Blow the Man Down - A Romance of the Coast
Page 265"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.
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
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."
"I heard he had been discharged. That was what the broker said when he
hired me."
"Yes, that's what Simpson said. He made a business of going around and
swearing about it. Seemed to want to have everybody 'longcoast hear him
swear about it. When I see a man make too much of a business of swearing
about another man I get suspicious. After Art Simpson worked his cards
so as to get the job of second officer on board the new Conomo I
got more suspicious. Now that I have seen how that steamer has
been plunked fair and square on Razee, I'm almighty suspicious.
I'm suspicious enough to believe that she banged during Art Simpson's
watch."