Part 33

“All the crew gone ashore—the Bee line men?”

“Sure—bag and baggage. We own her as she stands. That second officer had 'em shivering every time a wave slapped her. I was glad when he got away. He pretty nigh stampeded my men. Said she was liable to slide any minute.”

The drawling voice of Captain Dodge broke in above them. “Here comes the tug Resolute” he stated. “Mebbe it's another one of them night messages from your concern, Titus. May want you to put what you can carry of her in a paper bag and bring it to Boston.”

“You never can tell what they're going to do in Boston,” growled the outside man. “I get discouraged, sometimes, trying to be enterprising.”

He began to pace, looking worried, and did not reply to several questions that Mayo put to him. So the young man accepted Captain Dodge's invitation and climbed to the tugboat's pilot-house. He had a very human hankering to know what the coming of that tug from the main signified, and decided to hang around a little while longer, even at the risk of making Captain Candage impatient.

The Resolute brought a telegram, and the man in the fur coat slapped it open, took in its gist at one glance, and began to swear with great gusto.

He climbed into the Ransom's pilot-house, with the air of a man seeking comfort from friends, and fanned the sheet of paper wrathfully.

“Orders to resell. Get out from under. Take what I can get. Don't want the gamble. And here I have cleaned a good profit already.”

“Why don't you fire back a message advising 'em to hold on?” asked Captain Dodge.

“And have a gale come up in a few hours and knock her off'n this rock? That's what would happen. It would be just my luck. I'm only a hired man, gents. If my firm won't gamble, it ain't up to me. If I disobey orders and hold on, I'll be scared to death the first time the wind begins to blow. There's no use in ruining a fine set of nerves for a firm that won't appreciate the sacrifice, and I need nerve to keep on working for 'em. I say it ain't up to me. Me for shore as soon as I load those lighters. Every dollar I get by reselling is velvet, so let 'ergo!”

“What do they tell you to do about price?” ventured Mayo.

“Take the first offer—and hurry about it. They seem to have an idea that this steamer is standing on her head on the point of a needle, and that only a blind man will buy her.”

He went back to his crew, much disgusted, ordered the freshly arrived tug to wait for a tow, and spurred laggard toilers with sharp profanity.

“Somebody has been scaring his concern,” suggested Mayo, left alone with Captain Dodge.

“Perhaps so—but it may be good business to get scared, provided they can unload this onto somebody else for a little ready cash. This spell of weather can't last much longer. Look at that bank to s'uthard. I don't know just what is under her in the way of ledges—never knew much about old Razee. But my prediction is, she'll break in two as soon as the waves give her any motion.”

It was on the tip of Mayo's tongue to argue the matter with the tugboat man, but he took second thought and shut his mouth.

“You're probably right,” he admitted. “I'd better be moving. I don't see any fish jumping aboard our schooner. We've got to go and catch 'em. Good-by, Dodge.”

When his associate came in over the rail of the Ethel and May Captain Candage, from force of habit, having picked up his men, gave orders to let her off into the wind.

“Hold her all-aback!” commanded Mayo. “Excuse me, Captain Candage, for a cross-order, but I've got a bit of news I want you to hear before we leave. The junk crowd has got cold feet and are going to sell as she stands, as soon as they get cargoes for those lighters.”

“Well, she does lay in a bad way, and weather is making,” said the skipper, fiddling his forefinger under his nose dubiously.

“They haven't even skimmed the cream off her—probably will get all her cargo that's worth saving and some loose stuff in the rigging line. By gad! what a chance for a gamble!”

“It might be for a feller who had so much money he could kiss a slice of it good-by in case the Atlantic Ocean showed aces,” said the old man, revealing a sailor's familiarity with a popular game.

“There is such a thing as being desperate enough to stake your whole bundle,” declared Mayo. “Captain, I'm young, and I suppose I have got a young man's folly. I can't expect you to feel the way I feel about a gamble.”

“I may look old, but I haven't gone to seed yet,” grumbled the skipper. “What are you trying to get through you?”

“That fat man on that lighter has a telegram in his pocket from his folks in Boston, ordering him to take the first offer that is made for the Conomo as she stands. I'm fool enough to be willing to put in every dollar I've got, and take a chance.”

Captain Candage stared at his associate for a time, and then walked to the rail and took a long look at the steamer. “I never heard of a feller ever getting specially rich in the fishing game,” he remarked.

Mayo, wild thoughts urging him to desperate ventures, snapped out corroboration of that dictum..

“And I've known a lot of fellers to go broke in the wrecking game,” pursued Captain Candage. “How much have you got?” That question came unexpectedly.

“I've got rising six hundred dollars.” He was carrying his little hoard in his pocket, for a man operating from the hamlet of Maquoit must needs be his own banker.

“I've got rising six hundred in my own pocket,” said the skipper. “That fat man may have orders to take the first offer that's made, but we've got to make him one that's big enough so that he won't kick us overboard and then go hunt up a buyer on the main.”

The two Hue and Cry fishermen who had ferried the young man were nesting their dory on top of other dories, and just forward of the house, and were within hearing. Neither captain noted with what interest these men were listening, exchanging glances with the man at the wheel.

“And after we waggle our wad under his nose—and less than a thousand will be an insult, so I figger—what have we got left to operate with? It won't do us any good to sail round that steamer for the rest of the winter and admire her. What was you thinking, Mayo, of trying to work him for a snap bargain, now that he's here on the spot and anxious to sell, and then grabbing off a little quick profit by peddling her to somebody else?”

“No, sir!” cried the young man, with decision. “I've got my own good reasons for wanting to make this job the whole hog or not a bristle! I won't go into it on any other plan.”

“Well, we'll be into something, all right, after we invest our money—the whole lump. We'll most likely be in a scrape, not a dollar left to hire men or buy wrecking outfit.”

The two men finished lashing the dories and went forward.

“It's a wild scheme, and I'm a fool to be thinking about it, Captain Candage. But wild schemes appeal to me just now. I can make some more money by working hard and saving it, a few dollars at a time, but I never expect to see another chance like this. Oh yes, I see that bank in the south!” His eyes followed the skipper's gloomy stare. “By to-morrow at this time she may be forty fathoms under. But here's the way I feel.” He pulled out his wallet and slapped it down on the roof of the house. “All on the turn of one card! And there comes the blow that will turn it!” He pointed south into the slaty clouds.

Captain Candage paused in his patrol of the quarterdeck and gazed down on the wallet. Then he began to tug at his own. “I'm no dead one, even if my hair is gray,” he grumbled.

The two captains looked at the two wallets, and then at each other. The next moment their attention was fully taken up by another matter. Their crew of fifteen men came marching aft and lined up forward of the house. A spokesman stepped out.

“Excuse us, captings, for meddling into something that p'raps ain't none of our business. We ain't meaning to peek nor pry, but some of us couldn't help overhearing. We've cleaned out our pockets. Here it is—three hundred and sixty-eight dollars and thirty-seven cents. Will you let me step onto the quarter-deck and lay it down 'side of them wallets?” He accepted their amazed silence as consent, and made his deposit solemnly.

“But this is all a gamble, and a mighty uncertain one,” protested Mayo.

“We 'ain't never had no chance to be sports before in all our lives,” pleaded the man. “We wouldn't have had that money if you two heroes hadn't give us the chance you have. We wa'n't more'n half men before. Now we can hold up our heads. You'll make us feel mighty mean, as if we wasn't fit to be along with you, if you won't let us in.”

“You bet you can come in, boys!” shouted Captain Candage. “I know how you feel.”

“And another thing,” went on the spokesman. “We 'ain't had much time to talk this over; we rushed aft here as soon as we heard and had cleaned out our pockets. But we've said enough to each other so that we can tell you that all of us will turn to on that wreck with you and work for nothing till—till—well, whatever happens. Don't want wages! Don't need promises! And if she sinks, we'll sing a song and go back to fishing again.”

The man at the wheel let go the spokes and came forward and deposited a handful of money beside the rest. “There's mine. I wisht it was a million; it would go just as free.”

“Boys, I'd make a speech to you—but my throat is too full,” choked Mayo. “I know better, now, why something called me over to Hue and Cry last summer. Hard over with that wheel! Jockey her down toward the wreck!”

When they were within hailing distance of the lighter Mayo raised his megaphone. “Will you take fifteen hundred dollars—cash—now—for that wreck, as you leave her when you've loaded those lighters?” he shouted.

There was a long period of silence. Then the man in the fur coat replied, through his hollowed hands: “Yes—and blast the fools in Boston who are making me sell!”

XXVII ~ THE TEMPEST TURNS ITS CARD

And one thing which we have to crave, Is that he may have a watery grave. So well heave him down into some dark hole, Where the sharks 'll have his body and the devil have his soul. With a big bow wow! Tow row row! Pal de, rai de, ri do day! —Boston.

After the man in the fur coat had placed a hastily executed bill of sale in Mayo's hands, he frankly declared that his interest in the fortune of the wrecked steamer had ceased.

“The Resolute reports that storm signals are displayed. I'll simply make sure of what I've got. I'll play the game as those quitters in Boston seem to want me to play it.”

The tugs, departing with their tows, squalled salutes to the little schooner hove to under the counter of the Conomo.

“Sounds like they was making fun of us,” growled Candage. He scowled into the gray skies and across the lonely sea.

Mayo, too, sensed a derisive note in the whistle-toots. Depression had promptly followed the excitement that had spurred him into this venture. The crackle of the legal paper in his reefer pocket only accentuated his gloom. That paper seemed to represent so little now. It was not merely his own gamble—he had drawn into a desperate undertaking men who could not afford to lose. They had put all their little prosperity in jeopardy. There were women and children ashore to consider. He and his fellows now owned that great steamer which loomed there under the brooding heavens. But it was a precarious possession. The loss of her now would mean not merely the loss of all their little hoards—it would mean the loss of hope, and the sacrifice of expectations, and the regret of men who have failed in a big task. He realized how stinging would be defeat, for he was building the prospects of his future upon winning in this thing.

Hope almost failed to reassure him as he gazed first at the departing lighters and then at the ice-panoplied hulk on Razee.

Surely no pauper ever had a more unwieldy elephant on his hands, without a wisp of hay in sight for food.. He had seen wrecking operations: money, men, and gigantic equipment often failed to win. Technical skill and expert knowledge were required. He did not know what an examination of her hull would reveal. He had bought as boys swap jack-knives—sight denied! He confessed to himself that even the pittance they had gambled on this hazard had been spent with the recklessness of folly, considering that they had spent their all. They had nothing left to operate with. It was like a man tying his hands behind him before he jumped overboard.

Oh, that was a lonely sea! It was gray and surly and ominous.

Black smoke from the distant tugs waved dismal farewell. A chill wind had begun to harp through the cordage of the little schooner; the moan—far flung, mystic, a voice from nowhere—that presages the tempest crooned in his ears.

“I can smell something in this weather that's worse than scorched-on hasty pudding,” stated Captain Can-dage. “I don't know just how you feel, sir, but if a feller should ride up here in a hearse about now and want my option on her for what I paid, I believe I'd dicker with him before we come to blows.”

“I can't blame you,” confessed the young man. “This seems to be another case of 'Now that we've got it, what the devil shall we do with it?'”

“Let's pile ashore on the trail of them lighters and dicker it, and be sensible,” advised his associate. “I feel as if I owned a share in old Poppocatterpettul—or whatever that mountain is—and had been ordered to move it in a shawl-strap.”

Mayo surveyed their newly acquired property through the advancing dusk.

“I believe I know a feller we can unload onto,” persisted Candage. “He has done some wrecking, and is a reckless cuss.”

“Look here,” snapped his associate, “we'll settle one point right now, sir. I'm not hurrahing over this prospect—not at all. But I'm in it, and I'm going to stick on my original plan. I don't want anybody in with me who is going to keep looking back and whining. If everything goes by the board, you won't hear a whicker out of me. If you want to quit now, Captain Candage, go ahead, and I'll mortgage my future to pay back what you have risked. Now what do you say?”

“Why, I say you're talking just the way I like to hear a man talk,” declared the skipper, stoutly. “I'll be cursed if I like to go into a thing with any half-hearted feller. You're my kind, and after this you'll find me your kind.” He turned and shouted commands. “Get in mains'l, close reef fores'l, and let her ride with that and jumbo.”

“That's the idea!” commended Mayo. “The Atlantic Ocean is getting ready to deal a hand in this game. We have got to stick close if we're going to see what cards we draw.”

A fishing-schooner, if well handled, is a veritable stormy petrel in riding out a blow. Even the ominous signs of tempest did not daunt the two captains. They were there to guard their property and to have their hopes or their fears realized.

“If the Conomo has got her grit with her and lives through it,” said Captain Candage, “we'll be here to give her three cheers when it's over. And if she goes down we'll be on deck to flap her a fare-ye-well.”

In that spirit they snugged everything on board the schooner and prepared to defy the storm. It came in the night, with a howl of blast and a fusillade of sleet like bird-shot. It stamped upon the throbbing sea and made tumult in water and air. At midnight they were wallowing with only a forestays'l that was iced to the hardness of boiler plate. But though the vast surges flung their mighty arms in efforts to grasp the schooner, she dodged and danced on her nimble way and frustrated their malignity. Her men did not sleep; they thawed themselves in relays and swarmed on deck again. Each seemed to be animated by personal and vital interest.

“You can't buy crews like this one with wages,” observed Captain Candage, icicled beard close to Mayo's ear. “I reckon it was about as my Polly said—you cast bread on the waters when you took their part on Hue and Cry.”

The young man, clinging to a cleat and watching the struggles of their craft, waved a mittened hand to signify that he agreed. In that riot of tempest and ruck of sea he was straining his eyes, trying to get a glimpse of the hulk on Razee. But the schooner had worked her way too far off to the west, pressed to leeward by the relentless palm of the storm.

Then at last came morning, an opaque dawn that was shrouded with swirling snow, and all was hidden from their eyes except the tumbling mountains of water which swept to them, threatened to engulf them, and then melted under their keel. The captains could only guess at the extent of their drift, but when the wind quieted after midday, and they were able to get sail on the schooner, they were in no doubt as to the direction in which the steamer must lie. They began their sloshing ratch back to east.

Mayo braved nipping wind and iced rigging and took the glass to the main crosstrees. He remained there though he was chilled through and through.

At last, near the horizon's rim, he spied a yeasty tumult of the sea, marking some obstruction at which the waves were tussling. In the midst of this white welter there was a shape that was almost spectral under the gray skies. The little schooner pitched so ferociously that only occasionally could he bring this object into the range of the glass. But he made sure at last. He clutched the glass and tobogganed to deck down the slippery shrouds.

“She's there, Captain Candage!” he shouted. “The teeth of old Razee are still biting.”

They were back to her again before the early night descended. She was iced to the main truck, and the spray had deposited hillocks of ice on her deck, weighting her down upon the ledges which had pinioned her. But in spite of the battering she had received her position had not changed. They circled her—the midget of a schooner seeming pitifully inadequate to cope with this monster craft.

“Well,” sighed Captain Candage, “thank the Lord she's still here. Our work is cut out for us now—whatever it is we can do with her. They say a mouse set a lion loose once by gnawing his ropes. It looks to me as if we're going to have some blasted slow gnawing here.”

They lay by her that night in a quieting sea, and spent wakeful hours in the cabin, struggling rather helplessly with schemes.

“Of course, it's comforting to find her here and to know that the Atlantic Ocean will have to get more muscle to move her,” said Candage. “And then again, it ain't so darnation comforting. Looks to me as if she's stuck there so solid that you couldn't joggle her off if you hove the moon at her. I reckon my hope has been what yours has been, Mayo—salvage her whole instead of junking her.”

“I'm a sailor, not a junkman. I'd almost rather let my money go, Captain Candage, than be a party to smashing up that new steamer into old iron. She has fooled the guessers by sticking where she is. It has been my hope from the first that she can be floated. She is not a rusted old iron rattletrap. Of course, she's got a hole in her, and we can see now that she's planted mighty solid. But she is sound and tight, I'll wager, in all her parts except where that wound is. I suppose most men who came along here now would guess that she can't be got off whole. I'm going into this thing and try to fool those guessers, too.”