But when the money's all gone and spent,
And there's none to be borrowed and none to be lent,
In comes old Grouchy with a frown,
Saying, “Get up, Jack, let John sit down.”
For it's now we're outward bound,
Hur-rah, we're outward bound!
--Song of the Dog and Bell.
Captain Mayo, when he woke, had it promptly conveyed to him that hospitality on board the Reuben and Esther had watchful eyes. While he was rubbing feeling back into his stiffened limbs, sitting there in the lee alley, the cook came lugging a pot of hot coffee and a plate heaped with food.
“Thought you'd rather have it here than in the cuddy. The miss is asleep in the house,” whispered the cook.
Captain Candage came to Mayo while the latter was eating and sat down on the deck. Gloom had settled on the schooner's master. “I don't want to bother you with my troubles, seeing that you've got aplenty of your own, sir. But I'm needing a little advice. I have lost a schooner that has been my home ever since I was big enough to heave a dunnage-bag over the rail, and not a cent of insurance. Insurance would have et up all my profits. What do you think of my chances to make a dollar over and above providing I hire a tugboat and try to salvage?”
“According to my notion your chances would be poor, sir. Claims in such cases usually eat up all a craft is worth. Besides, you may find those yachtsmen on your back for damages, providing you get her in where she can be libeled.”
“I shouldn't wonder a mite,” admitted Captain Can-dage. “The more some folks have the more they keep trying to git.”
“I was looking her bottom over while we sat there, and it must be owned up that her years have told on her.”
“I hate to let her go.”
“That's natural, sir. But I have an idea that she will be reported as a menace to navigation, and that a coastguard cutter will blow her up before you can get around to make your salvage arrangements.”
“When a man is down they all jump on him.”
“I can agree with you there,” affirmed Captain Mayo, mournfully.
“She showed grit--that girl,” ventured Candage, giving the other man keen survey from under his grizzled brows.
“I must ask you to furl sail on that subject, sir,” snapped Mayo, with sailor bluntness.
“I only said it complimentary. Lots of times girls have more grit than they are given credit for. You think they're just girls, and then you find out that they are hero-ines! I thought I had some grit, but my own Polly has shamed me. I was just down watching her--she's asleep in Cap'n Sinnett's bunk. Made the tears come up into my eyes, sir, to ponder on what she has been through on account of my cussed foolishness. Of course, you haven't been told. But confession is good for a man, and I'm going to own up. I took her with me to get her away from a fellow who is courting her.”
Mayo did not offer comment. He wanted to advise the skipper to keep still on that subject, too.
“I don't say he ain't good enough for her. Maybe he is. But I 'ain't been realizing that she has growed up. When I found she was being courted it was like hitting a rock in a fairway. You are young, and you are around consid'able and know the actions of young folks. What's your advice?”
“I don't know anything about the circumstances, sir.”
“But speaking generally,” insisted Captain Candage. “I want to do what's right. There ain't many I can bring myself to ask. I'm a poor old fool, I'm afraid. Won't you kind of grab in on this, Captain Mayo? I do need a little advice.” His rough hands trembled on his knees.
“If the young man is worthy--is the right sort,” returned Mayo, in gentler tones, “I think you are making a great mistake by interfering.”
“I'll go look that young fellow over--re-survey him, as ye might say,” stated the skipper, after a moment's meditation.
“I don't know your daughter very well, sir, but I have much faith in her judgment. If I were you I'd allow her to pick her own husband.”
“Thanks for that advice. I know it comes from a man who has shown that he knows exactly what to do in emergencies. I have changed my mind about her being courted, sir.”
“Honest love isn't a question of money, Captain Candage. Many good girls are ruined by--” He was speaking bitterly and he checked himself. “Where is Captain Sinnett going to set us ashore?”
“Maquoit. He is going to take his fish to the big market. But he said he would set us ashore anywhere, and so I said Maquoit. I might as well be there as anywhere till I know what I'm going to do.”
“Same thing holds good for me, I suppose. I don't feel like going to the city just yet.”
Captain Sinnett came rolling into the alley, and when Mayo started to thank him for the trouble he was taking he raised in genial protest a hand which resembled in spread a split codfish.
“Trouble! It ain't trouble. Was going to call into Maquoit to ice up, anyway. I know my manners even if them yachting fellows didn't.”
Captain Candage preserved the demeanor of innocence under Mayo's scrutiny.
“I've missed you off the fishing-grounds--didn't know you had gone on to a yacht, sir,” pursued Captain Sinnett. “Hope to see you back into the fishing business again; that is, providing you don't go on one of them beam trawlers that are hooking up the bottom of the Atlantic and sp'iling the thing entire for us all.”
“I agree with you about the trawler; that's why I quit. And as to yachting, I think I'll go after a real man's job, sir!”
“So do! You'll be contenteder,” replied the other, significance in his tones.
Mayo knew that his secret had been exposed, but he had no relish for an argument with Captain Candage on the subject of garrulity. He finished his coffee and went forward where the fishermen were coiling the gang-lines into the tubs.
The fisherman made port at Maquoit late in the afternoon, and was warped to her berth at the ice-house wharf.
The castaways went ashore.
Maquoit was a straggling hamlet at the head of a cove which nicked the coast-line.
Captain Candage, an Apple-treer, who knew every hole alongshore where refuge from stress of weather was afforded, led his party through the village with confidence.
“There's a widder here who will put us up for what time we want to stay--and be glad of the money. I knowed her husband in the coasting trade. I like to get into a place like this that 'ain't been sp'iled by them cussed rusticators and the prices they are willing to pay,” he confided to Mayo. He slyly exhibited a wallet that was stuffed with paper money. “I ain't busted, but there's no sense in paying more 'n five dollars a week anywhere for vittles and bed. She will make plenty off'n us at that rate. You just let me do the dickering.”
The widow proved to be a kindly soul who, in the first excitement of her sympathetic nature, resolutely refused to consider the matter of any payment whatever.
“You are shipwrecked, and my poor husband's body wouldn't rest quiet wherever it is in the Atlantic Ocean if I grabbed money from shipwrecked folks.”
However, in the end, Captain Candage worked her up from three dollars to five per week, and she took Polly Candage into her heart and into the best chamber.
Captain Mayo came back to supper after a moody stroll about the village. Skipper Candage was patrolling the widow's front yard and was exhibiting more cheerfulness.
“It's God's Proverdunce and your grit that has saved us, sir. I have come out of my numb condition and sense it all. What's your plans?”
“I don't seem to be able to make any just yet.”
“I'm going to stay right here for a spell, and shall keep Dolph and Otie with me. We shall be here on the coast where we can hear of something to grab in on. As soon as Polly gets straightened around I'll let her go home to her aunt. But, of course, hanging around here doesn't offer you any attractions, sir. You're looking for bigger game than we are.”
“I have about made up my mind to leave in the morning on the stage. I'll go somewhere.”
The widow tapped her knuckles on the glass of a near-by window. “Supper!” she announced. “Hurry in whilst it's hot!”
“I always do my best pondering on a full stomach,” said Captain Candage. “And I smell cream-o'-tartar biskits and I saw her hulling field strorb'ries. Better look on the bright side of things along with me, Captain Mayo.”
Captain Mayo failed to find any bright side as he turned his affairs over in his mind. He had only a meager stock of money. He had used his modest earnings in settling the debts of the family estate. The outlook for employment was vague--he could not estimate to what extent the hostility of Julius Marston might block his efforts, provided the magnate troubled himself to descend to meddle with the affairs of such an inconspicuous person. His poor little romance with Alma Marston had been left in a shocking condition. He did not talk at the supper-table, and the widow's wholesome food was like ashes in his mouth. He went out and sat on the porch of the widow's cottage and looked into the sunset and saw nothing in its rosy hues to give him encouragement for his own future.
Polly Candage came timidly and sat down beside him. “Father says you think of leaving in the morning!”
“There's nothing for me here.”
“Probably not.”
A long silence followed.
“I suppose you don't care to have me talk to you, Captain Mayo?”
“I'll listen to you gratefully, any time.”
“I'm only a country girl. I don't know how to say it--how to tell you I'm so sorry for you!”
“That one little pat on my hand to-day, it was better than words.”
“It's all I can think about--your unhappiness.”
“That touches me because I know that you have enough sorrow of your own.”
“Sorrow!” She opened her eyes wide.
“Perhaps I have no business speaking of it,” he returned, with considerable embarrassment.
“And yet I have been so bold as to speak to you!”
There was a touch of reproach in her voice, and therefore he ventured: “Your father told me--I tried to stop him, but he went on and said--Well, I understand! But I have some consolation for you and I'm going to speak out. He says he is going to allow you to marry your young man.”
“Did he dare to talk such matters over with you?”
“He insisted on doing it--on asking my advice. So I advised in a way to help you. I am glad, for your sake, that he is coming to his senses.”
“I thank you for your help,” she said, stiffly.
“Of course it's none of my business. I'm sorry he told me. But I wish you all happiness.”
She rose as if to go away. Then she stamped her foot and sat down. “My father ought to be muzzled!”
She realized that he might misinterpret her indignation, for he said: “I'm ashamed because I meddled in your affairs. But from what you saw to-day in my case, I felt that I ought to help others who are in the same trouble.”
“But my father has mistaken my--” She broke off in much confusion, not understanding the queer look he gave her. “I--I am glad my father is coming to his senses and will allow me to--to--marry the young man,” she stammered. “And now I think I may be allowed to say that I hope you may have the girl you love, some day. Would you like to have me talk to you about her--how dear and pretty I think she is?”
“No, it hurts! But I do want you to know, Miss Can-dage, that I'm not out fortune-hunting. I love her for herself--just herself--nothing more!”
“I know it must be so.”
“And I know that a young man you would choose is worthy of you. I told your father--”
“No matter. That hurts, too! We both understand. We'll leave it there!”
After the declaration of that truce they were frankly at ease and began to chat with friendly freedom. The dusk came shading into the west, the evening star dripped silver light.
“It's a peaceful spot here,” she suggested. “Everybody seems to be contented.”
“Contentment--in a rut--that may be the best way of passing this life, after all.”
“But if you were in the rut, Captain Mayo, you might find that contentment would not agree to come and live with you.”
“Probably it wouldn't! I'd have to be born to the life here like this chap who is coming up the hill. You can see that he isn't worrying about himself or the world outside.”
The man was clumping slowly along in his rubber boots; an old cap was slewed awry on his head, its peak drawn down over one ear. He cocked up the other ear at sound of voices on the porch and loafed up and sat down on the edge of the boarding. Captain Mayo and the girl, accustomed to bland indifference to formality in rural neighborhoods, accepted this interruption without surprise or protest.
“'Tain't a bad night as nights go,” stated the caller.
“It's a beautiful night,” said Polly Candage.
“I reckon it seems so to you, after what you went through. I've been harking to your father telling the yarn down to the store.”
They did not reply, having their own ideas as to Captain Candage's loquacity.
The caller hauled a plug of tobacco from his pocket, gnawed off a chew, and began slow wagging of his jaws. “This world is full of trouble,” he observed,
“It seems to be,” agreed Captain Mayo.
“Them what's down get kicked further down.”
“Also true, in many cases.”
“Take your case! It's bad. But our'n is worse!” The caller pointed to the dim bulk of a small island which the cove held between the bold jaws of its headland. “The old sir who named that Hue and Cry Island must have smelt into the future so as to know what was going to happen there some day--and this is the day!” He chewed on, and his silence became irritating.
“Well, what has happened?” demanded the captain.
“It hasn't happened just yet--it's going to.”
Further silence.
“Tell us what's going to happen, can't you?”
“Of course I can, now that you have asked me. I ain't no hand to butt in. I ain't no hand to do things unless I'm asked. There's seventeen fam'lies of us on Hue and Cry and they've told us to get off.”
“Who told you?”
“The state! Some big bugs come along and said the Governor sent 'em, and they showed papers and we've got to go.”
“But I know about Hue and Cry!” protested Mayo. “You people have lived there for years!”
“Sure have! My grandfather was one of the first settlers. Most all of us who live there had grandfathers who settled the place. But according to what is told us, some heirs have found papers what say that they own the island. The state bought out the heirs. Now the state says get off. We're only squatters, state says.”
“But, good Caesar, man, you have squatter rights after all these years. Hire a lawyer. Fight the case!”
“We ain't fighters. 'Ain't got no money--'ain't got no friends. Might have fit plain heirs, but you can't fight the state--leastways, poor cusses like us can't.”
“Where are you going?”
“Well, there's the problem! That's what made me say that this world is full of trouble. You see, we have taken town help in years past--had to do it or starve winters. And we have had state aid, too. They say that makes paupers of us. Every town round about has served notice that we can't settle there and gain pauper residence. Hue and Cry 'ain't ever been admitted to any town. Towns say, seeing that the state has ordered us off, now let the state take care of us.”
“And men have been here, representing the state?”
“You bet they have.”
“What do they say?”
“Say get off! But they won't let us settle on the main. Looks like they wanted us to go up in balloons. But we hain't got no balloons. Got to move, though.”
“I never heard of such a thing!”
“Nor I, neither,” admitted this man, with a sort of calm numbness of discouragement. “But that ain't anyways surprising. We don't hear much about anything on Hue and Cry till they come and tell us. Speaking for myself, I ain't so awful much fussed up. I've got a house-bo't to take my wife and young ones on, and we'll keep on digging clams for trawlers--sixty cents a bucket, shucked, and we can dig and shuck a bucket a day, all hands turning to. We won't starve. But I pity the poor critters that 'ain't got a house-bo't. Looks like they'd need wings. I ain't worrying a mite, I say. I had the best house on the island, and the state has allowed a hundred and fifty dollars for it. I consider I'm well fixed.”
The plutocrat of the unhappy tribe of Hue and Cry rose and stretched with a comfortable grunt.
“If it ain't one thing it's another,” he said, as he started off. “We've got to have about so much trouble, anyway, and it might just as well be this as anything else.” %
“Why, that's an awful thing to happen to those people!” declared the girl. “I must say, he takes it calmly.”
“He is a fair sample of some of the human jellyfish I have found hidden away in odd corners on this coast,” stated Captain Mayo. “Not enough mind or spirit left to fight for his own protection. But this thing is almost unbelievable. It can't be possible that the state is gunning an affair like this! I'll find somebody who knows more about it than that clam-digging machine!”
A little later a man strolled past, hands behind his back. He was placidly smoking a cigar, and, though the dusk had deepened, Mayo could perceive that he was attired with some pretensions to city smartness.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” called the young man. “But do you know anything about the inwardness of this business on Hue and Cry Island?”
“I can tell you all about it,” stated the person who had been hailed. He sauntered up and sat down on the edge of the porch. He showed the air of a man who was killing time. “I'm in charge of it.”
“Not of putting those people off the island?”
“Sure! That's what I'm here for. I'm state agent on pauper affairs, acting for the Governor and Council.”
“You say the state is back of this?” demanded Mayo, incredulously.
“Certainly! It's a matter that the state was obliged to take up. State has bought that island from the real heirs, has ordered off those squatters, and we shall burn down their shacks and clear the land up. Of course, we allow heads of families some cash for their houses, if you can call 'em houses. That's under the law regulating squatter improvements. But improvements is a polite word for the buildings on that island. It is going to cost us good money to clear up for that New York party who has made an offer to the state--he's going to use the island for a summer estate.”
He flicked the ashes from his cigar and broke in on Mayo's indignant retort.
“It had to be done, sir. They have intermarried till a good many of the children are fools. The men are breaking into summer cottages, after the owners leave in the fall. They steal everything on the main that isn't nailed down. They have set false beacons in the winter, and have wrecked coasters. Every little while some city newspaper has written them up as wild men, and it has given the state a bad name. We're going to break up the nest.”
“But where will they go?”
“Fools to the state school for the feeble-minded, cripples to the poorhouse. The able-bodied will have to get out and go to work at something honest.”
“But, look here, my dear sir! Those poor devils are starting out with too much of a handicap. After three generations on that island they don't know how to get a living on the main.”
“That's their own lookout, not the state's! State doesn't guarantee to give shiftless folks a living.”
“How about using a little common sense in the case of such people?”
“You are not making this affair your business, are you?” asked the commissioner, with acerbity.
“No.”
“Better not; and you'd better not say too much to me!” He rose and dusted off his trousers. “I have investigated for the Governor and Council and they are acting on my recommendations. You might just as well advise nursing and coddling a nest of brown-tail moths--and we are spending good money to kill off moths. We don't propose to encourage the breeding of thieves. We are not keeping show places of this sort along the coast for city folks to talk about and run down the state after they go back home. It hurts state business!” He marched away.
Captain Mayo strode up and down the porch and muttered some emphatic opinions in regard to the intellects and doings of rulers.
“You see, I know the sort of people who live on that island, Miss Candage. I have seen other cases alongshore. They are blamed for what they don't know--and what they are led into. Amateur missionaries will load them down in a spasm of summer generosity with a lot of truck and make them think that the world owes them a living. The poor devils haven't wit enough to look ahead. When it comes winter they are starving--and when children are hungry and cold a man will tackle a proposition that is more dangerous than a summer cottage locked up for the winter. Next comes along some chap like that state agent, who prides himself on being straight business and no favors! He puts the screws to 'em! There's nobody to help those folks in the real and the right way. I pity them!”
“I live in the country and I know how unfeeling the boards of selectmen are in many of the pauper cases. When it's a matter of saving money for the voters and making a good town record, they don't care much how poor folks get along.”
Mayo continued to patrol the porch. “I'm in a rather rebellious state of mind just now, I reckon,” he admitted. “Seems to me that a lot of folks, including myself, are getting kicked. I'm smarting! I have a fellow-feeling for the oppressed.” He laughed, but there was no merriment in his tones. “It's the little children who will suffer most in this, Miss Candage,” he went on. “They are not to blame--they don't understand.”
“And of course nothing can be done.”
“Nothing sensible, I'm afraid.” He walked to and fro for many minutes. “You see, it's none of my business,” he commented, when he came and sat down beside her.
“I suppose there's not one man in the world to step forward and say a good word for them,” said the girl, softly, uttering her thoughts.
“Words wouldn't amount to anything--with the machinery of the state grinding away so merrily as it is. But this matter is stirring my curiosity a little, Miss Candage. That's because I am one of the oppressed myself, I reckon.” Again his mirthless chuckle. “I intended to take the stage out of here in the morning, but I have an idea that I'll stay over and see what happens when that gentleman who represents our grand old state proceeds to scatter those folks to the four winds.”
“I was hoping you would stay over, Captain Mayo.” She declared that with frank delight.
“But you don't expect me to do anything, of course!”
“It's not that. You see, I'd like to go down to the island and--and father is so odd he might not be willing to escort me,” she explained, trying to be matter-of-fact, her air showing that she regretted her outburst.
“I volunteer, here and now.”
She rose and put out her hand to him. “I have not thanked you for saving my life--saving us all, Captain Mayo. It is too holy a matter to be profaned by any words. But here is my hand--like a friend--like a sister--no”--she held herself straight and looked him full in the face through the gloom and tightened her hold on his fingers--“like a man!”
He returned her earnest finger-clasp and released her hand when her pressure slackened. That sudden spirit, the suggestion that she desired to assume the attitude of man to man with him, seemed to vanish from her with the release of her fingers.
She quavered her “Good night!” There was even a hint of a sob. Then she ran into the house.
Mayo stared after her, wrinkling his forehead for a moment, as if he had discovered some new vagary in femininity to puzzle him. Then he resumed his patrol with the slow stride of the master mariner. Hue and Cry raised dim bulk in the harbor jaws, showing no glimmer of light. It was barren, treeless, a lump of land which towns had thrust from them and which county boundaries had not taken in. He admitted that the state had good reasons for desiring to change conditions on Hue and Cry, but this callous, brutal uprooting of helpless folks who had been attached to that soil through three generations was so senselessly radical that his resentment was stirred. It was swinging from the extreme of ill-considered indulgence to that of utter cruelty, and the poor devils could not in the least understand!
“There seem to be other things than a spiked martingale which can pick a man up and keep him away from his own business,” he mused. “What fool notion possesses me to go out there to-morrow I cannot understand. However, I can go and look on without butting into stuff that's no affair of mine.”
Two men were shuffling past in the road. In the utter silence of that summer night their conversation carried far.
“Yes, sir, as I was saying, there he lays dead! When I was with him on the Luther Briggs he fell from the main crosstrees, broke both legs and one arm, and made a dent in the deck, and he got well. And a week ago, come to-morrow, he got a sliver under his thumb, and there he lays dead.”
“It's the way it often is in life. Whilst a man is looking up into the sky so as to see the big things and dodge 'em, he goes to work and stubs his toe over a knitting-needle.”
“That's right,” Captain Mayo informed himself; “but I can't seem to help myself, somehow!”
