Blow the Man Down - A Romance of the Coast

"I've got rising six hundred dollars." He was carrying his little hoard

in his pocket, for a man operating from the hamlet of Maquoit must needs

be his own banker.

"I've got rising six hundred in my own pocket," said the skipper. "That

fat man may have orders to take the first offer that's made, but we've

got to make him one that's big enough so that he won't kick us overboard

and then go hunt up a buyer on the main."

The two Hue and Cry fishermen who had ferried the young man were nesting

their dory on top of other dories, and just forward of the house, and

were within hearing. Neither captain noted with what interest these men

were listening, exchanging glances with the man at the wheel.

"And after we waggle our wad under his nose--and less than a thousand

will be an insult, so I figger--what have we got left to operate with?

It won't do us any good to sail round that steamer for the rest of the

winter and admire her. What was you thinking, Mayo, of trying to work

him for a snap bargain, now that he's here on the spot and anxious to

sell, and then grabbing off a little quick profit by peddling her to

somebody else?"

"No, sir!" cried the young man, with decision. "I've got my own good

reasons for wanting to make this job the whole hog or not a bristle! I

won't go into it on any other plan."

"Well, we'll be into something, all right, after we invest our

money--the whole lump. We'll most likely be in a scrape, not a dollar

left to hire men or buy wrecking outfit."

The two men finished lashing the dories and went forward.

"It's a wild scheme, and I'm a fool to be thinking about it, Captain

Candage. But wild schemes appeal to me just now. I can make some more

money by working hard and saving it, a few dollars at a time, but I

never expect to see another chance like this. Oh yes, I see that bank in

the south!" His eyes followed the skipper's gloomy stare. "By to-morrow

at this time she may be forty fathoms under. But here's the way I feel."

He pulled out his wallet and slapped it down on the roof of the house.

"All on the turn of one card! And there comes the blow that will turn

it!" He pointed south into the slaty clouds.

Captain Candage paused in his patrol of the quarterdeck and gazed down

on the wallet. Then he began to tug at his own. "I'm no dead one, even

if my hair is gray," he grumbled.