Part 2

But Mamie stepped out of her partial shelter, Emma following her on to the beach, while Amos scrambled up the steep path in precipitate retreat to the house.

“What are you waitin’ for, Aubrey?” asked Mamie, her eyes flashing, her voice shrill with excitement. “Aint you goin’ to search that dory?”

Nathan laughed clownishly. “I cal’late your hero’s thinkin’ better of it, Miss Weston,” he chuckled. “He knows tormented well that if he gits hurt doin’ it, Cap Cole’ll back me an’ my boys up.”

“Then you’re goin’ to let Cap Cole scare you out o’ doin’ your duty, Aubrey?” Mamie’s tone was ironically sweet. “Oh, if my father was only here! I know what _he’d_ do!”

Aubrey clenched his fists, took a step forward--and another. He knew what doughty old Cap Weston would do if he were alive and placed in such a predicament. The hero of the wreck of the _David Rothwell_ would do what he had set out to do, or die in the attempt!

Straight for the dory Aubrey marched determinedly. He heard Nathan’s bellow as he and his sons rushed to the attack.

Aubrey jumped back in time to avoid the headlong charge of Nathan, but in doing so he collided with Russ. The eldest son had not recovered from the impact when he received a terrific punch just above his waistline, and he doubled up gasping for breath. Aubrey whirled on Fred and planted a wicked wallop on that bewildered youth’s jaw. Like an infuriated bull goaded by its tormentors in the ring, Aubrey faced Enoch, and after a short exchange of blows, put a damper on the second son’s ardor by delivering a haymaker to his nose.

Panting from his exertion, he turned to Nathan, who bore down on him with lowered head and flying fists. The surfman sidestepped--but not soon enough, for one of the fisherman’s blows found its mark on Aubrey’s chin. Half dazed though he was, Aubrey countered with a right to the giant’s jaw, which caused no more perceptible damage than birdshot to the hide of a rhinoceros.

From that instant on, the fight was a rough-and-tumble, free-for-all, and general rough-house. No chance for Aubrey to display any of the science he had acquired boxing with Paty. He struck out blindly, saved himself from his attackers by quick footwork, oppressed from all sides at once. Blows light and heavy landed on his cheeks, chin, and jaws, while he danced and dodged in the center of the melee, confused by the odds against him, but keeping his antagonists on the jump by avoiding dirty tactics on their part like tripping or kicking.

Then as they edged in closer, he broke through the ring surrounding him and ran a few yards up the beach, where he faced them again. He launched a right at Enoch which staggered that aggressive little bunch of wiry sinews. But at the same time the coast-guard received a crushing punch on the cheek from Russ. He managed, however, to dodge past Enoch and escape from the circle which was forming around him again. And there, his back to the harbor, some fifty yards upshore from the dories, once more he defied the four oncoming fishermen.

* * * * *

Aubrey was breathing hard, his nose bleeding, cheeks and lips cut, one eye closed, and his shirt flapping in shreds. Time and again he broke clear; and the scene of battle shifted frequently up and down the beach.

After one of Aubrey’s eel-like escapes, Nathan shoved his sons back and faced the surfman alone. “Got--enough?” the huge lobsterman panted, his leathery face daubed with blood, his thick lips split.

“Hell--no! I aint begun to fight yit!” Aubrey defied him. “Try it ag’in! Come on, I’m askin’ ye!”

Russ and Enoch, battle-grimed and rent as to raiment, started for the cornered surfman. But Nathan snatched Russ by the arm and flung him back, and stepped between Enoch and Aubrey.

“You stay out o’ this!” he commanded his offspring. “This Sears--he needs a dose o’ the medicine such as only one o’ my generation can hand him. I’ll take care o’ him in the good old-fashioned way. You three go back to the dories an’ see ’at no one swipes our lobsters.”

With a rush, the big fisherman resumed the conflict. Nathan was fighting, now, with knees as well as fists--the kind of fighting the old-time Yankee skippers resorted to when all other methods of subduing refractory members of their crews failed. In his younger days Nathan Holway had earned the nickname of “Bloody Nathan” from his proficiency in this style of fighting. Aubrey had seen Cap Cole fight that way once when he half killed a crazy-drunk sailor, so he knew what to expect.

He avoided Bloody Nathan by sidestepping, smashing left and right uppercuts to the fisherman’s lowered face. But the endurance of that hulk of bone and muscle was nothing short of marvelous, and he seemed to be wholly unaffected.

Now and then Aubrey felt the impact of Bloody Nathan’s huge fist as it smashed through his defense. Once Nathan’s knee caught the coast-guard in the abdomen, and he doubled up, seeing black. But he pulled himself together, and came back at his antagonist with a left to the jaw and a right uppercut to the chin, and again avoided the rush of the foul-fighting fisherman by sidestepping and smashing in with another left and right.

The pace was beginning to tell on Nathan. Aubrey’s wind was less expended, severely sapped though it was, for he didn’t waste energy in headlong rushes. One of Bloody Nathan’s eyes was closed, and his bleeding mouth lolled open. His lungs were wheezy and his knees shaky.

Then Aubrey rushed. He delivered a quick, swinging blow with his left that smashed through the fisherman’s awkward defense and crashed upon his bulbous nose. He groaned, and sank to the sand like a pole-axed steer.

The fall of their parent seemed to fire the three sons with fresh zeal. They pounced on Aubrey from all quarters, and he, his energy sapped by his vigorous fray with their father, went down on the sand under them, while they started to pummel him unmercifully.

But Aubrey twisted and squirmed clear of the three, leaving his undershirt in their clutches, and upsetting Fred, recovered his footing. He knew he was licked; the fight with Nathan had taken too much out of him to go through it all over again with them. But no matter how badly he was mauled, his was the satisfaction of making Bloody Nathan take the count. Mamie, wherever she was, couldn’t accuse him of being a coward now. Neither could Cap, whatever Cap would think of his judgment in starting the affair.

He didn’t care about the Number One surfman’s job now. Nor did Mamie seem a vital factor in his life. She had got him into this mess. It would be interesting to find out whether she would stick to him or not if the Number One job went to some one else.

* * * * *

He was standing again with his back to the harbor, the three sons of Bloody Nathan facing him but not carrying the fight to him. Near by he could make out Mamie trying to reach him, but Amos and Emma were holding her back.

“Come on, yuh damned coward!” Aubrey taunted Russ.

“Come on yerself!” retorted Russ.

“Start somethin’!” squealed Enoch.

And Aubrey accepted the invitation by charging Russ, head down, blindly, adopting Bloody Nathan’s method of attack--a method which had vindicated itself in free-for-all fighting. Again and again he flailed his fists at the fisherman’s eldest son, who gave no ground, but stood resigned to his punishment, if punishment it really were which Aubrey, in his exhausted state, was administering.

He was gripped by the shoulder and drawn firmly back, his fists fanning the air.

“Sears--behave! You’ve gone fur enough with this!”

Aubrey weakly raised his head--and his one open eye took in Cap Cole, holding his shoulder with one strong hand gripping what appeared to be the cylindrical metal case of a beach-torch in the other.

“I aint--gone fur--enough!” Aubrey defied his commander, struggling feebly and unsuccessfully to wrench himself loose. “I aint--_begun_--to fight!”

“It’s all his doin’, Cap!” groaned Bloody Nathan, staggering out of the fog to the Santuck commander, while his three sons retreated to the two dories. “Sears interfered with us, Cap--in the name o’ the coast-guard--out o’ spite to keep us from gittin’ a decent night’s rest--him in plain clothes--with no authority--”

“Why are you makin’ such a spectacle o’ yerself ag’inst a law-abidin’ citizen like Nathan?” Cole severely questioned the young surfman. “It’s a good thing Amos Swift called me up an’ told me you was in hot water at the landin’, judgin’ by the loud talk he heard. If you had your pistol here, I cal’late they’d ’a’ been murder committed--with you in your present frame o’ mind. If Jansen wa’n’t on patrol an’ he’d come here with me--”

“Yeah,” Aubrey flung back. “It’s always Jansen. ’Twas him that lied about me that night on Salt Marsh. An’ you’re no better’n he is, to b’lieve him, an’ send that lyin’ report to the superintendent!” He reached into his hip pocket, drew an automatic pistol, and handed it to Cap, holding it by the barrel. “Here’s my gun, Cap,” he said. “It’s been in my pants pocket all durin’ the scrap.”

Cap accepted the weapon without comment, relinquishing his grip on Aubrey’s shoulder.

“I’m through with the damn’ coast-guard an’ Santuck!” Aubrey thus kicked over the traces and stove in the dashboard. “Through with you, an’ Jansen, an’ your lies ’bout me. I’m going to sea--inland--_anywhere_ to git away from you two. I told you the truth that night on Salt Marsh. An’ what did _you_ do? You believed what Jansen told yuh, an’ worse’n that--you put it in the report to headquarters, an’ it got in the paper. I done tonight what I set out to do--I’ve got _that_ much satisfaction out of it, no matter how big a fool you an’ the Howesport folks call me!”

A small hand tenderly dabbed at his empurpled eye with a tiny handkerchief.

“Good for you, Aubrey!” Mamie applauded. “We wont change our plans a mite, Aubrey, you ’n’ me. We’ll git along somehow--I’ll go through anything to make you happy.” She turned savagely on Cap. “The idea o’ you belittlin’ my Aubrey after he’s been--so brave--” A sob choked her.

* * * * *

But Cap laughed, and again laid his hand on Aubrey’s shoulder. “You’re _not_ goin’ to leave the coast-guard, Sears!” he declared. “You’re goin’ to be the nex’ Number One surfman at Santuck station, if I have anything to say about it--an’ I cal’late I will! You don’t s’pose for a minute that I believed Jansen after he put that piece in the Boston paper, do ye? That wa’n’t what I reported to the superintendent. I didn’t mention your name in that report. An’ when I seen that newspaper, I telephoned it to find out where they got the information, an’ they said ‘From Jansen.’ He didn’t have no authority to put that in without gittin’ me to endorse it. It’s an open vi’lation o’ discipline, an’ it’s proof to me that he aint to be trusted. An’ he wont command Sandy Holler if _I_ c’n help it, by golly!”

“Then why didn’t you tell Aubrey that today?” indignantly asked Mamie.

“Because,” Cap replied, “I wanted to have somethin’ better to report to the superintendent ’bout Sears before I recommended him for Jansen’s place. An’ I cal’lated the best way to stir him up so’s I could do that would be to make him think he’s wuth less’n a healthy damn, an’ git his fightin’ dander up.”

* * * * *

“I can’t see whar he _is_ wuth more’n that,” spoke up Nathan, who had recovered sufficiently from his mauling to listen interestedly to the conversation of Mamie and Cap. The glare of a flashlight down the beach revealed through the thinning fog the fisherman’s three sons and four uniformed men of the Santuck crew grouped near the dories. “D’you coast-guard folks promote brave surfmen who pick on harmless fishermen an’ damn’ nigh beat the tar out of ’em?” he sneered.

“No--not for beatin’ up _harmless_ fishermen,” countered Cap. “But for molestin’ them engaged in _this_ kind o’ fishin’.” He held up the metal cylinder.

Nathan swayed drunkenly when he looked at it, “Oh, hell!” he moaned. “I was dependin’ on Russ an’ the boys to take care o’ that!”

“You was too busy fightin’--you an’ your boys, Nathan--to notice my Santuck boys searchin’ your lobsters,” explained Cap. “This tube is full of opium. I’m familiar with it--it’s the same kind the _Seabright’s_ been runnin’ ashore. Now I cal’late I know why Jansen advanced such good argymints to me to discontinue the Howesport harbor patrol. I cal’late his examination in court--an’ yourn, too, Nathan--will be real interestin’!”

“Hereafter, Sears,”--he turned to Aubrey,--“what you say at Santuck station _goes_! That’s final!”

[Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the February, 1930 issue of _The Blue Book_ magazine.]