others.”
He realized that a queer little sting of impatience was pricking him.
The girl did not seem to understand what his manhood was prompting.
“You mustn't be selfish, Boyd!”
She put into words the vague thought which had been troubling him in
regard to her attitude; and now that he understood what his thought had
been he was incensed by what seemed his own disloyalty. And yet, the
girl was asking him to make over his nature!
“I'm afraid it's all wrong. These things never seem to come out right,”
he mourned.
“You are trying to turn the world upside down all at once--and all
alone. Don't think so much, you solemn Yankee. Just love!”
He put his aims about her. “I'm sailing in new waters. I don't seem to
know the true course or the right bearings!”
“Let's stay anchored until the fog lifts! Isn't that what sailors
usually do?”
He confessed it, kissing her when she lifted her tantalizing face from
his shoulder.
“Now you'll let the future alone, won't you?” she asked.
“Yes.” But even while he promised he was obliged to face that future.
Julius Marston, at the foot of the ladder, called to his daughter. “Are
you up there?” he demanded, sharply.
“Yes, father.”
“Come down here.”
She gave her lover a hasty caress and obeyed.
Captain Mayo was obliged to listen. Marston, in his anger, showed no
consideration for possible eavesdroppers.
“I have told you to stay aft where you belong.”
“Really, father, I don't understand why--”
“Those are my orders! I understand. _You_ don't need to understand. This
world is full of cheap fellows who misinterpret actions.”
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.