Captain Mayo, when he woke, had it promptly conveyed to him that hospitality on board the Reuben and Esther had watchful eyes. While he was rubbing feeling back into his stiffened limbs, sitting there in the lee alley, the cook came lugging a pot of hot coffee and a plate heaped with food.
“Thought you'd rather have it here than in the cuddy. The miss is asleep in the house,” whispered the cook.
Captain Candage came to Mayo while the latter was eating and sat down on the deck. Gloom had settled on the schooner's master. “I don't want to bother you with my troubles, seeing that you've got aplenty of your own, sir. But I'm needing a little advice. I have lost a schooner that has been my home ever since I was big enough to heave a dunnage-bag over the rail, and not a cent of insurance. Insurance would have et up all my profits. What do you think of my chances to make a dollar over and above providing I hire a tugboat and try to salvage?”
“According to my notion your chances would be poor, sir. Claims in such cases usually eat up all a craft is worth. Besides, you may find those yachtsmen on your back for damages, providing you get her in where she can be libeled.”
“I shouldn't wonder a mite,” admitted Captain Can-dage. “The more some folks have the more they keep trying to git.”
“I was looking her bottom over while we sat there, and it must be owned up that her years have told on her.”
“I hate to let her go.”
“That's natural, sir. But I have an idea that she will be reported as a menace to navigation, and that a coastguard cutter will blow her up before you can get around to make your salvage arrangements.”
“When a man is down they all jump on him.”
“I can agree with you there,” affirmed Captain Mayo, mournfully.
“She showed grit—that girl,” ventured Candage, giving the other man keen survey from under his grizzled brows.
“I must ask you to furl sail on that subject, sir,” snapped Mayo, with sailor bluntness.
“I only said it complimentary. Lots of times girls have more grit than they are given credit for. You think they're just girls, and then you find out that they are hero-ines! I thought I had some grit, but my own Polly has shamed me. I was just down watching her—she's asleep in Cap'n Sinnett's bunk. Made the tears come up into my eyes, sir, to ponder on what she has been through on account of my cussed foolishness. Of course, you haven't been told. But confession is good for a man, and I'm going to own up. I took her with me to get her away from a fellow who is courting her.”
Mayo did not offer comment. He wanted to advise the skipper to keep still on that subject, too.
“I don't say he ain't good enough for her. Maybe he is. But I 'ain't been realizing that she has growed up. When I found she was being courted it was like hitting a rock in a fairway. You are young, and you are around consid'able and know the actions of young folks. What's your advice?”
“I don't know anything about the circumstances, sir.”
“But speaking generally,” insisted Captain Candage. “I want to do what's right. There ain't many I can bring myself to ask. I'm a poor old fool, I'm afraid. Won't you kind of grab in on this, Captain Mayo? I do need a little advice.” His rough hands trembled on his knees.
“If the young man is worthy—is the right sort,” returned Mayo, in gentler tones, “I think you are making a great mistake by interfering.”
“I'll go look that young fellow over—re-survey him, as ye might say,” stated the skipper, after a moment's meditation.
“I don't know your daughter very well, sir, but I have much faith in her judgment. If I were you I'd allow her to pick her own husband.”
“Thanks for that advice. I know it comes from a man who has shown that he knows exactly what to do in emergencies. I have changed my mind about her being courted, sir.”
“Honest love isn't a question of money, Captain Candage. Many good girls are ruined by—” He was speaking bitterly and he checked himself. “Where is Captain Sinnett going to set us ashore?”
“Maquoit. He is going to take his fish to the big market. But he said he would set us ashore anywhere, and so I said Maquoit. I might as well be there as anywhere till I know what I'm going to do.”
“Same thing holds good for me, I suppose. I don't feel like going to the city just yet.”
Captain Sinnett came rolling into the alley, and when Mayo started to thank him for the trouble he was taking he raised in genial protest a hand which resembled in spread a split codfish.
“Trouble! It ain't trouble. Was going to call into Maquoit to ice up, anyway. I know my manners even if them yachting fellows didn't.”
Captain Candage preserved the demeanor of innocence under Mayo's scrutiny.
“I've missed you off the fishing-grounds—didn't know you had gone on to a yacht, sir,” pursued Captain Sinnett. “Hope to see you back into the fishing business again; that is, providing you don't go on one of them beam trawlers that are hooking up the bottom of the Atlantic and sp'iling the thing entire for us all.”
“I agree with you about the trawler; that's why I quit. And as to yachting, I think I'll go after a real man's job, sir!”
“So do! You'll be contenteder,” replied the other, significance in his tones.
Mayo knew that his secret had been exposed, but he had no relish for an argument with Captain Candage on the subject of garrulity. He finished his coffee and went forward where the fishermen were coiling the gang-lines into the tubs.
The fisherman made port at Maquoit late in the afternoon, and was warped to her berth at the ice-house wharf.
The castaways went ashore.
Maquoit was a straggling hamlet at the head of a cove which nicked the coast-line.
Captain Candage, an Apple-treer, who knew every hole alongshore where refuge from stress of weather was afforded, led his party through the village with confidence.
“There's a widder here who will put us up for what time we want to stay—and be glad of the money. I knowed her husband in the coasting trade. I like to get into a place like this that 'ain't been sp'iled by them cussed rusticators and the prices they are willing to pay,” he confided to Mayo. He slyly exhibited a wallet that was stuffed with paper money. “I ain't busted, but there's no sense in paying more 'n five dollars a week anywhere for vittles and bed. She will make plenty off'n us at that rate. You just let me do the dickering.”
The widow proved to be a kindly soul who, in the first excitement of her sympathetic nature, resolutely refused to consider the matter of any payment whatever.
“You are shipwrecked, and my poor husband's body wouldn't rest quiet wherever it is in the Atlantic Ocean if I grabbed money from shipwrecked folks.”
However, in the end, Captain Candage worked her up from three dollars to five per week, and she took Polly Candage into her heart and into the best chamber.
Captain Mayo came back to supper after a moody stroll about the village. Skipper Candage was patrolling the widow's front yard and was exhibiting more cheerfulness.
“It's God's Proverdunce and your grit that has saved us, sir. I have come out of my numb condition and sense it all. What's your plans?”
“I don't seem to be able to make any just yet.”
“I'm going to stay right here for a spell, and shall keep Dolph and Otie with me. We shall be here on the coast where we can hear of something to grab in on. As soon as Polly gets straightened around I'll let her go home to her aunt. But, of course, hanging around here doesn't offer you any attractions, sir. You're looking for bigger game than we are.”
“I have about made up my mind to leave in the morning on the stage. I'll go somewhere.”
The widow tapped her knuckles on the glass of a near-by window. “Supper!” she announced. “Hurry in whilst it's hot!”
“I always do my best pondering on a full stomach,” said Captain Candage. “And I smell cream-o'-tartar biskits and I saw her hulling field strorb'ries. Better look on the bright side of things along with me, Captain Mayo.”
Captain Mayo failed to find any bright side as he turned his affairs over in his mind. He had only a meager stock of money. He had used his modest earnings in settling the debts of the family estate. The outlook for employment was vague—he could not estimate to what extent the hostility of Julius Marston might block his efforts, provided the magnate troubled himself to descend to meddle with the affairs of such an inconspicuous person. His poor little romance with Alma Marston had been left in a shocking condition. He did not talk at the supper-table, and the widow's wholesome food was like ashes in his mouth. He went out and sat on the porch of the widow's cottage and looked into the sunset and saw nothing in its rosy hues to give him encouragement for his own future.
Polly Candage came timidly and sat down beside him. “Father says you think of leaving in the morning!”
“There's nothing for me here.”
“Probably not.”
A long silence followed.
“I suppose you don't care to have me talk to you, Captain Mayo?”
“I'll listen to you gratefully, any time.”
“I'm only a country girl. I don't know how to say it—how to tell you I'm so sorry for you!”
“That one little pat on my hand to-day, it was better than words.”
“It's all I can think about—your unhappiness.”
“That touches me because I know that you have enough sorrow of your own.”
“Sorrow!” She opened her eyes wide.
“Perhaps I have no business speaking of it,” he returned, with considerable embarrassment.
“And yet I have been so bold as to speak to you!”
There was a touch of reproach in her voice, and therefore he ventured: “Your father told me—I tried to stop him, but he went on and said—Well, I understand! But I have some consolation for you and I'm going to speak out. He says he is going to allow you to marry your young man.”
“Did he dare to talk such matters over with you?”
“He insisted on doing it—on asking my advice. So I advised in a way to help you. I am glad, for your sake, that he is coming to his senses.”
“I thank you for your help,” she said, stiffly.
“Of course it's none of my business. I'm sorry he told me. But I wish you all happiness.”
She rose as if to go away. Then she stamped her foot and sat down. “My father ought to be muzzled!”
She realized that he might misinterpret her indignation, for he said: “I'm ashamed because I meddled in your affairs. But from what you saw to-day in my case, I felt that I ought to help others who are in the same trouble.”
“But my father has mistaken my—” She broke off in much confusion, not understanding the queer look he gave her. “I—I am glad my father is coming to his senses and will allow me to—to—marry the young man,” she stammered. “And now I think I may be allowed to say that I hope you may have the girl you love, some day. Would you like to have me talk to you about her—how dear and pretty I think she is?”
“No, it hurts! But I do want you to know, Miss Can-dage, that I'm not out fortune-hunting. I love her for herself—just herself—nothing more!”
“I know it must be so.”
“And I know that a young man you would choose is worthy of you. I told your father—”
“No matter. That hurts, too! We both understand. We'll leave it there!”
After the declaration of that truce they were frankly at ease and began to chat with friendly freedom. The dusk came shading into the west, the evening star dripped silver light.
“It's a peaceful spot here,” she suggested. “Everybody seems to be contented.”
“Contentment—in a rut—that may be the best way of passing this life, after all.”
“But if you were in the rut, Captain Mayo, you might find that contentment would not agree to come and live with you.”
“Probably it wouldn't! I'd have to be born to the life here like this chap who is coming up the hill. You can see that he isn't worrying about himself or the world outside.”
The man was clumping slowly along in his rubber boots; an old cap was slewed awry on his head, its peak drawn down over one ear. He cocked up the other ear at sound of voices on the porch and loafed up and sat down on the edge of the boarding. Captain Mayo and the girl, accustomed to bland indifference to formality in rural neighborhoods, accepted this interruption without surprise or protest.
“'Tain't a bad night as nights go,” stated the caller.
“It's a beautiful night,” said Polly Candage.
“I reckon it seems so to you, after what you went through. I've been harking to your father telling the yarn down to the store.”
They did not reply, having their own ideas as to Captain Candage's loquacity.
The caller hauled a plug of tobacco from his pocket, gnawed off a chew, and began slow wagging of his jaws. “This world is full of trouble,” he observed,
“It seems to be,” agreed Captain Mayo.
“Them what's down get kicked further down.”
“Also true, in many cases.”
“Take your case! It's bad. But our'n is worse!” The caller pointed to the dim bulk of a small island which the cove held between the bold jaws of its headland. “The old sir who named that Hue and Cry Island must have smelt into the future so as to know what was going to happen there some day—and this is the day!” He chewed on, and his silence became irritating.
“Well, what has happened?” demanded the captain.
“It hasn't happened just yet—it's going to.”
Further silence.
“Tell us what's going to happen, can't you?”
“Of course I can, now that you have asked me. I ain't no hand to butt in. I ain't no hand to do things unless I'm asked. There's seventeen fam'lies of us on Hue and Cry and they've told us to get off.”
“Who told you?”
“The state! Some big bugs come along and said the Governor sent 'em, and they showed papers and we've got to go.”
“But I know about Hue and Cry!” protested Mayo. “You people have lived there for years!”
“Sure have! My grandfather was one of the first settlers. Most all of us who live there had grandfathers who settled the place. But according to what is told us, some heirs have found papers what say that they own the island. The state bought out the heirs. Now the state says get off. We're only squatters, state says.”
“But, good Caesar, man, you have squatter rights after all these years. Hire a lawyer. Fight the case!”
“We ain't fighters. 'Ain't got no money—'ain't got no friends. Might have fit plain heirs, but you can't fight the state—leastways, poor cusses like us can't.”
“Where are you going?”
“Well, there's the problem! That's what made me say that this world is full of trouble. You see, we have taken town help in years past—had to do it or starve winters. And we have had state aid, too. They say that makes paupers of us. Every town round about has served notice that we can't settle there and gain pauper residence. Hue and Cry 'ain't ever been admitted to any town. Towns say, seeing that the state has ordered us off, now let the state take care of us.”
“And men have been here, representing the state?”
“You bet they have.”
“What do they say?”
“Say get off! But they won't let us settle on the main. Looks like they wanted us to go up in balloons. But we hain't got no balloons. Got to move, though.”
“I never heard of such a thing!”
“Nor I, neither,” admitted this man, with a sort of calm numbness of discouragement. “But that ain't anyways surprising. We don't hear much about anything on Hue and Cry till they come and tell us. Speaking for myself, I ain't so awful much fussed up. I've got a house-bo't to take my wife and young ones on, and we'll keep on digging clams for trawlers—sixty cents a bucket, shucked, and we can dig and shuck a bucket a day, all hands turning to. We won't starve. But I pity the poor critters that 'ain't got a house-bo't. Looks like they'd need wings. I ain't worrying a mite, I say. I had the best house on the island, and the state has allowed a hundred and fifty dollars for it. I consider I'm well fixed.”
The plutocrat of the unhappy tribe of Hue and Cry rose and stretched with a comfortable grunt.
“If it ain't one thing it's another,” he said, as he started off. “We've got to have about so much trouble, anyway, and it might just as well be this as anything else.” %
“Why, that's an awful thing to happen to those people!” declared the girl. “I must say, he takes it calmly.”
“He is a fair sample of some of the human jellyfish I have found hidden away in odd corners on this coast,” stated Captain Mayo. “Not enough mind or spirit left to fight for his own protection. But this thing is almost unbelievable. It can't be possible that the state is gunning an affair like this! I'll find somebody who knows more about it than that clam-digging machine!”
A little later a man strolled past, hands behind his back. He was placidly smoking a cigar, and, though the dusk had deepened, Mayo could perceive that he was attired with some pretensions to city smartness.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” called the young man. “But do you know anything about the inwardness of this business on Hue and Cry Island?”
“I can tell you all about it,” stated the person who had been hailed. He sauntered up and sat down on the edge of the porch. He showed the air of a man who was killing time. “I'm in charge of it.”
“Not of putting those people off the island?”
“Sure! That's what I'm here for. I'm state agent on pauper affairs, acting for the Governor and Council.”
“You say the state is back of this?” demanded Mayo, incredulously.
“Certainly! It's a matter that the state was obliged to take up. State has bought that island from the real heirs, has ordered off those squatters, and we shall burn down their shacks and clear the land up. Of course, we allow heads of families some cash for their houses, if you can call 'em houses. That's under the law regulating squatter improvements. But improvements is a polite word for the buildings on that island. It is going to cost us good money to clear up for that New York party who has made an offer to the state—he's going to use the island for a summer estate.”
He flicked the ashes from his cigar and broke in on Mayo's indignant retort.
“It had to be done, sir. They have intermarried till a good many of the children are fools. The men are breaking into summer cottages, after the owners leave in the fall. They steal everything on the main that isn't nailed down. They have set false beacons in the winter, and have wrecked coasters. Every little while some city newspaper has written them up as wild men, and it has given the state a bad name. We're going to break up the nest.”
“But where will they go?”
“Fools to the state school for the feeble-minded, cripples to the poorhouse. The able-bodied will have to get out and go to work at something honest.”
“But, look here, my dear sir! Those poor devils are starting out with too much of a handicap. After three generations on that island they don't know how to get a living on the main.”
“That's their own lookout, not the state's! State doesn't guarantee to give shiftless folks a living.”
“How about using a little common sense in the case of such people?”
“You are not making this affair your business, are you?” asked the commissioner, with acerbity.
“No.”
“Better not; and you'd better not say too much to me!” He rose and dusted off his trousers. “I have investigated for the Governor and Council and they are acting on my recommendations. You might just as well advise nursing and coddling a nest of brown-tail moths—and we are spending good money to kill off moths. We don't propose to encourage the breeding of thieves. We are not keeping show places of this sort along the coast for city folks to talk about and run down the state after they go back home. It hurts state business!” He marched away.
Captain Mayo strode up and down the porch and muttered some emphatic opinions in regard to the intellects and doings of rulers.
“You see, I know the sort of people who live on that island, Miss Candage. I have seen other cases alongshore. They are blamed for what they don't know—and what they are led into. Amateur missionaries will load them down in a spasm of summer generosity with a lot of truck and make them think that the world owes them a living. The poor devils haven't wit enough to look ahead. When it comes winter they are starving—and when children are hungry and cold a man will tackle a proposition that is more dangerous than a summer cottage locked up for the winter. Next comes along some chap like that state agent, who prides himself on being straight business and no favors! He puts the screws to 'em! There's nobody to help those folks in the real and the right way. I pity them!”
“I live in the country and I know how unfeeling the boards of selectmen are in many of the pauper cases. When it's a matter of saving money for the voters and making a good town record, they don't care much how poor folks get along.”
Mayo continued to patrol the porch. “I'm in a rather rebellious state of mind just now, I reckon,” he admitted. “Seems to me that a lot of folks, including myself, are getting kicked. I'm smarting! I have a fellow-feeling for the oppressed.” He laughed, but there was no merriment in his tones. “It's the little children who will suffer most in this, Miss Candage,” he went on. “They are not to blame—they don't understand.”
“And of course nothing can be done.”
“Nothing sensible, I'm afraid.” He walked to and fro for many minutes. “You see, it's none of my business,” he commented, when he came and sat down beside her.
“I suppose there's not one man in the world to step forward and say a good word for them,” said the girl, softly, uttering her thoughts.
“Words wouldn't amount to anything—with the machinery of the state grinding away so merrily as it is. But this matter is stirring my curiosity a little, Miss Candage. That's because I am one of the oppressed myself, I reckon.” Again his mirthless chuckle. “I intended to take the stage out of here in the morning, but I have an idea that I'll stay over and see what happens when that gentleman who represents our grand old state proceeds to scatter those folks to the four winds.”
“I was hoping you would stay over, Captain Mayo.” She declared that with frank delight.
“But you don't expect me to do anything, of course!”
“It's not that. You see, I'd like to go down to the island and—and father is so odd he might not be willing to escort me,” she explained, trying to be matter-of-fact, her air showing that she regretted her outburst.
“I volunteer, here and now.”
She rose and put out her hand to him. “I have not thanked you for saving my life—saving us all, Captain Mayo. It is too holy a matter to be profaned by any words. But here is my hand—like a friend—like a sister—no”—she held herself straight and looked him full in the face through the gloom and tightened her hold on his fingers—“like a man!”
He returned her earnest finger-clasp and released her hand when her pressure slackened. That sudden spirit, the suggestion that she desired to assume the attitude of man to man with him, seemed to vanish from her with the release of her fingers.
She quavered her “Good night!” There was even a hint of a sob. Then she ran into the house.
Mayo stared after her, wrinkling his forehead for a moment, as if he had discovered some new vagary in femininity to puzzle him. Then he resumed his patrol with the slow stride of the master mariner. Hue and Cry raised dim bulk in the harbor jaws, showing no glimmer of light. It was barren, treeless, a lump of land which towns had thrust from them and which county boundaries had not taken in. He admitted that the state had good reasons for desiring to change conditions on Hue and Cry, but this callous, brutal uprooting of helpless folks who had been attached to that soil through three generations was so senselessly radical that his resentment was stirred. It was swinging from the extreme of ill-considered indulgence to that of utter cruelty, and the poor devils could not in the least understand!
“There seem to be other things than a spiked martingale which can pick a man up and keep him away from his own business,” he mused. “What fool notion possesses me to go out there to-morrow I cannot understand. However, I can go and look on without butting into stuff that's no affair of mine.”
Two men were shuffling past in the road. In the utter silence of that summer night their conversation carried far.
“Yes, sir, as I was saying, there he lays dead! When I was with him on the Luther Briggs he fell from the main crosstrees, broke both legs and one arm, and made a dent in the deck, and he got well. And a week ago, come to-morrow, he got a sliver under his thumb, and there he lays dead.”
“It's the way it often is in life. Whilst a man is looking up into the sky so as to see the big things and dodge 'em, he goes to work and stubs his toe over a knitting-needle.”
“That's right,” Captain Mayo informed himself; “but I can't seem to help myself, somehow!”
When the subject of the proposed expedition to Hue and Cry was broached at the breakfast-table, Captain Epps Candage displayed prompt interest.
“It's going to be a good thing for the section round about here—roust 'em off! Heard 'em talking it over down to Rowley's store last evening. I'll go along with you and see it done.”
Mayo and Polly Candage exchanged looks and refrained from comment. It was evident that Captain Candage reflected the utilitarian view of Maquoit.
Mayo had put off that hateful uniform of Marston's yacht, and the girl gave him approving survey when he appeared that morning in his shore suit of quiet gray. With the widow's ready aid Polly Candage had made her own attire presentable once more. When they walked down to the shore she smiled archly at Mayo from under the brim of a very fetching straw poke.
“I ran down to the general store early and bought a boy's hat,” she explained. “I trimmed it myself. You know, I'm a milliner's apprentice. Does it do my training credit?”
He was somewhat warm in his assurances that it did.
“I ought to be pleased by your praise,” she said, demurely, “because women wear hats for men's approval, and if my customers go home and hear such nice words from their husbands my business career is sure to be a success.”
“Your business career?”
“Certainly, sir!” She bobbed a little courtesy. “I have money, sir! Money of my own. Five thousand dollars in the bank, if you please! Oh, you need not stare at me. I did not earn it. My dear mother's sister left it to me in her will. And some day when you are walking down the city street you'll see a little brass sign—very bright, very neat—and there'll be 'Polly' on it. Then you may come up and call on the great milliner—that will be this person, now so humble.”
“But that young man!” he protested, smiling at her gaiety.
“Oh, that young man?” She wrinkled her nose. Then she flushed, conscious that he was a bit surprised at her tone of disdain. “Why, he will wear a frock-coat and a flower in the buttonhole and will bow in my customers. You didn't think my young man was a farmer-boy, did you?”
She hurried ahead of him to the beach, where her father was waiting with his men. Captain Candage had borrowed a dory for the trip. He installed himself in the stern with the steer-oar, and the young man and the girl sat together on the midship seat. The skipper listened to their chat with bland content.
“There's a fellow that's one of our kind, and he ain't trying to court my girl,” he had confided to Mr. Speed. “He is spoke for and she knows it. And under them circumstances I believe in encouraging young folks to be sociable.”
It was still early morning when they arrived at the island, but the state agent was there ahead of them. They saw him walking briskly about among the scattered houses, puffing on his cigar.
He was making domiciliary visits and was transacting business in a loud tone of voice. That business was paying over the money which the state had allowed for “squatter improvements.” In the case of the settlers on Hue and Cry the sums were mere pittances; their improvements consisted of tottering shacks, erected from salvaged flotsam of the ocean and patched over and over with tarred paper.
There was only one building on the island which deserved
the name of dwelling; from this their communicative caller of the preceding evening was removing his scant belongings. His wife and children were helping. He set down a battered table when he met Mayo and his party.
“I'm the only citizen who can get away early and—as you might call it—respectable, gents. I took my hundred and fifty and bought that house-bo't out there.” It was an ancient scow, housed over, and evidently had grown venerable in service as a floating fish-market. “They can't drive me off'n the Atlantic Ocean! The others 'ain't woke up to a reelizing sense that they have got to go and that this all means business! I'm getting away early or else they'd all be trying to climb aboard my bo't like the folks wanted to do to Noah's ark when they see that the flood wasn't just a shower.” He lifted his table upon his head and marched on, leading his flock.
All the population of the island was out of doors. The women and the children were idling in groups; the men were listlessly following the commissioner on his rounds. No spirit of rebelliousness was evident. The men acted more like inquisitive sheep. They were of that abject variety of poor whites who accept the rains from heaven and bow to the reign of authority with the same unquestioning resignation.
But Mayo discovered promptly an especial reason for the calmness exhibited by these men. Their slow minds had not wakened to full comprehension.
“What do you men propose to do?” demanded Captain Mayo of a group which had abandoned the commissioner and had strolled over to inspect the new-comers.
“There ain't nothing we can do,” stated a spokesman.
“But don't you understand that this man is here with full power from the state to put you off this island?”
“Oh, they have threated us before. But something has allus come up. We haven't been driv' off.”
“But this time it's going to happen! Why don't you wake up? Where are you going?”
“That's for somebody else to worry about. This ain't any of our picking and choosing.”
“What's the use of trying to beat anything sensible through the shells of them quahaugs?” snarled Captain Candage, with 'longcoast scorn for the inefficient.
“Not much use, I'm afraid,” acknowledged the young man. “But look at the children!”
Those pathetic waifs of Hue and Cry were huddled apart, dumb with terror which their elders made no attempt to calm. They were ragged, pitiful, wistful urchins; lads with pinched faces, poor little snippets of girls. Their childish imaginations made of the affair a tragedy which they could not understand. Under their arms they held frightened cats, helpless kittens, or rag dolls. The callous calm of the men mystified them; the weeping of their mothers made their miserable fear more acute. They stared from face to face, trying to comprehend.
“What can I say to them?” asked Polly Candage, in a whisper. “It's wicked. They are so frightened.”
“Perhaps something can be done with that agent. I'm trying to think up something to say to him,” Mayo told her.
An old man, a very old man, sat on an upturned clamhod and yawled a discordant miserere on a fiddle. His eyes were wide open and sightless. A woman whose tattered skirt only partly concealed the man's trousers and rubber boots which she wore, occasionally addressed him as “father.” She was piling about him a few articles of furniture which she was lugging out of their home; that house was the upper part of a schooner's cabin—something the sea had cast up on Hue and Cry. She was obliged to bend nearly double in order to walk about in the shelter. Dogs slinked between the feet of their masters, canine instinct informing them that something evil was abroad that day. The children staring wide-eyed and white-faced, the weeping women, the cowed men who shuffled and mumbled! Among them strode the god of the machine, curt, contemptuous, puffing his cigar! He came past Captain Mayo and his friends.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” called the captain; “but are you sure that you are doing this thing just right?”
“Let's see—if I remember, I had a little talk with you last night!” suggested the agent, frostily. “Whom do you represent?” “Myself.”
“Just how do you fit into this matter?” “I don't think I do fit—there seem to be too many sharp corners,” stated Mayo, not liking the other's insolent manner. “Well, I fit! I have state authority.” “So you have told me. May I ask you a question?” “Go ahead, but be lively. This is my busy day.” “These people are being rooted up; they don't seem to know what's to become of them. What will be done?”
“I told you last evening! Fools in an institution; able-bodied must go to work. The state proposes—” “When you say 'state' just what do you mean, sir?” “I mean that I have investigated this matter and I'm running it.”
“That's what I thought! The state usually doesn't know much about what its agents are doing.”
“You are not doubting my authority, are you?”
“No, but I'm doubting your good judgment.”
“Look here, my man!”
“We'd better not lose our tempers,” advised Mayo, calmly. “You are a state servant, you say. Then a citizen has a right to talk to you. Let's leave the state out of this, if you question my right. Man to man, now! You're wrong.”
The population of the island had drawn close circle about them.
“That's enough talk from you,” declared the agent, wrathfully.
“You are trying to make over all at once what it has taken three generations to bring about,” insisted Mayo. “You can't do it!”
“You watch me and see if I can't! When I transact any business I'm paid to transact it gets transacted. I might have given these people a few more days if you had not come sticking your oar in here. But now I propose to show you! I'll have 'em off here by nightfall, and every shack burned to the ground.”
“Do you mean to say you're going to rub it into these poor folks just because I have tried to say something to help them?”
“I'll show you and them that it isn't safe to monkey with the state when the state gets started.”
“Oh, the state be condemned!” exploded Mayo, feeling his own temper getting away from him. “This isn't the state—it's a case of a man's swelled head!”
“Get off this island, you and your meddlers,” commanded the agent.
“Yes, when we are ready to leave, sir.”
Mayo was wondering at his own obstinacy. He knew that a rather boyish temper, resentment roused by the other man's arrogance, had considerable to do with his stand in the matter, but underneath there was protest at the world's injustice. He felt that he had been having personal experience with that injustice. He knew that he had not come out to Hue and Cry to volunteer as the champion of these unfortunates, but now that he was there and had spoken out it was evident that he must allow himself to be forced into the matter to some extent; the agent had declared in the hearing of all that this interference had settled the doom of the islanders. Polly Candage was standing close to the champion, and she looked at him with eyes that flashed with pride in him and spirit of her own. She reached and took one of the frightened children by the hand.
“If I have been a little hasty in my remarks I apologize,” pleaded the captain, anxious to repair the fault. “I don't mean to interfere with your duty. I have no right to do so!”
“You hear what your friend says, after getting you into the mess,” shouted the agent, so that all might hear. “Now he is getting ready to trot away and leave you in your trouble.”
“You are wrong there, my friend. If you are angry with me, go ahead and have your quarrel with me. Don't bang at me over the shoulders of these poor folks. It isn't a square deal.”
“They go off to-day—and they go because you have butted into the matter. The whole of you have got to be shown that the state doesn't stand for meddlers after orders have been given.” Then he added, with malice: “You folks better ride this chap down to the beach on a rail. Whatever happens to you is his fault!”
This attempt to shift responsibility as a petty method of retaliation stirred Mayo's anger in good earnest.
The agent was dealing with men who were scarcely more than children in their estimates of affairs; they muttered among themselves and scowled on this stranger who had brought their troubles to a climax.
“I'm not going to allow you to get away with that kind of talk, Mr. Agent. You know perfectly well that people on the main will not hire these men, even if they are able-bodied. Everybody is down on them. You said that to me last evening. They will be kicked from pillar to post—from this town to that! They will be worse than beggars. And they must drag these women and little children about with them. I will expose this thing!”
“That exposure will sound fine!” sneered the commissioner. “Exposing a state officer for doing what the Governor and Council have ordered!”
“Yes, ordered on your advice!”
“Well, it has been ordered! And I'll be backed up! As soon as I can get to a justice I shall swear out a warrant against you for interfering with a state officer.” He flung down the stub of his cigar. “Listen, you people! Get off this island. Anybody who is here at sunset—man, woman, or child—will be arrested and put in jail for trespassing on state land. Now you'd all better give three cheers for your meddling friend, here!”
“They have allus let us stay, even when they have threated us before now,” whimpered a man. “He has poured the fat into the fire for us, that's what he has done!” He pointed his finger at Mayo.
“It's wicked!” gasped the girl. “These poor folks don't know any better, they are not responsible!”
“Say, look here, you folks!” shouted Mr. Speed, who had been holding himself in with great difficulty. “It's about time for you to wake up!”
The plutocrat of the house-boat had come up from the beach and had been listening. The whimpering man started to speak again, and the magnate of the island cuffed him soundly; it was plain that this man, who had lived in the best house, had been a personage of authority in the tribe.
“I'm ashamed of the whole caboodle of ye,” he vociferated. “Here's a gent that's been standing up for us. He's the only man I ever heard say a good word for us or try to help us! Nobody else in the world ever done it! Take off your hats and thank him!”
“I'm in it!” whispered Mayo to the girl. “For heaven's sake, what am I going to do?”
“Do all you can—please, Captain Mayo!”
He stepped forward. The agent began to shout.
“Hold on, sir!” broke in the captain with quarter-deck air that made for obedience and attention. “You have had your say! Now I'm going to have mine. Listen to me, folks! I'm not the man to get my friends into trouble and then run off and leave 'em. All of you who are kicked out by the state—all men, women, and children who are ready to go to work—come over to me on the main at Maquoit with what stuff you can bring in your dories. I'll be waiting for you there. My name is Boyd Mayo.”
“I'll remember that name, myself,” declared the angry agent. “You'll be shown that you can't interfere in a state matter.”
“You have turned these folks loose in the world, and I'm going to give 'em a hand when they come to where I am. If you choose to call that interference, come on! It will make a fine story in court!”
He did not stop to shake the grimy hands which were thrust out to him. He pushed his way out of the crowd, and his party followed.
“Meet me yonder on the main, boys,” he called back with a sailor heartiness which they understood. “We'll see what can be done!”
“Well, what in the infernal blazes can be done?” growled Captain Candage, catching step with the champion.
“I don't know, sir.”
“You can't do nothing any more sensible with them critters than you could with combined cases of the smallpox and the seven years' itch.”
“Father!” cried the girl, reproachfully.
“I know what I'm talking about! This is dum foolishness!”
“Captain Mayo is a noble man! You ought to be ashamed of hanging back when your help is needed.”
“I don't blame you for sassing that skewangled old tywhoopus, sir,” admitted the old skipper. “I wanted to do it myself. But—”
“I'm afraid I don't deserve much praise,” said Mayo. “I've been getting back at that agent. He made me mad. I'm apt to go off half-cocked like that.”
“So am I, sir—and I'm always sorry for it. We'd better dig out before that tribe of gazaboos lands on our backs.”
“Oh, not a bit of it! I have given my word, sir. I must see it through.”
“But what are you going to do with 'em?”
“Blessed if I know right now! When I'm good and mad I don't stop to think.”
“Suppose I meet 'em for you and tell 'em you have had a sudden death in your family and have been called away? They won't know the difference,” volunteered Captain Candage. “And a real death would be lucky for you beside of what's in store if you hang around.”
“I shall hang around, sir. I can't afford to be ashamed of myself.”
“I think you have said quite enough, father,” stated Polly Candage, with vigor.
'“I have heard of adopting families before,” said the irreconcilable one, “but I never heard of any such wholesale operation as this. I'm thinking I'll go climb a tree.”
They embarked in the dory. Mr. Speed and Dolph splashed their oars and rowed, exchanging looks and not venturing to offer any comment.
“You might auction 'em off to farmers for scarecrows,” pursued Captain Candage, still worrying the topic as a dog mouths a bone. “They ain't fit for no more active jobs than that.”
“I do hope you'll forgive my father for talking this way,” pleaded Polly Candage. She raised brimming eyes to the sympathetic gaze of the young man beside her. “He doesn't understand it the way I do.”
“Perhaps I don't exactly understand it myself,” he protested.
“But what you are doing for them?”
“I haven't done anything as yet except start trouble for them. Now I must do a little something to square myself.”
“There's a reward for good deeds, Captain Mayo, when you help those who cannot help themselves. I believe what the Bible says about casting bread on the waters. It will return to you some day!”
He smiled down on her enthusiasm tolerantly, but he was far from realizing then that this pretty girl, whose eyes were so bright behind her tears, and whose cheeks were flushed with the ardor of her admiration, was speaking to him with the tongue of a sibyl.