Chapter 21

“She didn't want to come out and show herself till I had had a talk with you, sir. I have spoken to her through the door a few times.” He straightened himself and assumed dignity. “Captain Downs, I call it to your attention--I want you to remember that I have observed all the proprieties since I have been on board.”

Captain Downs snorted. “Proprieties--poosh! You have got her into a nice scrape! And she's down there locked in like a cat, and probably starving!”

“She doesn't care to eat. I think she isn't feeling very well.”

“I shouldn't think she would! Go bring her up here, where she can get some fresh air. I'll talk to her.”

After a moment's hesitation Bradish went below. He returned in a little while.

In spite of his efforts to pretend obliviousness Mayo stared hard at the companionway, eager to look on the face of the girl. But she did not follow her lover.

“She doesn't feel well enough to come on deck,” reported Bradish. “But she is in the saloon. Captain Downs, won't you go and talk to her and say something to make her feel easy in her mind? She is very nervous. She is frightened.”

“I'm not much of a ladies' man,” stated Old Mull. But he pulled off his cap and smoothed his grizzled hair.

“And if you could only say that you're going to help us!” pleaded the lover. “We throw ourselves on your mercy, sir.”

“I ain't much good as a life-raft in this love business.” He started for the companionway.

“But don't tell her that you will not marry us--not just now. Wait till she is calmer.”

“Oh, I sha'n't tell her! Don't worry!” said Captain Downs, with a grim set to his mouth. “All she, or you, gets out of me can be put in a flea's eye.”

He disappeared down the steps, and Bradish followed. A mate had come aft, obeying the master's hand-flourish, and he took up the watch. In a little while Mayo was relieved. He went forward, conscious that he was a bit irritated and disappointed because he had not seen the heroine of this love adventure, and wondering just a bit at his interest in that young lady.

An hour later Mayo, coiling down lines in the alley outside the engine-room, overheard a bulletin delivered by the one-eyed cook to the engineer.

The cook had trotted forward, his sound eye bulging out and thus mutely expressing much astonishment. “There's a dame aft. I've been making tea and toast for her.”

“Well, you act as if it was the first woman you'd ever seen. What's the special excitement about a skirt going along as passenger?”

“She wa'n't expected to be aboard. I heard the old man talking with her. The flash gent that's passenger has rung her in somehow. I didn't get all the drift be-cause the old man only sort of purred while I was in hearing distance. But I caught enough to know that it ain't according to schedule.”

“Good looker?” The engineer was showing a bit of interest.

“She sure is!” declared the cook, demonstrating that one eye is as handy, sometimes, as two. “Peaches and cream, molasses-candy hair, hands as white as pastry flour. Looks good enough to eat.”

“Nobody would ever guess you are a cook, hearing you describe a girl,” sneered the engineer.

“There's a mystery about her. I heard her kind of taking on before the dude hushed her up. She was saying something about being sorry that she had come, and that she wished she was back, and that she had always done things on the impulse, and didn't stop to think, and so forth, and couldn't the ship be turned around.”

Mayo forgot himself. He stopped coiling ropes and stood there and listened eagerly until the cook's indignant eye chanced to take a swing in his direction.

“Do you see who's standing there butting in on the private talk of two gents?” he asked the engineer. “Hand me that grate-poker--the hot one. I'll show that nigger where he belongs.”

But Mayo retreated in a hurry, knowing that he was not permitted to protest either by word or by look. However, the cook had given him something else besides an insult--he had retailed gossip which kept the young man's thoughts busy.

In spite of his rather contemptuous opinion of the wit of a girl who would hazard such a silly adventure, he found himself pitying her plight, guessing that she was really sorry. But as to what was going on in the master's cabin he had no way of ascertaining. He wondered whether Captain Downs would marry the couple in such equivocal fashion.

At any rate, pondered Mayo, how did it happen to be any affair of his? He had troubles enough of his own to occupy his sole attention.

Their spanking wind from the sou'west let go just as dusk shut down. A yellowish scud dimmed the stars. Mayo heard one of the mates say that the glass had dropped. He smelled nasty weather himself, having the sailor's keen instinct. The topsails were ordered in, and he climbed aloft and had a long, lone struggle before he got the heavy canvas folded and lashed.

When he reached the deck a mate commanded him to fasten the canvas covers over the skylights of the house. The work brought him within range of the conversation which Captain Downs and Bradish were carrying on, pacing the deck together.

“Of course I don't want to throw down anybody, captain,” Bradish was saying. There was an obsequious note in his voice; it was the tone of a man who was affecting confidential cordiality in order to get on--to win a favor. “But I have a lot of sympathy for you and for the rest of the schooner people. I have been right there in the office, and have had a finger in the pie, and I've seen what has been done in a good many cases. Of course, you understand, this is all between us! I'm not giving away any of the office secrets to be used against the big fellows. But I'm willing to show that I'm a friend of yours. And I know you'll be a friend of mine, and keep mum. All is, you can get wise from what I tell you and can keep your eyes peeled from now on.”

Mayo heard fragmentary explanation of how the combination of steamboat and barge interests had operated to leave only pickings to the schooners. The two men were tramping the deck together, and at the turns were too far away from him to be heard distinctly.

“But they're putting over the biggest job of all just now,” proceeded Bradish. “Confound it, Captain Downs, I'm not to be blamed for running away with a man's daughter after watching him operate as long as I have. His motto is, 'Go after it when you see a thing you want in this world.' I've been trained to that system. I've got just as much right to go after a thing as he. I'm treasurer of the Paramount--that's the trust with which they intend to smash the opposition. My job is to ask no questions and to sign checks when they tell me to, and Heaven only knows what kind of a goat it will make of me if they ever have a show-down in the courts! They worked some kind of a shenanigan to grab off the Vose line; I wired a pot of money to Fletcher Fogg, who was doing the dirty work, and it was paid to a clerk to work proxies at the annual meeting. And then Fogg put up some kind of a job on a greenhorn captain--worked a flip trick on the fellow and made him shove the _Montana_ onto the sands. I suppose they'll have the Vose line at their price before I get back.”

Mayo sat there in the shadow, squatting on legs which trembled.

This babbler--tongue loosened by his new liberty and by the antagonism his small nature was developing, anticipating his employer's enmity--had dropped a word of what Mayo knew must be the truth. It had been a trick--and Fletcher Fogg had worked it! Mayo did not know who Fletcher Fogg's employer might be. From what office this tattler came he did not know; but it was evident that Bradish was cognizant of the trick. As a result of that trick, an honest man had been ruined and blacklisted, deprived of opportunity to work in his profession, was a fugitive, a despised sailor, kicked to the Very bottom of the ladder he had climbed so patiently and honorably.

Furious passion bowled over Mayo's prudence. He leaped down from the top of the house and presented himself in front of the two men.

“I heard it--I couldn't help hearing it!” he stuttered.

“Here's a nigger gone crazy!” yelped Captain Downs. “Ahoy, there, for'ard! Tumble aft with a rope!”

“I'm no nigger, and I'm not crazy!” shouted Mayo.

The swinging lantern in the companionway lighted him dimly. But in the gloom his dusky hue was only the more accentuated. His excitement seemed that of a man whose wits had been touched.

“I knew it was a trick. But what was the trick?” he demanded, starting toward Bradish, his clutching hands outspread.

Captain Downs kicked at this obstreperous sailor, and at the same time fanned a blow at his head with open palm.

Mayo avoided both the foot and the hand. “What does the law say about striking a sailor, captain? Hold on, there! I'm just as good a man as you are. Don't you tell those men to lay hands on me.” He backed away from the sailors who came running aft, with the second mate marshaling them. He stripped up his sleeve and held his arm across the radiance of the binnacle light. “That's a white man's skin, isn't it?” he demanded.

“What kind of play-acting is all this?” asked Old Mull, with astonished indignation.

In that crisis Mayo controlled his tongue after a mighty effort to steady himself. He was prompted to obey his mood and announce his identity with all the fury that was in him. But here stood the man who had served as one of the tools of his enemies, whoever they were. For his weapon against this man Mayo had only a few words of gossip which had been dropped in an unwary moment; he realized his position; he regretted his passionate haste. He was not ready to put himself into the power of his enemies by telling this man who he was; he remembered that he was running away from the law.

Bradish gaped at this intruder without seeming to understand what it all meant.

“Passengers better get below out of the muss,” advised Captain Downs. “Here's a crazy nigger, mate. Grab him and tie him up.”

Mayo backed to the rack at the rail and pulled out two belaying-pins, mighty weapons, one for each hand.

Bradish hurried away into the depths of the house, manifestly glad to get out from underfoot.

“Don't you allow those niggers to lay their hands on me,” repeated the man at bay. “Captain Downs, let me have a word to you in private.” He had desperately decided on making a confidant of one of his kind. He bitterly needed the help a master mariner could give him.

“Get at him!” roared the skipper. “Go in, you niggers!”

“By the gods! you'll be short-handed, sir. I'll kill 'em!”

That threat was more effective than mere bluster. Captain Downs instinctively squinted aloft at the scud which was dimming the stars; he sniffed at the volleying wind.

“One word to you, and you'll understand, sir!” pleaded Mayo. He put the pins back into the rack and walked straight to the captain.

There was no menace in his action, and the mate did not interfere.

“Just a word or two to you, sir, to show you that I have done more than throw my hat into the door of the Masters and Mates Association.” He leaned close and whispered. “Now let me tell you something else--in private?” he urged in low tones.

Captain Downs glanced again at the bared arm and surveyed this sailor with more careful scrutiny. “You go around and come into the for'ard cabin through the coach-house door,” he commanded, after a little hesitation.

Mayo bowed and hurried away down the lee alley.

That cabin designated as the place of conference was the dining-saloon of the schooner. He waited there until Captain Downs, moving his bulk more deliberately, trudged down the main companionway and came into the apartment through its after-door which no sailor was allowed to profane.

“Can anybody--in there--hear?” asked Mayo, cautiously. He pointed to the main saloon.

“She's in her stateroom and he's talking through the door,” grunted the skipper. “Now what's on your mind?”

Mayo reached his hand into an inside pocket of his shirt and drew forth a document. He laid it in Captain Downs's hand. The skipper sat down at the table, pulled out his spectacles, and adjusted them on his bulging nose in leisurely fashion, spread the paper on the red damask cloth, and studied it. He tipped down his head and stared at Mayo over the edge of his glasses with true astonishment.

“This your name in these master's papers?” he demanded.

“Yes, sir.”

“You're--you claim to be the Captain Mayo who smashed the _Montana?_”

“I'm the man, sir. I hung on to my papers, even though they have been canceled.”

“How do I know about these papers? How do I know your name is Mayo? You might have stolen 'em--though, for that matter, you might just as well carry a dynamite bomb around in your pocket, for all the good they'll do you.”

“That's the point, sir. They merely prove my identity. Nobody else would want them. Captain Downs, I'm running away from the law. I own up to you. Let me tell you how it happened.”

“Make it short,” snapped the captain, showing no great amiability toward this plucked and discredited master. “The wind is breezing up.”

He told his story concisely and in manly fashion, standing up while Captain Downs sat and stared over his spectacles, drumming his stubby fingers on the red damask.

“There, sir, that's why I am here and how I happened to get here,” Mayo concluded.

“I ain't prepared to say it isn't so,” admitted Old Mull at last, “no matter how foolish it sounds. And I'm wondering if next I'll find the King of Peruvia or the Queen of Sheba aboard this schooner. New folks are piling in fast! I know Captain Wass pretty well, though I never laid eye on you to know you. Where's that wart on his face?”

“Starboard side of his nose, sir.”

“What does he do, whittle off his chaw or bite the plug?”

“Neither. Chews fine cut.”

“What's his favorite line of talk?”

“Reciting the pilot rules and jawing because the big fellows slam along without observing them.”

“Last remark showing that you have been in the pilothouse along with Captain Wass! Examination is over and you rank one hundred and the board stands adjourned!” He rose and shook hands with Mayo. “Now what can I do for you?”

“I don't suppose you can do much of anything, Captain Downs. But I'm going to ask you this, master to masted. Don't let a soul aboard this schooner know who I am--especially those two back there!” He pointed to the door of the main saloon.

“Seems to be more or less of a masked-ball party aboard here!” growled the skipper.

“That man you call Bradish, whoever he is, knows what kind of a game they played on me. I want to get it out of him. If he knows who I am he won't loosen! I was a fool to break in as I did. He was coming across to you.”

“Seemed to be pretty gossipy,” admitted the captain. “Is trying to be my special chum so as to work me!”

“Don't you suppose you can get some more out of him?”

“Might be done.”

“I feel that it's sailors against the shore pirates this time, sir. Won't you call that man out here and ask him some questions and allow me to listen?”

“Under the circumstances I'll do it. Sailors first is my motto. You step into the mate's stateroom, there, and put ear to the crack o' the door.”

But when Bradish appeared, answering the captain's summons, all his chattiness had left him. He declared that he knew nothing about the trouble in the _Montana_ case.

“But you said something about a scheme to fool a green captain?”

“It was only gossip--I probably got it wrong. I have thought it over and really can't remember where I heard it or much about it. Might have been just newspaper faking.”

He kept peering about the dimly lighted room.

“You needn't worry, young man. That nigger isn't here.”

“But he said he was a white man. And how does he come to be interested?”

“It's a nigger gone crazy about that case--he has probably been reading fake stories in the papers, too,” stated Captain Downs, grimly. “I must remind you again, Bradish, that you were talking to me in pretty lively style.”

“Oh, a man lets out a lot of guesswork when he is nervous about his own business.”

“Well, I might fix it so that you'd be a little less nervous, providing you'll show a more willing disposition when I ask you a few questions,” probed the skipper. But this insistence alarmed Bradish and his blinking eyes revealed his fears and suspicions.

“I don't know anything about the _Montana_ case. I don't intend to do any talking about it.”

Captain Downs tapped harder on the table, scowled, and was silent.

“Anything else, sir?” inquired Bradish, after a pause.

“Guess not, if that's the way you feel about it!” snapped Captain Downs.

Bradish went back into the main saloon, and the eavesdropper ventured forth.

“I don't know just what the dickens to do about you, now that I know who you are,” confessed the master, looking Mayo up and down.

“There isn't anything to do except let me go back to my work, sir.”

“I'm in a devil of a position. You're a captain.”

“I shipped on board here before the mast, Captain Downs, and knew exactly what I was doing. I'll take my medicine.”

“I don't like to have you go for'ard there among those cattle, Mayo.”

“Captain Downs, it was wrong for me to make the break I did on your quarter-deck. I ought to have kept still; but the thing came to me so sudden that I went all to pieces. I'd like to step back into the crew and have you forget that I'm Boyd Mayo. I'll sneak ashore in Boston and lose myself.”

The captain tipped up his cap and scratched the side of his head. “Seems 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.