Part 26

Captain Downs tapped harder on the table, scowled, and was silent.

“Anything else, sir?” inquired Bradish, after a pause.

“Guess not, if that's the way you feel about it!” snapped Captain Downs.

Bradish went back into the main saloon, and the eavesdropper ventured forth.

“I don't know just what the dickens to do about you, now that I know who you are,” confessed the master, looking Mayo up and down.

“There isn't anything to do except let me go back to my work, sir.”

“I'm in a devil of a position. You're a captain.”

“I shipped on board here before the mast, Captain Downs, and knew exactly what I was doing. I'll take my medicine.”

“I don't like to have you go for'ard there among those cattle, Mayo.”

“Captain Downs, it was wrong for me to make the break I did on your quarter-deck. I ought to have kept still; but the thing came to me so sudden that I went all to pieces. I'd like to step back into the crew and have you forget that I'm Boyd Mayo. I'll sneak ashore in Boston and lose myself.”

The captain tipped up his cap and scratched the side of his head. “Seems as if I remember you being at the wheel, Mayo, when that fellow was unloading some pretty important information on to me.”

“I couldn't help hearing, sir.”

“So you know he's eloping with a girl?” The old skipper lowered his voice.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you ever hear of such a cussed, infernal performance? And I have talked with the girl, and she really doesn't seem to be that sort at all. She's flighty, you can see that. She has been left to run loose too much, like a lot of girls in society are running loose nowadays. They think of a thing that's different, and, biff! they go do it. She is wishing she hadn't done this. That shows some sense.” He studied the young man. “Do you know anything about this right a captain has to perform marriage ceremonies?”

“Nothing special.”

“It will probably be a good thing for that girl to be married and settled down. She seems to have picked out Bradish. Mayo, you're one of my kind, and I want to help you. I'll take a chance on my right to perform the ceremony. What say if we get Bradish back in here and swap a marriage for what he can tell us about the Montana business?”

“Captain Downs, a fellow who will put up a job of this kind on a girl, no matter if she has encouraged him, is a cheap pup,” declared Mayo, promptly and firmly. “I don't want to buy back my papers in any such fashion.”

“Then you don't approve of my marrying them?”

“I haven't any right to tell you what you shall do, sir. I'm talking merely for myself.”

Captain Downs pondered. “If he's her father's right-hand man, he's probably just as good as most of the land pirates who have been courting her. If she goes home married, even if it is only marriage on the high seas, contract between willing persons with witnesses and the master of the vessel officiating, as I believe it's allowed, she'll have her good name protected, and that means a lot. I don't know as I have any right to stand out and block their way, seeing how far it has gone. What do you think, Mayo?”

“I don't believe I want to make any suggestions, sir.”

At that moment the door aft opened. Mayo was near the door of the mate's stateroom in the shadows, and he dodged back into his retreat. He heard Bradish's voice.

“Captain Downs, this young lady has something to say to you and I hope you'll listen!”

Then the girl's voice! It was impetuous outburst. She hurried her words as if she feared to wait for second and saner reflection.

“Captain Downs, I cannot wait any longer. You must act. I beg of you. I have made up my mind. I am ready!”

“Ready to get married, you mean?”

“Yes! Now that my mind is made up, please hurry!”

Her tone was high-pitched, tears were close behind her desperation, her words rushed almost incoherently. But Mayo, staring sightlessly in the black darkness of the little stateroom, his hearing keen, knew that voice. He could not restrain himself. He pulled the door wide open.

The girl was Alma Marston.

Her eyes were bright, her cheeks were flushed, and it was plain that her impulsive nature was flaming with determination. The shadows were deep in the corners of the saloon, and the man in the stateroom door was not noticed by the three who stood there in the patch of light cast by the swinging lamp.

“I ask you—I beg you—I have made up my mind! I must have it over with.”

“Don't have hysterics! This is no thing to be rushed.”

“You must.”

“You're talking to a captain aboard his own vessel, ma'am!”

From Mayo's choking throat came some sort of sound and the girl glanced in his direction, but it was a hasty and indifferent gaze. Her own affairs were engrossing her. He reeled back into the little room, and the swing of the schooner shut the door.

“You are captain! You have the power! That's why I am talking to you, sir!”

“But when you talked with me a little while ago you were crawfishing!” was Captain Downs's blunt objection.

“I am sorry I have been so imprudent. I ought not to be here. I have said so. I do too many things on impulse. Now I want to be married!”

“More impulse, eh?”

“I must be able to face my father.”

There was silence in the saloon.

Mayo shoved trembling fingers into his mouth and bit upon them to keep back what his horrified reason warned him would be a scream of protest. In spite of what his eyes and ears told him, it all seemed to be some sort of hideous unreality.

“It's a big responsibility,” proceeded Captain Downs, mumbling his words and talking half to himself in his uncertainty. “I've been trying to get some light on it from another—from a man who ought to understand more about it than what I do. It's too much of a problem for a man to wrassle with all alone.”

He turned his back on them, gazed at the stateroom door, tipped his cap awry, and scratched his head more vigorously than he had in his past ponderings.

“Say, you in there! Mate!” he called, clumsily preserving Mayo's incognito. “I'm in a pinch. Say what you really think!”

There was no word from the stateroom.

“You're an unprejudiced party,” insisted the skipper. “You have good judgment. Now what?”

“Who is that, in there?” demanded Bradish.

“Why should this person, whoever he is, have any-thing to say about my affairs?” asked the girl.

“Because I'm asking him to say!” yelped the skipper, showing anger. “I'm running this! Don't try to tell me my own business!” He walked toward the door. “Speak up, mate!”

“It's an insult to me—asking strangers about my private affairs!” The protest of the girl was a furious outburst.

“I resent it, captain! Most bitterly resent it,” stated Bradish.

The old skipper walked back toward them. “Resent it as much as you condemned like, sir! You're here asking favors of me. I want to do what is right for all concerned. You ought to be married—I admit that. But what sort of a position does it leave me in? Are you going to tell me this girl's name?”

“I'm Alma Marston!” She volleyed the name at him with hysterical violence, but he did not seem to be impressed. “I am Julius Marston's daughter!”

The skipper looked her up and down.

“Now you will be so good as to proceed about your duty!” she commanded, haughtily.

“Well, you can't expect me to show any special neighborly kindness to the Wall Street gouger who kept me tied up without a charter two months last spring with his steamboat combinations and his dicker deals!”

“How are we to take that, sir?” asked Bradish.

The girl was staring with frank wonder at this hard-shelled mariner whom she had not been able to impress by her name or her manner.

“Just as you want to.”

“I demand an explanation.”

“Well, I'll give it to you, seeing that I'm perfectly willing to. Take it one way, and I'm willing to wallop Julius Marston by handing him the kind of a son-in-law you'd make; take it the other way, and I ain't particular about doing anything to accommodate anybody in the Marston family.” He eyed them sardonically.

“So, you see, I'm betwixt and between in the matter! It's like settling a question by flipping a cent. And I'll tell you what I'm going to do!” He smacked his palm on the table. He strode back toward the stateroom door. “Mate, ahoy, there! Sailor to sailor, now, and remember that you have asked something of me! If you were captain of this schooner would you marry off these two?”

They waited in silence, in which they heard the whummle and screech of the wind outside and the angry squalling of the sheathing of the plunging schooner's cabin walls.

The voice which replied to Captain Downs's query did not sound human. It was a sort of muffled wail, but there was no mistaking its positiveness.

“No!” said the man behind the door.

Back to the table lurched Captain Downs. He pounded down his fist. “That settles it with me!” Then he poised his big hand on the edge of the table-cover. “I was ready to tip one way or the other and it needed only a little push. I have tipped.” Down came the palm flat on the table-cloth with final and decisive firmness. “Young man,” he informed Bradish, “there's an extra stateroom, there, off this dining-saloon. You take it!”

“What can I tell my father?” wailed the girl, the fire of her determination suddenly quenched by sobbing helplessness.

“You can tell him that I temporarily adopted you as my daughter at three bells on this particular evening, and I'll go to him and back you up if it becomes necessary.” He opened the door leading aft and bowed. “Now, you trot along to your stateroom, sissy!”

After hesitating a few moments she hurried away. The skipper locked the door and slipped the key into his pocket.

“Do you think I'm going to—” began Bradish, angrily.

“I ain't wasting any thoughts on you, sir. I'm saving 'em all for the Drusilla M. Alden just now.”

The craft's plunging roll gave evidence that the sea was making. At that instant the first mate came down a few steps of the forward companionway, entering through the coach-house door.

“She's breezing up fresh from east'ard, sir!” he reported.

“So I've judged from the way this sheathing is talking up. I'll be on deck at once, Mr. Dodge.”

That report was a summons to a sailor; Mayo came staggering out of the stateroom. He looked neither to right nor left nor at either of the men in the saloon. He stumbled toward the companionway, reaching his hands in front of him after the fashion in which a man gropes in the dark.

“Are you letting a nigger—and a crazy one at that—decide the biggest thing in my life?” raged Bradish.

“I know what I'm doing,” Captain Downs assured him. But the skipper was manifestly amazed by the expression he saw on Mayo's face.

“I won't stand for it! Here, you!” Bradish rushed across the room and intercepted Mayo.

“Come away from that man!” commanded the skipper.

But Bradish was not in a mood to obey authority. “There's something behind this and I propose to be let in on it! Stop, you!” He pushed Mayo back, but the latter's face did not change its expression of dull, blank, utter despair which saw not and heard not. Mayo recovered himself and came on again, looking into vacancy.

“If you have a grudge against me, by the gods, I'll wake you up and make you explain it!” shouted Bradish. He drew back his arm and drove a quick punch squarely against the expressionless face. The blow came with a lurch of the vessel and Mayo fell flat on his back. He went down as stiffly as he had walked, with as little effort to save himself as a store dummy would have made.

But he was another man when he came upon his feet.

Bradish had awakened him!

The master of the Alden hurried around the table, roaring oaths, and tried to get between them, but he was an unwieldy man on his short legs. Before he was in arm's-length they were at each other, dodging here and there.

Bradish was no shrimp of an adversary; he was taller than his antagonist, and handled his fists like a man who had been trained as an amateur boxer.

They fought up and down the cabin, battering each other's face.

The indignant master threatened them with an upraised chair, tried to strike down their hands with it, but they were in no mood to mind a mediator. They fought like maddened cats, banging against the cabin walls, whirling in a crazy rigadoon to find an opening for their fists; Captain Downs was not nimble enough to catch them. Uttering awful profanity, he threatened to shoot both of them and rushed into the main saloon, unlocking the door.

“I'm coming back with a gun!” he promised. But the fight ended suddenly in a wrestling trick.

Mayo closed in, got Bradish's right hand in a grip, and doubled the arm behind his adversary's back. Then he tripped the city man and laid him backward over the table and against its edge with a violence that brought a yell of pain and made Bradish limp and passive. Mayo held him there.

“My grudge, eh? My grudge!” the victor panted. “Because you wouldn't tell me how the sneaks ruined me? No! The girl isn't here now. I'll tell you! It's because you stole her self-respect and her good name, and it makes you too dirty a dog to be her husband!”

He picked up Bradish and threw him on the floor. When he turned he saw the girl's white, agonized, frightened face at the crack of the saloon door.

“Captain Downs!” she shrieked, “that negro is killing him. He's killing Ralph!”

The victor turned his back on her and lurched around the table on his way out. He stroked blood from his face with his palm, and was glad that she had not recognized him; and yet, her failure to do so, even though he was such a pitiable figure of the man she had known, was one more slash of the whip of anguish across his raw soul. For a moment they had stood there, face to face, and only blank unrecognition greeted him; it made this horrible contretemps seem all the more unreal.

Mayo did not pause to listen to the ravings of Captain Downs, who came thrusting past her. Dizzy, bleeding, half blind, he rushed up the forward companionway and went into the black night on deck.

The mate was bawling for all hands to shorten sail, and Mayo took his place with the toilers, who were manning sheets and downhauls.

XXIII ~ THE MONSTER THAT SLIPPED ITS LEASH

And there Captain Kirby proved a coward at last, And he played at bo-peep behind the mainmast, And there they did stand, boys, and shiver and shake, For fear that that terror their lives it would take. —Admiral Benbow.

Rain came with the wind, and the weather settled into a sullen, driving, summer easterly.

Late summer regularly furnishes one of those storms to the Atlantic coast, a recrudescence of the wintry gales, a trial run of the elements, a sort of inter-equinoctial testing out so that Eurus may be sure that his bellows is in working condition.

Such a storm rarely gives warning ahead that it is to be severe. It seems to be a meteorological prank in order to catch mariners napping.

At midnight the Alden was plunging into creaming seas, her five masts thrummed by the blast. With five thousand tons of coal weighting her, she wallowed like a water-soaked log.

Mayo, who was roused from his hideous agony of soul at four bells, morning, to go on deck for his watch, ventured as near the engine-room door as he dared, for the rain was soaking his meager garments and the red glow from within was grateful. The ship's pump was clanking, a circumstance in no way alarming, because the huge schooners of the coal trade are racked and wrenched in rough water.

The second mate came to the engine-room, lugging the sounding-rod to the light in order to examine the smear on its freshly chalked length.

He tossed it out on deck with a grunt of satisfaction. “Nothing to hurt!” he said to the engineer. “However, I'd rather be inside the capes in this blow. The old skimmer ain't what she used to be. Johnson, do you know that this schooner is all of two feet longer when she is loaded than when she is light?”

“I knew she was hogged, but I didn't know it was as bad as that.”

“I put the lead-line on her before she went into the coal-dock this trip, and I measured her again in the stream yesterday. With a cargo she just humps right up like a monkey bound for war. That's the way with these five-masters! They get such a racking they go wrong before the owners realize.”

“They'll never build any more, and I don't suppose they want to spend much money on the old ones,” suggested the engineer.

“Naturally not, when they ain't paying dividends as it is.” He stepped to the weather rail and sniffed. “I reckon the old man will be dropping the killick before long,” he said.

Mayo knew something of the methods of schooner masters and was not surprised by the last remark.

In the gallant old days, when it was the custom to thrash out a blow, the later plan of anchoring a big craft in the high seas off the Delaware coast, with Europe for a lee, would have been viewed with a certain amount of horror by a captain.

But the modern skipper figures that there's less wear and tear if he anchors and rides it out. To be sure, it's no sort of a place for a squeamish person, aboard a loaded schooner whose mudhook clutches bottom while the sea flings her about, but the masters and crews of coal-luggers are not squeamish.

Mayo, glancing aft, saw two men coming forward slowly, stopping at regular intervals. The light of a lantern played upon their dripping oilskins. When they arrived at the break of the main-deck, near the forward house, he recognized Captain Downs and the first mate. The second mate stepped out and replied to the captain's hail.

“Bring a maul and some more wedges!” commanded the master.

“Drusilla is getting her back up some more,” commented the second mate, starting for the storeroom. “I don't blame her much. This is no place for an old lady, out here to-night.” He ordered Mayo to accompany him.

In a few moments they reported to the captain, the mate carrying the two-headed maul and the young man bearing an armful of wedges.

Captain Downs bestowed on Mayo about the same attention he would have allowed to a galley cockroach. He pointed to a gap in the rail.

“There—drive one in there,” he told the mate. “Let that nigger hold the wedge.” There was rancor in his voice—baleful hostility shone in his snapping eyes; no captain tolerates disobedience at sea, and Mayo had disregarded all discipline in the cabin.

The young man kneeled and performed the service and followed the party dutifully when they moved on to the next gap.

The pitching schooner groaned and grunted and squalled in all her fabric.

Every angle joint was working—yawing open and closing with dull grindings as the vessel rolled and plunged.

“By goofer, she's gritting her teeth in good shape!” commented the first mate.

“She ought to have been stiffened a year ago, when she first began to loosen and work!” declared Captain Downs. His anxiety stirred both his temper and his tongue. “I was willing to have my sixteenth into her assessed for repairs, but a stockholder don't have to go to sea! I wish I had an excursion party of owners aboard here now.”

“When these old critters once get loose enough to play they rattle to pieces mighty fast,” said the mate. “But this is nothing specially bad.”

“Find out what we've got under us,” snapped Captain Downs. The wedges had been driven. “Let this nigger carry the lead for'ard!”