Part 3

“Alma!” snapped Julius Marston. His eyes opened wide. He looked her up and down. “I have heard before that an ocean trip makes women silly, I am inclined to believe it. I don't care a curse who that fellow's grandfather was. _You_ are my daughter--and you keep off that bridge!”

The men of business were coming up the companion-way, and she rose and hurried to her stateroom.

“I don't dare to meet Nan Burgess just now,” she told herself. “Friendships can be broken by saying certain things--and I feel perfectly capable of saying just those things to her at this moment.”

In the late afternoon the _Olenia_, the shore-line looming to starboard, shaped her course to meet and pass a big steamer which came rolling down the sea with a banner of black smoke flaunting behind her.

The fog which Captain Mayo had predicted was coming. Wisps of it trailed over the waves--skirmishers sent ahead of the main body which marched in mass more slowly behind.

A whistling buoy, with its grim grunt, told all mariners to 'ware Razee Reef, which was lifting its jagged, black bulk against the sky-line. With that fog coming, Captain Mayo needed to take exact bearings from Razee, for he had decided to run for harbor that night. That coastline, to whose inside course Marston's orders had sent the yacht, was too dangerous to be negotiated in a night which was fog-wrapped. Therefore, the captain took the whistler nearly dead on, leaving to the larger steamer plenty of room in the open sea.

With considerable amazement Mayo noticed that the other fellow was edging toward the whistler at a sharper angle than any one needed. That course, if persisted in, would pinch the yacht in dangerous waters. Mayo gave the on-coming steamer one whistle, indicating his intention to pass to starboard. After a delay he was answered by two hoarse hoots--a most flagrant breach of the rules of the road.

“That must be a mistake,” Captain Mayo informed Mate McGaw.

“That's a polite name for it, sir,” averred Mr. McGaw, after he had shifted the lump in his cheek.

“Of course he doesn't mean it, Mr. McGaw.”

“Then why isn't he giving us elbow-room on the outside of that buoy, sir?”

“I can't swing and cross his bows now. If he should hit us we'd be the ones held for the accident.”

Again Mayo gave the obstinate steamer a single whistle-blast.

“If he cross-signals me again I'll report him,” he informed the mate. “Pay close attention, Mr. McGaw, and you, too, Billy. We may have to go before the inspectors.”

But the big chap ahead of them did not deign to reply. He kept on straight at the whistler.

“Compliments of Mr. Marston!” called the secretary from the bridge ladder. “What steamer is that?”

“_Conorno_ of the Bee line, sir,” stated Captain Mayo over his shoulder. Then he ripped out a good, hearty, deep-water oath. According to appearances, incredible as the situation seemed, the _Conorno_ proposed to drive the yacht inside the whistler.

Mayo ran to the wheel and yanked the bell-pull furiously. There were four quick clangs in the engine-room, and in a moment the _Olenia_ began to quiver in all her fabric. Going full speed ahead, Mayo had called for full speed astern. Then he sounded three whistles, signaling as the rules of the road provide. The yacht's twin screws churned a yeasty riot under her counter, and while she was laboring thus in her own wallow, trembling like some living thing in the extremity of terror, the big steamer swept past. Froth from the creamy surges at her bows flicked spray contemptuously upon Julius Marston and his guests on the _Olenia_'s quarter-deck. Men grinned down upon them from the high windows of the steamer's pilot-house.

A jeering voice boomed through a megaphone: “Keep out of the way of the Bee line! Take the hint!”

An officer pointed his finger at Marston's house flag, snapping from the yacht's main truck. The blue fish-tail with its letter “M” had revealed the yacht's identity to searching glasses.

“Better make it black! Skull and cross-bones!” volunteered the megaphone operator.

On she went down the sea and the _Olenia_ tossed in the turbulent wake of the kicking screws.

Then, for the first time, Captain Mayo heard the sound of Julius Marston's voice. The magnate stood up, shook his fist at his staring captain, and yelled, “What in damnation do you think you are doing?”

It was amazing, insulting, and, under the circumstances as Mayo knew them, an unjust query. The master of the _Olenia_ did not reply. He was not prepared to deliver any long-distance explanation. Furthermore, the yacht demanded all his attention just then. He gave his orders and she forged ahead to round the whistler.

“Nor'west by west, half west, Billy. And cut it fine!”

The fog had fairly leaped upon them from the sea. The land-breeze had been holding back the wall of vapor, damming it in a dun bank to southward. The breeze had let go. The fog had seized its opportunity.

“Saturday Cove for us to-night, Mr. McGaw,” said the master. “Keep your eye over Billy's shoulder.”

Then the secretary appeared again on the ladder. This time he did not bring any “compliments.”

“Mr. Marston wants you to report aft at once,” he announced, brusquely.

Mayo hesitated a moment. They were driving into blankness which had shut down with that smothering density which mariners call “a dungeon fog.” Saturday Cove's entrance was a distant and a small target. In spite of steersman and mate, his was the sole responsibility.

“Will you please explain to Mr. Marston that I cannot leave the bridge?”

“You have straight orders from him, captain! You'd better stop the boat and report.”

The skipper of the _Olenia_ was having his first taste of the unreasoning whim of the autocrat who was entitled to break into shipboard discipline, even in a critical moment. Mayo felt exasperation surging in him, but he was willing to explain.

The whistler and Razee Reef had been blotted out by the fog.

“If this vessel is stopped five minutes in this tide-drift we shall lose our bearings, sir. I cannot leave this bridge for the present.”

“I'm thinking you'll leave it for good!” blurted the secretary. “You're the first hired man who ever told Julius Marston to go bite his own thumb.”

“I may be a hired man,” retorted Mayo. “But I am also a licensed shipmaster. I must ask you to step down off the bridge.”

“Does that go for all the rest of the--passengers?” asked the secretary, angry in his turn. He dwelt on his last word. “It does--in a time like this!”

“Very well, I'll give them that word aft.”

Captain Mayo caught a side glance from Mate McGaw after a time.

“I have often wondered,” remarked the mate to nobody in particular, “how it is that so many damn fools get rich on shore.”

Captain Mayo did not express any opinion on the subject. He clutched the bridge rail and stared into the fog, and seemed to be having a lot of trouble in choking back some kind of emotion.

III ~ THE TAVERN OF THE SEAS

Now, Mister Macliver, you knows him quite well, He comes upon deck and he cuts a great swell; It's damn your eyes there and it's damn your eyes here, And straight to the gangway he takes a broad sheer. --La Pique “Come-all-ye.”

Into Saturday Cove, all during that late afternoon, they came surging--spars and tackle limned against the on-sweeping pall of the gray fog--those wayfarers of the open main.

First to roll in past the ledgy portals of the haven were the venerable sea-wagons--the coasters known as the “Apple-treers.” Their weatherwise skippers, old sea-dogs who could smell weather as bloodhounds sniff trails, had their noses in the air in good season that day, and knew that they must depend on a thinning wind to cuff them into port. One after the other, barnacled anchors splashed from catheads, dragging rusty chains from hawse-holes, and old, patched sails came sprawling down with chuckle of sheaves and lisp of running rigging.

A 'long-coast shanty explains the nickname, “Apple-treers”:

O, what's the use of compass or a quadrant or a log? Keep her loafin' on her mudhook in a norther or a fog. But as soon's the chance is better, then well ratch her off once more, Keepin' clost enough for bearings from the apple-trees ashore.

Therefore, the topsail schooners, the fore-and-afters, the Bluenose blunt-prows, came in early before the fog smooched out the loom of the trees and before it became necessary to guess at what the old card compasses had to reveal on the subject of courses.

And so, along with the rest of the coastwise ragtag, which was seeking harbor and holding-ground, came the ancient schooner _Polly_. Fog-masked by those illusory mists, she was a shadow ship like the others; but, more than the others, she seemed to be a ghost ship, for her lines and her rig informed any well-posted mariner that she must be a centenarian; with her grotesqueness accentuated by the fog pall, she seemed unreal--a picture from the past.

She had an out-thrust of snub bow and an upcock of square stern, and sag of waist--all of which accurately revealed ripe antiquity, just as a bell-crowned beaver and a swallow-tail coat with brass buttons would identify an old man in the ruck of newer fashions. She had seams like the wrinkles in the parchment skin of extreme old age. She carried a wooden figurehead under her bowsprit, the face and bust of a woman on whom an ancient woodcarver had bestowed his notion of a beatific smile; the result was an idiotic simper. The glorious gilding had been worn off, the wood was gray and cracked. The _Polly's_ galley was entirely hidden under a deckload of shingles and laths in bunches; the after-house was broad and loomed high above the rail in contrast to the mere cubbies which were provided for the other fore-and-afters in the flotilla which came ratching in toward Saturday Cove.

The _Polly_, being old enough to be celebrated, had been the subject of a long-coast lyric of seventeen verses, any one of which was capable of producing most horrible profanity from Captain Epps Candage, her master, whenever he heard the ditty echoing over the waves, sung by a satirist aboard another craft.

In that drifting wind there was leisure; a man on board a lime-schooner at a fairly safe distance from the _Polly_ found inclination and lifted his voice:

“Ow-w-w, here comes the _Polly_ with a lopped-down sail, And Rubber-boot Epps, is a-settin' on her rail. How-w-w long will she take to get to Boston town? Can't just tell 'cause she's headin' up and down.”

“You think that kind o' ky-yi is funny, do you, you walnut-nosed, blue-gilled, goggle-eyed son of a dough-faced americaneezus?” bellowed Captain Candage, from his post at the _Polly's_ wheel.

“Father!” remonstrated a girl who stood in the companionway, her elbows propped on the hatch combings. “Such language! You stop it!”

“It ain't half what I can do when I'm fair started,” returned the captain.

“You never say such things on shore.”

“Well, I ain't on shore now, be I? I'm on the high seas, and I'm talking to fit the occasion. Who's running this schooner, you or me?”

She met his testiness with a spirit of her own, “I'm on board here, where I don't want to be, because of your silly notions, father. I have the right to ask you to use decent language, and not shame us both.”

Against the archaically homely background the beauty of the young girl appeared in most striking contrast. Her curls peeped out from under the white Dutch cap she wore. Her eyes sparkled with indignant protest, her face was piquant and was just then flushed, and her nose had the least bit of a natural uptilt, giving her the air of a young woman who had a will of her own to spice her amiability.

Captain Candage blinked at her over the spokes of the wheel, and in his father's heart acknowledged her charm, realizing more acutely that his motherless girl had become too much of a problem for his limited knowledge in the management of women.

He had not seen her grow up gradually, as other fathers had viewed their daughters, being able to meet daily problems in molding and mastery.

She seemed to reach development, mental and physical, in disconcerting phases while he was away on his voyages. Each time he met her he was obliged to get acquainted all over again, it appeared to him.

Captain Candage had owned up frankly to himself that he was not able to exercise any authority over his daughter when she was ashore.

She was not wilful; she was not obstinate; she gave him affection. But she had become a young woman while his slow thoughts were classing her still as a child. She was always ahead of all his calculations. In his absences she jumped from stage to stage of character--almost of identity! He had never forgotten how he had brought back to her from New York, after one voyage, half a gunny sackful of tin toys, and discovered that in his absence, by advice and sanction of her aunt, who had become her foster-mother, she had let her dresses down to ankle-length and had become a young lady whom he called “Miss Candage” twice before he had managed to get his emotions straightened out. While he was wondering about the enormity of tin toys in the gunny sack at his feet, as he sat in the aunt's parlor; his daughter asked him to come as guest of honor with the Sunday-school class's picnic which she was arranging as teacher. That gave him his opportunity to lie about the toys and allege that he had brought them for her scholars.

Captain Candage, on the deck of his ship, found that he was able to muster a little courage and bluster for a few minutes, but he did not dare to look at her for long while he was asserting himself.

He looked at her then as she stood in the gloomy companionway, a radiant and rosy picture of healthy maidenhood. But the expression on her face was not comfortingly filial.

“Father, I must say it again. I can't help saying it. I am so unhappy. You are misjudging me so cruelly.”

“I done it because I thought it was right to do it. I haven't been tending and watching the way a father ought to tend and watch. I never seemed to be able to ketch up with you. Maybe I ain't right. Maybe I be! At any rate, I'm going to stand on this tack, in your case, for a while longer.”

“You have taken me away from my real home for this? This is no place for a girl! You are not the same as you are when you are on shore. I didn't know you could be so rough--and--wicked!”

“Hold on there, daughter! Snub cable right there! I'm an honest, God-fearing, hard-working man--paying a hundred cents on the dollar, and you know it.”

“But what did you just shout--right out where everybody could hear you?”

“That--that was only passing the compliments of the day as compared with what I can do when I get started proper. Do you think I'm going to let any snub-snooted wart-hog of a lime-duster sing--”

“Father!”

“What's a girl know about the things a father has to put up with when he goes to sea and earns money for her?”

“I am willing to work for myself. You took me right out of my good position in the millinery-store. You have made me leave all my young friends. Oh, I am so homesick!” Her self-reliance departed suddenly. She choked. She tucked her head into the hook of her arm and sobbed.

“Don't do that!” he pleaded, softening suddenly. “Please don't, Polly!”

She looked up and smiled--a pleading, wan little smile. “I didn't mean to give way to it, popsy dear. I don't intend to do anything to make you angry or sorry. I have tried to be a good girl. I am a good girl. But it breaks my heart when you don't trust me.”

“They were courting you,” he stammered. “Them shore dudes was hanging around you. I ain't doubting you, Polly. But you 'ain't got no mother. I was afraid. I know I've been a fool about it. But I was afraid!” Tears sprinkled his bronzed cheeks. “I haven't been much of a father because I've had to go sailing and earn money. But I thought I'd take you away till-till I could sort of plan on something.”

She gazed at him, softening visibly.

“Oh, Polly,” he said, his voice breaking, “you don't know how pretty you are-you don't know how afraid I am!”

“But you can trust me, father,” she promised, after a pause, with simple dignity. “I know I am only a country girl, not wise, perhaps, but I know what is right and what is wrong. Can't you understand how terribly you have hurt my pride and my self-respect by forcing me to come and be penned up here as if I were a shameless girl who could not take care of herself?”

“I reckon I have done wrong, Polly. But I don't know much-not about women folk. I was trying to do right-because you're all I have in this world.”

“I hope you will think it all over,” she advised, earnestly. “You will understand after a time, father, I'm sure. Then you will let me go back and you will trust me-as your own daughter should be trusted. That's the right way to make girls good-let them know that they can be trusted.”

“You are probably right,” he admitted. “I will think it all over. As soon as we get in and anchored I'll sit down and give it a good overhauling in my mind. Maybe-”

She took advantage of his pause. “We are going into a harbor, are we, father?”

“Yes. Right ahead of us.”

“I wish you would put me ashore and send me back. I shall lose my position in the store if I stay away too long.”

His obstinacy showed again, promptly. “I don't want you in that millinery-shop. I'm told that dude drummers pester girls in stores.”

“They do not trouble me, father. Haven't you any confidence in your own daughter?”

“Yes, I have,” he said, firmly, and then added, “but I keep thinking of the dudes and then I get afraid.”

She gave him quick a glance, plainly tempted to make an impatient retort, and then turned and went down into the cabin.

“Don't be mad with me, Polly,” he called after her. “I guess, maybe, I'm all wrong. I'm going to think it over; I ain't promising nothing sure, but it won't be none surprising if I set you ashore here and send you back home. Don't cry, little girl.” There were tears in his voice as well as in his eyes.

The lime-schooner vocalist felt an impulse to voice another verse:

“Ow-w-w, here comes the _Polly_ in the middle of the road, Towed by a mule and paving-blocks her load. Devil is a-waiting and the devil may as well, 'Cause he'll never get them paving-blocks to finish paving hell.”

Captain Candage left his wheel and strode to the rail. All the softness was gone from his face and his voice.

“You horn-jawed, muck-faced jezebo of a sea-sculpin, you dare to yap out any more of that sculch and I'll come aboard you after we anchor and jump down your gullet and gallop the etarnal innards out of ye! Don't you know that I've got ladies aboard here?”

“It don't sound like it,” returned the songster.

“Well, you hear what _I_ sound like! Half-hitch them jaw taakuls of yours!”

Captain Candage's meditations were not disturbed after that.

With the assistance of his one helper aboard ship, “Oakum Otie,” a gray and whiskered individual who combined in one person the various offices of first mate, second mate, A-1 seaman, and hand before the mast-as well as the skipper's boon companion-the _Polly_ was manoeuvered to her anchorage in Saturday Cove and was snugged for the night. Smoke began to curl in blue wreaths from her galley funnel, and there were occasional glimpses of the cook, a sallow-complexioned, one-eyed youth whose chief and everlasting decoration provided him with the nickname of “Smut-nosed Dolph.”

Then came some of the ocean aristocrats to join the humbler guests in that tavern of the seas.

Avant couriers of a metropolitan yacht club, on its annual cruise, arrived, jockeying in with billowing mountains of snowy canvas spread to catch the last whispers of the breeze. Later arrivals, after the breeze failed, were towed in by the smart motor craft of the fleet. One by one, as the anchors splashed, brass cannons barked salute and were answered by the commodore's gun.

Captain Candage sat on the edge of the _Polly's_ house and snapped an involuntary and wrathful wink every time a cannon banged. In that hill-bound harbor, where the fog had massed, every noise was magnified as by a sounding-board. There were cheery hails, yachtsmen bawled over the mist-gemmed brass rails interchange of the day's experiences, and frisking yacht tenders, barking staccato exhausts, began to carry men to and fro on errands of sociability. In the silences Captain Candage could hear the popping of champagne corks.

“Them fellers certainly live high and sleep in the garret,” observed Oakum Otie. He was seated cross-legged on the top of the house and was hammering down the lumps in a freshly twisted eye-splice with the end of a marlinespike.

“It has always been a wonder to me,” growled Captain Candage, “how dudes who don't seem to have no more wit than them fellows haw-hawing over there, and swigging liquor by the cart-load, ever make money the way they do so as to afford all this.”

On that point Captain Candage might have found Mate McGaw of the _Olenia_ willing to engage in profitable discussion and amicable understanding!

“They don't make it-they don't know enough to make it,” stated Otie, with the conviction of a man who knew exactly what he was talking about. “It has all been left to 'em by their fathers.”

The bearded and brown men of the apple-tree crews leaned the patched elbows of their old coats on the rails and gloomily surveyed the conviviality on board the plaything crafts. Remarks which they exchanged with one another were framed to indicate a sort of lofty scorn for these frolickers of the sea. The coasting skippers, most of whom wore hard hats, as if they did not want to be confounded with those foppish yacht captains, patrolled their quarter-decks and spat disdainfully over their rails.

Everlastingly there was the clank of pumps on board the Apple-treers, and the pumps were tackling the everlasting leaks. Water reddened by contact with bricks, water made turbid by percolation through paving-blocks, splashed continuously from hiccuping scuppers.

Captain Ranse Lougee of the topsail schooner _Belvedere_, laden with fish scraps for a Boston glue-factory, dropped over the counter into his dory and came rowing to the _Polly_, standing up and facing forward and swaying with the fisherman's stroke.

He straddled easily over the schooner's scant freeboard and came aft, and was greeted cordially by Captain Candage.