state to put you off this island?”
“Oh, they have threated us before. But something has allus come up. We
haven't been driv' off.”
“But this time it's going to happen! Why don't you wake up? Where are
you going?”
“That's for somebody else to worry about. This ain't any of our picking
and choosing.”
“What's the use of trying to beat anything sensible through the shells
of them quahaugs?” snarled Captain Candage, with 'longcoast scorn for
the inefficient.
“Not much use, I'm afraid,” acknowledged the young man. “But look at the
children!”
Those pathetic waifs of Hue and Cry were huddled apart, dumb with terror
which their elders made no attempt to calm. They were ragged, pitiful,
wistful urchins; lads with pinched faces, poor little snippets of girls.
Their childish imaginations made of the affair a tragedy which they
could not understand. Under their arms they held frightened cats,
helpless kittens, or rag dolls. The callous calm of the men mystified
them; the weeping of their mothers made their miserable fear more acute.
They stared from face to face, trying to comprehend.
“What can I say to them?” asked Polly Candage, in a whisper. “It's
wicked. They are so frightened.”
“Perhaps something can be done with that agent. I'm trying to think up
something to say to him,” Mayo told her.
An old man, a very old man, sat on an upturned clamhod and yawled a
discordant miserere on a fiddle. His eyes were wide open and sightless.
A woman whose tattered skirt only partly concealed the man's trousers
and rubber boots which she wore, occasionally addressed him as “father.”
She was piling about him a few articles of furniture which she was
lugging out of their home; that house was the upper part of a schooner's
cabin--something the sea had cast up on Hue and Cry. She was obliged to
bend nearly double in order to walk about in the shelter. Dogs slinked
between the feet of their masters, canine instinct informing them that
something evil was abroad that day. The children staring wide-eyed and
white-faced, the weeping women, the cowed men who shuffled and mumbled!
Among them strode the god of the machine, curt, contemptuous, puffing
his cigar! He came past Captain Mayo and his friends.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” called the captain; “but are you sure that you
are doing this thing just right?”
“Let's see--if I remember, I had a little talk with you last night!”
suggested the agent, frostily. “Whom do you represent?” “Myself.”
“Just how do you fit into this matter?” “I don't think I do fit--there
seem to be too many sharp corners,” stated Mayo, not liking the other's
insolent manner. “Well, I fit! I have state authority.” “So you have
told me. May I ask you a question?” “Go ahead, but be lively. This is
my busy day.” “These people are being rooted up; they don't seem to know
what's to become of them. What will be done?”
“I told you last evening! Fools in an institution; able-bodied must go
to work. The state proposes--” “When you say 'state' just what do you
mean, sir?” “I mean that I have investigated this matter and I'm running
it.”
“That's what I thought! The state usually doesn't know much about what
its agents are doing.”
“You are not doubting my authority, are you?”
“No, but I'm doubting your good judgment.”
“Look here, my man!”
“We'd better not lose our tempers,” advised Mayo, calmly. “You are a
state servant, you say. Then a citizen has a right to talk to you. Let's
leave the state out of this, if you question my right. Man to man, now!
You're wrong.”
The population of the island had drawn close circle about them.
“That's enough talk from you,” declared the agent, wrathfully.
“You are trying to make over all at once what it has taken three
generations to bring about,” insisted Mayo. “You can't do it!”
“You watch me and see if I can't! When I transact any business I'm paid
to transact it gets transacted. I might have given these people a few
more days if you had not come sticking your oar in here. But now I
propose to show you! I'll have 'em off here by nightfall, and every
shack burned to the ground.”
“Do you mean to say you're going to rub it into these poor folks just
because I have tried to say something to help them?”
“I'll show you and them that it isn't safe to monkey with the state when
the state gets started.”
“Oh, the state be condemned!” exploded Mayo, feeling his own temper
getting away from him. “This isn't the state--it's a case of a man's
swelled head!”
“Get off this island, you and your meddlers,” commanded the agent.
“Yes, when we are ready to leave, sir.”
Mayo was wondering at his own obstinacy. He knew that a rather boyish
temper, resentment roused by the other man's arrogance, had considerable
to do with his stand in the matter, but underneath there was protest
at the world's injustice. He felt that he had been having personal
experience with that injustice. He knew that he had not come out to Hue
and Cry to volunteer as the champion of these unfortunates, but now
that he was there and had spoken out it was evident that he must allow
himself to be forced into the matter to some extent; the agent had
declared in the hearing of all that this interference had settled the
doom of the islanders. Polly Candage was standing close to the champion,
and she looked at him with eyes that flashed with pride in him and
spirit of her own. She reached and took one of the frightened children
by the hand.
“If I have been a little hasty in my remarks I apologize,” pleaded the
captain, anxious to repair the fault. “I don't mean to interfere with
your duty. I have no right to do so!”
“You hear what your friend says, after getting you into the mess,”
shouted the agent, so that all might hear. “Now he is getting ready to
trot away and leave you in your trouble.”
“You are wrong there, my friend. If you are angry with me, go ahead and
have your quarrel with me. Don't bang at me over the shoulders of these
poor folks. It isn't a square deal.”
“They go off to-day--and they go because you have butted into the
matter. The whole of you have got to be shown that the state doesn't
stand for meddlers after orders have been given.” Then he added, with
malice: “You folks better ride this chap down to the beach on a rail.
Whatever happens to you is his fault!”
This attempt to shift responsibility as a petty method of retaliation
stirred Mayo's anger in good earnest.
The agent was dealing with men who were scarcely more than children in
their estimates of affairs; they muttered among themselves and scowled
on this stranger who had brought their troubles to a climax.
“I'm not going to allow you to get away with that kind of talk, Mr.
Agent. You know perfectly well that people on the main will not hire
these men, even if they _are_ able-bodied. Everybody is down on them.
You said that to me last evening. They will be kicked from pillar to
post--from this town to that! They will be worse than beggars. And they
must drag these women and little children about with them. I will expose
this thing!”
“That exposure will sound fine!” sneered the commissioner. “Exposing a
state officer for doing what the Governor and Council have ordered!”
“Yes, ordered on your advice!”
“Well, it has been ordered! And I'll be backed up! As soon as I can get
to a justice I shall swear out a warrant against you for interfering
with a state officer.” He flung down the stub of his cigar. “Listen, you
people! Get off this island. Anybody who is here at sunset--man, woman,
or child--will be arrested and put in jail for trespassing on state
land. Now you'd all better give three cheers for your meddling friend,
here!”
“They have allus let us stay, even when they have threated us before
now,” whimpered a man. “He has poured the fat into the fire for us,
that's what he has done!” He pointed his finger at Mayo.
“It's wicked!” gasped the girl. “These poor folks don't know any better,
they are not responsible!”
“Say, look here, you folks!” shouted Mr. Speed, who had been holding
himself in with great difficulty. “It's about time for you to wake up!”
The plutocrat of the house-boat had come up from the beach and had been
listening. The whimpering man started to speak again, and the magnate of
the island cuffed him soundly; it was plain that this man, who had lived
in the best house, had been a personage of authority in the tribe.
“I'm ashamed of the whole caboodle of ye,” he vociferated. “Here's a
gent that's been standing up for us. He's the only man I ever heard say
a good word for us or try to help us! Nobody else in the world ever done
it! Take off your hats and thank him!”
“I'm in it!” whispered Mayo to the girl. “For heaven's sake, what am I
going to do?”
“Do all you can--please, Captain Mayo!”
He stepped forward. The agent began to shout.
“Hold on, sir!” broke in the captain with quarter-deck air that made for
obedience and attention. “You have had your say! Now I'm going to
have mine. Listen to me, folks! I'm not the man to get my friends into
trouble and then run off and leave 'em. All of you who are kicked out
by the state--all men, women, and children who are ready to go to
work--come over to me on the main at Maquoit with what stuff you can
bring in your dories. I'll be waiting for you there. My name is Boyd
Mayo.”
“I'll remember that name, myself,” declared the angry agent. “You'll be
shown that you can't interfere in a state matter.”
“You have turned these folks loose in the world, and I'm going to give
'em a hand when they come to where I am. If you choose to call that
interference, come on! It will make a fine story in court!”
He did not stop to shake the grimy hands which were thrust out to him.
He pushed his way out of the crowd, and his party followed.
“Meet me yonder on the main, boys,” he called back with a sailor
heartiness which they understood. “We'll see what can be done!”
“Well, what in the infernal blazes can be done?” growled Captain
Candage, catching step with the champion.
“I don't know, sir.”
“You can't do nothing any more sensible with them critters than you
could with combined cases of the smallpox and the seven years' itch.”
“Father!” cried the girl, reproachfully.
“I know what I'm talking about! This is dum foolishness!”
“Captain Mayo is a noble man! You ought to be ashamed of hanging back
when your help is needed.”
“I don't blame you for sassing that skewangled old tywhoopus, sir,”
admitted the old skipper. “I wanted to do it myself. But--”
“I'm afraid I don't deserve much praise,” said Mayo. “I've been getting
back at that agent. He made me mad. I'm apt to go off half-cocked like
that.”
“So am I, sir--and I'm always sorry for it. We'd better dig out before
that tribe of gazaboos lands on our backs.”
“Oh, not a bit of it! I have given my word, sir. I must see it through.”
“But what are you going to do with 'em?”
“Blessed if I know right now! When I'm good and mad I don't stop to
think.”
“Suppose I meet 'em for you and tell 'em you have had a sudden death in
your family and have been called away? They won't know the difference,”
volunteered Captain Candage. “And a real death would be lucky for you
beside of what's in store if you hang around.”
“I shall hang around, sir. I can't afford to be ashamed of myself.”
“I think you have said quite enough, father,” stated Polly Candage, with
vigor.
'“I have heard of adopting families before,” said the irreconcilable
one, “but I never heard of any such wholesale operation as this. I'm
thinking I'll go climb a tree.”
They embarked in the dory. Mr. Speed and Dolph splashed their oars and
rowed, exchanging looks and not venturing to offer any comment.
“You might auction 'em off to farmers for scarecrows,” pursued Captain
Candage, still worrying the topic as a dog mouths a bone. “They ain't
fit for no more active jobs than that.”
“I do hope you'll forgive my father for talking this way,” pleaded Polly
Candage. She raised brimming eyes to the sympathetic gaze of the young
man beside her. “He doesn't understand it the way I do.”
“Perhaps I don't exactly understand it myself,” he protested.
“But what you are doing for them?”
“I haven't done anything as yet except start trouble for them. Now I
must do a little something to square myself.”
“There's a reward for good deeds, Captain Mayo, when you help those
who cannot help themselves. I believe what the Bible says about casting
bread on the waters. It will return to you some day!”
He smiled down on her enthusiasm tolerantly, but he was far from
realizing then that this pretty girl, whose eyes were so bright
behind her tears, and whose cheeks were flushed with the ardor of her
admiration, was speaking to him with the tongue of a sibyl.
XIII ~ A CAPTAIN OP HUMAN FLOTSAM
O what is that which smells so tarry?
I've nothing in the house that's tarry.
It's a tarry sailor, down below,
Kick him out into the snow!
Doo me axna, dinghy a-a-a ma!
Doo me ama-day!
--Doo Me Ama.
Captain Candage growled and complained so persistently during the trip
to the main that Mayo expected to be deserted by the querulous skipper
the moment the dory's prow touched the beach. But the skipper came
dogging at his heels when Mayo set off up the one street of Maquoit.
“May I come along with you?” asked the girl at his side. “I can see that
you are thinking up some plan. I do Hope I may come!” He gave her his
aim for answer.
“I haven't been into this port for some time, Captain Candage, but the
last trip I made here, as I remember, a man named Rowley, who runs the
general store, was first selectman.”
“Is now,” grunted the skipper. “They've got into the habit of electing
him and can't seem to break off.”
When they arrived in front of the store Captain Candage took the lead.
“I may as well go in and introduce you, whatever it is you want of him.
I know Rufe Rowley as well as anybody ever gets to know him.”
Mr. Rowley leaned over his counter and acknowledged the introduction
with a flicker of amiability lighting his reserve. But his wan smile
faded into blankness and he clawed his chin beard nervously when Mayo
informed him that he had invited the evicted folks of Hue and Cry to
land on the mainland that day.
“As overseer of the poor in this town I can't allow it, Captain Mayo!”
“Those people must land somewhere.”
“Yes, yes, of course!” admitted Selectman Rowley. “But not here! I'm
beholden to the taxpayers.”
“And I suppose the officers of all the other towns about here will say
the same?”
“Yes, yes! Of course.”
“Do you still own that old fish-house?” asked the captain, after
hesitating for a few moments; “the sardine-canning plant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You're not using it now?”
“No, sir.”
“It isn't paying you any revenue, eh?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you ought to be willing to let it pretty cheap--month-to-month
lease!”
“Depends on what I'm letting it for.”
“I want to stow those poor people in there till I can arrange further
for them, either show the matter up to the state, or get work for them,
or something! Will you let me have it?”
“No, sir!” declared the selectman, with vigor.
“It's only monthly lease, I repeat. You can prevent them from getting
pauper residence here, in case none of my plans work.”
“Don't want 'em here--won't have 'em! I consider taxpayers first!”
“Don't ye ever consider common, ordinary, human decency?” roared Captain
Epps Candage.
It was astonishing interruption. Its violence made it startling. Mayo
whirled and stared amazedly at this new recruit.
Captain Candage yanked his fat wallet from his pocket and dammed it down
on the counter with a bang which made the selectman's eyes snap.
“You know _me_, Rowley! We've got the money to pay for what we order and
contract for. Them folks ain't paupers so long as we stand be-hind 'em.
We are bringing 'em ashore, here, because it's right to help 'em get
onto their feet. Hold on, Captain Mayo; you let me talk to Rowley! Him
and me know how to get sociable in a business talk!”
However, Captain Candage seemed to be seeking sociability by bellowing
ferociously, thudding his hard fist on the counter. Mayo was not easily
surprised by the temperamental vagaries of queer old 'longcoast crabs
like Captain Candage, but this sudden conversion did take away his
breath.
“When a close and partickler friend of mine, like this one I've just
introduced, comes to you all polite and asks a favor, I want general
politeness all around or I'll know the reason why,” shouted the
intermediary. “Look-a-here, Rowley, you pretend to be a terrible
Christian sort of a man. When I have been fog-bound here I've tended out
on prayer-meetings, and I have heard you holler like a good one about
dying grace and salvation is free. I've never heard you say much about
living charity that costs something!”
“I claim to be a Christian man,” faltered Rowley, backing away from the
banging fist.
“Then act like one. If you don't do it, blast your pelt, I'll post you
for a heathen from West Quoddy to Kittery!”
“God bless you, my dad!” whispered the girl, snuggling close to the
skipper's shoulder.
“Furthermore, Rowley, besides paying you a fair rental for that old
fish-house we'll buy grub for them poor devils out of your store.”
Mr. Rowley caressed his beard and blinked.
“They're like empty nail-kags, and they'll eat a lot of vittles and
we've got the money to pay!”
“I have a wallet of my own,” stated Captain Mayo. He had not recovered
from his amazement at the sudden shift about of Captain Candage. After
all the sullen growling he had been tempted to ask the old skipper to
stop tagging him about on his errand of mercy.
“Hear that, Rowley? This is the best friend I've got in the whole
world! Brought him in here! Introduced him to you! Here's my daughter!
Interested, too! Now, whatever you say, you'd better be sure that you
pick the right words.”
“Well, I'm always ready to help friends,” stated Mr. Rowley.
“Yes, and do business in a slack time,” added Captain Candage.
“I'm willing to show Christian charity to them that's poor and
oppressed. But what's the sense in doing it in this case?”
“A great many folks in this life need a hard jolt before they turn to
and make anything of themselves,” said Captain Mayo. “The people on Hue
and Cry have had their jolt. I do believe, with the right advice and
management, they can be made self-supporting. They have been allowed
to run loose until now, sir. I have been pulled into the thing all of
a sudden, and now that I'm in I'm willing to give up a little time and
effort to start 'em off. I haven't much of anything else to do just
now,” he added, bitterly.
“Come into my back office,” invited Mr. Rowley.
“Much obleeged--we'll do so,” said Captain Candage. “You're a bright
man, Rowley, and I knowed you'd see the p'int when it was put up to you
right and polite.”
The business in the back office was soon settled satisfactorily, and
a busy day followed on the heels of that momentous morning. When night
fell the men, women, and children whom a benevolent state--through its
“straight-business” agent--had turned loose upon the world to shift for
themselves, were located in a single colony in the spacious fish-house.
A few second-hand stoves, hired from Rowley, served to cook the food
bought from Rowley, and the families grouped themselves in rooms and
behind partitions and arranged the poor belongings they had salvaged
from their homes. Even the citizen who had at first resolved to go
floating on the bosom of the deep joined the colony.
“It's more sociable,” he explained, “and my wife don't like to give up
her neighbors. Furthermore, I know the whole bunch, root and branch,
whims, notions, and all, and they can't fool me. I'll help boss 'em!” He
became a lieutenant of value.
This community life under a better roof than had ever sheltered them
before in their lives seemed to delight the refugees. Old and young,
they enjoyed the new surroundings with the zest of children. They had
never taken thought of the morrow in their existence on Hue and Cry.
Given food and shelter in this new abode, they did not worry about
the problems of the future. They roamed about their domain with the
satisfaction of princes in a palace. They did not show any curiosity
regarding what was to be done with them. They did not ask Captain Mayo
and his associates any questions. They surveyed him with a dumb and
sort of canine thankfulness when he moved among them. He himself tried
questions on a few of the more intelligent men, hoping that they would
show some initiative. They told him with bland serenity that they would
leave it all to him.
“But what are you going to do for yourselves?”
“Just what you say. You're the boss. Show us the job!”
It was borne in upon him that he had taken a larger contract than he had
planned on. Rowley and the taxpayers on the main looked to him on one
side, and his dependents on the other.
“It seems to be up to me--to us, I mean,” he told the girl, ruefully,
when they were on their way to the widow's cottage that evening. “It's
up to me most of all, however, for I'm the guilty party--I have pulled
you and your father in. I'm pegged in here till I can think up some sort
of a scheme.”
She had been working all day faithfully by his side, a tactful and
indefatigable helper. He would have been all at sea regarding the women
and children without her aid, and he told her so gratefully.
“Both my hands and my heart are with you in this thing, Captain Mayo.
And I know you'll think of some way out for them--just as you helped us
out of the schooner after we had given up all hope.”
“Getting out of the schooner was merely a sailor's trick of the hands,
Miss Candage. I don't believe I'll be much of a hand at making over
human nature. I have too much of it myself, and the material down in
that fish-house would puzzle even a doctor of divinity.”
“Oh, you will think of some plan,” she assured him-with fine loyalty.
“If you will allow me to help in my poor way I'll be proud.”
“I'll not tell you what I think of your help; it might sound like soft
talk. But let me tell you that you have one grand old dad!” he declared,
earnestly; but although he tried to keep his face straight and his tones
steady he looked down at her and immediately lost control of himself.
Merriment was mingled with tears in her eyes.
“Isn't he funny?” she gasped, and they halted in their tracks and
laughed in chorus with the whole-hearted fervor of youth; that laughter
relieved the strain of that anxious day.
“I am not laughing _at_ your father--you understand that!” he assured
her.
“Of course, you are not! I know. But you are getting to understand him,
just as I understand him. He is only a big child under all his bluster.
But he does make me so angry sometimes!”
“You can't tell much about a Yankee till he comes out of his shell, and
I agree with you as to the aggravating qualities in Captain Candage. I'm
not very patient myself, when I'm provoked! But after this he and I will
get along all right.”
They walked on to the cottage.
“Good night,” he said at the door.
“And you have no plan as yet?”
“Maybe something will come to me in a dream.”
The dream did not come to him, for his sleep was the profound slumber of
exhaustion. He went down in the early dawn and plunged into the sea, and
while he was walking back toward the cottage an idea and a conviction
presented themselves, hand in hand. The conviction had been with him
before--that he could not back out just then and leave those poor people
to shift for themselves, as anxious as he was to be off about his own
affairs; his undertaking was quixotic, but if he abandoned it at that
juncture a queer story would chase him alongcoast, and he knew what sort
of esteem mariners entertained for quitters.
However, deep in his heart, he confessed that it was not merely sailor
pride that spurred him. The pathetic helplessness of the tribe of Hue
and Cry appealed with an insistence he could not deny. He understood
them as he understood similar colonies along the coast--children whom an
indifferent world classed as man and treated with thoughtless injustice!
Work was prescribed for them, as for others! But, they did not know how
to work or how to make their work pay them.
The idea which came to him with the conviction that he must help these
folks concerned work for them.
After breakfast he took Captain Candage into his confidence, much to the
skipper's bland delight at being considered.