that news of his affair with Marston had gained such wide currency.
However, he was glad that this new opportunity offered him a chance to
hide himself in the isolation of a freighter's pilot-house.
Captain Candage received the news with meek resignation. “I knowed it
would have to come,” he said. “Couldn't expect much else. Howsomever, it
ain't comforting.”
“Can't keep a good boy like this pawing around in fish gurry,” stated
Captain Wass.
“I know it, and I wish him well and all the best!”
Their leave-taking, presided over by the peremptory master of the
_Nequasset_, was short.
“I'll probably have a chance to see you when we come here again,” called
Mayo from the wharf, looking down into the mournful countenance of the
skipper. “Perhaps I'll have time to run down to Maquoit while we are
discharging. At any rate, explain it all for me, especially to your
daughter.”
“I'll tell all concerned just what's right,” Captain Candage assured
him. “I'll tell her for you.”
She was on the beach when the skipper came rowing in alone from the
_Ethel and May_.
“He's gone,” he called to her. “Of course we couldn't keep him. He's too
smart to stay on a job like this.”
When they were on their way up to the widow's cottage he stole
side-glances at her, and her silence distressed him.
“Let's see! He says to me--if I can remember it right-he says, says he,
'Take my best respects and '--let's see--yes, 'take my best respects and
love to your Polly--'”
“Father! Please don't fib.”
“It's just as I remember it, dear. 'Especial,' he says. I remember that!
'Especial,' he says. And he looked mighty sad, dear, mighty sad.” He
put his arm about her. “There are a lot of sad things in this world for
everybody, Polly. Sometimes things get so blamed mixed up that I feel
like going off and climbing a tree!”
XV ~ THE RULES OF THE ROAD
Now the _Dreadnought's_ a-sailing the Atlantic so wide,
Where the high, roaring seas roll along her black side.
Her sailors like lions walk the deck to and fro,
She's the Liverpool packet--O Lord let her go!
--Song of the Flash Packet.
On a day in early August the _Nequasset_ came walloping laboriously
up-coast through a dungeon fog, steel rails her dragging burden, caution
her watchword.
The needle of her indicator marked “Half speed,” and it really meant
half speed. Captain Zoradus Wass made scripture of the rules laid
down by the Department of Commerce and Labor. There was no tricky
slipping-over under his sway--no finger-at-nose connivance between the
pilot-house and the chief engineer's grille platform. No, Captain Wass
was not that kind of a man, though the fog had held in front of him two
days, vapor thick as feathers in a tick, and he had averaged not much
over six nautical miles an hour, and was bitterly aware that the rate of
freight on steel rails was sixty-five cents a ton.
“And as I've been telling you, at sixty-five cents there's about as much
profit as there would be in swapping hard dollars from one hand to the
other and depending on what silver you can rub off,” said Captain Wass
to First-mate Mayo.
The captain was holding the knob of the whistle-pull In constant clutch.
Regularly every minute _Nequasset's_ prolonged blast sounded, strictly
according to the rules of the road.
Her voice started with a complaining squawk, was full toned for a few
moments, then trailed off into more querulousness; the timbre of that
tone seemed to fit with Captain Wass's mood.
“It's tough times when a cargo-carrier has to figger so fine that she
can lose profit on account of what the men eat,” he went on. “If you're
two days late, minding rules in a fog, owners ask what the tophet's
the matter with you! This kind of business don't need steamboat men any
longer; it calls for boarding-house keepers who can cut sirloin steak
off'n a critter clear to the horn, and who are handy in turning sharp
corners on left-overs. I'll buy a book of cooking receets and try to
turn in dividends.”
The captain was broad-bowed, like the _Nequasset_, he sagged on short
legs as if he carried a cargo fully as heavy as steel rails, his white
whiskers streamed away from his cutwater nose like the froth kicked up
by the old freighter's forefoot. He chewed slowly, conscientiously and
continuously on tobacco which bulged in his cheek; his jaws, moving as
steadily as a pendulum swings, seemed to set the time for the isochronal
whistle-blast. Sixty ruminating jaw-wags, then he spat into the fog,
then the blast--correct to the clock's tide!
The windows of the pilot-house were dropped into their casings, so
that all sounds might be admitted; the wet breeze beaded the skipper's
whiskers and dampened the mate's crisp hair. While the mate leaned
from a window, ear cocked for signals, the captain gave him more of the
critical inspection in which he had been indulging when occasion served.
Furthermore, Captain Wass went on pecking around the edges of a topic
which he had been attacking from time to time with clumsy attempt at
artful inquisition.
“As bad as it is on a freighter, I reckon you ain't sorry you're off
that yacht, son?”
“I'm not sorry, sir.”
“From what you told me, the owner was around meddling all the time.”
“I don't remember that I ever said so, sir.”
“Oh, I thought you did,” grunted Captain Wass, and he covered his
momentary check by sounding the whistle.
“Now that you are back in the steamboat business, of course you're a
steamboat man. Have the interests of your owners at heart,” he resumed.
“Certainly, sir.”
“It would be a lot of help to the regular steamboat men--the good old
stand-bys--if they could get some kind of a line on what them Wall
Street cusses are gunning through with Marston leading 'em--or, at
leastways, he's supposed to be leading. He hides away in the middle of
the web and lets the other spiders run and fetch. But it's Marston's
scheme, you can bet on that! What do you think?”
“I haven't thought anything about it, Captain Wass.” “But how could
you help thinking, catching a word here and a word there, aboard that
yacht?”
“I never listened--I never heard anything.”
“But he had them other spiders aboard--seen 'em myself through my
spy-glass when you passed us one day in June.”
“I suppose they talked together aft, but my duty was forward, sir.”
“It's too bad you didn't have a flea put into your ear about getting a
line on Marston's scheme, whatever it is. You could have helped the real
boys in this game!”
Mayo did not reply.
Captain Wass showed a resolve to quit pecking at the edges and make a
dab at the center of the subject. He pulled the whistle, released the
knob, and turned back to the window, setting his elbows on the casing.
“Son, you ain't in love with that pirate Marston, are you?”
“No, sir!” replied the young man, with bitterness that could not be
doubted.
“Well, how about your being in love with his daughter?” The caustic
humor in the old skipper's tones robbed the question of some of its
brutal bluntness, and Mayo was accustomed to Captain Wass's brand
of humor. The young man did not turn his head for a few moments; he
continued to look into the fog as if intent on his duty; he was trying
to get command of himself, fully aware that resentment would not work in
the case of Zoradus Wass. When Mayo did face the skipper, the latter
was discomposed in his turn, for Mayo showed his even teeth in a cordial
smile.
“Do you think I have been trying the chauffeur trick in order to catch
an heiress, sir?”
“Well, there's quite a gab-wireless operating along-coast and sailors
don't always keep their yawp closed after they have taken a man's money
to keep still,” stated Captain Wass, pointedly. “I wouldn't blame you
for grabbing in. You're good-looking enough to do what others have done
in like cases.”
“Thank you, sir. What's the rest of the joke?”
“I never joke,” retorted the skipper, turning and pulling the
whistle-cord. _Nequasset's_ squall rose and died down in her brazen
throat. “Her name is Alma?” he prodded. “Something of a clipper. If
Marston ever makes you general manager, put me into a better job than
this, will you?”
“I will, sir!”
The skipper gave his mate a disgusted stare. “You're a devil of a man
to keep up a conversation with!” He spat against the wall of the fog and
again let loose the freighter's hoarse lament.
From somewhere, ahead, a horn wailed, dividing its call into two blasts.
“Port tack and headed acrost us,” snarled the master, after a sniff at
the air and a squint at the sluggish ripple.
“Why ain't the infernal fool anchored, instead of drifting around
underfoot? How does he bear, Mr. Mayo?” He was now back to pilot-house
formality with his mate.
“Two points and a half, starboard bow, sir. And there's another chap
giving one horn in about the same direction.”
“Another drifter--not wind enough for 'em to know what tack they're
really on. Well, there's always Article Twenty-seven to fall back on,”
grumbled the skipper. He quoted sarcastically in the tone in which that
rule is mouthed so often in pilot-houses along coast: '“Due regard shall
be had to all dangers of navigation and collision, and to any special
circumstances which may render a departure from the above rules
necessary, and so forth and et cetry. Meaning, thank the Lord, that a
steamer can always run away from a gad-slammed schooner, even at half
speed. Hope if it ever comes to a showdown the secretary of the bureau
of commerce will agree with me. Ease her off to starboard, Mr. Mayo,
till we bring 'em abeam.”
The mate gave a quick glance at the compass. “East by nothe, Jack,” he
commanded.
“East by nothe, sir,” repeated the quartermaster in mechanical tones,
spinning the big wheel to the left.
It was evident that the _Nequasset_ had considerable company on the sea
that day. A little abaft her beam a tugboat was blowing one long and two
short, indicating her tow. She had been their “chum” for some time, and
Mayo had occasionally taken her bearings by sound and compass and knew
that the freighter was slowly forging ahead. He figured, listening again
to the horns, that the Nequasset was headed to clear all.
“You take a skipper who studies his book and is always ready to look
the department in the eye, without flinching, he has to mind his
own business and mind the other fellow's, too,” said Captain Wass,
continuing his monologue of grouch. “Dodging here and there, keeping out
of the way, two days behind schedule, meat three times a day or else
you can't keep a crew, and everybody hearty at meal-time! My owners have
never told me to let the law go to hoot and ram her for all she's worth!
But when I carry in my accounts they seem to be trying to think up
language that tells a man to do a thing, and yet doesn't tell him.
What's that?” He put his head far out of the window.
Floating out of the fog came a dull, grunting sound, a faint and
far-away diapason, a marine whistle which announced a big chap.
“I should say it is a Union liner, sir--either the _Triton_ or
_Neptune_.”
They listened. They waited two long minutes for another signal.
“Seems to be taking up his full, legal time,” growled Captain Wass.
“Since Marston has gobbled that line maybe he has put on a special
register to keep tabs on tooting--thinks it's waste of steam and will
reduce dividends. Expects us little fellows to do the squawking!”
The big whistle boomed again, dead ahead, and so much nearer that it
provoked the skipper to lash out a round oath.
“He is reeling off eighteen knots for a gait, or you can use my head for
a rivet nut!” He yanked the cord and the freighter howled angrily. The
other replied with bellowing roar--autocratic, domineering. With irony,
with vindictiveness, Captain Wass pitched his voice in sarcastic nasal
tone and recited another rule--thereby trying to express his irate
opinion of the lawlessness of other men.
“Article Sixteen, Mr. Mayo! He probably carries it in his watch-case
instead of his girl's picture! Nice reading for a rainy day! 'A
steam-vessel hearing apparently forward of her beam the fog signal of a
vessel, the position of which is not ascertained, shall, so far as the
circumstances of the case permit, stop her engines and then navigate
with caution until all danger of collision is over.' Hooray for the
rules!”
Captain Wass hooked a gnarled finger into the loop of the bell-pull and
yanked upward viciously. A dull clang sounded far below. He pulled again
and the vibration of the engine ceased.
“Gad rabbit it! I'll go the whole hog as the department orders! If he
bangs into me we'll see who comes off best at the hearing.”
He gave the bell-loop two quick jerks; then he shifted his hand to
another pull and the jingle bell sounded in the engine-room--the
_Nequasset_ was ordered to make full speed astern.
The freighter shook and shivered when the screw began to reverse,
pulling at the frothing sea, clawing frantically to haul her to a stop.
The skipper then gave three resentful, protesting whistle-blasts.
But the reply he received from ahead was a hoarse, prolonged howl. In
it there was no hint that the big fellow proposed to heed the protest
of the three blasts. It was insistence on right of way, the insolence of
the swaggering express liner making time in competition with rivals; it
hinted confident opinion that smaller chaps would better get out of the
way.
The on-comer had received a signal which served to justify that opinion.
Captain Wass had docilely announced that he was going full speed astern,
his whistle-blasts had declared that he had stepped off the sidewalk
of the ocean lane--as usual! The big fellows knew that the little chaps
would do it!
Mate Mayo leaned from the window, his jaw muscles tense, anxiety in his
eyes.
The big whistle now was fairly shaking the curtains of the mists and was
not giving him any comforting assurance that the liner was swinging to
avoid them.
The quartermaster was taking the situation more philosophically than his
superiors. He hummed:
Sez all the little fishes that swim to and fro,
She's the Liverpool packet--O Lord let her go!
“Does that gor-righteously fool ahead there think I blowed three
whistles to salute Marston's birthday or their last dividend, Mr. Mayo?”
shouted Captain Wass.
Fogs are freaky; ocean mists are often eerie in movements. There are
strata, there are eddying air-currents which rend the curtain or shred
the massing vapors. The men in the pilot-house of the _Nequasset_
suddenly found their range of vision widened. The fog did not clear; it
became more tenuous and showed an area of the sea. It was like a thin
veil which disclosed dimly what it distorted and magnified.
In a fog, experienced steamboat men always examine with earnest gaze
the line where fog and ocean merge. They do not stare up into the fog,
trying to distinguish the loom of an on-coming craft; they are able
to discern first of all the white line of foam marking the vessel's
cutwater kick-up or her wake.
“There she comes, sir!” announced the mate. He pointed his finger at a
foaming upthrust of tossing water.
“Yes, sir! Eighteen knots and both eyes shut!” But there was relief
mingled with the resentment. His quick glance informed him that the
liner would pass the _Nequasset_ well to starboard--her bow showed a
divergence of at least two points from the freighter's course. But the
next instant Captain Wass yelped a shout of angry alarm. “Yes, both eyes
shut!” he repeated.
Right in line with the liner's threshing bow was a fisherman's Hampton
boat, disclosed as the fog drifted.
The passenger-steamer gave forth a half-dozen “woofs” from her whistle,
answering the freighter's staccato warning, but gave no signs of
slowing. But that they were making an attempt to dodge the mite in their
path was made known by a shout from their lookout and his shrill call:
“Port! Hard over!”
The fisherman had all the alertness of his kind, trained by dangers and
ever-present prospect of mischance to grab at desperate measures.
He leaped forward and pulled out his mast and tossed mast and sail
overboard.
He knew that he must encounter the tremendous wash and wake of the
rushing hull. His shell of a boat, if made topheavy by the sail, would
stand small show.
“He's a goner!” gasped Captain Wass. “She's a-going to tramp him plumb
underfoot--unless she's going to get up a little more speed and jump
over him!” he added, moved to bitter sarcasm.
They saw the little boat go into eclipse behind the black prow, the
first lift of the churning waters flipping the cockleshell as a coin
is snapped by the thumb. The fisherman was not in view--he had thrown
himself flat in the bottom of his boat.
“He's under for keeps,” stated the skipper, with conviction. “If her
bilge-keel doesn't cooper him, her port propeller will!”
So rapidly was the liner moving, so abrupt her swoop to the right, that
she leaned far over and showed them the red of her huge bilge. Her high
speed enabled her to make an especially quick turn. As they gaped,
her two stacks swung almost into line. Her shearing bow menaced the
_Nequasset_.
“The condemned old hellion is going to nail _us_, now!” bellowed Captain
Wass. In his panic and his fury he leaped up and down, pulling at the
whistle-cord.
She was almost upon them--only a few hundred yards of gray water
separated the two steamers.
She was the _Triton!_
Her name was disclosed on her bow. Her red hawse-holes showed like
glowering and savage eyes. There was indescribably brutal threat in this
sudden dart in their direction. It was as if a sea monster had swallowed
an insect in the shape of a Hampton boat and now sought a real mouthful.
But her great rudder swung to the quick pull of her steam steering-gear
and again she sheered, cutting a letter s. The movement brought her past
the stern of the _Nequasset_, a biscuit-toss away. The mighty surge of
her roaring passage lifted the freighter's bulk aft, and the huge wave
that was crowded between the two hulls crowned itself with frothing
white and slapped a good, generous ton of green water over the smaller
steamer's superstructure.
Captain Wass grabbed down his megaphone; he wanted to submit a few
remarks which seemed to fit the incident.
But the captain of the Triton was beforehand with a celerity which
matched the up-to-date speed of his craft. He was bellowing through the
huge funnel which a quartermaster was holding for him. His language
was terrific. He cursed freighters in most able style. He asked why the
_Nequasset_ was loafing there in the seaway without steering headway on
her! That amazing query took away Captain Wass's breath and all power
to retort. Asking that of a man who had obeyed the law to the letter! A
fellow who was banging through the fog at eighteen knots' speed blaming
a conscientious skipper because the latter had stopped so as to get out
of the way!
And, above all, going so fast when he asked the question that he was out
of ear-shot before suitable answer could be returned!
Captain Wass revolved those whirling thoughts in a brain which flamed
and showed its fires through the skipper's wide-propped eyes.
Then he banged his megaphone across the pilot-house. It rebounded
against him, and he kicked it into a corner. He began to whack his fist
against a broad placard which was tacked up under his license as master.
The cardboard was freshly white, and its tacks were bright, showing that
it had been recently added as a feature of the pilot-house. Big letters
in red ink at the top counseled, “Safety First.” Other big letters
at the bottom warned, “Take No Chances.” The center lettering advised
shipmasters that in case of accident the guilty parties would feel all
the weight of Uncle Sam's heavy palm; it was the latest output from
the Department of Commerce and Labor, and bore the signature of the
honorable secretary of the bureau.
Mayo noted that his chief was wholly absorbed in this speechless
activity; therefore he pulled the bells which stopped the backward
churning and sent the freighter on her way. They passed the fisherman in
the Hampton boat; he was bailing his craft.
“That was a rather close call, sir! I am glad that I have been trained
by you to be a careful man. You took no chances!”
“And where have I got to by obeying the United States rules and never
taking chances, Mr. Mayo? At sixty-five I'm master of a freight-scow,
sassed by owners ashore and sassed on the high seas by fellows like that
one who just slammed past us! If that passenger-steamer had hit me the
lawyers would have shoved the tar end of the stick into my hands! It's
all for the good of the hellbent fellows the way things are arranged
in this world at the present time. I'll be lucky if he doesn't lodge
complaint against me when he gets to New York, saying that I got in his
way!” He cut off a fresh sliver of black plug and took his position at
the whistle-pull. “You'd better go get an heiress,” he advised his mate,
sourly. “Being an old-fashioned skipper in these days of steam-boating
is what I'm too polite to name. And as to being the other kind--well,
you have just seen him whang past!”
However, as they went wallowing up the coast, their old tub sagging with
the weight of the rails under her hatches, Mate Mayo felt considerable
of a young man's ambitious envy of that spick-and-span swaggerer who
had yelled anathema from the pilot-house of the _Triton_. It was
real steamboating, he reflected, even if the demands of owners and
dividend-seekers did compel a master to take his luck between his teeth
and gallop down the seas.
XVI ~ MILLIONS AND A MITE
To Tiffany's I took her,
I did not mind expense;
I bought her two gold ear-rings,
They cost me fifty cents.
And a-a-away, you santee!
My dear Annie!
O you New York girls!
Can't you dance the polka!
--Shanty, “The Lime Juicer.”
Mr. Ralph Bradish, using one of the booth telephones in the Wall Street
offices of Marston & Waller, earnestly asked the cashier of an up-town
restaurant, as a special favor, to hold for twenty-four hours the
personal check, amount twenty-five dollars, given by Mr. Bradish the
evening before.
Ten minutes later, with the utmost nonchalance and quite certain that
the document was as good as wheat, Mr. Bradish signed a check for one
million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
That amount in no measure astonished him. He was quite used to signing
smashing-big checks when he was called into the presence of Julius
Marston. Once, the amount named was two millions. And there had
been numbers and numbers of what Mr. Bradish mentally termed “piker
checks”--a hundred thousand, two and three hundred thousand. And he had
never been obliged to request any hold up on those checks for want of
funds. Because, in each instance, there had been a magic, printed line
along which Mr. Bradish had splashed his signature.
Before he blotted the ink on this check Bradish glanced, with only
idle curiosity, to note in what capacity he was serving this time. The
printed line announced to him that he was “Treasurer, the Paramount
Coast Transportation Company, Inc.” He remembered that in the past
he had signed as treasurer of the “Union Securities Company,” the
“Amalgamated Holding Company,” and for other corporations sponsoring
railroads and big industries with whose destinies Julius Marston,
financier, appeared to have much to do. It was evident that Financier
Marston preferred to have a forty-dollar-a-week clerk do the menial
work of check-signing, or at least to have that clerk's name in evidence
instead of Marston's own.
That modesty about having his name appear in public on a check seemed to
attach to the business habits of Mr. Marston.
Mighty few person were ever admitted to this inner sanctuary where
Bradish sat facing his employer across the flat-topped desk. And men who
saw that employer outside his office did not turn their heads to stare
after him or point respectful finger at him or remark to somebody else,
“There's the big Julius Marston.” In the first place, Mr. Marston was
not big in a physical sense, and there was nothing about him which would
attract attention or cause him to be remarked in a crowd. And only a few
persons really knew him, anyway.