I'm no coward, Captain Wass. I'm willing to face the music. But I'm so
helpless.”
“Stay outside jail till the fog lifts a bit in this case,” adjured his
mentor. “Are you going to lie down and stick up your legs to have 'em
tied, like a calf bound for market? Here are a few things you can do if
you duck out of sight for a little while. I'll go ahead and--”
Suddenly he checked himself. He was facing the window, which commanded
a considerable section of street. He wasted no further breath on good
advice.
“I know those men coming down there,” he cried. “They're bailiffs. I saw
them around the court-house. They're after you, Mayo! You run! Get
away! There must be a back door here. Scoot!” He pulled the unresisting
scapegoat out of his chair and hustled him to the rear of the office.
A young man may have the best intentions. He may resolve to be a martyr,
to bow to the law's majesty. But at that moment Mayo was receiving
imperious command from the shipmaster whose orders he had obeyed for so
long that obedience was second nature. And panic seized him! Men were at
hand to arrest him. There was no time to reason the thing out. Flight is
the first impulse of innocence persecuted. Manly resolve melted. He ran.
“I'll stay behind and bluff 'em off! I'll say you're just out for a
minute, that I'm waiting here for you,” cried Captain Wass. “That will
give you a start. Try the docks. You may find one of the boys who will
help.”
Mayo escaped into a yard, dodged down an alley, planning his movements
as he hurried, having a mariner's quickness of thought in an emergency.
He made directly for the pier where steam-vessels took water. A huge
ocean-going tug was just getting ready to leave her berth under the
water-hose. Her gruff whistle-call had ordered hawsers cast off. Mayo's
'longcoast acquaintance was fairly extensive. This was a coal-barge tug,
and he waved quick greeting to the familiar face in her pilot-house and
leaped aboard. He climbed the forward ladder nimbly.
“I reckon you'll have to make it hello and good-by in one breath, mate,”
advised the skipper. “I'm off to take a light tow down-coast. Norfolk
next stop.”
“Let her go--sooner the better,” gasped the fugitive. “I'll explain why
as soon as you are out of the dock.”
“You don't say that you want to take the trip?”
“I've got to take it.”
The skipper cocked an eyebrow and pulled his bell. “Make yourself to
home, mate,” he advised. “I hope you ain't in so much of a hurry to get
there as you seem to be, for I've got three barges to tow.”
Mayo sat down on the rear transom and was hidden from all eyes on the
pier.
There was no opportunity for an explanation until the barges had been
picked up, for there was much manouver-ing and much tooting. But he
found ready sympathy after he had explained.
“The law sharps are always hankering to catch a poor cuss who is trying
to navigate these waters and suit the inspectors and the owners at the
same time,” admitted the master of the tug. “I have read everything the
papers had to say about your case, and I figured they didn't give you a
fair show. Newspapers and lawyers and owners don't understand what a
fellow is up against. I'm glad you're aboard, mate, because I want to
hear your side, with all the details.”
The threshing over of the matter occupied many hours of the long wallow
down the Jersey coast, and the tug captain weighed all features of the
case with the care of a man who has plenty of time on his hands and with
the zest a mariner displays in considering the affairs of his kind of
folk.
“If I didn't know you pretty well, Mayo, and know what kind of a man
you got your training with, I might think--just as those law sharps
will probably say--that you were criminally careless or didn't know your
business. But that dodge she made on you! Two points off her course!
You've got to put your finger right on there and hold it! Let me tell
you something. It was a queer thing in my own case. That was a queer
thing in your case. Stand two queer things in our business up beside
each other and squint at 'em and you may learn something.”
“She was on her course--I put her there with my own hands,” persisted
Mayo.
“Sure! You know your business. If this thing was going to be left to
the bunch that know you, you'd go clear. But here's what happened in my
case: I had a new man in the wheel-house, here, and he almost rammed me
into Cuttyhunk, gave me a touch and go with the Pollock Rip Lightship,
and had me headed toward Nauset when the fog lifted. And he was steering
my courses to the thinness of a hair, at that! Say, I took a sudden
tumble and frisked that chap and dragged a toad-stabber knife out of his
pocket--one of those regular foot-long knives. It had been yawing off
that compass all the way from a point to a point and a half. When did
you shift wheel-watch?”
“Before we made Vineyard Sound.”
“And no trouble coming up the sound?”
“Made Nobska and West Chop to the dot.”
“Then perhaps your general manager, who was in that pilot-house, had an
iron gizzard inside him. Most of them Wall Street fellows do have!” said
the skipper, with sarcasm.
“There's something going on in the steamboat business that I can't
understand,” declared Mayo. “It's high up; it hasn't to do with us
chaps, who have to take the kicks. Fogg brought a man aboard the old
_Nequasset_, and he didn't bring along a good explanation to go with
that man. I have been wondering ever since how it happened that Fogg got
to be general manager of the Vose line so almighty sudden.”
“Them high financiers play a big game, mate. And if you happened to be
a marked card in it, they'd tear you up and toss you under the table
without thinking twice. If you'll take a tip from me, you lay low and
do a lot of thinking while Uncle Zoradus does his scouting. What are you
going to do when you get to Norfolk?”
“I haven't thought.”
“Well, the both of us better think, and think hard, mate. If the United
States is really after you there'll be a sharp eye at every knot-hole. I
can't afford to let 'em get in a crack at me for what I've done.”
“I'll jump overboard outside the capes before I'll put you in wrong,”
asserted Mayo, with deep feeling.
That night the captain of the tug took a trick at the wheel in person.
His guest lay on the transom, smoking the skipper's spare pipe, and
racking his mind for ways and means. After a time he was conscious that
the captain was growling a bit of a song to relieve the tedium of his
task. He sang the same words over and over--a tried and true Chesapeake
shanty:
“Oh, I sailed aboard a lugger, and I shipped aboard a scow,
And I sailed aboard a peanut-shell that had a razor bow.
Needle in a haystack, brick into a wall!
A nigger man in Norfolk, he ain't no 'count at all!”
Mayo rolled off the transom and went to the captain's side. “There's
more truth than poetry in that song of yours, sir,” he said. “You have
given me an idea. A nigger in Norfolk doesn't attract much attention.
And I haven't got to be one of the black ones, either. Don't you suppose
there's something aboard here I can use to stain my face with?”
“My cook is a great operator as a tattoo artist.”
“I don't think I want to make the disguise permanent, sir,” stated the
young man, with a smile.
“What I mean is, he may have something in his kit that he can use to
paint you with. What's your idea--stay there? I'm afraid they'll nail
you.” >
“I'll stay there just long enough to ship before the mast on a schooner.
There isn't time to think up any better plan just now. Anything to keep
out of sight until I can make up my mind about what's really best to be
done.”
“We'll have that cook up here,” offered the captain. “He's safe.”
The cook took prompt and professional interest in the matter. “Sure!” he
said. “I've got a stain that will sink in and stay put for a long time,
if no grease paint is used. Only you mustn't wash your face.”
“There's no danger of a fellow having any inducement to do that when
he's before the mast on a schooner in these days,” declared the tug
captain, dryly.
An hour later, Captain Boyd Mayo, late of the crack liner _Montana_,
was a very passable mulatto, his crisply curling hair adding to the
disguise. He swapped his neat suit of brown with a deck-hand, and
received some particularly unkempt garments.
The next night, when the tug was berthed at the water station, he
slipped off into the darkness, as homeless and as disconsolate as an
abandoned dog.
XXII ~ SPECIAL BUSINESS OF A PASSENGER
O Ranzo was no sailor,
He shipped on board a whaler.
O pity Reuben Ran-zo, Ran-zo, boys!
O poor old Reuben Ranzo, Ranzo, boys!
--Reuben Ranzo.
Captain Mayo kept out of the region of the white lights for some time.
He had a pretty wide acquaintance in the Virginia port, and he knew the
beaten paths of the steamboating transients, ashore for a bit of a blow.
He lurked in alleys, feeling especially disreputable. He was not at
all sure that his make-up was effective. His own self-consciousness
convinced him that he was a glaring fraud, whose identity would be
revealed promptly to any person who knew him. But while he sneaked in
the purlieus of the city several of his 'longshore friends passed him
without a second look. One, a second engineer on a Union line freighter,
whirled after passing, and came back to him.
“Got a job, boy?”
“No, sir.”
“We need coal-passers on the _Drummond_. She's in the stream. Come
aboard in the morning.”
But it was not according to Mayo's calculation, messing with steamboat
men. “Ah doan' conclude ah wants no sech job,” he drawled.
“No, of course you don't want to work, you blasted yaller mutt!” snapped
the engineer. He marched on, cursing, and Mayo was encouraged, for the
man had given him a thorough looking-over.
He went out onto the wider streets. He was looking for a roving schooner
captain, reckoning he would know one of that gentry by the cut of his
jib.
A ponderous man came stumping down the sidewalk, swinging his shoulders.
“He's one of 'em,” decided Mayo. The round-crowned soft hat, undented,
the flapping trouser legs, the gait recognized readily by one who has
ever seen a master mariner patrol his quarter-deck--all these marked him
as a safe man to tackle. He stopped, dragged a match against the brick
side of a building, and relighted his cigar. But before Mayo could reach
him a colored man hurried up and accosted the big gentleman, whipping
off his hat and bowing with smug humility. Mayo hung up at a little
distance. He recognized the colored man; he was one of the numerous
Norfolk runners who furnish crews for vessels. He wore pearl-gray
trousers, a tailed coat, and had a pink in his buttonhole.
“Ah done have to say that ah doan' get that number seven man up to now,
Cap'n Downs, though I have squitulate for him all up and down. But ah
done expect--”
Captain Downs scowled over his scooped hands, puffing hard at his cigar.
He threw away the match.
“Look-a-here! you've been chasing me two days with new stories about
that seventh man. Haven't you known me long enough to know that you
can't trim me for another fee?”
“Cap'n Downs, you done know yo'self the present lucidateness of the
sailorman supply.”
“I know that if you don't get that man aboard my schooner to-night or
the first thing to-morrow morning you'll never put another one aboard
for me. You go hustle! And look here! I see you making up your mouth!
Not another cent!”
The colored man backed off and went away.
Mayo accosted the captain when that fuming gentleman came lunging along
the sidewalk. “Ah done lak to have that job, cap'n,” he pleaded.
“You a sailor?”
“Yas, sir.”
“How is it you ain't hiring through the regular runners?”
“Ah doan' lak to give all my money to a dude nigger to go spotein' on.”
“Well, there's something in that,” acknowledged Captain Downs, softening
a bit. “I haven't got much use for that kind myself. You come along. But
if you ain't A-1, shipshape, and seamanlike and come aboard my vessel
to loaf on your job you'll wish you were in tophet with the torches
lighted. Got any dunnage laying around anywhere?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, then, I guess you're a regular sailor, all right, the way the
breed runs nowadays. That sounds perfectly natural.” The captain led the
way down to a public landing, where a power-yawl, with engineer and a
mate, was in waiting. “Will she go into the stream to-night, Mr. Dodge?”
asked Captain Downs, curtly.
“No, sir! About four hundred tons still to come.”
Schooner captains keep religiously away from their vessels as long as
the crafts lie at the coal-docks.
“Come up for me in the morning as soon as she is in the stream. Here's
a man to fill the crew. If that coon shows up with another man kick the
two of 'em up the wharf.”
“Will the passenger come aboard with you, sir?”
“He called me up at the hotel about supper-time and said something about
wanting to come aboard at the dock. I tried to tell him it was foolish,
but it's safe to reckon that a man who wants to sail as passenger from
here to Boston on a coal-schooner is a fool, anyway. If he shows up,
let him come aboard.” Captain Downs swung away and the night closed in
behind him.
Mayo took his place in the yawl and preserved meek and proper silence
during the trip down the harbor.
When they swung under the counter of the schooner which was their
destination, the young man noted that she was the _Drusilla M. Alden_,
a five-master, of no very enviable record along the coast, so far as the
methods and manners of her master went; Mayo had heard of her master,
whose nickname was “Old Mull.” He had not recognized him under the name
of Captain Downs when the runner had addressed him.
The new member of the crew followed the mate up the ladder--only a few
steps, for the huge schooner, with most of her cargo aboard, showed less
than ten feet of freeboard amidships.
“Sleepy, George?” asked the mate, when they were on deck.
“No, sir.”
“Then you may as well go on this watch.”
“Yass'r!”
“We'll call it now eight bells, midnight. You'll go off watch eight
bells, morning.”
Mayo knew that the hour was not much later than eleven, but he did
not protest; he knew something about the procedure aboard coastwise
coal-schooners.
Search-lights bent steady glare upon the chutes down which rushed the
streams of coal, black dust swirling in the white radiance. The great
pockets at Lambert Point are never idle. High above, on the railway,
trains of coal-cars racketed. Under his feet the fabric of the vessel
trembled as the chutes fed her through the three hatches. Sweating,
coal-blackened men toiled in the depths of her, revealed below hatches
by the electric lights, pecking at the avalanche with their shovels,
trimming cargo.
The young man exchanged a few listless words with the two negroes who
were on deck, his mates of the watch.
They were plainly not interested in him, and he avoided them.
The hours dragged. He helped to close and batten the fore-hatch,
and later performed similar service on the hatch aft. The main-hatch
continued to gulp the black food which the chute fed to it.
Suddenly a tall young man appeared to Mayo. The stranger was smartly
dressed, and his spick-and-span garb contrasted strangely with the
general riot of dirt aboard the schooner. He trod gingerly over the
dust-coated planks and carried two suit-cases.
“Here, George,” he commanded. “Take these to my stateroom.”
Mayo hesitated.
“I'm going as passenger,” said the young man, impatiently, and Mayo
remembered what the captain had told the mate.
Passengers on coal-schooners, sailing as friends of the master, were not
unknown on the coast, but Mayo judged, from what he had heard, that this
person was not a friend, and had wondered a bit.
“I am not allowed to go aft, sir, without orders from the mate.”
“Where is the mate?”
“I think he is below, sir.”
“Asleep?”
“I wouldn't wonder.”
Mayo did not trouble to use his dialect on this stranger, a mere
passenger, who spoke as if he were addressing a car-porter. The tone
produced instant irritation, resentment in the man who had so recently
been master of his ship.
The passenger set down his baggage and pondered a moment. He looked Mayo
over in calculating fashion; he stared up the wharf. Then he picked
up his bags and hurried along the port alley and disappeared down the
companionway.
He returned in a few moments, came into the waist of the vessel,
and made careful survey of all about him. There were two sailors far
forward, merely dim shadows. For some reason general conditions on the
schooner seemed to satisfy the stranger.
“The thing is breaking about right--about as I reckoned it would,” he
said aloud. “Look here, George, how much talking do you do about things
you see?”
“Talking to who, sir?”
“Why, to your boss--the captain--the mate.”
“A sailor before the mast is pretty careful not to say anything to a
captain or the mates unless they speak to him first, sir.”
“George, I'm not going to do anything but what is perfectly all right,
you understand. You'll not get into any trouble over it. But what you
don't see you can't tell, no matter if questions are asked later on.
Here, take this!” He crowded two silver dollars into Mayo's hands and
gave him a push. “You trot forward and stay there about five minutes,
that's the boy! It's all right. It's a little of my own private
business. Go ahead!”
Mayo went. He reflected that it was none of his affair what a passenger
did aboard the vessel. It was precious little interest he took in the
craft, anyway, except as a temporary refuge. He turned away and put the
money in his pocket, the darkness hiding his smile.
He did not look toward the wharf. He strolled on past the forward house,
where the engineer was stoking his boiler, getting up steam for the
schooner's windlass engine. When he patrolled aft again, after
a conscientious wait, he found the passenger leaning against the
coachhouse door, smoking a cigarette. The electric light showed his
face, and it wore a look of peculiar satisfaction.
Just then some one fumbled inside the coach-house door at the stranger's
back, and when the latter stepped away the first mate appeared, yawning.
“I'm the passenger--Mr. Bradish,” the young man explained, promptly. “I
just made myself at home, put my stuff in a stateroom, and locked the
door and took the key. Is that all right?”
“May be just as well to lock it while we're at dock and stevedores are
aboard,” agreed the mate.
“How soon do we pull out of here?”
The mate yawned again and peered up into the sky, where the first gray
of the summer dawn was showing over the cranes of the coal-pockets.
“In about a half-hour, I should say. Just as soon as the tug can use
daylight to put us into the stream.”
The roar of the coal in the main-hatch chute had ceased. The schooner
was loaded.
“Go strike eight bells, Jeff, and turn in!” ordered the mate, speaking
to Mayo.
“Well, I'll stay outside, here, and watch the sun rise,” said Bradish.
“It will be a new experience.”
“It's an almighty dirty place for loafing till we get into the stream
and clean ship, sir. I should think taking an excursion on a coal-lugger
would be another new experience!” There was just a hint of grim sarcasm
in his tone.
“The doctor ordered me to get out and away where I wouldn't hear of
business or see business, and a friend of mine told me there were plenty
of room and comfort aboard one of these big schooners. That cabin and
the staterooms, they're fine!”
“Oh, they have to give a master a good home these days. That's a Winton
carpet in the saloon,” declared the mate, with pride. “And we've got a
one-eyed cook who can certainly sling grub together. Yes, for a cheap
vacation I dun'no' but a schooner is all right!”
The two were getting on most amicably when Mayo went forward. He was
dog-tired and turned in on tie bare boards of his fo'cas'le berth.
No bedding is furnished men before the mast on the coal-carriers.
If a man wants anything between himself and the boards he must bring it
with him, and few do so. At the end of each trip a crew is discharged
and new men are hired, in order to save paying wages while a vessel is
in port loading or discharging. Therefore, a coastwise schooner harbors
only transients, for whom the fo'cas'le is merely a shelter between
watches.
But Mayo was a sailor, and the bare boards served him better than
bedding in which some dusky and dirty son of Ham had nestled. He laid
himself down and slept soundly.
The second mate turned out the watch below at four bells--six in the
morning. The schooner was in the stream and all hands were needed to
work hose and brooms and clear off the coal-dust. Mayo toiled in the
wallow of black water till his muscles ached.
There was one happy respite--they knocked off long enough to eat
breakfast. It was sent out to them from the cook-house in one huge,
metal pan without dishes or knives or forks.
A white cook wash dishes for negroes?
Mayo knew the custom which prevailed on board the schooners between the
coal ports and the New England cities, and he fished for food with his
fingers and cut meat with his jack-knife with proper meekness.
When he was back at his scrubbing again the cook passed aft, bearing
the zinc-lined hamper which contained the breakfast for the cabin table.
That this cook had the complete vocabulary of others of his ilk was
revealed when the man with the hose narrowly missed drenching the
hamper.
“That's right, cook!” roared Captain Downs, climbing ponderously on
board from his yawl. “Talk up to the loafing, cock-eyed, pot-colored
sons of a coal-scuttle when I ain't here to do it. Turn away that hose,
you mule-eared Fiji!” He turned on Mayo, who stood at one side and was
poising his scrubbing-broom to allow the master to pass. “Get to work,
there, yellow pup! Get to work!”
Ordinarily the skipper addresses one of his sailors only through the
mate. But there was no mate handy just then.
“One hand for the owners and one hand for yourself when you're aloft,
but on deck it's both hands for the owners,” he stated, as he plodded
aft, giving forth the aphorism for the benefit of all within hearing.
The passenger was still on deck, and Mayo heard Captain Downs greet him
rather brusquely.
Then the cook's hand-bell announced breakfast, and before the captain
and his guest reappeared on deck a tug had the _Alden's_ hawser and was
towing her down the dredged channel on the way to Hampton Roads and to
sea.
Mayo went at his new tasks so handily that he passed muster as an
able seaman. If a sailor aboard a big schooner of these days is quick,
willing, and strong he does not need the qualities and the knowledge
which made a man an “A. B.” in the old times.
While the schooner was on her way behind the tug they hoisted her sails,
a long cable called “the messenger” enabling the steam-winch forward to
do all the work. Mayo was assigned to the jigger-mast, and went aloft
to shake out the topsail. It was a dizzy height, and the task tried his
spirit, for the sail was heavy, and he found it difficult to keep his
balance while he was tugging at the folds of the canvas. He was obliged
to work alone--there was only one man to a mast, and very tiny insects
did his mates appear when Mayo glanced forward along the range of the
masts.
The tug dropped them off the Tail of the Horseshoe; a smashing
sou'wester was serving them.
With all her washing set, the schooner went plowing out past the capes,
and Mayo was given his welcome watch below; he was so sleepy that his
head swam.
When he turned out he was ordered to take his trick at the wheel. The
schooner had made her offing and was headed for her northward run along
the coast, which showed as a thin thread of white along the flashing
blue of the sea.
Mayo took the course from the gaunt, sooty Jamaican who stepped away
from the wheel; he set his gaze on the compass and had plenty to occupy
his hands and his mind, for a big schooner which is logging off six
or eight knots in a following sea is somewhat of a proposition for a
steersman. Occasionally he was obliged to climb bodily upon the wheel in
order to hold the vessel up to her course.
Captain Downs was pacing steadily from rail to rail between the wheel
and the house. At each turn he glanced up for a squint at the sails. It
was the regular patrol of a schooner captain.