Chapter 4

“Maybe he is right. He probably _is_ right. But it wouldn't be shipboard discipline if I told her that I have been wrong. I reckon I'll go aft and be pleasant and genteel, hoping that nothing will happen to rile my feelings. Now that my feelings are calm and peaceful, and having taken course and bearings from a father of five, I'll probably say to her, 'You'd better trot along home, sissy, seeing that I have told you how to mind your eye after this.'”

IV ~ OVER THE “POLLY'S” RAIL

O Stormy was a good old man! To my way you storm along! Physog tough as an old tin pan, Ay, ay, ay, Mister Storm-along! --Storm-along Shanty.

Without paying much attention to the disturber, Captain Candage had been a bit nettled during his meditation. A speed boat from one of the yachts kept circling the _Polly_, carrying a creaming smother of water under its upcocked bow. It was a noisy gnat of a boat and it kicked a contemptuous wake against the rust-streaked old wagon.

When it swept under the counter, after Captain Candage was back on his quarter-deck, he gave it a stare over the rail, and his expression was distinctly unamiable.

“They probably wasted more money on that doostra-bulus than this schooner would sell for in the market today,” he informed Otie.

“They don't care how money goes so long as they didn't have to sweat earning it. Slinging it like they'd sling beans!”

Back on its circling course swished the darting tender. This time the purring motor whined into silence and the boat came drifting alongside.

“On board _Polly!_” hailed one of the yachtsmen, a man with owner's insignia on his cap.

The master of the old schooner stuck his lowering visage farther over the rail, but he did not reply.

“Isn't this _Polly_ the real one?”

“No, it's only a chromo painting of it.”

“Thank you! You're a gentleman!” snapped the yachtsman.

“Oh, hold on, Paul,” urged one of the men in the tender. “There's a right way to handle these old boys.” He stood up. “We're much interested in this packet, captain.”

“That's why you have been making a holy show of her, playing ring around a rosy, hey?”

“But tell me, isn't this the old shallop that was a privateer in the war of eighteen twelve?”

“Nobody aboard here has ever said she wasn't.”

“Well, sir, may we not come on board and look her over?”

“No sir, you can't.”

“Now, look here, captain--”

“I'm looking!” declared the master of the _Polly_ in ominous tones.

“We don't mean to annoy you, captain.”

“Folks who don't know any better do a lot of things without meaning to.”

Captain Candage regularly entertained a sea-toiler's resentment for men who used the ocean as a mere playground. But more especially, during those later days, his general temper was touchy in regard to dapper young men, for he had faced a problem of the home which had tried his soul. He felt an unreasoning choler rising in him in respect to these chaps, who seemed to have no troubles of their own.

“I am a writer,” explained the other. “If I may be allowed on board I'll take a few pictures and--”

“And make fun of me and my bo't by putting a piece in the paper to tickle city dudes. Fend off!” he commanded, noticing that the tender was drifting toward the schooner's side and that one of the crew had set a boat-hook against the main chain-plate.

“Don't bother with the old crab,” advised the owner, sourly.

But the other persisted, courteously, even humbly. “I am afraid you do not understand me, captain. I would as soon make jest of my mother as of this noble old relic.”

“Go ahead! Call it names!”

“I am taking off my hat to it,” he declared, whipping his cap from his head. “My father's grandfather was in the war of eighteen twelve. I want to honor this old patriot here with the best tribute my pen can pay. If you will allow me to come on board I shall feel as though I were stepping upon a sacred spot, and I can assure you that my friends, here, have just as much respect for this craft as I have.”

But this honest appeal did not soften Captain Candage. He did not understand exactly from what source this general rancor of his flowed. At the same time he was conscious of the chief reason why he did not want to allow these visitors to rummage aboard the schooner. They would meet his daughter, and he was afraid, and he was bitterly ashamed of himself because he was afraid. Dimly he was aware that this everlasting fear on her account constituted an insult to her. The finer impulse to protect her privacy was not actuating him; he knew that, too. He was merely foolishly afraid to trust her in the company of young men, and the combination of his emotions produced the simplest product of mental upheaval--unreasonable wrath.

“Fend off, I say,” he commanded.

“Again I beg you, captain, with all respect, please may we come on board?”

“You get away from here and tend to your own business, if you've got any, or I'll heave a bunch of shingles at you!” roared the skipper.

“Father!” The voice expressed indignant reproof. “Father, I am ashamed of you!”

The girl came to the rail, and the yachtsmen stared at her as if she were Aphrodite risen from the sea instead of a mighty pretty girl emerging from a dark companion-way. She had appeared so suddenly! She was so manifestly incongruous in her surroundings.

“Mother o' mermaids!” muttered the yacht-owner in the ear of the man nearest. “Is the old rat still privateering?”

The men in the tender stood up and removed their caps.

“You have insulted these gentlemen, father!”

Captain Candage knew it, and that fact did not soften his anger in the least. At the same time this appearance of his own daughter to read him a lesson in manners in public was presumption too preposterous to be endured; her daring gave him something tangible for his resentment to attack.

He turned on her. “You go below where you belong.”

“I belong up here just now.”

“Down below with you!”

“I'll not go until you apologize to these gentlemen, father!”

“You ain't ashore now, miss, to tell me when to wipe my feet and not muss the tidies! You're on the high seas, and I'm cap'n of this vessel. Below, I say!”

“These gentlemen know the _Polly_, and they will find out the name of the man who commands her, and I don't propose to have it said that the Candages are heathens,” she declared, firmly. “If you do not apologize, father, I shall apologize for you.” She tried to crowd past him to the rail, but he clapped his brown hand over her mouth and pushed her back. His natural impulse as commander of his craft dominated his feelings as a father.

“I'll teach ye shipboard discipline, Polly Candage,” he growled, “even if I have to take ye acrost my knee.”

“Hold on there, if you please, captain,” called the spokesman of the yachtsmen.

Captain Candage was hustling his daughter toward the companionway. But there was authority in the tone, and he paused and jutted a challenging chin over his shoulder.

“What have any of you critters got to say about my private business?”

The formality of the man in the tender was a bit exaggerated in his reply. “Only this, sir. We are going away at once before we bring any more trouble upon this young lady, to whom we tender our most respectful compliments. We do not know any other way of helping her. Our protests, being the protests of gentlemen, might not be able to penetrate; it takes a drill to get through the hide of a rhinoceros!”

The skipper of the _Polly_ did not trouble himself about the finer shadings in that little speech, but of one fact he felt sure: he had been called a rhinoceros. He released his daughter, yanked the marlinespike away from Otie, who had been holding himself in the background as a reserve force, and stamped to the rail. He poised his weapon, fanning it to and fro to take sure aim. But the engineer had thrown in his clutch and the speed boat foamed off before the captain got the range, and he was too thrifty to heave a perfectly good marlinespike after a target he could not hit, angry as he was.

The girl faced her father. There was no doubting her mood. She was a rebel. Indignation set up its flaming standards on her cheeks, and the signal-flames of combat sparkled in her eyes.

“How did you dare to do such a thing to me--those gentlemen looking on? Father, have you lost your mind?”

Otie expressed the opinion tinder his breath that the captain, on the contrary, had “lost his number.”

Otie's superior officer was stamping around the quarterdeck, kicking at loose objects, and avoiding his daughter's resentful gaze. There was a note of insincerity in his bluster, as if he wanted to hide embarrassment in a cloud of his own vaporings, as a squid colors water when it fears capture.

“After this you call me Cap'n Candage,” he commanded. “After this I'm Cap'n Candage on the high seas, and I propose to run my own quarter-deck. And when I let a crowd of dudes traipse on board here to peek and spy and grin and flirt with you, you'll have clamshells for finger-nails. Now, my lady, I don't want any back talk!”

“But I am going to talk to you, father!”

“Remember that I'm a Candage, and back talk--”

“So am I a Candage--and I have just been ashamed of it!”

“I'm going to have discipline on my own quarterdeck.”

“Back talk, quarter-deck discipline, calling you captain! Fol-de-rol and fiddlesticks! I'm your own daughter and you're my father. And you have brought us both to shame! There! I don't want to stay on this old hulk, and I'm not going to stay. I am going home to Aunt Zilpah.”

“I had made up my mind to let you go. My temper was mild and sweet till those jeehoofered, gold-trimmed sons of a striped--”

“Father!”

“I had made up my mind to let you go. But I ain't going to give in to a mutiny right before the face and eyes of my own crew.”

Smut-nosed Dolph had arrived with the supper-dishes balanced in his arms while he crawled over the deckload. He was listening with the utmost interest.

“Your Aunt Zilpah has aided and abetted you in your flirting,” raged the captain. “My own sister, taking advantage of my being off to sea trying to earn money--”

“Do you mean to insult everybody in this world, father? I shall go home, I say. I'm miserable here.”

“I'll see to it that you ain't off gamboling and galley-westing with dudes!”

In spite of her spirit the girl was not able to bandy retort longer with this hard-shelled mariner, whose weapon among his kind for years had been a rude tongue. Shocked grief put an end to her poor little rebellion. Tears came.

“You are giving these two men a budget to carry home and spread about the village! Oh, father, you are wicked--wicked!” She put her hands to her face, sobbed, and then ran away down into the gloomy cabin.

There was a long silence on the quarter-deck. Otie recovered his marlinespike and began to pound the eye-bolt.

“Without presuming, preaching, or poking into things that ain't none of my business, I want to say that I don't blame you one mite, cap'n,” he volunteered. “No matter what she says, she wasn't to be trusted among them dudes on shore, and I speak from observation and, being an old bach, I can speak impartial. The dudes on the water is just as bad. Them fellows were flirting with her all the time they was 'longside. Real men that means decent ain't called on to keep whisking their caps off and on all the time a woman is in sight--and I see one of 'em wink at her.”

Captain Candage was in a mood to accept this comfort from Oakum Otie, and to put out of his contrite conscience the memory of what Captain Ranse Lougee had said.

“Don't you worry! I've got her now where I can keep my eye on her, and I'm cap'n of my own vessel--don't nobody ever forget that!” He shook his fist at the gaping cook. “What ye standing there for, like a hen-coop with the door open and letting my vittels cool off? Hiper your boots! Down below with you and dish that supper onto the table!”

The skipper lingered on deck, his hand at his ear.

The fog was settling over the inner harbor. In the dim vastness seaward a steamer was hooting. Each prolonged blast, at half-minute intervals, sounded nearer. The sound was deep, full-toned, a mighty diapason.

“What big fellow can it be that's coming in here?” the captain grunted.

“Most likely only another tin skimmer of a yacht,” suggested the mate, tossing the eye-splice and the marline-spike into the open hatch of the lazaret. “You know what they like to do, them play-critters! They stick on a whistle that's big enough for Seguin fog-horn.” He squinted under the edge of his palm and waited. “There she looms. What did I tell ye? Nothing but a yacht.”

“But she's a bouncer,” remarked the skipper. “What do you make her?”

“O--L,” spelled Otie--“O--L--_Olenia_. Must be a local pilot aboard. None of them New York spiffer captains could find Saturday Cove through the feather-tide that's outside just now.”

“Well, whether they can or whether they can't isn't of any interest to me,” stated the skipper, with fine indifference. “I'd hate to be in a tight place and have to depend on one of them gilded dudes! I smell supper. Come on!”

He was a little uncertain as to what demeanor he ought to assume below, but he clumped down the companion-way with considerable show of confidence, and Otie followed.

The captain cast a sharp glance at his daughter. He had been afraid that he would find her crying, and he did not know how to handle such cases with any certainty.

But she had dried her eyes and she gave him no very amiable look--rather, she hinted defiance. He felt more at ease. In his opinion, any person who had spirit enough left for fight was in a mood to keep on enjoying life.

“Perhaps I went a mite too far, Polly,” he admitted. He was mild, but he preserved a little touch of surliness in order that she might not conclude that her victory was won. “But seeing that I brought you off to sea to get you away from flirting--”

“Don't you dare to say that about me!” She beat her round little fist on the table. “Don't you dare!”

“I don't mean that you ever done it! The dudes done it! I want to do right by you, Polly. I've been to sea so long that I don't know much about ways and manners, I reckon. I can't get a good line on things as I ought to. I'm an old fool, I reckon.” His voice trembled. “But it made me mad to have you stram up there on deck and call me names before 'em.”

She did not reply.

“I have always worked hard for you--sailing the seas and going without things myself, so that you could have 'em--doing the best I could ever after your poor mother passed on.”

“I am grateful to you, father. But you don't understand a girl--oh, you don't understand! But let's not talk about it any more--not now.”

“I ain't saying to-night--I ain't making promises! But maybe--we'll see how things shape up--maybe I'll send you back home. Maybe it 'll be to-morrow. We'll see how the stage runs to the train, and so forth!”

“I am going to leave it all to you, father. I'm sure you mean to do right.” She served the food as mistress at the board.

“It seems homelike with you here,” said Captain Can-dage, meekly and wistfully.

“I will stay with you, father, if it will make you happier.”

“I sha'n't listen to anything of the sort. It ain't no place aboard here for a girl.”

Through the open port they heard the frequent clanging of the steam-yacht's engine-room bell and the riot of her swishing screws as she eased herself into an anchorage. She was very near them--so near that they could hear the chatter of the voices of gay folk.

“What boat is that, father?”

“Another frosted-caker! I can't remember the name.”

“It's the _Oilyena_ or something like that. I forget fancy names pretty quick,” Otie informed her.

“Well, it ain't much use to load your mind down with that kind of sculch,” stated Captain Candage, poising a potato on his fork-tines and peeling it, his elbows on the table. “That yacht and the kind of folks that's aboard that yacht ain't of any account to folks like us.”

The memory of some remarks which are uttered with peculiar fervor remains with the utterer. Some time later--long after--Captain Candage remembered that remark and informed himself that, outside of weather predictions, he was a mighty poor prophet.

V ~ ON THE BRIDGE OF YACHT “_OLENIA_”

O the times are hard and the wages low, Leave her, bullies, leave her! I guess it's time for us to go, It's time for us to leave her. --Across the Western Ocean.

Captain Mayo was not finding responsibility his chief worry while the _Olenia_ was making port.

It was a real mariner's job to drive her through the fog, stab the harbor entrance, and hunt out elbow-room for her in a crowded anchorage. But all that was in the line of the day's work. While he watched the compass, estimated tide drift, allowed for reduced speed, and listened for the echoes which would tell him his distance from the rocky shore, he was engaged in the more absorbing occupation of canvassing his personal affairs.

As the hired master of a private yacht he might have overlooked that affront from the owner, even though it was delivered to a captain on the bridge.

But love has a pride of its own. He had been abused like a lackey in the hearing of Alma Marston. It was evident that the owner had not finished the job. Mayo knew that he had merely postponed his evil moment by sending back a reply which would undoubtedly seem like insubordination in the judgment of a man who did not understand ship discipline and etiquette of the sea.

It was evident that Marston intended to call him “upon the carpet” on the quarter-deck as soon as the yacht was anchored, and proposed to continue that insulting arraignment.

In his new pride, in the love which now made all other matters of life so insignificant, Mayo was afraid of himself; he knew his limitations in the matter of submission; even then he felt a hankering to walk aft and jounce Julius Marston up and down in his hammock chair. He did not believe he could stand calmly in the presence of Alma Marston and listen to any unjust berating, even from her father.

He tried to put his flaming resentment out of his thoughts, but he could not. In the end, he told himself that perhaps it was just as well! Alma Marston must have pride of her own. She could not continue to love a man who remained in the position of her father's hireling; she would surely be ashamed of a lover who was willing to hump his back and take a lashing in public. His desire to be with her, even at the cost of his pride, was making him less a man and he knew it. He decided to face Marston, man fashion, and then go away. He felt that she would understand in spite of her grief.

Then, turning from a look at the compass, he saw that the yacht's owner was on the bridge. Half of an un-lighted cigar, which was soggy with the dampness of the fog, plugged Marston's-mouth.

He scowled when the captain saluted.

“You needn't bother to talk now,” the millionaire broke in when Mayo began an explanation of his delay in obeying the call to the quarter-deck. “When I have anything to say to a man I want his undivided attention. Is this fog going to hold on?”

“Yes, sir, until the wind hauls more to the norrard.”

“Then anchor.”

“I am heading into Saturday Cove now, sir.”

“Anchor here.”

“I'm looking for considerably more than a capful of wind when it comes, sir. It isn't prudent to anchor offshore.”

Marston grunted and turned away. He stood at the end of the bridge, chewing on the cigar, until the _Olenia_ was in the harbor with mudhook set. Mayo twitched the jingle bell, signaling release to the engineer.

“I am at your service, sir,” he reported, walking to the owner.

Marston rolled the plugging cigar to a corner of his mouth and inquired, “Now, young man, tell me what you mean by saluting a Bee line steamer with my whistle?”

“I did not salute the _Conomo_, sir.”

“You gave her three whistles.”

“Yes, but--”

“You're on a gentleman's yacht now, young man, and not on a fishing-steamer. Yachting etiquette doesn't allow a steam-whistle to be sounded in salute. Mr. Beveridge has just looked it up for me, and I know, and you need not assume any of your important knowledge.” Marston seemed to be displaying much more irritation than a small matter warranted. But what he added afforded more light on the subject. “The manager of the Bee line was on board that steamer. You heard him hoot that siren at me!”

“I heard him give me cross-signals in defiance of the rules of the road, sir.”

“Didn't you know that he whistled at me as an insult--as a sneer?”

“I heard only ordinary signals, sir.”

“Everything is ordinary to a sailor's observation! You allowed him to crowd you off your course. You made a spectacle of my yacht, splashing it around like a frightened duck.”

“I was avoiding collision, sir.”

“You should have made your bigness with my yacht! You sneaked and dodged like a fishing-boat skipper. Was it on a fishing-boat you were trained to those tricks?”

“I have commanded a fishing-steamer, sir.”

“On top of it all you gave him three whistles--regular fishing-boat manners, eh?”

Captain Mayo straightened and his face and eyes expressed the spirit of a Yankee skipper who knew that he was right.

“I say,” insisted Marston, “that you saluted him.”

“And I say, sir, that he cross-signaled, an offense that has lost masters their licenses. When I was pinched I gave him three whistles to say that my engines were going full speed astern. If Mr. Beveridge had looked farther in that book he might have found that rule, too!”

“When I looked up at the bridge, here, you were waving your hand to him--three whistles and a hand-wave! You can't deny that you were saluting!”

“I was shaking my fist at him, sir.”

Within himself Captain Mayo was frankly wondering because the owner of the _Olenia_ was displaying all this heat. He remembered the taunt from the pilot-house of the _Conomo_ and understood vaguely that there were depths in the affair which he had not fathomed. But he was in no mood to atone vicariously for the offenders aboard the _Conomo_.

“If I could have found a New York captain who knew the short cuts along this coast I could have had some decency and dignity on board my yacht. I'm even forgetting my own sense of what is proper--out here wasting words and time in this fashion. You're all of the same breed, you down-easters!”

“I am quite sure you can find a New York captain--” began Mayo.

“I don't want your opinion in regard to my business, young man. When I need suggestions from you I'll ask for them.” He flung his soggy cigar over the rail and went down the ladder, and the fog closed immediately behind him.

Captain Mayo paced the bridge. He was alone there. A deck-hand had hooded the brass of the binnacle and search-light, listening while the owner had called the master to account. Mayo knew that the full report of that affair would be carried to the forecastle. His position aboard the yacht had become intolerable. He wondered how much Marston would say aft. His cheeks were hot and rancor rasped in his thoughts. In the hearing of the girl he adored his shortcomings would be the subject for a few moments of contemptuous discourse, even as the failings of cooks form a topic for idle chatter at the dinner-table.

Out of the blank silence of the wrapping fog came many sounds. Noises carried far and the voice of an unseen singer, who timed himself to the clank of an Apple-treer pump, brought to Mayo the words of an old shanty: