Blow The Man Down Part 45

observed Captain Wa.s.s to his mate.

"I'm sorry, skipper," said the young man, with real feeling. "You are the man to be promoted, not I. It isn't right--it doesn't seem real."

"There isn't any real steamboating on this coast any longer. It is--I don't know what the devil it is," snarled the veteran. "I have been sniffing and scouting. I'd like to be a mouse in the wall of them New York offices and hear what it is they're trying to do to us poor cusses.

Ordered one day to keep the law; ordered the next day to break the law; hounded by owners and threatened by the government! I'm glad I'm out of it and glad you've got a good job. That last I'm specially glad about.

But keep your eye peeled. There are queer doings round about you!"

Fogg entered the cabin and shut the door behind him. He found Boyne sitting on a stool and looking somewhat apprehensive. "Hiding?" inquired Fogg.

"I thought I wouldn't show myself till I was sure about who was on that tug," said the young man.

"That's the boy, David," complimented Fogg, with real heartiness.

"You're no fool. Nothing like being careful. Pack your bag and go aboard the tug." He marched out.

"Philadelphia charter has been canceled, eh?" asked Captain Wa.s.s. The tone of his voice did not invite amity.

"It has, sir."

"Seems queer to turn down a cargo that's there waiting--and the old boat can carry it cheaper than anybody else, the way I've got expenses fined down."

"Are you trying to tell me my business?"

"I have beep steamboating forty years, and I know a little something about it."

Mr. Fogg looked at the old mariner, eyes narrowed. He wanted to inform Captain Wa.s.s that the latter knew altogether too much about steamboating for the kind of work that was planned out along the coast in those ticklish times.

"Then I ain't to expect anything special from now on?" asked the skipper. In spite of his determination to be crusty and keep his upper lip stiff, he could not repress a little wistfulness, and his eyes roved over the old freighter with affection.

"Not a thing, sir!" Mr. Fogg was blunt and cool. He started for the ladder. He slapped the shoulder of Mayo as he pa.s.sed the young man.

"Here's the kind of chap we're looking for nowadays. The sooner you report, my boy, the better for you."

With Boyne following him, he climbed down the swaying ladder, and was lifted from the lower rungs over the tug's rail to a secure footing.

After the lines had been cast off and the tug went floundering away at a sharp angle, Captain Wa.s.s scuffed into his pilot-house and gave the bells.

"She seems to feel it--honest she does!" he told Mate Mayo. "She goes off logy. She doesn't pick up her heels. Nor could I do it when I walked in here. Going to be sc.r.a.pped--the two of us! Cuss their picking and stealing and fighting and financing. They ain't steam-boating any longer. They're using good boats to play checkers in Wall Street with.

Well, son," he mourned, hanging dispiritedly over the sill of the window and staring up the wind-swept Chesapeake, "I ain't going to whine--but I shall miss the old packet and the rumble and racket of the old machine down there in her belly. I'd even take the job of watchman aboard her if he would hire me."

"He seems to fancy me a bit. I'll ask him to hire you," proffered the mate, eagerly.

"I reckon you didn't get the look in his eye when he fired me," said Captain Wa.s.s. "I won't allow you to say a word to him about me. You go ahead, boy, and take the job he has offered. But always remember that he's a slick operator. See what he has done to Uncle Vose; and we haven't been able to worm it out of that pa.s.senger how it was done, either. Financing in these days comes pretty nigh to running without lights and under forced draught. It gets a man to Prosperity Landing in a hurry, providing he doesn't hit anything bigger than he is. They're going to haul up this freighter and blame it on to me because I ain't making money for the owners. They'll have plenty of figgers to show it.

Look out that they don't lay something worse and bigger to you. They're going to play a game with the Vose line, I tell you! In the game of big finance, 'tag-gool,' making 'it' out of the little chap who can't run very fast, seems to be almighty popular."

He slowed the freighter to a snail's pace when he approached the dredged channel, and at last the leadsman found suitable bottom. Both anchors were let go.

The old skipper sounded the jingle, telling the chief engineer that the engine-crew was released. In a speaking-tube the captain ordered both boilers to be blown off.

"And there's the end of me as master of my s.h.i.+p," he said.

Mate Mayo's eyes were wet, but words of sympathy to fit the case did not come to his sailor tongue, and he was silent.

When the tug was near Newport News, Manager Fogg took David Boyne apart from all ears which might hear. He gave the young man another packet of money.

"The rest of your expenses for a good trip," he said. "You seem to be a chap who knows how to mind his own business--and able to get at the other fellow's business in pretty fair shape. You haven't told such an awful lot about young Mayo, but it's satisfactory to learn that he has lived such a simple and every-day life that there isn't much to tell."

"I never saw a man so sort of guileless," affirmed Boyne. "Not that I have had a lot of experience, but in a lawyer's office you are bound to see considerable of human nature."

"He is no doubt a very deserving young man--and I'm glad I can use him,"

said Fogg, not able to keep all the grimness out of his tones. "Now, son," he went on, after a moment of pondering, "you stay on board this tug till I have been gone five minutes. There are a lot of sharp eyes around in these times, and some of Vose's friends would be glad to run to him with a story about me. After five minutes, you take your bag and walk to Dock Seven and go aboard the freighter _Ariel_--go just as if you belonged there. Tell the captain that you are Daniel Boyle--get the name--Daniel Boyle. And never tell anybody until you hear from me that your name is David Boyne. That freighter leaves to-night for Barbados with sugar machinery. You'll have a nice trip."

"I don't care how far away I get," declared Boyne, rather bitterly. "I have done a tough trick. I'm pretty much of a renegade. No, I don't care how far I go."

"Nor I, either," agreed Fogg, but a smile relieved the brutality of the speech. "You see, son, both of us have special reasons why it's just as well for you to be away from these diggings for a time. If some folks get hold of you they'll bother you with a lot of foolish questions. When you get tired of Barbados go ahead and pick out another nice trip, and keep going, and later on we'll find a good job for you up this way. Keep me posted. Good-by."

The tug had docked and he hurried off and away.

"It's quite a game," reflected Mr. Fogg. "I've bluffed a pot with one two-spot. Work was a little coa.r.s.e because it had to be done on short notice. The work I do with my second two-spot is going to be smoother, and there won't be so much beefing after the pot is raked in. Too much hollering, and your game gets raided! I can see what would happen to me--Julius Marston doing it--if I give the strong-arm squad an opening.

But if they see the little Fogg boy slip a card in the next deal he's going to make--well, I'll eat the _Montana_, if that's the only way to get rid of her."

Boyd Mayo lost no time in obeying his orders to report in New York. He gave his name to a clerk at the offices of the Vose line and asked to see Mr. Fogg. He presented himself a bit timorously. He was not at all sure of his good fortune. It is rather bewildering for a young man to have the captaincy of a twin-screw pa.s.senger racer popped at one as carelessly as tossing a peanut to a child. He crushed his cap between trembling palms when he followed the clerk into the inner office.

Mr. Fogg rose and greeted Mayo with great cordiality. "Good morning, captain," said the manager. "Allow me to hope that you're going to be as lively in keeping to schedule time as you have been in getting here from Norfolk."

"I didn't feel like wasting much time, considering what was promised me," stammered Mayo, not yet sure of himself.

"Afraid I might change my mind?"

"It seemed too good to be true. I wanted to get here as soon as I could and make sure that I had heard right, sir. Here are my papers."

He laid them in the manager's hand. Fogg did not unfold them. He fanned them, indicating a chair.

"Sit down, Captain Mayo. You understand that new management has taken hold of the Vose line in order to get some life and snap into the business. We have strong compet.i.tion. A big syndicate is taking over the other steams.h.i.+p properties, and we must hustle to keep up with the procession. I'm laying off freighters that are not showing a proper profit--I'm weeding out the moss-covered captains who are not up with the times. That's why I'm putting you on the _Montana_ in place of Jacobs."

"He's a good man--one of the best," ventured Mayo, loyalty to his kind prompting him. "I'll be sorry to see him step aside, as glad as I am to be promoted--and that's honest."

"That's the way to talk; but we've got to have hustle and dash, and young men can give us what we're after. It doesn't mean that you've got to take reckless chances."

"I hope not, Mr. Fogg. My training with Captain Wa.s.s has been the other way. And if you could only give him--"

"Captain, you've got your own row to hoe. Keep your eye on it," advised the general manager, sharply. "I'm picking captains for the Vose boats, and I think I understand my business. Now what I want to know is, do you have confidence in me? Are you going to be loyal to me?"

"Yes, sir!" affirmed Mayo, impressed by his superior's brisk, brusque business demeanor.

"Exactly! And the only talk I want you to turn loose is to the effect that you believe I'm doing my best to make this line worth something to the stockholders. Where are you stopping?"

Mayo named a little hotel around the corner.

"I'll put you aboard the _Montana_ just as soon as I can arrange the details of transfer. I may let Jacobs make another trip or so. Report here each morning at nine. For the rest of the time keep within reach of the hotel telephone."