Part 21

“That was probably more than they figured on. But as long as it has happened they're going to use it to best advantage. You're going to have both tin cans tied to you, son. Every cussed bit of influence is going to be used against you. Poor devils on the outside, like you and I, don't understand just how slick the ways can be greased. Mayo, I'm going to give you good advice. Duck out!”

“Run away like a confessed criminal? That's the advice Fogg gave me. I don't think your advice is good, Captain Wass. I won't run away.”

“It may not be good advice. I ain't wise enough to know everything that's best. But if they put you behind the bars in Atlanta, son, you'll stay there till your term is up. No matter what is found out in your case, it will take money and a lot of time to get the truth before the right people. But if you ain't in prison, and we can get a line on this case and dig up even a part of the truth, then you've got a fighting chance in the open. If we can get just enough to make 'em afraid to put you onto the witness-stand, that much may make 'em quit their barking. You're a sailor, boy! You know a sailor can't do much when his hands are tied. Stay outside the penitentiary and help me fight this thing.”

“I don't know what to do,” mourned the young man. “I'm all in a whirl. I'm no coward, Captain Wass. I'm willing to face the music. But I'm so helpless.”

“Stay outside jail till the fog lifts a bit in this case,” adjured his mentor. “Are you going to lie down and stick up your legs to have 'em tied, like a calf bound for market? Here are a few things you can do if you duck out of sight for a little while. I'll go ahead and--”

Suddenly he checked himself. He was facing the window, which commanded a considerable section of street. He wasted no further breath on good advice.

“I know those men coming down there,” he cried. “They're bailiffs. I saw them around the court-house. They're after you, Mayo! You run! Get away! There must be a back door here. Scoot!” He pulled the unresisting scapegoat out of his chair and hustled him to the rear of the office.

A young man may have the best intentions. He may resolve to be a martyr, to bow to the law's majesty. But at that moment Mayo was receiving imperious command from the shipmaster whose orders he had obeyed for so long that obedience was second nature. And panic seized him! Men were at hand to arrest him. There was no time to reason the thing out. Flight is the first impulse of innocence persecuted. Manly resolve melted. He ran.

“I'll stay behind and bluff 'em off! I'll say you're just out for a minute, that I'm waiting here for you,” cried Captain Wass. “That will give you a start. Try the docks. You may find one of the boys who will help.”

Mayo escaped into a yard, dodged down an alley, planning his movements as he hurried, having a mariner's quickness of thought in an emergency.

He made directly for the pier where steam-vessels took water. A huge ocean-going tug was just getting ready to leave her berth under the water-hose. Her gruff whistle-call had ordered hawsers cast off. Mayo's 'longcoast acquaintance was fairly extensive. This was a coal-barge tug, and he waved quick greeting to the familiar face in her pilot-house and leaped aboard. He climbed the forward ladder nimbly.

“I reckon you'll have to make it hello and good-by in one breath, mate,” advised the skipper. “I'm off to take a light tow down-coast. Norfolk next stop.”

“Let her go--sooner the better,” gasped the fugitive. “I'll explain why as soon as you are out of the dock.”

“You don't say that you want to take the trip?”

“I've got to take it.”

The skipper cocked an eyebrow and pulled his bell. “Make yourself to home, mate,” he advised. “I hope you ain't in so much of a hurry to get there as you seem to be, for I've got three barges to tow.”

Mayo sat down on the rear transom and was hidden from all eyes on the pier.

There was no opportunity for an explanation until the barges had been picked up, for there was much manouver-ing and much tooting. But he found ready sympathy after he had explained.

“The law sharps are always hankering to catch a poor cuss who is trying to navigate these waters and suit the inspectors and the owners at the same time,” admitted the master of the tug. “I have read everything the papers had to say about your case, and I figured they didn't give you a fair show. Newspapers and lawyers and owners don't understand what a fellow is up against. I'm glad you're aboard, mate, because I want to hear your side, with all the details.”

The threshing over of the matter occupied many hours of the long wallow down the Jersey coast, and the tug captain weighed all features of the case with the care of a man who has plenty of time on his hands and with the zest a mariner displays in considering the affairs of his kind of folk.

“If I didn't know you pretty well, Mayo, and know what kind of a man you got your training with, I might think--just as those law sharps will probably say--that you were criminally careless or didn't know your business. But that dodge she made on you! Two points off her course! You've got to put your finger right on there and hold it! Let me tell you something. It was a queer thing in my own case. That was a queer thing in your case. Stand two queer things in our business up beside each other and squint at 'em and you may learn something.”

“She was on her course--I put her there with my own hands,” persisted Mayo.

“Sure! You know your business. If this thing was going to be left to the bunch that know you, you'd go clear. But here's what happened in my case: I had a new man in the wheel-house, here, and he almost rammed me into Cuttyhunk, gave me a touch and go with the Pollock Rip Lightship, and had me headed toward Nauset when the fog lifted. And he was steering my courses to the thinness of a hair, at that! Say, I took a sudden tumble and frisked that chap and dragged a toad-stabber knife out of his pocket--one of those regular foot-long knives. It had been yawing off that compass all the way from a point to a point and a half. When did you shift wheel-watch?”

“Before we made Vineyard Sound.”

“And no trouble coming up the sound?”

“Made Nobska and West Chop to the dot.”

“Then perhaps your general manager, who was in that pilot-house, had an iron gizzard inside him. Most of them Wall Street fellows do have!” said the skipper, with sarcasm.

“There's something going on in the steamboat business that I can't understand,” declared Mayo. “It's high up; it hasn't to do with us chaps, who have to take the kicks. Fogg brought a man aboard the old _Nequasset_, and he didn't bring along a good explanation to go with that man. I have been wondering ever since how it happened that Fogg got to be general manager of the Vose line so almighty sudden.”

“Them high financiers play a big game, mate. And if you happened to be a marked card in it, they'd tear you up and toss you under the table without thinking twice. If you'll take a tip from me, you lay low and do a lot of thinking while Uncle Zoradus does his scouting. What are you going to do when you get to Norfolk?”

“I haven't thought.”

“Well, the both of us better think, and think hard, mate. If the United States is really after you there'll be a sharp eye at every knot-hole. I can't afford to let 'em get in a crack at me for what I've done.”

“I'll jump overboard outside the capes before I'll put you in wrong,” asserted Mayo, with deep feeling.

That night the captain of the tug took a trick at the wheel in person.

His guest lay on the transom, smoking the skipper's spare pipe, and racking his mind for ways and means. After a time he was conscious that the captain was growling a bit of a song to relieve the tedium of his task. He sang the same words over and over--a tried and true Chesapeake shanty:

“Oh, I sailed aboard a lugger, and I shipped aboard a scow, And I sailed aboard a peanut-shell that had a razor bow. Needle in a haystack, brick into a wall! A nigger man in Norfolk, he ain't no 'count at all!”

Mayo rolled off the transom and went to the captain's side. “There's more truth than poetry in that song of yours, sir,” he said. “You have given me an idea. A nigger in Norfolk doesn't attract much attention. And I haven't got to be one of the black ones, either. Don't you suppose there's something aboard here I can use to stain my face with?”

“My cook is a great operator as a tattoo artist.”

“I don't think I want to make the disguise permanent, sir,” stated the young man, with a smile.

“What I mean is, he may have something in his kit that he can use to paint you with. What's your idea--stay there? I'm afraid they'll nail you.” >

“I'll stay there just long enough to ship before the mast on a schooner. There isn't time to think up any better plan just now. Anything to keep out of sight until I can make up my mind about what's really best to be done.”

“We'll have that cook up here,” offered the captain. “He's safe.”

The cook took prompt and professional interest in the matter. “Sure!” he said. “I've got a stain that will sink in and stay put for a long time, if no grease paint is used. Only you mustn't wash your face.”

“There's no danger of a fellow having any inducement to do that when he's before the mast on a schooner in these days,” declared the tug captain, dryly.

An hour later, Captain Boyd Mayo, late of the crack liner _Montana_, was a very passable mulatto, his crisply curling hair adding to the disguise. He swapped his neat suit of brown with a deck-hand, and received some particularly unkempt garments.

The next night, when the tug was berthed at the water station, he slipped off into the darkness, as homeless and as disconsolate as an abandoned dog.

XXII ~ SPECIAL BUSINESS OF A PASSENGER

O Ranzo was no sailor, He shipped on board a whaler. O pity Reuben Ran-zo, Ran-zo, boys! O poor old Reuben Ranzo, Ranzo, boys! --Reuben Ranzo.

Captain Mayo kept out of the region of the white lights for some time. He had a pretty wide acquaintance in the Virginia port, and he knew the beaten paths of the steamboating transients, ashore for a bit of a blow.

He lurked in alleys, feeling especially disreputable. He was not at all sure that his make-up was effective. His own self-consciousness convinced him that he was a glaring fraud, whose identity would be revealed promptly to any person who knew him. But while he sneaked in the purlieus of the city several of his 'longshore friends passed him without a second look. One, a second engineer on a Union line freighter, whirled after passing, and came back to him.

“Got a job, boy?”

“No, sir.”

“We need coal-passers on the _Drummond_. She's in the stream. Come aboard in the morning.”

But it was not according to Mayo's calculation, messing with steamboat men. “Ah doan' conclude ah wants no sech job,” he drawled.

“No, of course you don't want to work, you blasted yaller mutt!” snapped the engineer. He marched on, cursing, and Mayo was encouraged, for the man had given him a thorough looking-over.

He went out onto the wider streets. He was looking for a roving schooner captain, reckoning he would know one of that gentry by the cut of his jib.

A ponderous man came stumping down the sidewalk, swinging his shoulders.

“He's one of 'em,” decided Mayo. The round-crowned soft hat, undented, the flapping trouser legs, the gait recognized readily by one who has ever seen a master mariner patrol his quarter-deck--all these marked him as a safe man to tackle. He stopped, dragged a match against the brick side of a building, and relighted his cigar. But before Mayo could reach him a colored man hurried up and accosted the big gentleman, whipping off his hat and bowing with smug humility. Mayo hung up at a little distance. He recognized the colored man; he was one of the numerous Norfolk runners who furnish crews for vessels. He wore pearl-gray trousers, a tailed coat, and had a pink in his buttonhole.

“Ah done have to say that ah doan' get that number seven man up to now, Cap'n Downs, though I have squitulate for him all up and down. But ah done expect--”

Captain Downs scowled over his scooped hands, puffing hard at his cigar. He threw away the match.

“Look-a-here! you've been chasing me two days with new stories about that seventh man. Haven't you known me long enough to know that you can't trim me for another fee?”

“Cap'n Downs, you done know yo'self the present lucidateness of the sailorman supply.”

“I know that if you don't get that man aboard my schooner to-night or the first thing to-morrow morning you'll never put another one aboard for me. You go hustle! And look here! I see you making up your mouth! Not another cent!”

The colored man backed off and went away.

Mayo accosted the captain when that fuming gentleman came lunging along the sidewalk. “Ah done lak to have that job, cap'n,” he pleaded.

“You a sailor?”

“Yas, sir.”

“How is it you ain't hiring through the regular runners?”

“Ah doan' lak to give all my money to a dude nigger to go spotein' on.”

“Well, there's something in that,” acknowledged Captain Downs, softening a bit. “I haven't got much use for that kind myself. You come along. But if you ain't A-1, shipshape, and seamanlike and come aboard my vessel to loaf on your job you'll wish you were in tophet with the torches lighted. Got any dunnage laying around anywhere?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, then, I guess you're a regular sailor, all right, the way the breed runs nowadays. That sounds perfectly natural.” The captain led the way down to a public landing, where a power-yawl, with engineer and a mate, was in waiting. “Will she go into the stream to-night, Mr. Dodge?” asked Captain Downs, curtly.

“No, sir! About four hundred tons still to come.”

Schooner captains keep religiously away from their vessels as long as the crafts lie at the coal-docks.

“Come up for me in the morning as soon as she is in the stream. Here's a man to fill the crew. If that coon shows up with another man kick the two of 'em up the wharf.”

“Will the passenger come aboard with you, sir?”

“He called me up at the hotel about supper-time and said something about wanting to come aboard at the dock. I tried to tell him it was foolish, but it's safe to reckon that a man who wants to sail as passenger from here to Boston on a coal-schooner is a fool, anyway. If he shows up, let him come aboard.” Captain Downs swung away and the night closed in behind him.

Mayo took his place in the yawl and preserved meek and proper silence during the trip down the harbor.

When they swung under the counter of the schooner which was their destination, the young man noted that she was the _Drusilla M. Alden_, a five-master, of no very enviable record along the coast, so far as the methods and manners of her master went; Mayo had heard of her master, whose nickname was “Old Mull.” He had not recognized him under the name of Captain Downs when the runner had addressed him.

The new member of the crew followed the mate up the ladder--only a few steps, for the huge schooner, with most of her cargo aboard, showed less than ten feet of freeboard amidships.

“Sleepy, George?” asked the mate, when they were on deck.

“No, sir.”

“Then you may as well go on this watch.”

“Yass'r!”

“We'll call it now eight bells, midnight. You'll go off watch eight bells, morning.”

Mayo knew that the hour was not much later than eleven, but he did not protest; he knew something about the procedure aboard coastwise coal-schooners.

Search-lights bent steady glare upon the chutes down which rushed the streams of coal, black dust swirling in the white radiance. The great pockets at Lambert Point are never idle. High above, on the railway, trains of coal-cars racketed. Under his feet the fabric of the vessel trembled as the chutes fed her through the three hatches. Sweating, coal-blackened men toiled in the depths of her, revealed below hatches by the electric lights, pecking at the avalanche with their shovels, trimming cargo.

The young man exchanged a few listless words with the two negroes who were on deck, his mates of the watch.

They were plainly not interested in him, and he avoided them.

The hours dragged. He helped to close and batten the fore-hatch, and later performed similar service on the hatch aft. The main-hatch continued to gulp the black food which the chute fed to it.

Suddenly a tall young man appeared to Mayo. The stranger was smartly dressed, and his spick-and-span garb contrasted strangely with the general riot of dirt aboard the schooner. He trod gingerly over the dust-coated planks and carried two suit-cases.

“Here, George,” he commanded. “Take these to my stateroom.”

Mayo hesitated.

“I'm going as passenger,” said the young man, impatiently, and Mayo remembered what the captain had told the mate.

Passengers on coal-schooners, sailing as friends of the master, were not unknown on the coast, but Mayo judged, from what he had heard, that this person was not a friend, and had wondered a bit.

“I am not allowed to go aft, sir, without orders from the mate.”

“Where is the mate?”

“I think he is below, sir.”

“Asleep?”

“I wouldn't wonder.”

Mayo did not trouble to use his dialect on this stranger, a mere passenger, who spoke as if he were addressing a car-porter. The tone produced instant irritation, resentment in the man who had so recently been master of his ship.

The passenger set down his baggage and pondered a moment. He looked Mayo over in calculating fashion; he stared up the wharf. Then he picked up his bags and hurried along the port alley and disappeared down the companionway.

He returned in a few moments, came into the waist of the vessel, and made careful survey of all about him. There were two sailors far forward, merely dim shadows. For some reason general conditions on the schooner seemed to satisfy the stranger.

“The thing is breaking about right--about as I reckoned it would,” he said aloud. “Look here, George, how much talking do you do about things you see?”

“Talking to who, sir?”

“Why, to your boss--the captain--the mate.”

“A sailor before the mast is pretty careful not to say anything to a captain or the mates unless they speak to him first, sir.”

“George, I'm not going to do anything but what is perfectly all right, you understand. You'll not get into any trouble over it. But what you don't see you can't tell, no matter if questions are asked later on. Here, take this!” He crowded two silver dollars into Mayo's hands and gave him a push. “You trot forward and stay there about five minutes, that's the boy! It's all right. It's a little of my own private business. Go ahead!”

Mayo went. He reflected that it was none of his affair what a passenger did aboard the vessel. It was precious little interest he took in the craft, anyway, except as a temporary refuge. He turned away and put the money in his pocket, the darkness hiding his smile.

He did not look toward the wharf. He strolled on past the forward house, where the engineer was stoking his boiler, getting up steam for the schooner's windlass engine. When he patrolled aft again, after a conscientious wait, he found the passenger leaning against the coachhouse door, smoking a cigarette. The electric light showed his face, and it wore a look of peculiar satisfaction.

Just then some one fumbled inside the coach-house door at the stranger's back, and when the latter stepped away the first mate appeared, yawning.

“I'm the passenger--Mr. Bradish,” the young man explained, promptly. “I just made myself at home, put my stuff in a stateroom, and locked the door and took the key. Is that all right?”

“May be just as well to lock it while we're at dock and stevedores are aboard,” agreed the mate.

“How soon do we pull out of here?”

The mate yawned again and peered up into the sky, where the first gray of the summer dawn was showing over the cranes of the coal-pockets. “In about a half-hour, I should say. Just as soon as the tug can use daylight to put us into the stream.”

The roar of the coal in the main-hatch chute had ceased. The schooner was loaded.

“Go strike eight bells, Jeff, and turn in!” ordered the mate, speaking to Mayo.

“Well, I'll stay outside, here, and watch the sun rise,” said Bradish. “It will be a new experience.”

“It's an almighty dirty place for loafing till we get into the stream and clean ship, sir. I should think taking an excursion on a coal-lugger would be another new experience!” There was just a hint of grim sarcasm in his tone.

“The doctor ordered me to get out and away where I wouldn't hear of business or see business, and a friend of mine told me there were plenty of room and comfort aboard one of these big schooners. That cabin and the staterooms, they're fine!”

“Oh, they have to give a master a good home these days. That's a Winton carpet in the saloon,” declared the mate, with pride. “And we've got a one-eyed cook who can certainly sling grub together. Yes, for a cheap vacation I dun'no' but a schooner is all right!”

The two were getting on most amicably when Mayo went forward. He was dog-tired and turned in on tie bare boards of his fo'cas'le berth.

No bedding is furnished men before the mast on the coal-carriers.

If a man wants anything between himself and the boards he must bring it with him, and few do so. At the end of each trip a crew is discharged and new men are hired, in order to save paying wages while a vessel is in port loading or discharging. Therefore, a coastwise schooner harbors only transients, for whom the fo'cas'le is merely a shelter between watches.

But Mayo was a sailor, and the bare boards served him better than bedding in which some dusky and dirty son of Ham had nestled. He laid himself down and slept soundly.