Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast Page 8

  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.

  Captain Mayo strode straight to the men at the wheel. "Give me thosespokes!" he commanded. "I'll take her! Get in your washing, boys!"

  "Ay, ay, sir!" assented Mr. Speed, giving the resisting Dolph a violentshove.

  When Captain Candage began to curse, Captain Mayo showed that he had avoice and vocabulary of his own. He fairly roared down the master of the_Polly_.

  "Now shut up!" he ordered the dumfounded skipper, who faced him, mouthagape. "This is no time for any more foolishness. It's a case of worktogether to save our lives. Down with 'em, boys!"

  "That's right," declared the mate. "She don't need much of anything onher except a double-reefed mitten with the thumb brailed up."

  The wind had not attained the velocity of a gale, but it did have anugly growl which suggested further violence. Mayo braced himself, readyto bring the schooner about in order to give the crew an opportunity toshorten sail.

  Captain Candage, deposed as autocrat for the moment, seemed to beuncertain as to his duties.

  Mayo, understanding mariner nature, felt some contrition and wasprompted by saner second thought.

  "You'd better take the wheel, Captain Candage. You know her tricksbetter than I do in a seaway. I'll help the boys take in sail."

  The master obeyed with alacrity. He seemed to be cowed. Anger no longerblinded him to their predicament.

  "Just say what you want done, and I'll try to do it," he told Mayo, ina voice which had become suddenly mild and rather beseeching. Then hecalled to his daughter, who had come to the foot of the companion steps,"Better blow out that cabin light, Polly girl! She's li'ble to dancebad, and we don't want to run the chance of fire."

  Mayo got a glimpse at her face as he hurried upon the house on his wayto the main halyards. Her face was pale, but there was the firm spiritof her Yankee ancestry of the sea in her poise and in her very silencein that crisis. She obeyed without complaint or question and the cabinwas dark; even the glimmer of the light had held something of cheer. Nowthe gloom was somber and depressing.

  The schooner came round with a sort of scared hurry when the masterthrew the wheel hard over and trod on the spokes with all his weight. Assoon as the bellying mainsail began to flap, the three men let it go onthe run. They kept up the jumbo sail, as the main jib is called; theyreefed the foresail down to its smallest compass.

  Mayo, young, nimble, and eager, singly knotted more reef pointsthan both his helpers together, and his crisp commands were obeyedunquestioningly.

  "He sartinly is chain lightning in pants," confided Dolph to Otie.

  "He knows his card," said Otie to Dolph.

  Captain Mayo led the way aft, crawling over the shingles and laths.

  "I hope it's your judgment, sir, that we'd better keep her into the windas she is and try to ride this thing out," he suggested to the master.

  "It is my judgment, sir," returned Captain Candage, with officialgravity.

  Hove to, the old _Polly_ rode in fairly comfortable style. She was deepwith her load of lumber, but the lumber made her buoyant and shelifted easily. Her breadth of beam helped to steady her in the sweepingseas--but Captain Mayo clung to a mainstay and faced the wind andthe driving rain and knew that the open Atlantic was no place for the_Polly_ on a night like that.

  Spume from the crested breakers at her wallowing bow salted the rain onhis dripping face. It was an unseasonable tempest, scarcely to be lookedfor at that time of year. But he had had frequent experience with thevagaries of easterlies, and he knew that a summer easterly, when itcomes, holds menacing possibilities.

  "They knowed how to build schooners when your old sirs built this one atMayoport," declared Captain Candage, trying to put a conciliatory toneinto his voice when he bellowed against the blast. "She'll live whereone of these fancy yachts of twice her size would be smothered."

  Mayo did not answer. He leaped upon the house and helped Dolph and Otiefurl the mainsail that lay sprawled in the lazy-jaeks. They took theirtime; the more imminent danger seemed to be over.

  "I never knowed a summer blow to amount to much," observed Mr. Speed,trying to perk up, though he was hanging on by both hands to avoid bringblown off the slippery house.

  "It depends on whether there's an extra special squall knotted into itsomewhere to windward," said Mayo, in a lull of the wind. "Then it canamount to a devil of a lot, Mr. Speed!"

  The schooner washed her nose in a curving billow that came inboardand swept aft. With her small area of exposed sail and with the windbuffeting her, she had halted and paid off, lacking steerageway. She gotseveral wallops of the same sort before she had gathered herself enoughto head into the wind.

  Again she paid off, as if trying to avoid a volleying gust, and anotherwave crested itself ahead of the blunt bows and then seemed to explode,dropping tons of water on deck. Laths, lumber, and bunches of shingleswere ripped loose and went into the sea. The _Polly_ appeared to beshowing sagacity of her own in that crisis; she was jettisoning cargofor her own salvation.

  "Good Cephas! this is going to lose us our decklo'd," wailed the master."We'd better let her run!" "Don't you do it, sir! You'll never get herabout!" Mayo had given over his work on the sail and was listening.Above the scream of the passing gusts which assailed him he was hearinga dull and solemn roar to windward. He suspected what that soundindicated. He had heard it before in his experience. He tried topeer into the driving storm, dragging the rain from his eyes with hisfingers. Then nature held a torch for him. A vivid shaft of lightningcrinkled overhead and spread a broad flare of illumination across thesea. His suspicions, which had been stirred by that sullen roar, werenow verified. He saw a low wall of white water, rolling and frothing. Itwas a summer "spitter" trampling the waves.

  A spitter is a freak in a regular tempest--a midsummer madness ofweather upheaval. It is a thunderbolt of wind, a concentration of gale,a whirling dervish of disaster--wind compactly bunched into one almightyblast--wind enough to last a regular gale for a whole day if the stockwere spent thriftily.

  "Don't ease her an inch!" screamed Mayo.

  But just then another surging sea climbed aboard and picked up more ofthe laths and more of the shingles, and frolicked away into the nightwith the plunder. Captain Candage's sense of thrift got a more vital jabthan did his sense of fear. His eyes were on his wheel, and he had notseen the wall of white spume.

  "That decklo'd has got to be lashed," he muttered. He decided to runwith the wind till that work could be performed. He threw his helm hardover. Mayo had been riding the main boom astraddle, hitching himselftoward the captain, to make him hear. When the volunteer saw the masterof the _Polly_ trying to turn tail to the foe in that fashion, he leapedto the wheel, but he was too late. The schooner had paid off too much.The yelling spitter caught them as they were poised broadside on the topof a wave, before the sluggish craft had made her full turn.

  What happened then might have served as confirmation of mariners'superstition that a veritable demon reigns in the heart of the tempest.The attack on the old _Polly_ showed devilish intelligence in team-work.A crashing curler took advantage of the loosened deckload and smashedthe schooner a longside buffet which sent all the lumber in a slidingdrive against the lee rail and rigging. The mainsail had been onlypartly secured; the spitter blew into the flapping canvas with all itsforce and the sail snapped free and bellied out.

  The next instant the _Polly_ was tripped!

  She went over with all the helpless, dead-weight violence of a man whohas caught his toe on a drooping clothes line in the dark.

  The four men who were on deck were sailors and they did not needorders when they felt that soul-sickening swing of her as she topple
d.Instinctively, with one accord, they dived for the cabin companionway.

  Undoubtedly, as a sailor, the first thought of each was that theschooner was going on to her beam-ends. Therefore, to remain on deckmeant that they would either slide into the water or that a smashingwave would carry them off.

  They went tumbling down together in the darkness, and all four ofthem, with impulse of preservation as instant and true as that of thetrap-door spider, set their hands to the closing of the hatch and thefolding leaves of the door.

  Captain Mayo, his clutch still on a knob, found himself pulled underwater without understanding at first just what had happened. He let gohis grip and came up to the surface, spouting. He heard the girl shriekin extremity of terror, so near him that her breath swept his face. Heput out his arm and caught her while he was floundering for a footing.When he found something on which to stand and had steadied himself, hecould not comprehend just what had happened; the floor he was standingon had queer irregularities.

  "We've gone over!" squalled Mr. Speed in the black darkness. "We've goneclear over. We're upside down. We're standing on the ceiling!"

  Then Mayo trod about a bit and convinced himself that the irregularitiesunder his feet were the beams and carlines.

  The _Polly_ had been tripped in good earnest! Mr. Speed was right--shewas squarely upside down!

  Even in that moment of stress Mayo could figure out how it had happened.The spitter must have ripped all her rotten canvas off her spars as sherolled and there had been no brace to hold her on her beam-ends when shewent over.

  Captain Candage was spouting, splashing near at hand, and was bellowinghis fears. Then he began to call for his daughter in piteous fashion.

  "Are you drownded, Polly darling?" he shouted.

  "I have her safe, sir," Mayo assured him in husky tones, trying to clearthe water from his throat. "Stand on a beam. You can get half of yourbody above water."

  "It's all off with us," gasped the master. "We're spoke for."

  Such utter and impenetrable blackness Mayo had never experienced before.Their voices boomed dully, as if they were in a huge hogshead which hadbeen headed over.

  '"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep,'"quavered the cook. "If anybody knows a better prayer I wish he'd sayit."

  "Plumb over--upside down! Worse off than flies in a puddle of Porty Reekmolasses," mourned Mr. Speed.

  The master joined the mate in lamentation. "I have brought my baby tothis! I have brought my Polly here! God forgive me. Can't you speak tome, Polly?"

  Mayo found the girl very quiet in the hook of his arm, and he put hisfree hand against her cheek. She did not move under his touch.

  "She has fainted, sir."

  "No, she's dead! She's dead!" Candage began to weep and started tosplash his way across the cabin, directed by Mayo's voice.

  "She is all right--she is breathing," the young man assured the father."Here! This way, captain! Take her. Hold her up. I want to see whetheranything can be done for us."

  "Nothing can be done!" whimpered Candage. "We're goners."

  "We're goners," averred Oakum Otie.

  "We're goners," echoed Dolph.

  Mayo gave the girl into the groping arms of her father and stood for afew moments reflecting on their desperate plight. He was not hopeful. Inhis heart he agreed with the convictions which his mates were expressingin childish falsetto. But being a young sailor who found his head abovewater, he resolved to keep on battling in that emergency; the adageof the coastwise mariner is: "Don't die till Davy Jones sets his finalpinch on your weasen!"

  First of all, he gave full consideration to what had happened. The_Polly_ had been whipped over so quickly that she had been transformedinto a sort of diving-bell.{*} That is to say, a considerable amount ofair had been captured and was now retained in her. It was compressedby the water which was forced up from below through the windows andthe shattered skylight. The pressure on Mayo's temples afforded himinformation on this point. The _Polly_ was floating, and he feltcomforting confidence that she would continue to float for sometime. But this prospect did not insure safety or promise life to theunfortunates who had been trapped in her bowels. The air must eitherescape gradually or become vitiated as they breathed it.

  * The strange adventure of the _Polly_ is not an improbability of fiction. A Bath, Maine, schooner, lumber- laden, was tripped in exactly this fashion off Hatteras. Captain Boyd Mayo's exploit has been paralleled in real life in all details. My good friend Captain Elliott C. Gardner, former skipper of the world's only seven-master, the _Thomas W. Lawson_, furnished those details to me, and after writing this part of the tale I submitted the narrative to him for confirmation. It has received his indorsement.--H. D.

  There was only one thing to do, he decided: take advantage of anyperiod of truce which their ancient enemy, the sea, had allowed in thatdesperate battle.

  A sailor is prey to hazards and victim of the unexpected in theever-changing moods of the ocean; he must needs be master of expedientsand ready grappler of emergencies.

  "Where are your tools--a saw--a chisel?" demanded Mayo. He was obligedto repeat that query several times. His companions appeared to be whollyabsorbed in their personal woes.

  At last Mr. Speed checked his groans long enough to state that the toolswere in "the lazareet."

  The lazaret of a coaster is a storeroom under thequarter-deck--repository of general odds and ends and spare equipment.

  "Any way to get at it except through the deck-hatch?"

  "There's a door through, back of the companion ladder," said Mr. Speed,with listless indifference.

  Mayo crowded his way past the ladder after he had waded and stumbledhere and there and had located it. He set his shoulders against theslope of the steps and pushed at the door with his feet. After he hadforced it open he waded into the storeroom. It was blind business,hunting for anything in that place. He knew the general habits of thehit-or-miss coasting crews, and was sure that the tools had been thrownin among the rest of the clutter by the person who used them last. Ifthey had been loose on the floor they would now be loose on the ceiling.He pushed his feet about, hoping to tread on something that felt like asaw or chisel.

  "Ahoy, you men out there!" he called. "Don't you have any idea in whatpart of this lazaret the tools were?"

  "Oh, they was probably just throwed in," said Mr. Speed. "I wish youwouldn't bother me so much! I'm trying to compose my mind to pray."

  There were so much ruck and stuff under his feet that Mayo gave upsearching after a time. He had held his breath and ducked his head underwater so that he might investigate with his bare hands, but he foundnothing which would help him, and his brain was dizzy after his effortsand his mouth was choked by the dirty water.

  But when he groped his way back into the main cabin his hands came incontact with the inside of the lazaret door. In leather loops on thedoor he found saw, ax, chisel, and hammer. He was unable to keep back afew hearty and soul-satisfying oaths.

  "Why didn't you tell me where the tools were? They're here on the door."

  "I had forgot about picking 'em tip. And my mind ain't on tools,anyway."

  "Your mind will be on 'em as soon as I can get forward there," growledthe incensed captain.

  Mayo was not sure of what he needed or what he would be obliged to do,therefore he took all the tools, holding them above water. When he wadedpast Captain Can-dage he heard the old skipper trying to comfort thegirl, his voice low and broken by sobs. She had recovered consciousnessand Mayo was a bit sorry; in her swoon she had not realized theirplight; he feared hysterics and other feminine demonstrations, and heknew that he needed all his nerve.

  "We're going to die--we're going to die!" the girl kept moaning.

  "Yes, my poor baby, and I have brought you to it," blubbered her father.

  "Please keep up your courage for a little while, Miss Candage," Mayopleaded, wistfully.

  "But there's no hope!"<
br />
  "There's hope just as long as we have a little air and a little grit,"he insisted. "Now, please!"

  "I am afraid!" she whispered.

  "So am I," he confessed. "But we're all going to work the best we knowhow. Can't you encourage us like a brave, good girl?" He went stumblingon. "Now tell me, mate," he commanded, briskly, "how thick is thebulkhead between the cabin, here, and the hold?"

  "I can't bother to think," returned Mr. Speed.

  "It's only sheathing between the beams, sir," stated Captain Candage.

  "Mate, you and the cook lend a hand to help me."

  Oakum Otie broke off the prayer to which he had returned promptly."What's the use?" he demanded, with anger which his fright madejuvenile. "I tell you I'm trying to compose my soul, and I want thisrampage-round stopped."

  "I say what's the use, too!" whined Dolph. "You can't row a biskitacross a puddle of molasses with a couple of toothpicks," he added, withcook's metaphor for the absolutely hopeless.

  Mayo shouted at them with a violence that made hideous din in thatnarrow space. "You two men wade across here to me or I'll come afteryou with an ax in one hand and a hammer in the other! Damn you, I meanbusiness!"

  They were silent, then there sounded the splash of water and they came,muttering. They had recognized the ring of desperate resolve in hiscommand.

  Mayo, when he heard their stertorous breathing close at hand, gropedfor them and shoved tools into their clutch. He retained the hammer andchisel for himself.

  "That's about all I need you for just now--for tool-racks," he growled."Make sure you don't drop those."

  The upturned schooner rolled sluggishly, and every now and then thewater swashed across her cabin with extra impetus, making footinginsecure.

  "If I tumble down I'll have to drop 'em," whimpered Oolph.

  "Then don't come up. Drowning will be an easier death for you," declaredthe captain, menacingly. He was sounding the bulkhead with his hammer.

  The tapping quickly showed him where the upright beams were located onthe other side of the sheathing. In his own mind he was not as sanguineas his activity might have indicated. It was blind experiment--hecould not estimate the obstacles which were ahead of him. But he didunderstand, well enough, that if they were to escape they must do sothrough the bottom of the vessel amidship; there, wallowing though shewas, there might be some freeboard. He had seen vessels floating bottomup. Usually a section of the keel and a portion of the garboard streakswere in sight above the sea. But there could be no escape through thebottom of the craft above them where they stood in the cabin. He knewthat the counter and buttock must be well under water.

  "Have you a full cargo belowdecks?" he asked.

  "No," stated Captain Candage, hinting by his tone that he wondered whatdifference that would make to them in the straits in which they wereplaced.

  Mayo felt a bit of fresh courage. He had been afraid that the _Polly's_hold would be found to be stuffed full of lumber. His rising spiritsprompted a little sarcasm.

  "How did it ever happen that you didn't plug the trap you set for us?"

  "Couldn't get but two-thirds cargo below because the lumber was sawed solong. Made it up by extra deck-lo'd."

  "Yes, piled it all on deck so as to make her top-heavy--so as to be sureof catching us," suggested Mayo, beginning to work his hammer and chiselon the sheathing.

  "'Tain't no such thing!" expostulated Captain Candage, missing theirony. "Them shingles and laths is packet freight, and I couldn't put'em below because I've got to deliver 'em this side of New York. And youdon't expect me to overhaul a whole decklo'd so as to--"

  "Not now," broke in Mayo. "The Atlantic Ocean has attended to the caseof that deckload."

  "My Gawd, yes!" mourned the master. "I was forgetting that we are upsidedown--and that shows what a state of mind I'm in!"

  Mayo had picked his spot for operations. He drove his chisel through thesheathing as close to the cabin floor as he could. Remembering thatthe schooner was upside down and that the floor was over his head, theaperture he was starting work on would bring him nearest the bilge. Whenhe had chiseled a hole big enough for a start, he secured the saw fromthe mate and sawed a square opening. He lifted himself up and worked hisway through the hole and found himself on lumber and out of water.It was what he had been hoping to find, after the assurance from themaster: the partial cargo of lumber in the hold had settled to the deckwhen the schooner tipped over. Investigating with groping hands, heassured himself that there were fully three feet of space between thecargo and the bottom of the vessel.

  "Come here with your daughter, Captain Candage!" he called, cheerily."It's dry in here."

  He kneeled and held his hands out through the opening, directing themwith his voice, reaching into the pitchy darkness until her hands foundhis, and then he brought her up to him and in upon the lumber.

  "It's a little better, even if it's nothing to brag about," he told her."Sit over there at one side so that the men can crawl in past you. I'llneed them to help me."

  "And what do you think now--shall we die?" she asked, in tremulouswhisper.

  "No, I don't think so," he told her, stoutly.

  They were alone in the hold for a few moments while the others werehelping one another through the opening.

  "But in this trap--in the dark--crowded in here!" Her tone did notexpress doubt; it was pathetic endeavor to understand their plight. "Myfather and his men are frightened--they have given up. And you told methat you are frightened!"

  "Yes, I am!"

  "But they are not doing anything to help you."

  "Perhaps that is because they are not scared as much as I am. It oftenhappens that the more frightened a man is in a tight place the more hejumps around and the harder he tries to get out."

  "I don't care what you say--I know what you are!" she rejoined. "You area brave man, Captain Mayo. I thank you!"

  "Not yet! Not until--"

  "Yes, now! You have set me a good example. When folks are scared theyshould not sit down and whimper!"

  He reached and found a plump little fist which she had doubled into areal knob of decision.

  "Good work, little girl! Your kind of grit is helping me." He releasedher hand and crawled forward.

  "This ain't helping us any," complained Captain Candage. "I know what'sgoing to happen to us. As soon as it gets daylight a cussed coast-guardcutter will come snorting along and blow us up without bothering to findout what is under this turkle-shell."

  "Say, look here, Candage," called Captain Mayo, angrily, "that's enoughof that talk! There's a-plenty happening to us as it is, without yourinfernal driveling about what _may_ happen."

  "Isn't it about time for a real man to help Captain Mayo instead ofhindering him?" asked the girl. Evidently her new composure startled herfather.

  "Ain't you scared any more, Polly? You ain't losing your mind, are you?"

  "No, I have it back again, I hope."

  "Your daughter is setting you a good example, Captain Candage. Now let'sget down to business, sir! What's your sheathing on the ribs?"

  "Inch and a half spruce, if I remember right."

  "I take it she is ribbed about every twelve inches."

  "Near's I remember."

  "All right! Swarm forward here, the three of you, and have those toolshandy as I need 'em."

  He had brought the hammer and chisel in his reefer pockets, and set atwork on the sheathing over his head, having picked by touch and senseof locality a section which he considered to be nearly amidship. Itwas blind effort, but he managed to knock away a few square feet of thespruce boarding after a time.

  "Hand me that saw, whoever has it."

  A hand came fumbling to his in the dark and gave him the tool. He beganon one of the oak ribs, uncovered when the boarding had been removed.It was difficult and tedious work, for he could use only the tip of thesaw, because the ribs were so close together. But he toiled on steadily,and at last the sound of his diligence appeared to animate
the others.When he rested for a moment Captain Candage offered to help with thesawing.

  "I think I'll be obliged to do it alone, sir. You can't tell in the darkwhere I have left off. However, I'm glad to see that you're coming backto your senses," he added, a bit caustically.

  The master of the _Polly_ received that rebuke with a meekness thatindicated a decided change of heart. "I reckon me and Otie and Dolphhave been acting out what you might call pretty pussylaminous, as Iheard a schoolmarm say once," confessed the skipper, struggling with thebig word. "But we three ain't as young as we was once, and I'll leave itto you, sir, if this wasn't something that nobody had ever reckoned on."

  "There's considerable novelty in it," said Mayo, in dry tones, runninghis fingers over the rib to find the saw-scarf. The ache had gone out ofhis arms, and he was ready to begin again.

  "I'm sorry we yanked you into all this trouble," Can-dage went on. "Andon the other hand, I ain't so sorry! Because if you hadn't been alongwith us we'd never have got out of this scrape."

  "We haven't got out of it yet, Captain Candage."

  "Well, we are making an almighty good start, and I want to say here inthe hearing of all interested friends that you're the smartest cuss Iever saw afloat."

  "I hope you will forgive father," pleaded Polly of the _Polly_. He felther breath on his cheek. She was so near that her voice nearly jumpedhim. "I don't mean to get in your way, Captain Mayo, but somehow I feelsafer if I'm close to you."

  "And I guess all of us do," admitted Captain Candage.

  Mayo stopped sawing for a moment. "What say, men? Let's be Yankeesailors from this time on! We'll be the right sort, eh? We'll put thisbrave little girl where she belongs--on God's solid ground!"

  "Amen!" boomed Mr. Speed. "I have woke up. I must have been out of mymind. I showed you my nature when I first met you, Captain Mayo, and Ireckon you found it was helpful and enterprising. I'll be the same fromnow on, even if you order me to play goat and try to butt the bottom outof her with my head." "Me, too!" said Smut-nosed Dolph.