There was only one thing to do, he decided: take advantage of any period of truce which their ancient enemy, the sea, had allowed in that desperate battle.
A sailor is prey to hazards and victim of the unexpected in the ever-changing moods of the ocean; he must needs be master of expedients and ready grappler of emergencies.
“Where are your tools—a saw—a chisel?” demanded Mayo. He was obliged to repeat that query several times. His companions appeared to be wholly absorbed in their personal woes.
At last Mr. Speed checked his groans long enough to state that the tools were in “the lazareet.”
The lazaret of a coaster is a storeroom under the quarter-deck—repository of general odds and ends and spare equipment.
“Any way to get at it except through the deck-hatch?”
“There's a door through, back of the companion ladder,” said Mr. Speed, with listless indifference.
Mayo crowded his way past the ladder after he had waded and stumbled here and there and had located it. He set his shoulders against the slope of the steps and pushed at the door with his feet. After he had forced it open he waded into the storeroom. It was blind business, hunting for anything in that place. He knew the general habits of the hit-or-miss coasting crews, and was sure that the tools had been thrown in among the rest of the clutter by the person who used them last. If they had been loose on the floor they would now be loose on the ceiling. He pushed his feet about, hoping to tread on something that felt like a saw or chisel.
“Ahoy, you men out there!” he called. “Don't you have any idea in what part of this lazaret the tools were?”
“Oh, they was probably just throwed in,” said Mr. Speed. “I wish you wouldn't bother me so much! I'm trying to compose my mind to pray.”
There were so much ruck and stuff under his feet that Mayo gave up searching after a time. He had held his breath and ducked his head under water so that he might investigate with his bare hands, but he found nothing which would help him, and his brain was dizzy after his efforts and his mouth was choked by the dirty water.
But when he groped his way back into the main cabin his hands came in contact with the inside of the lazaret door. In leather loops on the door he found saw, ax, chisel, and hammer. He was unable to keep back a few hearty and soul-satisfying oaths.
“Why didn't you tell me where the tools were? They're here on the door.”
“I had forgot about picking 'em tip. And my mind ain't on tools, anyway.”
“Your mind will be on 'em as soon as I can get forward there,” growled the incensed captain.
Mayo was not sure of what he needed or what he would be obliged to do, therefore he took all the tools, holding them above water. When he waded past Captain Can-dage he heard the old skipper trying to comfort the girl, his voice low and broken by sobs. She had recovered consciousness and Mayo was a bit sorry; in her swoon she had not realized their plight; he feared hysterics and other feminine demonstrations, and he knew that he needed all his nerve.
“We're going to die—we're going to die!” the girl kept moaning.
“Yes, my poor baby, and I have brought you to it,” blubbered her father.
“Please keep up your courage for a little while, Miss Candage,” Mayo pleaded, wistfully.
“But there's no hope!”
“There's hope just as long as we have a little air and a little grit,” he insisted. “Now, please!”
“I am afraid!” she whispered.
“So am I,” he confessed. “But we're all going to work the best we know how. Can't you encourage us like a brave, good girl?” He went stumbling on. “Now tell me, mate,” he commanded, briskly, “how thick is the bulkhead between the cabin, here, and the hold?”
“I can't bother to think,” returned Mr. Speed.
“It's only sheathing between the beams, sir,” stated Captain Candage.
“Mate, you and the cook lend a hand to help me.”
Oakum Otie broke off the prayer to which he had returned promptly. “What's the use?” he demanded, with anger which his fright made juvenile. “I tell you I'm trying to compose my soul, and I want this rampage-round stopped.”
“I say what's the use, too!” whined Dolph. “You can't row a biskit across a puddle of molasses with a couple of toothpicks,” he added, with cook's metaphor for the absolutely hopeless.
Mayo shouted at them with a violence that made hideous din in that narrow space. “You two men wade across here to me or I'll come after you with an ax in one hand and a hammer in the other! Damn you, I mean business!”
They were silent, then there sounded the splash of water and they came, muttering. They had recognized the ring of desperate resolve in his command.
Mayo, when he heard their stertorous breathing close at hand, groped for them and shoved tools into their clutch. He retained the hammer and chisel for himself.
“That's about all I need you for just now—for tool-racks,” he growled. “Make sure you don't drop those.”
The upturned schooner rolled sluggishly, and every now and then the water swashed across her cabin with extra impetus, making footing insecure.
“If I tumble down I'll have to drop 'em,” whimpered Oolph.
“Then don't come up. Drowning will be an easier death for you,” declared the captain, menacingly. He was sounding the bulkhead with his hammer.
The tapping quickly showed him where the upright beams were located on the other side of the sheathing. In his own mind he was not as sanguine as his activity might have indicated. It was blind experiment—he could not estimate the obstacles which were ahead of him. But he did understand, well enough, that if they were to escape they must do so through the bottom of the vessel amidship; there, wallowing though she was, there might be some freeboard. He had seen vessels floating bottom up. Usually a section of the keel and a portion of the garboard streaks were in sight above the sea. But there could be no escape through the bottom of the craft above them where they stood in the cabin. He knew that the counter and buttock must be well under water.
“Have you a full cargo belowdecks?” he asked.
“No,” stated Captain Candage, hinting by his tone that he wondered what difference that would make to them in the straits in which they were placed.
Mayo felt a bit of fresh courage. He had been afraid that the Polly's hold would be found to be stuffed full of lumber. His rising spirits prompted a little sarcasm.
“How did it ever happen that you didn't plug the trap you set for us?”
“Couldn't get but two-thirds cargo below because the lumber was sawed so long. Made it up by extra deck-lo'd.”
“Yes, piled it all on deck so as to make her top-heavy—so as to be sure of catching us,” suggested Mayo, beginning to work his hammer and chisel on the sheathing.
“'Tain't no such thing!” expostulated Captain Candage, missing the irony. “Them shingles and laths is packet freight, and I couldn't put 'em below because I've got to deliver 'em this side of New York. And you don't expect me to overhaul a whole decklo'd so as to—”
“Not now,” broke in Mayo. “The Atlantic Ocean has attended to the case of that deckload.”
“My Gawd, yes!” mourned the master. “I was forgetting that we are upside down—and that shows what a state of mind I'm in!”
Mayo had picked his spot for operations. He drove his chisel through the sheathing as close to the cabin floor as he could. Remembering that the schooner was upside down and that the floor was over his head, the aperture he was starting work on would bring him nearest the bilge. When he had chiseled a hole big enough for a start, he secured the saw from the mate and sawed a square opening. He lifted himself up and worked his way through the hole and found himself on lumber and out of water. It was what he had been hoping to find, after the assurance from the master: the partial cargo of lumber in the hold had settled to the deck when the schooner tipped over. Investigating with groping hands, he assured himself that there were fully three feet of space between the cargo and the bottom of the vessel.
“Come here with your daughter, Captain Candage!” he called, cheerily. “It's dry in here.”
He kneeled and held his hands out through the opening, directing them with his voice, reaching into the pitchy darkness until her hands found his, and then he brought her up to him and in upon the lumber.
“It's a little better, even if it's nothing to brag about,” he told her. “Sit over there at one side so that the men can crawl in past you. I'll need them to help me.”
“And what do you think now—shall we die?” she asked, in tremulous whisper.
“No, I don't think so,” he told her, stoutly.
They were alone in the hold for a few moments while the others were helping one another through the opening.
“But in this trap—in the dark—crowded in here!” Her tone did not express doubt; it was pathetic endeavor to understand their plight. “My father and his men are frightened—they have given up. And you told me that you are frightened!”
“Yes, I am!”
“But they are not doing anything to help you.”
“Perhaps that is because they are not scared as much as I am. It often happens that the more frightened a man is in a tight place the more he jumps around and the harder he tries to get out.”
“I don't care what you say—I know what you are!” she rejoined. “You are a brave man, Captain Mayo. I thank you!”
“Not yet! Not until—”
“Yes, now! You have set me a good example. When folks are scared they should not sit down and whimper!”
He reached and found a plump little fist which she had doubled into a real knob of decision.
“Good work, little girl! Your kind of grit is helping me.” He released her hand and crawled forward.
“This ain't helping us any,” complained Captain Candage. “I know what's going to happen to us. As soon as it gets daylight a cussed coast-guard cutter will come snorting along and blow us up without bothering to find out what is under this turkle-shell.”
“Say, look here, Candage,” called Captain Mayo, angrily, “that's enough of that talk! There's a-plenty happening to us as it is, without your infernal driveling about what may happen.”
“Isn't it about time for a real man to help Captain Mayo instead of hindering him?” asked the girl. Evidently her new composure startled her father.
“Ain't you scared any more, Polly? You ain't losing your mind, are you?”
“No, I have it back again, I hope.”
“Your daughter is setting you a good example, Captain Candage. Now let's get down to business, sir! What's your sheathing on the ribs?”
“Inch and a half spruce, if I remember right.”
“I take it she is ribbed about every twelve inches.”
“Near's I remember.”
“All right! Swarm forward here, the three of you, and have those tools handy as I need 'em.”
He had brought the hammer and chisel in his reefer pockets, and set at work on the sheathing over his head, having picked by touch and sense of locality a section which he considered to be nearly amidship. It was blind effort, but he managed to knock away a few square feet of the spruce boarding after a time.
“Hand me that saw, whoever has it.”
A hand came fumbling to his in the dark and gave him the tool. He began on one of the oak ribs, uncovered when the boarding had been removed. It was difficult and tedious work, for he could use only the tip of the saw, because the ribs were so close together. But he toiled on steadily, and at last the sound of his diligence appeared to animate the others. When he rested for a moment Captain Candage offered to help with the sawing.
“I think I'll be obliged to do it alone, sir. You can't tell in the dark where I have left off. However, I'm glad to see that you're coming back to your senses,” he added, a bit caustically.
The master of the Polly received that rebuke with a meekness that indicated a decided change of heart. “I reckon me and Otie and Dolph have been acting out what you might call pretty pussylaminous, as I heard a schoolmarm say once,” confessed the skipper, struggling with the big word. “But we three ain't as young as we was once, and I'll leave it to you, sir, if this wasn't something that nobody had ever reckoned on.”
“There's considerable novelty in it,” said Mayo, in dry tones, running his fingers over the rib to find the saw-scarf. The ache had gone out of his arms, and he was ready to begin again.
“I'm sorry we yanked you into all this trouble,” Can-dage went on. “And on the other hand, I ain't so sorry! Because if you hadn't been along with us we'd never have got out of this scrape.”
“We haven't got out of it yet, Captain Candage.”
“Well, we are making an almighty good start, and I want to say here in the hearing of all interested friends that you're the smartest cuss I ever saw afloat.”
“I hope you will forgive father,” pleaded Polly of the Polly. He felt her breath on his cheek. She was so near that her voice nearly jumped him. “I don't mean to get in your way, Captain Mayo, but somehow I feel safer if I'm close to you.”
“And I guess all of us do,” admitted Captain Candage.
Mayo stopped sawing for a moment. “What say, men? Let's be Yankee sailors from this time on! We'll be the right sort, eh? We'll put this brave little girl where she belongs—on God's solid ground!”
“Amen!” boomed Mr. Speed. “I have woke up. I must have been out of my mind. I showed you my nature when I first met you, Captain Mayo, and I reckon you found it was helpful and enterprising. I'll be the same from now on, even if you order me to play goat and try to butt the bottom out of her with my head.” “Me, too!” said Smut-nosed Dolph.
Boyd Mayo soon found that his ancestors had put no scrub timber into the Polly. The old oak rib was tough as well as bulky. The task of sawing with merely the tip of the blade in play required both muscle and patience, and the position he was obliged to assume added to his difficulties. He rested after he had sawed the rib in four places, and decided to give Oakum Otie something to do; the mate had been begging for an opportunity to grab in. He was ordered to knock away as much as he could of the sawed section with hammer and chisel. Mayo figured that when this section of rib had been removed it would leave room for a hole through the bottom planks at least two feet square—and there were no swelling girths in their party.
The mate had strength, and he was eager to display that helpful spirit of which he had boasted. He went at the beam with all his might.
Mayo's attention had been centered on his task; now, with a moment's leisure in which to note other matters, he was conscious of something which provoked his apprehension; the air under the hull of the schooner was becoming vitiated. His temples throbbed and his ears rang.
“Ain't it getting pretty stuffy in here?” asked the master, putting words to Mayo's thoughts.
“I have been feeling like a bug under a thimble for some little time,” stated Otie, whacking his chisel sturdily.
“Her bottom can't be awash with all this lumber in her. If we can only get a little speck of a hole through the outside planking right now, we'd better do it,” suggested Candage.
“That's just what I have been doing,” declared Mr. Speed. “I'm right after the job, gents, when I get started on a thing. Helpful and enterprising, that's my motto!”
The next moment, before Mayo, his thoughts busy with his new danger of suffocation, could voice warning or had grasped the full import of the dialogue, the chisel's edge plugged through the planking. Instantly there was a hiss like escaping steam. Mayo yelled an oath and set his hands against the mate, pushing him violently away. The industrious Mr. Speed had been devoting his attention to the planking instead of to the sawed beam.
Wan light filtered through the crevice made by the chisel and Mayo planted his palm against the crack. The pressure held his hand as if it were clamped against the planks, and the hissing ceased.
The schooner, as she lay, upside down in the sea, was practically a diving-bell; with that hole in her shell their safety was in jeopardy. The girl seemed to understand the situation before the duller minds of her father and his mates had begun to work. She frenziedly sought for Mayo's disengaged hand and thrust some kind of fabric into it.
“It's from my petticoat,” she gasped. “Can you calk with it?”
“Hand me the chisel,” he entreated.
As soon as she had given the tool to him he worked his hand free from the crack and instantly drove the fabric into the crevice, crowding it fold by fold with the edge of the chisel.
“Hope I didn't do anything wrong, trying to be helpful,” apologized Mr. Speed.
“I'll do the rest of this job without any such help,” growled the captain.
“But what are you stopping the air for when it's rushing in to liven us up?” asked Dolph, plaintively.
“It was rushing out, fool! Rushing out so fast that this lumber would have flattened us against the bottom of this hull in a little while.”
“I would have figgered it just t'other way,” stated Mr. Speed, humbly. “Outside air, being fresh, ought nat'rally to rush in to fill the holes we have breathed out of this air.”
Mayo was in no mood to lecture on natural phenomena. He investigated the cut which had been made by the incautious mate and estimated, by what his fingers told him, that the schooner's bottom planks were three inches thick. He settled back on his haunches and gave a little thought to the matter, and understood that he had a ticklish job ahead of him. Those planks must be gouged around the complete square of the proposed opening, so that the section might be driven out in one piece by a blow from beneath. That section must give way wholly and instantly. They were doomed if they made a half-job of it. In that pitchy blackness he had only his fingers to guide him. That one little streak of light from the open world without was tantalizing promise. On the other side of those planks was God's limitless air. The poor creatures penned under that hull were gasping and choking for want of that air. Mayo set bravely to work, hammering at the chisel-head above him.
All were silent. They felt the initial languor of suffocation and knew the peril which was threatening them.
“If there is anything I can do—” ventured Otie.
“There isn't!”
Captain Mayo felt the lack of oxygen most cruelly, because he was working with all his might. Perspiration was streaming into his eyes, he was panting like a running dog, his blows were losing force.
He found that Otie had partly cleared out the rib before that too-willing helper had taken it into his head to knock a hole through the planking. The rib must come away entirely! The tough oak resisted; the chisel slipped; it was maddeningly slow work. But he finished the task at last and began to gouge a channel in the planking close to the other ribs. Torpor was wrapping its tentacles about him. He heard his companions gasping for breath. Then, all at once, he felt a little pat on his shoulder. He knew that tap for what it was, though she did not speak to him; it was the girl's reassuring touch. It comforted him to be told in that manner that she was keeping up her courage in the horrible situation. He beveled the planks as deeply as he dared, and made his cut around three sides of his square. He was forced to stop for a moment and lay prostrate, his face on the lumber.
“Take that saw, one of you, and chunk off a few short lengths of plank,” he whispered, hoarsely. The rasp of the hand-saw informed him that he had been obeyed.
He held his eyes wide open with effort as he lay there in the darkness. Then he struggled up and went at his task once more. Queerly colored flames were shooting before his straining eyes. He toiled in partial delirium, and it seemed to him that he was looking again at the phantasmagoria of the Coston lights on the fog when the yachtsmen were serenading the girl of the Polly. He found himself muttering, keeping time to his chisel-blows:
In all the human emotions there is no more maddening and soul-flaying terror than the fear of being shut in, which wise men call claustrophobia. Mayo had been a man of the open—of wide horizons, drinking from the fount of all the air under the heavens. This hideous confinement was demoralizing his reason. He wanted to throw down his hammer and chisel and scream and kick and throw himself up against the penning planks. On the other side was air—the open! There was still one side of the square to do.
Again that comforting little hand touched his shoulder and he was spurred by the thought that the girl was still courageous and had faith in him. He groaned and kept on.
Lapse of time ceased to have significance. Every now and then the hammer slipped and bruised his hand cruelly. But he did not feel the hurt. Both tools wavered in his grasp. He struck a desperate—a despairing blow and the hammer and chisel dropped. He knew that he had finished the fourth side. He fell across Polly Candage's lap and she helped him to his knees.
“I'm done, men,” he gasped. “All together with those joists! Strike together! Right above my head.”
He heard the skipper count one—two—three. He heard the concerted blow. The planks did not give way.
“We don't seem to have no strength left,” explained the mate, in hoarse tones.
They struck again, but irregularly.
“It's our lives—our lives, men!” cried Mayo. “Ram it to her!”
“Here's one for you, Captain Mayo,” said Candage, and he thrust a length of plank into the groping hands.
“Make it together, this time—together!” commanded Mayo. “Hard—one, two, three!”
They drove their battering-rams up against the prisoning roof. Fury and despair were behind their blow.
The glory of light flooded into their blinking eyes.
The section had given way!
Mayo went first and he snapped out with almost the violence of a cork popping from a bottle. He felt the rush of the imprisoned air past him as he emerged. Instantly he turned and thrust down his hands and pulled the girl up into the open and the others followed, the lumber pushing under their feet.
It seemed to Captain Mayo, after those few frenzied moments of escape, that he had awakened from a nightmare; he found himself clinging to the schooner's barnacled keel, his arm holding Polly Candage from sliding down over the slimy bottom into the sea.
“Good jeero! We've been in there all night,” bawled Captain Candage. He lay sprawled on the bottom of the Polly, his hornbeam hands clutching the keel, his face upraised wonderingly to the skies that were flooded with the glory of the morning. Otie and Dolph were beside him, mouths open, gulping in draughts of the air as if they were fish freshly drawn from the ocean depths.
There was a long silence after the skipper's ejaculation.
Thoughts, rather than words, fitted that sacred moment of their salvation.
The five persons who lay there on the bottom of the schooner stared at the sun in its cloudless sky and gazed off across the sea whose blue was shrouded by the golden haze of a perfect summer's day. Only a lazy roll was left of the sudden turbulence of the night before. A listless breeze with a fresh tang of salt in it lapped the surface of the long, slow surges, and the facets of the ripples flashed back the sunlight cheerily.
Captain Candage pulled himself to the keel, sat upon it, and found speech in faltering manner.
“I ain't a member of no church, never having felt the need of j'ining, and not being handy where I could tend out. But I ain't ashamed to say here, before witnesses, that I have just been telling God, as best I know how, hoping He'll excuse me if I 'ain't used the sanctimonious way, that I'm going to be a different man after this—different and better, according to my best lights.”
“I believe you have spoken for all of us, Captain Can-dage,” said Mayo, earnestly. “I thank you!”
They all perceived that the Polly had made offing at a lively pace during her wild gallop under the impetus of the easterly.
Mayo balanced himself on the keel and took a long survey of the horizon. In one place a thread of blue, almost as delicate as the tracery of a vein on a girl's arm, suggested shore line. But without a glass he was not sure. He saw no sign of any other craft; the storm had driven all coasters to harbor—and there was not wind enough as yet to help them out to sea again. But he did not worry; he was sure that something, some yacht or sea-wagon, would come rolling up over the rim of the ocean before long. The faint breeze which fanned their faces was from the southwest, and that fact promised wind enough to invite shipping to spread canvas.
Only the oval of the schooner's broad bilge showed above water, and the old Polly was so flat and tubby that their floating islet afforded only scant freeboard.
Mayo shoved his arm down into the hole through which they had escaped. After the air had been forced out the lumber was within reach from the schooner's bottom. He fumbled about and found the ax. Some of the short bits of lumber which they had used as battering-rams were in the jaws of the hole. He busied himself with hewing these ends of planks into big wedges and he drove them into cracks between the planks near the keel.
“It may come to be a bit sloppy when this sou'wester gets its gait on,” he suggested to the skipper. “We'll have something to hang on to.”
Captain Candage's first thankfulness had shown a radiant gloss. But he was a sailorman, he was cautious, he was naturally apprehensive regarding all matters of the sea, and that gloss was now dulled a bit by his second thought.
“We may have to hang on to something longer 'n we reckon on. We're too far off for the coasters and too far in for the big fellers. And unless something comes pretty clost to us we can't be seen no more 'n as if we was mussels on a tide reef. We'd ought to have something to stick up.”
“If we could only work out one of those long joists it would make a little show.” Captain Mayo shoved his arm down the hole again. “But they are wedged across too solidly.”
“I think there's a piece of lumber floating over there,” cried the girl. She was clinging to one of the wedges, and the composure which she felt, or had assumed, stirred Mayo's admiration. The plump hand which she held against her forehead to shield her eyes did not tremble. From the little Dutch cap, under the edge of which stray locks peeped, down over her attire to her toes, she seemed to be still trim and trig, in spite of her experiences below in the darkness and the wet. With a sort of mild interest in her, he reflected that her up-country beau would be very properly proud of her if he could see her there on that schooner's keel.
“What a picture you would make, Miss Candage, just as you are!” he blurted. She took down her hand, and the look she gave him did not encourage compliments. “Just as you are, and call it 'The Wreck,'” he added.
“Do I look as badly as all that, Captain Mayo?”
“You look—” he expostulated, and hesitated, for her gaze was distinctly not reassuring.
“Don't tell me, please, how I look. I'm thankful that I have no mirror. Isn't that a piece of lumber?” she inquired, crisply, putting a stop on further personalities. “Wait! It's down in a hollow just now.”
The sea lifted it again immediately. Mayo saw that it was a long strip of scantling, undoubtedly from the deckload that the Polly had jettisoned when she was tripped. It lay to windward, and that fact promised its recovery; but how was the tide? Mayo squinted at the sun, did a moment's quick reckoning from the tide time of the day before, and smiled.
“We'll get that, Miss Candage. She's coming this way.”
Watching it, seeing it lift and sink, waiting for it, helped to pass the time. Then at last it came alongside, and he crawled cautiously down the curve of the bilge and secured it. After he had braced it in the hole in the schooner's bottom with the help of Mr. Speed, the girl gave him a crumpled wad of cloth when he turned from his task.
“It's the rest of my petticoat. You may as well have it,” she explained, a pretty touch of pink confusion in her cheeks.
Mr. Speed boosted Mayo and the young man attached the cloth to the scantling and flung their banner to the breeze. Then there was not much to do except to wait, everlastingly squinting across the bright sea to the horizon's edge.
Mayo saw the sail first. It was coming in from the sea, and was very far and minute. He pointed it out with an exclamation.
“What do you make it, sir?” asked Captain Candage. “Your eyes are younger 'n mine are.”
“I reckon it's a fisherman bound in from Cashes Banks. He seems to be lying well over, and that shows there's a good breeze outside. He ought to reach near enough to see us, judging from the way he's heading.”
That little sail, nicked against the sky, was something else to watch and speculate on and wait for, and they forgot, almost, that they were hungry and thirsty and sun-parched.
However, Captain Mayo kept his own gaze most steadfastly on the landward horizon. He did not reveal any of his thoughts, for he did not want to raise false hopes. Nevertheless, it was firmly in his mind that no matter what might be the sentiments of Julius Marston in regard to his recent skipper, the mate and engineer on board the Olenia were loyal friends who would use all their influence with the owner to urge him to come seeking the man who had been lost.
The fact that a motor-boat had come popping out of Saturday Cove in pursuit of the schooner suggested that Mate McGaw had suspected what had happened, and was not dragging the cove-bottom for a drowned man.
Mayo had plenty of time for pondering on the matter, and he allowed hope to spice his guesses. He knew Mate McGaw's characteristics and decided that the yacht would get under way early, would nose into a few near-by harbors where a gale-ridden schooner might have dodged for safety, and then would chase down the sea, following the probable course of a craft which had been caught in that nor'easter. Mate McGaw was a sailorly man and understood how to fit one fact with another. He had a due portion of mariner's imagination, and was not the sort to desert a chum, even if he were obliged to use stiff speech to convert an owner. Therefore, Mayo peered toward the blue shore-line, coddling hope. He wondered whether Mate McGaw would have courage to slip a word of encouragement to Alma Marston if she asked questions.
Mayo was elated rather than astonished when he spied a smear of drab smoke and was able to determine that the craft which was puffing that smoke was heading out to sea, not crawling alongshore.
“That's a fisherman all right, and he's bound to come clost enough to make us out,” stated Captain Candage, his steady gaze to southward.
“But here comes another fellow who is going to beat him to us,” announced Captain Mayo, gaily.
“And what do you make it?” asked the skipper, blinking at the distant smoke.
“A yacht, probably.”
“Huh? A yacht! If that's what it is they'll most likely smash right past. They'll think we're out here on a fishing picnic, most like. That's about all these yacht fellers know.”
The girl gave her father a frown of protest, but Mayo smiled at her.
“I think this one is different, sir. If I am not very much mistaken, that is the yacht Olenia and she is hunting me up. Mate McGaw is one of our best little guessers.”
A quarter of an hour later he was able to assure them that the on-coming craft was the Olenia.
“Good old Mate McGaw!” he cried, rapturously. In his joy he wished he could make them his confidants, tell them who was waiting for him on board that yacht, make them understand what wonderful good fortune was his.
After a time—the long time that even a fast yacht seems to consume in covering distance to effect the rescue of those who are anxious—the Olenita's whistle hooted hoarsely to assure them that they had been seen.
“The same to you, Mate McGaw!” choked Captain Mayo, swinging his cap in wide circles.
“Seeing that things have come round as they have, I'm mighty glad for you, Captain Mayo,” declared Candage. “I ain't no kind of a hand to plaster a man all over with thanks—”
“I don't want thanks, sir. We worked together to save our lives.”
“Then I'm hoping that there won't be any hard feelings one way or the other. I have lost my schooner by my blasted foolishness. So I'll say good-by and—”
“Good-by?” demanded Mayo, showing his astonishment. “Why are you saying good-by to me now?”
“Because you are going aboard your yacht.”
“The rest of you are going there, too.”
“It ain't for poor critters like us to go mussing—”
“Look here, Captain Candage, I am the captain of that yacht, and I say that you are coming on board and stay until I can set you ashore at the handiest port.”
“I'd just as lieve wait for that fisherman, sir. I'll feel more at home aboard him.”
“You ought to think of your daughter's condition first, Captain Candage. She needs a few comforts right away, and you won't find them on board a fisherman.”
He turned to the girt who sat on the keel, silent, looking away to sea. She seemed to show a strange lack of interest in the yacht. Her pretty face exhibited no emotion, but somehow she was a wistfully pathetic figure as she sat there. Mayo's countenance showed much more concern than she expressed when she faced about at the sound of his voice and looked at him. Color came into his cheeks; there was embarrassment in his eyes, a queer hesitancy in his tones.
“There is a young lady—there are several young ladies—but there is Mr. Marston's daughter!” he faltered. “She is on the yacht. I—I know she will do all she can for you. She will be good to you!” His eyes fell under her frank and rather quizzical gaze.
“She might not care to be bothered with such a ragamuffin.”
“I can speak for her!” he cried, eagerly. He was now even more disturbed by the glance she gave him. He had read that women have intuition in affairs of the heart.
“I am quite certain you can, Captain Mayo,” she assured him, demurely. “And I am grateful. But perhaps we'd be better off on board that other vessel—father and the rest of us.”
“I insist,” he said, but he did not dare to meet her searching eyes. “I insist!” he repeated, resuming the decisive manner which he had shown before on board the Polly.
The Olenia, slowing down, had come close aboard, and her churning screws pulled her to a standstill. Her crew sent a tender rattling down from her port davits. As she rolled on the surge her brass rails caught the sunlight in long flashes which fairly blinded the hollow eyes of the castaways. The white canvas of bridge and awnings gleamed in snowy purity. She was so near that Dolph smelled the savory scents from her galley and began to “suffle” moisture in the corners of his mouth.
They who waited on the barnacled hulk of the Polly, faint with hunger, bedraggled with brine, unkempt and wholly miserable after a night of toils and vigil, felt like beggars at a palace gate as they surveyed her immaculateness.
A sort of insolent opulence seemed to exude from her. Mayo, her captain though he was, felt that suggestion of insolence more keenly than his companions, for he had had bitter and recent experience with the moods of Julius Marston.
He did not find Marston a comforting object for his gaze; the transportation magnate was pacing the port alley with a stride that was plainly impatient. Close beside the gangway stood Alma Marston, spotless in white duck. Each time her father turned his back on her she put out her clasped hands toward her lover with a furtive gesture.
Polly Candage watched this demonstration with frank interest, and occasionally stole side-glances at the face of the man who stood beside her on the schooner's bottom; he was wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of the other girl.
Mate McGaw himself was at the tiller of the tender. His honest face was working with emotion, and he began to talk before the oarsmen had eased the boat against the overturned hulk.
“I haven't closed my eyes, Captain Mayo. Stayed up all night, trying to figure it out. Almost gave up all notion that you were aboard the schooner. You didn't hail the boat we sent out.”
“I tried to do it; perhaps you couldn't hear me.”
Captain Candage's countenance showed gratitude and relief.
“This morning I tried Lumbo and two other shelters, and then chased along the trail of the blow.”
Mayo trod carefully down the bilge and clasped the mate's hand. “I was looking for you, Mr. McGaw. I know what kind of a chap you are.”
McGaw, still holding to the captain's hand, spoke in lower tones. “Had a devil of a time with the owner, sir. He was bound to have it that you had deserted.”
“I was afraid he would think something of the sort.”
The mate showed frank astonishment. “You was afraid of what? Why, sir, I wanted to tell him that he was a crazy man to have any such ideas about you! Yes, sir, I came nigh telling him that! I would have done it if I hadn't wanted to keep mild and meek whilst I was arguing with him and trying to make him give me leave to search!”
“We have had a terrible time of it, Mr. McGaw,” stated Mayo, avoiding the mate's inquisitiveness. “I am going to take these folks on board and set them ashore.”
“Ay, sir, of course.”
The two of them stood with clasped hands and held the tender close to the wreck until the passengers embarked. When they reached the foot of the Olenia's steps Captain Mayo sent his guests ahead of him.
Marston paused in his march and scowled, and the folks on the quarter-deck crowded to the rail, showing great interest.
Captain Mayo exchanged a long look with Alma Marston when he came up the steps. Love, pity, and greeting were in his eyes. Her countenance revealed her vivid emotions; she was overwrought, unstrung, half-crazed after a night spent with her fears. When he came within her reach caution was torn from her as gossamer is flicked away by a gale. Impulse had always governed her; she gave way to it then.
“I don't care,” she sobbed. “I love you. They may as well know it!”
Before he understood her intentions or could prevent her rashness she flung her arms about his neck and kissed him repeatedly.
Marston stood in his tracks like a man stricken by paralysis; his cigar dropped from his open mouth. This exhibition under his very nose, with his guests and the whole crew of his yacht looking on, fairly stunned him.
“If you had died I would have died!” she wailed.
Then her father plunged toward her, elbowing the astonished Beveridge out of his way.
Captain Mayo gently unhooked the arms of the frantic girl from about his neck and stepped forward, putting himself between father and daughter. He was not taking sensible thought in the matter; he was prompted by an instinctive impulse to protect her.
Mayo had no word ready at his tongue's end, and Mar-ston's anathema was muffled and incoherent. The girl's rash act had tipped over the sane and manly self-possession of both of them. The captain was too bewildered to comprehend the full enormity of his action in standing guard over the daughter of Julius Marston, as if she needed protection on her father's quarter-deck. He did not move to one side of the alley when Marston jerked an impatient gesture.
“I want to say that I am wholly to blame, sir,” he faltered. “I hope you will overlook—”
“Are you presuming to discuss my daughter's insanity with me?” He noticed that the sailors were preparing to hoist the tender to the davits. “Drop that boat back into the water!” he shouted. There was an ugly rasp in his voice, and for a moment it seemed as if he were about to lose control of himself. Then he set a check on his temper and tongue, though his face was deathly white and his eyes were as hard as marbles. Resolve to end further exhibition in this incredible business dominated his wrathful shame.
“If you will set us ashore—” pleaded Mayo.
“Get back into that boat, you and your gang, whatever it is!”
“Mr. Marston, this young woman needs—”
“Get into that boat, or I'll have the bunch of you thrown overboard!” The owner spoke in low tones, but his furious determination was apparent.
“We will go without being thrown, sir. Will you order us set aboard that fisherman?” He pointed to the little schooner which was almost within hailing distance.
“Get off! I don't care where you go!” He crowded past Mayo, seized his daughter's arm, and led her aft.
She seemed to have expended all her determination in her sensational outburst.
The captain met her pleading gaze as she turned to leave. “It's for the best,” he declared, bravely. “I'll make good!”
The pathetic castaways from the Polly made a little group at the gangway, standing close to the rail, as if they feared to step upon the white deck. Mate McGaw intercepted Mayo as he was about to join them.
“Hadn't I better stretch Section Two of the collision act a mite and scare him with the prospect of a thousand-dollar fine?” asked the mate, eagerly. “My glory, Captain Mayo, I'm so weak I can hardly stand up! Who'd have thought it?”
“We'll go aboard the schooner, Mr. McGaw. It's the place for us.”
“Maybe it is, but I'll speak up if you say the word, and make him set you ashore—even if I leave along with you?”
“Keep your job, sir. Will you pick up my few little belongings in my stateroom and bring them to me, Mr. McGaw? I'd better stay here on deck with my friends.” He emphasized the last word, and Captain Candage gave him a grateful look. “I'm sorry, mates! I can't say any more!” Captain Mayo did not allow himself to make further comment on the melancholy situation. The others were silent; the affair was out of their reckoning; they had no words to fit the case. Polly Candage stood looking out to sea. He had hoped that she would give him a glance of understanding sympathy, at least. But she did not, not even when he helped her down the steps into the tender.
Mate McGaw came with the captain's bag and belongings, and promptly received orders from the owner from the quarter-deck.
“Go on to the bridge and hail that schooner. Tell her we are headed for New York and can't be bothered by these persons!”
Mr. McGaw grasped Mayo's hand in farewell, and then he hurried to his duty. His megaphoned message echoed over their heads while the tender was on its way.
“Ay, ay, sir!” returned the fishing-skipper, with hearty bellow. “Glad to help sailors in trouble.”
“And that shows you—” blurted Captain Candage, and stopped his say in the middle of his outburst when his daughter shoved a significant fist against his ribs.
Captain Mayo turned his head once while the tender was hastening toward the schooner. But there were no women in sight on the yacht's deck. There was an instant's flutter of white from a stateroom port, but he was not sure whether it was a handkerchief or the end of a wind-waved curtain. He faced about resolutely and did not look behind again. Shame, misery, hopelessness—he did not know which emotion was stinging him most poignantly. The oarsmen in the tender were gazing upward innocently while they rowed, but he perceived that they were hiding grins. His humiliation in that amazing fashion would be the forecastle jest. Through him these new friends of his had been subjected to insult. He felt that he understood what Polly Candage's silence meant.
The next moment he felt the pat of a little hand on the fist he was clenching on his knee.
“Poor boy!” she whispered. “I understand! It will come out right if you don't lose courage.”
But she was not looking at him when he gave her a quick side-glance.
The fisherman had come into the wind, rocking on the long swell, dingy sails flapping, salt-stained sides dipping and flashing wet gleams as she rolled. Her men were rigging a ladder over the side.
“I want to say whilst we're here together and there's time to say it,” announced Captain Candage, “that we are one and all mighty much obliged for that invite you gave us to come aboard the yacht, sir, and we all know that if—well, if things had been different from what they was you would have used us all right. And what I might say about yachts and the kind of critters that own 'em I ain't a-going to say.”
“You are improving right along, father,” observed Polly Candage, dryly.
“Still, I have my own idees on the subject. But that's neither here nor there. You're a native and I'm a native, and I want ye should just look at that face leaning over the lee rail, there, and then say that now we know that we're among real friends.”
It was a rubicund and welcoming countenance under the edge of a rusty black oilskin sou'wester hat, and the man was manifestly the skipper. Every once in a while he flourished his arm encouragingly.
“Hearty welcome aboard the Reuben and Esther,” he called out when the tender swung to the foot of the ladder. “What schooner is she, there?”
“Poor old Polly,” stated the master, first up the ladder. In his haste to greet the fishing-skipper he left his daughter to the care of Captain Mayo.
“That's too bad—too bad!” clucked the fishing-skipper, full measure of sympathy in his demeanor. “She was old, but she was able, sir!”
“And here's another poor Polly,” stated Captain Candage. “I was fool enough to take her out of a good home for a trip to sea.”
The skipper ducked salute. “Make yourself to home, miss. Go below. House is yours!”
Then the schooner lurched away on her shoreward tack, and the insolent yacht marched off down across the shimmering waves.
Mayo shook hands with the solicitous fisherman in rather dreamy and indifferent fashion. He realized that he was faint with hunger, but he refused to eat. Fatigue and grief demanded their toll in more imperious fashion than hunger. He lay down in the sun in the lee alley, put his head on his crossed arms, and blessed sleep blotted out his bitter thoughts.