Part 5

The girl faced her father. There was no doubting her mood. She was a rebel. Indignation set up its flaming standards on her cheeks, and the signal-flames of combat sparkled in her eyes.

“How did you dare to do such a thing to me—those gentlemen looking on? Father, have you lost your mind?”

Otie expressed the opinion tinder his breath that the captain, on the contrary, had “lost his number.”

Otie's superior officer was stamping around the quarterdeck, kicking at loose objects, and avoiding his daughter's resentful gaze. There was a note of insincerity in his bluster, as if he wanted to hide embarrassment in a cloud of his own vaporings, as a squid colors water when it fears capture.

“After this you call me Cap'n Candage,” he commanded. “After this I'm Cap'n Candage on the high seas, and I propose to run my own quarter-deck. And when I let a crowd of dudes traipse on board here to peek and spy and grin and flirt with you, you'll have clamshells for finger-nails. Now, my lady, I don't want any back talk!”

“But I am going to talk to you, father!”

“Remember that I'm a Candage, and back talk—”

“So am I a Candage—and I have just been ashamed of it!”

“I'm going to have discipline on my own quarterdeck.”

“Back talk, quarter-deck discipline, calling you captain! Fol-de-rol and fiddlesticks! I'm your own daughter and you're my father. And you have brought us both to shame! There! I don't want to stay on this old hulk, and I'm not going to stay. I am going home to Aunt Zilpah.”

“I had made up my mind to let you go. My temper was mild and sweet till those jeehoofered, gold-trimmed sons of a striped—”

“Father!”

“I had made up my mind to let you go. But I ain't going to give in to a mutiny right before the face and eyes of my own crew.”

Smut-nosed Dolph had arrived with the supper-dishes balanced in his arms while he crawled over the deckload. He was listening with the utmost interest.

“Your Aunt Zilpah has aided and abetted you in your flirting,” raged the captain. “My own sister, taking advantage of my being off to sea trying to earn money—”

“Do you mean to insult everybody in this world, father? I shall go home, I say. I'm miserable here.”

“I'll see to it that you ain't off gamboling and galley-westing with dudes!”

In spite of her spirit the girl was not able to bandy retort longer with this hard-shelled mariner, whose weapon among his kind for years had been a rude tongue. Shocked grief put an end to her poor little rebellion. Tears came.

“You are giving these two men a budget to carry home and spread about the village! Oh, father, you are wicked—wicked!” She put her hands to her face, sobbed, and then ran away down into the gloomy cabin.

There was a long silence on the quarter-deck. Otie recovered his marlinespike and began to pound the eye-bolt.

“Without presuming, preaching, or poking into things that ain't none of my business, I want to say that I don't blame you one mite, cap'n,” he volunteered. “No matter what she says, she wasn't to be trusted among them dudes on shore, and I speak from observation and, being an old bach, I can speak impartial. The dudes on the water is just as bad. Them fellows were flirting with her all the time they was 'longside. Real men that means decent ain't called on to keep whisking their caps off and on all the time a woman is in sight—and I see one of 'em wink at her.”

Captain Candage was in a mood to accept this comfort from Oakum Otie, and to put out of his contrite conscience the memory of what Captain Ranse Lougee had said.

“Don't you worry! I've got her now where I can keep my eye on her, and I'm cap'n of my own vessel—don't nobody ever forget that!” He shook his fist at the gaping cook. “What ye standing there for, like a hen-coop with the door open and letting my vittels cool off? Hiper your boots! Down below with you and dish that supper onto the table!”

The skipper lingered on deck, his hand at his ear.

The fog was settling over the inner harbor. In the dim vastness seaward a steamer was hooting. Each prolonged blast, at half-minute intervals, sounded nearer. The sound was deep, full-toned, a mighty diapason.

“What big fellow can it be that's coming in here?” the captain grunted.

“Most likely only another tin skimmer of a yacht,” suggested the mate, tossing the eye-splice and the marline-spike into the open hatch of the lazaret. “You know what they like to do, them play-critters! They stick on a whistle that's big enough for Seguin fog-horn.” He squinted under the edge of his palm and waited. “There she looms. What did I tell ye? Nothing but a yacht.”

“But she's a bouncer,” remarked the skipper. “What do you make her?”

“O—L,” spelled Otie—“O—L—Olenia. Must be a local pilot aboard. None of them New York spiffer captains could find Saturday Cove through the feather-tide that's outside just now.”

“Well, whether they can or whether they can't isn't of any interest to me,” stated the skipper, with fine indifference. “I'd hate to be in a tight place and have to depend on one of them gilded dudes! I smell supper. Come on!”

He was a little uncertain as to what demeanor he ought to assume below, but he clumped down the companion-way with considerable show of confidence, and Otie followed.

The captain cast a sharp glance at his daughter. He had been afraid that he would find her crying, and he did not know how to handle such cases with any certainty.

But she had dried her eyes and she gave him no very amiable look—rather, she hinted defiance. He felt more at ease. In his opinion, any person who had spirit enough left for fight was in a mood to keep on enjoying life.

“Perhaps I went a mite too far, Polly,” he admitted. He was mild, but he preserved a little touch of surliness in order that she might not conclude that her victory was won. “But seeing that I brought you off to sea to get you away from flirting—”

“Don't you dare to say that about me!” She beat her round little fist on the table. “Don't you dare!”

“I don't mean that you ever done it! The dudes done it! I want to do right by you, Polly. I've been to sea so long that I don't know much about ways and manners, I reckon. I can't get a good line on things as I ought to. I'm an old fool, I reckon.” His voice trembled. “But it made me mad to have you stram up there on deck and call me names before 'em.”

She did not reply.

“I have always worked hard for you—sailing the seas and going without things myself, so that you could have 'em—doing the best I could ever after your poor mother passed on.”

“I am grateful to you, father. But you don't understand a girl—oh, you don't understand! But let's not talk about it any more—not now.”

“I ain't saying to-night—I ain't making promises! But maybe—we'll see how things shape up—maybe I'll send you back home. Maybe it 'll be to-morrow. We'll see how the stage runs to the train, and so forth!”

“I am going to leave it all to you, father. I'm sure you mean to do right.” She served the food as mistress at the board.

“It seems homelike with you here,” said Captain Can-dage, meekly and wistfully.

“I will stay with you, father, if it will make you happier.”

“I sha'n't listen to anything of the sort. It ain't no place aboard here for a girl.”

Through the open port they heard the frequent clanging of the steam-yacht's engine-room bell and the riot of her swishing screws as she eased herself into an anchorage. She was very near them—so near that they could hear the chatter of the voices of gay folk.

“What boat is that, father?”

“Another frosted-caker! I can't remember the name.”

“It's the Oilyena or something like that. I forget fancy names pretty quick,” Otie informed her.

“Well, it ain't much use to load your mind down with that kind of sculch,” stated Captain Candage, poising a potato on his fork-tines and peeling it, his elbows on the table. “That yacht and the kind of folks that's aboard that yacht ain't of any account to folks like us.”

The memory of some remarks which are uttered with peculiar fervor remains with the utterer. Some time later—long after—Captain Candage remembered that remark and informed himself that, outside of weather predictions, he was a mighty poor prophet.

V ~ ON THE BRIDGE OF YACHT “OLENIA”

O the times are hard and the wages low, Leave her, bullies, leave her! I guess it's time for us to go, It's time for us to leave her. —Across the Western Ocean.

Captain Mayo was not finding responsibility his chief worry while the Olenia was making port.

It was a real mariner's job to drive her through the fog, stab the harbor entrance, and hunt out elbow-room for her in a crowded anchorage. But all that was in the line of the day's work. While he watched the compass, estimated tide drift, allowed for reduced speed, and listened for the echoes which would tell him his distance from the rocky shore, he was engaged in the more absorbing occupation of canvassing his personal affairs.

As the hired master of a private yacht he might have overlooked that affront from the owner, even though it was delivered to a captain on the bridge.

But love has a pride of its own. He had been abused like a lackey in the hearing of Alma Marston. It was evident that the owner had not finished the job. Mayo knew that he had merely postponed his evil moment by sending back a reply which would undoubtedly seem like insubordination in the judgment of a man who did not understand ship discipline and etiquette of the sea.

It was evident that Marston intended to call him “upon the carpet” on the quarter-deck as soon as the yacht was anchored, and proposed to continue that insulting arraignment.

In his new pride, in the love which now made all other matters of life so insignificant, Mayo was afraid of himself; he knew his limitations in the matter of submission; even then he felt a hankering to walk aft and jounce Julius Marston up and down in his hammock chair. He did not believe he could stand calmly in the presence of Alma Marston and listen to any unjust berating, even from her father.

He tried to put his flaming resentment out of his thoughts, but he could not. In the end, he told himself that perhaps it was just as well! Alma Marston must have pride of her own. She could not continue to love a man who remained in the position of her father's hireling; she would surely be ashamed of a lover who was willing to hump his back and take a lashing in public. His desire to be with her, even at the cost of his pride, was making him less a man and he knew it. He decided to face Marston, man fashion, and then go away. He felt that she would understand in spite of her grief.

Then, turning from a look at the compass, he saw that the yacht's owner was on the bridge. Half of an un-lighted cigar, which was soggy with the dampness of the fog, plugged Marston's-mouth.

He scowled when the captain saluted.

“You needn't bother to talk now,” the millionaire broke in when Mayo began an explanation of his delay in obeying the call to the quarter-deck. “When I have anything to say to a man I want his undivided attention. Is this fog going to hold on?”

“Yes, sir, until the wind hauls more to the norrard.”

“Then anchor.”

“I am heading into Saturday Cove now, sir.”

“Anchor here.”

“I'm looking for considerably more than a capful of wind when it comes, sir. It isn't prudent to anchor offshore.”

Marston grunted and turned away. He stood at the end of the bridge, chewing on the cigar, until the Olenia was in the harbor with mudhook set. Mayo twitched the jingle bell, signaling release to the engineer.

“I am at your service, sir,” he reported, walking to the owner.

Marston rolled the plugging cigar to a corner of his mouth and inquired, “Now, young man, tell me what you mean by saluting a Bee line steamer with my whistle?”

“I did not salute the Conomo, sir.”

“You gave her three whistles.”

“Yes, but—”

“You're on a gentleman's yacht now, young man, and not on a fishing-steamer. Yachting etiquette doesn't allow a steam-whistle to be sounded in salute. Mr. Beveridge has just looked it up for me, and I know, and you need not assume any of your important knowledge.” Marston seemed to be displaying much more irritation than a small matter warranted. But what he added afforded more light on the subject. “The manager of the Bee line was on board that steamer. You heard him hoot that siren at me!”

“I heard him give me cross-signals in defiance of the rules of the road, sir.”

“Didn't you know that he whistled at me as an insult—as a sneer?”

“I heard only ordinary signals, sir.”

“Everything is ordinary to a sailor's observation! You allowed him to crowd you off your course. You made a spectacle of my yacht, splashing it around like a frightened duck.”

“I was avoiding collision, sir.”

“You should have made your bigness with my yacht! You sneaked and dodged like a fishing-boat skipper. Was it on a fishing-boat you were trained to those tricks?”

“I have commanded a fishing-steamer, sir.”

“On top of it all you gave him three whistles—regular fishing-boat manners, eh?”

Captain Mayo straightened and his face and eyes expressed the spirit of a Yankee skipper who knew that he was right.

“I say,” insisted Marston, “that you saluted him.”

“And I say, sir, that he cross-signaled, an offense that has lost masters their licenses. When I was pinched I gave him three whistles to say that my engines were going full speed astern. If Mr. Beveridge had looked farther in that book he might have found that rule, too!”

“When I looked up at the bridge, here, you were waving your hand to him—three whistles and a hand-wave! You can't deny that you were saluting!”

“I was shaking my fist at him, sir.”

Within himself Captain Mayo was frankly wondering because the owner of the Olenia was displaying all this heat. He remembered the taunt from the pilot-house of the Conomo and understood vaguely that there were depths in the affair which he had not fathomed. But he was in no mood to atone vicariously for the offenders aboard the Conomo.

“If I could have found a New York captain who knew the short cuts along this coast I could have had some decency and dignity on board my yacht. I'm even forgetting my own sense of what is proper—out here wasting words and time in this fashion. You're all of the same breed, you down-easters!”

“I am quite sure you can find a New York captain—” began Mayo.

“I don't want your opinion in regard to my business, young man. When I need suggestions from you I'll ask for them.” He flung his soggy cigar over the rail and went down the ladder, and the fog closed immediately behind him.

Captain Mayo paced the bridge. He was alone there. A deck-hand had hooded the brass of the binnacle and search-light, listening while the owner had called the master to account. Mayo knew that the full report of that affair would be carried to the forecastle. His position aboard the yacht had become intolerable. He wondered how much Marston would say aft. His cheeks were hot and rancor rasped in his thoughts. In the hearing of the girl he adored his shortcomings would be the subject for a few moments of contemptuous discourse, even as the failings of cooks form a topic for idle chatter at the dinner-table.

Out of the blank silence of the wrapping fog came many sounds. Noises carried far and the voice of an unseen singer, who timed himself to the clank of an Apple-treer pump, brought to Mayo the words of an old shanty:

“Come all you young fellows that follow the sea, Now pray pay attention and lis-ten to me. O blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down! Way-ay, blow the man down. O blow the man down in Liverpool town! Give me some time to blow the man down. 'Twas aboard a Black-Bailer I first served my time, And in that Black-Bailer I wasted my prime. 'Tis larboard and starboard on deck you will sprawl, For blowers and strikers command the Black Ball. So, it's blow the man down, bullies—”

Alma Marston's voice interrupted his somber appreciation of the significance of that ditty. “Are you up there, Boyd?” she asked, in cautious tones.

He hurried to the head of the ladder and saw her at its foot, half hidden in the mists even at that short distance. He reached down his hand and she came up, grasping it.

She was studying his expression with both eagerness and apprehension. “I couldn't stay away from you any longer,” she declared. “The fog is good to us! Father could not see me as I came forward. I must tell you, Boyd. He has ordered me to stay aft.”

He did not speak.

“Has he dared to say to you what he has been saying below about you?”

“I don't think it needed any especial daring on your father's part; I am only his servant,” he said, with bitterness.

“And he—he insulted you like that?”

“I suppose your father did not look on what he said as insult. I repeat, I am a paid servant.”

“But what you did was right! I know it must have been right, for you know everything about what is right to do on the sea.”

“I understand my duties.”

“And he blamed you for something?”

“It was a bit worse than that from my viewpoint.” He smiled down at her, for her eyes were searching his face as if appealing for a bit of consolation.

“Boyd, don't mind him,” she entreated. “Somebody who has been fighting him in business has been very naughty. I don't know just what it's all about. But he has so many matters to worry him. And he snaps at me just the same, every now and then.”

“Yes, some men are cowards enough to abuse those who must look to them for the comforts of this world,” he declared.

“We must make allowances.”

“I'll not stay in a position where a man who hires me thinks he can talk to me as if I were a foremast hand. Alma, you would despise me if I allowed myself to be kicked around like a dog.”

“I would love you all the more for being willing to sacrifice something for my sake. I want you here—here with all your love—here with me as long as these summer days last.” She patted his cheek. “Why don't you tell me that you want to stay with me, Boyd? That you will die if we cannot be together? We can see each other here. I can bring Nan Burgess on the bridge with me. Father will not mind then. Let each day take care of itself!”

“I want to be what you want me to be—to do what you want me to do. But I wish you would tell me to go out into the world and make something of myself. Alma, tell me to go! And wait for me!”

She laid her face against his shoulder and reached for his fingers, endeavoring to pull one of his arms about her. But both of his hands were clutching the rail of the bridge. He resisted.

“Are you going to be like all the rest? Just money and trouble and worry?” She stretched up on tiptoe and brushed a kiss across his fog-wet cheek. “Are you asleep, my big boy? Yesterday you were awake.”

“I think I am really awake to-day, and that I was dreaming yesterday. Alma, I cannot sneak behind your father's back to make love to you. I can't do it. I'm going to give up this position. I can't endure it.”

“I say 'No!' I need you.”

“But—”

“I'll not give you up.”

There was something dramatic in her declaration; her demeanor expressed the placid calm of absolute proprietorship. She worked his unwilling fingers free from the rail.