_ CHAPTER 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.
"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.'" _