"You are probably right," he admitted. "I will think it all over.
As soon as we get in and anchored I'll sit down and give it a good
overhauling in my mind. Maybe-"
She took advantage of his pause. "We are going into a harbor, are we,
father?"
"Yes. Right ahead of us."
"I wish you would put me ashore and send me back. I shall lose my
position in the store if I stay away too long."
His obstinacy showed again, promptly. "I don't want you in that
millinery-shop. I'm told that dude drummers pester girls in stores."
"They do not trouble me, father. Haven't you any confidence in your own
daughter?"
"Yes, I have," he said, firmly, and then added, "but I keep thinking of
the dudes and then I get afraid."
She gave him quick a glance, plainly tempted to make an impatient
retort, and then turned and went down into the cabin.
"Don't be mad with me, Polly," he called after her. "I guess, maybe, I'm
all wrong. I'm going to think it over; I ain't promising nothing sure,
but it won't be none surprising if I set you ashore here and send you
back home. Don't cry, little girl." There were tears in his voice as
well as in his eyes.
The lime-schooner vocalist felt an impulse to voice another verse: "Ow-w-w, here comes the Polly in the middle of the road,
Towed by a mule and paving-blocks her load.
Devil is a-waiting and the devil may as well,
'Cause he'll never get them paving-blocks to finish paving hell."
Captain Candage left his wheel and strode to the rail. All the softness
was gone from his face and his voice.
"You horn-jawed, muck-faced jezebo of a sea-sculpin, you dare to yap
out any more of that sculch and I'll come aboard you after we anchor and
jump down your gullet and gallop the etarnal innards out of ye! Don't
you know that I've got ladies aboard here?"
"It don't sound like it," returned the songster.
"Well, you hear what I sound like! Half-hitch them jaw taakuls of
yours!"
Captain Candage's meditations were not disturbed after that.
With the assistance of his one helper aboard ship, "Oakum Otie," a gray
and whiskered individual who combined in one person the various offices
of first mate, second mate, A-1 seaman, and hand before the mast-as
well as the skipper's boon companion-the Polly was manoeuvered to her
anchorage in Saturday Cove and was snugged for the night. Smoke began to
curl in blue wreaths from her galley funnel, and there were occasional
glimpses of the cook, a sallow-complexioned, one-eyed youth whose chief
and everlasting decoration provided him with the nickname of "Smut-nosed
Dolph."