He remembered what Mr. Speed had said about the reason for her presence on the _Polly_. He cast a disparaging glance around the bare cabin and decided in his mind that Mr. Speed had reported truthfully and with full knowledge of the facts. Surely no girl would choose that sort of thing for a summer vacation.
She bent her head lower over her work and he was conscious of warmer sympathy for her; their troubled affairs of the heart were in similar plight. He felt an impulse to say something to console her and knew that he would welcome understanding and consolation from her; promptly he was afraid of his own tongue, and set curb upon all speech.
“A man never knows how far he may go in making fool talk when he gets started,” he reflected. “Feeling the way I do to-night, I'd better keep the conversation kedge well hooked.”
Now that her hands were busy, she did not find the silence embarrassing. Mayo returned to his ugly meditations.
After a time he was obliged to shift himself on the transom. The schooner was heeling in a manner which showed the thrust of wind. He glanced up and saw that the rain was smearing broad splashes on the dingy glass of the windows. The companion hatch was open, and when he cocked his ear, with mariner's interest in weather, he heard the wind gasping in the open space with a queer “guffle” in its tone.
Instinctively he began to look about the cabin for a barometer.
Already that day the _Olenia's_ glass had warned him by its downward tendency. He wondered whether further reading would indicate something more ominous than fog.
Across the cabin he noted some sort of an instrument swinging from a hook on a carline. He investigated. It was a makeshift barometer, the advertising gift of a yeast company. The contents of its tube were roiled to the height of the mark which was lettered “Tornado.”
“You can't tell nothing from that!” Captain Candage had come down into the cabin and stood behind his involuntary guest. “It has registered 'Tornado' ever since the glass got cracked. And even at that, it's about as reliable as any of the rest of them tinkerdiddle things.”
“Haven't you a regular barometer--an aneroid?” inquired Captain Mayo.
“I can smell all the weather I need to without bothering with one of them contrivances,” declared the master of the schooner, in lordly manner. He began to pull dirty oilskins out of a locker.
Mayo hurried up the companionway and put out his head. There were both weight and menace in the wind which hooted past his ears. The fog was gone, but the night was black, without glimmer of stars. The white crests of the waves which galloped alongside flaked the darkness with ominous signalings.
“If you can smell weather, Captain Candage, your nose ought to tell you that this promises to be something pretty nasty.”
“Oh, it might be called nasty by lubbers on a gingerbread yacht, but I have sailed the seas in my day and season, and I don't run for an inshore puddle every time the wind whickers a little.” He was fumbling with a button under his crisp roll of chin beard and gave the other man a stare of superiority.
“You don't class me with yacht-lubbers, do you?”
“Well, you was just on a yacht, wasn't you?”
“Look here, Captain Candage, you may just as well understand, now and here, that I'm one of your kind of sailors. Excuse me for personal talk, but I want to inform you that from fifteen to twenty I was a Grand-Banksman. Last season I was captain of the beam trawler _Laura and Marion_. And I have steamboated in the Sound and have been a first mate in the hard-pine trade in Southern waters. I have had a chance to find out more or less about weather.”
“Un-huh!” remarked the skipper, feigning indifference. “What about it?”
“I tell you that you have no business running out into this mess that is making from east'ard.”
“If you have been so much and so mighty in your time, then you understand that a captain takes orders from nobody when he's on board his own vessel.”
“I understand perfectly well, sir. I'm not giving orders. But my own life is worth something to me and I have a right to tell you that you are taking foolhardy chances. And you know it, too!”
Captain Candage's gaze shifted. He was a coaster and he was naturally cautious, as Apple-treers are obliged to be. He knew perfectly well that he was in the presence of a man who knew! He had not the assurance to dispute that man, though his general grudge against all the world at that moment prompted him.
“I got out because they drove me out,” he growled.
“A man can't afford to be childish when he is in command of a vessel, sir. You are too old a skipper to deny that.”
“I was so mad I didn't stop to smell weather,” admitted the master, bracing himself to meet a fresh list of the heeling _Polly_. He evidently felt that he ought to defend his own sagacity and absolve himself from mariner's culpability.
“Very well! Let it go at that! But what are you going to do?”
“I can't beat back to Saturday Cove against this wind--not now! She would rack her blamed old butts out.”
“Then run her for Lumbo Reach. You can quarter a following sea. She ought to ride fairly easy.”
“That's a narrow stab in a night as black as this one is.”
“I'll make a cross-bearing for you. Where's your chart?” Mayo exhibited a sailor's alert anxiety to be helpful.
“I 'ain't ever needed a chart--not for this coast.”
“Then I'll have to guess at it, sir.” He closed his eyes in order to concentrate. “You gave a course of sou'west by sou'. Let's see--it was nine-fifteen when I just looked and we must have logged--”
“It ain't no use to stab for such a hole in the wall as Lumbo Reach,” declared Candage in discouraged tones.
“But you've got your compass and I can--”
“There ain't no depending on my compass within two points and a half.”
“Confound it, I can make allowance, sir, if you'll tell me your deviation!”
“But it's a card compass and spins so bad in a seaway there ain't no telling, anyway. In my coasting I haven't had to be particular.”
“Not as long as you had an apple-tree in sight,” jeered Mayo, beginning to lose his temper.
“I don't dare to run in the direction of anything that is solid--we'll hit it sure, 'n' hell-fire will toast corn bread. We've got to stay to sea!”
Captain Mayo set his teeth and clenched his fists and took a few turns up and down the cabin. He looked up into the night through the open hatch of the companion-way. The pale glimmer of the swinging lamp tossed a mild flare against the blackness and lighted two faces which were limned against that pall. Both Oakum Otie and Smut-nosed Dolph were at the wheel. Their united strength was needed because the schooner was yawing madly every now and then when the mightier surges of the frothing sea hoisted her counter, chasing behind her like wild horses. Those faces, when Mayo looked on them, were very solemn. The two were crouching like men who were anxious to hide from a savage beast. They grunted as they struggled with the wheel, trying to hold her up when the _Polly_ tobogganed with rushes that were almost breath-checking.
Mayo hastened to the girl. “I must have my coat, Miss Candage. I thank you. It will do now.”
She held it open for his arms, as a maid might aid her knight with his armor. “Are we in danger?” she asked, tremulously.
“I hope not--only it is uncomfortable--and needless,” he said, with some irritation.
“Must I stay down here--alone?”
“I would! It's only a summer blow, Miss Candage. I'm sure we'll be all right.”
Captain Candage had gone on deck, rattling away in his stiff oilskins.
Mayo followed, but the master came down a few steps into the companionway and intercepted the volunteer, showing a final smolder of his surliness.
“I want to notify you that I can run my own bo't, sir!”
“Yes, run it with a yeast barometer, a straw bottom, a pinwheel compass, and your general cussedness of disposition,” shouted Mayo into the whirl of the wind, his anxiety whetting his much-tried temper.
“If you're feeling that way, I don't want you up here.”
“I'm feeling worse than you'll ever understand, you stubborn old fool!”
“I let one man call me a fool to-day and I didn't make back talk--but I know where to draw the line,” warned Candage.
“Look here, I propose to start in with you right now, sir, on a basis you'll understand! I say you're a fool and need a guardian--and from now on I'm going to make my bigness aboard here! Get out of my way!”
Captain Mayo then emphasized his opinion of Captain Candage by elbowing the master to one side and leaping out on deck.
“That may be mutiny,” stated Mr. Speed through set teeth, checking the startled exclamation from his helper at the wheel. “But, by the Judas I-scarrot, it's a Mayo that's doing it! Remember that, Dolph!”
VIII ~ LIKE BUGS UNDER A THIMBLE
Up comes the skipper from down below, And he looks aloft and he looks alow. And he looks alow and he looks aloft, And it's, “Coil up your ropes, there, fore and aft.” With a big Bow-wow! Tow-row-row! Fal de rai de, ri do day! --Boston Shanty.