Part 56

However, Captain Candage seemed to be seeking sociability by bellowing ferociously, thudding his hard fist on the counter. Mayo was not easily surprised by the temperamental vagaries of queer old 'longcoast crabs like Captain Candage, but this sudden conversion did take away his breath.

“When a close and partickler friend of mine, like this one I've just introduced, comes to you all polite and asks a favor, I want general politeness all around or I'll know the reason why,” shouted the intermediary. “Look-a-here, Rowley, you pretend to be a terrible Christian sort of a man. When I have been fog-bound here I've tended out on prayer-meetings, and I have heard you holler like a good one about dying grace and salvation is free. I've never heard you say much about living charity that costs something!”

“I claim to be a Christian man,” faltered Rowley, backing away from the banging fist.

“Then act like one. If you don't do it, blast your pelt, I'll post you for a heathen from West Quoddy to Kittery!”

“God bless you, my dad!” whispered the girl, snuggling close to the skipper's shoulder.

“Furthermore, Rowley, besides paying you a fair rental for that old fish-house we'll buy grub for them poor devils out of your store.”

Mr. Rowley caressed his beard and blinked.

“They're like empty nail-kags, and they'll eat a lot of vittles and we've got the money to pay!”

“I have a wallet of my own,” stated Captain Mayo. He had not recovered from his amazement at the sudden shift about of Captain Candage. After all the sullen growling he had been tempted to ask the old skipper to stop tagging him about on his errand of mercy.

“Hear that, Rowley? This is the best friend I've got in the whole world! Brought him in here! Introduced him to you! Here's my daughter! Interested, too! Now, whatever you say, you'd better be sure that you pick the right words.”

“Well, I'm always ready to help friends,” stated Mr. Rowley.

“Yes, and do business in a slack time,” added Captain Candage.

“I'm willing to show Christian charity to them that's poor and oppressed. But what's the sense in doing it in this case?”

“A great many folks in this life need a hard jolt before they turn to and make anything of themselves,” said Captain Mayo. “The people on Hue and Cry have had their jolt. I do believe, with the right advice and management, they can be made self-supporting. They have been allowed to run loose until now, sir. I have been pulled into the thing all of a sudden, and now that I'm in I'm willing to give up a little time and effort to start 'em off. I haven't much of anything else to do just now,” he added, bitterly.

“Come into my back office,” invited Mr. Rowley.

“Much obleeged--we'll do so,” said Captain Candage. “You're a bright man, Rowley, and I knowed you'd see the p'int when it was put up to you right and polite.”

The business in the back office was soon settled satisfactorily, and a busy day followed on the heels of that momentous morning. When night fell the men, women, and children whom a benevolent state--through its “straight-business” agent--had turned loose upon the world to shift for themselves, were located in a single colony in the spacious fish-house.

A few second-hand stoves, hired from Rowley, served to cook the food bought from Rowley, and the families grouped themselves in rooms and behind partitions and arranged the poor belongings they had salvaged from their homes. Even the citizen who had at first resolved to go floating on the bosom of the deep joined the colony.

“It's more sociable,” he explained, “and my wife don't like to give up her neighbors. Furthermore, I know the whole bunch, root and branch, whims, notions, and all, and they can't fool me. I'll help boss 'em!” He became a lieutenant of value.

This community life under a better roof than had ever sheltered them before in their lives seemed to delight the refugees. Old and young, they enjoyed the new surroundings with the zest of children. They had never taken thought of the morrow in their existence on Hue and Cry. Given food and shelter in this new abode, they did not worry about the problems of the future. They roamed about their domain with the satisfaction of princes in a palace. They did not show any curiosity regarding what was to be done with them. They did not ask Captain Mayo and his associates any questions. They surveyed him with a dumb and sort of canine thankfulness when he moved among them. He himself tried questions on a few of the more intelligent men, hoping that they would show some initiative. They told him with bland serenity that they would leave it all to him.

“But what are you going to do for yourselves?”

“Just what you say. You're the boss. Show us the job!”

It was borne in upon him that he had taken a larger contract than he had planned on. Rowley and the taxpayers on the main looked to him on one side, and his dependents on the other.

“It seems to be up to me--to us, I mean,” he told the girl, ruefully, when they were on their way to the widow's cottage that evening. “It's up to me most of all, however, for I'm the guilty party--I have pulled you and your father in. I'm pegged in here till I can think up some sort of a scheme.”

She had been working all day faithfully by his side, a tactful and indefatigable helper. He would have been all at sea regarding the women and children without her aid, and he told her so gratefully.

“Both my hands and my heart are with you in this thing, Captain Mayo. And I know you'll think of some way out for them--just as you helped us out of the schooner after we had given up all hope.”

“Getting out of the schooner was merely a sailor's trick of the hands, Miss Candage. I don't believe I'll be much of a hand at making over human nature. I have too much of it myself, and the material down in that fish-house would puzzle even a doctor of divinity.”

“Oh, you will think of some plan,” she assured him-with fine loyalty. “If you will allow me to help in my poor way I'll be proud.”