Blow the Man Down - A Romance of the Coast

"What are you driving at, Captain Candage? Are you hinting that anybody

would plant a man for a job of that kind?"

"Exactly what I'm hinting," drawled the skipper.

"But putting a steamer on the rocks at this time of year!"

"No passengers--and plenty of life-boats for the crew, sir. I have

been hearing a lot of talk about steamboat conditions since I have been

carrying in fish."

"I've found out a little something in that line myself," admitted Mayo.

"There's one thing to be said about Blackbeard and Cap'n Teach and old

Cap Kidd--they went out on the sea and tended to their own pirating;

they didn't stay behind a desk and send out understrappers."

Mayo, in spite of his bitter memories of Julius Mar-ston's attitude,

felt impelled to palliate in some degree the apparent enormities of the

steamboat magnates.

"I don't believe the big fellows know all that's done, Captain Candage.

As responsible parties they wouldn't dare to have those things done. The

understrappers, as you say, are anxious to make good and to earn their

money, and when the word is passed on down to 'em they go at the job

recklessly. I think it will be pretty hard to fix anything on the real

principals. That's why I am out in the cold with my hands tied, just

now."

"I wish we were going to get into the Conomo matter a little, so that

we could do some first-hand scouting. It looks to me like the rankest

job to date, and it may be the opening for a general overhauling. When

deviltry gets to running too hard it generally stubs its toes, sir."

Captain Candage found a responsive gleam in Mayo's eyes and he went on.

"Of course, I didn't hear the talk, nor see the money pass, nor I wa'n't

in the pilot-house when Art Simpson shut his eyes and let her slam. But

having been a sailorman all my life, I smell nasty weather a long ways

off. That steamer was wrecked a-purpose, and she was wrecked at a time

o' year when she can't be salvaged. You don't have to advise the devil

how to build a bonfire."

Mayo did not offer any comment. He seemed to be much occupied by his

thoughts.

Two days later a newspaper came into Mayo's hands at Maquoit, and

he read that the wrecked steamer had been put up at auction by the

underwriters. It was plain that the bidders had shared the insurance

folks' general feeling of pessimism--she had been knocked down for two

thousand five hundred dollars. The newspapers explained that only this

ridiculous sum had been realized because experts had decided that in

the first blow the steamer would slip off the ledges on which she was

impaled and would go down like a plummet in the deep water from which

old Razee cropped. Even the most reckless of gambling junkmen could not

be expected to dare much of an investment in such a peek-a-boo game as

that.