Part 62

“Fish! You fishing?” demanded Captain Wass, with incredulity.

“Yes, and on a chartered smack at that--shack-fishing on shares!” Mayo was sourly resolved to paint his low estate in black colors. “And I have concluded it's about all I'm fit for.”

“That's fine, seaman-like talk to come from a young chap I have trained up to master's papers, giving him two years in my pilot-house. I was afraid you were going astern, you young cuss, when I heard you'd gone skipper of a yacht, but I didn't think it was as bad as all this.”

“My yachting business is done, sir.”

“Thank the bald-headed Nicodemus! There's hopes of you. Did anybody tell you I've been looking for you?”

“No, sir!”

“Glad of it. Now I can tell you myself. Do you know where I am now?”

“I heard you were on a Vose line freighter, sir.”

“Don't know who told you that--but it wasn't Ananias. You're right. She's the old Nequasset, handed back to me again because I'm the only one who understands her cussed fool notions. First mate got drunk yesterday and broke second mate's leg in the scuffle--one is in jail and t'other in the hospital, and never neither of 'em will step aboard any ship with me again. I sail at daybreak, bade to the Chesapeake for steel rails. Got your papers?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Come along. You're first mate.”

“Do you really want me, sir?”

“Want you? Confound it all, I've got you! In about half a day I'll have all the yacht notions shaken out of you and the fish-scales stripped off, and then you'll be what you was when I let you go--the smartest youngster I ever trained.”

Mayo obeyed the thrust of the jubilant master's arm and went along. “I'll go and explain to Captain Can-dage, my partner.”

“All right. I'll go along, too, and help you make it short.”

As they walked along Captain Wass inspected his companion critically.

“High living aboard Marston's yacht make you dyspeptic, son? You look as if your vittles hadn't been agreeing with you.”

“My health is all right, sir.”

“Heard you had trouble with Marston,” proceeded the old skipper, with brutal frankness. “Anybody who has trouble with that damnation pirate comes well recommended to me. He is trying to steal every steamboat line on this coast. Thank Gawd, he can never get his claws on the old Vose line. Some great doings in the steamboat business are ahead, Mayo. Reckon it's a good line to be in if you like fight and want to make your bigness.”

Mayo walked on in silence. He was troubled by this added information that news of his affair with Marston had gained such wide currency. However, he was glad that this new opportunity offered him a chance to hide himself in the isolation of a freighter's pilot-house.

Captain Candage received the news with meek resignation. “I knowed it would have to come,” he said. “Couldn't expect much else. Howsomever, it ain't comforting.”

“Can't keep a good boy like this pawing around in fish gurry,” stated Captain Wass.

“I know it, and I wish him well and all the best!”

Their leave-taking, presided over by the peremptory master of the Nequasset, was short.

“I'll probably have a chance to see you when we come here again,” called Mayo from the wharf, looking down into the mournful countenance of the skipper. “Perhaps I'll have time to run down to Maquoit while we are discharging. At any rate, explain it all for me, especially to your daughter.”

“I'll tell all concerned just what's right,” Captain Candage assured him. “I'll tell her for you.”

She was on the beach when the skipper came rowing in alone from the Ethel and May.

“He's gone,” he called to her. “Of course we couldn't keep him. He's too smart to stay on a job like this.”