Chapter 9

In all the human emotions there is no more maddening and soul-flaying terror than the fear of being shut in, which wise men call claustrophobia. Mayo had been a man of the open--of wide horizons, drinking from the fount of all the air under the heavens. This hideous confinement was demoralizing his reason. He wanted to throw down his hammer and chisel and scream and kick and throw himself up against the penning planks. On the other side was air--the open! There was still one side of the square to do.

Again that comforting little hand touched his shoulder and he was spurred by the thought that the girl was still courageous and had faith in him. He groaned and kept on.

Lapse of time ceased to have significance. Every now and then the hammer slipped and bruised his hand cruelly. But he did not feel the hurt. Both tools wavered in his grasp. He struck a desperate--a despairing blow and the hammer and chisel dropped. He knew that he had finished the fourth side. He fell across Polly Candage's lap and she helped him to his knees.

“I'm done, men,” he gasped. “All together with those joists! Strike together! Right above my head.”

He heard the skipper count one--two--three. He heard the concerted blow. The planks did not give way.

“We don't seem to have no strength left,” explained the mate, in hoarse tones.

They struck again, but irregularly.

“It's our lives--our lives, men!” cried Mayo. “Ram it to her!”

“Here's one for you, Captain Mayo,” said Candage, and he thrust a length of plank into the groping hands.

“Make it together, this time--together!” commanded Mayo. “Hard--one, two, three!”

They drove their battering-rams up against the prisoning roof. Fury and despair were behind their blow.

The glory of light flooded into their blinking eyes.

The section had given way!

Mayo went first and he snapped out with almost the violence of a cork popping from a bottle. He felt the rush of the imprisoned air past him as he emerged. Instantly he turned and thrust down his hands and pulled the girl up into the open and the others followed, the lumber pushing under their feet.

It seemed to Captain Mayo, after those few frenzied moments of escape, that he had awakened from a nightmare; he found himself clinging to the schooner's barnacled keel, his arm holding Polly Candage from sliding down over the slimy bottom into the sea.

“Good jeero! We've been in there all night,” bawled Captain Candage. He lay sprawled on the bottom of the Polly, his hornbeam hands clutching the keel, his face upraised wonderingly to the skies that were flooded with the glory of the morning. Otie and Dolph were beside him, mouths open, gulping in draughts of the air as if they were fish freshly drawn from the ocean depths.

There was a long silence after the skipper's ejaculation.

Thoughts, rather than words, fitted that sacred moment of their salvation.

The five persons who lay there on the bottom of the schooner stared at the sun in its cloudless sky and gazed off across the sea whose blue was shrouded by the golden haze of a perfect summer's day. Only a lazy roll was left of the sudden turbulence of the night before. A listless breeze with a fresh tang of salt in it lapped the surface of the long, slow surges, and the facets of the ripples flashed back the sunlight cheerily.

Captain Candage pulled himself to the keel, sat upon it, and found speech in faltering manner.

“I ain't a member of no church, never having felt the need of j'ining, and not being handy where I could tend out. But I ain't ashamed to say here, before witnesses, that I have just been telling God, as best I know how, hoping He'll excuse me if I 'ain't used the sanctimonious way, that I'm going to be a different man after this--different and better, according to my best lights.”

“I believe you have spoken for all of us, Captain Can-dage,” said Mayo, earnestly. “I thank you!”

They all perceived that the _Polly_ had made offing at a lively pace during her wild gallop under the impetus of the easterly.

Mayo balanced himself on the keel and took a long survey of the horizon. In one place a thread of blue, almost as delicate as the tracery of a vein on a girl's arm, suggested shore line. But without a glass he was not sure. He saw no sign of any other craft; the storm had driven all coasters to harbor--and there was not wind enough as yet to help them out to sea again. But he did not worry; he was sure that something, some yacht or sea-wagon, would come rolling up over the rim of the ocean before long. The faint breeze which fanned their faces was from the southwest, and that fact promised wind enough to invite shipping to spread canvas.

Only the oval of the schooner's broad bilge showed above water, and the old Polly was so flat and tubby that their floating islet afforded only scant freeboard.

Mayo shoved his arm down into the hole through which they had escaped. After the air had been forced out the lumber was within reach from the schooner's bottom. He fumbled about and found the ax. Some of the short bits of lumber which they had used as battering-rams were in the jaws of the hole. He busied himself with hewing these ends of planks into big wedges and he drove them into cracks between the planks near the keel.

“It may come to be a bit sloppy when this sou'wester gets its gait on,” he suggested to the skipper. “We'll have something to hang on to.”

Captain Candage's first thankfulness had shown a radiant gloss. But he was a sailorman, he was cautious, he was naturally apprehensive regarding all matters of the sea, and that gloss was now dulled a bit by his second thought.

“We may have to hang on to something longer 'n we reckon on. We're too far off for the coasters and too far in for the big fellers. And unless something comes pretty clost to us we can't be seen no more 'n as if we was mussels on a tide reef. We'd ought to have something to stick up.”

“If we could only work out one of those long joists it would make a little show.” Captain Mayo shoved his arm down the hole again. “But they are wedged across too solidly.”

“I think there's a piece of lumber floating over there,” cried the girl. She was clinging to one of the wedges, and the composure which she felt, or had assumed, stirred Mayo's admiration. The plump hand which she held against her forehead to shield her eyes did not tremble. From the little Dutch cap, under the edge of which stray locks peeped, down over her attire to her toes, she seemed to be still trim and trig, in spite of her experiences below in the darkness and the wet. With a sort of mild interest in her, he reflected that her up-country beau would be very properly proud of her if he could see her there on that schooner's keel.

“What a picture you would make, Miss Candage, just as you are!” he blurted. She took down her hand, and the look she gave him did not encourage compliments. “Just as you are, and call it 'The Wreck,'” he added.

“Do I look as badly as all that, Captain Mayo?”

“You look--” he expostulated, and hesitated, for her gaze was distinctly not reassuring.

“Don't tell me, please, how I look. I'm thankful that I have no mirror. Isn't that a piece of lumber?” she inquired, crisply, putting a stop on further personalities. “Wait! It's down in a hollow just now.”

The sea lifted it again immediately. Mayo saw that it was a long strip of scantling, undoubtedly from the deckload that the _Polly_ had jettisoned when she was tripped. It lay to windward, and that fact promised its recovery; but how was the tide? Mayo squinted at the sun, did a moment's quick reckoning from the tide time of the day before, and smiled.

“We'll get that, Miss Candage. She's coming this way.”

Watching it, seeing it lift and sink, waiting for it, helped to pass the time. Then at last it came alongside, and he crawled cautiously down the curve of the bilge and secured it. After he had braced it in the hole in the schooner's bottom with the help of Mr. Speed, the girl gave him a crumpled wad of cloth when he turned from his task.

“It's the rest of my petticoat. You may as well have it,” she explained, a pretty touch of pink confusion in her cheeks.

Mr. Speed boosted Mayo and the young man attached the cloth to the scantling and flung their banner to the breeze. Then there was not much to do except to wait, everlastingly squinting across the bright sea to the horizon's edge.

X ~ HOSPITALITY, PER JULIUS MARSTON

Hoo--oo--rah; and up she rises! Hoo--oo--rah! and up she rises! Early in the morning. What shall we do with a saucy sailor? Put him in the long boat and make him bail 'erv Early in the morn--ing! --Old “Stamp-and-go.”

Mayo saw the sail first. It was coming in from the sea, and was very far and minute. He pointed it out with an exclamation.

“What do you make it, sir?” asked Captain Candage. “Your eyes are younger 'n mine are.”

“I reckon it's a fisherman bound in from Cashes Banks. He seems to be lying well over, and that shows there's a good breeze outside. He ought to reach near enough to see us, judging from the way he's heading.”

That little sail, nicked against the sky, was something else to watch and speculate on and wait for, and they forgot, almost, that they were hungry and thirsty and sun-parched.

However, Captain Mayo kept his own gaze most steadfastly on the landward horizon. He did not reveal any of his thoughts, for he did not want to raise false hopes. Nevertheless, it was firmly in his mind that no matter what might be the sentiments of Julius Marston in regard to his recent skipper, the mate and engineer on board the _Olenia_ were loyal friends who would use all their influence with the owner to urge him to come seeking the man who had been lost.

The fact that a motor-boat had come popping out of Saturday Cove in pursuit of the schooner suggested that Mate McGaw had suspected what had happened, and was not dragging the cove-bottom for a drowned man.

Mayo had plenty of time for pondering on the matter, and he allowed hope to spice his guesses. He knew Mate McGaw's characteristics and decided that the yacht would get under way early, would nose into a few near-by harbors where a gale-ridden schooner might have dodged for safety, and then would chase down the sea, following the probable course of a craft which had been caught in that nor'easter. Mate McGaw was a sailorly man and understood how to fit one fact with another. He had a due portion of mariner's imagination, and was not the sort to desert a chum, even if he were obliged to use stiff speech to convert an owner. Therefore, Mayo peered toward the blue shore-line, coddling hope. He wondered whether Mate McGaw would have courage to slip a word of encouragement to Alma Marston if she asked questions.

Mayo was elated rather than astonished when he spied a smear of drab smoke and was able to determine that the craft which was puffing that smoke was heading out to sea, not crawling alongshore.

“That's a fisherman all right, and he's bound to come clost enough to make us out,” stated Captain Candage, his steady gaze to southward.

“But here comes another fellow who is going to beat him to us,” announced Captain Mayo, gaily.

“And what do you make it?” asked the skipper, blinking at the distant smoke.

“A yacht, probably.”

“Huh? A yacht! If that's what it is they'll most likely smash right past. They'll think we're out here on a fishing picnic, most like. That's about all these yacht fellers know.”

The girl gave her father a frown of protest, but Mayo smiled at her.

“I think this one is different, sir. If I am not very much mistaken, that is the yacht _Olenia_ and she is hunting me up. Mate McGaw is one of our best little guessers.”

A quarter of an hour later he was able to assure them that the on-coming craft was the _Olenia_.

“Good old Mate McGaw!” he cried, rapturously. In his joy he wished he could make them his confidants, tell them who was waiting for him on board that yacht, make them understand what wonderful good fortune was his.

After a time--the long time that even a fast yacht seems to consume in covering distance to effect the rescue of those who are anxious--the Olenita's whistle hooted hoarsely to assure them that they had been seen.

“The same to you, Mate McGaw!” choked Captain Mayo, swinging his cap in wide circles.

“Seeing that things have come round as they have, I'm mighty glad for you, Captain Mayo,” declared Candage. “I ain't no kind of a hand to plaster a man all over with thanks--”

“I don't want thanks, sir. We worked together to save our lives.”

“Then I'm hoping that there won't be any hard feelings one way or the other. I have lost my schooner by my blasted foolishness. So I'll say good-by and--”

“Good-by?” demanded Mayo, showing his astonishment. “Why are you saying good-by to me now?”

“Because you are going aboard your yacht.”

“The rest of you are going there, too.”

“It ain't for poor critters like us to go mussing--”

“Look here, Captain Candage, I am the captain of that yacht, and I say that you are coming on board and stay until I can set you ashore at the handiest port.”

“I'd just as lieve wait for that fisherman, sir. I'll feel more at home aboard him.”

“You ought to think of your daughter's condition first, Captain Candage. She needs a few comforts right away, and you won't find them on board a fisherman.”

He turned to the girt who sat on the keel, silent, looking away to sea. She seemed to show a strange lack of interest in the yacht. Her pretty face exhibited no emotion, but somehow she was a wistfully pathetic figure as she sat there. Mayo's countenance showed much more concern than she expressed when she faced about at the sound of his voice and looked at him. Color came into his cheeks; there was embarrassment in his eyes, a queer hesitancy in his tones.

“There is a young lady--there are several young ladies--but there is Mr. Marston's daughter!” he faltered. “She is on the yacht. I--I know she will do all she can for you. She will be good to you!” His eyes fell under her frank and rather quizzical gaze.

“She might not care to be bothered with such a ragamuffin.”

“I can speak for her!” he cried, eagerly. He was now even more disturbed by the glance she gave him. He had read that women have intuition in affairs of the heart.

“I am quite certain you can, Captain Mayo,” she assured him, demurely. “And I am grateful. But perhaps we'd be better off on board that other vessel--father and the rest of us.”

“I insist,” he said, but he did not dare to meet her searching eyes. “I insist!” he repeated, resuming the decisive manner which he had shown before on board the _Polly_.

The _Olenia_, slowing down, had come close aboard, and her churning screws pulled her to a standstill. Her crew sent a tender rattling down from her port davits. As she rolled on the surge her brass rails caught the sunlight in long flashes which fairly blinded the hollow eyes of the castaways. The white canvas of bridge and awnings gleamed in snowy purity. She was so near that Dolph smelled the savory scents from her galley and began to “suffle” moisture in the corners of his mouth.

They who waited on the barnacled hulk of the Polly, faint with hunger, bedraggled with brine, unkempt and wholly miserable after a night of toils and vigil, felt like beggars at a palace gate as they surveyed her immaculateness.

A sort of insolent opulence seemed to exude from her. Mayo, her captain though he was, felt that suggestion of insolence more keenly than his companions, for he had had bitter and recent experience with the moods of Julius Marston.

He did not find Marston a comforting object for his gaze; the transportation magnate was pacing the port alley with a stride that was plainly impatient. Close beside the gangway stood Alma Marston, spotless in white duck. Each time her father turned his back on her she put out her clasped hands toward her lover with a furtive gesture.

Polly Candage watched this demonstration with frank interest, and occasionally stole side-glances at the face of the man who stood beside her on the schooner's bottom; he was wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of the other girl.

Mate McGaw himself was at the tiller of the tender. His honest face was working with emotion, and he began to talk before the oarsmen had eased the boat against the overturned hulk.

“I haven't closed my eyes, Captain Mayo. Stayed up all night, trying to figure it out. Almost gave up all notion that you were aboard the schooner. You didn't hail the boat we sent out.”

“I tried to do it; perhaps you couldn't hear me.”

Captain Candage's countenance showed gratitude and relief.

“This morning I tried Lumbo and two other shelters, and then chased along the trail of the blow.”

Mayo trod carefully down the bilge and clasped the mate's hand. “I was looking for you, Mr. McGaw. I know what kind of a chap you are.”

McGaw, still holding to the captain's hand, spoke in lower tones. “Had a devil of a time with the owner, sir. He was bound to have it that you had deserted.”

“I was afraid he would think something of the sort.”

The mate showed frank astonishment. “You was afraid of _what?_ Why, sir, I wanted to tell him that he was a crazy man to have any such ideas about you! Yes, sir, I came nigh telling him that! I would have done it if I hadn't wanted to keep mild and meek whilst I was arguing with him and trying to make him give me leave to search!”

“We have had a terrible time of it, Mr. McGaw,” stated Mayo, avoiding the mate's inquisitiveness. “I am going to take these folks on board and set them ashore.”

“Ay, sir, of course.”

The two of them stood with clasped hands and held the tender close to the wreck until the passengers embarked. When they reached the foot of the _Olenia_'s steps Captain Mayo sent his guests ahead of him.

Marston paused in his march and scowled, and the folks on the quarter-deck crowded to the rail, showing great interest.

Captain Mayo exchanged a long look with Alma Marston when he came up the steps. Love, pity, and greeting were in his eyes. Her countenance revealed her vivid emotions; she was overwrought, unstrung, half-crazed after a night spent with her fears. When he came within her reach caution was torn from her as gossamer is flicked away by a gale. Impulse had always governed her; she gave way to it then.

“I don't care,” she sobbed. “I love you. They may as well know it!”

Before he understood her intentions or could prevent her rashness she flung her arms about his neck and kissed him repeatedly.

Marston stood in his tracks like a man stricken by paralysis; his cigar dropped from his open mouth. This exhibition under his very nose, with his guests and the whole crew of his yacht looking on, fairly stunned him.

“If you had died I would have died!” she wailed.

Then her father plunged toward her, elbowing the astonished Beveridge out of his way.

Captain Mayo gently unhooked the arms of the frantic girl from about his neck and stepped forward, putting himself between father and daughter. He was not taking sensible thought in the matter; he was prompted by an instinctive impulse to protect her.

Mayo had no word ready at his tongue's end, and Mar-ston's anathema was muffled and incoherent. The girl's rash act had tipped over the sane and manly self-possession of both of them. The captain was too bewildered to comprehend the full enormity of his action in standing guard over the daughter of Julius Marston, as if she needed protection on her father's quarter-deck. He did not move to one side of the alley when Marston jerked an impatient gesture.

“I want to say that I am wholly to blame, sir,” he faltered. “I hope you will overlook--”

“Are you presuming to discuss my daughter's insanity with me?” He noticed that the sailors were preparing to hoist the tender to the davits. “Drop that boat back into the water!” he shouted. There was an ugly rasp in his voice, and for a moment it seemed as if he were about to lose control of himself. Then he set a check on his temper and tongue, though his face was deathly white and his eyes were as hard as marbles. Resolve to end further exhibition in this incredible business dominated his wrathful shame.

“If you will set us ashore--” pleaded Mayo.

“Get back into that boat, you and your gang, whatever it is!”

“Mr. Marston, this young woman needs--”

“Get into that boat, or I'll have the bunch of you thrown overboard!” The owner spoke in low tones, but his furious determination was apparent.

“We will go without being thrown, sir. Will you order us set aboard that fisherman?” He pointed to the little schooner which was almost within hailing distance.

“Get off! I don't care where you go!” He crowded past Mayo, seized his daughter's arm, and led her aft.

She seemed to have expended all her determination in her sensational outburst.

The captain met her pleading gaze as she turned to leave. “It's for the best,” he declared, bravely. “I'll make good!”

The pathetic castaways from the _Polly_ made a little group at the gangway, standing close to the rail, as if they feared to step upon the white deck. Mate McGaw intercepted Mayo as he was about to join them.

“Hadn't I better stretch Section Two of the collision act a mite and scare him with the prospect of a thousand-dollar fine?” asked the mate, eagerly. “My glory, Captain Mayo, I'm so weak I can hardly stand up! Who'd have thought it?”

“We'll go aboard the schooner, Mr. McGaw. It's the place for us.”

“Maybe it is, but I'll speak up if you say the word, and make him set you ashore--even if I leave along with you?”

“Keep your job, sir. Will you pick up my few little belongings in my stateroom and bring them to me, Mr. McGaw? I'd better stay here on deck with my friends.” He emphasized the last word, and Captain Candage gave him a grateful look. “I'm sorry, mates! I can't say any more!” Captain Mayo did not allow himself to make further comment on the melancholy situation. The others were silent; the affair was out of their reckoning; they had no words to fit the case. Polly Candage stood looking out to sea. He had hoped that she would give him a glance of understanding sympathy, at least. But she did not, not even when he helped her down the steps into the tender.

Mate McGaw came with the captain's bag and belongings, and promptly received orders from the owner from the quarter-deck.

“Go on to the bridge and hail that schooner. Tell her we are headed for New York and can't be bothered by these persons!”

Mr. McGaw grasped Mayo's hand in farewell, and then he hurried to his duty. His megaphoned message echoed over their heads while the tender was on its way.

“Ay, ay, sir!” returned the fishing-skipper, with hearty bellow. “Glad to help sailors in trouble.”

“And that shows you--” blurted Captain Candage, and stopped his say in the middle of his outburst when his daughter shoved a significant fist against his ribs.

Captain Mayo turned his head once while the tender was hastening toward the schooner. But there were no women in sight on the yacht's deck. There was an instant's flutter of white from a stateroom port, but he was not sure whether it was a handkerchief or the end of a wind-waved curtain. He faced about resolutely and did not look behind again. Shame, misery, hopelessness--he did not know which emotion was stinging him most poignantly. The oarsmen in the tender were gazing upward innocently while they rowed, but he perceived that they were hiding grins. His humiliation in that amazing fashion would be the forecastle jest. Through him these new friends of his had been subjected to insult. He felt that he understood what Polly Candage's silence meant.

The next moment he felt the pat of a little hand on the fist he was clenching on his knee.

“Poor boy!” she whispered. “I understand! It will come out right if you don't lose courage.”