and report.”
The skipper of the _Olenia_ was having his first taste of the
unreasoning whim of the autocrat who was entitled to break into
shipboard discipline, even in a critical moment. Mayo felt exasperation
surging in him, but he was willing to explain.
The whistler and Razee Reef had been blotted out by the fog.
“If this vessel is stopped five minutes in this tide-drift we shall lose
our bearings, sir. I cannot leave this bridge for the present.”
“I'm thinking you'll leave it for good!” blurted the secretary. “You're
the first hired man who ever told Julius Marston to go bite his own
thumb.”
“I may be a hired man,” retorted Mayo. “But I am also a licensed
shipmaster. I must ask you to step down off the bridge.”
“Does that go for all the rest of the--passengers?” asked the secretary,
angry in his turn. He dwelt on his last word. “It does--in a time like
this!”
“Very well, I'll give them that word aft.”
Captain Mayo caught a side glance from Mate McGaw after a time.
“I have often wondered,” remarked the mate to nobody in particular, “how
it is that so many damn fools get rich on shore.”
Captain Mayo did not express any opinion on the subject. He clutched the
bridge rail and stared into the fog, and seemed to be having a lot of
trouble in choking back some kind of emotion.
III ~ THE TAVERN OF THE SEAS
Now, Mister Macliver, you knows him quite well,
He comes upon deck and he cuts a great swell;
It's damn your eyes there and it's damn your eyes here,
And straight to the gangway he takes a broad sheer.
--La Pique “Come-all-ye.”
Into Saturday Cove, all during that late afternoon, they came
surging--spars and tackle limned against the on-sweeping pall of the
gray fog--those wayfarers of the open main.
First to roll in past the ledgy portals of the haven were the venerable
sea-wagons--the coasters known as the “Apple-treers.” Their weatherwise
skippers, old sea-dogs who could smell weather as bloodhounds sniff
trails, had their noses in the air in good season that day, and knew
that they must depend on a thinning wind to cuff them into port. One
after the other, barnacled anchors splashed from catheads, dragging
rusty chains from hawse-holes, and old, patched sails came sprawling
down with chuckle of sheaves and lisp of running rigging.
A 'long-coast shanty explains the nickname, “Apple-treers”:
O, what's the use of compass or a quadrant or a log?
Keep her loafin' on her mudhook in a norther or a fog.
But as soon's the chance is better, then well ratch her off once more,
Keepin' clost enough for bearings from the apple-trees ashore.
Therefore, the topsail schooners, the fore-and-afters, the Bluenose
blunt-prows, came in early before the fog smooched out the loom of
the trees and before it became necessary to guess at what the old card
compasses had to reveal on the subject of courses.
And so, along with the rest of the coastwise ragtag, which was seeking
harbor and holding-ground, came the ancient schooner _Polly_. Fog-masked
by those illusory mists, she was a shadow ship like the others; but,
more than the others, she seemed to be a ghost ship, for her lines and
her rig informed any well-posted mariner that she must be a centenarian;
with her grotesqueness accentuated by the fog pall, she seemed unreal--a
picture from the past.
She had an out-thrust of snub bow and an upcock of square stern, and
sag of waist--all of which accurately revealed ripe antiquity, just as
a bell-crowned beaver and a swallow-tail coat with brass buttons would
identify an old man in the ruck of newer fashions. She had seams like
the wrinkles in the parchment skin of extreme old age. She carried a
wooden figurehead under her bowsprit, the face and bust of a woman on
whom an ancient woodcarver had bestowed his notion of a beatific smile;
the result was an idiotic simper. The glorious gilding had been worn
off, the wood was gray and cracked. The _Polly's_ galley was entirely
hidden under a deckload of shingles and laths in bunches; the
after-house was broad and loomed high above the rail in contrast to the
mere cubbies which were provided for the other fore-and-afters in the
flotilla which came ratching in toward Saturday Cove.
The _Polly_, being old enough to be celebrated, had been the subject of
a long-coast lyric of seventeen verses, any one of which was capable of
producing most horrible profanity from Captain Epps Candage, her master,
whenever he heard the ditty echoing over the waves, sung by a satirist
aboard another craft.
In that drifting wind there was leisure; a man on board a lime-schooner
at a fairly safe distance from the _Polly_ found inclination and lifted
his voice:
“Ow-w-w, here comes the _Polly_ with a lopped-down sail,
And Rubber-boot Epps, is a-settin' on her rail.
How-w-w long will she take to get to Boston town?
Can't just tell 'cause she's headin' up and down.”
“You think that kind o' ky-yi is funny, do you, you walnut-nosed,
blue-gilled, goggle-eyed son of a dough-faced americaneezus?” bellowed
Captain Candage, from his post at the _Polly's_ wheel.
“Father!” remonstrated a girl who stood in the companionway, her elbows
propped on the hatch combings. “Such language! You stop it!”
“It ain't half what I can do when I'm fair started,” returned the
captain.
“You never say such things on shore.”
“Well, I ain't on shore now, be I? I'm on the high seas, and I'm talking
to fit the occasion. Who's running this schooner, you or me?”
She met his testiness with a spirit of her own, “I'm on board here,
where I don't want to be, because of your silly notions, father. I have
the right to ask you to use decent language, and not shame us both.”
Against the archaically homely background the beauty of the young girl
appeared in most striking contrast. Her curls peeped out from under the
white Dutch cap she wore. Her eyes sparkled with indignant protest, her
face was piquant and was just then flushed, and her nose had the least
bit of a natural uptilt, giving her the air of a young woman who had a
will of her own to spice her amiability.
Captain Candage blinked at her over the spokes of the wheel, and in his
father's heart acknowledged her charm, realizing more acutely that
his motherless girl had become too much of a problem for his limited
knowledge in the management of women.
He had not seen her grow up gradually, as other fathers had viewed their
daughters, being able to meet daily problems in molding and mastery.
She seemed to reach development, mental and physical, in disconcerting
phases while he was away on his voyages. Each time he met her he was
obliged to get acquainted all over again, it appeared to him.
Captain Candage had owned up frankly to himself that he was not able to
exercise any authority over his daughter when she was ashore.
She was not wilful; she was not obstinate; she gave him affection. But
she had become a young woman while his slow thoughts were classing her
still as a child. She was always ahead of all his calculations. In
his absences she jumped from stage to stage of character--almost of
identity! He had never forgotten how he had brought back to her from New
York, after one voyage, half a gunny sackful of tin toys, and discovered
that in his absence, by advice and sanction of her aunt, who had become
her foster-mother, she had let her dresses down to ankle-length and had
become a young lady whom he called “Miss Candage” twice before he had
managed to get his emotions straightened out. While he was wondering
about the enormity of tin toys in the gunny sack at his feet, as he sat
in the aunt's parlor; his daughter asked him to come as guest of
honor with the Sunday-school class's picnic which she was arranging as
teacher. That gave him his opportunity to lie about the toys and allege
that he had brought them for her scholars.
Captain Candage, on the deck of his ship, found that he was able to
muster a little courage and bluster for a few minutes, but he did not
dare to look at her for long while he was asserting himself.
He looked at her then as she stood in the gloomy companionway, a
radiant and rosy picture of healthy maidenhood. But the expression on
her face was not comfortingly filial.
“Father, I must say it again. I can't help saying it. I am so unhappy.
You are misjudging me so cruelly.”
“I done it because I thought it was right to do it. I haven't been
tending and watching the way a father ought to tend and watch. I never
seemed to be able to ketch up with you. Maybe I ain't right. Maybe I be!
At any rate, I'm going to stand on this tack, in your case, for a while
longer.”
“You have taken me away from my real home for this? This is no place for
a girl! You are not the same as you are when you are on shore. I didn't
know you could be so rough--and--wicked!”
“Hold on there, daughter! Snub cable right there! I'm an honest,
God-fearing, hard-working man--paying a hundred cents on the dollar, and
you know it.”
“But what did you just shout--right out where everybody could hear you?”
“That--that was only passing the compliments of the day as compared with
what I can do when I get started proper. Do you think I'm going to let
any snub-snooted wart-hog of a lime-duster sing--”
“Father!”
“What's a girl know about the things a father has to put up with when he
goes to sea and earns money for her?”
“I am willing to work for myself. You took me right out of my good
position in the millinery-store. You have made me leave all my young
friends. Oh, I am so homesick!” Her self-reliance departed suddenly. She
choked. She tucked her head into the hook of her arm and sobbed.
“Don't do that!” he pleaded, softening suddenly. “Please don't, Polly!”
She looked up and smiled--a pleading, wan little smile. “I didn't mean
to give way to it, popsy dear. I don't intend to do anything to make you
angry or sorry. I have tried to be a good girl. I am a good girl. But it
breaks my heart when you don't trust me.”
“They were courting you,” he stammered. “Them shore dudes was hanging
around you. I ain't doubting you, Polly. But you 'ain't got no mother.
I was afraid. I know I've been a fool about it. But I was afraid!” Tears
sprinkled his bronzed cheeks. “I haven't been much of a father because
I've had to go sailing and earn money. But I thought I'd take you away
till-till I could sort of plan on something.”
She gazed at him, softening visibly.
“Oh, Polly,” he said, his voice breaking, “you don't know how pretty you
are-you don't know how afraid I am!”
“But you can trust me, father,” she promised, after a pause, with simple
dignity. “I know I am only a country girl, not wise, perhaps, but I know
what is right and what is wrong. Can't you understand how terribly you
have hurt my pride and my self-respect by forcing me to come and be
penned up here as if I were a shameless girl who could not take care of
herself?”
“I reckon I have done wrong, Polly. But I don't know much-not about
women folk. I was trying to do right-because you're all I have in this
world.”
“I hope you will think it all over,” she advised, earnestly. “You will
understand after a time, father, I'm sure. Then you will let me go back
and you will trust me-as your own daughter should be trusted. That's the
right way to make girls good-let them know that they can be trusted.”
“You are probably right,” he admitted. “I will think it all over.
As soon as we get in and anchored I'll sit down and give it a good
overhauling in my mind. Maybe-”
She took advantage of his pause. “We are going into a harbor, are we,
father?”
“Yes. Right ahead of us.”
“I wish you would put me ashore and send me back. I shall lose my
position in the store if I stay away too long.”
His obstinacy showed again, promptly. “I don't want you in that
millinery-shop. I'm told that dude drummers pester girls in stores.”
“They do not trouble me, father. Haven't you any confidence in your own
daughter?”
“Yes, I have,” he said, firmly, and then added, “but I keep thinking of
the dudes and then I get afraid.”
She gave him quick a glance, plainly tempted to make an impatient
retort, and then turned and went down into the cabin.
“Don't be mad with me, Polly,” he called after her. “I guess, maybe, I'm
all wrong. I'm going to think it over; I ain't promising nothing sure,
but it won't be none surprising if I set you ashore here and send you
back home. Don't cry, little girl.” There were tears in his voice as
well as in his eyes.
The lime-schooner vocalist felt an impulse to voice another verse:
“Ow-w-w, here comes the _Polly_ in the middle of the road,
Towed by a mule and paving-blocks her load.
Devil is a-waiting and the devil may as well,
'Cause he'll never get them paving-blocks to finish paving hell.”
Captain Candage left his wheel and strode to the rail. All the softness
was gone from his face and his voice.
“You horn-jawed, muck-faced jezebo of a sea-sculpin, you dare to yap
out any more of that sculch and I'll come aboard you after we anchor and
jump down your gullet and gallop the etarnal innards out of ye! Don't
you know that I've got ladies aboard here?”
“It don't sound like it,” returned the songster.
“Well, you hear what _I_ sound like! Half-hitch them jaw taakuls of
yours!”
Captain Candage's meditations were not disturbed after that.
With the assistance of his one helper aboard ship, “Oakum Otie,” a gray
and whiskered individual who combined in one person the various offices
of first mate, second mate, A-1 seaman, and hand before the mast-as
well as the skipper's boon companion-the _Polly_ was manoeuvered to her
anchorage in Saturday Cove and was snugged for the night. Smoke began to
curl in blue wreaths from her galley funnel, and there were occasional
glimpses of the cook, a sallow-complexioned, one-eyed youth whose chief
and everlasting decoration provided him with the nickname of “Smut-nosed
Dolph.”
Then came some of the ocean aristocrats to join the humbler guests in
that tavern of the seas.
Avant couriers of a metropolitan yacht club, on its annual cruise,
arrived, jockeying in with billowing mountains of snowy canvas spread to
catch the last whispers of the breeze. Later arrivals, after the breeze
failed, were towed in by the smart motor craft of the fleet. One by one,
as the anchors splashed, brass cannons barked salute and were answered
by the commodore's gun.
Captain Candage sat on the edge of the _Polly's_ house and snapped
an involuntary and wrathful wink every time a cannon banged. In that
hill-bound harbor, where the fog had massed, every noise was magnified
as by a sounding-board. There were cheery hails, yachtsmen bawled over
the mist-gemmed brass rails interchange of the day's experiences, and
frisking yacht tenders, barking staccato exhausts, began to carry men to
and fro on errands of sociability. In the silences Captain Candage could
hear the popping of champagne corks.
“Them fellers certainly live high and sleep in the garret,” observed
Oakum Otie. He was seated cross-legged on the top of the house and was
hammering down the lumps in a freshly twisted eye-splice with the end of
a marlinespike.
“It has always been a wonder to me,” growled Captain Candage, “how dudes
who don't seem to have no more wit than them fellows haw-hawing over
there, and swigging liquor by the cart-load, ever make money the way
they do so as to afford all this.”
On that point Captain Candage might have found Mate McGaw of the
_Olenia_ willing to engage in profitable discussion and amicable
understanding!
“They don't make it-they don't know enough to make it,” stated Otie,
with the conviction of a man who knew exactly what he was talking about.
“It has all been left to 'em by their fathers.”
The bearded and brown men of the apple-tree crews leaned the patched
elbows of their old coats on the rails and gloomily surveyed the
conviviality on board the plaything crafts. Remarks which they exchanged
with one another were framed to indicate a sort of lofty scorn for these
frolickers of the sea. The coasting skippers, most of whom wore hard
hats, as if they did not want to be confounded with those foppish yacht
captains, patrolled their quarter-decks and spat disdainfully over their
rails.
Everlastingly there was the clank of pumps on board the Apple-treers,
and the pumps were tackling the everlasting leaks. Water reddened
by contact with bricks, water made turbid by percolation through
paving-blocks, splashed continuously from hiccuping scuppers.
Captain Ranse Lougee of the topsail schooner _Belvedere_, laden with
fish scraps for a Boston glue-factory, dropped over the counter into his
dory and came rowing to the _Polly_, standing up and facing forward and
swaying with the fisherman's stroke.
He straddled easily over the schooner's scant freeboard and came aft,
and was greeted cordially by Captain Candage.
“Thought I'd show them frosted-cakers that there's a little sociability
amongst the gents in the coasting trade, too,” he informed his
host. “Furthermore, I want to borry the ex-act time o' day. _And_,
furthermore, I'm glad to get away from that cussed aromy on board the
_Belvedere_ and sort of air out my nose once in a while. What's the good
word, Cap?”
Captain Candage replied to the commonplaces of the other skipper in
abstracted fashion. He had viewed Lougee's approach with interest, and
now he was plainly pondering in regard to something wholly outside this
chatter.
“Captain Lougee,” he broke in, suddenly, in low tones, “I want you
should come forward with me out of hearing of anybody below. I've got a
little taakul I want you to help me overhaul.”
The two walked forward over the deckload and sat on the fore-gaff, which
sprawled carelessly where it had fallen when the halyards were let run.
“My daughter is below, there,” explained Captain Candage.
“Vacation trip, eh?”
“I don't think it can be called that, Captain Lougee,” stated the host,
dryly. “She is having about as good a time as a canary-bird would have
in a corn-popper over a hot fire.”
“What did she come for, then?”
“I made her come. I shanghaied her.”
“That's no way to treat wimmen folks,” declared Captain Lougee. “I've
raised five daughters and I know what I'm talking about.”
“I know you have raised five girls, and they're smart as tophet and
right as a trivet--and that's why I have grabbed right in on the subject
as I have. I was glad to see you coming aboard, Captain Lougee. I want
some advice from a man who knows.”
“Then I'm the man to ask, Captain Candage.”
“Last time I was home--where she has been living with her Aunt Zilpah--I
ketched her!” confessed Candage. His voice was hoarse. His fingers, bent
and calloused with rope-pulling, trembled as he fingered the seam of his
trousers.
“You don't tell!” Lougee clucked, solicitously.
“Yes, I ketched her buggy-riding!”
“Alone?”
“No, there was a gang of 'em in a beach-wagon. They was going to a
party. And I ketched her dancing with a fellow at that party.”
“Well, go ahead now that you've got started! Shake out the mainsail!”
“That's about all there is to it--except that a fellow has been beauing
her home from Sunday-school concerts with a lantern. Yes, I reckon that
is about all to date and present writing,” confessed Candage.
“What else do you suspect?”
“Nothing. Of course, there's no telling what it will grow to be--with
dudes a-pestering her the way they do.”
“There ain't any telling about anything in this world, is there?”
demanded Captain Lougee, very sharply.
“I reckon not--not for sure!”
“Do you mean to say that because your girl--like any girl should--has
been having a little innocent fun with young folks, you have dragged her
on board this old hooker, shaming her and making her ridiculous?”
“I have been trying to do my duty as a father,” stated Captain Candage,
stoutly, and avoiding the flaming gaze of his guest.
Captain Lougee straightened his leg so as to come at his trousers
pocket, produced a plug of tobacco, and gnawed a chew off a corner,
after careful inspection to find a likely spot for a bite.
“I need to have something in my mouth about this time--something
soothing to the tongue and, as you might say, sort of confining, so that
too much language won't bu'st out all at once,” he averred, speaking
with effort as he tried to lodge the huge hunk of tobacco into a
comfortable position. “I have raised five nice girls, and I have always
treated 'em as if they had common sense along with woman's nat'ral
goodness and consid'able more self-reliance than a Leghorn pullet. And
I used 'em like they had the ordinary rights and privileges of human
beings. And they are growed up and a credit to the family. And I haven't
got to look back over my record and reflect that I was either a Chinyman
or a Turkeyman. No, sir! I have been a father--and my girls can come
and sit on my knee to-day and get my advice, and think it's worth
something.”
He rose and walked toward his dory.
“But hold on,” called Captain Candage. “You haven't told me what you
think.”
“Haven't I? I thought I had, making it mild and pleasant. But if you
need a little something more plain and direct, I'll remark--still making
it mild and pleasant--that you're a damned old fool! And now I'll go
back and be sociable with them fish scraps. I believe they will smell
better after this!” He leaped into his dory and rowed away.
Captain Candage offered no rejoinder to that terse and meaty summing up.
Naturally, he was as ready with his tongue as Captain Ranse Lougee or
any other man alongshore. But in this case the master of the _Polly_
was not sure of his ground. He knew that Captain Lougee had qualified as
father of five. In the judgment of a mariner experience counts. And
he did not resent the manner of Captain Lougee because that skipper's
brutal bluntness was well known by his friends. Captain Candage had
asked and he had received. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared
after the departing caller and pondered.
“Maybe he is right. He probably _is_ right. But it wouldn't be shipboard
discipline if I told her that I have been wrong. I reckon I'll go aft
and be pleasant and genteel, hoping that nothing will happen to rile my
feelings. Now that my feelings are calm and peaceful, and having taken
course and bearings from a father of five, I'll probably say to her,
'You'd better trot along home, sissy, seeing that I have told you how to
mind your eye after this.'”
IV ~ OVER THE “POLLY'S” RAIL
O Stormy was a good old man!
To my way you storm along!
Physog tough as an old tin pan,
Ay, ay, ay, Mister Storm-along!
--Storm-along Shanty.
Without paying much attention to the disturber, Captain Candage had been
a bit nettled during his meditation. A speed boat from one of the yachts
kept circling the _Polly_, carrying a creaming smother of water
under its upcocked bow. It was a noisy gnat of a boat and it kicked a
contemptuous wake against the rust-streaked old wagon.
When it swept under the counter, after Captain Candage was back on his
quarter-deck, he gave it a stare over the rail, and his expression was
distinctly unamiable.
“They probably wasted more money on that doostra-bulus than this
schooner would sell for in the market today,” he informed Otie.
“They don't care how money goes so long as they didn't have to sweat
earning it. Slinging it like they'd sling beans!”
Back on its circling course swished the darting tender. This time the
purring motor whined into silence and the boat came drifting alongside.
“On board _Polly!_” hailed one of the yachtsmen, a man with owner's
insignia on his cap.
The master of the old schooner stuck his lowering visage farther over
the rail, but he did not reply.
“Isn't this _Polly_ the real one?”
“No, it's only a chromo painting of it.”
“Thank you! You're a gentleman!” snapped the yachtsman.
“Oh, hold on, Paul,” urged one of the men in the tender. “There's a
right way to handle these old boys.” He stood up. “We're much interested
in this packet, captain.”
“That's why you have been making a holy show of her, playing ring around
a rosy, hey?”
“But tell me, isn't this the old shallop that was a privateer in the war
of eighteen twelve?”
“Nobody aboard here has ever said she wasn't.”
“Well, sir, may we not come on board and look her over?”
“No sir, you can't.”
“Now, look here, captain--”
“I'm looking!” declared the master of the _Polly_ in ominous tones.
“We don't mean to annoy you, captain.”
“Folks who don't know any better do a lot of things without meaning to.”