Blow the Man Down - A Romance of the Coast

"She was on her course--I put her there with my own hands," persisted

Mayo.

"Sure! You know your business. If this thing was going to be left to

the bunch that know you, you'd go clear. But here's what happened in my

case: I had a new man in the wheel-house, here, and he almost rammed me

into Cuttyhunk, gave me a touch and go with the Pollock Rip Lightship,

and had me headed toward Nauset when the fog lifted. And he was steering

my courses to the thinness of a hair, at that! Say, I took a sudden

tumble and frisked that chap and dragged a toad-stabber knife out of his

pocket--one of those regular foot-long knives. It had been yawing off

that compass all the way from a point to a point and a half. When did

you shift wheel-watch?"

"Before we made Vineyard Sound."

"And no trouble coming up the sound?"

"Made Nobska and West Chop to the dot."

"Then perhaps your general manager, who was in that pilot-house, had an

iron gizzard inside him. Most of them Wall Street fellows do have!" said

the skipper, with sarcasm.

"There's something going on in the steamboat business that I can't

understand," declared Mayo. "It's high up; it hasn't to do with us

chaps, who have to take the kicks. Fogg brought a man aboard the old

Nequasset, and he didn't bring along a good explanation to go with

that man. I have been wondering ever since how it happened that Fogg got

to be general manager of the Vose line so almighty sudden."

"Them high financiers play a big game, mate. And if you happened to be

a marked card in it, they'd tear you up and toss you under the table

without thinking twice. If you'll take a tip from me, you lay low and

do a lot of thinking while Uncle Zoradus does his scouting. What are you

going to do when you get to Norfolk?"

"I haven't thought."

"Well, the both of us better think, and think hard, mate. If the United

States is really after you there'll be a sharp eye at every knot-hole. I

can't afford to let 'em get in a crack at me for what I've done."

"I'll jump overboard outside the capes before I'll put you in wrong,"

asserted Mayo, with deep feeling.

That night the captain of the tug took a trick at the wheel in person.

His guest lay on the transom, smoking the skipper's spare pipe, and

racking his mind for ways and means. After a time he was conscious that

the captain was growling a bit of a song to relieve the tedium of his

task. He sang the same words over and over--a tried and true Chesapeake

shanty: "Oh, I sailed aboard a lugger, and I shipped aboard a scow,

And I sailed aboard a peanut-shell that had a razor bow.

Needle in a haystack, brick into a wall!

A nigger man in Norfolk, he ain't no 'count at all!"