"Ay, ay, sir!" returned the fishing-skipper, with hearty bellow. "Glad
to help sailors in trouble."
"And that shows you--" blurted Captain Candage, and stopped his say in
the middle of his outburst when his daughter shoved a significant fist
against his ribs.
Captain Mayo turned his head once while the tender was hastening toward
the schooner. But there were no women in sight on the yacht's deck.
There was an instant's flutter of white from a stateroom port, but he
was not sure whether it was a handkerchief or the end of a wind-waved
curtain. He faced about resolutely and did not look behind again. Shame,
misery, hopelessness--he did not know which emotion was stinging him
most poignantly. The oarsmen in the tender were gazing upward innocently
while they rowed, but he perceived that they were hiding grins. His
humiliation in that amazing fashion would be the forecastle jest.
Through him these new friends of his had been subjected to insult. He
felt that he understood what Polly Candage's silence meant.
The next moment he felt the pat of a little hand on the fist he was
clenching on his knee.
"Poor boy!" she whispered. "I understand! It will come out right if you
don't lose courage."
But she was not looking at him when he gave her a quick side-glance.
The fisherman had come into the wind, rocking on the long swell, dingy
sails flapping, salt-stained sides dipping and flashing wet gleams as
she rolled. Her men were rigging a ladder over the side.
"I want to say whilst we're here together and there's time to say it,"
announced Captain Candage, "that we are one and all mighty much obliged
for that invite you gave us to come aboard the yacht, sir, and we all
know that if--well, if things had been different from what they was you
would have used us all right. And what I might say about yachts and the
kind of critters that own 'em I ain't a-going to say."
"You are improving right along, father," observed Polly Candage, dryly.
"Still, I have my own idees on the subject. But that's neither here nor
there. You're a native and I'm a native, and I want ye should just look
at that face leaning over the lee rail, there, and then say that now we
know that we're among real friends."
It was a rubicund and welcoming countenance under the edge of a rusty
black oilskin sou'wester hat, and the man was manifestly the skipper.
Every once in a while he flourished his arm encouragingly.