Chapter 5

“Come all you young fellows that follow the sea, Now pray pay attention and lis-ten to me. O blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down! Way-ay, blow the man down. O blow the man down in Liverpool town! Give me some time to blow the man down. 'Twas aboard a Black-Bailer I first served my time, And in that Black-Bailer I wasted my prime. 'Tis larboard and starboard on deck you will sprawl, For blowers and strikers command the Black Ball. So, it's blow the man down, bullies--”

Alma Marston's voice interrupted his somber appreciation of the significance of that ditty. “Are you up there, Boyd?” she asked, in cautious tones.

He hurried to the head of the ladder and saw her at its foot, half hidden in the mists even at that short distance. He reached down his hand and she came up, grasping it.

She was studying his expression with both eagerness and apprehension. “I couldn't stay away from you any longer,” she declared. “The fog is good to us! Father could not see me as I came forward. I must tell you, Boyd. He has ordered me to stay aft.”

He did not speak.

“Has he dared to say to you what he has been saying below about you?”

“I don't think it needed any especial daring on your father's part; I am only his servant,” he said, with bitterness.

“And he--he insulted you like that?”

“I suppose your father did not look on what he said as insult. I repeat, I am a paid servant.”

“But what you did was right! I know it must have been right, for you know everything about what is right to do on the sea.”

“I understand my duties.”

“And he blamed you for something?”

“It was a bit worse than that from my viewpoint.” He smiled down at her, for her eyes were searching his face as if appealing for a bit of consolation.

“Boyd, don't mind him,” she entreated. “Somebody who has been fighting him in business has been very naughty. I don't know just what it's all about. But he has so many matters to worry him. And he snaps at me just the same, every now and then.”

“Yes, some men are cowards enough to abuse those who must look to them for the comforts of this world,” he declared.

“We must make allowances.”

“I'll not stay in a position where a man who hires me thinks he can talk to me as if I were a foremast hand. Alma, you would despise me if I allowed myself to be kicked around like a dog.”

“I would love you all the more for being willing to sacrifice something for my sake. I want you here--here with all your love--here with me as long as these summer days last.” She patted his cheek. “Why don't you tell me that you want to stay with me, Boyd? That you will die if we cannot be together? We can see each other here. I can bring Nan Burgess on the bridge with me. Father will not mind then. Let each day take care of itself!”

“I want to be what you want me to be--to do what you want me to do. But I wish you would tell me to go out into the world and make something of myself. Alma, tell me to go! And wait for me!”

She laid her face against his shoulder and reached for his fingers, endeavoring to pull one of his arms about her. But both of his hands were clutching the rail of the bridge. He resisted.

“Are you going to be like all the rest? Just money and trouble and worry?” She stretched up on tiptoe and brushed a kiss across his fog-wet cheek. “Are you asleep, my big boy? Yesterday you were awake.”

“I think I am really awake to-day, and that I was dreaming yesterday. Alma, I cannot sneak behind your father's back to make love to you. I can't do it. I'm going to give up this position. I can't endure it.”

“I say 'No!' I need you.”

“But--”

“I'll not give you up.”

There was something dramatic in her declaration; her demeanor expressed the placid calm of absolute proprietorship. She worked his unwilling fingers free from the rail.

“I love you because you can forget yourself. Now don't be like all the others.”

He realized that a queer little sting of impatience was pricking him. The girl did not seem to understand what his manhood was prompting.

“You mustn't be selfish, Boyd!”

She put into words the vague thought which had been troubling him in regard to her attitude; and now that he understood what his thought had been he was incensed by what seemed his own disloyalty. And yet, the girl was asking him to make over his nature!

“I'm afraid it's all wrong. These things never seem to come out right,” he mourned.

“You are trying to turn the world upside down all at once--and all alone. Don't think so much, you solemn Yankee. Just love!”

He put his aims about her. “I'm sailing in new waters. I don't seem to know the true course or the right bearings!”

“Let's stay anchored until the fog lifts! Isn't that what sailors usually do?”

He confessed it, kissing her when she lifted her tantalizing face from his shoulder.

“Now you'll let the future alone, won't you?” she asked.

“Yes.” But even while he promised he was obliged to face that future.

Julius Marston, at the foot of the ladder, called to his daughter. “Are you up there?” he demanded, sharply.

“Yes, father.”

“Come down here.”

She gave her lover a hasty caress and obeyed.

Captain Mayo was obliged to listen. Marston, in his anger, showed no consideration for possible eavesdroppers.

“I have told you to stay aft where you belong.”

“Really, father, I don't understand why--”

“Those are my orders! I understand. _You_ don't need to understand. This world is full of cheap fellows who misinterpret actions.”

Captain Mayo grasped the rails of the bridge ladder and did down to the deck without touching his feet to the treads. He appeared before the father and daughter with startling suddenness.

“Mr. Marston, I am leaving my position on board here as soon as you can get another man to take my place.”

“You are, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You signed papers for the season. It is not convenient for me to make a change.” Marston spoke with the crispness of a man who had settled the matter.

Captain Mayo was conscious that the girl was trying to attract his gaze, but he kept his eyes resolutely from her face.

“I insist on being relieved.”

“I have no patience with childishness in a man! I found it necessary to reprimand you. You'll probably know your place after this.” He turned away.

“I have decided that I do not belong on this yacht,” stated Mayo, with an emphasis he knew the girl would understand. “You must get another master!”

“I cannot pick captains out of this fog, and I allow no man to tell me my own business. I shall keep you to your written agreement. Hold yourself in readiness to carry telegrams ashore for me. I take it there is an office here?”

“There is, sir,” returned Mayo, stiffly.

The girl, departing, bestowed on him a pretty grimace of triumph, plainly rejoicing because his impetuous resignation had been overruled so autocratically. But Mayo gave a somber return to the raillery of her eyes. He had spoken out to Marston as a man, and had been treated with the contemptuous indifference which would be accorded to a bond-servant. He was wounded by the light manner in which she viewed that affront, even though her own father offered it.

He stood there alone for a time, meditating various rash acts. But under all the tumult of his feelings was the realization that the responsibility for that yacht's discipline and safety rested on his shoulders and he went about his duties. He called two of the crew and ordered the gangway steps down and the port dinghy cleared and lowered. Then he went to the chart-room and sat on a locker and tried to figure out whether he was wonderfully happy or supremely miserable.

Marston promptly closeted himself with his three wise men of business after he went aft. “We'll frame up those telegrams now and get them off,” he told them. “I thought I'd better wait until I had worked the bile out of my system. Never try to do sane and safe business when you're angry, gentlemen! I'm afraid those telegrams would not have been exactly coherent if I had written them right after that Bee liner smashed past us.”

“I have been ready to believe that Tucker would come in with us on the right lay,” said one of the associates.

“So did I,” agreed Marston. “I have thought all his loud talk has been bluff to beat up a bigger price. But, after what he did to-day! Oh no! He is out to fight and he grabbed his chance to show us! I do not believe a lot of this regular fight talk. But when a man comes up and smashes me between the eyes I begin to suspect his intentions.”

“There's no need of dickering with him any longer, Mr. Marston. He made his work as dirty as he could to-day--he has left nothing open to doubt.”

“I'm sorry,” said another of the group. “Tucker has let himself get ugly.”

“So have I,” replied Marston, dryly. “And I'm growing senile, too, I'm afraid. I went forward and wasted as much anathema on that skipper of mine as I would use up in putting through a half-million deal with an opposition traffic line. Next thing I know I'll be arguing with, the smoke-stack. But I must confess, gentlemen, that Tucker rather took my breath away to-day. Either he has become absolutely crazy or else he doesn't understand the strength of the combination.”

“He hasn't waked up yet. He doesn't know what's against him.”

“That may be our fault, in a measure,” stated one of the men. “We haven't been able to let men like Tucker in on the full details.”

“In business it's the good guesser who wins,” declared Marston. “Our merger isn't a thing to be advertised. And if we do any more explaining to Tucker the whole plan _will_ be advertised, you can depend on it. The infernal fool has been holding us up three months, demanding more knowledge--and he can't be trusted. There's only one thing to do, gentlemen! That!” He drove his fist into his palm with significant thud.

“Is the Bee line absolutely essential in our plans?”

“Every line along this coast is essential in making that merger stock an air-tight proposition.”

“It's a new line and is not paying dividends.”

“Well, for that matter, it's got nothing in that respect on some of the other lines we're salting down in the merger,” suggested a member of the party, speaking for the first time.

“I'm afraid you said it then, Thompson! American bottoms seem to be turned into barnacle-gardens,” declared the man who had questioned the matter of Tucker's value.

“Gentlemen, just a moment!” Julius Marston leaned forward in his chair. His voice was low. His eyes narrowed. He dominated them by his earnestness. “You have followed me in a number of enterprises, and we have had good luck. But let me tell you that we have ahead of us the biggest thing yet, and we cannot afford to leave one loose end! Not one, gentlemen! That's why a fool like Tucker doesn't deserve any consideration when he gets in our way. Listen to me! The biggest thing that has ever happened in this world is going to happen. How do I know? I am not sure that I do know. But as I have just told you, the man who guesses right is the winner.” His thin nose was wrinkled, and the strip of beard on his chin bristled. Sometimes men called Marston “the fox of Wall Street.” He suggested the reason for his nickname as he sat there and squinted at his associates. “And there's an instinct that helps some men to guess right. Something is going to happen in this world before long that will make millionaires over and over out of men who have invested a few thousands in American bottoms.”

“What will happen?” bluntly inquired one of the men, after a silence.

“I am neither clairvoyant nor crystal-gazer,” said Marston, grimly. “But I have led you into some good things when my instinct has whispered. I say it's going to happen--and I say no more.”

“To make American bottoms worth while the whole of Europe will have to be busy doing something else with their ships.”

“All right! Then they'll be doing it,” returned Marston.

“It would have to be a war--a big war.”

“Very well! Maybe that's the answer.”

“But there never can be another big war. As a financier you know it.”

“I have made some money by adhering to the hard and fast rules of finance. But I have made the most of my money by turning my back on those rules and listening to my instinct,” was Marston's rejoinder. “I don't want to over-influence you, gentlemen. I don't care to discuss any further what you may consider to be dreams. I am not predicting a great war in Europe. Common sense argues the other way. But I am going into this ship-merger proposition with every ounce of brains and energy and capital I possess. The man who gets in my way is trying to keep these two hands of mine off millions!” He shook his clutched fists above his head. “And I'll walk over him, by the gods! whether it's Tucker or anybody else. We have had some good talks on the subject, first and last. I'm starting now to fight and smash opposition. What do you propose to do in the matter, gentlemen?”

They were silent for a time, looking at one another, querying without words. Then out of their knowledge of Julius Marston's uncanny abilities, remembering their past successes, came resolve.

“We're in with you to the last dollar,” they assured him, one after the other.

“Very well! You're wise!”

He unlocked a drawer of his desk and secured a code-book. He pressed a buzzer and the secretary came hurrying from his stateroom.

“We'll open action, gentlemen, with a little long-distance skirmish over the wire.”

He began to dictate his telegrams.

VI ~ AND WE SAILED

O Johnny's gone to Baltimore To dance upon that sanded floor. O Johnny's gone for evermore; I'll never see my John no more! O Johnny's gone! What shall I do? A-way you. H-e-e l-o-o-o! O Johnny's gone! What shall I do? Johnny's gone to Hilo. --Old Hauling Song.

The taciturn secretary fumbled his way forward and delivered to Captain Mayo a little packet securely bound with tape.

“Orders from Mr. Marston that you take these ashore, yourself. They are important telegrams and he wants them hurried.”

The master called his men to the dinghy, and they rowed him away through the fog. It was a touchy job, picking his way through that murk. He stood up, leaning forward holding to his taut tiller-ropes, and more by ears than his eyes directed his course. A few of the anchored craft, knowing that they were in the harbor roadway, clanged their bells lazily once in a while. Yacht tenders were making their rounds, carrying parties who were paying and returning calls, and these boats were avoiding each other by loud hails. Small objects loomed largely and little sounds were accentuated.

The far voice of an unseen joker announced that he could find his way through the fog all right, but was afraid he had not strength enough to push his boat through it.

But Mayo knew his waters in that harbor, and found his way to the wharf. His real difficulties confronted him at the village telegraph office. The visiting yachtsmen had flooded the place with messages, and the flustered young woman was in a condition nearly resembling hysteria. She was defiantly declaring that she would not accept any more telegrams. Instead of setting at work upon those already filed she was spending her time explaining her limitations to later arrivals.

Captain Mayo stood at one side and looked on for a few moments. A gentle nudge on his elbow called his attention to an elderly man with stringy whiskers, who thus solicited his notice. The man held a folded paper gingerly by one corner, exhibiting profound respect for his minute burden.

“You ain't one of these yachting dudes--you're a skipper, ain't you?” asked the man.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, then, I can talk to you, as one officer to another--and glad to meet one of my own breed. I'm first mate of the schooner _Polly_. Mr. Speed is my name.”

Captain Mayo nodded.

“And I need help and advice. This is the first tele-graft I ever had in my hands. I'd rather be aholt of an iced halyard in a no'easter! I've been sent ashore to telegraft it, and now she says she won't stick it onto the wire, however it is they do the blasted trick.”

Captain Mayo had already noticed that the messengers from the yachts were killing time by teasing the flustered young woman; it was good-humored badinage, but it was effectively blocking progress at that end of the line.

He felt a “native's” instinctive impulse to go to the relief of the young woman who was being baited by the merrymakers; the responsibility of his own errand prompted him to help her clear decks. But he waited, hoping that the yachtsmen would go about their business.

“From the _Polly_, Mr. Speed?” he inquired, amiably. “Is the Polly in the harbor? I didn't notice her in the fog.”

“Reckon you know her, by the way you speak of her,” replied the gratified Mr. Speed.

“I ought to, sir. She was built at Mayoport by my great-grandfather before the Mayo yards began to turn out ships.”

“Well, I swanny! Be you a Mayo?”

The captain bowed and smiled at the enthusiasm displayed by Mr. Speed.

“By ginger! that sort of puts you right into _our_ fambly, so to speak!” The mate surveyed him with interest and with increasing confidence. “I'm in a mess, Cap'n Mayo, and I need advice and comfort, I reckon. I was headed on a straight tack toward my regular duty, and all of a sudden I found myself jibed and in stays, and I'm there now and drifting. Seeing that your folks built the _Polly_, I consider that you're in the fambly, and that Proverdunce put you right here to-night in this telegraft office. Do you know Cap'n Epps Candage?”

Mayo shook his head.

“Or his girl, Polly, named for the _Polly?_”

“No, I must confess.”

“Well, it may be just as well for ye that ye don't,” said Oakum Otie, twisting his straggly beard into a spill and blinking nervously. “There I was, headed straight and keeping true course, and then she looked at me and there was a tremble in her voice and tears in her eyes--and the next thing I knowed I was here in this telegraft place with this!” He held up the folded paper and his hand shook.

Captain Mayo did not understand, and therefore he made no remarks.

“There was a song old Ephrum Wack used to sing,” went on Mr. Speed, getting more confidential and making sure that the other men in the room were too much occupied to listen. “Chorus went:

“I ain't afeard of the raging sea, Nor critters that's in it, whatever they be. But a witch of a woman is what skeers me!

“There I've been, standing by Cap'n Epps in the whole dingdo, and she got me one side and looked at me and says a few things with a quiver in her voice and her eyes all wet and shiny and”--he paused and looked down at the paper with bewilderment that was rather pitiful--“and I walked right over all common sense and shipboard rules and discipline and everything and came here, fetching this to be stuck on to the wire, or whatever they do with telegrafts. But,” he added, a waver in his tones, “she is so lord-awful pretty, I couldn't help it!”

Still did Captain Mayo refrain from comment or question.

“The question now is, had I ought to,” demanded Mr. Speed. “I'm taking you into the fambly on my own responsibility. You're a captain, you're a native, and I need good advice. Had I ought to?”

“I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me, sir. The matter seems to be private, and, furthermore, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“She says it's to the milliner so that the milliner will hold the job open. But I'm suspicioning that it's roundabout to the beau that's in love with her. That's the style of women. Cap'n Epps shanghaied her to get her away from that fellow. Now she has got it worked around so that she is going back. But there's a beau in it instead of a milliner. She wouldn't be so anxious to get word to a milliner. That's my idee, and I reckon it's yours, too.”

“I really have no ideas on the subject,” returned Captain Mayo. “But if you have promised a young lady to send a telegram for her I would certainly keep that promise if I were in your place.”

The next moment he regretted his rather impetuous advice, for Mr. Speed slapped the paper against a hard palm and blurted out: “That's all I wanted! Course and bearings from an a-number-one adviser. New, how'll I go to work to send this thing?”

“I have been figuring on that matter for the last few minutes, myself,” acknowledged the captain. “It's about time to have a little action in this place.”

He was obliged to elbow his way through the group of men who surrounded the telegraph operator. Oakum Otie followed on his heels, resolved to study at close range the mystery of telegraphing, realizing what he needed for his own instruction.

“These telegrams are important and they must go at ore, madam,” Mayo informed the flustered young woman.

“I can't send them. I am bothered so much I can't do anything,” she stammered.

“Oh, forget your business, skipper,” advised one of the party.

“It is not my business, sir.” He laid the packet of messages before the operator on her little counter and tapped his finger on them. “They must go,” he repeated.

“In their turn,” warned the yachtsman, showing that he resented this intrusion. “And after the party is over!”

“I intended to confine my conversation to this young lady,” said Mayo. He turned and faced them. “But I have been here long enough to see that you gentlemen are interfering with the business of this office. Perhaps your messages are not important. Mine are.”

The yachtsman was not sober nor was he judicious. “Go back to your job, young fellow,” he advised. “You are horning in among gentlemen.”

“So am I,” squawked Mr. Speed, with weather eye out for clouds of any sort.

Captain Mayo gave his supporter a glance of mingled astonishment and relish. “We'd better not have any words about the matter, gentlemen,'' he suggested, mildly.

“Certainly not,” stated the spokesman. “If you'll pass on there'll be no words--or anything else.”

“Then we'll dispense with words!” The quick anger of youth flared in Mayo. The air of the man rather than his words had offended deeply. “You'd like to have this room to yourself so that you can attend to your business, I presume?” he asked the operator.

“Yes, I would.”

Oakum Otie laid his folded paper upon the packet of Captain Mayo.

“You will leave the room gentlemen,” advised the captain.

Mr. Speed thrust out his bony elbows and cracked his hard fists together. “I have never liked dudes,” he stated. “I have been brought up that way. All my training with Cap'n Epps has been that way.”

“How do you fit into this thing?” demanded one of the yachtsmen.

“About like this,” averred Mr. Speed. He grabbed the young man by both shoulders and ran him out into the night before anybody could interfere. Then Mr. Speed reappeared promptly and inquired, “Which one goes next?”

“I think they will all go,” said the captain.

“Come on,” urged one of the party. “We can't afford to get into a brawl with natives.”

“You bet you can't,” retorted Oakum Otie. “I hain't hove bunches of shingles all my life for nothing!”

Mayo said nothing more. But after the yachtsmen had looked him over they went out, making the affair a subject for ridicule.

“Hope I done right and showed to you that I was thankful for good advice,” suggested Mr. Speed, seeking commendation.

“Just a bit hasty, sir.”

“Maybe, but there's nothing like handing folks a sample just to show up the quality of the whole piece.”

“I thank you--both of you,” said the grateful operator.

“You'd better lock your door,” advised Mayo. “Men are thoughtless when they have nothing to do except play.”

“I am so grateful! And I'm going to break an office rule,” volunteered the girl. “I shall send off your telegrams first.”