Part 126

A short half-mile away, a veritable ghost ship, loomed the wrecked Conomo. Spray had beaten over her and had congealed until she seemed like a mass of ice that had been molded into the shape of a ship. She gleamed, a spectral figure, under the starry heavens.

A single red light, a baleful blob of color, showed from her main rigging.

They surveyed her for some time.

“I should say she was spoke for,” was Captain Candage's opinion. “It's high tide now, and a spring tide at that, and them tugs is just loafing out there--ain't making a move to start her. We can tell more about the prospect in the morning.”

Then the two captains turned in, for the Ethel and May lay to docilely with a single helmsman at the wheel.

The crisp light of morning did not reveal anything especially new or important. There were half a dozen small schooners, fishermen, loafing under shortened canvas in the vicinity of the wreck. One of the tugs departed shoreward after a time.

Mayo had assured himself, through the schooner's telescope, that the remaining tug was named Seba J. Ransom.

“The captain of that fellow went mate with me on a fishing-steamer once,” he informed Captain Candage. “Jockey me down in reaching distance and I'll go aboard him in a dory. He may have some news.”

Captain Dodge was immensely pleased to see his old chum, and called him up into the pilot-house and gave him a cigar.

“It's only a loafing job,” he said. “I've got to stand by and take off her captain and crew in case of rough weather or anything breaks loose more'n what's already busted. They are still hanging by her so as to deliver her to the buyer.”

“Buyer?”

“Yep! To whatever junkman is fool enough to bid her in. She's stuck fast. Underwriters have gone back on that tug, and are going to auction her. I'm here to help keep off pirates and take her men ashore after she has been handed over. You a pirate, Mayo?” he asked, with a grin.

“I'm almost anything nowadays, if there's a dollar to be made,” returned the young man.

The Ransom's captain gave him a wink. “I'm on to what happened on board the Olenia” he confided. “Feller who was in the crew told me. You're good enough for old Marston's girl. Why haven't you gone up to New York and taken--”

“Cut that conversation, Dodge,” barked Mayo, his face hard and his jaw jutting threateningly. “Good day!” added the young man, slamming the pilot-house door behind him.

His schooner, standing off and on, picked him up.

“There's no use hanging around here,” he informed the old skipper. “They're going to junk her, if they can find anybody fool enough to bid. She'll be guarded till after the auction.”

Therefore the Ethel and May shook out all her canvas and headed full and by for Maquoit to secure her fresh supply of bait.

“It's a shame,” mourned Captain Candage, staring over the taffrail at the ice-sheathed steamer. “'Most new, and cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to build, if I remember right what the paper said when she was launched.”

“If she was making money they'll have another one in her place,” said Mayo.

“Don'no' about that, sir. The Bee line wasn't none too strong financially, I'm told--a lot of little fellers who put in what they could scrape and borrowed the rest. Depends on insurance and their courage what they do after this.” He offered another observation after he had tamped down a load in his black pipe. “Men will do 'most anything for money--enough money.”

“Seems as if I'd heard that statement before,” was Mayo's curt rejoinder.

“Oh, I know it ain't in any ways new. But the more I think over what has happened to the Conomo, the pickeder seems the point to that remark. And whilst I was standing off and on, waiting for you, I run close enough to that steamer to make out a few faces aboard her.”

Mayo glanced at him without comment.

“F'r instance, I saw Art Simpson. You know him, don't you?”

“He was captain of Mr. Marston's yacht once.”

“Why did he leave her?”

“I heard he had been discharged. That was what the broker said when he hired me.”