Part 32

After that there was no constraint between them; they kept their own affairs hidden from each other. The autumn passed and the long, chill evenings came, and when the fishing-schooner was in port at Maquoit, between trips, Mayo and the girl spent comfortable hours together, playing at cards under the widow's red-shaded lamp and under the widow's approving eyes.

“No, they ain't courting, either,” she informed the pestering neighbors. “Do you suppose I have been twice married and twice a widder not to know courting when I see it? It's 'Boyd this' and 'Polly that,' to be sure, the whole continyal time; but she is engaged to somebody else, because she has been wearing an engagement ring that has come to her since she has been here. She showed it to me, and she showed it to him! And as for him, everybody 'longcoast knows how dead gone on him that millionaire girl is! Now everybody mind their own business!”

As the days passed the widow's counsel seemed to apply to all the affairs of Maquoit; folks went at their business in good earnest.

The winter wind nipped, the wharf piles were sheathed with ice, and only hardy men were abroad on the waterfront of the coast city, but the crew of the Ethel and May were unusually cheerful that day.

The schooner had stayed on Cashes Banks and had ridden out a gale that had driven other fishermen to shelter. Then in the first lull she had sent her dories over the rail and had put down her trawls for a set, and a rousing set it was! It seemed as if the cod, hake, and haddock had been waiting for that gale to stop so that they might hunt for baited hooks and have a feast. Nearly every ganging-line had its prize. The bow pulley in each dory fairly chuckled with delight as the trawl line was pulled over it. Every three feet was a ganging-line. Each dory strung out a mile of trawl. And when the dories returned to the schooner and dumped the catch into the hold the little craft fairly wallowed under her load.

They caught the market bare; the gale had blown for nearly a week. Fish-houses bid spiritedly against one another, and when at last a trade was made and the schooner's crew began to pitchfork the fish into the winch buckets, and the buckets rose creaking out over the rail, the two captains went into the office of the fish-house to figure some mighty gratifying profits.

“Nothing like luck in the fishing game, gents,” observed the manager.

“Well, grit counts for something,” stated Captain Candage. “We've got a crew that ain't afraid of a little weather.”

“If that's the case, there may be something for you off-coast about now that's better than the fishing game.”

“What's that?” asked the old skipper.

“Wrecking. Seen the morning papers?”

“We've had something to do besides fool with papers.”

“That new Bee line steamer, Conomo, has been piled up on Razee Reef.”

“One time—this last time—she hugged too close!” snapped the young man. The others bent an inquiring gaze on him. But he did not explain. His thoughts were busy with the events of that day when the Bee line steamer started his troubles with Marston.

“Paper says she's considered a total loss,” went on the manager. “If that's so, and the underwriters give her up, there ought to be some fine picking for men with grit. The board of survey went out to her on a tug this morning.” He gave them their check, and they went aboard their schooner.

The affair of the Conomo was not mentioned between them until they were at sea on their way to the eastward again. The piece of news did not interest Mayo at first, except as a marine disaster that had no bearing on his own affairs.

Captain Candage was stumping the quarter-deck, puffing at his short, black pipe. “I don'no' as you feel anyways as I do about it, Captain Mayo, but it ain't going to be no great outset to us if we make a leg out to Razee and see what's going on there,” he suggested.

“I have no objections,” returned Mayo. “But the way things are managed nowadays in case of wrecks, I don't see much prospect of our getting in on the thing in any way.”

“Mebbe not; but in case they're going to abandon her there'll be some grabbing, and we might as well grab with the rest of 'em.”

“If they can't get her off some junk concern will gamble on her. But we'll make an excursion of it to see the sights, sir. We can afford a little trip after what we pulled down to-day.”

There was no hope of reaching the wreck before nightfall, so they jogged comfortably in the light westerly that had succeeded the gale.

Captain Candage took the first watch after the second dog-watch, and at two bells, or nine o'clock, in the evening, Mayo awoke and heard him give orders to “pinch her.” He heard the sails flap, and knew that the men were shortening in readiness to lay to. He slipped on his outer clothing and went on deck.

“We're here,” stated the old skipper, “and it looks like some other moskeeters had got here ahead of us, ready to stick in their little bills when they get a chance.”

It was a clear night, brilliant with stars. In contrast with the twinkling and pure lights of the heavens, there were dim reds and greens and yellow-white lights on the surface of the ocean. These lights rocked and oscillated and tossed as the giant surges swept past.

“I make out half a dozen sail—little fellers—and two tugs,” said Captain Candage. “But get your eye on the main squeeze!”

Mayo looked in the direction of the extended mittened hand.

“Some iceberg, hey?” commented the skipper.

A short half-mile away, a veritable ghost ship, loomed the wrecked Conomo. Spray had beaten over her and had congealed until she seemed like a mass of ice that had been molded into the shape of a ship. She gleamed, a spectral figure, under the starry heavens.

A single red light, a baleful blob of color, showed from her main rigging.

They surveyed her for some time.

“I should say she was spoke for,” was Captain Candage's opinion. “It's high tide now, and a spring tide at that, and them tugs is just loafing out there—ain't making a move to start her. We can tell more about the prospect in the morning.”

Then the two captains turned in, for the Ethel and May lay to docilely with a single helmsman at the wheel.

The crisp light of morning did not reveal anything especially new or important. There were half a dozen small schooners, fishermen, loafing under shortened canvas in the vicinity of the wreck. One of the tugs departed shoreward after a time.

Mayo had assured himself, through the schooner's telescope, that the remaining tug was named Seba J. Ransom.

“The captain of that fellow went mate with me on a fishing-steamer once,” he informed Captain Candage. “Jockey me down in reaching distance and I'll go aboard him in a dory. He may have some news.”

Captain Dodge was immensely pleased to see his old chum, and called him up into the pilot-house and gave him a cigar.

“It's only a loafing job,” he said. “I've got to stand by and take off her captain and crew in case of rough weather or anything breaks loose more'n what's already busted. They are still hanging by her so as to deliver her to the buyer.”

“Buyer?”

“Yep! To whatever junkman is fool enough to bid her in. She's stuck fast. Underwriters have gone back on that tug, and are going to auction her. I'm here to help keep off pirates and take her men ashore after she has been handed over. You a pirate, Mayo?” he asked, with a grin.

“I'm almost anything nowadays, if there's a dollar to be made,” returned the young man.

The Ransom's captain gave him a wink. “I'm on to what happened on board the Olenia” he confided. “Feller who was in the crew told me. You're good enough for old Marston's girl. Why haven't you gone up to New York and taken—”

“Cut that conversation, Dodge,” barked Mayo, his face hard and his jaw jutting threateningly. “Good day!” added the young man, slamming the pilot-house door behind him.

His schooner, standing off and on, picked him up.

“There's no use hanging around here,” he informed the old skipper. “They're going to junk her, if they can find anybody fool enough to bid. She'll be guarded till after the auction.”

Therefore the Ethel and May shook out all her canvas and headed full and by for Maquoit to secure her fresh supply of bait.

“It's a shame,” mourned Captain Candage, staring over the taffrail at the ice-sheathed steamer. “'Most new, and cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to build, if I remember right what the paper said when she was launched.”

“If she was making money they'll have another one in her place,” said Mayo.

“Don'no' about that, sir. The Bee line wasn't none too strong financially, I'm told—a lot of little fellers who put in what they could scrape and borrowed the rest. Depends on insurance and their courage what they do after this.” He offered another observation after he had tamped down a load in his black pipe. “Men will do 'most anything for money—enough money.”

“Seems as if I'd heard that statement before,” was Mayo's curt rejoinder.

“Oh, I know it ain't in any ways new. But the more I think over what has happened to the Conomo, the pickeder seems the point to that remark. And whilst I was standing off and on, waiting for you, I run close enough to that steamer to make out a few faces aboard her.”

Mayo glanced at him without comment.

“F'r instance, I saw Art Simpson. You know him, don't you?”

“He was captain of Mr. Marston's yacht once.”

“Why did he leave her?”

“I heard he had been discharged. That was what the broker said when he hired me.”

“Yes, that's what Simpson said. He made a business of going around and swearing about it. Seemed to want to have everybody 'longcoast hear him swear about it. When I see a man make too much of a business of swearing about another man I get suspicious. After Art Simpson worked his cards so as to get the job of second officer on board the new Conomo I got more suspicious. Now that I have seen how that steamer has been plunked fair and square on Razee, I'm almighty suspicious. I'm suspicious enough to believe that she banged during Art Simpson's watch.”

“What are you driving at, Captain Candage? Are you hinting that anybody would plant a man for a job of that kind?”

“Exactly what I'm hinting,” drawled the skipper.

“But putting a steamer on the rocks at this time of year!”

“No passengers—and plenty of life-boats for the crew, sir. I have been hearing a lot of talk about steamboat conditions since I have been carrying in fish.”

“I've found out a little something in that line myself,” admitted Mayo.

“There's one thing to be said about Blackbeard and Cap'n Teach and old Cap Kidd—they went out on the sea and tended to their own pirating; they didn't stay behind a desk and send out understrappers.”

Mayo, in spite of his bitter memories of Julius Mar-ston's attitude, felt impelled to palliate in some degree the apparent enormities of the steamboat magnates.

“I don't believe the big fellows know all that's done, Captain Candage. As responsible parties they wouldn't dare to have those things done. The understrappers, as you say, are anxious to make good and to earn their money, and when the word is passed on down to 'em they go at the job recklessly. I think it will be pretty hard to fix anything on the real principals. That's why I am out in the cold with my hands tied, just now.”

“I wish we were going to get into the Conomo matter a little, so that we could do some first-hand scouting. It looks to me like the rankest job to date, and it may be the opening for a general overhauling. When deviltry gets to running too hard it generally stubs its toes, sir.” Captain Candage found a responsive gleam in Mayo's eyes and he went on. “Of course, I didn't hear the talk, nor see the money pass, nor I wa'n't in the pilot-house when Art Simpson shut his eyes and let her slam. But having been a sailorman all my life, I smell nasty weather a long ways off. That steamer was wrecked a-purpose, and she was wrecked at a time o' year when she can't be salvaged. You don't have to advise the devil how to build a bonfire.”

Mayo did not offer any comment. He seemed to be much occupied by his thoughts.

Two days later a newspaper came into Mayo's hands at Maquoit, and he read that the wrecked steamer had been put up at auction by the underwriters. It was plain that the bidders had shared the insurance folks' general feeling of pessimism—she had been knocked down for two thousand five hundred dollars. The newspapers explained that only this ridiculous sum had been realized because experts had decided that in the first blow the steamer would slip off the ledges on which she was impaled and would go down like a plummet in the deep water from which old Razee cropped. Even the most reckless of gambling junkmen could not be expected to dare much of an investment in such a peek-a-boo game as that.

“But I wonder what was the matter with the expert who predicted that,” mused Mayo. “He doesn't know the old jaw teeth of Razee Reef as well as I do.”

When the Ethel and May set forth from Maquoit on her next trip to Cashes Banks, Mayo suggested—and he was a bit shamefaced when he did so—that they might as well go out of their way a little and see what the junkers were doing at Razee.

Captain Candage eyed his associate with rather quizzical expression. “Great minds travel, et cetry!” he chuckled. “I was just going to say that same thing to you. On your mind a little, is it?”

“Yes, and only a little. Of course, there can't be anything in it for us. Those junkers will stick to her till she ducks for deep water. But I've been wondering why they think she's going to duck. I seined around Razee for a while, and the old chap has teeth like a hyena—regular fangs.”

“Maybe they took Art Simpson's say-so,” remarked the old man, wrinkling his nose. “Art would be very encouraging about the prospects of saving her—that is to say, he would be so in case losing that steamer has turned his brain.”

“Guess there wasn't very much interest by the underwriters,” suggested Mayo. “They weren't stuck very hard, so I've found out. She was mostly owned in sixty-fourths, and with marine risks up to where they are, small owners don't insure. It's a wicked thing all through, Candage! That great, new steamer piled up there by somebody's devilishness! I believe as you do about the affair! I've been to sea so long that a boat means something to me besides iron and wood. There's something about 'em—something—”

“Almost human,” put in the old man. “I sorrowed over the Polly, but I didn't feel as bad as if she'd been new. It was sort of like when old folks die of natural causes—you know they have lived about as long as they can. It's sorrowful to have 'em go, but you have to feel reconciled. But I know just how it is with you in the case of that steamer, for I'm a sailor like you. It's just like getting a fine boy through college, seeing him start out full of life, and courage, and hopes, and prospects, and then seeing him drop dead at your feet.”

There was a quaver in the old man's tones. But Mayo, who knew the souls of mariners, understood. Under their hard shells there is imagination that has been nurtured in long, long thoughts. In the calms under starlit skies, in the black darkness when tossing surges swing beneath the keel, in the glimmering vistas of sun-lighted seas, sailors ponder while their more stolid brothers on land allow their souls to doze.

“You are right, Captain Candage. That's why I almost hate to go out to the Conomo. Those infernal ghouls of junkmen will be tearing her into bits instead of trying to put the breath of life back into her.”

The helpless steamer seemed more lonely than when they had visited her before. The mosquito fleet that had surrounded her, hoping for some stray pickings, had dispersed. A tug and a couple of lighters were stuck against her icy sides, and, like leeches, were sucking from her what they could. They were prosecuting their work industriously, for the sea was calm in one of those lulls between storms, a wintry truce that Atlantic coastwise toilers understand and depend on.

Mayo, his curiosity prompting him, determined to go on board one of the lighters and discover to what extremes the junk jackals were proceeding.

Two of his dorymen ferried him after the schooner had been hove to near the wreck.

“What's your business?” inquired a man who was bundled in a fur coat and seemed to be bossing operations.

“Nothing much,” confessed the young man from his dory, which was tossing alongside the lighter. “I'm only a fisherman.”

The swinging cranes of the lighters, winches purring, the little lifting-engines puffing in breathless staccato, were hoisting and dropping cargo—potatoes in sacks, and huge rolls of print paper. Mayo was a bit astonished to note that they were not stripping the steamer; not even her anchors and chains had been disturbed.

“Fend off!” commanded the boss.

Captain Dodge dropped one of the windows of his pilot-house and leaned on his elbows, thrusting his head out. The tug Seba J. Ransom was still on the job. She was tied up alongside the wreck, chafing her fenders against the ice-sheathed hull.

“Hello, Captain Mayo!” he called, a welcoming grin splitting his features. “Come aboard and have a cigar, and this time I'll keep the conversation on fish-scales and gurry-butts.”

The man in the fur coat glanced from one to the other, and was promptly placated. “Oh, this is a friend of yours, is he, Captain Dodge?”

“You bet he is. He's been my boss before now.”

“If that's the case make yourself at home anywhere. But you know what some of these fellows alongcoast who call themselves fishermen will do around a wreck when your back is turned!”

Mayo nodded amicably.

“Step on board,” invited the boss.

“I'm all right here in the dory, and I'm out from underfoot, sir. We're going along to the fishing-grounds in a jiffy. I'm only satisfying a sailor's curiosity. Wondered what you intended to do with this proposition.”

“We're only grabbing what's handy just now. Some of the cargo forward is above water. I'm in on this thing in a sort of queer way myself.” This keen-eyed young man who had been so heartily indorsed by the tugboat skipper afforded the man in the fur coat an opportunity for a little conversation about himself. “I'm the outside man for Todd & Simonton, of Boston, and bought on the jump after I'd swapped a wire or so with the house. Happened into that auction, and bought blind. I believe in a gamble myself. Then somebody wired to the concern that they had been stuck good and fine, and they gave me a sizzler of a call-down in a night message. A man can sit at desk in Boston and think up a whole lot of things that ain't so. Well, I've flown out here with what equipment I could scrape up in a hurry, and you can see what I'm doing! There's enough in sight in the way of loose cargo to square me with the concern. But, blast the luck! If Jake Simonton had a little grit and would back me I believe we'd make a killing.”

“Of course, it all depends on how she's resting and what will happen when the next blow comes,” said Mayo. “Have you been below?”

“I'm a hustler on a dicker, and a hellion on junk,” snapped the boss. “I'm no sailor, prophet, or marine architect. I simply know that she's full of water aft and has got something serious the matter with her innards. I'm pulling enough out to make Simonton sorry he sassed me in a night message. Only he will never let on that he's sorry. He never lets loose any boomerangs that will scale around and come back and hit him. He wants to be in a position to rasp me the next time I make a mistake in a gamble.”