Produced by David Widger
BLOW THE MAN DOWN
A ROMANCE OF THE COAST
By Holman Day
Copyright, 1916, by Harper & Brothers
TO MY GOOD FRIEND
Captain John W. Christie
BRITISH MASTER MARINER
WHO HAS SUNG ALL THE SHANTIES
AND HAS SAILED ALL THE SEAS
“_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.”
--Old Shanty of the Atlantic Packet Ships._
CONTENTS:
I ~ CAPTAIN BOYD MAYO GETS OUT OF SOUNDINGS
II ~ THEN CAPTAIN MAYO SEES SHOALS
III ~ THE TAVERN OF THE SEAS
IV ~ OVER THE “POLLY'S” RAIL
V ~ ON THE BRIDGE OF YACHT “OLENIA”
VI ~ AND WE SAILED
VII ~ INTO THE MESS FROM EASTWARD
VIII ~ LIKE BUGS UNDER A THIMBLE
IX ~ A MAN'S JOB
X ~ HOSPITALITY, PER JULIUS MARSTON
XI ~ A VOICE FROM HUE AND CRY
XII ~ NO PLACE POR THE SOLES OP THEIR FEET
XIII ~ A CAPTAIN OP HUMAN FLOTSAM
XIV ~ BEARINGS FOR A NEW COURSE
XV ~ THE RULES OF THE ROAD
XVI ~ MILLIONS AND A MITE
XVII ~ “EXACTLY!” SAID MR. FOGG
XVIII ~ HOW AN ANNUAL MEETING WAS HELD—ONCE!
XIX ~ THE PRIZE PACKAGE FROM MR. FOGG
XX ~ TESTING OUT A MAN
XXI ~ BITTER PROOF BY MORNING LIGHT
XXII ~ SPECIAL BUSINESS OF A PASSENGER
XXIII ~ THE MONSTER THAT SLIPPED ITS LEASH
XXIV ~ DOWN A GALLOPING SEA
XXV ~ A GIRL AND HER DEBT OF HONOR
XXVI ~ THE FANGS OF OLD RAZEE
XXVII ~ THE TEMPEST TURNS ITS CARD
XXVIII ~ GIRL'S HELP AND MAN'S WORK
XXIX ~ THE TOILERS OF OLD RAZEE
XXX ~ THE MATTER OP A MONOGRAM IN WAX
XXXI ~ THE BIG FELLOW HIMSELF
XXXII ~ A GIRL'S DEAR “BECAUSE!”
BLOW THE MAN DOWN
I ~ CAPTAIN BOYD MAYO GETS OUT OF SOUNDINGS
When in safety or in doubt,
Always keep a safe lookout;
Strive to keep a level head,
Mind your lights and mind your lead.
--Pilot-house Ditty.
For days he had been afraid of that incredible madness of his as a man
fears a nameless monster. But he was sure of his strength even while
admitting his weakness. He was confident that he had the thing securely
in leash.
Then all at once it happened!
Without preface of word or look he whirled and faced her, swept her
into his arms and kissed her. He did not attempt to absolve himself
or mitigate his offense by telling her that he loved her. He was
voiceless--he could not control his speech. He did not dare to show such
presumption as talk of love must seem to be to her. He knew he must not
speak of love; such proffer to her would be lunacy. But this greater
presumption, this blind capture of her in his arms--this was something
which he had not intended any more than a sane man considers flight to
the moon.
He did not understand; he had been himself--then, instantly, in time
measured by a finger-snap, he had become this wretch who seemed to be
somebody else.
He had ceased, for an insane moment, to be master of all his senses. But
he released her as suddenly as he had seized her, and staggered to the
door of the chart-room, turning his back on her and groaning in supreme
misery.
In that moment of delirium he had insulted his own New England sense of
decency and honor.
He was afraid to look back at her. With an agony of apprehension
he dreaded the sound of her voice. He knew well enough that she was
striving to get command of herself, to recover from her utter amazement.
He waited. The outrage must have incensed her beyond measure; the
silence was prolonged.
In the yacht's saloon below a violin sang its very soul out upon the
summer night, weaving its plaint into the soft, adagio rippling of a
piano's chords.
He searched his soul. The music, that distant, mellow phrasing of the
call of love, the music had unstrung him. While he paced the bridge
before her coming that music had been melting the ice of his natural
reserve. But he did not pardon himself because he had acted the fool.
He stared at the night framed in the door of the chart-house. Little
waves were racing toward him, straight from the moon, on the sea-line,
like a flood of new silver pouring from the open door of plenty!
But the appealing beauty of that night could not excuse the
unconscionable insult he had just offered her. He knew it, and shivered.
She had come and leaned close to him over the outspread chart, her
breath on his cheek--so close to him that a roving tress of her hair
flicked him. But because a sudden fire had leaped from the touch to his
brain was no reason for the act by which he had just damned himself as a
presumptuous brute.
For he, Boyd Mayo, captain of her father's yacht, a hireling, had just
paid the same insulting courtship to Alma Marston that a sailor would
proffer to an ogling girl on the street.
“I'll jump overboard,” he stammered at last. “I'll take myself out of
your sight forever.”
The ominous silence persisted.
“I don't ask you to forgive me. It is not a thing which can be forgiven.
Tell them I was insane--and jumped overboard. That will be the truth. I
am a lunatic.”
He lurched through the door. In that desperate moment, in the whirl
of his emotions, there seemed to be no other way out of his horrible
predicament. He had grown to love the girl with all the consuming
passion of his soul, realizing fully his blind folly at the same time.
He had built no false hopes. As to speaking of that love--even betraying
it by a glance--he had sheathed himself in the armor of reserved
constraint; he had been sure that he sooner would have gone down on his
hands and knees and bayed that silver moon from the deck of the yacht
_Olenia_ than do what he had just done.
“Captain Mayo! Wait!”
He waited without turning to look at her. Her voice was not steady, but
he could not determine from the tone what her emotions were.
“Come back here!”
She was obliged to repeat the command with sharper authority before he
obeyed. He lowered his eyes and stood before her, a voiceless suppliant.
“Why did you do that?” she asked. It was not the contemptuous demand
which he had been fearing. Her voice was so low that it was almost a
whisper.
“I don't know,” he confessed.
The violin sang on; the moon shone in at the door; two strokes, like
golden globules of sound, from the ship's bell signaled nine o'clock.
Only the rhythm of the engines, as soothing as a cat's purring, and the
slow roll of the yacht and the murmuring of the parted waves revealed
that the _Olenia_ was on her way through the night.
“I don't know,” he repeated. “It doesn't excuse me to say that I could
not help it.”
And he understood women so little that he did not realize that he was
making the ages-old plea which has softened feminine rancor ever since
the Sabine women were borne away in their captors' arms and forgave
their captors.
She stared at him, making once more a maiden's swift appraisal of this
young man who had offered himself so humbly as a sacrifice. His brown
hands were crossed in front of him and clutched convulsively his white
cap. The cap and the linen above the collar of his uniform coat brought
out to the full the hue of his manly tan. The red flush of his shocked
contrition touched his cheeks, and, all in all, whatever the daughter of
Julius Marston, Wall Street priest of high finance, may have thought of
his effrontery, the melting look she gave him from under lowered eyelids
indicated her appreciation of his outward excellencies.
“I suppose you are thoroughly and properly ashamed of what you have
done!”
“I am ashamed--so ashamed that I shall never dare to raise my eyes to
you again. I will do what I promised. I will jump overboard.”
“Captain Mayo, look at me!”
When he obeyed, with the demeanor of a whipped hound, his perturbation
would not allow him to show as much appreciation of her as she had
displayed in the secret study of him, which she now promptly concealed.
He surveyed her wistfully, with fear. And a maiden, after she has
understood that she has obtained mastery over brawn and soul, does not
care to be looked at as if she were Medusa.
She stole a side-glance at her face in one of the mirrors, and then
tucked into place a vagrant lock of hair with a shapely finger, thereby
suggesting, had there been a cynical observer present, that Miss Alma
Marston never allowed any situation, no matter how crucial, to take her
attention wholly from herself.
There was no mistaking it--had that cynical observer been there,
he would have noted that she pouted slightly when Mayo declared his
unutterable shame.
“You will never get over that shame, will you?”
And Captain Mayo, feverishly anxious to show that he understood the
enormity of his offense, and desiring to offer pledge for the future,
declared that his shame would never lessen.
Her dark eyes sparkled; whether there was mischief mingled with
resentment, or whether the resentment quite supplanted all other
emotions, might have been a difficult problem for the cynic. But when
she tilted her chin and stared the offender full in the eyes, propping
her plump little hands in the side-pockets of her white reefer,
Captain Mayo, like a man hit by a cudgel, was struck with the sudden
and bewildering knowledge that he did not know much about women, for
she asked, with a quizzical drawl, “Just what is there about me, dear
captain, to inspire that everlasting regret which seems to be troubling
you so much?”
Even then he did not grasp the full import of her provocative question.
“It isn't you. I'm the one who is wholly to blame,” he stammered. “I
have dared to--But no matter. I know my place. I'll show you I know it.”
“You _dared_ to--What have you dared to do--besides what you just did?”
“I cannot tell you, Miss Marston. I don't propose to insult you again.”
“I command you to tell me, Captain Mayo.”
He could not comprehend her mood in the least and his demeanor showed
it. Her command had a funny little ripple in it--as of laughter
suppressed. There were queer quirks at the corners of her full, red
lips.
“Now straighten up like your real self! I don't like to see you standing
that way. You know I like to have all the folks on the yachts look at
our captain when we go into a harbor! You didn't know it? Well, I do.
Now what have you dared to do?”
He did straighten then. “I have dared to fall in love with you, Miss
Marston. So have a lot of other fools, I suppose. But I am the worst of
all. I am only a sailor. How I lost control of myself I don't know!”
“Not even now?” Still that unexplainable softness in her voice, that
strange expression on her face. Being a sailor, he looked on this calm
as being ominous presage of a storm.
“I am willing to have you report me to your father, Miss Marston. I will
take my punishment. I will never offend you again.”
“You can control yourself after this, can you?”
“Yes, Miss Marston, absolutely.”
She hesitated; she smiled. She lowered her eyelids again and surveyed
him with the satisfied tolerance a pretty woman can so easily extend
when unconquerable ardor has prompted to rashness.
“Oh, you funny, prim Yankee!” she murmured. “You don't understand even
now just why you did it!”
His face revealed that he did not in the least understand.
“Come here,” she invited.
He went three steps across the narrow cabin and stood in an attitude of
respectful obedience before her.
“What now, sir?” It was query even more provocative--a smile went with
it.
“I apologize. I have learned my lesson.”
“You need to learn a lot--you are very ignorant,” she replied, with
considerable tartness.
“Yes,” he agreed, humbly.
What happened then was so wholly outside his reckoning that the
preceding events of the evening retired tamely into the background. It
had been conceivable that rush of passion might drive him to break all
the rules of conduct his New England conscience had set over him; but
what Alma Marston did overwhelmed him with such stupefaction that he
stood there as rigid and motionless as a belaying-pin in a rack. She put
up her arms, pressed her two hands on his shoulders, stood on tiptoe,
and kissed him on his lips.
“There, foolish old Yankee,” she said, softly, her mouth close to his;
“since you are so ashamed I give you back your kiss--and all is made
right between us, because we are just where we started a little while
ago.”
His amazement had so benumbed him that even after that surrender he
stood there, close to her, his countenance blank, his arms dangling at
his side.
“What on earth is the matter with you?” she asked, petulantly.
“I don't know! I--I--I don't seem to understand.”
“I'm going to be honest with you. You are so honest you will understand
me, then,” she told him. It seemed to him that he must be mistaken, but
he certainly felt her arms were slipping up his shoulders and had met
behind his neck. “I saw it in your eyes long ago. A woman always knows.
I wanted you to do what you did to-night. I knew I would be obliged to
tempt you. I came up here while the moon and the music would help me. I
did it all on purpose--I stood close to you--for I knew you were just
my slow old Yankee who would never come out of his shell till I poked.
There! I have confessed!”
His mad joy did not allow him to see anything of the coquette in that
confession. It all seemed to be consecrated by the love he felt for
her--a love which was so honest that he perceived no boldness in the
attitude of this girl who had come so far to meet him. He took her into
his arms again, and she returned his kisses.
“Tell me again, Boyd, that you love me,” she coaxed.
“And yet I have no right to love you. You are--”
“Hush! Hush! There goes your Yankee caution talking! I want love, for
I am a girl. Love hasn't anything to do with what you are or what I am.
Not now! We will love each other--and wait! You are my big boy! Aren't
you?”
He was glad to comply with her plea to put sensible talk from them just
then. There was nothing sensible he could say. He was holding Julius
Marston's daughter in his arms, and she was telling him that she loved
him. The world was suddenly upside down and he was surrendering himself
to the mad present.
In the yacht's saloon below a woman began to sing:
“Love comes like a summer sigh,
Softly o'er us stealing.
Love comes and we wonder why
To its shrine we're kneeling.
Love comes as the days go by--”
“That's it,” the girl murmured, eagerly. “We don't know anything at all
about why we love. Folks who marry for money make believe love--I have
watched them--I know. I love you. You're my big boy. That's all. That's
enough.”
He accepted this comforting doctrine unquestioningly. Her serene
acceptance of the situation, without one wrinkle in her placid brow
to indicate that any future problems annoyed her, did not arouse his
wonderment or cause him to question the depths of her emotions; it only
added one more element to the unreality of the entire affair.
Moon and music, silver sea and glorious night, and a maid who had been,
in his secret thoughts, his dream of the unattainable!
“Will you wait for me--wait till I can make something of myself?” he
demanded.
“You are yourself--right now--that's enough!”
“But the future. I must--”
“Love me--love me now--that's all we need to ask. The future will take
care of itself when the time comes! Haven't you read about the great
loves? How they just forgot the whole petty world? What has love to do
with business and money and bargains? Love in its place--business in its
place! And our love will be our secret until--”
He pardoned her indefiniteness, for when she paused and hesitated she
pressed her lips to his, and that assurance was enough for him.
“Yes--oh yes--Miss Alma!” called a man's voice in the singsong of eager
summons.
“It's Arthur,” she said, with snap of impatience in her voice. “Why
won't people let me alone?”
He released her, and she stood at arm's-length, her hands against
his breast. “I have thought--It seemed to me,” he stammered, “that
he--Forgive me, but I have loved you so! I couldn't bear to think--think
that he--”
“You thought I cared for him!” she chided. “That's only the man my
father has picked out for me! Why, I wouldn't even allow my father to
select a yachting-cap for me, much less a husband. I'll tell him so when
the time comes!”
Mayo's brows wrinkled in spite of himself. The morrow seemed to play
small part in the calculations of this maid.
“Money--that's all there is to Arthur Beveridge. My father has enough
money for all of us. And if he is stingy with us--oh, it's easy enough
to earn money, isn't it? All men can earn money.”
Captain Mayo, sailor, was not sure of his course in financial waters and
did not reply.
“Miss Alma! I say! Oh, where are you?”
“Even that silly, little, dried-up man,” she jeered, with a duck of her
head in the direction of the drawling voice, “goes down to Wall Street
and makes thousands and thousands of dollars whenever he feels like it.
And you could put him in your reefer pocket. They will all be afraid of
you when you go down to Wall Street to make lots of money for us two.
You shall see! Kiss me! Kiss me once! Kiss me quick! Here he comes!”
He obeyed, released her, and when Beveridge shoved his wizened face in
at the door they were bending over the chart.
“Oh, I say, we have missed you. They are asking for you.”
She did not turn to look at him. “I have something else on my mind,
Arthur, besides lolling below listening to Wally Dalton fiddle
love-tunes. And this passage, here, Captain Mayo! What is it?” Her
finger strayed idly across a few hundred miles of mapped Atlantic Ocean.
“It's Honeymoon Channel,” replied the navigator, demurely. His new
ecstasy made him bold enough to jest.
“Oh, so we are learning to be a captain, Miss Alma?” inquired Beveridge
with a wry smile.
“It would be better if more yacht-owners knew how to manage their own
craft,” she informed him, with spirit.
“Yes, it might keep the understrappers in line,” agreed the man at
the door.. “I apply for the position of first mate after you qualify,
Captain Alma.”
“And this, you say, is, Captain Mayo?” she queried, without troubling
herself to reply. Her tone was crisply matter of fact.
Beveridge blinked at her and showed the disconcerted uneasiness of a man
who has intruded in business hours.
Captain Mayo, watching the white finger rapturously, noted that it was
sweeping from the Arctic Circle to the Tropic Zone. “That's Love Harbor,
reached through the thoroughfare of Hope,” he answered, respectfully.
“Oh, I say!” exclaimed Beveridge; “the sailors who laid out that course
must have been romantic.”
“Sailors have souls to correspond with their horizon, Arthur. Would you
prefer such names as Cash Cove and Money-grub Channel?”
Mr. Beveridge cocked an eyebrow and stared at her eloquent back; also,
he cast a glance of no great favor on the stalwart young captain of the
_Olenia_. It certainly did not occur to Mr. Beveridge that two young
folks in love were making sport of him. That Julius Marston's daughter
would descend to a yacht captain would have appeared as incredible an
enormity as an affair with the butler. But there was something about
this intimate companionship of the chart-room which Mr. Beveridge did
not relish. Instinct rather than any sane reason told him that he was
not wanted.
“I'm sorry to break in on your studies, Miss Marston,” he said, a bit
stiffly. “But I have been sent by your father to call you to the cabin.”
Mr. Beveridge's air, his tone of protest, conveyed rather pointed hint
that her responsibilities as a hostess were fully as important as her
studies as a navigator.
“I must go,” she whispered.
Relief was mingled with Captain Mayo's regret. He had feared that this
impetuous young woman might rebel against the summons, even though the
word came from her father. And her persistent stay in his chart-room,
even on the pretext of a fervid interest in the mysteries of navigation,
might produce complications. This wonderful new joy in his life was too
precious to be marred by complications.
She trailed her fingers along his hand when she turned from the
chart-table, and then pinched him in farewell salute.
“Good night, Captain Mayo. I'll take another lesson to-morrow.”
“I am at your service,” he told her.
Their voices betrayed nothing, but Beveridge's keen eyes--the eyes which
had studied faces in the greatest game of all when fortunes were at
stake--noted the look they exchanged. It was long-drawn, as expressive
as a lingering kiss.
Mr. Beveridge, sanctioned in his courtship by Julius Marston, was not
especially worried by any inferences from that soft glance. He could not
blame even a coal-heaver who might stare tenderly at Miss Alma Marston,
for she was especially pleasing to the eye, and he enjoyed looking at
her himself. He was enough of a philosopher to be willing to have other
folks enjoy themselves and thereby give their approbation to his choice.
He excused Captain Mayo. As to Miss Marston, he viewed her frivolity as
he did that of the other girls whom he knew; they all had too much time
on their hands.
“Give the poor devils a chance, Alma. Don't tip 'em upside down,” he
advised, testily, when she followed him down the ladder. He stood at the
foot and offered his hand, but she leaped down the last two steps and
did not accept his assistance. “Now, you have twisted that skipper of
ours until he doesn't know north from south.”
“I do not care much for your emphasis on the 'now,'” she declared,
indignantly. “You seem to intimate that I am going about the world
trying to beguile every man I see.”
“That seems to be the popular indoor and outdoor sport for girls in
these days,” he returned with good humor. “Just a moment ago you were
raising the very devil with that fellow up there with your eyes. Of
course, practice makes perfect. But you're a good, kind girl in your
heart. Don't make 'em miserable.”
Mr. Beveridge's commiseration would have been wasted on Captain Boyd
Mayo that evening. The captain snapped off the light in the chart-room
as soon as they had departed, and there in the gloom he took his
happiness to his heart, even as he had taken her delicious self to his
breast. He put up his hands and pressed his face into the palms.
He inhaled the delicate, subtle fragrance--a mere suggestion of
perfume--the sweet ghost of her personality, which she had left behind.
Her touch still thrilled him, and the warmth of her last kiss was on his
lips.
Then he went out and climbed the ladder to the bridge. A peep over the
shoulder of the man at the wheel into the mellow glow under the hood of
the binnacle, showed him that the _Olenia_ was on her course.
“It's a beautiful night, Mr. McGaw,” he said to the mate, a stumpy
little man with bowed legs, who was pacing to and fro, measuring strides
with the regularity of a pendulum.
“It is that, sir!”
Mr. McGaw, before he answered, plainly had difficulty with something
which bulged in his cheek. He appeared, also, to be considerably
surprised by the captain's air of vivacious gaiety. His superior had
been moping around the ship for many days with melancholy spelled in
every line of his face.
“Yes, it's the most beautiful and perfect night I ever saw, Mr. McGaw.”
There was triumph in the captain's buoyant tones.
“Must be allowed to be what they call a starry night for a ramble,”
admitted the mate, trying to find speech to fit the occasion.
“I will take the rest of this watch and the middle watch, Mr. McGaw,”
offered the captain. “I want to stay up to-night. I can't go to sleep.”
The offer meant that Captain Mayo proposed to stay on duty until four
o'clock in the morning.
Mate McGaw fiddled a gnarled finger under his nose and tried to find
some words of protest. But Captain Mayo added a crisp command.
“Go below, Mr. McGaw, and take it easy. You can make it up to me some
time when there is no moon!” He laughed.
When all the cabin lights were out and he realized that she must be
asleep, he walked the bridge, exulting because her safety was in his
hands, but supremely exultant because she loved him and had told him so.
Obedience had been in the line of his training.
She had commanded him to live and love in the present, allowing the
future to take care of itself, and it afforded him a sense of sweet
companionship to obey her slightest wish when he was apart from
her. Therefore, he put aside all thoughts of Julius Marston and his
millions--Julius Marston, his master, owner of the yacht which swept on
under the moon--that frigid, silent man with the narrow strip of frosty
beard pointing his chin.
Mayo walked the bridge and lived and loved.
II ~ THEN CAPTAIN MAYO SEES SHOALS
There's naught upon the stern, there's naught upon the lee,
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we.
But there's a lofty ship to windward,
And she's sailing fast and free,
Sailing down along the coast of the high Barbaree.
--Ancient Shanty.
The skipper of the _Olenia_ found himself dabbling in guesses and
wonderment more than is good for a man who is expected to obey without
asking the reason why.
That cruise seemed to be a series of spasmodic alternations between
leisurely loafing and hustling haste.
There were days when he was ordered to amble along at half speed
offshore. Then for hours together Julius Marston and his two especial
and close companions, men of affairs, plainly, men of his kind, bunched
themselves close together in their hammock chairs under the poop awning
and talked interminably. Alma Marston and her young friends, chaperoned
by an amiable aunt--so Captain Mayo understood her status in the
party--remained considerately away from the earnest group of three.
Arthur Beveridge attached himself to the young folks.
From the bridge the captain caught glimpses of all this shipboard
routine. The yacht's saunterings offshore seemed a part of the summer
vacation.
But the occasional hurryings into harbors, the conferences below with
men who came and went with more or less attempt at secrecy, did not fit
with the vacation side of the cruise.
These conferences were often followed by orders to the captain to thread
inner reaches of the coast and to visit unfrequented harbors.
Captain Mayo had been prepared for these trips, although he had not been
informed of the reason. It was his first season on the yacht _Olenia_.
The shipping broker who had hired him had been searching in his
inquiries as to Mayo's knowledge of the byways of the coast. The young
man who had captained fishermen and coasters ever since he was seventeen
years old had found it easy to convince the shipping broker, and the
shipping broker had sent him on board the yacht without the formality of
an interview with the owner.
Mayo was informed curtly that there was no need of an interview. He was
told that Julius Marston never bothered with details.
When Julius Marston had come on board with his party he merely nodded
grim acknowledgment of the salute of his yacht's master, who stood at
the gangway, cap in hand.
The owner had never shown any interest in the management of the yacht;
he had remained abaft the main gangway; he had never called the captain
into conference regarding any movements of the _Olenia_.
Captain Mayo, pacing the bridge in the forenoon watch, trying to grasp
the full measure of his fortune after troubled dreams of his master's
daughter, recollected that he had never heard the sound of Julius
Marston's voice. So far as personal contact was concerned, the yacht's
skipper was evidently as much a matter of indifference to the owner as
the yacht's funnel.
Orders were always brought forward by a pale young man who was taciturn
even to rudeness, and by that trait seemed to commend himself to Marston
as a safe secretary.
At first, Alma Marston had brought her friends to the bridge. But after
the novelty was gone they seemed to prefer the comfort of chairs astern
or the saloon couches.
For a time the attentive Beveridge had followed her when she came
forward; and then Beveridge discovered that she quite disregarded him in
her quest for information from the tall young man in uniform. She came
alone.
And after that what had happened happened.
She came alone that forenoon. He saw her coming. He had stolen a glance
aft every time he turned in his walk at the end of the bridge. He leaned
low and reached down his hand to assist her up the ladder.
“I have been nigh crazy all morning. But I had to wait a decent time and
listen to their gossip after breakfast,” she told him, her face close
to his as she came up the ladder. “And, besides, my father is snappy
to-day. He scolded me last night for neglecting my guests. Just as if
I were called on to sit all day and listen to Nan Burgess appraise her
lovers or to sing a song every time Wally Dalton has his relapse of
lovesickness. He has come away to forget her, you know.” She chuckled,
uttering her funny little gurgle of a laugh which stirred in him,
always, a desire to smother it with kisses.
They went to the end of the bridge, apart from the man at the wheel.
“I hurried to go to sleep last night so that I could dream of you, my
own big boy.”
“I walked the bridge until after daylight. I wanted to stay awake. I
could not bear to let sleep take away my thoughts.”
“What is there like love to make this world full of happiness? How
bright the sun is! How the waves sparkle! Those folks sitting back there
are looking at the same things we are--or they can look, though they
don't seem to have sense enough. And about all they notice is that it's
daylight instead of night. My father and those men are talking about
money--just money--that's all. And Wally has a headache from drinking
too much Scotch. And Nan Burgess doesn't love anybody who loves her, But
for us--oh, this glorious world!”
She put out her arms toward the sun and stared boldly at that blazing
orb, as though she were not satisfied with what her eyes could behold,
but desired to grasp and feel some of the glory of outdoors. If Captain
Mayo had been as well versed in psychology as he was in navigation
he might have drawn a few disquieting deductions from this frank and
unconscious expression of the mood of the materialist. She emphasized
that mood by word.
“I'll show you my little clasp-book some day, big boy. It's where I
write my verses. I don't show them to anybody. You see, I'm telling you
my secrets! We must tell each other our secrets, you and I! I have put
my philosophy of living into four lines. Listen!
“The future? Why perplex the soul? The past? Forget its woe and strife!
Let's thread each day, a perfect whole, Upon our rosary of Life.”
“It's beautiful,” he told her.
“Isn't it good philosophy?”
“Yes,” he admitted, not daring to doubt the high priestess of the new
cult to which he had been commandeered.
“It saves all this foolish worry. Most of the folks I know are always
talking about the bad things which have happened to them or are peering
forward and hoping that good things will happen, and they never once
look down and admire a golden moment which Fate has dropped into their
hands. You see, I'm poetical this morning. Why shouldn't I be? We love
each other.”
“I don't know how to talk,” he stammered. “I'm only a sailor. I never
said a word about love to any girl in my life.”
“Are you sure you have never loved anybody? Remember, we must tell each
other our secrets.”
“Never,” he declared with convincing firmness.
She surveyed him, showing the satisfaction a gold-seeker would exhibit
in appraising a nugget of virgin ore. “But you are so big and fine! And
you must have met so many pretty girls!”
He was not restive under this quizzing. “I have told you the truth, Miss
Marston.”
“For shame, big boy! 'Miss Marston,' indeed! I am Alma--Alma to you. Say
it! Say it nicely!”
He flushed. He stole a shamefaced glance at the-wheelsman and made a
quick and apprehensive survey of the sacred regions aft.
“Are you afraid, after all I have said to you?”
“No, but it seems--I can hardly believe--”
“Say it.”
“Alma,” he gulped. “Alma, I love you.”
“You need some lessons, big boy. You are so awkward I think you are
telling me the truth about the other girls.”
He did not dare to ask her whether she had loved any one else. With all
the passionate jealousy of his soul he wanted to ask her. She, who was
so sure that she could instruct him, must have loved somebody. He tried
to comfort himself by the thought that her knowledge arose from the
efforts either men had made to win her.
“We have our To-day,” she murmured. “Golden hours till the moon comes
up--and then perhaps a few silver ones! I don't care what Arthur
guesses. My father is too busy talking money with those men to guess.
I'm going to be with you all I can. I can arrange it. I'm studying
navigation.”
She snuggled against the rail, luxuriating in the sunshine.
“Who are you?” she asked, bluntly.
That question, coming after the pledging of their affection, astonished
him like the loom of a ledge in mid-channel.
“It's enough for me that you are just as you are, boy! But you're not a
prince in disguise, are you?”
“I'm only a Yankee sailor,” he told her. “But if you won't think that
I'm trying to trade on what my folks have been before me, I'll say that
my grandfather was Gamaliel Mayo of Mayoport.”
“That sounds good, but I never heard of him. With all my philosophy, I'm
a poor student of history, sweetheart.” Her tone and the name she gave
him took the sting out of her confession.
“I don't believe he played a great part in history. But he built sixteen
ships in his day, and our house flag circled the world many times.
Sixteen big ships, and the last one was the _Harvest Home_, the China
clipper that paid for herself three times before an Indian Ocean monsoon
swallowed her.”
“Well, if he made all that money, are you going to sea for the fun of
it?”
“There are no more Yankee wooden ships on the sea. My poor father
thought he was wise when the wooden ships were crowded off. He put his
money into railroads--and you know what has happened to most of the
folks who have put their money into new railroads.”
“I'm afraid I don't know much about business.”
“The hawks caught the doves. It was a game that was played all over New
England. The folks whose money built the roads were squeezed out. Long
before my mother died our money was gone, but my father and I did not
allow her to know it. We mortgaged and gave her what she had always been
used to. And when my father died there was nothing!”
Her eyes glistened. “That's chivalry,” she cried. “That's the spirit of
the knights of old when women were concerned. I adore you for what you
did!”
“It was the way my father and I looked at it,” he said, mildly. “My
father was not a very practical man, but I always agreed with him. And
I am happy now, earning my own living. Why should I think my grandfather
ought to have worked all his life so that I would not need to work?”
“I suppose it's different with a big, strong man and a woman. She needs
so much that a man must give her.”
Captain Mayo became promptly silent, crestfallen, and embarrassed. He
stared aft, he looked at the splendid yacht whose finances he managed
and whose extravagance he knew. He saw the girl at his side, and blinked
at the gems which flashed in the sunlight as her fingers tucked up the
locks of hair where the breeze had wantoned.
“I think my father works because he loves it,” she said. “I wish he
would rest and enjoy other things more. If mother had lived to influence
him perhaps he would see something else in life instead of merely piling
up money. But he doesn't listen to me. He gives me money and tells me to
go and play. I miss my mother, boy! I haven't anybody to talk with--who
understands!”
There were tears in her eyes, and he was grateful for them. He felt
that she had depths in her nature. But keen realization of his position,
compared with hers, distressed him. She stood there, luxury incarnate,
mistress of all that money could give her.
“Anybody can make money,” she declared. “My father and those men are
sitting there and building plans to bring them thousands and thousands
of dollars. All they need to do is put their heads together and plan.
Every now and then I hear a few words. They're going to own all the
steamboats--or something of that kind. Anybody can make money, I say,
but there are so few who know how to enjoy it.”
“I have been doing a lot of thinking since last night--Alma.” He
hesitated when he came to her name, and then blurted it out.
“Do you think it is real lover-like to treat my name as if it were a
hurdle that you must leap over?” she asked, with her aggravating little
chuckle. “Oh, you have so much to learn!”
“I'm afraid so. I have a great many things ahead of me to learn and do.
I have been thinking. I have been afraid of the men who sit and scheme
and put all their minds on making money. They did bitter things to us,
and we didn't understand until it was all over. But I must go among them
and watch them and learn how to make money.”
“Don't be like the others, now, and talk money--money,” she said,
pettishly. “Money and their love-affairs--that's the talk I have heard
from men ever since I was allowed to come into the drawing-room out of
the nursery!”
“But I must talk money a little, dear. I have my way to make in the
world.”
“Thrifty, practical, and Yankee!” she jested. “I suppose you can't help
it!”
“It isn't for myself--it's for you!” he returned, wistfully, and with
a voice and demeanor he offered himself as Love's sacrifice before
her--the old story of utter devotion--the ancient sacrifice.
“I have all I want,” she insisted.
“But _I_ must be able to give you what you want!”
“I warn you that I hate money-grubbers! They haven't a spark of romance
in them. Boyd, you'd be like all the rest in a little while. You mustn't
do it.”
“But I must have position--means before I dare to go to your father--if
I ever shall be able to go to him!”
“Go to him for what?”
“To ask him--to say--to--well, when we feel that I'm in a position where
we can be married--”
“Of course we shall be married some day, boy, but all that will take
care of itself when the time comes. But now you are-- How old are you,
Boyd?”
“Twenty-six.”
“And I am nineteen. And what has marriage to do with the love we are
enjoying right now?”
“When folks are in love they want to get married.”
“Granted! But when lovers are wise they will treat romance at first as
the epicure treats his glass of good wine. They will pour it slowly and
hold the glass up against the light and admire its color!” In her gay
mood she pinched together thumb and forefinger and lifted an imaginary
glass to the sun. “Then they will sniff the bouquet. Ah-h-h, how
fragrant! And after a time they will take a little sip--just a weeny
little sip and hold it on the tongue for ever so long. For, when it is
swallowed, what good? Oh, boy, here are you--talking first of all about
marriage! Talking of the good wine of life and love as if it were a
fluid simply to satisfy thirst. We are going to love, first of all!
Come, I will teach you.”
He did not know what to say to her. There was a species of abandon in
her gaiety. Her exotic language embarrassed one who had been used to
mariners' laconic directness of speech. She looked at him, teasing him
with her eyes. He was a bit relieved when the pale-faced secretary came
dragging himself up the ladder and broke in on the tête-à-tête.
“Mr. Marston's orders are, Captain Mayo, that you turn here and go west.
Do you know the usual course of the Bee line steamers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He requests you to turn in toward shore and follow that course.”
“Very well, sir.” Captain Mayo walked to the wheel. “Nor' nor'west,
Billy, until I can give you the exact course.”
“Nor' nor'west!” repeated the wheelsman, throwing her hard over, and
the _Olenia_ came about with a rail-dipping swerve and retraced her way
along her own wake of white suds.
Miss Marston preceded the captain down the ladder and went into the
chart-room. “A kiss--quick!” she whispered.
He held her close to him for a long moment.
“You are a most obedient captain,” she said.
When he released her and went at his task, she leaned upon his shoulder
and watched him as he straddled his parallels across the chart.
“We'll run to Razee Reef,” he told her, eager to make her a partner in
all his little concerns. “The Bee boats fetch the whistler there so as
to lay off their next leg. I didn't know that Mr. Marston was interested
in the Bee line.”
“I heard him talking about that line,” she said, indifferently.
“Sometimes I listen when I have nothing else to do. He used a naughty
word about somebody connected with that company--and it's so seldom that
he allows himself to swear I listened to see what it was all about. I
don't know even now. I don't understand such things. But he said if he
couldn't buy 'em he'd bu'st 'em. Those were his words. Not very elegant
language. But it's all I remember.”
Before he left the chart-room Mayo took a squint at the barometer. “I'm
sorry he has ordered me in toward the coast,” he said. “The glass is too
far below thirty to suit me. I think it means fog.”
“But it's so clear and beautiful,” she protested.
“It's always especially beautiful at sea before something bad happens,”
he explained, smiling. “And there has been a big fog-bank off to
s'uth'ard for two days. It's a good deal like life, dear. All lovely,
and then the fog shuts in!”
“But I would be happy with you in the fog,” she assured him.
He glowed at her words and answered with his eyes.
She would have followed him back upon the bridge, but the steward
intercepted her. He had waited outside the chart-room.
“Mr. Marston's compliments, Miss Marston! He requests you to join him at
cards.”
She pouted as she gave back Mayo's look of annoyance, and then obeyed
the mandate.
Mr. Marston was stroking his narrow strip of chin beard with thumb and
forefinger when she arrived on the quarter-deck. The men of business
were below, and he motioned to a hammock chair beside him.
“Alma, for the rest of this cruise I want you to stay back here with
our guests where you belong,” he commanded with the directness of attack
employed by Julius Marston in his dealings with those of his ménage.
“What do you mean, father?”
“That--exactly. I was explicit, was I not?”
“But you do not intimate that--that I have--”
“Well?” Mr. Marston believed in allowing others to expose their
sentiments before he uncovered his own.
“You don't suggest that there is anything wrong in my being on the
bridge where I enjoy myself so much. I am trying to learn something
about navigation.”
“I am paying that fellow up there to attend to all that.”
“And it gets tiresome back here.”
“You selected your own company for the cruise--and there is Mr.
Beveridge ready to amuse you at any time.”
“Mr. Beveridge amuses me--distinctly amuses me,” she retorted. “But
there is such a thing as becoming wearied even of such a joke as Mr.
Beveridge.”
“You will please employ a more respectful tone when you refer to that
gentleman,” said her father, with severity. But he promptly fell back
into his usual mood when she came into his affairs. He was patronizingly
tolerant. “Your friend, Miss Burgess, has been joking about your sudden
devotion to navigation, Alma.”
“Nan Burgess cannot keep her tongue still, even about herself.”
“I know, but I do not intend to have you give occasion even for
jokes. Of course, I understand. I know your whims. You are interested,
personally, in that gold-braided chap about as much as you would be
interested in that brass thing where the compass is--whatever they call
it.”
“But he's a gentleman!” she cried, her interest making her unwary. “His
grandfather was--”
“Alma!” snapped Julius Marston. His eyes opened wide. He looked her up
and down. “I have heard before that an ocean trip makes women silly,
I am inclined to believe it. I don't care a curse who that fellow's
grandfather was. _You_ are my daughter--and you keep off that bridge!”
The men of business were coming up the companion-way, and she rose and
hurried to her stateroom.
“I don't dare to meet Nan Burgess just now,” she told herself.
“Friendships can be broken by saying certain things--and I feel
perfectly capable of saying just those things to her at this moment.”
In the late afternoon the _Olenia_, the shore-line looming to starboard,
shaped her course to meet and pass a big steamer which came rolling down
the sea with a banner of black smoke flaunting behind her.
The fog which Captain Mayo had predicted was coming. Wisps of it trailed
over the waves--skirmishers sent ahead of the main body which marched in
mass more slowly behind.
A whistling buoy, with its grim grunt, told all mariners to 'ware Razee
Reef, which was lifting its jagged, black bulk against the sky-line.
With that fog coming, Captain Mayo needed to take exact bearings from
Razee, for he had decided to run for harbor that night. That coastline,
to whose inside course Marston's orders had sent the yacht, was too
dangerous to be negotiated in a night which was fog-wrapped. Therefore,
the captain took the whistler nearly dead on, leaving to the larger
steamer plenty of room in the open sea.
With considerable amazement Mayo noticed that the other fellow was
edging toward the whistler at a sharper angle than any one needed. That
course, if persisted in, would pinch the yacht in dangerous waters. Mayo
gave the on-coming steamer one whistle, indicating his intention to pass
to starboard. After a delay he was answered by two hoarse hoots--a most
flagrant breach of the rules of the road.
“That must be a mistake,” Captain Mayo informed Mate McGaw.
“That's a polite name for it, sir,” averred Mr. McGaw, after he had
shifted the lump in his cheek.
“Of course he doesn't mean it, Mr. McGaw.”
“Then why isn't he giving us elbow-room on the outside of that buoy,
sir?”
“I can't swing and cross his bows now. If he should hit us we'd be the
ones held for the accident.”
Again Mayo gave the obstinate steamer a single whistle-blast.
“If he cross-signals me again I'll report him,” he informed the mate.
“Pay close attention, Mr. McGaw, and you, too, Billy. We may have to go
before the inspectors.”
But the big chap ahead of them did not deign to reply. He kept on
straight at the whistler.
“Compliments of Mr. Marston!” called the secretary from the bridge
ladder. “What steamer is that?”
“_Conorno_ of the Bee line, sir,” stated Captain Mayo over his shoulder.
Then he ripped out a good, hearty, deep-water oath. According to
appearances, incredible as the situation seemed, the _Conorno_ proposed
to drive the yacht inside the whistler.
Mayo ran to the wheel and yanked the bell-pull furiously. There were
four quick clangs in the engine-room, and in a moment the _Olenia_ began
to quiver in all her fabric. Going full speed ahead, Mayo had called
for full speed astern. Then he sounded three whistles, signaling as the
rules of the road provide. The yacht's twin screws churned a yeasty riot
under her counter, and while she was laboring thus in her own wallow,
trembling like some living thing in the extremity of terror, the big
steamer swept past. Froth from the creamy surges at her bows flicked
spray contemptuously upon Julius Marston and his guests on the
_Olenia_'s quarter-deck. Men grinned down upon them from the high
windows of the steamer's pilot-house.
A jeering voice boomed through a megaphone: “Keep out of the way of the
Bee line! Take the hint!”
An officer pointed his finger at Marston's house flag, snapping from
the yacht's main truck. The blue fish-tail with its letter “M” had
revealed the yacht's identity to searching glasses.
“Better make it black! Skull and cross-bones!” volunteered the megaphone
operator.
On she went down the sea and the _Olenia_ tossed in the turbulent wake
of the kicking screws.
Then, for the first time, Captain Mayo heard the sound of Julius
Marston's voice. The magnate stood up, shook his fist at his staring
captain, and yelled, “What in damnation do you think you are doing?”
It was amazing, insulting, and, under the circumstances as Mayo knew
them, an unjust query. The master of the _Olenia_ did not reply. He was
not prepared to deliver any long-distance explanation. Furthermore, the
yacht demanded all his attention just then. He gave his orders and she
forged ahead to round the whistler.
“Nor'west by west, half west, Billy. And cut it fine!”
The fog had fairly leaped upon them from the sea. The land-breeze
had been holding back the wall of vapor, damming it in a dun bank to
southward. The breeze had let go. The fog had seized its opportunity.
“Saturday Cove for us to-night, Mr. McGaw,” said the master. “Keep your
eye over Billy's shoulder.”
Then the secretary appeared again on the ladder. This time he did not
bring any “compliments.”
“Mr. Marston wants you to report aft at once,” he announced, brusquely.
Mayo hesitated a moment. They were driving into blankness which had shut
down with that smothering density which mariners call “a dungeon fog.”
Saturday Cove's entrance was a distant and a small target. In spite of
steersman and mate, his was the sole responsibility.
“Will you please explain to Mr. Marston that I cannot leave the bridge?”