as if I remember you being at the wheel, Mayo, when that fellow was
unloading some pretty important information on to me.”
“I couldn't help hearing, sir.”
“So you know he's eloping with a girl?” The old skipper lowered his
voice.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you ever hear of such a cussed, infernal performance? And I have
talked with the girl, and she really doesn't seem to be that sort at
all. She's flighty, you can see that. She has been left to run loose too
much, like a lot of girls in society are running loose nowadays. They
think of a thing that's different, and, biff! they go do it. She is
wishing she hadn't done this. That shows some sense.” He studied the
young man. “Do you know anything about this right a captain has to
perform marriage ceremonies?”
“Nothing special.”
“It will probably be a good thing for that girl to be married and
settled down. She seems to have picked out Bradish. Mayo, you're one
of my kind, and I want to help you. I'll take a chance on my right to
perform the ceremony. What say if we get Bradish back in here and swap a
marriage for what he can tell us about the _Montana_ business?”
“Captain Downs, a fellow who will put up a job of this kind on a girl,
no matter if she has encouraged him, is a cheap pup,” declared Mayo,
promptly and firmly. “I don't want to buy back my papers in any such
fashion.”
“Then you don't approve of my marrying them?”
“I haven't any right to tell you what you shall do, sir. I'm talking
merely for myself.”
Captain Downs pondered. “If he's her father's right-hand man, he's
probably just as good as most of the land pirates who have been courting
her. If she goes home married, even if it is only marriage on the high
seas, contract between willing persons with witnesses and the master of
the vessel officiating, as I believe it's allowed, she'll have her good
name protected, and that means a lot. I don't know as I have any right
to stand out and block their way, seeing how far it has gone. What do
you think, Mayo?”
“I don't believe I want to make any suggestions, sir.”
At that moment the door aft opened. Mayo was near the door of the mate's
stateroom in the shadows, and he dodged back into his retreat. He heard
Bradish's voice.
“Captain Downs, this young lady has something to say to you and I hope
you'll listen!”
Then the girl's voice! It was impetuous outburst. She hurried her words
as if she feared to wait for second and saner reflection.
“Captain Downs, I cannot wait any longer. You must act. I beg of you. I
have made up my mind. I am ready!”
“Ready to get married, you mean?”
“Yes! Now that my mind is made up, please hurry!”
Her tone was high-pitched, tears were close behind her desperation, her
words rushed almost incoherently. But Mayo, staring sightlessly in the
black darkness of the little stateroom, his hearing keen, knew that
voice. He could not restrain himself. He pulled the door wide open.
The girl was Alma Marston.
Her eyes were bright, her cheeks were flushed, and it was plain that her
impulsive nature was flaming with determination. The shadows were deep
in the corners of the saloon, and the man in the stateroom door was not
noticed by the three who stood there in the patch of light cast by the
swinging lamp.
“I ask you--I beg you--I have made up my mind! I must have it over
with.”
“Don't have hysterics! This is no thing to be rushed.”
“You must.”
“You're talking to a captain aboard his own vessel, ma'am!”
From Mayo's choking throat came some sort of sound and the girl glanced
in his direction, but it was a hasty and indifferent gaze. Her own
affairs were engrossing her. He reeled back into the little room, and
the swing of the schooner shut the door.
“You are captain! You have the power! That's why I am talking to you,
sir!”
“But when you talked with me a little while ago you were crawfishing!”
was Captain Downs's blunt objection.
“I am sorry I have been so imprudent. I ought not to be here. I have
said so. I do too many things on impulse. Now I want to be married!”
“More impulse, eh?”
“I must be able to face my father.”
There was silence in the saloon.
Mayo shoved trembling fingers into his mouth and bit upon them to keep
back what his horrified reason warned him would be a scream of protest.
In spite of what his eyes and ears told him, it all seemed to be some
sort of hideous unreality.
“It's a big responsibility,” proceeded Captain Downs, mumbling his words
and talking half to himself in his uncertainty. “I've been trying to get
some light on it from another--from a man who ought to understand more
about it than what I do. It's too much of a problem for a man to wrassle
with all alone.”
He turned his back on them, gazed at the stateroom door, tipped his cap
awry, and scratched his head more vigorously than he had in his past
ponderings.
“Say, you in there! Mate!” he called, clumsily preserving Mayo's
incognito. “I'm in a pinch. Say what you really think!”
There was no word from the stateroom.
“You're an unprejudiced party,” insisted the skipper. “You have good
judgment. Now what?”
“Who is that, in there?” demanded Bradish.
“Why should this person, whoever he is, have any-thing to say about my
affairs?” asked the girl.
“Because I'm asking him to say!” yelped the skipper, showing anger. “I'm
running this! Don't try to tell me my own business!” He walked toward
the door. “Speak up, mate!”
“It's an insult to me--asking strangers about my private affairs!” The
protest of the girl was a furious outburst.
“I resent it, captain! Most bitterly resent it,” stated Bradish.
The old skipper walked back toward them. “Resent it as much as you
condemned like, sir! You're here asking favors of me. I want to do what
is right for all concerned. You ought to be married--I admit that. But
what sort of a position does it leave me in? Are you going to tell me
this girl's name?”
“I'm Alma Marston!” She volleyed the name at him with hysterical
violence, but he did not seem to be impressed. “I am Julius Marston's
daughter!”
The skipper looked her up and down.
“Now you will be so good as to proceed about your duty!” she commanded,
haughtily.
“Well, you can't expect me to show any special neighborly kindness to
the Wall Street gouger who kept me tied up without a charter two months
last spring with his steamboat combinations and his dicker deals!”
“How are we to take that, sir?” asked Bradish.
The girl was staring with frank wonder at this hard-shelled mariner whom
she had not been able to impress by her name or her manner.
“Just as you want to.”
“I demand an explanation.”
“Well, I'll give it to you, seeing that I'm perfectly willing to. Take
it one way, and I'm willing to wallop Julius Marston by handing him
the kind of a son-in-law you'd make; take it the other way, and I ain't
particular about doing anything to accommodate anybody in the Marston
family.” He eyed them sardonically.
“So, you see, I'm betwixt and between in the matter! It's like settling
a question by flipping a cent. And I'll tell you what I'm going to do!”
He smacked his palm on the table. He strode back toward the stateroom
door. “Mate, ahoy, there! Sailor to sailor, now, and remember that you
have asked something of _me!_ If you were captain of this schooner would
you marry off these two?”
They waited in silence, in which they heard the whummle and screech
of the wind outside and the angry squalling of the sheathing of the
plunging schooner's cabin walls.
The voice which replied to Captain Downs's query did not sound human. It
was a sort of muffled wail, but there was no mistaking its positiveness.
“No!” said the man behind the door.
Back to the table lurched Captain Downs. He pounded down his fist. “That
settles it with me!” Then he poised his big hand on the edge of the
table-cover. “I was ready to tip one way or the other and it needed
only a little push. I have tipped.” Down came the palm flat on the
table-cloth with final and decisive firmness. “Young man,” he informed
Bradish, “there's an extra stateroom, there, off this dining-saloon. You
take it!”
“What can I tell my father?” wailed the girl, the fire of her
determination suddenly quenched by sobbing helplessness.
“You can tell him that I temporarily adopted you as my daughter at three
bells on this particular evening, and I'll go to him and back you up if
it becomes necessary.” He opened the door leading aft and bowed. “Now,
you trot along to your stateroom, sissy!”
After hesitating a few moments she hurried away. The skipper locked the
door and slipped the key into his pocket.
“Do you think I'm going to--” began Bradish, angrily.
“I ain't wasting any thoughts on you, sir. I'm saving 'em all for the
_Drusilla M. Alden_ just now.”
The craft's plunging roll gave evidence that the sea was making. At
that instant the first mate came down a few steps of the forward
companionway, entering through the coach-house door.
“She's breezing up fresh from east'ard, sir!” he reported.
“So I've judged from the way this sheathing is talking up. I'll be on
deck at once, Mr. Dodge.”
That report was a summons to a sailor; Mayo came staggering out of the
stateroom. He looked neither to right nor left nor at either of the men
in the saloon. He stumbled toward the companionway, reaching his hands
in front of him after the fashion in which a man gropes in the dark.
“Are you letting a nigger--and a crazy one at that--decide the biggest
thing in my life?” raged Bradish.
“I know what I'm doing,” Captain Downs assured him. But the skipper was
manifestly amazed by the expression he saw on Mayo's face.
“I won't stand for it! Here, you!” Bradish rushed across the room and
intercepted Mayo.
“Come away from that man!” commanded the skipper.
But Bradish was not in a mood to obey authority. “There's something
behind this and I propose to be let in on it! Stop, you!” He pushed
Mayo back, but the latter's face did not change its expression of dull,
blank, utter despair which saw not and heard not. Mayo recovered himself
and came on again, looking into vacancy.
“If you have a grudge against me, by the gods, I'll wake you up and make
you explain it!” shouted Bradish. He drew back his arm and drove a quick
punch squarely against the expressionless face. The blow came with a
lurch of the vessel and Mayo fell flat on his back. He went down as
stiffly as he had walked, with as little effort to save himself as a
store dummy would have made.
But he was another man when he came upon his feet.
Bradish had awakened him!
The master of the _Alden_ hurried around the table, roaring oaths, and
tried to get between them, but he was an unwieldy man on his short legs.
Before he was in arm's-length they were at each other, dodging here and
there.
Bradish was no shrimp of an adversary; he was taller than his
antagonist, and handled his fists like a man who had been trained as an
amateur boxer.
They fought up and down the cabin, battering each other's face.
The indignant master threatened them with an upraised chair, tried to
strike down their hands with it, but they were in no mood to mind a
mediator. They fought like maddened cats, banging against the cabin
walls, whirling in a crazy rigadoon to find an opening for their fists;
Captain Downs was not nimble enough to catch them. Uttering awful
profanity, he threatened to shoot both of them and rushed into the main
saloon, unlocking the door.
“I'm coming back with a gun!” he promised. But the fight ended suddenly
in a wrestling trick.
Mayo closed in, got Bradish's right hand in a grip, and doubled the arm
behind his adversary's back. Then he tripped the city man and laid
him backward over the table and against its edge with a violence that
brought a yell of pain and made Bradish limp and passive. Mayo held him
there.
“My grudge, eh? My grudge!” the victor panted. “Because you wouldn't
tell me how the sneaks ruined me? No! The girl isn't here now. I'll tell
you! It's because you stole her self-respect and her good name, and it
makes you too dirty a dog to be her husband!”
He picked up Bradish and threw him on the floor. When he turned he saw
the girl's white, agonized, frightened face at the crack of the saloon
door.
“Captain Downs!” she shrieked, “that negro is killing him. He's killing
Ralph!”
The victor turned his back on her and lurched around the table on his
way out. He stroked blood from his face with his palm, and was glad that
she had not recognized him; and yet, her failure to do so, even though
he was such a pitiable figure of the man she had known, was one more
slash of the whip of anguish across his raw soul. For a moment they had
stood there, face to face, and only blank unrecognition greeted him; it
made this horrible contretemps seem all the more unreal.
Mayo did not pause to listen to the ravings of Captain Downs, who
came thrusting past her. Dizzy, bleeding, half blind, he rushed up the
forward companionway and went into the black night on deck.
The mate was bawling for all hands to shorten sail, and Mayo took his
place with the toilers, who were manning sheets and downhauls.
XXIII ~ THE MONSTER THAT SLIPPED ITS LEASH
And there Captain Kirby proved a coward at last,
And he played at bo-peep behind the mainmast,
And there they did stand, boys, and shiver and shake,
For fear that that terror their lives it would take.
--Admiral Benbow.
Rain came with the wind, and the weather settled into a sullen, driving,
summer easterly.
Late summer regularly furnishes one of those storms to the Atlantic
coast, a recrudescence of the wintry gales, a trial run of the elements,
a sort of inter-equinoctial testing out so that Eurus may be sure that
his bellows is in working condition.
Such a storm rarely gives warning ahead that it is to be severe. It
seems to be a meteorological prank in order to catch mariners napping.
At midnight the _Alden_ was plunging into creaming seas, her five masts
thrummed by the blast. With five thousand tons of coal weighting her,
she wallowed like a water-soaked log.
Mayo, who was roused from his hideous agony of soul at four bells,
morning, to go on deck for his watch, ventured as near the engine-room
door as he dared, for the rain was soaking his meager garments and
the red glow from within was grateful. The ship's pump was clanking, a
circumstance in no way alarming, because the huge schooners of the coal
trade are racked and wrenched in rough water.
The second mate came to the engine-room, lugging the sounding-rod to the
light in order to examine the smear on its freshly chalked length.
He tossed it out on deck with a grunt of satisfaction. “Nothing to
hurt!” he said to the engineer. “However, I'd rather be inside the capes
in this blow. The old skimmer ain't what she used to be. Johnson, do
you know that this schooner is all of two feet longer when she is loaded
than when she is light?”
“I knew she was hogged, but I didn't know it was as bad as that.”
“I put the lead-line on her before she went into the coal-dock this
trip, and I measured her again in the stream yesterday. With a cargo
she just humps right up like a monkey bound for war. That's the way with
these five-masters! They get such a racking they go wrong before the
owners realize.”
“They'll never build any more, and I don't suppose they want to spend
much money on the old ones,” suggested the engineer.
“Naturally not, when they ain't paying dividends as it is.” He stepped
to the weather rail and sniffed. “I reckon the old man will be dropping
the killick before long,” he said.
Mayo knew something of the methods of schooner masters and was not
surprised by the last remark.
In the gallant old days, when it was the custom to thrash out a blow,
the later plan of anchoring a big craft in the high seas off the
Delaware coast, with Europe for a lee, would have been viewed with a
certain amount of horror by a captain.
But the modern skipper figures that there's less wear and tear if he
anchors and rides it out. To be sure, it's no sort of a place for a
squeamish person, aboard a loaded schooner whose mudhook clutches
bottom while the sea flings her about, but the masters and crews of
coal-luggers are not squeamish.
Mayo, glancing aft, saw two men coming forward slowly, stopping at
regular intervals. The light of a lantern played upon their dripping
oilskins. When they arrived at the break of the main-deck, near the
forward house, he recognized Captain Downs and the first mate. The
second mate stepped out and replied to the captain's hail.
“Bring a maul and some more wedges!” commanded the master.
“_Drusilla_ is getting her back up some more,” commented the second
mate, starting for the storeroom. “I don't blame her much. This is no
place for an old lady, out here to-night.” He ordered Mayo to accompany
him.
In a few moments they reported to the captain, the mate carrying the
two-headed maul and the young man bearing an armful of wedges.
Captain Downs bestowed on Mayo about the same attention he would have
allowed to a galley cockroach. He pointed to a gap in the rail.
“There--drive one in there,” he told the mate. “Let that nigger hold the
wedge.” There was rancor in his voice--baleful hostility shone in his
snapping eyes; no captain tolerates disobedience at sea, and Mayo had
disregarded all discipline in the cabin.
The young man kneeled and performed the service and followed the party
dutifully when they moved on to the next gap.
The pitching schooner groaned and grunted and squalled in all her
fabric.
Every angle joint was working--yawing open and closing with dull
grindings as the vessel rolled and plunged.
“By goofer, she's gritting her teeth in good shape!” commented the first
mate.
“She ought to have been stiffened a year ago, when she first began to
loosen and work!” declared Captain Downs. His anxiety stirred both his
temper and his tongue. “I was willing to have my sixteenth into her
assessed for repairs, but a stockholder don't have to go to sea! I wish
I had an excursion party of owners aboard here now.”
“When these old critters once get loose enough to play they rattle to
pieces mighty fast,” said the mate. “But this is nothing specially bad.”
“Find out what we've got under us,” snapped Captain Downs. The wedges
had been driven. “Let this nigger carry the lead for'ard!”
It was a difficult task in the night, because the leadline had to be
passed from the quarter-deck to the cathead outside the shrouds; the
rails and deck were slippery. Plainly, Captain Downs was proposing to
show Mayo “a thing or two.”
He let go the lead at command, and heard the man on the quarter-deck,
catching the line when it swung into a perpendicular position, report
twenty-five fathoms.
Again, answering the mate's bawled orders, Mayo carried the lead forward
and dropped it, after a period of waiting, during which the schooner
had been eased off. He was soaked to the skin, and was miserable in both
body and mind. He had betrayed himself, he had made an enemy of the man
who knew something which could help him; he felt a queer sense of shame
and despair when he remembered the girl and the expression of her face.
He tried to convince himself that he did not care what her opinion
of him was. What happened to that love she had professed on board the
_Olenia?_ What manner of maiden was this? He did not understand!
Five times he made his precarious trip with the lead, fumbling his way
outside the rigging.
In twenty fathoms Captain Downs decided to anchor, after the mate,
“arming” the lead by filling its cup with grease, found that they were
over good holding ground.
When the _Alden_ came into the wind and slowed down, slapping wet
sails, the second mate hammered out the holding-pin of the gigantic port
anchor, and the hawse-hole belched fathom after fathom of chain.
All hands were on deck letting sails go on the run into the lazy-jacks,
and the big schooner swung broadside to the trough of the sea. She made
a mighty pendulum, rolling rails under, sawing the black skies with her
towering masts.
There are many things which can happen aboard a schooner in that
position when men are either slow or stupid. A big negro who was paying
out the mizzen-peak halyards allowed his line to foul. Into the triangle
of sail the wind volleyed, and the thirty-foot mizzen-boom, the roll
of the ship helping, swung as far as its loosened sheets allowed. The
“traveler,” an iron hoop encircling a long bar of iron fastened at both
ends to the deck, struck sparks as a trolley pulley produces fire from a
sleety wire.
With splintering of wood and clanging of metal, the iron bar was
wrenched from its deck-fastenings and began to fly to and fro across the
deck at the end of its tether, like a giant's slung-shot. It circled, it
spun, it flung itself afar and returned in unexpected arcs.
Men fled from the area which this terror dominated.
The boom swung until it banged the mizzen shrouds to port, and then came
swooping back across the deck, to slam against the starboard shrouds.
The clanging, tethered missile it bore on its end seemed to be searching
for a victim. When the boom met the starboard shrouds in its headlong
rush, the schooner shivered.
“Free that halyard and douse the peak!” roared the first mate.
A sailor started, ducking low, but he ran back when the boom came across
the deck with such a vicious swing that the iron bar fairly screamed
through the air.
“Gawd-a-mighty! She'll bang the mast out of her!” clamored Captain
Downs. “Get some men to those halyards, Mr. Dodge! Catch that boom!”
The mate ran and kicked at a sailor, shouting profane orders. He seized
the fellow and thrust him toward the pins where the halyards were
belayed. But at that instant the rushing boom came hurtling overhead
with its slung-shot, and the iron banged the rail almost exactly where
the fouled line was secured. The mate and the sailor fell flat on their
faces and crawled back from the zone of danger.
“Get some rope and noose that boom! Lassoo it!” commanded the master,
touching up his orders with some lurid sea oaths.
But the men who stepped forward did so timidly and slowly, and dodged
back when the boom threatened. The flying bar was a terrible weapon. Now
it swung in toward the mast--now swept in wider radius. Just where it
would next sweep the deck between the masts depended on the vagary of
wave and wind. It was perfectly apparent that anybody who got in its
path would meet death as instantly as a fly under a housewife's spanker.
Life is sweet, even if a man is black and is toiling for a dollar-a-day
wage.
And even if a man is a mate, at a higher wage and with more
responsibility, he is inclined to think of himself before he figures on
saving a mast and gear for a schooner's owners.
“What kind of a gor-rammed crew have I got aboard here?” shrieked the
master.
“About the kind that all wind-jammers carry these days,” said a voice at
his elbow.
Captain Downs whirled and found Mayo there. “How do you dare to speak to
me, you tin-kettle sailor?” demanded the master. In his passion he went
on: “You're aboard here under false pretenses. You can't even do your
work. You have made this vessel liable by assaulting a passenger. You're
no good! With you aboard here I'm just the same as one man short.” But
he had no time to devote to this person.
He turned away and began to revile his mates and his sailors, his voice
rising higher each time the rampaging boom crashed from side to side.
One or two of the backstays had parted, and it was plain that before
long the mast would go by the board.
“If that mast comes out it's apt to smash us clear to the water-line,”
lamented the captain.
“If you can make your herd of sheep give me a hand at the right time,
I'll show you that a tin-kettle sailor is as good as a wind-jammer
swab,” said Mayo, retaliating with some of the same sort of rancor that
Captain Downs had been expending. In that crisis he was bold enough to
presume on his identity as a master mariner. “I'd hate to find this kind
of a bunch on any steamboat I've ever had experience with.”
Then he ran away before the captain had time to retort. He made a slide
across the danger zone on his back, like a runner in a ball game. This
move brought him into a safe place between the mainmast and the mizzen.
There was a coil of extra cable here, and he grabbed the loose end and
deftly made a running bowline knot. He set the noose firmly upon his
shoulders, leaped up, and caught at the hoops on the mizzenmast.