that evening in the purlieus of Jersey City, and entered the metropolis after midnight on a ferryboat which had few passengers and afforded him a dark corner where he was alone. He found lodgings in humble quarters on the East Side.

In the morning he nerved himself to the ordeal of appearing in the streets. His belief in his own innocence made his suffering greater as he waited for the clap of a heavy hand on his shoulder and the summons of an officer's voice. He knew that the eyes of Uncle Sam are sharp and his reach a long one. He had firm belief in the almost uncanny vigilance of government officers. He was rather surprised to find himself at last in the outer office of Marston & Waller.

He sat down on a bench and waited for a time in order to regain his self-possession. He wanted to control features and voice before accosting one of the guardians of the magnate. But the espionage of the attendants did not permit loiterers to remain long in that place without explanation. A man tiptoed to him and asked his name and his business.

“My name doesn't matter,” said Mayo. “But I have important business with Mr. Marston. If you will tell him that the business is most important—that it is something he ought to know, and that—”

“You haven't any appointment, then?”

“No.”

“Do you think for one moment that you can get in to see Mr. Marston without giving your name and explaining beforehand the nature of your business?”

“I hoped so, for it is important.”

“What is it?”

“It's private—it's something for Mr. Marston.”

“Impossible!” was the man's curt rejoinder. He went back to his post. In a few moments he returned to Mayo. “You mustn't remain here. You cannot see Mr. Marston.”

“Won't you take in a message from me? I'll explain—”

“Explain to me. That's what I'm here for.”

Telling that cold-blooded person that this visitor was the broken master of the Montana was out of the question. To mention the case of the Montana to this watchdog was dangerous. But Mayo dreaded to go back to the street again.

“I'll stay here a little while and perhaps I can—” he began.

“If you stay here without explaining your business I'll have you escorted down to the street by an officer, my friend.”

Mayo rose and hurried out.

“An officer!” Even in his despairing and innocent quest of a hearing he was threatened with arrest! He sneaked back to his lodgings and hid himself in the squalid apartment and nursed the misery of his soul.

That night Mayo sat till late, toiling over a letter addressed to Julius Marston.

He despatched it by messenger at an early hour, and mustered his courage in the middle of the forenoon and followed in person. He assumed a boldness he did not feel in his quaking heart when he approached the guardian of the outer office.

“Will you ask Mr. Marston if he will see the man who sent him a letter by messenger this morning?” “What letter? Signed by what name?” “He will understand what letter I refer to.” “He will, will he?” The attendant gave this applicant sharp scrutiny. The coast-guard captain's liberty garments were not impressive, nor did they fit very well. Mayo displayed the embarrassment of the man who knew he was hunted. “Do you think Mr. Marston receives only one letter by messenger in a morning? Look here, my man, you were in here yesterday, and I look on you as a suspicious character. You cannot see Mr. Marston on any such excuse. Get out of that door inside of one minute or I'll send in a police call!”

And once more Mayo fled from the danger which threatened him. He bought a stock of newspapers at a sidewalk news-stand; his hours of loneliness in his little room the day before had tortured him mentally. He sat himself down and read them. The news that the Vose line had gone into the steamship combination was interesting and significant. Evidently the Montana's lay-up had discouraged the mass of stockholders. He had time to kill and thoughts to stifle; he went on reading scrupulously, lingering over matters in which he had no interest, striving to occupy his mind and drive the bitter memories and his fears away from him. Never in his life before had he read the society tattle in the newspapers. However, dragging along the columns, he found a paragraph on which he dwelt for a long time. It stated that Miss Marston of Fifth Avenue had returned by motor from a house-party in the Catskills, accompanied by Miss Lana Vanadistine, who would be a house guest of Miss Marston's for a few days.

That bit of news was significant. She had established her alibi; she had reinstated herself and had turned a smooth front to the world.

Mayo was certain in his soul that he knew her kind. His illusions were departing. Now that her tragic experience was behind her, now that she was back among her own, now that the fervor of romance was cool, she was thanking God, so he told himself, that she had not sacrificed herself for anybody. He was honestly glad that she was at home, glad of the hint which the paragraph gave—that her secret was still her own, so far as family and the social world were concerned.

That night Mayo took further counsel with himself. In the morning his final decision was made. He would endeavor once more to see Julius Maxston. He determined that he would march into the outer office, boldly announce his name, assert that he was there to expose a crime, and tell them that if Mr. Marston refused to hear him he should tell what he knew to the public through the newspapers; then he would ask them to send for the police, if the door of Marston's office remained closed to him. He would call attention to himself and to his case by all the uproar he could make. When he went to jail he would go with plenty of folks looking on. Let Marston and his fellow-financiers see how they liked that!

It was a desperate and a crude plan, but Mayo was not a diplomat—he was a sailor.

He marched forth on his errand with his chin up and resolve flaming within him.

Other men, prosperous-looking and rotund men, rode up in the elevator with him and went into Marston & Waller's office ahead of him, for he had modestly stepped to one side to allow them to pass.

He heard some talk of a “board meeting.” It was plain that Mr. Marston was to be occupied for a time. This was not a favorable moment in which to project himself upon the attention of the financier; he needed a clear field. Therefore he tramped up and down the corridor of the office building, watching the elevator door, waiting to see the rotund gentlemen go on their way. And with attention thus focused he saw Miss Alma Marston arrive.

She waited until the elevator had passed on, and then she came directly to him. Her expression did not reveal her mood except to hint that she was self-possessed.

“I am not especially surprised to find you here,” she told him. “I believe you said to Captain Downs—so he informed me—that you were going to try to see my father. And men who try to see my father, without proper introduction, usually kick their heels outside his office for some days.”

There was a bit of hauteur in her voice. She preserved much of the acerbity which had marked her demeanor when they had said good-by to each other. He would not acknowledge to himself that he hoped she would meet him on another plane; he meekly accepted her attitude as the proper one. He was a sailor, and she was the daughter of Julius Marston.

“Do you blame me for being suspicious in regard to what you intend to say to my father?” she demanded. “I tell you frankly that I came here looking for you. We must settle our affair.”

“I am trying to get word with him about my own business—simply my own business, Miss Marston.”

“But as to me! What are you going to say to him about me? You remember I told you that I intended to protect myself,” she declared, with some insolence.

“I thought you had a better opinion of me,” he protested. “Miss Marston, as far as I am concerned, you never were on that schooner. I know nothing about you. I do not even know you. Do you understand?”

He started away hastily. “Don't stay here. Don't speak to me. Somebody may see you.”

“'Come back here!”

He stopped.

“I demand an explicit promise from you that if you are able to talk with my father you will never mention my name to him or try to take advantage of the dreadful mistake I made.”

“I promise, on my honor,” he said, straightening.

“Thank you, sir.”

“And now that I have promised,” he added, red in his tanned cheeks, “I want to say to you, Miss Marston, that you have insulted me gratuitously. I suppose I'm not much in the way of a gentleman as you meet them in society. I'm only a sailor. But I'm neither a tattler nor a blackmailer. I know the square thing to do where a woman is concerned, and I would have done it without being put under a pledge.” He bowed and walked away.

She gazed after him, a queer sparkle in her eyes. “We'll see about you, you big child!” she murmured.

She entered the waiting-room of the Marston & Waller suite, and was informed that her father was busy with a board meeting.

“But it's merely a bit of routine business. It will soon be over, Miss Marston—if you will be so good as to wait.”

After a time the gentlemen filed out, but she waited on.

“Tell my father that I'm here and will be in presently,” she commanded the guardian.

Before the messenger returned Mayo came in, rather apprehensively. He tried to avoid her, but she met him face to face and accosted him with spirit.

“Now that I have put you on your honor, I'm not afraid to have you talk your business over with my father. Come with me. I will take you to him. Then we will call accounts square between us.”

“Very well,” he consented. “After what I have been through here, I feel that one service matches the other.” Mayo followed her and came into The Presence.

Julius Marston was alone, intrenched behind his desk, on his throne of business; the dark back of the chair, towering over his head, set off in contrast his gray garb and his cold face; to Mayo, who halted respectfully just inside the door, he appeared a sort of bas-relief against that background—something insensate, without ears to listen or heart to bestow compassion.

The girl, hurrying to him, engaged his attention until she had seated herself on the arm of his chair. Then he saw Mayo, recognized him, and tried to rise, but she pushed him back, urging him with eager appeal.

“You must listen to me, father! It is serious! It is important!”

He groped for the row of desk buttons, but she held his hand from them.

Captain Mayo strode forward, determined to speak for himself, rendered bold by the courageous sacrifice the girl was making.

“Not a word! Not a word! The supreme impudence of it!” Marston repeated the last phrase several times with increasing violence. He pushed his daughter off the arm of the chair and struggled up. Only heroic measures could save that situation—and the girl knew her father! She forced herself between him and his desk.

“You'd better listen!” she warned him, hysterically. “A few days ago I ran away to be married!”

He stood there, stricken motionless, and she put her hands against his breast and pressed him back into his chair.

“But this is not the man, father!”

Marston had been gathering his voice for wild invective, but that last statement took away all his power of speech.

“I warned you that you'd better listen!”

In that moment she dominated the situation as completely as if she stood between the two men with a lighted bomb in her hand.

Mayo was overwhelmed even more completely than the financier. He realized that her extortion of a pledge from him had been subterfuge; her triumphant eyes flashed complete information on that point. Both anger and bewilderment made him incapable of any sane attempt to press his case with Marston at that time. He turned and started for the door.

“Stop that man, father. You'll be sorry if you do not! He must stay!”

“Come back here!” shouted Marston.

Mayo looked behind.

The magnate stood with finger on the push-button. “Come back, I say!”

“I protest. This is none of my business. I am here for something else than to listen to your daughter's private affairs.”

“You come back!” commanded the father in low tones of menace, “or I'll have you held for the United States marshals the minute you step foot outside that door.”

Raging within himself at the tactics of this incomprehensible girl, Captain Mayo walked slowly to the desk; it occurred to him that it was as hard to get out of Julius Marston's office as it was to get in.

“I would never have come in here if I had dreamed that your daughter would tell you what she has. I am in a false position. I insist that you allow me to leave.”

“You'll leave when I get to the bottom of this thing! Now, Alma, what new craziness is all this?”

“I am not resenting the word you apply to it,” she replied, facing him resolutely. “I did it—and I don't know why I did it!”

“Did what?”

“I ran away. I did it because the girls dared me to do it. I promised a man I would marry him.”

“This man, eh?”

“No. I have told you this is not the man.”

“Well, who, then?” Incredulity was mingled with her father's wrath.

“One of your trusted young gentlemen. Mr. Ralph Bradish.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“At the dances.”

“Not at our house?”

“I do not know how you are so sure of that, father,” she returned, a touch of rather wistful reproach in her tones. “You have left me alone in that house ever since mother went away. But it was not at our house—it was in the public ball-rooms.”

“Hell set to music!” he rasped. “I ought to have realized that you are still an infant!”

“No; I am a woman to-day. I lived a whole lifetime in one night on the ocean. I know you have reason to be ashamed of me. But I'll never give you cause for shame again. Now what are you going to say to this man who saved my life—who did more than that? He saved me from myself!”

Marston narrowed his eyes and scrutinized Mayo. “I don't understand this thing yet! The story doesn't ring right.” He turned on his daughter. “How did this man save your life? Be quick and be short!”

He interrupted her in the middle of her eager recital. He had been scowling while she talked, staring into vacancy in meditation.

“A story-book tale!” he declared, impatiently, and yet there was a shade of insincerity in that impatience. “I would be bitterly ashamed of you, Alma, if you had run away as you are trying to make me believe. But—”

“Don't you believe me?”

“Silence! But this trumped-up story is too transparent. You are still acting the fool in the matter of this person, here. Now see here, my man, you are here to-day on the Montana affair. Isn't that so?”

“It is, sir.”

“I was sure of it. How did you dare to sneak into that job after I had discharged you from the Olenia?”

“There was no sneaking to it! I was hired by Mr. Fogg and I—”

“You may be sure that I did not know you were on board the Montana. But I cannot attend to all the details of my business. You realize, don't you, that you are a fugitive from justice?”

“I am a scapegoat for the dirty dogs who operate for you!”

“That's enough! I am investigating this matter now? Sit down in that chair!”

Mayo obeyed, lulled by the assurance.

“Alma, you go home!”

“I am going to stay here, father, until Captain Mayo—”

“I have listened to all the falsehoods I propose to hear!” This rejoinder astounded his two listeners. “I see into this matter clear to the bottom. I am amazed that you should think such a silly yarn would deceive me for a moment.” He had pressed one of the buttons. To the man who opened the door he said: “Tell Mr. Bradish that I want to see him here at once. He is in the office, isn't he?”

“Yes, sir! I will inform him.”

Mayo and the girl exchanged eloquent looks; they had been leaving Mr. Bradish out of their calculations; they had discarded him from their thoughts; that he had had the effrontery to reappear in the Marston & Waller offices was news indeed.

Marston took the girl by the arm and led her toward a door. “I tell you to go home!” he cried, angrily, stopping her protests. “No, you are going by this side door. I do not believe one word you have told me. It's all a transparent attempt to continue your folly. I'll know how to look after you from now on!” He closed the door behind her and locked it.

“I swear this is all true, sir,” pleaded Mayo. “I'm not trying to deceive you through your daughter. I did not understand what she intended to say. I want my rights as a man who has been tricked, abused—”

Mr. Bradish appeared, bowing respectfully. He was once more part of the smooth machinery of the Marston & Waller offices. He was pale, calm, cool, subdued master of his emotions as the employees of Julius Marston were trained to be.

“Did you ever see this man before? Of course you never did!” prompted the financier.

“I never saw him before, sir.”

“Certainly not! What have you to say to the ridiculous, nonsensical story that you attempted to elope with my daughter?”

Not by a flicker of the eyelids did the imperturbable maker of million-dollar checks show confusion.

“If such a lie needs denial from me I most firmly do deny it, sir.”

“You cheap renegade!” roared the captain.

“That will do, Mr. Bradish!”

The clerk obeyed the wave of his master's hand and retired quickly.

“Mr. Marston,” raved Mayo, “I'm fighting for all that's worth while to me in life. My reputation as a master mariner, my chance to make a living in my work. I was a fool on board your yacht! With all my soul I am penitent. I will-”

“Enough! Don't you dare to discuss my own daughter with me!”

“I don't intend to, sir. I'm going to believe that you don't know what your understrappers have done to me. You only see results. But find out what is being done in your name, Mr. Marston. Some day it will be bad for you if you don't stop 'em.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It's only my appeal for justice. My God, sir—”

“There's justice waiting for you.”

“Then send out for your marshals. Let them drag me into court! Your man Bradigh's mouth is closed now, but it has been open. I know what has been done to me. Let them put me on the stand. You don't dare to have me stand up in court and tell what I know.”

“Do you suppose I am running the Federal courts?”

“You'd better find out whether you have power or not. There are men in this world who will believe an honest man's true story!”

“Good day!” said Mr. Marston, significantly.

Mayo hesitated, gazed into the impassive countenance of the magnate, and then conviction of the uselessness of argument overwhelmed him. He started for the door.

“Certain sensible things can be done,” Marston called after him. “You'd better get out of New York. If you know of a place to hide you'd better get into it.”

Mayo did not reply. He strode out through the offices, descended to the street, and went on his way.

He did not notice that an automobile pursued him through the roaring traffic of the streets, halting ahead of him when, he had turned into one of the quieter thoroughfares.