Blow The Man Down. Holman Day
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.
“Thought I'd show them frosted-cakers that there's a little sociability amongst the gents in the coasting trade, too,” he informed his host. “Furthermore, I want to borry the ex-act time o' day. And, furthermore, I'm glad to get away from that cussed aromy on board the Belvedere and sort of air out my nose once in a while. What's the good word, Cap?”
Captain Candage replied to the commonplaces of the other skipper in abstracted fashion. He had viewed Lougee's approach with interest, and now he was plainly pondering in regard to something wholly outside this chatter.
“Captain Lougee,” he broke in, suddenly, in low tones, “I want you should come forward with me out of hearing of anybody below. I've got a little taakul I want you to help me overhaul.”
The two walked forward over the deckload and sat on the fore-gaff, which sprawled carelessly where it had fallen when the halyards were let run.
“My daughter is below, there,” explained Captain Candage.
“Vacation trip, eh?”
“I don't think it can be called that, Captain Lougee,” stated the host, dryly. “She is having about as good a time as a canary-bird would have in a corn-popper over a hot fire.”
“What did she come for, then?”
“I made her come. I shanghaied her.”
“That's no way to treat wimmen folks,” declared Captain Lougee. “I've raised five daughters and I know what I'm talking about.”
“I know you have raised five girls, and they're smart as tophet and right as a trivet—and that's why I have grabbed right in on the subject as I have. I was glad to see you coming aboard, Captain Lougee. I want some advice from a man who knows.”
“Then I'm the man to ask, Captain Candage.”
“Last time I was home—where she has been living with her Aunt Zilpah—I ketched her!” confessed Candage. His voice was hoarse. His fingers, bent and calloused with rope-pulling, trembled as he fingered the seam of his trousers.
“You don't tell!” Lougee clucked, solicitously.
“Yes, I ketched her buggy-riding!”
“Alone?”
“No, there was a gang of 'em in a beach-wagon. They was going to a party. And I ketched her dancing with a fellow at that party.”
“Well, go ahead now that you've got started! Shake out the mainsail!”
“That's about all there is to it—except that a fellow has been beauing her home from Sunday-school concerts with a lantern. Yes, I reckon that is about all to date and present writing,” confessed Candage.
“What else do you suspect?”
“Nothing. Of course, there's no telling what it will grow to be—with dudes a-pestering her the way they do.”
“There ain't any telling about anything in this world, is there?” demanded Captain Lougee, very sharply.
“I reckon not—not for sure!”
“Do you mean to say that because your girl—like any girl should—has been having a little innocent fun with young folks, you have dragged her on board this old hooker, shaming her and making her ridiculous?”
“I have been trying to do my duty as a father,” stated Captain Candage, stoutly, and avoiding the flaming gaze of his guest.
Captain Lougee straightened his leg so as to come at his trousers pocket, produced a plug of tobacco, and gnawed a chew off a corner, after careful inspection to find a likely spot for a bite.
“I need to have something in my mouth about this time—something soothing to the tongue and, as you might say, sort of confining, so that too much language won't bu'st out all at once,” he averred, speaking with effort as he tried to lodge the huge hunk of tobacco into a comfortable position. “I have raised five nice girls, and I have always treated 'em as if they had common sense along with woman's nat'ral goodness and consid'able more self-reliance than a Leghorn pullet. And I used 'em like they had the ordinary rights and privileges of human beings. And they are growed up and a credit to the family. And I haven't got to look back over my record and reflect that I was either a Chinyman or a Turkeyman. No, sir! I have been a father—and my girls can come and sit on my knee to-day and get my advice, and think it's worth something.”
He rose and walked toward his dory.
“But hold on,” called Captain Candage. “You haven't told me what you think.”
“Haven't I? I thought I had, making it mild and pleasant. But if you need a little something more plain and direct, I'll remark—still making it mild and pleasant—that you're a damned old fool! And now I'll go back and be sociable with them fish scraps. I believe they will smell better after this!” He leaped into his dory and rowed away.
Captain Candage offered no rejoinder to that terse and meaty summing up. Naturally, he was as ready with his tongue as Captain Ranse Lougee or any other man alongshore. But in this case the master of the Polly was not sure of his ground. He knew that Captain Lougee had qualified as father of five. In the judgment of a mariner experience counts. And he did not resent the manner of Captain Lougee because that skipper's brutal bluntness was well known by his friends. Captain Candage had asked and he had received. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared after the departing caller and pondered.
“Maybe he is right. He probably is right. But it wouldn't be shipboard discipline if I told her that I have been wrong. I reckon I'll go aft and be pleasant and genteel, hoping that nothing will happen to rile my feelings. Now that my feelings are calm and peaceful, and having taken course and bearings from a father of five, I'll probably say to her, 'You'd better trot along home, sissy, seeing that I have told you how to mind your eye after this.'”
IV ~ OVER THE “POLLY'S” RAIL
O Stormy was a good old man!
To my way you storm along!
Physog tough as an old tin pan,
Ay, ay, ay, Mister Storm-along!
—Storm-along Shanty.
Without paying much attention to the disturber, Captain Candage had been a bit nettled during his meditation. A speed boat from one of the yachts kept circling the Polly, carrying a creaming smother of water under its upcocked bow. It was a noisy gnat of a boat and it kicked a contemptuous wake against the rust-streaked old wagon.
When it swept under the counter, after Captain Candage was back on his quarter-deck, he gave it a stare over the rail,