Chapter III: Part 3

Captain Mayo grasped the rails of the bridge ladder and did down to the deck without touching his feet to the treads. He appeared before the father and daughter with startling suddenness.

“Mr. Marston, I am leaving my position on board here as soon as you can get another man to take my place.”

“You are, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You signed papers for the season. It is not convenient for me to make a change.” Marston spoke with the crispness of a man who had settled the matter.

Captain Mayo was conscious that the girl was trying to attract his gaze, but he kept his eyes resolutely from her face.

“I insist on being relieved.”

“I have no patience with childishness in a man! I found it necessary to reprimand you. You'll probably know your place after this.” He turned away.

“I have decided that I do not belong on this yacht,” stated Mayo, with an emphasis he knew the girl would understand. “You must get another master!”

“I cannot pick captains out of this fog, and I allow no man to tell me my own business. I shall keep you to your written agreement. Hold yourself in readiness to carry telegrams ashore for me. I take it there is an office here?”

“There is, sir,” returned Mayo, stiffly.

The girl, departing, bestowed on him a pretty grimace of triumph, plainly rejoicing because his impetuous resignation had been overruled so autocratically. But Mayo gave a somber return to the raillery of her eyes. He had spoken out to Marston as a man, and had been treated with the contemptuous indifference which would be accorded to a bond-servant. He was wounded by the light manner in which she viewed that affront, even though her own father offered it.

He stood there alone for a time, meditating various rash acts. But under all the tumult of his feelings was the realization that the responsibility for that yacht's discipline and safety rested on his shoulders and he went about his duties. He called two of the crew and ordered the gangway steps down and the port dinghy cleared and lowered. Then he went to the chart-room and sat on a locker and tried to figure out whether he was wonderfully happy or supremely miserable.

Marston promptly closeted himself with his three wise men of business after he went aft. “We'll frame up those telegrams now and get them off,” he told them. “I thought I'd better wait until I had worked the bile out of my system. Never try to do sane and safe business when you're angry, gentlemen! I'm afraid those telegrams would not have been exactly coherent if I had written them right after that Bee liner smashed past us.”

“I have been ready to believe that Tucker would come in with us on the right lay,” said one of the associates.

“So did I,” agreed Marston. “I have thought all his loud talk has been bluff to beat up a bigger price. But, after what he did to-day! Oh no! He is out to fight and he grabbed his chance to show us! I do not believe a lot of this regular fight talk. But when a man comes up and smashes me between the eyes I begin to suspect his intentions.”

“There's no need of dickering with him any longer, Mr. Marston. He made his work as dirty as he could to-day--he has left nothing open to doubt.”

“I'm sorry,” said another of the group. “Tucker has let himself get ugly.”

“So have I,” replied Marston, dryly. “And I'm growing senile, too, I'm afraid. I went forward and wasted as much anathema on that skipper of mine as I would use up in putting through a half-million deal with an opposition traffic line. Next thing I know I'll be arguing with, the smoke-stack. But I must confess, gentlemen, that Tucker rather took my breath away to-day. Either he has become absolutely crazy or else he doesn't understand the strength of the combination.”

“He hasn't waked up yet. He doesn't know what's against him.”

“That may be our fault, in a measure,” stated one of the men. “We haven't been able to let men like Tucker in on the full details.”

“In business it's the good guesser who wins,” declared Marston. “Our merger isn't a thing to be advertised. And if we do any more explaining to Tucker the whole plan _will_ be advertised, you can depend on it. The infernal fool has been holding us up three months, demanding more knowledge--and he can't be trusted. There's only one thing to do, gentlemen! That!” He drove his fist into his palm with significant thud.

“Is the Bee line absolutely essential in our plans?”

“Every line along this coast is essential in making that merger stock an air-tight proposition.”

“It's a new line and is not paying dividends.”

“Well, for that matter, it's got nothing in that respect on some of the other lines we're salting down in the merger,” suggested a member of the party, speaking for the first time.

“I'm afraid you said it then, Thompson! American bottoms seem to be turned into barnacle-gardens,” declared the man who had questioned the matter of Tucker's value.

“Gentlemen, just a moment!” Julius Marston leaned forward in his chair. His voice was low. His eyes narrowed. He dominated them by his earnestness. “You have followed me in a number of enterprises, and we have had good luck. But let me tell you that we have ahead of us the biggest thing yet, and we cannot afford to leave one loose end! Not one, gentlemen! That's why a fool like Tucker doesn't deserve any consideration when he gets in our way. Listen to me! The biggest thing that has ever happened in this world is going to happen. How do I know? I am not sure that I do know. But as I have just told you, the man who guesses right is the winner.” His thin nose was wrinkled, and the strip of beard on his chin bristled. Sometimes men called Marston “the fox of Wall Street.” He suggested the reason for his nickname as he sat there and squinted at his associates. “And there's an instinct that helps some men to guess right. Something is going to happen in this world before long that will make millionaires over and over out of men who have invested a few thousands in American bottoms.”

“What will happen?” bluntly inquired one of the men, after a silence.

“I am neither clairvoyant nor crystal-gazer,” said Marston, grimly. “But I have led you into some good things when my instinct has whispered. I say it's going to happen--and I say no more.”

“To make American bottoms worth while the whole of Europe will have to be busy doing something else with their ships.”

“All right! Then they'll be doing it,” returned Marston.

“It would have to be a war--a big war.”

“Very well! Maybe that's the answer.”

“But there never can be another big war. As a financier you know it.”

“I have made some money by adhering to the hard and fast rules of finance. But I have made the most of my money by turning my back on those rules and listening to my instinct,” was Marston's rejoinder. “I don't want to over-influence you, gentlemen. I don't care to discuss any further what you may consider to be dreams. I am not predicting a great war in Europe. Common sense argues the other way. But I am going into this ship-merger proposition with every ounce of brains and energy and capital I possess. The man who gets in my way is trying to keep these two hands of mine off millions!” He shook his clutched fists above his head. “And I'll walk over him, by the gods! whether it's Tucker or anybody else. We have had some good talks on the subject, first and last. I'm starting now to fight and smash opposition. What do you propose to do in the matter, gentlemen?”

They were silent for a time, looking at one another, querying without words. Then out of their knowledge of Julius Marston's uncanny abilities, remembering their past successes, came resolve.

“We're in with you to the last dollar,” they assured him, one after the other.

“Very well! You're wise!”

He unlocked a drawer of his desk and secured a code-book. He pressed a buzzer and the secretary came hurrying from his stateroom.

“We'll open action, gentlemen, with a little long-distance skirmish over the wire.”

He began to dictate his telegrams.

VI ~ AND WE SAILED

O Johnny's gone to Baltimore
To dance upon that sanded floor.
O Johnny's gone for evermore;
I'll never see my John no more!
O Johnny's gone!
What shall I do?
A-way you. H-e-e l-o-o-o!
O Johnny's gone!
What shall I do?
Johnny's gone to Hilo.
--Old Hauling Song.

The taciturn secretary fumbled his way forward and delivered to Captain Mayo a little packet securely bound with tape.

“Orders from Mr. Marston that you take these ashore, yourself. They are important telegrams and he wants them hurried.”

The master called his men to the dinghy, and they rowed him away through the fog. It was a touchy job, picking his way through that murk. He stood up, leaning forward holding to his taut tiller-ropes, and more by ears than his eyes directed his course. A few of the anchored craft, knowing that they were in the harbor roadway, clanged their bells lazily once in a while. Yacht tenders were making their rounds, carrying parties who were paying and returning calls, and these boats were avoiding each other by loud hails. Small objects loomed largely and little sounds were accentuated.

The far voice of an unseen joker announced that he could find his way through the fog all right, but was afraid he had not strength enough to push his boat through it.

But Mayo knew his waters in that harbor, and found his way to the wharf. His real difficulties confronted him at the village telegraph office. The visiting yachtsmen had flooded the place with messages, and the flustered young woman was in a condition nearly resembling hysteria. She was defiantly declaring that she would not accept any more telegrams. Instead of setting at work upon those already filed she was spending her time explaining her limitations to later arrivals.

Captain Mayo stood at one side and looked on for a few moments. A gentle nudge on his elbow called his attention to an elderly man with stringy whiskers, who thus solicited his notice. The man held a folded paper gingerly by one corner, exhibiting profound respect for his minute burden.

“You ain't one of these yachting dudes--you're a skipper, ain't you?” asked the man.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then, I can talk to you, as one officer to another--and glad to meet one of my own breed. I'm first mate of the schooner _Polly_. Mr. Speed is my name.”

Captain Mayo nodded.

“And I need help and advice. This is the first tele-graft I ever had in my hands. I'd rather be aholt of an iced halyard in a no'easter! I've been sent ashore to telegraft it, and now she says she won't stick it onto the wire, however it is they do the blasted trick.”

Captain Mayo had already noticed that the messengers from the yachts were killing time by teasing the flustered young woman; it was good-humored badinage, but it was effectively blocking progress at that end of the line.

He felt a “native's” instinctive impulse to go to the relief of the young woman who was being baited by the merrymakers; the responsibility of his own errand prompted him to help her clear decks. But he waited, hoping that the yachtsmen would go about their business.

“From the _Polly_, Mr. Speed?” he inquired, amiably. “Is the Polly in the harbor? I didn't notice her in the fog.”

“Reckon you know her, by the way you speak of her,” replied the gratified Mr. Speed.

“I ought to, sir. She was built at Mayoport by my great-grandfather before the Mayo yards began to turn out ships.”

“Well, I swanny! Be you a Mayo?”

The captain bowed and smiled at the enthusiasm displayed by Mr. Speed.

“By ginger! that sort of puts you right into _our_ fambly, so to speak!” The mate surveyed him with interest and with increasing confidence. “I'm in a mess, Cap'n Mayo, and I need advice and comfort, I reckon. I was headed on a straight tack toward my regular duty, and all of a sudden I found myself jibed and in stays, and I'm there now and drifting. Seeing that your folks built the _Polly_, I consider that you're in the fambly, and that Proverdunce put you right here to-night in this telegraft office. Do you know Cap'n Epps Candage?”

Mayo shook his head.

“Or his girl, Polly, named for the _Polly?_”

“No, I must confess.”

“Well, it may be just as well for ye that ye don't,” said Oakum Otie, twisting his straggly beard into a spill and blinking nervously. “There I was, headed straight and keeping true course, and then she looked at me and there was a tremble in her voice and tears in her eyes--and the next thing I knowed I was here in this telegraft place with this!” He held up the folded paper and his hand shook.

Captain Mayo did not understand, and therefore he made no remarks.

“There was a song old Ephrum Wack used to sing,” went on Mr. Speed, getting more confidential and making sure that the other men in the room were too much occupied to listen. “Chorus went:

“I ain't afeard of the raging sea,
Nor critters that's in it, whatever they be.
But a witch of a woman is what skeers me!

“There I've been, standing by Cap'n Epps in the whole dingdo, and she got me one side and looked at me and says a few things with a quiver in her voice and her eyes all wet and shiny and”--he paused and looked down at the paper with bewilderment that was rather pitiful--“and I walked right over all common sense and shipboard rules and discipline and everything and came here, fetching this to be stuck on to the wire, or whatever they do with telegrafts. But,” he added, a waver in his tones, “she is so lord-awful pretty, I couldn't help it!”

Still did Captain Mayo refrain from comment or question.

“The question now is, had I ought to,” demanded Mr. Speed. “I'm taking you into the fambly on my own responsibility. You're a captain, you're a native, and I need good advice. Had I ought to?”

“I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, sir. The matter seems to be private, and, furthermore, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“She says it's to the milliner so that the milliner will hold the job open. But I'm suspicioning that it's roundabout to the beau that's in love with her. That's the style of women. Cap'n Epps shanghaied her to get her away from that fellow. Now she has got it worked around so that she is going back. But there's a beau in it instead of a milliner. She wouldn't be so anxious to get word to a milliner. That's my idee, and I reckon it's yours, too.”

“I really have no ideas on the subject,” returned Captain Mayo. “But if you have promised a young lady to send a telegram for her I would certainly keep that promise if I were in your place.”

The next moment he regretted his rather impetuous advice, for Mr. Speed slapped the paper against a hard palm and blurted out: “That's all I wanted! Course and bearings from an a-number-one adviser. New, how'll I go to work to send this thing?”

“I have been figuring on that matter for the last few minutes, myself,” acknowledged the captain. “It's about time to have a little action in this place.”

He was obliged to elbow his way through the group of men who surrounded the telegraph operator. Oakum Otie followed on his heels, resolved to study at close range the mystery of telegraphing, realizing what he needed for his own instruction.

“These telegrams are important and they must go at ore, madam,” Mayo informed the flustered young woman.

“I can't send them. I am bothered so much I can't do anything,” she stammered.

“Oh, forget your business, skipper,” advised one of the party.

“It is not my business, sir.” He laid the packet of messages before the operator on her little counter and tapped his finger on them. “They must go,” he repeated.

“In their turn,” warned the yachtsman, showing that he resented this intrusion. “And after the party is over!”

“I intended to confine my conversation to this young lady,” said Mayo. He turned and faced them. “But I have been here long enough to see that you gentlemen are interfering with the business of this office. Perhaps your messages are not important. Mine are.”

The yachtsman was not sober nor was he judicious. “Go back to your job, young fellow,” he advised. “You are horning in among gentlemen.”

“So am I,” squawked Mr. Speed, with weather eye out for clouds of any sort.

Captain Mayo gave his supporter a glance of mingled astonishment and relish. “We'd better not have any words about the matter, gentlemen,'' he suggested, mildly.

“Certainly not,” stated the spokesman. “If you'll pass on there'll be no words--or anything else.”

“Then we'll dispense with words!” The quick anger of youth flared in Mayo. The air of the man rather than his words had offended deeply. “You'd like to have this room to yourself so that you can attend to your business, I presume?” he asked the operator.

“Yes, I would.”

Oakum Otie laid his folded paper upon the packet of Captain Mayo.

“You will leave the room gentlemen,” advised the captain.

Mr. Speed thrust out his bony elbows and cracked his hard fists together. “I have never liked dudes,” he stated. “I have been brought up that way. All my training with Cap'n Epps has been that way.”

“How do you fit into this thing?” demanded one of the yachtsmen.

“About like this,” averred Mr. Speed. He grabbed the young man by both shoulders and ran him out into the night before anybody could interfere. Then Mr. Speed reappeared promptly and inquired, “Which one goes next?”

“I think they will all go,” said the captain.

“Come on,” urged one of the party. “We can't afford to get into a brawl with natives.”

“You bet you can't,” retorted Oakum Otie. “I hain't hove bunches of shingles all my life for nothing!”

Mayo said nothing more. But after the yachtsmen had looked him over they went out, making the affair a subject for ridicule.

“Hope I done right and showed to you that I was thankful for good advice,” suggested Mr. Speed, seeking commendation.

“Just a bit hasty, sir.”

“Maybe, but there's nothing like handing folks a sample just to show up the quality of the whole piece.”

“I thank you--both of you,” said the grateful operator.

“You'd better lock your door,” advised Mayo. “Men are thoughtless when they have nothing to do except play.”

“I am so grateful! And I'm going to break an office rule,” volunteered the girl. “I shall send off your telegrams first.”

“And I hope you can tuck that little one in second--it won't take up much room!” pleaded Oakum Otie. “It's to help an awful pretty girl--looks are a good deal like yours!”

“I'll attend to it,” promised the young woman, blushing.

Outside in the village street Mr. Speed wiped his rough palm against the leg of his trousers and offered his hand to the captain. “I'll have to say good-by to you here, sir. I've got a little errunting to do--fig o' terbacker and a box of stror'b'ries. I confess to a terrible tooth for stror'b'ries. When the hanker ketches me and I can't get to stror'b'ries my stror'b'ry mark shows up behind my ear. I hope I have done right in sending off that tele-graft for her--but it's too bad that a landlubber beau is going to get such a pretty girl.” Then Oakum Otie sighed and melted away into the foggy gloom.

When Captain Mayo was half-way down the harbor, on his way back to the yacht, he was confronted by a spectacle which startled him. The fog was suddenly painted with a ruddy flare which spread high and flamed steadily. His first fears suggested that a vessel was on fire. The _Olenia_ lay in that direction. He commanded his men to pull hard.

When he burst out of the mists into the zone of the illumination his misgivings were allayed, but his curiosity was roused.

A dozen yacht tenders flocked in a flotilla near the stern of a rusty old schooner. All the tenders were burning Coston lights, and from several boats yachtsmen were sending off rockets which striped the pall of fog with bizarre colorings.

The stern of the schooner was well lighted up by the torches, and Mayo saw her name, though he did not need that name to assure him of her identity; she was the venerable _Polly_.

The light which flamed about her, showing up her rig and lines, was weirdly unreal and more than ever did she seem like a ghost ship. The thick curtain of the mist caught up the flare of the torches and reflected it upon her from the skies, and she was limned in fantastic fashion from truck to water-line. Shadows of men in the tenders were thrown against the fog-screen in grotesque outline, and a spirit crew appeared to be toiling in the top-hamper of the old schooner.

Captain Mayo ordered his men to hold water and the tender drifted close to the flotilla. He spied a yacht skipper whom he had known when both were in the coasting trade.

“What's the idea, Duncan?”

His acquaintance grinned. “Serenade for old Epps Candage's girl--handed to her over his head.” He pointed upward.

Projecting over the schooner's rail was the convulsed countenance of Captain Candage. Choler seemed to be consuming him. The freakish light painted everything with patterns in arabesque; the captain's face looked like the countenance of a gargoyle.

Mayo, observing with the natural prejudice of a “native,” detected mockery in the affair. He had just been present at one exhibition of the convivial humor of larking yachtsmen.

“What's the special excuse for it?” he asked, sourly.

“According to the story, Epps has brought her with him on this trip to break up a courting match.”

“Well, does that have anything to do with this performance?”

“Oh, it's only a little spree,” confessed the other. “It was planned out on our yacht. Old Epps made himself a mucker to-day by sassing some of the gents of the fleet, and the boys are handing him a little something. That's all! It's only fun!”

“According to my notion it's the kind of fun that hurts when a girl is concerned, Duncan.”

“Just as serious as ever, eh? Well, my notion is that a little good-natured fun never hurts a pretty girl--and they say this one is some looker! Oh, hold on a minute, Boyd!” The master of the _Olenia_ had turned away and was about to give an order to his oarsmen. “You ought to stop long enough to hear that new song one of the gents on the _Sunbeam_ has composed for the occasion. It's a corker. I heard 'em rehearsing it on our yacht.”

In spite of his impatient resentment on behalf of the daughter of Epps Candage, Captain Mayo remained. Just then the accredited minstrel of the yachtsmen stood up, balancing himself in a tender. He was clearly revealed by the lights, and was magnified by the aureole of tinted fog which surrounded him. He sang, in waltz time, in a fine tenor:

“Our Polly O,
O'er the sea you go;
Fairer than sunbeam, lovely as moon-gleam,
All of us love thee so!
While the breezes blow
To waft thee, Polly O,
We will be true to thee,
Crossing the blue to thee,
Polly--Polly!
Dear little Polly,
Polly--O-O-O!”

He finished the verse and then raised both arms with the gesture of a choral conductor.

“All together, now, boys!”

They sang with soul and vigor and excellent effect.

Ferocity nearly inarticulate, fury almost apoplectic, were expressed by the face above the weather-worn rail.

“They say that music soothes the savage breast, but it don't look like it in this case,” observed Captain Duncan with a chuckle.

“Clear off away from here, you drunken dudes! I'll have the law on ye! I'll have ye arrested for--for breaking the peace.”

That threat, considering the surroundings, provoked great hilarity.

“Give way all! Here comes a cop!” warned a jeering voice.

“He's walking on the water,” explained another.

“The man must be a fool,” declared Captain Mayo. “If he'd go below and shut up, they'd get tired and leave in a few minutes.”

However, Captain Candage seemed to believe that retreat would be greatly to his discredit. He continued to hang over the rail, discharging as complete a line of deep-water oaths as ever passed the quivering lips of a mariner. Therefore the playful yachtsmen were highly entertained and stayed to bait him still further. Every little while they sang the Polly song with fresh gusto, while the enraged skipper fairly danced to it in his mad rage and flung his arms about like a crazy orchestra leader.

Mr. Speed came rowing in his dory, putting out all his strength, splashing his oars. “My Gawd! Cap'n Mayo,” he gasped, “I heard 'em hollering 'Oh, Polly!' and I was 'feard she was afire. What's the trouble?”

“You'd better get on board, sir, and induce Captain Candage to go below and keep still. He is fast making a complete idiot of himself.”

“I hain't got no influence over him. I ask and implore you to step on board and soothe him down, sir. You can do it. He'll listen to a Mayo.”

“I'd better not try. It's no job for a stranger, Mr. Speed.”

“He'll be heaving that whole deckload of shingles at 'em next!”

“Get his daughter to coax him.”

“He won't listen to her when he's that fussed up!”

“I'm sorry! Give way men!”

His rowers dropped their oars into the water and pulled away with evident reluctance.

“Better stay and see it out,” advised Captain Duncan.

“I don't care much for your show,” stated Mayo, curtly.

The cabin curtains were drawn on the _Olenia_, and he felt especially shut away from human companionship. He went forward and paced up and down the deck, turning over his troubled affairs in his mind, but making poor shift in his efforts to set anything in its right place.

There were no indications that the serenading yachtsmen were becoming tired of their method of killing time during a fog-bound evening. They had secured banjos and mandolins, and were singing the Polly song with better effect and greater relish. And continually the hoarse voice of the _Polly's_ master roared forth malediction, twisted into new forms of profanity.

But Captain Mayo, pacing under the damp gleam of the riding-light, paid but little heed to the hullabaloo. He was too thoroughly absorbed in his own troubles to feel special interest in what his neighbors were doing. He did not even note that a fog-sodden breeze had begun to puff spasmodically from the east and that the mists were shredding overhead.

However, all of a sudden, a sound forced itself on his attention; he heard the chuckling of sheaves and knew that a sail was being hoisted. The low-lying stratum of fog was still thick, and he could not perceive the identity of the craft which proposed to take advantage of the sluggish breeze. The “ruckle-ruckle” of the blocks sounded at quick intervals and indicated haste; there was a suggestion of vicious determination on the part of the men who were tugging at the halyards. Then Captain Mayo heard the steady clanking of capstan pawls. He knew the methods of the Apple-treers, their cautiousness, and their leisurely habits, and he could scarcely believe that a coasting skipper was intending to leave the harbor that night. But the capstan pawls began to click in staccato, showing that the anchor had been broken out.

Protesting shouts from all about in the gloom greeted that signal.

There was no mistaking the hoarse voice of Captain Candage when it was raised in reply; his tones had become familiar after that evening of malediction.

“Dingdam ye, I know of a way of getting shet of the bunch of ye!”

“Don't try to shift your anchorage!”

“Anchorage be hossified! I'm going to sea!” bellowed the master of the _Polly_.

“Down with that hook of yours! You'll rake this whole yacht fleet with your old dumpcart!”

“You have driv' me to it! Now you can take your chances!”

The next moment Mayo heard the ripping of tackle and a crash.

“There go two tenders and our boat-boom! Confound it, man, drop your hook!”

But from that moment Captain Candage, as far as his mouth was concerned, preserved ominous silence. The splintery speech of havoc was more eloquent.

Mayo could not see, but he understood in detail what damage was wrought upon the delicate fabric of yachts by that unwieldy old tub of a schooner. Here, another boat-boom carried away, as she sluggishly thrust her bulk out through the fleet; there an enameled hull raked by her rusty chain-plate bolts. Now a tender smashed on the outjutting davits, next a wreck of spidery head-rigging, a jib-boom splintered and a foretopmast dragged down. If Captain Mayo had been in any doubt as to the details of the disasters he would have received full information from the illuminating profanity of the victims.

He knew well enough that Captain Candage was not performing with wilful intent to do all that damage. In what little wind there was the schooner was not under control. She was drifting until she got enough headway to be steered. In the mean time she was doing what came in her way to do. The _Polly_ had been anchored near the _Olenia_. As soon as her anchor left bottom the schooner drifted up the harbor. Mayo knew, in a few minutes, that Candage was bringing her about. An especial outbreak of smashing signaled that manouver.

Mayo sniffed at the breeze, judged distance and direction, and then he rushed forward and pounded his fist on the forecastle hatch.

“Rout out all hands!” he shouted. “Rouse up bumpers and tarpaulin!”

With the wind as it was, he realized that the schooner would point up in the _Olenia_'s direction when Candage headed out to sea.

At last Mayo caught a glimpse of her through the fog. His calculation had been correct. Headed his way she was. She was moving so slowly that she was practically unmanageable; her apple-bows hardly stirred a ripple, but with breeze helping the tide-set she was coming irresistibly, paying off gradually and promising to sideswipe the big yacht.

Mayo had a mariner's pride in his craft, and a master's devotion to duty. He did not content himself with merely ordering about the men who came tumbling on deck.

He grabbed a huge bumper away from one of the sailors who seemed uncertain just what to do; he ran forward and thrust it over the rail, leaning far out to see that it was placed properly to take the impact. He was giving more attention to the safety of the _Olenia_ than he was to what the on-coming _Polly_ might do to him.

Under all bowsprits on schooners, to guy the headstays, thrusts downward a short spar, at right angles to the bowsprit; it is called the martingale or dolphin-striker. The amateur riggers who had tinkered with the Polly's gear in makeshift fashion had not troubled to smooth off spikes with which they had repaired the martingale's lower end. Captain Mayo ducked low to dodge a guy, and the spikes hooked themselves neatly into the back of his reefer coat. Mr. Marston had bought excellent and strong cloth for his captain's uniform. The fabric held, the spikes were well set, the _Polly_ did not pause, and, therefore, the master of the _Olenia_ was yanked off his own deck and went along.

All the evening Mayo's collar had been buttoned closely about his neck to keep out the fog-damp, and when he was picked up by the spikes the collar gripped tightly about his throat and against his larynx. His cry for help was only a strangled squawk. His men were scattered along the side of the yacht, trying to protect her, the night was over all, and no one noted the mode of the skipper's departure.

The old schooner scrunched her way past the _Olenia_, roweling the yacht's glossy paint and smearing her with tar and slime. It was as if the rancorous spirit of the unclean had found sudden opportunity to defile the clean.

Then the _Polly_ passed on into the night with clear pathway to the open sea.

VII ~ INTO THE MESS FROM EASTWARD

Farewell to friends, farewell to foes,
Farewell to dear relations.
We're bound across the ocean blue--
Bound for the foreign nations.
Then obey your bo's'n's call,
Walk away with that cat-fall!
And we'll think on those girls when we can no longer stay.
And we'll think on those girls when we're far, far away.
--Unmooring.

For the first few moments, after being snatched up in that fashion, Mayo hung from the dolphin-striker without motion, like a man paralyzed. He was astounded by the suddenness of this abduction. He was afraid to struggle. Momentarily he expected that the fabric would let go and that he would be rolled under the forefoot of the schooner. Then he began to grow faint from lack of breath; he was nearly garroted by his collar. Carefully he raised his hands and set them about a stay above his head and lifted himself so that he might ease his throat from the throttling grip of the collar. He dangled there over the water for some time, feeling that he had not strength enough, after his choking, to lift himself into the chains or to swing to the foot-rope.

He glanced up and saw the figurehead; it seemed to be simpering at him with an irritating smile. There was something of bland triumph in that grin. In the upset of his feelings there was personal and provoking aggravation in the expression of the figurehead. He swore at it as if it were something human. His anger helped him, gave him strength. He began to swing himself, and at last was able to throw a foot over a stay.

He rested for a time and then gave himself another hoist and was able to get astride the bowsprit. He judged that they must be outside the headland of Saturday Cove, because the breeze was stronger and the sea gurgled and showed white threads of foam against the blunt bows. His struggles had consumed more time than he had realized in the dazed condition produced by his choking collar.

He heard the popping of a motor-boat's engine far astern, and was cheered by the prompt conviction that pursuit was on. Therefore, he made haste to get in touch with the _Polly's_ master. He scrambled inboard along the bowsprit and fumbled his way aft over the piles of lumber, obliged to move slowly for fear of pitfalls, Once or twice he shouted, but he received no answer, He perceived three dim figures on the quarter-deck when he arrived there--three men. Captain Candage was stamping to and fro.

“Who in the devil's name are _you?_” bawled the old skipper. “Get off'm here! This ain't a passenger-bo't.”

“I'll get off mighty sudden and be glad to,” retorted Mayo.

“Well, I'll be hackmetacked!” exploded Mr. Speed shoving his face over the wheel. “It's--”

“Shut up!” roared the master. “How comes it you're aboard here as a stowaway?”

“Don't talk foolishness,” snapped Captain Mayo “Your old martingale spikes hooked me up. Heave to and let me off!”

“Heave to it is!” echoed Oakum Otie, beginning to whirl the tiller.

Captain Candage turned on his mate with the violence of a thunderclap. “Gad swigger your pelt, who's giving off orders aboard here? Hold on your course!”

“But this is--”

“Shut up!” It was a blast of vocal effort. “Hold your course!”

“And _I_ say, heave to and let that motor-boat take me off,” insisted Mayo.

Captain Candage leaned close enough to note the yacht skipper's uniform coat. “Who do you think you're ordering around, you gilt-striped, monkey-doodle dandy?”

“That motor-boat is coming after me.”

“Think you're of all that importance, hey? No, sir! It's a pack of 'em chasing me to make me go back into port and be sued and libeled and attached by cheap lawyers.”

“You ought to be seized and libeled! You had no business ratching out of that harbor in the dark.”

“Ought to have taken a rising vote of dudes, hey, to find out whether I had the right to h'ist my mudhook or not?”

“I'm not here to argue. You can do that in court. I tell you to come into the wind and wait for that boat.”

“You'd better, Cap Candage,” bleated Oakum Otie. “This is--”

“Shut up! I'm running my own schooner, Mr. Speed.”

“But he is one of the--”

“I don't care if he is one of the Apostles. I know my own business. Shut up! Hold her on her course!”

He took two turns along the quarter-deck, squinting up into the night.

“Look here, Candage, you and I are going to have a lot of trouble with each other if you don't show some common sense. I must get back to my yacht.”

“Jump overboard and swim back. I ain't preventing. I didn't ask you on board. You can leave when you get ready. But this schooner is bound for New York, they're in a hurry for this lumber, and I ain't stopping at way stations!” He took another look at the weather, licked his thumb, and held it against the breeze. “Sou'west by sou', and let her run! And shut up!” he commanded his mate.

Mayo grabbed one of the yawl davits and sprang to the rail.

“We're some bigger than a needle, but so long as the haystack stays thick enough I guess we needn't worry!” remarked Captain Candage, cocking his ear to listen to the motor-boat's exhaust.

“Hoi-oi!” shouted Mayo into the night astern. He knew that men hear indistinctly over the noise of a gasoline-engine, but he had resolved to keep shouting.

“This way, men! This way with that boat!”

“'Vast heaving on that howl!” commanded Candage.

But Mayo persisted with all his might. His attention was confined wholly to his efforts, and he was not prepared for the sudden attack from behind. The master of the _Polly_ seized Mayo's legs and yanked him backward to the deck. The young man fell heavily, and his head thumped the planks with violence which flung him into insensibility.

When he opened his eyes he looked up and saw a hanging-lamp that creaked on its gimbals as it swayed to the roll of the schooner. He was in the _Polly's_ cabin. Next he was conscious that he was unable to move. He was seated on the floor, his back against a stanchion, his hands lashed behind him by bonds which confined him to the upright support. But the most uncomfortable feature of his predicament was a marlinespike which was stuck into his mouth like a bit provided for a fractious horse, and was secured by lashings behind his head. He was effectually gagged. Furthermore, the back of his head ached in most acute fashion. He rolled his eyes about and discovered that he had a companion in misery. A very pretty young woman was seated on a camp-chair across the cabin. Her face expressed much sympathy.

He gurgled a wordless appeal for help, and then perceived that she was lashed into her chair.

“I wish I could take that awful thing out of your mouth, sir.”

He gave her a look which assured her that he shared in her desire.

“My father has tied me into this chair. I tried to make him stop his dreadful talk when the boats came and burned the lights. He put me down here and made a prisoner of me. It is terrible, all that has been happening. I can't understand! I hope you will not think too hard of my father, sir. Honestly, he seems to be out of his right mind.”

He wanted to return some comforting reply to this wistful appeal, but he could only roll his head against the stanchion and make inarticulate sounds.

“He seemed to be very bitter when he brought you below. I could not make him listen to reason. I have been thinking--and perhaps you're the gentleman who led the singing which made him so angry?”

Mayo shook his head violently in protest at this suspicion.

“I didn't mind,” she assured him. “I knew it was only in fun.” She pondered for a few minutes. “Perhaps they wouldn't have teased one of their city girl friends in that way--but I suppose men must have a good time when they are away from home. Only--it has made it hard for me!” There were tears in her eyes.

Mayo's face grew purple as he tried to speak past the restraining spike and make her understand his sentiments on the subject of that serenade.

“Don't try to talk, sir. I'm so sorry. It is shameful!”

There was silence in the cabin after that for a long time. He looked up at the swinging lamp, his gaze wandered about the homely cabin. But his eyes kept returning to her face. He could not use his tongue, and he tried to tell her by his glances, apologetic little starings, that he was sorry for her in her grief. She met those glances with manifest embarrassment.

After an absence which was prolonged to suit his own sour will in the matter, Captain Candage came stamping stormily down the companionway. He stood between his captives and glowered, first at one and then at the other.

“Both of ye blaming me, I reckon, for what couldn't be helped.”

“Father, listen to me now, if you have any sense left in you,” cried the girl, with passion. “Take that horrible thing out of that gentleman's mouth.”

“It has come to a pretty pass in this world when an honest man can't carry on his own private business without having to tie up meddlers so as to have a little peace.” He walked close to Mayo and shook a monitory finger under the young man's nose. “Now, what did ye come on board here for, messing into my affairs?”

The indignant captain put forth his best efforts to make suitable retort, but could only emit a series of “guggles.”

“And now on top of it all I am told by my mate, who never gets around to do anything that ought to be done till it's two days too late, that you are one of the Mayos! Why wasn't I informed? I might have made arrangements to show you some favors. I might have hove to and taken a chance, considering who you was. And now it's too late. Everybody seems to be ready to impose on me!”

Again Mayo tried to speak.

“Why don't you shut up that gobbling and talk sense?” shouted the irate skipper, with maddening disregard of the captive's predicament.

“Father, are you completely crazy? You haven't taken that spike out of his mouth.”

“Expect a man to remember everything when he is all wrapped in his own business and everybody trying to meddle with it?” grumbled Candage. He fumbled in his pocket and produced a knife. He slashed away the rope yarn which lashed the marlinespike. “If you can talk sense I'll help you do it! I reckon you can holler all you want to now. Them dudes can't find their own mouths in a fog, much less this schooner. Now talk up!”

Mayo worked his aching jaws and found his voice. “You know how I happened to get aboard, Captain Candage. I am skipper of the _Olenia_. Put back with me if you want to save trouble.”

“Not by a tin hoopus, sir! I ain't going about and tackle them reefs in this fog. I've got open sea ahead, and I shall keep going!”

Mayo was a sailor who knew that coast, and he admitted to himself that Candage's stubbornness was justified.

“I ain't responsible for your getting aboard here. I'll land you as soon as I can--and that covers the law, sir.”

During a prolonged silence the two men stared at each other.

“At any rate, Captain Candage, I trust you will not consider that you have a right to keep me tied up here any longer.”

“Now that there's a better understanding about who is boss aboard here, I don't know as I'm afraid to have you at large,” admitted the skipper. “I only warn you to remember your manners and don't forget that I'm captain.”

He flourished his clasp-knife and bent and cut the lashings. Then he strode across the cabin and performed like service for his daughter.

“I reckon I can afford to have _you_ loose, too, now that you can't tell me my business in front of a lot of skylarkers throwing kisses right and left!”

“Father! Oh, oh!” She put her hands to her face.

Captain Candage seemed to be having some trouble in keeping up his rôle of a bucko shipmaster; he shifted his eyes from Mayo's scowl and surveyed his daughter with uncertainty while he scratched his ear.

“When a man ain't boss on his own schooner he might as well stop going to sea,” he muttered. “Some folks knows it's the truth, being in a position to know, and others has to be showed!” He went stamping up the companionway into the night.

Captain Mayo waited, for some minutes. The girl did not lift her head.

“About that--What he said about--You understand! I know better!” he faltered.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, gratefully, still hiding her face from him.

“Men sometimes do very foolish things.”

“I didn't know my father could be like this.”

“I was thinking about the men who came and annoyed him. I can understand how he felt, because I am 'a 'native' myself.”

“I thought you were from outside.”

“My name is Boyd Mayo. I'm from Mayoport.”

She looked up at him with frank interest.

“My folks built this schooner,” he stated, with modest pride.

“I'm Polly Candage--I'm named for it.”

“It's too bad!” he blurted. “I don't mean to say but what the name is all right,” he explained, awkwardly, “but I don't think that either of us is particularly proud of this old hooker right at the present moment.” He went across the cabin and sat down on a transom and, tested the bump on the back of his head with cautious palm.

She did not reply, and he set his elbows on his knees and proceeded to nurse his private grouch in silence, quite excluding his companion from his thoughts. Now that he had been snatched so summarily from his hateful position on board the _Olenia_, his desire to leave her was not so keen. After Mayo's declaration to the owner, Marston might readily conclude that his skipper had deserted. His reputation and his license as a shipmaster were in jeopardy, and he had already had a bitter taste of Marston's intolerance of shortcomings. If Marston cared to bother about breaking such a humble citizen, malice had a handy weapon. But most of all was Mayo concerned with the view Alma Marston would take of the situation. She would either believe that he had fallen overboard in the skirmish with the attacking Polly or had deserted without warning--and in the case of a lover both suppositions were agonizing. His distress was so apparent that the girl, from her seat on the opposite transom, extended sympathy in the glances she dared to give him.

“How did you tear your coat so badly in the back?” she ventured at last.

“Spikes your excellent father left sticking out of his martingale,” he said, a sort of boyish resentment in his tones.

“Then it is only right that I should offer to mend it for you.”

She hurried to a locker, as if glad of an excuse to occupy herself. She produced her little sewing-basket and then came to him and held out her hand.

“Take it off, please.”

“You needn't trouble,” he expostulated, still gruff.

“I insist. Please let me do a little something to make up for the _Polly's_ naughtiness.”

“It will be all right until I can get ashore--and perhaps I'll never have need to wear the coat again, anyway.”

“Won't you allow me to be doing something that will take my mind off my troubles, sir?” Then she snapped her finger into her palm and there was a spirit of matronly command in her voice, in spite of her youth. “I insist, I say! Take off your coat.”

He obeyed, a little grin crinkling at the corners of his mouth--a flicker of light in his general gloom. After he had placed the coat in her hands he sat down on the transom and watched her busy fingers. She worked deftly. She closed in the rents and then darned the raveled places with bits of the thread pulled from the coat itself.

“You are making it look almost as good as new.”

“A country girl must know how to patch and darn. The folks in the country haven't as many things to throw away as the city folks have.”

“But that--what you are doing--that's real art.”

“My aunt does dressmaking and I have helped her. And lately I have been working in a millinery-shop. Any girl ought to know how to use her needle.”

He remembered what Mr. Speed had said about the reason for her presence on the _Polly_. He cast a disparaging glance around the bare cabin and decided in his mind that Mr. Speed had reported truthfully and with full knowledge of the facts. Surely no girl would choose that sort of thing for a summer vacation.

She bent her head lower over her work and he was conscious of warmer sympathy for her; their troubled affairs of the heart were in similar plight. He felt an impulse to say something to console her and knew that he would welcome understanding and consolation from her; promptly he was afraid of his own tongue, and set curb upon all speech.

“A man never knows how far he may go in making fool talk when he gets started,” he reflected. “Feeling the way I do to-night, I'd better keep the conversation kedge well hooked.”

Now that her hands were busy, she did not find the silence embarrassing. Mayo returned to his ugly meditations.

After a time he was obliged to shift himself on the transom. The schooner was heeling in a manner which showed the thrust of wind. He glanced up and saw that the rain was smearing broad splashes on the dingy glass of the windows. The companion hatch was open, and when he cocked his ear, with mariner's interest in weather, he heard the wind gasping in the open space with a queer “guffle” in its tone.

Instinctively he began to look about the cabin for a barometer.

Already that day the _Olenia's_ glass had warned him by its downward tendency. He wondered whether further reading would indicate something more ominous than fog.

Across the cabin he noted some sort of an instrument swinging from a hook on a carline. He investigated. It was a makeshift barometer, the advertising gift of a yeast company. The contents of its tube were roiled to the height of the mark which was lettered “Tornado.”

“You can't tell nothing from that!” Captain Candage had come down into the cabin and stood behind his involuntary guest. “It has registered 'Tornado' ever since the glass got cracked. And even at that, it's about as reliable as any of the rest of them tinkerdiddle things.”

“Haven't you a regular barometer--an aneroid?” inquired Captain Mayo.

“I can smell all the weather I need to without bothering with one of them contrivances,” declared the master of the schooner, in lordly manner. He began to pull dirty oilskins out of a locker.

Mayo hurried up the companionway and put out his head. There were both weight and menace in the wind which hooted past his ears. The fog was gone, but the night was black, without glimmer of stars. The white crests of the waves which galloped alongside flaked the darkness with ominous signalings.

“If you can smell weather, Captain Candage, your nose ought to tell you that this promises to be something pretty nasty.”

“Oh, it might be called nasty by lubbers on a gingerbread yacht, but I have sailed the seas in my day and season, and I don't run for an inshore puddle every time the wind whickers a little.” He was fumbling with a button under his crisp roll of chin beard and gave the other man a stare of superiority.

“You don't class me with yacht-lubbers, do you?”

“Well, you was just on a yacht, wasn't you?”