into her. But she kept right side up, and in a few moments the cable
straightened and she rode head into the tumult of the ocean; the
sea-anchor was dragging and performing its service.
Mayo was obliged to kick the two men with considerable heartiness before
he could stir them to bailing with the buckets. The bedraggled cat fled
to the shelter of the girl's arms. Mayo struggled aft, in order to take
his weight from the bow of the boat, and when he sat down beside the
girl she was “mothering” the animal.
“It's coming in faster than I can throw it out!” wailed Bradish.
“Bail faster, then! Bail or drown!”
“She's leaking,” announced the cook. “She has been on deck so long she
has got all dried out.”
“Bail or drown!” repeated Mayo. To the girl he said: “This seems to be
the only way of getting work out of cowards. They'll have to do it. I'm
about done for.”
The waves were lifting and dropping them in dizzying fashion. There was
suddenly a more violent tossing of the water.
“That's the old packet! She went under then!” Mayo explained. “Thank the
Lord we are out of her clutches! I was afraid we were stuck there.”
“Is there any hope for us now?” she inquired.
“I don't know. If the boat stays afloat and the wind doesn't haul and
knock this sea crossways, if somebody sees us in the morning, if we
don't get rolled onto the coast in the breakers and--” He did not
finish.
“It seems that a lot of things can happen at sea,” she suggested.
“That fact has been proved to me in the past few weeks.”
“You mean in the past few hours, don't you?”
“Miss Marston, what has happened on that schooner is a part of the
business, and a sailor must take it as it comes along. I wish nothing
worse had happened to me than what's happening now.”
She made no reply.
“But no matter about it,” he said, curtly.
The two men, kneeling amidships, clutching a thwart and bailing with
their free hands, toiled away; even Bradish had wakened to the fact that
he was working for his own salvation.
In the obscurity the waves which rose ahead seemed like mountains topped
with snow. Hollows and hills of water swept past on their right and
left. But the crests of the waves were not breaking, and this fact meant
respite from immediate danger.
“I'm sorry it was all left to you to do,” ventured the girl, breaking
a long silence. “I thought Ralph had more man in him,” she added,
bitterly. “I feel that he ought to apologize to you for--for several
things.”
He, on his part, did not reply to that. He was afraid that she intended
to draw him into argument or explanation. Just what he would be able to
say to her on that topic was not clear to him.
“It seems as if years had gone by instead of hours. It seems as if I
had lived half a life since I left home. It seems as if I had changed
my nature and had grown up to see things in a different light. It is all
very strange to me.”
He did not know whether she were talking to herself or to him. He did
not offer comment.
There was a long period of silence. The sound of rushing waters filled,
that silence and made their conversation audible only to themselves when
they talked.
“I don't understand how you happened to be on that schooner--as--as you
were,” she said, hesitating.
“I didn't rig myself out this way to play any practical jokes, Miss
Marston,” he returned, bitterly.
“I would like to know how it all happened--your side of it.”
“I have talked too much already.”
There was no more conversation for a long time. He wondered how she had
mustered courage to talk at all. They were in a predicament to try the
courage of even a seasoned seaman. In the night, tossed by that wild
sea, drifting they knew not where, she had apparently disregarded
danger. He asked himself if she had not merely exhibited feminine
ignorance of what their situation meant. He had often seen cases where
apparent bravado was based on such ignorance.
“I must say that you told me at least one truth a while ago--you are not
a coward,” he said at last.
She was comforting the wretched cat. “But I am miserably frightened,”
she admitted. “I don't dare to think about the thing. I don't dare
to look at the waves. I talked to you so as to take my mind off my
troubles. I didn't mean to be prying.”
“I'll tell you what has been done to me,” he blurted. “Hearing
somebody's troubles may take your mind off your own.”
While the two men amidships bailed doggedly and weariedly, he told his
story as briefly as he could. The gray dawn showed her face to him after
a time, and he was peculiarly comforted by the sympathy he saw there. He
did not communicate to her any suspicions he may have entertained. With
sailor directness he related how he had hoped, and how all had been
snatched away from him. But on one topic the mouths of both seemed to be
sealed!
After a time Bradish and the cook were enabled to rest from the work of
bailing. The planks of the boat swelled and the leak was stopped.
“You'd better crawl aft here and sit beside Miss Marston,” advised Mayo.
“Be careful how you move.”
He passed Bradish and took the latter's place with the cook, and felt
a sense of relief; he had feared that the one, the dreaded topic would
force itself upon him.
“I don't see no sense in prolonging all this agony,” averred his
despondent companion. “We ain't ever going to get out of this alive.
We're drifting in on the coast, and you know what that means.”
“You may jump overboard any time you see fit,” said the skipper of the
craft. “I don't need you any longer for bailing!”
“If that's the way you feel about it, you won't get rid of me so easy,”
declared the cook, malevolence in his single eye.
Mayo noticed, with some surprise, that after the two had exchanged a few
words there was silence between Bradish and the girl. The New-Yorker was
pale and trembling, and his jaw still sagged, and he threw glances to
right and left as the surges galloped under them. He was plainly and
wholly occupied with his fears.
When day came at last without rain, but with heavy skies, in which
masses of vapor dragged, Mayo began eager search of the sea. He had
no way of determining their whereabouts; he hoped they were far enough
off-shore to be in the track of traffic. However, he could see no sail,
no encouraging trail of smoke. But after a time he did behold something
which was not encouraging. He stood up and balanced himself and gazed
westward, in the direction in which they were drifting; every now and
then a lifting wave enabled him to command a wide expanse of the sea.
He saw a white ribbon of foam that stretched its way north and south
into the obscurity of the mists. He did not report this finding at once.
He looked at his companions and pondered.
“I think you have something to say to me,” suggested the girl.
“I suppose I ought to say it. I've been wondering just how it ought to
be said. It's not pleasant news.”
“I am prepared to hear anything, Captain Mayo. Nothing matters a great
deal just now.”
“We are being driven on to the coast. I don't know whether it's the
Delaware or the New Jersey coast. It doesn't make much difference. The
breakers are just as bad in one place as in the other.”
“Why don't you anchor this boat? Are you going to let it go ashore and
be wrecked?” asked Bradish, with anger that was childish.
“The anchor seems to have been overlooked when we started on this little
excursion. As I remember it, there was some hurry and bustle,” returned
Mayo, dryly.
“Why didn't you remember it? You got us into this scrape. You slammed
and bossed everybody around. You didn't give anybody else a chance to
think. You call yourself a sailor! You're a devil of a sailor to come
off without an anchor.”
“I suppose so,” admitted Mayo.
“And there wasn't any sense, in coming off in this little boat. We ought
to have stayed on the schooner.”
“Ralph!” protested the girl. “Have you completely lost your mind? Don't
you know that the schooner sank almost the minute we left it?”
“Mr. Bradish's mind was very much occupied at the time,” said Captain
Mayo.
“I don't believe the schooner sank. What does a girl know about such
things? That fellow got scared, that's the trouble. There isn't any
sense in leaving a big boat in a storm. We would have been taken off
before this. We would have been all right. This is what comes of letting
a fool boss you around when he is scared,” he raved.
“You are the fool!” she cried, with passion. “Captain Mayo saved us.”
“Saved us from what? Here we are going into the breakers--and he says
so--and there's no anchor on here. He took everything out of my hands.
Now why doesn't he do something?”
“Don't pay any attention to him,” she pleaded.
“We are going to be drowned! You can't deny it, can you? We're going to
die!” He pulled a trembling hand from between his knees, where he had
held both hands pinched in order to steady them. He shook his fist at
Mayo. “Own up, now. We're going to die, aren't we?”
“I think it's right to tell the truth at this stage,” said Mayo, in
steady tones. “We're not children. Yonder is a beach with sand-reefs and
breakers, and when we strike the sand this boat will go over and over
and we shall be tossed out. The waves will throw us up and haul us back
like a cat playing with mice. And we stand about the same chance as
mice.”
“And that's the best you can do for us--and you call yourself a sailor!”
whined Bradish.
“I'm only a poor chap who has done his best as it came to his hand to
do,” said the young man, seeking the girl's eyes with his.
She gazed at him for a moment and then put both hands to her face and
began to sob.
“It's a hard thing to face, but we'd better understand the truth and be
as brave as we can,” said Mayo, gently.
“For myself I ain't a mite surprised,” averred the cook. “I had my
hunch! I was resigned. But my plans was interfered with. I wanted to go
down in good, deep, green, clean water like a sailor ought to. And now
I'm going to get mauled into the sand and have a painful death.”
“Shut up!” barked Mayo.
The girl was trembling, and he feared collapse.
Bradish began to blubber. “I'm not prepared to die,” he protested.
Mayo studied his passenger for some time, wrinkling his brows. “Bradish,
listen to me a moment!”
The New-Yorker gave him as much attention as terror and grief permitted.
“There isn't much we can do just now to fix up our general earthly
affairs. But we may as well clean the slate between us two. That will
help our consciences a little. I haven't any quarrel with you any more.
We won't be mushy about it. But let's cross it off.”
“It's all over,” mourned Bradish. “So what's the use of bearing
grudges?”
“I suppose it's true that the court has indicted me for manslaughter.
Bradish, tell me, man to man, whether I've got to go into those breakers
with that on my conscience!”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“Yes, you do! You know whether those men of the schooner _Warren_ were
drowned by any criminal mistake of mine or not!”
Bradish did not speak.
“You wouldn't have said as much to Captain Downs if you hadn't known
something,” insisted the victim of the plot.
“It was only what Burkett let drop when he came after some money. I
suppose he thought it was safe to talk to me. But what's the good of my
giving you guesswork? I don't know anything definite. I don't understand
sailor matters.”
“Bradish, what Burkett said--was it something about the compass--about
putting a job over on me by monkeying with the compass?”
“It was something like that.” His tone exhibited indifference; it
was evident that he was more occupied with his terror than with his
confession.
“Didn't Burkett say something about a magnet?”
“He got off some kind of a joke about Fogg in the pilot-house and
fog outside--but that the Fogg inside did the business. And he said
something about Fogg's iron wishbone.”
“So that was the way it was done--and done by the general manager of the
line!” cried Mayo. “The general manager himself! It's no wonder I have
smashed that suspicion between the eyes every time it bobbed up! I
suspected--but I didn't dare to suspect! Is that some of your high
finance, Bradish?”
“No, it isn't,” declared the New-Yorker, with heat. “It's an
understrapper like Fogg going ahead and producing results, so he calls
it. The big men never bother with the details.”
“The details! Taking away from me all I have worked for--my reputation
as a master, my papers, my standing--my liberty. By the gods, I'm going
to live! I'm going through those breakers! I'll face that gang like a
man who has fought his way back from hell,” raged the victim.
“This--this was none of my father's business! It could not have been,”
expostulated Miss Marston.
“Your father never knows anything about the details of Fogg's
operations,” declared Bradish.
“He ought to know,” insisted the maddened scapegoat. “He gives off his
orders, doesn't he? He sits in the middle of the web. What if he did
know how Fogg was operating?”
“Probably wouldn't stand for it! But he doesn't know. And the Angel
Gabriel himself wouldn't get a chance to tell him!” declared the clerk.
“A put-up job, then, is it--and all called high finance!” jeered Mayo.
“High finance isn't to blame for tricks the field-workers put out
so that they can earn their money quick and easy. What's the good of
pestering me with questions at this awful time? I'm going to die! I'm
going to die!” he wailed.
Miss Marston slid from the seat to her knees, in order that she might
be able to reach her hand to Mayo. “Will you let this handclasp tell
you all I feel about it--all your trouble, all your brave work in this
terrible time? I am so frightened, Captain Mayo! But I'm going to keep
my eyes on you--and I'll be ashamed to show you how frightened I am.”
He returned the fervent clasp of her fingers with gentle pressure and
reassuring smile. “Honestly, I feel too ugly to die just now. Let's keep
on hoping.”
But when he stood up and beheld the white mountains of water between
their little boat and the shore, and realized what would happen when
they were in that savage tumult, with the undertow dragging and the
surges lashing, he felt no hope within himself.
From the appearance of the coast he could not determine their probable
location. The land was barren and sandy. There seemed to be no inlet.
As far as he could see the line of frothing white was unbroken. The
sea foamed across broad shallows, where no boat could possibly remain
upright and no human being could hope to live.
Nevertheless, he remained standing and peered under his hand, resolved
to be alert till the last, determined to grasp any opportunity.
All at once he beheld certain black lines in perpendicular silhouette
against the foam. At first he was not certain just what they could be,
and he observed them narrowly as the boat tossed on its way.
At last their identity was revealed. They were weir-stakes. The weir
itself was evidently dismantled. Such stakes as remained were set some
distance from one another, like fence-posts located irregularly.
He made hasty observation of bearings as the boat drifted, and was
certain that the sea would carry them down past the stakes. How near
they would pass depended on the vagary of the waves and the tide. He
realized that three men, even if they were able seamen, could do little
in the way of rowing or guiding the longboat in the welter of that sea,
now surging madly over the shoals. He knew that there was not much water
under the keel, for the ocean was turbid with swirling sand, and the
waves were more mountainous, heaped high by the friction of the water on
the bottom. Every now and then the crest of a roller flaunted a banner
of bursting spray, showing breakers near at hand.
Mayo hurried to the bow of the boat and pulled free a long stretch of
cable. He made a bowline slip-knot, opened a noose as large as he could
handle, coiled the rest of the cable carefully, and poised himself on a
thwart.
“What now?” asked the cook.
“No matter,” returned Mayo. His project was such a gamble that he did
not care to canvass it in advance.
The nearer they drove to the stakes the more unattainable those objects
seemed. They projected high above the water.
The cook perceived them and got up on his knees and squinted. “Huh!” he
sniffed. “You'll never make it. It can't be done!”
In his fierce anxiety Mayo heaved his noose too soon, and it fell short.
He dragged in the cable with all his quickness and strength and threw
the noose again. The rope hit the stake three-quarters of the way up and
fell into the sea.
“It needs a cowboy for that work,” muttered the cook.
Mayo recovered his noose and poised himself again.
In the shallows where they were the boat which bore him became a
veritable bucking bronco. It was flung high, it swooped down into the
hollows. He made a desperate try for the next stake in line. The noose
caught, and he snubbed quickly. The top of the stake came away with a
dull crack of rotten wood when the next wave lifted the boat.
Mayo pulled in his rope hand over hand with frantic haste. He
was obliged to free the broken stake from the noose and pull his
extemporized lasso into position again. He made a wider noose. His
failure had taught a point or two. He waited till the boat was on the
top of a wave. He curbed his desperate impatience, set his teeth, and
whirled the noose about his head in a widening circle. Then he cast just
as the boat began to drop. The rope encircled the stake, dropped to the
water, and he paid out all his free cable so that a good length of the
heavy rope might lie in the water and form a makeshift bridle. When he
snubbed carefully the noose drew close around the stake, and the latter
held. The waves which rode under them were terrific, and Mayo's heart
came into his mouth every time a tug and shock indicated that the rope
had come taut.
However, after five minutes of anxious waiting, kneeling in the bow, his
eyes on the cable, he found his courage rising and his hopes glowing.
“Does it mean--” gasped the girl, when he turned and looked at her.
“I don't know just what it will mean in the end, Miss Marston,” he
said, with emotion. “But it's a reprieve while that rope holds.”
Bradish sat clutching the gunwale with both hands, staring over his
shoulder at the waters frothing and roaring on the shore. The girl
glanced at him occasionally with a certain wonderment in her expression.
It seemed to Mayo that she was trying to assure herself that Bradish was
some person whom she knew. But she did not appear to have much success
in making him seem real. She spoke to him once or twice in an undertone,
but he did not answer. Then she turned her back on him.
Suddenly Mayo leaped up and shouted.
A man was running along the sandy crest of a low hill near the beach. He
disappeared in a little structure that was no larger than a sentry-box.
“There's a coast-guard patrol from the life-saving station. There must
be one somewhere along here!”
The man rushed out and flourished his arms.
“He has telephoned,” explained Mayo. “Those are the boys! There's hope
for us!”
There was more than hope--there was rescue after some hours of dreary
and anxious waiting.
The life-boat came frothing down the sea from the distant inlet, and
they were lifted on board by strong arms.
And then Alma Marston gave Mayo the strangest look he had ever received
from a woman's eyes. But her lips grew white and her eyes closed, and
she lapsed into unconsciousness while he folded a blanket about her.
“You must have had quite a job of it, managing a woman through this
scrape,” suggested the captain of the crew.
“It's just the other way,” declared Mayo. “I'm giving her credit for
saving the whole of us.”
“How's that?”
“I might find it a little hard to make you understand, captain. Let it
stand as I have said it.”
XXV ~ A GIRL AND HER DEBT OF HONOR
Says she, “You lime-juice sailor,
Now see me home you may.”
But when we reached her cottage door
She unto me did say--
And a-way, you santee,
My dear Annie!
O you New York girls,
Can't you dance the polka!
--Walking Down the Broadway.
Mayo was promptly informed that Captain Downs and the crew of the
_Alden_ were safe.
“He caught our flare, got his motor to working, and made the inlet by a
lucky stab,” explained the coast-station captain. “But he didn't reckon
he'd ever see you folks again. How did it happen he didn't tell me there
was a woman aboard?”
“You'll have to ask him.”
“Who is she?”
“You'll have to ask him that, too. I'm only a sailor.”
The captain looked him over with considerable suspicion: His shirt was
torn and his white skin was revealed. The drenching by rain and spray
had played havoc with his disguise; most of the coloring had been washed
away.
“Have you got anything special to say about yourself?”
“No, sir.”
The captain turned his back on his men and leaned close to Mayo. “They
have had your picture in the paper this week,” he said. “You're the
captain they are wanting in that _Montana_ case. They're after you. I've
got to report on this thing, you understand!”
“Very well, captain.”
“But I reckon we'll talk it all over after we get to the station,”
said the master, kindly. “There may be something in it that I don't
understand.”
“There's considerable in it that I don't understand myself, just now,
but I'm going to find out,” declared Captain Mayo.
They placed Ahpa Marston in the care of the station captain's wife as
soon as they were safely on shore in the inlet. Fortunate chance had
sent the woman to the station that day on a visit to her husband.
Captain Downs, fed and warmed, watched the new arrivals eat beside the
kitchen stove and listened to the story Mayo had for him.
The bedraggled cat lapped milk, protected from the resentful jealousy of
the station's regular feline attaché by the one-eyed cook.
And afterward, closeted with Captain Downs and the station captain, Mayo
went over his case.
“I must say you seem to be pretty hard and fast ashore in mighty
sloppy water,” commented the coastguard captain. “It isn't my especial
business--but what do you propose to do?”
“Go to New York and take what they're going to hand me, I suppose. I
ought to have stayed there and faced the music. I have put myself in bad
by running away. But I was rattled.”
“The best of us get rattled,” said the host, consolingly. “I'm not a
policeman, sheriff, or detective, mate. I'll report this case as Captain
Downs and so many souls saved from the schooner _Alden_. You'd better
trot along up to the city and face 'em as a man should. I'll rig you out
in some of my clothes. Your old friend, Wass, meant well by rushing
you away, but I've always found that in a man's fight you can't do much
unless you're close enough to t'other fellow to hit him when he reaches
for you.”
A half-hour later, made presentable in the coast-guard captain's liberty
suit, Mayo walked through the kitchen. Bradish and the cook were still
in front of the stove.
The captain's wife, standing in a door which admitted to an inner room,
put up a finger to signal the young man and then nodded her head in
invitation. “The young lady wants to see you, sir,” she informed him
in a whisper, when he stepped to her side. “Go in!” She closed the door
behind him and remained in the kitchen.
He stood in the middle of the room and gazed at the girl for some time,
and neither of them spoke. She was swathed in blankets and was huddled
in a big chair; her face was wan and her eyes showed her weariness. But
her voice was firm and earnest when she addressed him.
“Captain Mayo, what I am going to say to you will sound very strange.
Tell me that you'll listen to me as you would listen to a man.”
“I'm afraid--” he stammered.
“It's too bad that man and woman can seldom meet on the plane where man
and man meet. But I don't want to be considered a girl just now. I'm one
human being, and you're another, and I owe something to you which must
be paid, or I shall be disgraced by a debt which will worry me all my
life.” She put out her hands and knotted the fingers together in appeal.
“Understand me--help me!”
He was ill at ease. He feared with all his soul to meet the one great
subject.