Morning brought to him neither cheer nor counsel. The winds swept the fog off the seas, and the brightness of the sunshine only mocked the gloom of Captain Mayo's thoughts.
He was most unmistakably far off his course. He took his bearings carefully, and he groped through his memory and his experience for reasons which would explain how he came to be away up there on Hedge Fence. Two of the masts of the sunken stone-schooner showed above the sea, two depressing monuments of disaster. He took further bearings and tested his compass with minute care. So far as he could determine it was correct to the dot.
It was a busy forenoon for all on board the steamer. The revenue cutters took off the passengers. Representatives of the underwriters came out from Wood's Hole on a tug. The huge Montana, set solidly into its bed of sand, loomed against the sky, mute witness of somebody's inefficiency or mistake.
Late in the day Captain Mayo and General-Manager Fogg locked themselves in the captain's cabin to have it out.
When the master had finished his statement Mr. Fogg flicked the ash from his cigar, studied the glowing end for a time, and narrowed his eyes.
“So, summing it all up, it happened, and you don't know just how it happened. You were off your course and don't know how you happened to be off your course. You don't expect us to defend you before the steamboat inspectors, with that for an explanation, Mayo?”
“All I can do is to tell the truth at the hearing, sir.”
“They'll break you, sure as a mule wags ears. There are five dead men inside that wreck yonder. Don't you reckon you'll be indicted for manslaughter?”
“I shall claim that the collision was unavoidable.”
“But you were off your course—were in a place you had no business to be in. That knocks your defense all to the devil. You are in almighty bad, Mayo. You must wake up to it.”
The young man was pale and rigid and silent.
“The Vose line is in bad enough as it is, without trying to defend you. I suppose I'll be blamed for putting on a young captain. Mayo, I am older than you are and wiser about the law and such matters. Why don't you duck out from under, eh?”
“You mean run away?”
“I wouldn't put it quite as bluntly as that. I mean, go away and keep out of sight till it quiets down. If you stay they'll put you on the rack and get you all tangled up by firing questions at you. And what will you gain by going through the muss? You've got to agree with me that the inspectors will suspend you—revoke your license. Here's this steamer here, talking for herself. If you stay around underfoot, and all the evidence is brought out at the hearing, then the Federal grand jury will take the thing up, probably. They'll have a manslaughter case against you.”
Still Captain Mayo did not speak.
“If you simply drop out of sight I don't believe they'll chase you. Personally, having watched you last night, I don't believe you are guilty of any very bad break. It simply happened wrong. We don't want all the notoriety a court trial would bring to the line. And here's what I'll do, Mayo. I'll slip you a few hundred for expenses so that you can go away and grab into the shipping game somewhere else. A fellow like you can land on his feet.”
“Mr. Fogg, a renegade steamboat man stands a mighty poor show. I may be suspended, and worse may happen to me, but I'm not going to ruin myself and my good name by running away. That's confession! It's wrecking all my prospects forever—and I have worked too hard for what I've got. I'm going to stay here and face the music—tell my story like a man.”
“It will make a fine story—and you have told me yourself that they are just waiting to make a smashing example of somebody,” sneered Fogg. “You, a cub captain, broke the navigation rules last night by running at least fifteen knots in the fog. Your log and the testimony of your mates will show that. I'm not blaming you, son. I'm showing you how it looks! You got off your course and rammed a schooner at anchor, and you didn't even stop to pick up her men. I saw that much. Mayo, the only sensible thing for you to do is to duck out from under. It will save the line from a lot of scandal and bad advertising. By gad! if you don't do that much for us, after the offer I've just made you, I'll go onto the stand and testify against you.”
“You seem to be mighty ready and anxious to make me the goat in this thing,” blazed the young man, his temper getting away from him. He had been without sleep for many hours, his soul had been crucified by the bitter experiences he had been through.
“Are you looking for a fight?”
“No, Mr. Fogg, I'm looking for a square deal. I haven't done anything intentionally to make me a fugitive from justice. I won't run away.”
“You won't be the first witness who has helped big interests by keeping out of sight and out of reach of the lawyers. It's business, Mayo.”
“It may be, Mr. Fogg. I don't know the inside of the big deals. I'm only a sailor. I associate with sailors. And I've got a little pride in my good name.”
Mr. Fogg looked at this recalcitrant with scorn. He wanted to tell this stubborn individual that he was merely a two-spot in the big game which was being played. But the expression on Mayo's face encouraged neither levity nor sneers.
“I'll give you a thousand dollars expense money for your trip and will talk job with you next year after you get your license back,” proffered the general manager.
Captain Mayo fixed flaming eyes on the tempter. “What special, private reason have you got for wanting to bribe me?” demanded the young man, with such heat that Fogg flinched. “You are making something very mysterious out of what should be open and aboveboard. That may be Wall Street tactics, Mr. Fogg, but it doesn't go with a sailor who has earned a master's papers and is proud of it.”
“Well, pass on then,” directed Fogg. “There's a tug alongside to take the underwriters back to Wood's Hole. Go along—to jail, or wherever it is you'll fetch up.”
“I shall stay aboard this ship as her captain until I am relieved according to the formalities of the admiralty law,” declared Captain Mayo, with dignity. “I don't propose to run away from duty or punishment, Mr. Fogg.”
The general manager pursed a contemptuous mouth and departed from the cabin. He went away on the tug without further word to Mayo.
During the next two days small craft buzzed about the stricken giant like flies around a carcass. There were insurance men, wreckers with plans and projects, sightseers, stockholders—and one visitor was Captain Zoradus Wass.
“Nothing else to do just now, boy, except to come and sympathize with you.” He clucked his tongue against his teeth as he looked the steamer over. It was condolence without words. “Now tell me the story of it—with all the fine details,” he demanded, after they were closeted in the captain's cabin. He sat with elbows on his knees and gazed at the floor during the recital, and he continued to gaze at the floor for some time after Mayo had ceased speaking.
“I admit that the quartermaster let her off for just a minute—less than a minute,” repeated the young man. “I had only just looked away for an instant. I helped him put her over. We couldn't have done more than cut a letter S for a few lengths. But the more I think of it, the queerer it seems. Two points off, almost in a finger-snap!”
“Tell that part of it over and over again, while I shut my eyes and get it fixed in my mind as if I had seen it,” requested Captain Wass. “Who was there, where did they stand, and so forth and et cetry. When a thing happens and you can't figger it out, it's usually because you haven't pawed over the details carefully enough. Go ahead! I'm a good listener.”
But after he had listened he had no comments to make. He went out of the cabin after a few minutes' wait which was devoted to deep meditation, and strolled about the ship, hands behind his back, scuffing his feet. A half-hour later, meeting Captain Mayo on his rounds, the veteran inquired:
“How do you happen to have Oliver Burkett aboard here?” “I don't know him.”
“You ought to know him. He is the captain the Vose line fired off the Nirvana three years ago. He gave the go-ahead and a jingle when he was making dock, and chewed up four fishing-boats and part of the pier. He had to choose between admitting that he was drunk, crazy, or bribed by the opposition. And I guess they figured that he was all three. Was he aboard here the night it happened?”
“I don't know, sir.”
“According to my notion it's worth finding out,” growled Captain Wass. “I'm not seeing very far into this thing as yet, son, and I'll admit it. But if dirty work was done to you, Burkett would have been a handier tool for Fogg than a Stillson wrench in a plumbing job. No, don't ask me questions now. I haven't got any consolation for you or confidence in myself. I'm only thinking.”
The next day the wounded Montana was formally surrendered to the underwriters.
Captain Boyd Mayo was ordered to appear before the United States inspectors, and he went and told his story as best he could. But his best was an unconvincing tale, after all. He left the hearing after his testimony and walked down to the little hotel by the water-front to wait for news.
Captain Wass came bustling down to the little hotel, plumping along at an extra rate of speed, setting his heels down hard, a moving monument of gloom.
His protégé, removing disconsolate gaze from the dusty chromos on the office walls, did not require verbal report; Captain Wass's demeanor told all.
“And you couldn't expect much of anything else,” declared the old man. “I made the best talk I could for you after you had finished your testimony and had gone out. But it was no use, son! The department has been laying for a victim. Both of us have known that right along. They have soaked it to you good and proper.”
“How long am I suspended for?” faltered Mayo.
“That's the point! Indefinitely. You were meat. Everybody watching the case. They trimmed you.”
Mayo set his hands into his thick hair, propped his head, and stared at the floor.
“Indefinitely doesn't mean forever, but there ain't much comfort in that. I'll tell you what it does mean, boy. It means that if there has been crooked work we've got to show it up in order to reinstate you. And now get a good brace on yourself. I've taken a peek in at the United States court.”
The young man, without lifting his head, gave the veteran a piteous side-glance.
“Fletcher Fogg is buzzing around the outside of that hive. He has Burkett along for an understrapper. They are marshaling in witnesses before the grand jury—those men from the Warren, and you know what they'll say, of course! Your mates and quartermasters, too! Mayo, they're going to railroad you to Atlanta penitentiary. They have put something over on you because you are young and they figured that you'd be a little green. It seemed queer to me when Fogg was so mighty nice to you all of a sudden. But they don't lay off a man like Jacobs and put in a new man just to be nice. They either felt they couldn't work Jacobs, or else they felt a green man would give 'em a good excuse for what happened.”
“But they couldn't arrange to have a schooner—”
“That was probably more than they figured on. But as long as it has happened they're going to use it to best advantage. You're going to have both tin cans tied to you, son. Every cussed bit of influence is going to be used against you. Poor devils on the outside, like you and I, don't understand just how slick the ways can be greased. Mayo, I'm going to give you good advice. Duck out!”
“Run away like a confessed criminal? That's the advice Fogg gave me. I don't think your advice is good, Captain Wass. I won't run away.”
“It may not be good advice. I ain't wise enough to know everything that's best. But if they put you behind the bars in Atlanta, son, you'll stay there till your term is up. No matter what is found out in your case, it will take money and a lot of time to get the truth before the right people. But if you ain't in prison, and we can get a line on this case and dig up even a part of the truth, then you've got a fighting chance in the open. If we can get just enough to make 'em afraid to put you onto the witness-stand, that much may make 'em quit their barking. You're a sailor, boy! You know a sailor can't do much when his hands are tied. Stay outside the penitentiary and help me fight this thing.”
“I don't know what to do,” mourned the young man. “I'm all in a whirl. I'm no coward, Captain Wass. I'm willing to face the music. But I'm so helpless.”
“Stay outside jail till the fog lifts a bit in this case,” adjured his mentor. “Are you going to lie down and stick up your legs to have 'em tied, like a calf bound for market? Here are a few things you can do if you duck out of sight for a little while. I'll go ahead and—”
Suddenly he checked himself. He was facing the window, which commanded a considerable section of street. He wasted no further breath on good advice.
“I know those men coming down there,” he cried. “They're bailiffs. I saw them around the court-house. They're after you, Mayo! You run! Get away! There must be a back door here. Scoot!” He pulled the unresisting scapegoat out of his chair and hustled him to the rear of the office.
A young man may have the best intentions. He may resolve to be a martyr, to bow to the law's majesty. But at that moment Mayo was receiving imperious command from the shipmaster whose orders he had obeyed for so long that obedience was second nature. And panic seized him! Men were at hand to arrest him. There was no time to reason the thing out. Flight is the first impulse of innocence persecuted. Manly resolve melted. He ran.
“I'll stay behind and bluff 'em off! I'll say you're just out for a minute, that I'm waiting here for you,” cried Captain Wass. “That will give you a start. Try the docks. You may find one of the boys who will help.”
Mayo escaped into a yard, dodged down an alley, planning his movements as he hurried, having a mariner's quickness of thought in an emergency.
He made directly for the pier where steam-vessels took water. A huge ocean-going tug was just getting ready to leave her berth under the water-hose. Her gruff whistle-call had ordered hawsers cast off. Mayo's 'longcoast acquaintance was fairly extensive. This was a coal-barge tug, and he waved quick greeting to the familiar face in her pilot-house and leaped aboard. He climbed the forward ladder nimbly.
“I reckon you'll have to make it hello and good-by in one breath, mate,” advised the skipper. “I'm off to take a light tow down-coast. Norfolk next stop.”
“Let her go—sooner the better,” gasped the fugitive. “I'll explain why as soon as you are out of the dock.”
“You don't say that you want to take the trip?”
“I've got to take it.”
The skipper cocked an eyebrow and pulled his bell. “Make yourself to home, mate,” he advised. “I hope you ain't in so much of a hurry to get there as you seem to be, for I've got three barges to tow.”
Mayo sat down on the rear transom and was hidden from all eyes on the pier.
There was no opportunity for an explanation until the barges had been picked up, for there was much manouver-ing and much tooting. But he found ready sympathy after he had explained.
“The law sharps are always hankering to catch a poor cuss who is trying to navigate these waters and suit the inspectors and the owners at the same time,” admitted the master of the tug. “I have read everything the papers had to say about your case, and I figured they didn't give you a fair show. Newspapers and lawyers and owners don't understand what a fellow is up against. I'm glad you're aboard, mate, because I want to hear your side, with all the details.”
The threshing over of the matter occupied many hours of the long wallow down the Jersey coast, and the tug captain weighed all features of the case with the care of a man who has plenty of time on his hands and with the zest a mariner displays in considering the affairs of his kind of folk.
“If I didn't know you pretty well, Mayo, and know what kind of a man you got your training with, I might think—just as those law sharps will probably say—that you were criminally careless or didn't know your business. But that dodge she made on you! Two points off her course! You've got to put your finger right on there and hold it! Let me tell you something. It was a queer thing in my own case. That was a queer thing in your case. Stand two queer things in our business up beside each other and squint at 'em and you may learn something.”
“She was on her course—I put her there with my own hands,” persisted Mayo.
“Sure! You know your business. If this thing was going to be left to the bunch that know you, you'd go clear. But here's what happened in my case: I had a new man in the wheel-house, here, and he almost rammed me into Cuttyhunk, gave me a touch and go with the Pollock Rip Lightship, and had me headed toward Nauset when the fog lifted. And he was steering my courses to the thinness of a hair, at that! Say, I took a sudden tumble and frisked that chap and dragged a toad-stabber knife out of his pocket—one of those regular foot-long knives. It had been yawing off that compass all the way from a point to a point and a half. When did you shift wheel-watch?”
“Before we made Vineyard Sound.”
“And no trouble coming up the sound?”
“Made Nobska and West Chop to the dot.”
“Then perhaps your general manager, who was in that pilot-house, had an iron gizzard inside him. Most of them Wall Street fellows do have!” said the skipper, with sarcasm.
“There's something going on in the steamboat business that I can't understand,” declared Mayo. “It's high up; it hasn't to do with us chaps, who have to take the kicks. Fogg brought a man aboard the old Nequasset, and he didn't bring along a good explanation to go with that man. I have been wondering ever since how it happened that Fogg got to be general manager of the Vose line so almighty sudden.”
“Them high financiers play a big game, mate. And if you happened to be a marked card in it, they'd tear you up and toss you under the table without thinking twice. If you'll take a tip from me, you lay low and do a lot of thinking while Uncle Zoradus does his scouting. What are you going to do when you get to Norfolk?”
“I haven't thought.”
“Well, the both of us better think, and think hard, mate. If the United States is really after you there'll be a sharp eye at every knot-hole. I can't afford to let 'em get in a crack at me for what I've done.”
“I'll jump overboard outside the capes before I'll put you in wrong,” asserted Mayo, with deep feeling.
That night the captain of the tug took a trick at the wheel in person.
His guest lay on the transom, smoking the skipper's spare pipe, and racking his mind for ways and means. After a time he was conscious that the captain was growling a bit of a song to relieve the tedium of his task. He sang the same words over and over—a tried and true Chesapeake shanty:
Mayo rolled off the transom and went to the captain's side. “There's more truth than poetry in that song of yours, sir,” he said. “You have given me an idea. A nigger in Norfolk doesn't attract much attention. And I haven't got to be one of the black ones, either. Don't you suppose there's something aboard here I can use to stain my face with?”
“My cook is a great operator as a tattoo artist.”
“I don't think I want to make the disguise permanent, sir,” stated the young man, with a smile.
“What I mean is, he may have something in his kit that he can use to paint you with. What's your idea—stay there? I'm afraid they'll nail you.” >
“I'll stay there just long enough to ship before the mast on a schooner. There isn't time to think up any better plan just now. Anything to keep out of sight until I can make up my mind about what's really best to be done.”
“We'll have that cook up here,” offered the captain. “He's safe.”
The cook took prompt and professional interest in the matter. “Sure!” he said. “I've got a stain that will sink in and stay put for a long time, if no grease paint is used. Only you mustn't wash your face.”
“There's no danger of a fellow having any inducement to do that when he's before the mast on a schooner in these days,” declared the tug captain, dryly.
An hour later, Captain Boyd Mayo, late of the crack liner Montana, was a very passable mulatto, his crisply curling hair adding to the disguise. He swapped his neat suit of brown with a deck-hand, and received some particularly unkempt garments.
The next night, when the tug was berthed at the water station, he slipped off into the darkness, as homeless and as disconsolate as an abandoned dog.
Captain Mayo kept out of the region of the white lights for some time. He had a pretty wide acquaintance in the Virginia port, and he knew the beaten paths of the steamboating transients, ashore for a bit of a blow.
He lurked in alleys, feeling especially disreputable. He was not at all sure that his make-up was effective. His own self-consciousness convinced him that he was a glaring fraud, whose identity would be revealed promptly to any person who knew him. But while he sneaked in the purlieus of the city several of his 'longshore friends passed him without a second look. One, a second engineer on a Union line freighter, whirled after passing, and came back to him.
“Got a job, boy?”
“No, sir.”
“We need coal-passers on the Drummond. She's in the stream. Come aboard in the morning.”
But it was not according to Mayo's calculation, messing with steamboat men. “Ah doan' conclude ah wants no sech job,” he drawled.
“No, of course you don't want to work, you blasted yaller mutt!” snapped the engineer. He marched on, cursing, and Mayo was encouraged, for the man had given him a thorough looking-over.
He went out onto the wider streets. He was looking for a roving schooner captain, reckoning he would know one of that gentry by the cut of his jib.
A ponderous man came stumping down the sidewalk, swinging his shoulders.
“He's one of 'em,” decided Mayo. The round-crowned soft hat, undented, the flapping trouser legs, the gait recognized readily by one who has ever seen a master mariner patrol his quarter-deck—all these marked him as a safe man to tackle. He stopped, dragged a match against the brick side of a building, and relighted his cigar. But before Mayo could reach him a colored man hurried up and accosted the big gentleman, whipping off his hat and bowing with smug humility. Mayo hung up at a little distance. He recognized the colored man; he was one of the numerous Norfolk runners who furnish crews for vessels. He wore pearl-gray trousers, a tailed coat, and had a pink in his buttonhole.
“Ah done have to say that ah doan' get that number seven man up to now, Cap'n Downs, though I have squitulate for him all up and down. But ah done expect—”
Captain Downs scowled over his scooped hands, puffing hard at his cigar. He threw away the match.
“Look-a-here! you've been chasing me two days with new stories about that seventh man. Haven't you known me long enough to know that you can't trim me for another fee?”
“Cap'n Downs, you done know yo'self the present lucidateness of the sailorman supply.”
“I know that if you don't get that man aboard my schooner to-night or the first thing to-morrow morning you'll never put another one aboard for me. You go hustle! And look here! I see you making up your mouth! Not another cent!”
The colored man backed off and went away.
Mayo accosted the captain when that fuming gentleman came lunging along the sidewalk. “Ah done lak to have that job, cap'n,” he pleaded.
“You a sailor?”
“Yas, sir.”
“How is it you ain't hiring through the regular runners?”
“Ah doan' lak to give all my money to a dude nigger to go spotein' on.”
“Well, there's something in that,” acknowledged Captain Downs, softening a bit. “I haven't got much use for that kind myself. You come along. But if you ain't A-1, shipshape, and seamanlike and come aboard my vessel to loaf on your job you'll wish you were in tophet with the torches lighted. Got any dunnage laying around anywhere?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, then, I guess you're a regular sailor, all right, the way the breed runs nowadays. That sounds perfectly natural.” The captain led the way down to a public landing, where a power-yawl, with engineer and a mate, was in waiting. “Will she go into the stream to-night, Mr. Dodge?” asked Captain Downs, curtly.
“No, sir! About four hundred tons still to come.”
Schooner captains keep religiously away from their vessels as long as the crafts lie at the coal-docks.
“Come up for me in the morning as soon as she is in the stream. Here's a man to fill the crew. If that coon shows up with another man kick the two of 'em up the wharf.”
“Will the passenger come aboard with you, sir?”
“He called me up at the hotel about supper-time and said something about wanting to come aboard at the dock. I tried to tell him it was foolish, but it's safe to reckon that a man who wants to sail as passenger from here to Boston on a coal-schooner is a fool, anyway. If he shows up, let him come aboard.” Captain Downs swung away and the night closed in behind him.
Mayo took his place in the yawl and preserved meek and proper silence during the trip down the harbor.
When they swung under the counter of the schooner which was their destination, the young man noted that she was the Drusilla M. Alden, a five-master, of no very enviable record along the coast, so far as the methods and manners of her master went; Mayo had heard of her master, whose nickname was “Old Mull.” He had not recognized him under the name of Captain Downs when the runner had addressed him.
The new member of the crew followed the mate up the ladder—only a few steps, for the huge schooner, with most of her cargo aboard, showed less than ten feet of freeboard amidships.
“Sleepy, George?” asked the mate, when they were on deck.
“No, sir.”
“Then you may as well go on this watch.”
“Yass'r!”
“We'll call it now eight bells, midnight. You'll go off watch eight bells, morning.”
Mayo knew that the hour was not much later than eleven, but he did not protest; he knew something about the procedure aboard coastwise coal-schooners.
Search-lights bent steady glare upon the chutes down which rushed the streams of coal, black dust swirling in the white radiance. The great pockets at Lambert Point are never idle. High above, on the railway, trains of coal-cars racketed. Under his feet the fabric of the vessel trembled as the chutes fed her through the three hatches. Sweating, coal-blackened men toiled in the depths of her, revealed below hatches by the electric lights, pecking at the avalanche with their shovels, trimming cargo.
The young man exchanged a few listless words with the two negroes who were on deck, his mates of the watch.
They were plainly not interested in him, and he avoided them.
The hours dragged. He helped to close and batten the fore-hatch, and later performed similar service on the hatch aft. The main-hatch continued to gulp the black food which the chute fed to it.
Suddenly a tall young man appeared to Mayo. The stranger was smartly dressed, and his spick-and-span garb contrasted strangely with the general riot of dirt aboard the schooner. He trod gingerly over the dust-coated planks and carried two suit-cases.
“Here, George,” he commanded. “Take these to my stateroom.”
Mayo hesitated.
“I'm going as passenger,” said the young man, impatiently, and Mayo remembered what the captain had told the mate.
Passengers on coal-schooners, sailing as friends of the master, were not unknown on the coast, but Mayo judged, from what he had heard, that this person was not a friend, and had wondered a bit.
“I am not allowed to go aft, sir, without orders from the mate.”
“Where is the mate?”
“I think he is below, sir.”
“Asleep?”
“I wouldn't wonder.”
Mayo did not trouble to use his dialect on this stranger, a mere passenger, who spoke as if he were addressing a car-porter. The tone produced instant irritation, resentment in the man who had so recently been master of his ship.
The passenger set down his baggage and pondered a moment. He looked Mayo over in calculating fashion; he stared up the wharf. Then he picked up his bags and hurried along the port alley and disappeared down the companionway.
He returned in a few moments, came into the waist of the vessel, and made careful survey of all about him. There were two sailors far forward, merely dim shadows. For some reason general conditions on the schooner seemed to satisfy the stranger.
“The thing is breaking about right—about as I reckoned it would,” he said aloud. “Look here, George, how much talking do you do about things you see?”
“Talking to who, sir?”
“Why, to your boss—the captain—the mate.”
“A sailor before the mast is pretty careful not to say anything to a captain or the mates unless they speak to him first, sir.”
“George, I'm not going to do anything but what is perfectly all right, you understand. You'll not get into any trouble over it. But what you don't see you can't tell, no matter if questions are asked later on. Here, take this!” He crowded two silver dollars into Mayo's hands and gave him a push. “You trot forward and stay there about five minutes, that's the boy! It's all right. It's a little of my own private business. Go ahead!”
Mayo went. He reflected that it was none of his affair what a passenger did aboard the vessel. It was precious little interest he took in the craft, anyway, except as a temporary refuge. He turned away and put the money in his pocket, the darkness hiding his smile.
He did not look toward the wharf. He strolled on past the forward house, where the engineer was stoking his boiler, getting up steam for the schooner's windlass engine. When he patrolled aft again, after a conscientious wait, he found the passenger leaning against the coachhouse door, smoking a cigarette. The electric light showed his face, and it wore a look of peculiar satisfaction.
Just then some one fumbled inside the coach-house door at the stranger's back, and when the latter stepped away the first mate appeared, yawning.
“I'm the passenger—Mr. Bradish,” the young man explained, promptly. “I just made myself at home, put my stuff in a stateroom, and locked the door and took the key. Is that all right?”
“May be just as well to lock it while we're at dock and stevedores are aboard,” agreed the mate.
“How soon do we pull out of here?”
The mate yawned again and peered up into the sky, where the first gray of the summer dawn was showing over the cranes of the coal-pockets. “In about a half-hour, I should say. Just as soon as the tug can use daylight to put us into the stream.”
The roar of the coal in the main-hatch chute had ceased. The schooner was loaded.
“Go strike eight bells, Jeff, and turn in!” ordered the mate, speaking to Mayo.
“Well, I'll stay outside, here, and watch the sun rise,” said Bradish. “It will be a new experience.”
“It's an almighty dirty place for loafing till we get into the stream and clean ship, sir. I should think taking an excursion on a coal-lugger would be another new experience!” There was just a hint of grim sarcasm in his tone.
“The doctor ordered me to get out and away where I wouldn't hear of business or see business, and a friend of mine told me there were plenty of room and comfort aboard one of these big schooners. That cabin and the staterooms, they're fine!”
“Oh, they have to give a master a good home these days. That's a Winton carpet in the saloon,” declared the mate, with pride. “And we've got a one-eyed cook who can certainly sling grub together. Yes, for a cheap vacation I dun'no' but a schooner is all right!”
The two were getting on most amicably when Mayo went forward. He was dog-tired and turned in on tie bare boards of his fo'cas'le berth.
No bedding is furnished men before the mast on the coal-carriers.
If a man wants anything between himself and the boards he must bring it with him, and few do so. At the end of each trip a crew is discharged and new men are hired, in order to save paying wages while a vessel is in port loading or discharging. Therefore, a coastwise schooner harbors only transients, for whom the fo'cas'le is merely a shelter between watches.
But Mayo was a sailor, and the bare boards served him better than bedding in which some dusky and dirty son of Ham had nestled. He laid himself down and slept soundly.
The second mate turned out the watch below at four bells—six in the morning. The schooner was in the stream and all hands were needed to work hose and brooms and clear off the coal-dust. Mayo toiled in the wallow of black water till his muscles ached.
There was one happy respite—they knocked off long enough to eat breakfast. It was sent out to them from the cook-house in one huge, metal pan without dishes or knives or forks.
A white cook wash dishes for negroes?
Mayo knew the custom which prevailed on board the schooners between the coal ports and the New England cities, and he fished for food with his fingers and cut meat with his jack-knife with proper meekness.
When he was back at his scrubbing again the cook passed aft, bearing the zinc-lined hamper which contained the breakfast for the cabin table. That this cook had the complete vocabulary of others of his ilk was revealed when the man with the hose narrowly missed drenching the hamper.
“That's right, cook!” roared Captain Downs, climbing ponderously on board from his yawl. “Talk up to the loafing, cock-eyed, pot-colored sons of a coal-scuttle when I ain't here to do it. Turn away that hose, you mule-eared Fiji!” He turned on Mayo, who stood at one side and was poising his scrubbing-broom to allow the master to pass. “Get to work, there, yellow pup! Get to work!”
Ordinarily the skipper addresses one of his sailors only through the mate. But there was no mate handy just then.
“One hand for the owners and one hand for yourself when you're aloft, but on deck it's both hands for the owners,” he stated, as he plodded aft, giving forth the aphorism for the benefit of all within hearing.
The passenger was still on deck, and Mayo heard Captain Downs greet him rather brusquely.
Then the cook's hand-bell announced breakfast, and before the captain and his guest reappeared on deck a tug had the Alden's hawser and was towing her down the dredged channel on the way to Hampton Roads and to sea.
Mayo went at his new tasks so handily that he passed muster as an able seaman. If a sailor aboard a big schooner of these days is quick, willing, and strong he does not need the qualities and the knowledge which made a man an “A. B.” in the old times.
While the schooner was on her way behind the tug they hoisted her sails, a long cable called “the messenger” enabling the steam-winch forward to do all the work. Mayo was assigned to the jigger-mast, and went aloft to shake out the topsail. It was a dizzy height, and the task tried his spirit, for the sail was heavy, and he found it difficult to keep his balance while he was tugging at the folds of the canvas. He was obliged to work alone—there was only one man to a mast, and very tiny insects did his mates appear when Mayo glanced forward along the range of the masts.
The tug dropped them off the Tail of the Horseshoe; a smashing sou'wester was serving them.
With all her washing set, the schooner went plowing out past the capes, and Mayo was given his welcome watch below; he was so sleepy that his head swam.
When he turned out he was ordered to take his trick at the wheel. The schooner had made her offing and was headed for her northward run along the coast, which showed as a thin thread of white along the flashing blue of the sea.
Mayo took the course from the gaunt, sooty Jamaican who stepped away from the wheel; he set his gaze on the compass and had plenty to occupy his hands and his mind, for a big schooner which is logging off six or eight knots in a following sea is somewhat of a proposition for a steersman. Occasionally he was obliged to climb bodily upon the wheel in order to hold the vessel up to her course.
Captain Downs was pacing steadily from rail to rail between the wheel and the house. At each turn he glanced up for a squint at the sails. It was the regular patrol of a schooner captain.
In spite of his absorption in his task, Mayo could not resist taking an occasional swift peep at the passenger. The young man's demeanor had become so peculiar that it attracted attention. He looked worried, ill at ease, smoked his cigarettes nervously, flung over the rail one which he had just lighted, and started for the captain, his mouth open. Then he turned away, shielded a match under the hood of the companionway, and touched off another cigarette. He was plainly wrestling with a problem that distressed him very much.
At last he hurried below. He came up almost immediately. He had the air of a man who had made up his mind to have a disagreeable matter over with.
“Captain Downs,” he blurted, stepping in front of Old Mull and halting that astonished skipper, “will you please step down into the cabin with me for a few moments? I've something to tell you.”
“Well, tell it—tell it here!” barked the captain.
“It's very private, sir!”
“I don't know of any privater place than this quarterdeck, fifteen miles offshore.”
“But the—the man at the wheel!”
“Good Josephus! That ain't a man! That's a nigger sailor steering my schooner. Tell your tale, Mr. Bradish. Tell it right here. That fellow don't count any more 'n that rudder-head counts.”
“If you could step down into the cabin, I—”
“My place is on this quarter-deck, sir. If you've got anything to say to me, say it!” He began to pace again.
Bradish caught step, after a scuff or two.
“I hope you're going to take this thing right, Captain Downs. It may sound queer to you at first,” he stammered.
“Well, well, well, tell it to me—tell it! Then I will let you know whether it sounds queer or not.”
“I brought another passenger on board with me. She is locked in a stateroom.”
Old Mull stopped his patrol with a jerk. “She?” he demanded. “You mean to tell me you've got a woman aboard here?”
“We're engaged—we want to get married. So she came along—”
“Then why in tophet didn't ye go get married? You don't think this is a parsonage, do you?”
“There were reasons why we couldn't get married ashore. You have to have licenses, and questions are asked, and we were afraid it would be found out before we could arrange it.”
“So this is an elopement, hey?”
“Well, the young lady's father has foolish ideas about a husband for his daughter, and she doesn't agree with him.”
“Who is her father?”
“I don't intend to tell you, sir. That hasn't anything to do with the matter.”
Captain Downs looked his passenger up and down with great disfavor. “And what's your general idea in loading yourselves onto me in this fashion?”
“You have the right, as captain of a ship outside the three-mile limit, to marry folks in an emergency.”
“I ain't sure that I've got any such right, and I ain't at all certain about the emergency, Mr. Bradish. I ain't going to stick my head into a scrape.”
“But there can't be any scrape for you. You simply exercise your right and marry us and enter it in your log and give us a paper. It will be enough of a marriage so that we can't be separated.”
“Want to hold a hand you can bluff her father with, hey? I don't approve of any such tactics in matrimony.”
“I wouldn't be doing this if there were any other safe way for us,” protested Bradish, earnestly. “I'm no cheap fellow. I hold down a good job, sir. But the trouble is I work for her father—and you know how it always is in a case like that. He can't see me!”
“Rich, eh?”
“Yes, sir!” Bradish made the admission rather sullenly.
“It's usually the case when there's eloping done!”
“But this will not seem like eloping when it's reported right in the newspapers. Marriage at sea—it will seem like a romantic way of getting rid of the fuss of a church wedding. We'll put out a statement of that sort. It will give her father a chance to stop all the gossip. He'll be glad if you perform the ceremony.”
“Say, young fellow, you're not rehearsing the stuff on me that you used on the girl, are you? Well, it doesn't go!
“Captain Downs, you must understand how bull-headed some rich men are in matters of this kind. I am active and enterprising. I'll be a handy man for him. He likes me in a business way—he has said so. He'll be all right after he gets cooled down.”
“More rehearsal! But I ain't in love with you like that girl is.”
“We're in a terrible position, captain! Perhaps it wasn't a wise thing to do. But it will come out all right if you marry us.”
“What's her name?”
“I can't tell you.”
“How in the devil can I marry you and her if I don't know her name?”
“But you haven't promised that you will do your part! I don't want to expose this whole thing and then be turned down.”
“I ain't making any rash promises,” stated Captain Downs, walking to the rail and taking a squint at the top-hamper. “Besides,” he added, on his tramp past to the other rail, “he may be an owner into this schooner property, for all I know. Sixteenths of her are scattered from tophet to Tar Hollow!”
“You needn't worry about his owning schooner property! He is doing quite a little job at putting you fellows out of business!”
Curiosity and something else gleamed in Captain Downs's eyes. “Chance for me to rasp him, hey, by wishing you onto the family?”
This new idea in the situation appealed instantly to Bradish as a possibility to be worked. “Promise man to man that you'll perform the marriage, and I'll tell you his name; then you'll be glad that you have promised,” he said, eagerly.
“I don't reckon I'd try to get even with Judas I-scarrot himself by stealing his daughter away from him, sir. There's the girl to be considered in all such cases!”
“But this isn't stealing! We're in love.”
“Maybe, but you ain't fooling me very much, young fellow. I don't say but what you like her all right, but you're after something else, too.”
“A man has to make his way in the world as best he can.”
“That plan seems to be pretty fashionable among you financing fellows nowadays. But I'm a pretty good judge of men and you can't fool me, I say. Now how did you fool the girl?”
It was blunt and insulting query, but Bradish did not have the courage to resent it; he had too much need of placating this despot. The lover hesitated and glanced apprehensively at the man at the wheel.
“Don't mind that nigger!” yelped Captain Downs, “How did you ever get nigh enough to that girl to horn-swoggle her into this foolishness?”
“We met at dances. We were attracted to each other,” explained Bradish, meekly.
“Huh! Yes, they tell me that girls are crazy over hoof-shaking these days, and I suppose it's easy to go on from there into a general state of plumb lunacy,” commented Old Mull, with disgust. “You show you ain't really in love with her, young man. You'd never allow her to cut up this caper if you were!”
He stuck an unlighted cigar in his mouth and continued to patrol his quarter-deck, muttering.
Bradish lighted a cigarette, tossed it away after two puffs, and leaned against the house, studying his fingertips, scowling and sullen.
Mayo had heard all the conversation, but his interest in the identity of these persons was limited; New York was full of rich men, and there were many silly daughters.
“Look here,” suggested the captain, unamiably, “whatever is done later, there's something to be done now. It's cruelty to animals to keep that girl shut up in that stateroom any longer.”
“She didn't want to come out and show herself till I had had a talk with you, sir. I have spoken to her through the door a few times.” He straightened himself and assumed dignity. “Captain Downs, I call it to your attention—I want you to remember that I have observed all the proprieties since I have been on board.”
Captain Downs snorted. “Proprieties—poosh! You have got her into a nice scrape! And she's down there locked in like a cat, and probably starving!”
“She doesn't care to eat. I think she isn't feeling very well.”
“I shouldn't think she would! Go bring her up here, where she can get some fresh air. I'll talk to her.”
After a moment's hesitation Bradish went below. He returned in a little while.
In spite of his efforts to pretend obliviousness Mayo stared hard at the companionway, eager to look on the face of the girl. But she did not follow her lover.
“She doesn't feel well enough to come on deck,” reported Bradish. “But she is in the saloon. Captain Downs, won't you go and talk to her and say something to make her feel easy in her mind? She is very nervous. She is frightened.”
“I'm not much of a ladies' man,” stated Old Mull. But he pulled off his cap and smoothed his grizzled hair.
“And if you could only say that you're going to help us!” pleaded the lover. “We throw ourselves on your mercy, sir.”
“I ain't much good as a life-raft in this love business.” He started for the companionway.
“But don't tell her that you will not marry us—not just now. Wait till she is calmer.”
“Oh, I sha'n't tell her! Don't worry!” said Captain Downs, with a grim set to his mouth. “All she, or you, gets out of me can be put in a flea's eye.”
He disappeared down the steps, and Bradish followed. A mate had come aft, obeying the master's hand-flourish, and he took up the watch. In a little while Mayo was relieved. He went forward, conscious that he was a bit irritated and disappointed because he had not seen the heroine of this love adventure, and wondering just a bit at his interest in that young lady.
An hour later Mayo, coiling down lines in the alley outside the engine-room, overheard a bulletin delivered by the one-eyed cook to the engineer.
The cook had trotted forward, his sound eye bulging out and thus mutely expressing much astonishment. “There's a dame aft. I've been making tea and toast for her.”
“Well, you act as if it was the first woman you'd ever seen. What's the special excitement about a skirt going along as passenger?”
“She wa'n't expected to be aboard. I heard the old man talking with her. The flash gent that's passenger has rung her in somehow. I didn't get all the drift be-cause the old man only sort of purred while I was in hearing distance. But I caught enough to know that it ain't according to schedule.”
“Good looker?” The engineer was showing a bit of interest.
“She sure is!” declared the cook, demonstrating that one eye is as handy, sometimes, as two. “Peaches and cream, molasses-candy hair, hands as white as pastry flour. Looks good enough to eat.”
“Nobody would ever guess you are a cook, hearing you describe a girl,” sneered the engineer.
“There's a mystery about her. I heard her kind of taking on before the dude hushed her up. She was saying something about being sorry that she had come, and that she wished she was back, and that she had always done things on the impulse, and didn't stop to think, and so forth, and couldn't the ship be turned around.”
Mayo forgot himself. He stopped coiling ropes and stood there and listened eagerly until the cook's indignant eye chanced to take a swing in his direction.
“Do you see who's standing there butting in on the private talk of two gents?” he asked the engineer. “Hand me that grate-poker—the hot one. I'll show that nigger where he belongs.”
But Mayo retreated in a hurry, knowing that he was not permitted to protest either by word or by look. However, the cook had given him something else besides an insult—he had retailed gossip which kept the young man's thoughts busy.
In spite of his rather contemptuous opinion of the wit of a girl who would hazard such a silly adventure, he found himself pitying her plight, guessing that she was really sorry. But as to what was going on in the master's cabin he had no way of ascertaining. He wondered whether Captain Downs would marry the couple in such equivocal fashion.
At any rate, pondered Mayo, how did it happen to be any affair of his? He had troubles enough of his own to occupy his sole attention.
Their spanking wind from the sou'west let go just as dusk shut down. A yellowish scud dimmed the stars. Mayo heard one of the mates say that the glass had dropped. He smelled nasty weather himself, having the sailor's keen instinct. The topsails were ordered in, and he climbed aloft and had a long, lone struggle before he got the heavy canvas folded and lashed.
When he reached the deck a mate commanded him to fasten the canvas covers over the skylights of the house. The work brought him within range of the conversation which Captain Downs and Bradish were carrying on, pacing the deck together.
“Of course I don't want to throw down anybody, captain,” Bradish was saying. There was an obsequious note in his voice; it was the tone of a man who was affecting confidential cordiality in order to get on—to win a favor. “But I have a lot of sympathy for you and for the rest of the schooner people. I have been right there in the office, and have had a finger in the pie, and I've seen what has been done in a good many cases. Of course, you understand, this is all between us! I'm not giving away any of the office secrets to be used against the big fellows. But I'm willing to show that I'm a friend of yours. And I know you'll be a friend of mine, and keep mum. All is, you can get wise from what I tell you and can keep your eyes peeled from now on.”
Mayo heard fragmentary explanation of how the combination of steamboat and barge interests had operated to leave only pickings to the schooners. The two men were tramping the deck together, and at the turns were too far away from him to be heard distinctly.
“But they're putting over the biggest job of all just now,” proceeded Bradish. “Confound it, Captain Downs, I'm not to be blamed for running away with a man's daughter after watching him operate as long as I have. His motto is, 'Go after it when you see a thing you want in this world.' I've been trained to that system. I've got just as much right to go after a thing as he. I'm treasurer of the Paramount—that's the trust with which they intend to smash the opposition. My job is to ask no questions and to sign checks when they tell me to, and Heaven only knows what kind of a goat it will make of me if they ever have a show-down in the courts! They worked some kind of a shenanigan to grab off the Vose line; I wired a pot of money to Fletcher Fogg, who was doing the dirty work, and it was paid to a clerk to work proxies at the annual meeting. And then Fogg put up some kind of a job on a greenhorn captain—worked a flip trick on the fellow and made him shove the Montana onto the sands. I suppose they'll have the Vose line at their price before I get back.”
Mayo sat there in the shadow, squatting on legs which trembled.
This babbler—tongue loosened by his new liberty and by the antagonism his small nature was developing, anticipating his employer's enmity—had dropped a word of what Mayo knew must be the truth. It had been a trick—and Fletcher Fogg had worked it! Mayo did not know who Fletcher Fogg's employer might be. From what office this tattler came he did not know; but it was evident that Bradish was cognizant of the trick. As a result of that trick, an honest man had been ruined and blacklisted, deprived of opportunity to work in his profession, was a fugitive, a despised sailor, kicked to the Very bottom of the ladder he had climbed so patiently and honorably.
Furious passion bowled over Mayo's prudence. He leaped down from the top of the house and presented himself in front of the two men.
“I heard it—I couldn't help hearing it!” he stuttered.
“Here's a nigger gone crazy!” yelped Captain Downs. “Ahoy, there, for'ard! Tumble aft with a rope!”
“I'm no nigger, and I'm not crazy!” shouted Mayo.
The swinging lantern in the companionway lighted him dimly. But in the gloom his dusky hue was only the more accentuated. His excitement seemed that of a man whose wits had been touched.
“I knew it was a trick. But what was the trick?” he demanded, starting toward Bradish, his clutching hands outspread.
Captain Downs kicked at this obstreperous sailor, and at the same time fanned a blow at his head with open palm.
Mayo avoided both the foot and the hand. “What does the law say about striking a sailor, captain? Hold on, there! I'm just as good a man as you are. Don't you tell those men to lay hands on me.” He backed away from the sailors who came running aft, with the second mate marshaling them. He stripped up his sleeve and held his arm across the radiance of the binnacle light. “That's a white man's skin, isn't it?” he demanded.
“What kind of play-acting is all this?” asked Old Mull, with astonished indignation.
In that crisis Mayo controlled his tongue after a mighty effort to steady himself. He was prompted to obey his mood and announce his identity with all the fury that was in him. But here stood the man who had served as one of the tools of his enemies, whoever they were. For his weapon against this man Mayo had only a few words of gossip which had been dropped in an unwary moment; he realized his position; he regretted his passionate haste. He was not ready to put himself into the power of his enemies by telling this man who he was; he remembered that he was running away from the law.
Bradish gaped at this intruder without seeming to understand what it all meant.
“Passengers better get below out of the muss,” advised Captain Downs. “Here's a crazy nigger, mate. Grab him and tie him up.”
Mayo backed to the rack at the rail and pulled out two belaying-pins, mighty weapons, one for each hand.
Bradish hurried away into the depths of the house, manifestly glad to get out from underfoot.
“Don't you allow those niggers to lay their hands on me,” repeated the man at bay. “Captain Downs, let me have a word to you in private.” He had desperately decided on making a confidant of one of his kind. He bitterly needed the help a master mariner could give him.
“Get at him!” roared the skipper. “Go in, you niggers!”
“By the gods! you'll be short-handed, sir. I'll kill 'em!”
That threat was more effective than mere bluster. Captain Downs instinctively squinted aloft at the scud which was dimming the stars; he sniffed at the volleying wind.
“One word to you, and you'll understand, sir!” pleaded Mayo. He put the pins back into the rack and walked straight to the captain.
There was no menace in his action, and the mate did not interfere.
“Just a word or two to you, sir, to show you that I have done more than throw my hat into the door of the Masters and Mates Association.” He leaned close and whispered. “Now let me tell you something else—in private?” he urged in low tones.
Captain Downs glanced again at the bared arm and surveyed this sailor with more careful scrutiny. “You go around and come into the for'ard cabin through the coach-house door,” he commanded, after a little hesitation.
Mayo bowed and hurried away down the lee alley.
That cabin designated as the place of conference was the dining-saloon of the schooner. He waited there until Captain Downs, moving his bulk more deliberately, trudged down the main companionway and came into the apartment through its after-door which no sailor was allowed to profane.
“Can anybody—in there—hear?” asked Mayo, cautiously. He pointed to the main saloon.
“She's in her stateroom and he's talking through the door,” grunted the skipper. “Now what's on your mind?”
Mayo reached his hand into an inside pocket of his shirt and drew forth a document. He laid it in Captain Downs's hand. The skipper sat down at the table, pulled out his spectacles, and adjusted them on his bulging nose in leisurely fashion, spread the paper on the red damask cloth, and studied it. He tipped down his head and stared at Mayo over the edge of his glasses with true astonishment.
“This your name in these master's papers?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir.”
“You're—you claim to be the Captain Mayo who smashed the Montana?”
“I'm the man, sir. I hung on to my papers, even though they have been canceled.”
“How do I know about these papers? How do I know your name is Mayo? You might have stolen 'em—though, for that matter, you might just as well carry a dynamite bomb around in your pocket, for all the good they'll do you.”
“That's the point, sir. They merely prove my identity. Nobody else would want them. Captain Downs, I'm running away from the law. I own up to you. Let me tell you how it happened.”
“Make it short,” snapped the captain, showing no great amiability toward this plucked and discredited master. “The wind is breezing up.”
He told his story concisely and in manly fashion, standing up while Captain Downs sat and stared over his spectacles, drumming his stubby fingers on the red damask.
“There, sir, that's why I am here and how I happened to get here,” Mayo concluded.
“I ain't prepared to say it isn't so,” admitted Old Mull at last, “no matter how foolish it sounds. And I'm wondering if next I'll find the King of Peruvia or the Queen of Sheba aboard this schooner. New folks are piling in fast! I know Captain Wass pretty well, though I never laid eye on you to know you. Where's that wart on his face?”
“Starboard side of his nose, sir.”
“What does he do, whittle off his chaw or bite the plug?”