“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.”