Blow The Man Down Part 33

"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 s.h.i.+ft for themselves, were located in a single colony in the s.p.a.cious 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 part.i.tions 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 a.s.sociates 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."

She had been working all day faithfully by his side, a tactful and indefatigable helper. He would have been all at sea regarding the women and children without her aid, and he told her so gratefully.

"Both my hands and my heart are with you in this thing, Captain Mayo.

And I know you'll think of some way out for them--just as you helped us out of the schooner after we had given up all hope."

"Getting out of the schooner was merely a sailor's trick of the hands, Miss Candage. I don't believe I'll be much of a hand at making over human nature. I have too much of it myself, and the material down in that fish-house would puzzle even a doctor of divinity."

"Oh, you will think of some plan," she a.s.sured him-with fine loyalty.

"If you will allow me to help in my poor way I'll be proud."

"I'll not tell you what I think of your help; it might sound like soft talk. But let me tell you that you have one grand old dad!" he declared, earnestly; but although he tried to keep his face straight and his tones steady he looked down at her and immediately lost control of himself.

Merriment was mingled with tears in her eyes.

"Isn't he funny?" she gasped, and they halted in their tracks and laughed in chorus with the whole-hearted fervor of youth; that laughter relieved the strain of that anxious day.

"I am not laughing _at_ your father--you understand that!" he a.s.sured her.

"Of course, you are not! I know. But you are getting to understand him, just as I understand him. He is only a big child under all his bl.u.s.ter.

But he does make me so angry sometimes!"

"You can't tell much about a Yankee till he comes out of his sh.e.l.l, and I agree with you as to the aggravating qualities in Captain Candage. I'm not very patient myself, when I'm provoked! But after this he and I will get along all right."

They walked on to the cottage.

"Good night," he said at the door.

"And you have no plan as yet?"

"Maybe something will come to me in a dream."

The dream did not come to him, for his sleep was the profound slumber of exhaustion. He went down in the early dawn and plunged into the sea, and while he was walking back toward the cottage an idea and a conviction presented themselves, hand in hand. The conviction had been with him before--that he could not back out just then and leave those poor people to s.h.i.+ft for themselves, as anxious as he was to be off about his own affairs; his undertaking was quixotic, but if he abandoned it at that juncture a queer story would chase him alongcoast, and he knew what sort of esteem mariners entertained for quitters.

However, deep in his heart, he confessed that it was not merely sailor pride that spurred him. The pathetic helplessness of the tribe of Hue and Cry appealed with an insistence he could not deny. He understood them as he understood similar colonies along the coast--children whom an indifferent world cla.s.sed as man and treated with thoughtless injustice!

Work was prescribed for them, as for others! But, they did not know how to work or how to make their work pay them.

The idea which came to him with the conviction that he must help these folks concerned work for them.

After breakfast he took Captain Candage into his confidence, much to the skipper's bland delight at being considered.

"I hope it's something where we can fetch Rowley in," confessed the skipper. "I don't care anything for them critters," he added, a.s.suming brusqueness. "Don't want it hinted around that I'm getting simple in my old age. But they give me an excuse to bingdoodle Rowley."

"To carry out that plan I have outlined we need some kind of a packet,"

said Mayo.

"Sure! We'll go right to Rowley. He'll know. If there's anything in this section that he 'ain't got his finger on some way--bill of sale, mortgage, debt owed to him or expecting to be owed, then it ain't worth noticing."

Mr. Rowley listened in his back office. He stroked his beard contentedly and beamed his pleasure when he saw the prospect of making another profitable d.i.c.ker with men who seemed to be reliable and energetic.

"I had a mortgage on the _Ethel and May_ when Captain Tebbets pa.s.sed on to the higher life," he informed them. "Widder gave up the schooner when I foreclosed, she not desiring to--er--bother with vessel proputty. So I have it free and clear without it standing me such a terrible sum! Shall be pleased to charter to you gents at a reasonable figure. Furthermore, seeing that industry makes for righteousness, so we are told, your plan of making those critters go to work may be a good one, providing you'll use a club on 'em often enough."

"From what I've heard of your talk in prayer-meeting I should think you'd advise moral suasion," suggested Captain Candage, plainly relis.h.i.+ng this opportunity to "bingdoodle."

"I use common sense, whether it's in religion or politics or business,"

snapped Rowley, exhibiting a bit of un-Christian heat.

"It's advisable to ile up common sense with a little charity, and then the machine won't squeak so bad."

"I wouldn't undertake to trot a dogfish on my knee or sing him to sleep with a pennyr'yal hymn, Captain Candage."

"I think we can show results without the club," interposed Mayo, with mild intent to smooth the tone of this repartee.

The clerk called Mr. Rowley out into the store on some matter of special importance, and the selectman departed, coming down rather hard on his heels.

"The old Adam sort of torches up through his sh.e.l.l once in a while,"

commented Candage.

"We'd better settle the charter price, sir, before you lay aboard him too much," advised the young man.

"I just natch'ally can't help harpooning him," confessed the skipper.

"He's a darned old hypocrite, cheating widders and orphans by choice because they 'ain't got the s.p.u.n.k to razoo back, and I've allus enjoyed fighting such as him. Him and me is due for a row. But I'll hold off the best I can till we have got him beat down."

Mayo's plan involved the modest venture of chartering a craft suitable for fis.h.i.+ng. There was no material for real Banksmen in the Hue and Cry colony, but the run of the men would serve to go trawling for ground and shack fish a few miles off the coast. It was the only scheme which would afford employment for the whole body of dependents; older and more decrepit men and the women and children could dig and shuck clams for the trawl bait. In order to encourage ambition and independence among the abler men of the colony, Mayo suggested that the fishermen be taken on shares, and Captain Candage agreed.

When Mr. Rowley came back into the office he found his match waiting for him in the person of Captain Candage, primed and ready to drive a sharp bargain. At the end of an hour papers representing the charter of the _Ethel and May_ were turned over.

"I reckon it's a good job," affirmed the skipper, when he and Mayo were outside the Rowley store. "I have made up my mind to let poor old _Polly_ go to Davy Jones's locker. I wrote to the s.h.i.+ppers and the consignees of the lumber last night. If they want it they can go after it. I may as well fish for the rest of this season!" He regarded Captain Mayo with eyes in which query was almost wistftul. "Of course, you can depend on me to see to it that you get your share, sir, just as if you were aboard."