Part 33

Already that day the Olenia's glass had warned him by its downward tendency. He wondered whether further reading would indicate something more ominous than fog.

Across the cabin he noted some sort of an instrument swinging from a hook on a carline. He investigated. It was a makeshift barometer, the advertising gift of a yeast company. The contents of its tube were roiled to the height of the mark which was lettered “Tornado.”

“You can't tell nothing from that!” Captain Candage had come down into the cabin and stood behind his involuntary guest. “It has registered 'Tornado' ever since the glass got cracked. And even at that, it's about as reliable as any of the rest of them tinkerdiddle things.”

“Haven't you a regular barometer--an aneroid?” inquired Captain Mayo.

“I can smell all the weather I need to without bothering with one of them contrivances,” declared the master of the schooner, in lordly manner. He began to pull dirty oilskins out of a locker.

Mayo hurried up the companionway and put out his head. There were both weight and menace in the wind which hooted past his ears. The fog was gone, but the night was black, without glimmer of stars. The white crests of the waves which galloped alongside flaked the darkness with ominous signalings.

“If you can smell weather, Captain Candage, your nose ought to tell you that this promises to be something pretty nasty.”

“Oh, it might be called nasty by lubbers on a gingerbread yacht, but I have sailed the seas in my day and season, and I don't run for an inshore puddle every time the wind whickers a little.” He was fumbling with a button under his crisp roll of chin beard and gave the other man a stare of superiority.

“You don't class me with yacht-lubbers, do you?”

“Well, you was just on a yacht, wasn't you?”

“Look here, Captain Candage, you may just as well understand, now and here, that I'm one of your kind of sailors. Excuse me for personal talk, but I want to inform you that from fifteen to twenty I was a Grand-Banksman. Last season I was captain of the beam trawler Laura and Marion. And I have steamboated in the Sound and have been a first mate in the hard-pine trade in Southern waters. I have had a chance to find out more or less about weather.”

“Un-huh!” remarked the skipper, feigning indifference. “What about it?”

“I tell you that you have no business running out into this mess that is making from east'ard.”

“If you have been so much and so mighty in your time, then you understand that a captain takes orders from nobody when he's on board his own vessel.”

“I understand perfectly well, sir. I'm not giving orders. But my own life is worth something to me and I have a right to tell you that you are taking foolhardy chances. And you know it, too!”

Captain Candage's gaze shifted. He was a coaster and he was naturally cautious, as Apple-treers are obliged to be. He knew perfectly well that he was in the presence of a man who knew! He had not the assurance to dispute that man, though his general grudge against all the world at that moment prompted him.

“I got out because they drove me out,” he growled.

“A man can't afford to be childish when he is in command of a vessel, sir. You are too old a skipper to deny that.”

“I was so mad I didn't stop to smell weather,” admitted the master, bracing himself to meet a fresh list of the heeling Polly. He evidently felt that he ought to defend his own sagacity and absolve himself from mariner's culpability.

“Very well! Let it go at that! But what are you going to do?”

“I can't beat back to Saturday Cove against this wind--not now! She would rack her blamed old butts out.”

“Then run her for Lumbo Reach. You can quarter a following sea. She ought to ride fairly easy.”

“That's a narrow stab in a night as black as this one is.”

“I'll make a cross-bearing for you. Where's your chart?” Mayo exhibited a sailor's alert anxiety to be helpful.

“I 'ain't ever needed a chart--not for this coast.”

“Then I'll have to guess at it, sir.” He closed his eyes in order to concentrate. “You gave a course of sou'west by sou'. Let's see--it was nine-fifteen when I just looked and we must have logged--”

“It ain't no use to stab for such a hole in the wall as Lumbo Reach,” declared Candage in discouraged tones.

“But you've got your compass and I can--”