declared the skipper, stoutly. “I'll be cursed if I like to go into a
thing with any half-hearted feller. You're _my_ kind, and after this
you'll find me _your_ kind.” He turned and shouted commands. “Get in
mains'l, close reef fores'l, and let her ride with that and jumbo.”
“That's the idea!” commended Mayo. “The Atlantic Ocean is getting ready
to deal a hand in this game. We have got to stick close if we're going
to see what cards we draw.”
A fishing-schooner, if well handled, is a veritable stormy petrel in
riding out a blow. Even the ominous signs of tempest did not daunt the
two captains. They were there to guard their property and to have their
hopes or their fears realized.
“If the _Conomo_ has got her grit with her and lives through it,” said
Captain Candage, “we'll be here to give her three cheers when it's over.
And if she goes down we'll be on deck to flap her a fare-ye-well.”
In that spirit they snugged everything on board the schooner and
prepared to defy the storm. It came in the night, with a howl of blast
and a fusillade of sleet like bird-shot. It stamped upon the throbbing
sea and made tumult in water and air. At midnight they were wallowing
with only a forestays'l that was iced to the hardness of boiler plate.
But though the vast surges flung their mighty arms in efforts to grasp
the schooner, she dodged and danced on her nimble way and frustrated
their malignity. Her men did not sleep; they thawed themselves in relays
and swarmed on deck again. Each seemed to be animated by personal and
vital interest.
“You can't buy crews like this one with wages,” observed Captain
Candage, icicled beard close to Mayo's ear. “I reckon it was about as my
Polly said--you cast bread on the waters when you took their part on Hue
and Cry.”
The young man, clinging to a cleat and watching the struggles of their
craft, waved a mittened hand to signify that he agreed. In that riot
of tempest and ruck of sea he was straining his eyes, trying to get a
glimpse of the hulk on Razee. But the schooner had worked her way too
far off to the west, pressed to leeward by the relentless palm of the
storm.
Then at last came morning, an opaque dawn that was shrouded with
swirling snow, and all was hidden from their eyes except the tumbling
mountains of water which swept to them, threatened to engulf them,
and then melted under their keel. The captains could only guess at the
extent of their drift, but when the wind quieted after midday, and they
were able to get sail on the schooner, they were in no doubt as to the
direction in which the steamer must lie. They began their sloshing ratch
back to east.
Mayo braved nipping wind and iced rigging and took the glass to the main
crosstrees. He remained there though he was chilled through and through.
At last, near the horizon's rim, he spied a yeasty tumult of the sea,
marking some obstruction at which the waves were tussling. In the midst
of this white welter there was a shape that was almost spectral under
the gray skies. The little schooner pitched so ferociously that only
occasionally could he bring this object into the range of the glass. But
he made sure at last. He clutched the glass and tobogganed to deck down
the slippery shrouds.
“She's there, Captain Candage!” he shouted. “The teeth of old Razee are
still biting.”
They were back to her again before the early night descended. She was
iced to the main truck, and the spray had deposited hillocks of ice on
her deck, weighting her down upon the ledges which had pinioned her. But
in spite of the battering she had received her position had not changed.
They circled her--the midget of a schooner seeming pitifully inadequate
to cope with this monster craft.
“Well,” sighed Captain Candage, “thank the Lord she's still here. Our
work is cut out for us now--whatever it is we can do with her. They say
a mouse set a lion loose once by gnawing his ropes. It looks to me as if
we're going to have some blasted slow gnawing here.”
They lay by her that night in a quieting sea, and spent wakeful hours in
the cabin, struggling rather helplessly with schemes.
“Of course, it's comforting to find her here and to know that the
Atlantic Ocean will have to get more muscle to move her,” said Candage.
“And then again, it ain't so darnation comforting. Looks to me as if
she's stuck there so solid that you couldn't joggle her off if you
hove the moon at her. I reckon my hope has been what yours has been,
Mayo--salvage her whole instead of junking her.”
“I'm a sailor, not a junkman. I'd almost rather let my money go, Captain
Candage, than be a party to smashing up that new steamer into old iron.
She has fooled the guessers by sticking where she is. It has been my
hope from the first that she can be floated. She is not a rusted old
iron rattletrap. Of course, she's got a hole in her, and we can see now
that she's planted mighty solid. But she is sound and tight, I'll wager,
in all her parts except where that wound is. I suppose most men who came
along here now would guess that she can't be got off whole. I'm going
into this thing and try to fool _those_ guessers, too.”
“That's the only real gamble,” agreed the skipper. “We'd only make days'
wages by carving her into a junk-pile. A scrap-heap ain't worth much
except as old iron at half a cent a pound; but a new steamer like that
is worth two hundred thousand dollars, by gorry! if she's afloat.”
“Well, we've got to do something besides lay to here and look at
her lines. In the first place, I want to know what's the matter with
her--about how much of a hole she has got. Our eyes ought to tell us a
little something.”
And on that errand Mayo departed the next morning after breakfast.
Only a sailor, young, alert, and bold, could have scaled the side of
the steamer in that weather. Her ladder was in place, but nothing much
except an exaggerated icicle. But it was on the lee side of her, and
his dory was fairly well protected from the rush of the seas. With his
hatchet he hacked foothold on the ladder, left his men in the dory, and
notched his perilous way to the deck. The fore-hatch was open, just as
the hastily departing salvagers had left it. He went below, down the
frosted iron ladder. He was fronted with a cheerless aspect. Cargo and
water hid what damage she had suffered. The fat man had secured most of
the cargo that the water had not ruined.
He climbed back on deck and explored amidships and aft. Her engine-room
was partially flooded, for her forepeak was propped on the higher part
of the reef, and water had settled aft. Her crew's quarters were above
the main-deck, as is the case with most cargo-carriers of the newer
type. He found plenty of tinned food in the steward's domains, coal in
tie galley bunker, and there was bedding in the officers' staterooms.
Mayo scrambled back to his dory and went aboard the schooner. He
reported his findings.
“And here's the only sensible plan for the present, Captain Candage:
I'll take two men and a dory and go aboard and guard our property.
Somebody must stay here--and I don't want you to take the chances
on that wreck. You've got a daughter. You probably know more of the
shipyard crowd in Limeport than I do. That's the nearest city, and I
believe that when you report that the _Conomo_ is holding after this
storm you can hire some equipment on credit and borrow some money.”
“I swear I'll do my best. I know a lot of water-front folks, and I've
always paid my bills.”
“We need stuff for the whole wrecking game--engine, pumps, and all the
rest. You go and scout on shore and capture a few men and bring 'em out
here to look our prospect over.”
“Offer 'em a lay?”
“No, sir. We'll make this a close corporation. I don't propose to let a
lot of land sharks in here to manipulate us out of what's our own. It's
our gamble, and we want what's coming out of it. Go ashore and see what
you can do on prices and terms. Don't close anything till you and I
have conferred. I'll have a schedule of needs made up by the time you're
back.”
Half an hour later he was located on the wreck with the two men he had
selected as his companions. They carried tackle with them, with
which they hoisted after them their dory--their main bower in case of
emergency.
And the sea which Mayo surveyed was more lonely than ever, for the
_Ethel and May_ was standing off across the heaving surface toward the
main and the hulk was left alone in the expanse of ocean. He felt very
much of a pygmy and very helpless as he scrambled about over the icy
decks. He remembered that faith can move mountains, but he was as yet
unable to determine just what power would be able to move that steamer,
into whose vitals the reef of Razee had poked its teeth.
At eight bells, midnight, Mayo turned out of his berth, for he heard
something that interested him. It was a soft pattering, a gentle
swishing. As a mariner, he knew how sudden can be meteorological changes
on the coast in winter. When the north winds have raged and howled and
have blown themselves out, spitting sleet and snow, the gentler south
winds have their innings and bear balmier moisture from the Gulf Stream.
He poked his head out and felt a soft air and warm rain. He had been
hoping and half expecting that a change of weather would bring this
condition--known as a January thaw. He went back to his bunk, much
comforted.
A bright sun awoke him. Clear skies had succeeded the rain, All was
dripping and melting. Chunks of ice were dropping from the steamer's
stubby masts, and her scuppers were beginning to discharge water from
the softening mass on her deck.
He and his little crew ate breakfast with great good cheer, then secured
axes from the steamer's tool-house and began to chop watercourses in the
ice. A benignant sun in a cloudless sky had enlisted himself as a member
of the wrecking crew on Razee Reef. That weather would soon clear the
_Conomo_ of her sheathing.
This was a cheerful prospect, because rigging and deck equipment of
various kinds would be released. The steamer began to look like a less
discouraging proposition. She was no longer the icicle that had put a
chill into underwriters and bidders. Mayo lost the somberness that had
weighed upon him. The sea did not seem so lonely and so threatening. He
felt that he could show something tangible and hopeful to the parties
whom Captain Can-dage might be able to solicit.
When he saw a tug approaching in the afternoon his optimism suggested
that it brought the skipper and his party; his own hopes were so high
now that he felt that men with equipment and money would be eager
to loan it to parties who possessed such excellent prospects. In this
fashion he translated this apparent haste to get to the reef.
But it was not Captain Candage who hailed him when the tug eased herself
against the ladder, her screw churning the sea in reverse. A stranger
came out of the pilothouse of the _Resolute_, carrying a big leather
suit-case. He was plainly the passenger who had chartered her. A
deck-hand tossed a cast-line to the steamer's deck, and Mayo promptly
threw it back.
“You can't come aboard.”
“Who says so?”
“I say so. I have a bill of sale of her in my pocket.”
“I don't recognize it. The law will have something to say about that
later.”
“I don't care what the law may say later. I'm talking right now. We own
this steamer. What are you here for?”
“I left quite a lot of little personal belongings on her. I went away in
a hurry. I want to come aboard with this valise and get 'em.”
“They must be pretty valuable belongings, seeing that you've chartered a
tug to come out here.”
“A fellow's own property means more to him than it does to anybody else.
Now that I've gone to all this expense, you ain't mean enough are you,
to keep me off? This is between sailors.”
“Who are you?”
The man hesitated. “Well, if I've got to be introduced I'll say my name
is Simpson--I have been second officer aboard there.”
“You're not here with any legal papers--you're not trying any trick to
get possession, are you?”
“Take all in hearing to witness that I ain't! I'll pick up my stuff and
leave in ten minutes.”
“Come aboard, then.”
The man set down his suit-case and hitched a heave-line to the handle.
He coiled the line and handed it to a deck-hand. “Throw that to me when
I'm on deck,” he ordered. Then he came up the ladder.
“Heave, and I'll hoist up the bag,” suggested Mayo at the rail.
“Wait till I get there,” barked the visitor, still climbing. He caught
the line after he had reached the rail and pulled up the case with some
effort and great care.
“Look here, that bag isn't empty,” said Mayo.
“Who said it was? I'm carrying around in it all I own in the world. I'm
starting for New York as soon as this tug sets me ashore.”
He picked up the case and started for the officers' quarters. Mayo went
along, too.
“You afraid I'm going to steal her engine out of her? The few little
things of mine I'm after were hidden away, and that's how I forgot 'em.
Now don't insult me by following me around as if I was a thief.”
“I don't know just what you are,” muttered the young man. “There's
something that looks mighty phony about this, but I haven't got you
sized up just yet.”
“I'll go back--go back right now. I supposed I was asking a favor of
a gentleman and a brother officer.” He started on his return to the
ladder.
“Go get your stuff,” commanded Mayo. “If your business here is all your
own, I don't want to spy on you.”
He went back to question the captain of the tug for information in
regard to the _Ethel and May_.
“She's in Limeport,” reported the captain, elbows on his window-sill.
“Came past her in the inner harbor this morning. You've bit off quite a
chunk here, haven't you? We all thought this storm had sluiced her. Made
quite a stir up and down the water-front when old Can-dage blew along
and reported that she had lived it out.”
“Reckon some of the panic boys are talking in another key about the
prospects out here, about now, aren't they?”
“Ain't so sure about that, sir,” stated the towboat man, loafing into an
easier attitude.
“Isn't there a feeling on shore that we are likely to make good on
this proposition?” There was solicitude in Mayo's voice. He was acutely
anxious. On the sentiment ashore depended Captain Candage's success.
“Can't say that I hear of any!”
“But the talk must--”
“There ain't very much talk--not now. It's generally reckoned that this
packet is a gone goose and folks are talking about something else.”
“But she is here--she is upright and fast! She is--”
The towboat man was not enough interested to listen to statements
concerning the _Conomo's_ condition. “Look-a-here, son,” he broke in,
“do you think for a minute that this thing wouldn't have been grabbed
up by the real people if there had been any show of a make? I know there
isn't a show!”
“How do you know?” demanded Mayo, with indignation.
“Haven't I been talking with the representative of one of the biggest
salvaging companies on the Atlantic coast? He's there in Limeport
now--was aboard my tug this morning.”
“How does he know?”
“Well, he does know. That's his business. And everybody in Limeport
knows what he has said. He hasn't been bashful about expressing his
opinion.”
Mayo leaned over the rail, a baleful light in his eyes indicating what
his own opinions regarding this unknown detractor were, just then.
“I'd like to know who this Lord Guess-so is--barking behind honest men's
backs!”
“Mr. Fogg! That's him! Seems to know his business!”
“Fogg?”
“'Exactly!' That's his great word,” explained the other, grinning. “Some
chap, too, with cigars and language!”
“By the gods, now I know who chartered this tug!” he shouted. “What kind
of a fool am I getting to be?”
He turned and ran toward the officers' quarters. He leaped into the main
passageway and explored headlong the staterooms. There was no sign of
his visitor.
At that moment, in the tumult of his thoughts, he had only a glimmering
of an idea as to what might be the motive of the man's visit. But he
was certain, now, that a wretch who had deliberately wrecked a rival
steamer--if Candage's suspicions were correct--would do almost anything
else for money.
A narrow companionway with brass rails led below to the crew's quarters.
Mayo, coming to the head of it, saw the man hurrying to its foot. The
captain grasped the rails and slid down with one swoop.
“What in the devil's name are you doing?” he gasped.
The intruder grabbed him and threw him to one side, and started up the
companionway. He had dropped the suit-case to seize Mayo, and it bounced
in a way to show that it was empty.
Mayo leaped and grasped the other's legs as he was mounting. The man
kicked him ferociously in the breast before the attacker managed to
pinion the legs in his arms. They went down together, rolling over and
over.
The stranger was stocky and strong, his muscles toughened by a sailor's
activities. Moreover, he seemed to be animated by something more than a
mere grudge or desire to defend himself; he fought with frenzy, beating
his fists into Mayo's face and sides as they rolled. Then he began to
shout. He fairly screamed, struggling to release himself.
But his assailant was just as tough and just as desperate, and he had
a younger man's superior agility. The other had forced the fight. Mayo
proposed to hang to him until he discovered the meaning of this peculiar
ferocity.
He flipped across his prisoner, clutched him by both ears, and rapped
the man's head so smartly on the deck planks that his victim relaxed,
half unconscious.
Then he opened staring eyes. “Let me go! Let me go! I quit. Run for it.
Let me run. We're goners!” he squalled.
“Run? Why?” demanded the victor.
“Dynamite! I've planted it. The fuse is going.”
“Where is it?”
“Below--somewhere. I've forgot. I, can't remember. My mind is gone. I'm
too scared to think. Run!”
Mayo jumped up and yanked the man to his feet. “Take me to it!” he
shouted.
“There ain't time. I guessed at the fuse--it may burn quicker than I
reckoned.”
The young man drove his fist into the other's face and knocked him down.
Then he jerked him upright again.
“Take me where you've planted that dynamite or we'll stay here and go up
together. And now you know I mean what I say.”
The last blow had cowed his man; he raised his fist again.
The visitor leaped away from him and ran along the lower deck, Mayo
at his heels. He led the way aft. In the gloom of betweendecks there
gleamed a red spark. Mayo rushed to it, whipped off his cap, and snuffed
the baleful glow. When he was sure that the fuse was dead he heard his
man scrambling up the companion ladder. He pursued and caught the quarry
as he gained the upper deck, and buffeted the man about the ears and
forced him into a stateroom.
“This means state prison for you! You were guilty of barratry before,
and you know it! How did you dare to try this last trick?”
“I had my orders.”
“Orders from what man?”
“No matter. You needn't ask. I won't tell.” The stranger was sullen, and
had recovered some of his assurance, now that his fear of the dynamite
was removed.
“You're a lunatic. You ought to have known you couldn't pull off a thing
of this kind.”
“I don't know about that! It was working pretty slick. If she had split
and gone off these ledges, you couldn't have proved anything special.
I've got good backing. You better let me go.”
Mayo glared at him, deprived of speech by this effrontrery.
“You'd better come over with the big fellows,” advised the man. “I can
tell you right now that every hole in Limeport has been plugged against
you. You can't hire equipment there, or get a cent's credit. It has all
been nicely attended to. You're here fooling with a dead duck. You'd be
better off if that dynamite had been let alone to split her.”
The entire uselessness of words in a situation like this, the inadequacy
of speech to meet such brazen boldness, checked Mayo's oath-peppered
anathema. He pulled the key from the stateroom door and menaced the
prisoner with his fist when the man started to follow him out.
“You don't dare to keep me aboard here! Take warning by what they have
already done to you, Mayo! I'm sure of my backing.”
“You'll have a chance to use it!” retorted the young man. He dodged out
and locked the stateroom door.
“Your passenger is not going back with you, sir,” he called down over
the rail to the towboat captain.
“I take my orders from him.”
“You are taking them from me now. Cast off!”.
“Look here--”
“I mean what I say, sir. That man you brought out here is going to stay
till I can put him into the hands of the police.”
“What has he done?”
“The less you know about the matter the better it will be for yourself
and your boat! You tell the man who chartered your tug--”
“You have him aboard, there!”
Mayo looked straight into the towboat man's eyes.
“You tell Mr. Fogg, who chartered your tug, that I have his man under
lock and key and that the more riot he starts over the matter the better
I will be satisfied. And don't bring any more passengers out here unless
they are police officers.” Then he roared in his master-mariner tones:
“Cast off your lines, sir. You know what the admiralty law is!”
The captain nodded, closed his pilot-house window, and clanged his bell.
Mayo knew by his mystified air that he was not wholly in the confidence
of his passenger and his employer.
This bungling, barefaced attempt to destroy the steamer touched Mayo's
pride as deeply as it stirred his wrath. Fogg evidently viewed the
pretensions of the new ownership with contempt. He must have belief in
his own power to ruin and to escape consequences, pondered the young
man. He had put Mayo and his humble associates on the plane of the
ordinary piratical wreckers of the coast-men who grabbed without law or
right, who must be prepared to fight other pirates of the same ilk, and
whose affairs could have no standing in a court of law.
Even more disquieting were the statements that the avenues of credit
ashore had been closed. Malicious assertions could ruin the project more
effectually than could dynamite. But now that the _Conomo_ had withstood
the battering of a gale and bulked large on the reef, a visible pledge
of value, it did seem that Captain Candage must be able to find somebody
who would back them.
For two days Mayo waited with much impatience, he and his men doing such
preliminary work as offered itself.
He expected that Fogg would send a relief expedition, but his
apprehensions bore no fruit. His prisoner was sourly reticent and by the
few words he did drop seemed to console himself with the certainty that
retribution awaited Mayo.
On the third day came the schooner. She came listlessly, under a
light wind, and her limp sails seemed to express discouragement and
disappointment. Mayo, gazing across to her as she approached, received
that impression, in spite of his hopes. He got a glimpse of Captain
Candage's face as he came to the steamer's side in his dory, and his
fears were confirmed.
“'Tain't no use,” was the skipper's laconic report as he swung up the
ladder.
“You mean to say you didn't get a rise out of anybody?”
“Nothing doing nowhere. There's a fat man named Fogg in Limeport, and he
is spreading talk that we 'ain't got law or prospects. Got a few men to
listen to me, but they shooed me off when they found that we wouldn't
take 'em in and give 'em all the profits. Went to Maquoit and tried to
get Deacon Rowley into the thing--and when I go and beg favors of Deacon
Rowley, you can imagine how desperate I am. He's a cash-down fellow--you
have found that out.”
“But couldn't you show him that this is the best gamble on the coast?”
“He ain't a gambler; he's a sure-thing operator. And when he knew that
we had put in all our cash, he threatened to take the schooner away from
us unless we go back to fishing and 'be sensible'--that's the way he put
it. So then him and me had that postponed row.”
“But look at her,” pleaded Mayo, waving his hand, “Ice off her, sound in
all her rivets after her beating. If we could get the right men out here
now--”
“I ain't confident, myself, no more,” stated Captain Candage, running
an eye of disfavor over their property. “If ye get out here away from
level-headed business men and dream about what might happen, you can
fool yourself. I can see how it is with you. But I've been ashore, and
I've got it put to me good and plenty. I did think of one way of getting
some money, but I come to my senses and give it up.”
“Getting money--how?”
“No matter. I'd cut off both hands before I'd let them hands take that
money for a desp'rit thing like this. Let's sell her for scrap to
the first man who'll take her--and then mind our own business and go
fishing.”
“Will you take your turn aboard here and let me go ashore?”
“There ain't no sense in us wasting more time.”