Blow the Man Down - A Romance of the Coast

The girl faced her father. There was no doubting her mood. She was a

rebel. Indignation set up its flaming standards on her cheeks, and the

signal-flames of combat sparkled in her eyes.

"How did you dare to do such a thing to me--those gentlemen looking on?

Father, have you lost your mind?"

Otie expressed the opinion tinder his breath that the captain, on the

contrary, had "lost his number."

Otie's superior officer was stamping around the quarterdeck, kicking at

loose objects, and avoiding his daughter's resentful gaze. There was

a note of insincerity in his bluster, as if he wanted to hide

embarrassment in a cloud of his own vaporings, as a squid colors water

when it fears capture.

"After this you call me Cap'n Candage," he commanded. "After this

I'm Cap'n Candage on the high seas, and I propose to run my own

quarter-deck. And when I let a crowd of dudes traipse on board here to

peek and spy and grin and flirt with you, you'll have clamshells for

finger-nails. Now, my lady, I don't want any back talk!"

"But I am going to talk to you, father!"

"Remember that I'm a Candage, and back talk--"

"So am I a Candage--and I have just been ashamed of it!"

"I'm going to have discipline on my own quarterdeck."

"Back talk, quarter-deck discipline, calling you captain! Fol-de-rol and

fiddlesticks! I'm your own daughter and you're my father. And you have

brought us both to shame! There! I don't want to stay on this old hulk,

and I'm not going to stay. I am going home to Aunt Zilpah."

"I had made up my mind to let you go. My temper was mild and sweet till

those jeehoofered, gold-trimmed sons of a striped--"

"Father!"

"I had made up my mind to let you go. But I ain't going to give in to a

mutiny right before the face and eyes of my own crew."

Smut-nosed Dolph had arrived with the supper-dishes balanced in his arms

while he crawled over the deckload. He was listening with the utmost

interest.

"Your Aunt Zilpah has aided and abetted you in your flirting," raged the

captain. "My own sister, taking advantage of my being off to sea trying

to earn money--"

"Do you mean to insult everybody in this world, father? I shall go home,

I say. I'm miserable here."

"I'll see to it that you ain't off gamboling and galley-westing with

dudes!"