Chapter VI: Part 6

“I told you last evening! Fools in an institution; able-bodied must go to work. The state proposes--” “When you say 'state' just what do you mean, sir?” “I mean that I have investigated this matter and I'm running it.”

“That's what I thought! The state usually doesn't know much about what its agents are doing.”

“You are not doubting my authority, are you?”

“No, but I'm doubting your good judgment.”

“Look here, my man!”

“We'd better not lose our tempers,” advised Mayo, calmly. “You are a state servant, you say. Then a citizen has a right to talk to you. Let's leave the state out of this, if you question my right. Man to man, now! You're wrong.”

The population of the island had drawn close circle about them.

“That's enough talk from you,” declared the agent, wrathfully.

“You are trying to make over all at once what it has taken three generations to bring about,” insisted Mayo. “You can't do it!”

“You watch me and see if I can't! When I transact any business I'm paid to transact it gets transacted. I might have given these people a few more days if you had not come sticking your oar in here. But now I propose to show you! I'll have 'em off here by nightfall, and every shack burned to the ground.”

“Do you mean to say you're going to rub it into these poor folks just because I have tried to say something to help them?”

“I'll show you and them that it isn't safe to monkey with the state when the state gets started.”

“Oh, the state be condemned!” exploded Mayo, feeling his own temper getting away from him. “This isn't the state--it's a case of a man's swelled head!”

“Get off this island, you and your meddlers,” commanded the agent.

“Yes, when we are ready to leave, sir.”

Mayo was wondering at his own obstinacy. He knew that a rather boyish temper, resentment roused by the other man's arrogance, had considerable to do with his stand in the matter, but underneath there was protest at the world's injustice. He felt that he had been having personal experience with that injustice. He knew that he had not come out to Hue and Cry to volunteer as the champion of these unfortunates, but now that he was there and had spoken out it was evident that he must allow himself to be forced into the matter to some extent; the agent had declared in the hearing of all that this interference had settled the doom of the islanders. Polly Candage was standing close to the champion, and she looked at him with eyes that flashed with pride in him and spirit of her own. She reached and took one of the frightened children by the hand.

“If I have been a little hasty in my remarks I apologize,” pleaded the captain, anxious to repair the fault. “I don't mean to interfere with your duty. I have no right to do so!”

“You hear what your friend says, after getting you into the mess,” shouted the agent, so that all might hear. “Now he is getting ready to trot away and leave you in your trouble.”

“You are wrong there, my friend. If you are angry with me, go ahead and have your quarrel with me. Don't bang at me over the shoulders of these poor folks. It isn't a square deal.”

“They go off to-day--and they go because you have butted into the matter. The whole of you have got to be shown that the state doesn't stand for meddlers after orders have been given.” Then he added, with malice: “You folks better ride this chap down to the beach on a rail. Whatever happens to you is his fault!”

This attempt to shift responsibility as a petty method of retaliation stirred Mayo's anger in good earnest.

The agent was dealing with men who were scarcely more than children in their estimates of affairs; they muttered among themselves and scowled on this stranger who had brought their troubles to a climax.

“I'm not going to allow you to get away with that kind of talk, Mr. Agent. You know perfectly well that people on the main will not hire these men, even if they _are_ able-bodied. Everybody is down on them. You said that to me last evening. They will be kicked from pillar to post--from this town to that! They will be worse than beggars. And they must drag these women and little children about with them. I will expose this thing!”

“That exposure will sound fine!” sneered the commissioner. “Exposing a state officer for doing what the Governor and Council have ordered!”

“Yes, ordered on your advice!”

“Well, it has been ordered! And I'll be backed up! As soon as I can get to a justice I shall swear out a warrant against you for interfering with a state officer.” He flung down the stub of his cigar. “Listen, you people! Get off this island. Anybody who is here at sunset--man, woman, or child--will be arrested and put in jail for trespassing on state land. Now you'd all better give three cheers for your meddling friend, here!”

“They have allus let us stay, even when they have threated us before now,” whimpered a man. “He has poured the fat into the fire for us, that's what he has done!” He pointed his finger at Mayo.

“It's wicked!” gasped the girl. “These poor folks don't know any better, they are not responsible!”

“Say, look here, you folks!” shouted Mr. Speed, who had been holding himself in with great difficulty. “It's about time for you to wake up!”

The plutocrat of the house-boat had come up from the beach and had been listening. The whimpering man started to speak again, and the magnate of the island cuffed him soundly; it was plain that this man, who had lived in the best house, had been a personage of authority in the tribe.

“I'm ashamed of the whole caboodle of ye,” he vociferated. “Here's a gent that's been standing up for us. He's the only man I ever heard say a good word for us or try to help us! Nobody else in the world ever done it! Take off your hats and thank him!”

“I'm in it!” whispered Mayo to the girl. “For heaven's sake, what am I going to do?”

“Do all you can--please, Captain Mayo!”

He stepped forward. The agent began to shout.

“Hold on, sir!” broke in the captain with quarter-deck air that made for obedience and attention. “You have had your say! Now I'm going to have mine. Listen to me, folks! I'm not the man to get my friends into trouble and then run off and leave 'em. All of you who are kicked out by the state--all men, women, and children who are ready to go to work--come over to me on the main at Maquoit with what stuff you can bring in your dories. I'll be waiting for you there. My name is Boyd Mayo.”

“I'll remember that name, myself,” declared the angry agent. “You'll be shown that you can't interfere in a state matter.”

“You have turned these folks loose in the world, and I'm going to give 'em a hand when they come to where I am. If you choose to call that interference, come on! It will make a fine story in court!”

He did not stop to shake the grimy hands which were thrust out to him. He pushed his way out of the crowd, and his party followed.

“Meet me yonder on the main, boys,” he called back with a sailor heartiness which they understood. “We'll see what can be done!”

“Well, what in the infernal blazes can be done?” growled Captain Candage, catching step with the champion.

“I don't know, sir.”

“You can't do nothing any more sensible with them critters than you could with combined cases of the smallpox and the seven years' itch.”

“Father!” cried the girl, reproachfully.

“I know what I'm talking about! This is dum foolishness!”

“Captain Mayo is a noble man! You ought to be ashamed of hanging back when your help is needed.”

“I don't blame you for sassing that skewangled old tywhoopus, sir,” admitted the old skipper. “I wanted to do it myself. But--”

“I'm afraid I don't deserve much praise,” said Mayo. “I've been getting back at that agent. He made me mad. I'm apt to go off half-cocked like that.”

“So am I, sir--and I'm always sorry for it. We'd better dig out before that tribe of gazaboos lands on our backs.”

“Oh, not a bit of it! I have given my word, sir. I must see it through.”

“But what are you going to do with 'em?”

“Blessed if I know right now! When I'm good and mad I don't stop to think.”

“Suppose I meet 'em for you and tell 'em you have had a sudden death in your family and have been called away? They won't know the difference,” volunteered Captain Candage. “And a real death would be lucky for you beside of what's in store if you hang around.”

“I shall hang around, sir. I can't afford to be ashamed of myself.”

“I think you have said quite enough, father,” stated Polly Candage, with vigor.

'“I have heard of adopting families before,” said the irreconcilable one, “but I never heard of any such wholesale operation as this. I'm thinking I'll go climb a tree.”

They embarked in the dory. Mr. Speed and Dolph splashed their oars and rowed, exchanging looks and not venturing to offer any comment.

“You might auction 'em off to farmers for scarecrows,” pursued Captain Candage, still worrying the topic as a dog mouths a bone. “They ain't fit for no more active jobs than that.”

“I do hope you'll forgive my father for talking this way,” pleaded Polly Candage. She raised brimming eyes to the sympathetic gaze of the young man beside her. “He doesn't understand it the way I do.”

“Perhaps I don't exactly understand it myself,” he protested.

“But what you are doing for them?”

“I haven't done anything as yet except start trouble for them. Now I must do a little something to square myself.”

“There's a reward for good deeds, Captain Mayo, when you help those who cannot help themselves. I believe what the Bible says about casting bread on the waters. It will return to you some day!”

He smiled down on her enthusiasm tolerantly, but he was far from realizing then that this pretty girl, whose eyes were so bright behind her tears, and whose cheeks were flushed with the ardor of her admiration, was speaking to him with the tongue of a sibyl.

XIII ~ A CAPTAIN OP HUMAN FLOTSAM

O what is that which smells so tarry?
I've nothing in the house that's tarry.
It's a tarry sailor, down below,
Kick him out into the snow!
Doo me axna, dinghy a-a-a ma!
Doo me ama-day!
--Doo Me Ama.

Captain Candage growled and complained so persistently during the trip to the main that Mayo expected to be deserted by the querulous skipper the moment the dory's prow touched the beach. But the skipper came dogging at his heels when Mayo set off up the one street of Maquoit.

“May I come along with you?” asked the girl at his side. “I can see that you are thinking up some plan. I do Hope I may come!” He gave her his aim for answer.

“I haven't been into this port for some time, Captain Candage, but the last trip I made here, as I remember, a man named Rowley, who runs the general store, was first selectman.”

“Is now,” grunted the skipper. “They've got into the habit of electing him and can't seem to break off.”

When they arrived in front of the store Captain Candage took the lead.

“I may as well go in and introduce you, whatever it is you want of him. I know Rufe Rowley as well as anybody ever gets to know him.”

Mr. Rowley leaned over his counter and acknowledged the introduction with a flicker of amiability lighting his reserve. But his wan smile faded into blankness and he clawed his chin beard nervously when Mayo informed him that he had invited the evicted folks of Hue and Cry to land on the mainland that day.

“As overseer of the poor in this town I can't allow it, Captain Mayo!”

“Those people must land somewhere.”

“Yes, yes, of course!” admitted Selectman Rowley. “But not here! I'm beholden to the taxpayers.”

“And I suppose the officers of all the other towns about here will say the same?”

“Yes, yes! Of course.”

“Do you still own that old fish-house?” asked the captain, after hesitating for a few moments; “the sardine-canning plant?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You're not using it now?”

“No, sir.”

“It isn't paying you any revenue, eh?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you ought to be willing to let it pretty cheap--month-to-month lease!”

“Depends on what I'm letting it for.”

“I want to stow those poor people in there till I can arrange further for them, either show the matter up to the state, or get work for them, or something! Will you let me have it?”

“No, sir!” declared the selectman, with vigor.

“It's only monthly lease, I repeat. You can prevent them from getting pauper residence here, in case none of my plans work.”

“Don't want 'em here--won't have 'em! I consider taxpayers first!”

“Don't ye ever consider common, ordinary, human decency?” roared Captain Epps Candage.

It was astonishing interruption. Its violence made it startling. Mayo whirled and stared amazedly at this new recruit.

Captain Candage yanked his fat wallet from his pocket and dammed it down on the counter with a bang which made the selectman's eyes snap.

“You know _me_, Rowley! We've got the money to pay for what we order and contract for. Them folks ain't paupers so long as we stand be-hind 'em. We are bringing 'em ashore, here, because it's right to help 'em get onto their feet. Hold on, Captain Mayo; you let me talk to Rowley! Him and me know how to get sociable in a business talk!”

However, Captain Candage seemed to be seeking sociability by bellowing ferociously, thudding his hard fist on the counter. Mayo was not easily surprised by the temperamental vagaries of queer old 'longcoast crabs like Captain Candage, but this sudden conversion did take away his breath.

“When a close and partickler friend of mine, like this one I've just introduced, comes to you all polite and asks a favor, I want general politeness all around or I'll know the reason why,” shouted the intermediary. “Look-a-here, Rowley, you pretend to be a terrible Christian sort of a man. When I have been fog-bound here I've tended out on prayer-meetings, and I have heard you holler like a good one about dying grace and salvation is free. I've never heard you say much about living charity that costs something!”

“I claim to be a Christian man,” faltered Rowley, backing away from the banging fist.

“Then act like one. If you don't do it, blast your pelt, I'll post you for a heathen from West Quoddy to Kittery!”

“God bless you, my dad!” whispered the girl, snuggling close to the skipper's shoulder.

“Furthermore, Rowley, besides paying you a fair rental for that old fish-house we'll buy grub for them poor devils out of your store.”

Mr. Rowley caressed his beard and blinked.

“They're like empty nail-kags, and they'll eat a lot of vittles and we've got the money to pay!”

“I have a wallet of my own,” stated Captain Mayo. He had not recovered from his amazement at the sudden shift about of Captain Candage. After all the sullen growling he had been tempted to ask the old skipper to stop tagging him about on his errand of mercy.

“Hear that, Rowley? This is the best friend I've got in the whole world! Brought him in here! Introduced him to you! Here's my daughter! Interested, too! Now, whatever you say, you'd better be sure that you pick the right words.”

“Well, I'm always ready to help friends,” stated Mr. Rowley.

“Yes, and do business in a slack time,” added Captain Candage.

“I'm willing to show Christian charity to them that's poor and oppressed. But what's the sense in doing it in this case?”

“A great many folks in this life need a hard jolt before they turn to and make anything of themselves,” said Captain Mayo. “The people on Hue and Cry have had their jolt. I do believe, with the right advice and management, they can be made self-supporting. They have been allowed to run loose until now, sir. I have been pulled into the thing all of a sudden, and now that I'm in I'm willing to give up a little time and effort to start 'em off. I haven't much of anything else to do just now,” he added, bitterly.

“Come into my back office,” invited Mr. Rowley.

“Much obleeged--we'll do so,” said Captain Candage. “You're a bright man, Rowley, and I knowed you'd see the p'int when it was put up to you right and polite.”

The business in the back office was soon settled satisfactorily, and a busy day followed on the heels of that momentous morning. When night fell the men, women, and children whom a benevolent state--through its “straight-business” agent--had turned loose upon the world to shift for themselves, were located in a single colony in the spacious fish-house.

A few second-hand stoves, hired from Rowley, served to cook the food bought from Rowley, and the families grouped themselves in rooms and behind partitions and arranged the poor belongings they had salvaged from their homes. Even the citizen who had at first resolved to go floating on the bosom of the deep joined the colony.

“It's more sociable,” he explained, “and my wife don't like to give up her neighbors. Furthermore, I know the whole bunch, root and branch, whims, notions, and all, and they can't fool me. I'll help boss 'em!” He became a lieutenant of value.

This community life under a better roof than had ever sheltered them before in their lives seemed to delight the refugees. Old and young, they enjoyed the new surroundings with the zest of children. They had never taken thought of the morrow in their existence on Hue and Cry. Given food and shelter in this new abode, they did not worry about the problems of the future. They roamed about their domain with the satisfaction of princes in a palace. They did not show any curiosity regarding what was to be done with them. They did not ask Captain Mayo and his associates any questions. They surveyed him with a dumb and sort of canine thankfulness when he moved among them. He himself tried questions on a few of the more intelligent men, hoping that they would show some initiative. They told him with bland serenity that they would leave it all to him.

“But what are you going to do for yourselves?”

“Just what you say. You're the boss. Show us the job!”

It was borne in upon him that he had taken a larger contract than he had planned on. Rowley and the taxpayers on the main looked to him on one side, and his dependents on the other.

“It seems to be up to me--to us, I mean,” he told the girl, ruefully, when they were on their way to the widow's cottage that evening. “It's up to me most of all, however, for I'm the guilty party--I have pulled you and your father in. I'm pegged in here till I can think up some sort of a scheme.”

She had been working all day faithfully by his side, a tactful and indefatigable helper. He would have been all at sea regarding the women and children without her aid, and he told her so gratefully.

“Both my hands and my heart are with you in this thing, Captain Mayo. And I know you'll think of some way out for them--just as you helped us out of the schooner after we had given up all hope.”

“Getting out of the schooner was merely a sailor's trick of the hands, Miss Candage. I don't believe I'll be much of a hand at making over human nature. I have too much of it myself, and the material down in that fish-house would puzzle even a doctor of divinity.”

“Oh, you will think of some plan,” she assured him-with fine loyalty. “If you will allow me to help in my poor way I'll be proud.”

“I'll not tell you what I think of your help; it might sound like soft talk. But let me tell you that you have one grand old dad!” he declared, earnestly; but although he tried to keep his face straight and his tones steady he looked down at her and immediately lost control of himself. Merriment was mingled with tears in her eyes.

“Isn't he funny?” she gasped, and they halted in their tracks and laughed in chorus with the whole-hearted fervor of youth; that laughter relieved the strain of that anxious day.

“I am not laughing _at_ your father--you understand that!” he assured her.

“Of course, you are not! I know. But you are getting to understand him, just as I understand him. He is only a big child under all his bluster. But he does make me so angry sometimes!”

“You can't tell much about a Yankee till he comes out of his shell, and I agree with you as to the aggravating qualities in Captain Candage. I'm not very patient myself, when I'm provoked! But after this he and I will get along all right.”

They walked on to the cottage.

“Good night,” he said at the door.

“And you have no plan as yet?”

“Maybe something will come to me in a dream.”

The dream did not come to him, for his sleep was the profound slumber of exhaustion. He went down in the early dawn and plunged into the sea, and while he was walking back toward the cottage an idea and a conviction presented themselves, hand in hand. The conviction had been with him before--that he could not back out just then and leave those poor people to shift for themselves, as anxious as he was to be off about his own affairs; his undertaking was quixotic, but if he abandoned it at that juncture a queer story would chase him alongcoast, and he knew what sort of esteem mariners entertained for quitters.

However, deep in his heart, he confessed that it was not merely sailor pride that spurred him. The pathetic helplessness of the tribe of Hue and Cry appealed with an insistence he could not deny. He understood them as he understood similar colonies along the coast--children whom an indifferent world classed as man and treated with thoughtless injustice! Work was prescribed for them, as for others! But, they did not know how to work or how to make their work pay them.

The idea which came to him with the conviction that he must help these folks concerned work for them.

After breakfast he took Captain Candage into his confidence, much to the skipper's bland delight at being considered.

“I hope it's something where we can fetch Rowley in,” confessed the skipper. “I don't care anything for them critters,” he added, assuming brusqueness. “Don't want it hinted around that I'm getting simple in my old age. But they give me an excuse to bingdoodle Rowley.”

“To carry out that plan I have outlined we need some kind of a packet,” said Mayo.

“Sure! We'll go right to Rowley. He'll know. If there's anything in this section that he 'ain't got his finger on some way--bill of sale, mortgage, debt owed to him or expecting to be owed, then it ain't worth noticing.”

Mr. Rowley listened in his back office. He stroked his beard contentedly and beamed his pleasure when he saw the prospect of making another profitable dicker with men who seemed to be reliable and energetic.

“I had a mortgage on the _Ethel and May_ when Captain Tebbets passed on to the higher life,” he informed them. “Widder gave up the schooner when I foreclosed, she not desiring to--er--bother with vessel proputty. So I have it free and clear without it standing me such a terrible sum! Shall be pleased to charter to you gents at a reasonable figure. Furthermore, seeing that industry makes for righteousness, so we are told, your plan of making those critters go to work may be a good one, providing you'll use a club on 'em often enough.”

“From what I've heard of your talk in prayer-meeting I should think you'd advise moral suasion,” suggested Captain Candage, plainly relishing this opportunity to “bingdoodle.”

“I use common sense, whether it's in religion or politics or business,” snapped Rowley, exhibiting a bit of un-Christian heat.

“It's advisable to ile up common sense with a little charity, and then the machine won't squeak so bad.”

“I wouldn't undertake to trot a dogfish on my knee or sing him to sleep with a pennyr'yal hymn, Captain Candage.”

“I think we can show results without the club,” interposed Mayo, with mild intent to smooth the tone of this repartee.

The clerk called Mr. Rowley out into the store on some matter of special importance, and the selectman departed, coming down rather hard on his heels.

“The old Adam sort of torches up through his shell once in a while,” commented Candage.

“We'd better settle the charter price, sir, before you lay aboard him too much,” advised the young man.

“I just natch'ally can't help harpooning him,” confessed the skipper. “He's a darned old hypocrite, cheating widders and orphans by choice because they 'ain't got the spunk to razoo back, and I've allus enjoyed fighting such as him. Him and me is due for a row. But I'll hold off the best I can till we have got him beat down.”

Mayo's plan involved the modest venture of chartering a craft suitable for fishing. There was no material for real Banksmen in the Hue and Cry colony, but the run of the men would serve to go trawling for ground and shack fish a few miles off the coast. It was the only scheme which would afford employment for the whole body of dependents; older and more decrepit men and the women and children could dig and shuck clams for the trawl bait. In order to encourage ambition and independence among the abler men of the colony, Mayo suggested that the fishermen be taken on shares, and Captain Candage agreed.

When Mr. Rowley came back into the office he found his match waiting for him in the person of Captain Candage, primed and ready to drive a sharp bargain. At the end of an hour papers representing the charter of the _Ethel and May_ were turned over.

“I reckon it's a good job,” affirmed the skipper, when he and Mayo were outside the Rowley store. “I have made up my mind to let poor old _Polly_ go to Davy Jones's locker. I wrote to the shippers and the consignees of the lumber last night. If they want it they can go after it. I may as well fish for the rest of this season!” He regarded Captain Mayo with eyes in which query was almost wistftul. “Of course, you can depend on me to see to it that you get your share, sir, just as if you were aboard.”

“I'm going aboard, Captain Candage.”

The old man stopped stock still and stared.

“I haven't anything in sight just now. You need help in getting the thing started right. I'm not going away and leave that gang on your hands until I can see how the plan works out. I'll go as mate with you.”

“Not by a blame sight you won't go as no mate with me,” objected Candage. “You'll go as skipper and I'll be proud to take orders from you, sir.”

They were wrangling amiably on that point when they returned to the widow's cottage. Polly Candage broke the deadlock.

“Why not have two captains? That will be something brand new along the coast!”

“The rest of it is brand new enough without that,” blurted her father. “But considering what kind of a crew we've got I guess two captains ain't any too much! I'll be captain number two and I know enough to keep my place.”

“I do not think you and I will ever do much quarreling again!” smiled Captain Mayo, extending his hand and receiving Candage's mighty grip. “I am going to start out a few letters, and I'll go now and write them. Until those letters bring me something in the way of a job I am with you, sir.”

Captain Candage walked down toward the fish-house with his daughter. “Polly,” he declared, after an embarrassed silence, “I have been all wrong in your case, girl. Here and now I give you clearance papers. Sail for home just as soon as you want to. I'm asking no questions! It's none of my business!”

“My little affairs must always be business of yours, father,” she returned.. “I love you. I will obey you.”

“But I ain't giving off no more orders. I ain't fit to command in the waters where you are sailing, Polly dear. So run along home and be my good girl! I know you will be!”

“I have changed my mind about going home--just now!” Her eyes met his frankly. “I have written to Aunt Zilpah to send me some of my clothes. Father,” there was feminine, rather indignant amazement in her tones, “do you know that there isn't a single woman from Hue and Cry who knows how to use a needle?”

“I might have guessed it, judging from the way their young ones and men folk go looking!”

“Do you realize that those children don't even know their A-B-C's?”

“Never heard of any college perfessers being raised on that island.”

“I am going to take a vacation from the millinery-shop, now that I am down here. I'll show those women how to sew and cook, and I'll teach those children how to read. It's only right--my duty! I couldn't go home and be happy without doing it!”

“Calling that a vacation is putting a polite name to it, Polly.”

“If you could have seen their eyes, father, when I promised to help them, you wouldn't wonder why I am staying.”

“I don't wonder, Polly, my girl! If you had gone away and--and left us--Mayo and me--I should have been mighty disappointed in ye! But I really never thought much about your going--'cause you wouldn't go, I knew, till you had helped all you could.” He put his arm around her. “I have been worrying about having brought you away. But I guess God had it all figgered out for us. I didn't know my own girl the way I ought to have knowed her. I'd been away too much. But now we're sort of growing up--together--sort of that, ain't we, Polly dear?”

She put her arms about his neck and answered him with a kiss.

XIV ~ BEARINGS FOR A NEW COURSE

And now, my brave boys, comes the best of the fun,
It's hands about ship and reef topsails in one;
So it's lay aloft, topman, as the hellum goes down,
And clew down your topsails as the mainyard goes round.
--La Pique.

At the end of that week the _Ethel and May_ had delivered at market her first fare of fish and her captains had divided her first shares. Mayo decided that the results were but of proportion to the modest returns. He was viewing the regeneration of the tribe of Hue and Cry. In their case it had been the right touch at the right time. For years their hopes had been hungry for a chance to make good. Now gratitude inspired them and an almost insane desire to show that they were not worthless drove them to supreme effort. The leaven of the psychology of independence was getting in its work.

The people of Hue and Cry for three generations had been made to feel that they were pariahs. When they had brought their fish or clams to the mainland the buyers were both unjust and contemptuous, as if they were dealing with begging children who must expect only a charitable gift for their product instead of a real man's price. Prices suited the fish-buyers' moods of the day. The islanders had never been admitted to the plane of straight business like other fishermen. They had always taken meekly what had been offered--whether coin or insults. Therefore, their labor had never returned them full values.

They who bought made the poor wretches feel that it constituted a special favor to take their fish at any price.

They seemed to come into their own that first day at market when the _Ethel and May_ made her bigness in the dock at the city fish-house. Masterful men represented them in the dealings with the buyers. The crew hid their delighted grins behind rough palms when Captain Epps Candage bawled out bidders who were under market quotations; they gazed with awe on Captain Mayo when he read from printed sheets--print being a mystery they had never mastered--and figured with ready pencil and even corrected the buyer, who acknowledged his error and humbly apologized. No more subservient paltering at the doors of fish-houses!

Back home the women and the children and the old folks had a good roof over their heads; the fishers had the deck of a tidy schooner under their feet. Shiftlessness departed from them. After years of oppression they had found their opportunity. More experienced men would have found this new fortune only modest; these men grasped it with juvenile enthusiasm.

They were over the side of the schooner and out in their dories when more cautious trawlsmen hugged the fo'c'sle. On their third trip, because of this daring, they caught the city market bare on a Thursday and made a clean-up.

“I'm told that Saint Peter started this Friday notion because he was in the fish business,” stated Captain Candage, sorting money for the shares. “All I've got to say is, he done a good job of it.”

Mr. Speed, sailing as mate, always found ready obedience.

Smut-nosed Dolph never listened before to such praise as was lavished by the hungry men over the pannikins which he heaped.

Captain Mayo, casting up accounts one day, was honestly astonished to find that almost a month had passed since he had landed at Maquoit.

“That goes to show how a man will get interested when he is picked up and tossed into a thing,” he said to Polly Candage.

“You are making real men of them, Captain Mayo!” She added, with a laugh, “And you told me you were no kind of a hand at making over human nature!”

“They are doing it themselves.”

“I will say nothing to wound your modesty, sir.”

“Now I must wake up. I must! There's nothing worth while in the profit for both your father and myself. I want him to have the proposition alone. There'll be a fair make for him. I didn't intend to stay here so long. I guess I sort of forgot myself.” He went on with his figures.

“But I knew you could not forget,” she ventured, after a pause.

He glanced up and found a queer expression on her countenance. There were frank sympathy and friendliness in her eyes. He had revolved bitter thoughts alone, struggling with a problem he could not master. In sudden emotion--in an unpremeditated letting-go of himself--he reached out for somebody in whom to confide. He needed counsel in a matter where no man could help him. This girl was the only one who could understand.

“There may be letters waiting for me in the city--in the big city where I may be expected,” he blurted. “I haven't dared to send any.” He hesitated, and then gave way to his impulse. “Miss Polly, I haven't any right to trouble you with my affairs. I may seem impertinent. But you are a girl! Does a girl usually sit down and think over all the difficulties--when she doesn't get letters--and then make allowances?”

“I'm sure she does--when she loves anybody.”

“And yet it may seem very strange. I am worried out of my senses. I don't know what to do.”

She was silent for a long time, looking away from him and twisting her hands in her lap; she was plainly searching her soul for inspiration--and courage!

“You think she will understand the situation?” he insisted.

“She ought to.”

“But no word from me! Silence for weeks!”

Her voice was low, but she evidently had found courage. “I have not heard one word--not a letter has come to me--since I left my aunt's home.”

“Do you feel sure that he loves you just the same? You don't need letters?”

“Oh no! I don't need letters.”

“But in my case?”

“I could see that she loves you very much. She stood out before them all, Captain Mayo. That sort of a girl does not need letters.”

“You have put new courage in me. I believe you understand just how a girl would feel. You know a Yankee! He expects to find a friend just where he left him, in the matter of affection.”

“A girl does not need to be a Yankee to be that way in her love.”

“I can't sneak around to her by the back way--I can't do that!” he cried. “I don't want to be ashamed of myself. I don't want to bring more trouble to her. Don't you think she will wait for me until I can come--and come right!”

“She will wait for you, sir. It's the nature of women to wait--when they love.”

“But I cannot ask her to wait forever. That's why I must go away and try to make good.” He set his teeth, and his jaw muscles were ridged. “I believe a man can get what he goes after in the right spirit, Miss Polly.” He swing off the porch and left her.

The fog was heavy on shore and sea that day, holding the _Ethel and May_ in port. He disappeared into the stifling mist, and the girl sat and stared into that vacancy for a long time.

Mayo rowed out to the schooner, which was anchored in the harbor roads. He was carrying his accounts to Captain Candage.

Standing and facing forward as he rowed, he came suddenly upon a big steam-yacht which had stolen into the cove through the fog and was anchored in his course. She was the _Sprite_, and he had formed a 'longshore acquaintance with her skipper that summer, meeting him in harbors where the _Sprite_ and _Olenia_ had been neighbors in the anchorage. He stopped rowing and allowed the dory to drift. He noted that the blue flag was flying at the main starboard spreader, announcing the absence of the owner, and he understood that he could call for the skipper without embarrassing that gentleman. One of the crew was putting covers on the brasswork forward.

“Compliments to Captain Trott, and tell him that Captain Mayo is at the gangway.”

The skipper appeared promptly, replying to the hail before the sailor had stirred. “Come aboard, sir.”

“I'll not bother you that much, captain. I can ask my question just as well from here. Do you know of any good opening for a man of my size?”

The captain of the _Sprite_ came to the rail and did not reply promptly.

“I have left the _Olenia_ and I'm looking for something.”

Captain Trott started for the gangway. “Oh, you needn't trouble to come down, sir.”

“I'd rather, Captain Mayo.” After he had descended he squatted on the platform at the foot of the ladder and held the dory close, grasping the gunwale. “What are you doing for yourself these days?”

Mayo had no relish for a long story. “I'm waiting to grab in on something,” he replied.

Captain Trott did not show any alacrity in getting to the subject which Mayo had broached. “It has set in pretty thick, hasn't it? I have been ordered in here to wait for my folks; they're visiting at some big estate up-river.”

“But about the chance for a job, captain!”

“Look here! What kind of a run-in did you have with the _Olenia_ owner?”

Mayo opened his mouth and then promptly closed it. He could not reveal the nature of the trouble between himself and his former employer.

“We had words,” he said, stiffly.

“Yes, I reckon so! But the rest of it!”

“That's all.”

“You needn't tell me any more than you feel like doing, of course,” said Captain Trott. “But I have to tell _you_ that Mr. Marston has come out with some pretty fierce talk for an owner to make. He has made quite a business of circulating that talk. I didn't realize that you are of so much importance in the world, Mayo,” he added, dryly.

“I don't know what he is saying.”

“Didn't you leave him in the night--without notice, or something of the kind?”

“It was an accident.”

“I hope you have a good story to back you up, Captain Mayo, for I have liked you mighty well ever since meeting you first. What is behind it?”

“I can't tell you.”

“But you can tell somebody--somebody who can straighten the thing out for you, can't you?”

“No, Captain Trott.”

“Well, you know what has happened in your case, don't you?” The skipper of the _Sprite_ exhibited a little testiness at being barred out of Mayo's confidence.

The young man shook his head.

“Marston claims that you mutinied and deserted him--slipped away in the night--threw up your job on the high seas--left him to work to New York with a short crew--the mate as captain.”

“That's an infernal lie!”

“Then come forward and show him up.”

“I cannot talk about the case. I have my reasons--good ones!”

“I'm sorry for you, Mayo. You are done in the yachting game, I'm afraid. He'll blacklist you in every yacht club from Bar Harbor to Miami. I have heard my folks talking about it. He seems to have a terrible grudge--more than a big man usually bothers about in the case of a skipper.”

Mayo set his oar against the edge of the platform and pushed off. The skipper called after him, but he was instantly swallowed up by the fog and did not reply.

On board the _Ethel and May_ his ragged but cheery crew were baiting up, hooking clams upon the ganging hooks, and coiling lines into tubs. The men grinned greeting when he swung over the rail. He scowled at them; he even turned a glowering look on Captain Candage when he met the latter on the quarter-deck.

“Yes, sir! I see how it is! You're getting cussed sick of this two-cent game here,” said Candage, mournfully. “I don't blame ye. We ain't in your class, here, Captain Mayo.” He took the papers which the young man held out to him. “I suppose this is the last time we'll share, you and me. I'll miss ye devilish bad. I'd rather go for nothing and let you have it all than lose ye. But, of course, it ain't no use to argue or coax.”

Mayo went and sat on the rail, folding his arms, and did not reply. The old skipper trudged forward, his head bowed, his hands clutched behind his back. When he returned Mayo stood up and put his hand on the old man's shoulder.

“Captain Candage, please don't misunderstand me. Just at present I feel that the only friends I have in the world are here. Don't mind the way I acted just now when I came on board. I have had a lot of trouble--I'm having more of it. I'm not going to leave you just yet. I want to stay aboard until I can think it all over--can get my grip. That is, if you're satisfied to have it that way!”

“Satisfied! Jumping Cicero!” exploded Captain Can-dage. He took the dory and rowed ashore. He found his daughter gazing into the fog from the porch of the widow's cottage. “He is going to stay a while longer,” he informed her, rapturously. “Something has happened. Do you suppose that girl has throwed him over?”

“Father, do you dare to chuckle because a friend is in trouble?”

“I'll laugh and slap my leg if he ever gets shet of that hity-tity girl,” he rejoined, stoutly.

“I am astonished--I am ashamed of you, father!”

“Polly dear, be honest with your dad!” he pleaded. “Do you want to see him married off to her?”

“I certainly do. I only wish I might help him.” Her lips were white, her voice trembled. She got up and hurried into the house.

“I'll be cussed if I understand wimmen,” declared Captain Candage, fiddling his finger under his nose. “That feller she has picked out for herself must be the Emp'ror of Peeroo.”

Captain Mayo did not come ashore again before the _Ethel and May_ sailed.

The fog cleared that night and they smashed out to the fishing-grounds ahead of a cracking breeze, and had their trawls down in the early dawn. At sundown, trailed by a wavering banner of screaming gulls who gobbled the “orts” tossed over by the busy crew cleaning their catch, they were docking at the city fish-house.

“Lucky again,” commented Captain Candage, returning from his sharp dicker with the buyer. “The city critters are all hungry for haddock, and that's just what we hit to-day.” He surveyed his gloomy partner with sympathetic concern. “Why don't you take a run uptown?” he suggested. “You're sticking too close to this packet for a young man. Furthermore, if you see a store open buy me a box of paper collars. Rowley hain't got my size!”

Mayo, unreconciled and uneasy, hating that day the sound of the flapping, sliding fish as they were pitchforked into the tubs for hoisting, annoyed by the yawling of pulleys and realizing that his nerves were not right at all, obeyed the suggestion. He had a secret errand of his own, yielding to a half-hope; he went to the general-delivery window of the post-office and asked for mail. He knew that love makes keen guesses. The _Olenia_ had visited that harbor frequently for mail. But there was nothing for him. He strolled about the streets, nursing his melancholy, forgetting Captain Candage's commission, envying the contentment shown by others.

In that mood he would have avoided Captain Zoradus Wass if he had spied that boisterously cheerful mariner in season. But the captain had him by the arm and was dancing him about the sidewalk, showing more affability than was his wont.

“Heifers o' Herod! youngster,” shouted the grizzled master, “have you come looking for me?”

“No,” faltered Mayo. “Did you want to see me?”

“Have worn taps off my boots to-day chasing from shipping commissioner's office to every hole and corner along the water-front. Heard you had quit aboard a yacht, and reckoned you had got sensible again and wanted real work.”

“If you had asked down among the fish-houses you might have got on track of me, sir.” Mayo's tone was somber.

“Fish! You fishing?” demanded Captain Wass, with incredulity.

“Yes, and on a chartered smack at that--shack-fishing on shares!” Mayo was sourly resolved to paint his low estate in black colors. “And I have concluded it's about all I'm fit for.”

“That's fine, seaman-like talk to come from a young chap I have trained up to master's papers, giving him two years in my pilot-house. I was afraid you were going astern, you young cuss, when I heard you'd gone skipper of a yacht, but I didn't think it was as bad as all this.”

“My yachting business is done, sir.”

“Thank the bald-headed Nicodemus! There's hopes of you. Did anybody tell you I've been looking for you?”

“No, sir!”

“Glad of it. Now I can tell you myself. Do you know where I am now?”

“I heard you were on a Vose line freighter, sir.”

“Don't know who told you that--but it wasn't Ananias. You're right. She's the old _Nequasset_, handed back to me again because I'm the only one who understands her cussed fool notions. First mate got drunk yesterday and broke second mate's leg in the scuffle--one is in jail and t'other in the hospital, and never neither of 'em will step aboard any ship with me again. I sail at daybreak, bade to the Chesapeake for steel rails. Got your papers?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Come along. You're first mate.”

“Do you really want me, sir?”

“Want you? Confound it all, I've got you! In about half a day I'll have all the yacht notions shaken out of you and the fish-scales stripped off, and then you'll be what you was when I let you go--the smartest youngster I ever trained.”

Mayo obeyed the thrust of the jubilant master's arm and went along. “I'll go and explain to Captain Can-dage, my partner.”

“All right. I'll go along, too, and help you make it short.”

As they walked along Captain Wass inspected his companion critically.

“High living aboard Marston's yacht make you dyspeptic, son? You look as if your vittles hadn't been agreeing with you.”

“My health is all right, sir.”

“Heard you had trouble with Marston,” proceeded the old skipper, with brutal frankness. “Anybody who has trouble with that damnation pirate comes well recommended to me. He is trying to steal every steamboat line on this coast. Thank Gawd, he can never get his claws on the old Vose line. Some great doings in the steamboat business are ahead, Mayo. Reckon it's a good line to be in if you like fight and want to make your bigness.”

Mayo walked on in silence. He was troubled by this added information that news of his affair with Marston had gained such wide currency. However, he was glad that this new opportunity offered him a chance to hide himself in the isolation of a freighter's pilot-house.

Captain Candage received the news with meek resignation. “I knowed it would have to come,” he said. “Couldn't expect much else. Howsomever, it ain't comforting.”

“Can't keep a good boy like this pawing around in fish gurry,” stated Captain Wass.

“I know it, and I wish him well and all the best!”

Their leave-taking, presided over by the peremptory master of the _Nequasset_, was short.

“I'll probably have a chance to see you when we come here again,” called Mayo from the wharf, looking down into the mournful countenance of the skipper. “Perhaps I'll have time to run down to Maquoit while we are discharging. At any rate, explain it all for me, especially to your daughter.”

“I'll tell all concerned just what's right,” Captain Candage assured him. “I'll tell her for you.”

She was on the beach when the skipper came rowing in alone from the _Ethel and May_.

“He's gone,” he called to her. “Of course we couldn't keep him. He's too smart to stay on a job like this.”

When they were on their way up to the widow's cottage he stole side-glances at her, and her silence distressed him.

“Let's see! He says to me--if I can remember it right-he says, says he, 'Take my best respects and '--let's see--yes, 'take my best respects and love to your Polly--'”

“Father! Please don't fib.”

“It's just as I remember it, dear. 'Especial,' he says. I remember that! 'Especial,' he says. And he looked mighty sad, dear, mighty sad.” He put his arm about her. “There are a lot of sad things in this world for everybody, Polly. Sometimes things get so blamed mixed up that I feel like going off and climbing a tree!”

XV ~ THE RULES OF THE ROAD

Now the _Dreadnought's_ a-sailing the Atlantic so wide,
Where the high, roaring seas roll along her black side.
Her sailors like lions walk the deck to and fro,
She's the Liverpool packet--O Lord let her go!
--Song of the Flash Packet.

On a day in early August the _Nequasset_ came walloping laboriously up-coast through a dungeon fog, steel rails her dragging burden, caution her watchword.

The needle of her indicator marked “Half speed,” and it really meant half speed. Captain Zoradus Wass made scripture of the rules laid down by the Department of Commerce and Labor. There was no tricky slipping-over under his sway--no finger-at-nose connivance between the pilot-house and the chief engineer's grille platform. No, Captain Wass was not that kind of a man, though the fog had held in front of him two days, vapor thick as feathers in a tick, and he had averaged not much over six nautical miles an hour, and was bitterly aware that the rate of freight on steel rails was sixty-five cents a ton.

“And as I've been telling you, at sixty-five cents there's about as much profit as there would be in swapping hard dollars from one hand to the other and depending on what silver you can rub off,” said Captain Wass to First-mate Mayo.

The captain was holding the knob of the whistle-pull In constant clutch. Regularly every minute _Nequasset's_ prolonged blast sounded, strictly according to the rules of the road.