Part 125

“I'm glad you have come back to wait till all your troubles are settled. The most consoling friends are those who know and who sympathize and who keep still! Now come with me and listen to the children and see what the women are doing. You will be proud and glad because you spoke up for them that day when we went over to Hue and Cry.”

After that there was no constraint between them; they kept their own affairs hidden from each other. The autumn passed and the long, chill evenings came, and when the fishing-schooner was in port at Maquoit, between trips, Mayo and the girl spent comfortable hours together, playing at cards under the widow's red-shaded lamp and under the widow's approving eyes.

“No, they ain't courting, either,” she informed the pestering neighbors. “Do you suppose I have been twice married and twice a widder not to know courting when I see it? It's 'Boyd this' and 'Polly that,' to be sure, the whole continyal time; but she is engaged to somebody else, because she has been wearing an engagement ring that has come to her since she has been here. She showed it to me, and she showed it to him! And as for him, everybody 'longcoast knows how dead gone on him that millionaire girl is! Now everybody mind their own business!”

As the days passed the widow's counsel seemed to apply to all the affairs of Maquoit; folks went at their business in good earnest.

The winter wind nipped, the wharf piles were sheathed with ice, and only hardy men were abroad on the waterfront of the coast city, but the crew of the Ethel and May were unusually cheerful that day.

The schooner had stayed on Cashes Banks and had ridden out a gale that had driven other fishermen to shelter. Then in the first lull she had sent her dories over the rail and had put down her trawls for a set, and a rousing set it was! It seemed as if the cod, hake, and haddock had been waiting for that gale to stop so that they might hunt for baited hooks and have a feast. Nearly every ganging-line had its prize. The bow pulley in each dory fairly chuckled with delight as the trawl line was pulled over it. Every three feet was a ganging-line. Each dory strung out a mile of trawl. And when the dories returned to the schooner and dumped the catch into the hold the little craft fairly wallowed under her load.

They caught the market bare; the gale had blown for nearly a week. Fish-houses bid spiritedly against one another, and when at last a trade was made and the schooner's crew began to pitchfork the fish into the winch buckets, and the buckets rose creaking out over the rail, the two captains went into the office of the fish-house to figure some mighty gratifying profits.

“Nothing like luck in the fishing game, gents,” observed the manager.

“Well, grit counts for something,” stated Captain Candage. “We've got a crew that ain't afraid of a little weather.”

“If that's the case, there may be something for you off-coast about now that's better than the fishing game.”

“What's that?” asked the old skipper.

“Wrecking. Seen the morning papers?”

“We've had something to do besides fool with papers.”

“That new Bee line steamer, Conomo, has been piled up on Razee Reef.”

“One time--this last time--she hugged too close!” snapped the young man. The others bent an inquiring gaze on him. But he did not explain. His thoughts were busy with the events of that day when the Bee line steamer started his troubles with Marston.

“Paper says she's considered a total loss,” went on the manager. “If that's so, and the underwriters give her up, there ought to be some fine picking for men with grit. The board of survey went out to her on a tug this morning.” He gave them their check, and they went aboard their schooner.

The affair of the Conomo was not mentioned between them until they were at sea on their way to the eastward again. The piece of news did not interest Mayo at first, except as a marine disaster that had no bearing on his own affairs.

Captain Candage was stumping the quarter-deck, puffing at his short, black pipe. “I don'no' as you feel anyways as I do about it, Captain Mayo, but it ain't going to be no great outset to us if we make a leg out to Razee and see what's going on there,” he suggested.

“I have no objections,” returned Mayo. “But the way things are managed nowadays in case of wrecks, I don't see much prospect of our getting in on the thing in any way.”

“Mebbe not; but in case they're going to abandon her there'll be some grabbing, and we might as well grab with the rest of 'em.”

“If they can't get her off some junk concern will gamble on her. But we'll make an excursion of it to see the sights, sir. We can afford a little trip after what we pulled down to-day.”

There was no hope of reaching the wreck before nightfall, so they jogged comfortably in the light westerly that had succeeded the gale.

Captain Candage took the first watch after the second dog-watch, and at two bells, or nine o'clock, in the evening, Mayo awoke and heard him give orders to “pinch her.” He heard the sails flap, and knew that the men were shortening in readiness to lay to. He slipped on his outer clothing and went on deck.

“We're here,” stated the old skipper, “and it looks like some other moskeeters had got here ahead of us, ready to stick in their little bills when they get a chance.”

It was a clear night, brilliant with stars. In contrast with the twinkling and pure lights of the heavens, there were dim reds and greens and yellow-white lights on the surface of the ocean. These lights rocked and oscillated and tossed as the giant surges swept past.

“I make out half a dozen sail--little fellers--and two tugs,” said Captain Candage. “But get your eye on the main squeeze!”

Mayo looked in the direction of the extended mittened hand.

“Some iceberg, hey?” commented the skipper.