Chapter 3

But
she had become a young woman while his slow thoughts were classing her
still as a child. She was always ahead of all his calculations. In
his absences she jumped from stage to stage of character--almost of
identity! He had never forgotten how he had brought back to her from New
York, after one voyage, half a gunny sackful of tin toys, and discovered
that in his absence, by advice and sanction of her aunt, who had become
her foster-mother, she had let her dresses down to ankle-length and had
become a young lady whom he called “Miss Candage” twice before he had
managed to get his emotions straightened out. While he was wondering
about the enormity of tin toys in the gunny sack at his feet, as he sat
in the aunt's parlor; his daughter asked him to come as guest of
honor with the Sunday-school class's picnic which she was arranging as
teacher. That gave him his opportunity to lie about the toys and allege
that he had brought them for her scholars.

Captain Candage, on the deck of his ship, found that he was able to
muster a little courage and bluster for a few minutes, but he did not
dare to look at her for long while he was asserting himself.

He looked at her then as she stood in the gloomy companionway, a
radiant and rosy picture of healthy maidenhood. But the expression on
her face was not comfortingly filial.

“Father, I must say it again. I can't help saying it. I am so unhappy.
You are misjudging me so cruelly.”

“I done it because I thought it was right to do it. I haven't been
tending and watching the way a father ought to tend and watch. I never
seemed to be able to ketch up with you. Maybe I ain't right. Maybe I be!
At any rate, I'm going to stand on this tack, in your case, for a while
longer.”

“You have taken me away from my real home for this? This is no place for
a girl! You are not the same as you are when you are on shore. I didn't
know you could be so rough--and--wicked!”

“Hold on there, daughter! Snub cable right there! I'm an honest,
God-fearing, hard-working man--paying a hundred cents on the dollar, and
you know it.”

“But what did you just shout--right out where everybody could hear you?”

“That--that was only passing the compliments of the day as compared with
what I can do when I get started proper. Do you think I'm going to let
any snub-snooted wart-hog of a lime-duster sing--”

“Father!”

“What's a girl know about the things a father has to put up with when he
goes to sea and earns money for her?”

“I am willing to work for myself. You took me right out of my good
position in the millinery-store. You have made me leave all my young
friends. Oh, I am so homesick!” Her self-reliance departed suddenly. She
choked. She tucked her head into the hook of her arm and sobbed.

“Don't do that!” he pleaded, softening suddenly. “Please don't, Polly!”

She looked up and smiled--a pleading, wan little smile. “I didn't mean
to give way to it, popsy dear. I don't intend to do anything to make you
angry or sorry. I have tried to be a good girl. I am a good girl. But it
breaks my heart when you don't trust me.”

“They were courting you,” he stammered. “Them shore dudes was hanging
around you. I ain't doubting you, Polly. But you 'ain't got no mother.
I was afraid. I know I've been a fool about it. But I was afraid!” Tears
sprinkled his bronzed cheeks. “I haven't been much of a father because
I've had to go sailing and earn money. But I thought I'd take you away
till-till I could sort of plan on something.”

She gazed at him, softening visibly.

“Oh, Polly,” he said, his voice breaking, “you don't know how pretty you
are-you don't know how afraid I am!”

“But you can trust me, father,” she promised, after a pause, with simple
dignity. “I know I am only a country girl, not wise, perhaps, but I know
what is right and what is wrong. Can't you understand how terribly you
have hurt my pride and my self-respect by forcing me to come and be
penned up here as if I were a shameless girl who could not take care of
herself?”

“I reckon I have done wrong, Polly. But I don't know much-not about
women folk. I was trying to do right-because you're all I have in this
world.”

“I hope you will think it all over,” she advised, earnestly. “You will
understand after a time, father, I'm sure. Then you will let me go back
and you will trust me-as your own daughter should be trusted. That's the
right way to make girls good-let them know that they can be trusted.”

“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.”

Then came some of the ocean aristocrats to join the humbler guests in
that tavern of the seas.

Avant couriers of a metropolitan yacht club, on its annual cruise,
arrived, jockeying in with billowing mountains of snowy canvas spread to
catch the last whispers of the breeze. Later arrivals, after the breeze
failed, were towed in by the smart motor craft of the fleet. One by one,
as the anchors splashed, brass cannons barked salute and were answered
by the commodore's gun.

Captain Candage sat on the edge of the _Polly's_ house and snapped
an involuntary and wrathful wink every time a cannon banged. In that
hill-bound harbor, where the fog had massed, every noise was magnified
as by a sounding-board. There were cheery hails, yachtsmen bawled over
the mist-gemmed brass rails interchange of the day's experiences, and
frisking yacht tenders, barking staccato exhausts, began to carry men to
and fro on errands of sociability. In the silences Captain Candage could
hear the popping of champagne corks.

“Them fellers certainly live high and sleep in the garret,” observed
Oakum Otie. He was seated cross-legged on the top of the house and was
hammering down the lumps in a freshly twisted eye-splice with the end of
a marlinespike.

“It has always been a wonder to me,” growled Captain Candage, “how dudes
who don't seem to have no more wit than them fellows haw-hawing over
there, and swigging liquor by the cart-load, ever make money the way
they do so as to afford all this.”

On that point Captain Candage might have found Mate McGaw of the
_Olenia_ willing to engage in profitable discussion and amicable
understanding!

“They don't make it-they don't know enough to make it,” stated Otie,
with the conviction of a man who knew exactly what he was talking about.
“It has all been left to 'em by their fathers.”

The bearded and brown men of the apple-tree crews leaned the patched
elbows of their old coats on the rails and gloomily surveyed the
conviviality on board the plaything crafts. Remarks which they exchanged
with one another were framed to indicate a sort of lofty scorn for these
frolickers of the sea. The coasting skippers, most of whom wore hard
hats, as if they did not want to be confounded with those foppish yacht
captains, patrolled their quarter-decks and spat disdainfully over their
rails.

Everlastingly there was the clank of pumps on board the Apple-treers,
and the pumps were tackling the everlasting leaks. Water reddened
by contact with bricks, water made turbid by percolation through
paving-blocks, splashed continuously from hiccuping scuppers.

Captain Ranse Lougee of the topsail schooner _Belvedere_, laden with
fish scraps for a Boston glue-factory, dropped over the counter into his
dory and came rowing to the _Polly_, standing up and facing forward and
swaying with the fisherman's stroke.

He straddled easily over the schooner's scant freeboard and came aft,
and was greeted cordially by Captain Candage.

“Thought I'd show them frosted-cakers that there's a little sociability
amongst the gents in the coasting trade, too,” he informed his
host. “Furthermore, I want to borry the ex-act time o' day. _And_,
furthermore, I'm glad to get away from that cussed aromy on board the
_Belvedere_ and sort of air out my nose once in a while. What's the good
word, Cap?”

Captain Candage replied to the commonplaces of the other skipper in
abstracted fashion. He had viewed Lougee's approach with interest, and
now he was plainly pondering in regard to something wholly outside this
chatter.

“Captain Lougee,” he broke in, suddenly, in low tones, “I want you
should come forward with me out of hearing of anybody below. I've got a
little taakul I want you to help me overhaul.”

The two walked forward over the deckload and sat on the fore-gaff, which
sprawled carelessly where it had fallen when the halyards were let run.

“My daughter is below, there,” explained Captain Candage.

“Vacation trip, eh?”

“I don't think it can be called that, Captain Lougee,” stated the host,
dryly. “She is having about as good a time as a canary-bird would have
in a corn-popper over a hot fire.”

“What did she come for, then?”

“I made her come. I shanghaied her.”

“That's no way to treat wimmen folks,” declared Captain Lougee. “I've
raised five daughters and I know what I'm talking about.”

“I know you have raised five girls, and they're smart as tophet and
right as a trivet--and that's why I have grabbed right in on the subject
as I have. I was glad to see you coming aboard, Captain Lougee. I want
some advice from a man who knows.”

“Then I'm the man to ask, Captain Candage.”

“Last time I was home--where she has been living with her Aunt Zilpah--I
ketched her!” confessed Candage. His voice was hoarse. His fingers, bent
and calloused with rope-pulling, trembled as he fingered the seam of his
trousers.

“You don't tell!” Lougee clucked, solicitously.

“Yes, I ketched her buggy-riding!”

“Alone?”

“No, there was a gang of 'em in a beach-wagon. They was going to a
party. And I ketched her dancing with a fellow at that party.”

“Well, go ahead now that you've got started! Shake out the mainsail!”

“That's about all there is to it--except that a fellow has been beauing
her home from Sunday-school concerts with a lantern. Yes, I reckon that
is about all to date and present writing,” confessed Candage.

“What else do you suspect?”

“Nothing. Of course, there's no telling what it will grow to be--with
dudes a-pestering her the way they do.”

“There ain't any telling about anything in this world, is there?”
demanded Captain Lougee, very sharply.

“I reckon not--not for sure!”

“Do you mean to say that because your girl--like any girl should--has
been having a little innocent fun with young folks, you have dragged her
on board this old hooker, shaming her and making her ridiculous?”

“I have been trying to do my duty as a father,” stated Captain Candage,
stoutly, and avoiding the flaming gaze of his guest.

Captain Lougee straightened his leg so as to come at his trousers
pocket, produced a plug of tobacco, and gnawed a chew off a corner,
after careful inspection to find a likely spot for a bite.

“I need to have something in my mouth about this time--something
soothing to the tongue and, as you might say, sort of confining, so that
too much language won't bu'st out all at once,” he averred, speaking
with effort as he tried to lodge the huge hunk of tobacco into a
comfortable position. “I have raised five nice girls, and I have always
treated 'em as if they had common sense along with woman's nat'ral
goodness and consid'able more self-reliance than a Leghorn pullet. And
I used 'em like they had the ordinary rights and privileges of human
beings. And they are growed up and a credit to the family. And I haven't
got to look back over my record and reflect that I was either a Chinyman
or a Turkeyman. No, sir! I have been a father--and my girls can come
and sit on my knee to-day and get my advice, and think it's worth
something.”

He rose and walked toward his dory.

“But hold on,” called Captain Candage. “You haven't told me what you
think.”

“Haven't I? I thought I had, making it mild and pleasant. But if you
need a little something more plain and direct, I'll remark--still making
it mild and pleasant--that you're a damned old fool! And now I'll go
back and be sociable with them fish scraps. I believe they will smell
better after this!” He leaped into his dory and rowed away.

Captain Candage offered no rejoinder to that terse and meaty summing up.
Naturally, he was as ready with his tongue as Captain Ranse Lougee or
any other man alongshore. But in this case the master of the _Polly_
was not sure of his ground. He knew that Captain Lougee had qualified as
father of five. In the judgment of a mariner experience counts. And
he did not resent the manner of Captain Lougee because that skipper's
brutal bluntness was well known by his friends. Captain Candage had
asked and he had received. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared
after the departing caller and pondered.

“Maybe he is right. He probably _is_ right. But it wouldn't be shipboard
discipline if I told her that I have been wrong. I reckon I'll go aft
and be pleasant and genteel, hoping that nothing will happen to rile my
feelings. Now that my feelings are calm and peaceful, and having taken
course and bearings from a father of five, I'll probably say to her,
'You'd better trot along home, sissy, seeing that I have told you how to
mind your eye after this.'”

IV ~ OVER THE “POLLY'S” RAIL

O Stormy was a good old man!
To my way you storm along!
Physog tough as an old tin pan,
Ay, ay, ay, Mister Storm-along!
--Storm-along Shanty.

Without paying much attention to the disturber, Captain Candage had been
a bit nettled during his meditation. A speed boat from one of the yachts
kept circling the _Polly_, carrying a creaming smother of water
under its upcocked bow. It was a noisy gnat of a boat and it kicked a
contemptuous wake against the rust-streaked old wagon.

When it swept under the counter, after Captain Candage was back on his
quarter-deck, he gave it a stare over the rail, and his expression was
distinctly unamiable.

“They probably wasted more money on that doostra-bulus than this
schooner would sell for in the market today,” he informed Otie.

“They don't care how money goes so long as they didn't have to sweat
earning it. Slinging it like they'd sling beans!”

Back on its circling course swished the darting tender. This time the
purring motor whined into silence and the boat came drifting alongside.

“On board _Polly!_” hailed one of the yachtsmen, a man with owner's
insignia on his cap.

The master of the old schooner stuck his lowering visage farther over
the rail, but he did not reply.

“Isn't this _Polly_ the real one?”

“No, it's only a chromo painting of it.”

“Thank you! You're a gentleman!” snapped the yachtsman.

“Oh, hold on, Paul,” urged one of the men in the tender. “There's a
right way to handle these old boys.” He stood up. “We're much interested
in this packet, captain.”

“That's why you have been making a holy show of her, playing ring around
a rosy, hey?”

“But tell me, isn't this the old shallop that was a privateer in the war
of eighteen twelve?”

“Nobody aboard here has ever said she wasn't.”

“Well, sir, may we not come on board and look her over?”

“No sir, you can't.”

“Now, look here, captain--”

“I'm looking!” declared the master of the _Polly_ in ominous tones.

“We don't mean to annoy you, captain.”

“Folks who don't know any better do a lot of things without meaning to.”

Captain Candage regularly entertained a sea-toiler's resentment for men
who used the ocean as a mere playground. But more especially, during
those later days, his general temper was touchy in regard to dapper
young men, for he had faced a problem of the home which had tried his
soul. He felt an unreasoning choler rising in him in respect to these
chaps, who seemed to have no troubles of their own.

“I am a writer,” explained the other. “If I may be allowed on board I'll
take a few pictures and--”

“And make fun of me and my bo't by putting a piece in the paper to
tickle city dudes. Fend off!” he commanded, noticing that the tender was
drifting toward the schooner's side and that one of the crew had set a
boat-hook against the main chain-plate.

“Don't bother with the old crab,” advised the owner, sourly.

But the other persisted, courteously, even humbly. “I am afraid you do
not understand me, captain. I would as soon make jest of my mother as of
this noble old relic.”

“Go ahead! Call it names!”

“I am taking off my hat to it,” he declared, whipping his cap from his
head. “My father's grandfather was in the war of eighteen twelve. I want
to honor this old patriot here with the best tribute my pen can pay.
If you will allow me to come on board I shall feel as though I were
stepping upon a sacred spot, and I can assure you that my friends, here,
have just as much respect for this craft as I have.”

But this honest appeal did not soften Captain Candage. He did not
understand exactly from what source this general rancor of his flowed.
At the same time he was conscious of the chief reason why he did not
want to allow these visitors to rummage aboard the schooner. They would
meet his daughter, and he was afraid, and he was bitterly ashamed of
himself because he was afraid. Dimly he was aware that this everlasting
fear on her account constituted an insult to her. The finer impulse to
protect her privacy was not actuating him; he knew that, too. He was
merely foolishly afraid to trust her in the company of young men, and
the combination of his emotions produced the simplest product of mental
upheaval--unreasonable wrath.

“Fend off, I say,” he commanded.

“Again I beg you, captain, with all respect, please may we come on
board?”

“You get away from here and tend to your own business, if you've got
any, or I'll heave a bunch of shingles at you!” roared the skipper.

“Father!” The voice expressed indignant reproof. “Father, I am ashamed
of you!”

The girl came to the rail, and the yachtsmen stared at her as if she
were Aphrodite risen from the sea instead of a mighty pretty girl
emerging from a dark companion-way. She had appeared so suddenly! She
was so manifestly incongruous in her surroundings.

“Mother o' mermaids!” muttered the yacht-owner in the ear of the man
nearest. “Is the old rat still privateering?”

The men in the tender stood up and removed their caps.

“You have insulted these gentlemen, father!”

Captain Candage knew it, and that fact did not soften his anger in the
least. At the same time this appearance of his own daughter to read him
a lesson in manners in public was presumption too preposterous to be
endured; her daring gave him something tangible for his resentment to
attack.

He turned on her. “You go below where you belong.”

“I belong up here just now.”

“Down below with you!”

“I'll not go until you apologize to these gentlemen, father!”

“You ain't ashore now, miss, to tell me when to wipe my feet and not
muss the tidies! You're on the high seas, and I'm cap'n of this vessel.
Below, I say!”

“These gentlemen know the _Polly_, and they will find out the name of
the man who commands her, and I don't propose to have it said that the
Candages are heathens,” she declared, firmly. “If you do not apologize,
father, I shall apologize for you.” She tried to crowd past him to the
rail, but he clapped his brown hand over her mouth and pushed her back.
His natural impulse as commander of his craft dominated his feelings as
a father.

“I'll teach ye shipboard discipline, Polly Candage,” he growled, “even
if I have to take ye acrost my knee.”

“Hold on there, if you please, captain,” called the spokesman of the
yachtsmen.

Captain Candage was hustling his daughter toward the companionway. But
there was authority in the tone, and he paused and jutted a challenging
chin over his shoulder.

“What have any of you critters got to say about my private business?”

The formality of the man in the tender was a bit exaggerated in his
reply. “Only this, sir. We are going away at once before we bring any
more trouble upon this young lady, to whom we tender our most respectful
compliments. We do not know any other way of helping her. Our protests,
being the protests of gentlemen, might not be able to penetrate; it
takes a drill to get through the hide of a rhinoceros!”

The skipper of the _Polly_ did not trouble himself about the finer
shadings in that little speech, but of one fact he felt sure: he
had been called a rhinoceros. He released his daughter, yanked the
marlinespike away from Otie, who had been holding himself in the
background as a reserve force, and stamped to the rail. He poised his
weapon, fanning it to and fro to take sure aim. But the engineer had
thrown in his clutch and the speed boat foamed off before the captain
got the range, and he was too thrifty to heave a perfectly good
marlinespike after a target he could not hit, angry as he was.

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!”

In spite of her spirit the girl was not able to bandy retort longer with
this hard-shelled mariner, whose weapon among his kind for years
had been a rude tongue. Shocked grief put an end to her poor little
rebellion. Tears came.

“You are giving these two men a budget to carry home and spread about
the village! Oh, father, you are wicked--wicked!” She put her hands to
her face, sobbed, and then ran away down into the gloomy cabin.

There was a long silence on the quarter-deck. Otie recovered his
marlinespike and began to pound the eye-bolt.

“Without presuming, preaching, or poking into things that ain't none of
my business, I want to say that I don't blame you one mite, cap'n,” he
volunteered. “No matter what she says, she wasn't to be trusted among
them dudes on shore, and I speak from observation and, being an old
bach, I can speak impartial. The dudes on the water is just as bad. Them
fellows were flirting with her all the time they was 'longside. Real men
that means decent ain't called on to keep whisking their caps off and on
all the time a woman is in sight--and I see one of 'em wink at her.”

Captain Candage was in a mood to accept this comfort from Oakum Otie,
and to put out of his contrite conscience the memory of what Captain
Ranse Lougee had said.

“Don't you worry! I've got her now where I can keep my eye on her, and
I'm cap'n of my own vessel--don't nobody ever forget that!” He shook his
fist at the gaping cook. “What ye standing there for, like a hen-coop
with the door open and letting my vittels cool off? Hiper your boots!
Down below with you and dish that supper onto the table!”

The skipper lingered on deck, his hand at his ear.

The fog was settling over the inner harbor. In the dim vastness seaward
a steamer was hooting. Each prolonged blast, at half-minute intervals,
sounded nearer. The sound was deep, full-toned, a mighty diapason.

“What big fellow can it be that's coming in here?” the captain grunted.

“Most likely only another tin skimmer of a yacht,” suggested the mate,
tossing the eye-splice and the marline-spike into the open hatch of the
lazaret. “You know what they like to do, them play-critters! They stick
on a whistle that's big enough for Seguin fog-horn.” He squinted under
the edge of his palm and waited. “There she looms. What did I tell ye?
Nothing but a yacht.”

“But she's a bouncer,” remarked the skipper. “What do you make her?”

“O--L,” spelled Otie--“O--L--_Olenia_. Must be a local pilot aboard.
None of them New York spiffer captains could find Saturday Cove through
the feather-tide that's outside just now.”

“Well, whether they can or whether they can't isn't of any interest to
me,” stated the skipper, with fine indifference.