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Title: Salvage—extra special
Author: Holman Day
Release date: January 9, 2025 [eBook #75075]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Street & Smith Corporation, 1929
Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SALVAGE—EXTRA SPECIAL ***
SALVAGE--EXTRA SPECIAL
By Holman Day
A ship’s captain who didn’t want to be rescued.
Off Cape Sable, the coast-guard cutter _Arrowsic_ received orders to
return to her regular strategic position in a port on the Maine coast.
For six weeks the cutter had been offshore on iceberg patrol in the
steamer lanes.
The radioman’s ears fairly wiggled with the impulse of an expansive
grin. He carried that grin when he trotted aft along the main deck, the
message fluttering in his hand. Men observed the radiant visage and
guessed hopefully.
Captain Rawson Bent received the message in his quarters, a spacious
room below the quarter-deck. He was pacing to and fro across the beam of
the ship. He performed a queer little jig when he started for his desk.
No expression of hilarity, this! His countenance between his frosted
temple locks was as stonily stern as usual. His muscles were unruly ever
since he had spent a half-hour in icy Alaskan water after wind-lashed
boat tackle had knocked him off the cutter _Bear_.
He pushed buttons on his desk, summoned executive officer and ship’s
writer, gave orders for change of course, dictated acknowledgment of the
receipt of orders, and the _Arrowsic_ swung in a foaming half-circle and
rode a tail sea in a sou’easter, heading for port. The tumble of
graybacks suggested menace for the coasters. Captain Bent, returning to
station, was now thinking solely of coast affairs.
When, eventually, the _Arrowsic_ plowed past shipping in the home
harbor, she was greeted by whistle toots of steamers and was hailed
heartily by men leaning over the rails of anchored schooners. Captain
Bent paced the bridge and swung his arm in reply. He was accepting the
acclaim in behalf of the cutter and her salvage record.
As soon as the _Arrowsic_, crawfishing with churning screw, had backed
into her dock within jumping distance of the pier head, a sailor leaped,
beating a heave line to the wharf. He swarmed up a telephone post and
made connection with the cutter’s private wire from central.
When he had overseen the job of mooring, the captain went below where
the ship’s writer was busy with the freshly connected telephone, ringing
up various points of contact to report arrival. Captain Bent waited at
the man’s elbow, listening, checking to make certain that the ship had
been put in touch with all the offices which should be informed.
It was immediately apparent that the writer had started something
special at headquarters of the life-saving service. He was silent,
giving attention. After his brief pause he barked:
“Yes, sir! I’ll call Captain Bent.”
The latter reached for the receiver and announced himself. This is what
he heard:
“Captain Bent, you’re in the nick o’ time, as usual. Popham Sands
station reports a two-master kedged offshore and making a touch-and-go
of it. Station has been trying to get their boat off through the
rollers, but she has pitch-poled at every try. They’ve fired lines on
the chance of working the breeches buoy, but the lines haven’t been
handled aboard the schooner. Station phones that the crew acts queer.
Glass shows a woman and children aboard. It seems to be a job cut out
for you, eh, what?”
“That’s what!” snapped the captain. “Inform the station I’m on the way.
Hold on a moment! Does the glass show her name?”
“Yes, sir. She’s the _Harvest Home_, hailing from Lumbo Island.”
Captain Bent hung up and for an instant bored vacancy with a
straight-ahead stare.
“I’ll be damned!” he snorted, leaping up and starting away.
Crossing the ward room, he saw the executive officer dealing with a man
delegated by suppliants for shore leave.
Not halting in his stride, the commander announced, “We’re casting off
at once, Mr. Todd. Call o’ duty! Send all hands to stations.”
The chief engineer stepped into the starboard alley from his stateroom,
his face lathered. “Did I hear you say we’re off again, sir?”
“At once! Give her all she’ll carry.”
By this precipitate change of plans the _Arrowsic_ plowed in departure
down the harbor, cutting the foam streaks which were still marking the
trail of her arrival.
Stepping into the wheelhouse, the captain gave orders to the man on the
grating. “East by half south after turning the whistler. And make course
good in tide first hour’s ebb.”
The chart room was abaft the wheelhouse through a connecting archway.
Captain Bent launched himself into a swivel chair and swung up his feet
to rest on a table. His smile always flickered when he took this
attitude. The pose was a deep-water gesture, with its meaning for
mariners. Twice around Cape Horn--he was entitled to put both feet on
the table!
The executive officer, coming in to make due log entry, glanced at the
posed feet and grinned understanding.
Said Captain Bent, unbending more than was his wont, “They’re up there
as monuments of memory, Mr. Todd. My memory has just been jogged. Nudged
by a name. _Harvest Home!_ We’re headed to pull off a packet named the
_Harvest Home_. A two-master lugger taking the name of the mighty in
vain. ’Twas in a full-rigger named _Harvest Home_ that I rounded the
Horn. Articled apprentice! So, for once, we’ll put a bit of sentiment
into the job we do to-day. But Captain York Coombs would bang his fists
up against his coffin lid if he could know that a two-sticked old hooker
was now parading his clipper’s name.”
Lieutenant Todd made suitable reply and entered time of departure,
course and objective.
The chart-room clock _ding-dinged_ four bells--ten o’clock of the
forenoon, landsman’s time.
Making mental estimate, Todd figured that the cutter would be off Popham
Sands at about two o’clock in the afternoon, arriving in the last run of
the ebb tide.
His nose wrinkled when foresight pictured for him the conditions off
Popham Sands when the ebb would be kicking up trouble in earnest. The
mouth of a great river was at Popham. When the barrier was lowered by a
receding sea, the river, which had been forced back by tide at flood,
would renew its assault on its ancient enemy, tilting at the ocean with
brackish torrent. Towering surges were piling in toward the coast this
day, following the previous thrust by the sou’easter. Where river and
surges would be coming to grips that afternoon, during the rush of the
ebb tide, there was bound to be welter aplenty.
Captain Bent squinted at the preoccupied countenance of his officer. “I
see that you and I have the same thoughts, Mr. Todd. So there’s no
profit in swapping ’em. We can only hope that the packet is still hooked
when we get there.”
Standing in from the open sea four hours later, Captain Bent perceived
that the schooner was still hooked.
With his glasses he had mounted to the top of the wheelhouse. He could
see the schooner silhouetted against the white spume rolling up behind
her from the breakers. The craft was a shuttlecock for the tide rips and
surges. He understood why she had been able to hang on so long in the
riot. He was obliged to have full knowledge of bottoms at all points of
hazard along the coast. Rocks, deeply submerged, bastioned the sands at
Popham where the beach ended undersea. The anchor flukes manifestly were
gripped on rocks in a death clutch.
It was also evident to Captain Bent’s sea-trained observation of gear at
bow that the schooner had drifted in from the open sea to this perilous
position where she was fighting for her life. Through his glasses he was
able to make out against the white suds churned by her forefoot the
taut, straddled streaking of her chains. So, while she had drifted, her
Old Man had maneuvered skillfully enough to effect a bridle-anchoring!
This adjustment was enabling the craft to ride without broaching.
Running the glass lenses against his sleeve, the cutter commander
muttered, “A clipper name hasn’t been wholly wasted on the man who knows
enough to carry good chain and brace his bowers.”
Further inspection through the glass revealed that the schooner’s
foremast had partially parted stays and that her top hamper had been
slatted into a tangle. It would be impossible to make sail on her; she
could not ratch off that lee even if she were dealing with a smoother
sea.
It was up to the _Arrowsic_ to get a line across the schooner, give her
cable, tow her to safety. Captain Bent stowed his binoculars, descended
to the bridge. His three lieutenants were there, ready for his orders.
“Have the gunner clear equipment for shooting a line. Get cross-bearings
from points ashore, so we can make sure of charted depths. Put a man
forward with heave lead.”
He gave the engineer one bell.
While the cutter slowed to half speed the captain informed the executive
officer, “We mustn’t take too many chances, Mr. Todd, but we’ve got to
tackle shoal water to put a line aboard her.”
Both of them were trained by similar feats, and they did not need to
canvass in speech an especial hazard from a sea running as heavily as
that one.
This danger was not long in revealing itself. When the cutter quartered
in, flanking the schooner to starboard in order to get as much broadside
target as possible in shooting a line across her, the shoaling water was
heaved more tumultuously by the friction of bottom. The _Arrowsic_
swooped so deeply into troughs that the shore station was repeatedly
eclipsed by wave crests. The water in those troughs resembled boiling
porridge; the rollers were scooping sand from the depths. In a calm sea
the cutter would have beneath her a safe surplusage of fathoms. But
these deeply gouged troughs invited the risk of bumping.
Captain Bent held on as long as prudence permitted. Doubling his body
over the bridge’s weather-cloth he had made sure that the starboard gun
and the line tubs were ready. Gunner Martin, lanyard in hand, glanced up
at the captain and saluted.
“Let her go, gunner!”
Martin had adjusted elevation to measure with the cutter’s poise at
wave crest. At an instant of brief steadiness, he shot. A skyrocketing
line snaked away behind the missile which shrieked its course over the
disabled packet and plopped into the sea beyond, laying the line across
the schooner’s waist.
“Very handsomely done, gunner!” shouted Captain Bent, glass at eye.
A moment later he cursed with all the power of his lungs, now damning
something which was _not_ being done.
Before the line gun was fired he had taken note of such human figures as
were visible aboard the schooner: a woman and three children were
squatting on the after cabin; a man in oilskins, his face in the shadow
of the scoop of a chin-lashed sou’wester, was sitting on the
quarter-deck, his legs dangling over the break of the poop. He, the only
man in sight, remained as motionless as the dingy figurehead showing
under the packet’s sprit.
To be sure, Captain Bent had been apprised that lines from the beach had
not been handled aboard the craft, but it was understandable that the
services of a breeches buoy might not seem attractive, involving
abandonment while a vessel was still riding to kedge. But here now was
offered the rescue of souls and craft by a savior whose horizontally
barred revenue flag guaranteed that the service would be rendered
without salvage claim and free of towage cost.
Captain Bent’s intractable muscles yanked him into the quickstep which
characterized his moments of mental stress. He danced to and fro along
the bridge in a jig suggestive of carefree gayety. His tongue, however,
discounted the supposition. He used up his stock of ordinary deep-water
oaths and invented new ones on the spur of the crisis. And it surely was
critical at that juncture! At any moment the _Arrowsic_ might crack her
keel on the bottom of the porridge kettle.
Yonder, idly dangling his rubber boots against the poop sheathing,
lounged an indifferent individual who ought to be scrambling to grab the
line, at the same time howling his joy. Here was offered a free tow to
safety, but an infernal fool was not lifting a hand to take the gift!
What did it mean? Captain Bent was not guessing at the answer after his
first rush of amazed emotion. He promptly cleared up all possible
mystification in the subalterns on the cutter’s bridge.
He drove both fists in air and boomed, “Only another booze toter! He
doesn’t want a show-up!”
Bent lunged to the dial and gave the engine room two bells and the
jingle. The _Arrowsic_ frothed in reverse, clawing away from the hazards
of the shoals.
“Mr. Todd, lay aboard there with six men!”
The executive officer, disdaining rungs, clasped the ladder’s brass
rails and coasted to the deck.
He was followed by the captain’s shouted commands. “Haul aboard our gun
line. Then get our hawser onto her fore bitts. Buoy her cables and slip
’em. And ask no questions aboard there, Mr. Todd! When we have towed her
free of the rips we’ll heave to. Leave a couple of men as guards and
bring her master to me on the cutter.”
The port sponson boat was dropped in the lee of the _Arrowsic_ as soon
as she was swung to oppose her bulk to the crested seas.
A boatswain handily brought within reach the sagging heave line, using a
boat hook, and then overhanded while the rowers slashed away toward the
schooner.
Captain Bent, training his glass and observing details, found everything
running true to form according to his prompt and previous estimate of
the situation. The man on the packet dropped from the poop, waddled
along the main deck and now actively handled the line which had been
dropped across the waist.
But he was not helping to salvage.
He pulled in the weighted end, swung the slug around his head and heaved
line and missile in the direction of the advancing boat. Not resting
with this hint that he was declining assistance, he climbed into the
fore shrouds and bellowed commands to fend off, shaking his fist to
point up his orders.
For the cutter’s commander the affair had dropped into its expected and
banal rut. Only another decrepit old lugger staggering down the coast
with a load of rum! The prime zest of salvage adventure had oozed into
the bilge of a hooch capture! Captain Bent was despising this
performance, duty though it might be. In the affair his animosity had a
keener edge because a disreputable hooker was dishonoring a clipper name
after filching it from some hardy veteran’s yarns or memories.
The graduate from the clipper _Harvest Home_ growled anathema when he
drove the binoculars back into the case slung across his breast.
Noting that the job was properly in progress, he went below and started
a game of solitaire, banging his fist on the cards, scowling through the
cigar smoke.
He could afford to take it easy and indulge his disgust, giving no
personal attention to what was doing outside. The navigating lieutenant
was fully capable of handling the ship; and the job of hauling drum
cable to the schooner would be long and tedious.
Eventually the captain, cocking his ear toward the open skylight, heard
sounds which revealed that his subalterns had again proved up as his apt
pupils. Far away sounded the boatswain’s shrill pipe. The cutter’s
whistle gruffly hooted acknowledgment of the signal. At once the deck
winches began to rumble, showing that the cable had been run and made
fast and was being shortened.
Captain Bent could visualize the scene outside. He heard the bell for
half speed ahead; and the compass revealed that they were heading
sou’west to get into steadier sea outside the tide rips.
After a time the _Arrowsic’s_ corkscrew motion ceased. She lifted and
dipped with the long and slow rollers offshore. In this easier sea the
sponson boat would be bringing to Captain Bent’s presence that stubborn
barnacle pried loose from a lawless quarterdeck!
Captain Bent scuffled together the cards and dropped them into a drawer
of the table. The cutter had been riding for some minutes, engine
stilled, waiting for rowers to overhaul her.
The commander sat straight in his swivel chair, crossed his arms on his
breast, allowed his visage to congeal.
In due course of time he heard Todd’s unmistakable _rat-te-tat_ on the
door admitting from the ward room. Ah, reflected the chief, Mr. Todd
knew what was what in the code of handling visitors! He was not granting
to this rum skipper the courtesy of the companionway, allowing the
pirate to profane the cutter’s quarter-deck.
When Captain Bent barked permission, the executive officer quickly
opened the door and as quickly slammed it shut, allowing himself scant
time for pushing in the man he had brought.
The cutter commander leaped to his feet, his jaw sagging with the effect
of a sardonic grin, saying no word. He had no desire to speak. Nothing
sensible in the way of talk at this moment occurred to him. How does one
talk to a ghost? Or to a mentor disgraced? Or to an idol in the dust?
If this were truly a being of flesh and blood, this person who leaned
against the closed door, the man was Captain York Coombs, once lord of
the quarter-deck of the good ship _Harvest Home_. But because the man
was saying nothing he persisted in his semblance of a phantom, if
phantoms are able to “oil up”--a mariner phrase for rigging oneself in
rubber boots, slicker and sou’wester.
Captain Bent’s recognition flashed to the conviction that this was
Captain York Coombs, still alive, despite reports that he had died. On
him was the print of the years between prime and old age.
But Captain Coombs was staring in his turn, without showing a sign of
recognition. A lad had grown into a man whose rugged experiences had
altered his aspect out of all semblance to the apprentice aboard the
_Harvest Home_.
At once, memory working fast after the first surprise, the fact that
Captain Coombs was saying nothing identified him more completely for the
other’s comprehension.
Manifestly Captain Coombs’ feelings were wrought upon almost to
extremity. Entering the cabin, his countenance had been an arabesque of
distress and despair.
At times of great excitement, so Captain Bent remembered well, Captain
York Coombs was overwhelmed by a distressing affliction. He was not
merely a stammerer. In stress he was bereft of the power of speech. His
breath was dammed back by the convulsive muscles of throat and pharynx.
In the present crisis he was as dumb as a gargoyle and his twisted
features rendered him just as grotesquely ugly. He strove to bring his
jaws together so that he might have recourse to one remedy for a
stammerer; but he merely wagged his head, unable to whistle. With the
manner of a drumming cock partridge he flailed his breast with his arms.
He pointed to his gaping mouth and with a mighty explosion of breath
managed at last to hoot, “Hit me!”
Memory flipped another page in the absolute identification of this man
as York Coombs. Often on the _Harvest Home_ Apprentice Bent had seen the
chief officer restore speech to the stricken captain at a distressing
juncture, when, for example, the crew was making a botch of tacking ship
in a gale. By request the first mate would land a hearty punch in the
region of the master’s solar plexus, and the shock or the indignity or
something connected with the assault always started the captain’s vocal
machinery into smooth operation.
Captain Bent was a willing volunteer in this instance. In his alacrity
he disliked to think that he was grabbing an opportunity to pay back for
larrupings. But Captain Coombs was in a confessedly pitiful plight; he
wanted to talk something off his mind, evidently. And he had commanded
one who had been used to his commands on the _Harvest Home_. Captain
Bent obeyed with ardor.
He set palm on the table between the two, vaulted across the obstruction
and, with plenty of momentum behind his fist, drove a blow against the
breast and, for extra measure, landed a stiff punch under the ear of
Captain York Coombs, who was knocked off his feet and was launched
through a stateroom door, where he lay prone for a moment until a heave
of the ship rolled his soggy body under a berth. As Coombs himself would
have phrased it, the order was executed A-1, seamanlike and shipshape.
Captain Bent strode to his victim, grabbed the rubber-booted legs, and
hauled the former lord and master out into the middle of the cabin,
standing over him with doubled fists while Coombs blinked filmed eyes,
recovering his senses. He also recovered the power of speech--along with
handsome recollection of his entire glossary of sea oaths.
He sandwiched a slab or two of meaty comment between thick slices of
profanity.
“Knocking me bedockity-blue galley west. Celebrating my come-uppance, be
ye? Go ahead and kick me around the deck to the tune of ‘Blow the Man
Down.’ Make it a good celebration while you’re at it.” He grunted to a
sitting posture and glared from under the sou’wester scoop.
Captain Bent propped himself with hands on knees, leaned over and
returned the savage stare.
“Captain York Coombs of the _Harvest Home_, I believe!”
“I’m answering to that hail, damn yeh!”
“I am referring to full-rigger _Harvest Home_.”
“Shan’t admit that last.”
“Why not, sir?”
“It’ll be owning up to too much of a comedown.”
“Well, you don’t have to admit it, not in my case. You don’t remember
me, eh?”
“Not from Adam.” The old man set the ball of his thumb beneath the angle
of his jaw and groaned. “What’s your grudge against me, outside o’ me
swearing you into State prison for a murder I done myself?”
“I sailed apprentice with you; and it’s easy, of course, for a captain
to forget an----”
Coombs flapped his hand and grunted, “Mebbe you’ve said enough for me to
understand what that poke meant.”
“You taught me to jump in obeying orders, sir. You’ll have to split the
blame if so be it that I hit you extra hard.”
Captain Coombs’ mouth twisted dryly. “I must ’a’ tooken extra pains
teaching _you_.”
“You did, sir. Very extra the pains were. I carry marks of them. But I’m
calling the score squared. Let’s see! I’m forty. Well, sir, for
twenty-five years I have been lugging the hankering to hit you.
Hereafter, I’ll never wake up in the night and worry about that
hankering. My mind will be easy from now on. Thank you, sir, for coming
aboard and giving me my chance.”
Bent straightened and walked back to his chair.
Captain Coombs rolled to his knees and stiffly arose. “I’m glad to find
a small favor so much appreciated. What may I call your name?”
“Rawson Bent, sir.”
“I don’t ricolleck no sech name. But I’ve jettisoned out of my mind a
lot o’ sculch, including names of apprentices. So you’ve paid me back,
hey? Well, I’ll pass you a receipt by saying I won’t never again forget
Captain Rawson Bent.”
The cutter commander crossed his forearms on the table and leaned
forward. “However, Captain Coombs, I haven’t settled in full with you,
sir. I haven’t paid for the training that made a sailor of me, a mariner
with true notions of what the sea means. Also, I haven’t squared with
you for saving my life one time when I disobeyed orders and went
swimming in shark waters. I’m reminding you of how you jumped in, kicked
away the sharks, got me aboard and used up on me the rest of your stock
of kicks, racing me up and down the main deck.”
Captain Coombs rolled up his eyes, and scratched his ear, tipping the
sou’wester. “I’m beginning to get a little glimmer of rickollection
about you.”
“You may remember, sir, when your nursing saved me from dying of scurvy
that time we were dismasted by a typhoon and worked ship with jury rig
all the weeks till we made one of the Tonga group and grabbed some
God-given green stuff.”
Captain Coombs brought his gaze down and winked a puckered eye with
queer solemnity. “Edzackly!” he admitted. It was Yankee reserve, its
laconic style extra copper-riveted by mariner stolidity.
Captain Bent went brusquely back to the business of day and date. “Sir,
we’ll lay off grappling in muddy waters. We’ll tackle present concerns.
In a friendly way, however--if I did put too much steam behind that
punch.”
Captain Coombs snorted and tossed his hand, dismissing the subject. “Oh,
hell! That’s only the style of seafaring men understanding each other.
Much obleeged for your help in getting the hatch open on the cargo of
gab I’m carrying. Sir, you can size me up pretty well, seeing the hooker
I’m skippering. Cap’n Bent, I’ve come down awfully in the world.” It was
said with a quaver in the tones.
The old man obeyed the younger captain’s gesture and slumped into a
chair beside the table.
“Yes, I have sized you up, Captain Coombs. Your actions have been enough
for me. Your packet has a cargo of hooch.”
The other nodded with hopeless chin sag. “Thanks! I’m saved that much
gab.”
“But I want you to say _something_ about it,” commanded Bent, his eyes
narrowing.
“My story won’t be believed in court. Telling it to a coast-guarder will
only be like hooting into an empty scuttlebutt.”
“But not in the case of this coast-guarder, sir. Captain Coombs, I knew
you before I was a coast-guarder. Your ship was always teetotally dry.
You hated liquor.”
“Aye, and the older I’ve growed, the wuss I’ve hated the stuff. But tow
me in. Hand me over. Land me in court. When I’m on the stand I’ll work
myself into one of my dumb fits so I can’t yip a word. I’d ruther be
lampblacked as a pirut than whitewashed as a damnation boob. I have come
down in the world, sir, but I’ve been hanging onto some certain things
in a master mariner’s pride. I can go through with being a jailbird, but
I’ll be cussed if I can live up under being a standing joke along this
coast for the rest of my life.”
Captain Bent slowly put in eclipse his insignia. He removed his cap and
rolled up the cuffs of his coat to conceal the stripes. Sociably,
mariner to mariner, with convincing sympathy in tone and expression, he
invited, “Go on and spin the yarn, old-timer.”
“I get ye! I ain’t talking to a coast-guarder right now! Here’s what,
then--making story cable mighty short. My bills of lading show two
hundred and fifty cases of canned clams, two dozen to a case, sealed,
labeled proper, cases and cans; Jeth Wallace’s regular labels and
stenciling--he being known as a canner who ships regular.”
“More convincing than labels and stencils must be the reputation of
Captain York Coombs as a teetotal skipper,” put in Captain Bent with
vigor.
The old man bounced in the chair. He shouted in his passion of
innocence. He beat his fists on his breast in his apprehension that
emotion might make him voiceless without these mechanics.
“That’s what the jeemro, jass-heif-ered dunkaboos reckoned on when I was
chartered for this trip. They must have got to Jeth Wallace good and
proper--bribed up him and his cannery, run in their rum between days and
laid low while Jeth and some hand-picked whelps put the stuff up to look
as in-nercent as Miss Daisy teaching a Sunday-school class. And here I’m
handling the first cargo loaded off’n Dumbo, and, by the blue-gilled
sculpin, till I reached off Popham Sands I was just as innercent as Miss
Daisy herself.”
He had blown from his soul the hateful chaff of confession in an
unbroken exhaust of breath, racing his speech before fury could again
throttle him.
Captain Bent relighted his cigar, venturing no trigging comment while
the old man once more charged his lungs.
“My mate, the cook and the two hands forrards, one and all, they sure
have a hound’s nose for spotting rum through wood and tin. Else they had
a tip. Anyways, they got into that cargo, sneaking below one after the
other in relay trips, and the first I reelized any o’ their rigging was
slack they was drunker’n pipcats and they didn’t know whuther they was
reeling in clotheslines or handling tackle, and so the forrard hamper
was slatted away and I couldn’t handle ship in the seaway and I had to
work single-handed, myself, getting killicks hooked.”
“I noticed that for a shipshape, A-1 job. It was sign of an able
mariner, sir.”
“I have tried hard all my life to be A-1,” mourned Captain Coombs. “But,
blast it, I didn’t find others that way when I give up the sea and
settled ashore. The landsharks, the gougers and the flimflammers flocked
around me like gulls around a Lumbo fish house at gutting time. They
have nigh dreened me, sir. I foreclosed for money I had lent on that old
hooker you’re taking in tow and I refitted her as best I could. For luck
and old times’ sake I renamed her the _Harvest Home_. It’s an awful
comedown, libeled now for rum-toting, taking two honest names into
court.”
“That clipper name has been a pleasant memory for me,” admitted Captain
Bent conservatively.
“In spite of the lickings?” inquired the old master, cocking his eye.
“Yes; they had their part in teaching me to respect orders, making me
understand as master what orders mean aboard ship.” There was a hint of
tenderness in the tone. Instantly he became brusque again. “I saw none
of your crew on deck, sir.”
“Their minds ain’t edzackly on seafaring at the present time,” stated
Captain Coombs demurely. “I didn’t want any of the poor fellers to miss
footing and tumble overboard,” he went on, cooing his words. “They was
pretty sleepy, anyway. But I took no chances. I fixed it so they’re
sleeping all calm and sweet, like babies. I used a belaying pin.”
The two captains looked at each other, neither showing as much as the
glint of a smile.
“The shipping laws these days oblige us to be very considerate in
treatment of men before the mast,” observed Captain Bent dryly. “I
compliment you, sir, for care in keeping your crew out of trouble. May I
ask what about the woman and the children I saw on board?”
“You have spoke about the sourest plums in this infernal duff, Captain
Bent. I run acrost the woman and the younkers, stowaways in the
lazareet, after I had found there wasn’t clams in them tin cans.”
He folded his sou’wester and flailed it against his knee. “Not for a
minit am I laying anything against _you_ for seizing me and the packet,
now you’ve done it. You have only shortened up the devilish projecking I
was having with myself. I didn’t grab your line because I was hoping I
could projick a way out of my mess if coast-guarders could be shooed
off. I always did hate to give up beat, you know that much about me! But
I reelize I was plumb licked in this case even before your cutter hove
in sight. The woman is Jeth Wallace’s wife. Them’s her little shavers.
She managed to sneak herself and them on board. Seeing as how Jeth has
gone in snucks with the devil, so she says, she allows she is saving
herself and the children from the fires of Tophet. Where I’m pers’nally
concerned she was brought along a pan of dam-fired hot coals, as you
might say.” Captain Coombs stuck up two gnarled fingers, straddling them
into a V.
“She is giving me two options. I can either turn packet and cargo over
to the prohibitioners and lay down and whine for mercy with four paws in
the air, else she will pass word, she threats, that I got gay and asked
her to elope, children and all.”
“Nobody would take stock in such a yarn! _You_ elope with a ready-made
family? Bah!” Captain Bent sliced the air with flattened palm.
“Them remarks,” said Captain Coombs, “showing as how you’ve still got a
lot to learn about the way the old cats lap up gossip when it is
sassered out to ’em ’long coast. Say, against her tongue--it’s a lively
one--I don’t stand the show of an el’funt trying to dance a jig on the
dogvane! And she is going to use the tongue plenty more. Says she will
tell on Jeth and report his selling his soul to Satan and have Jeth
jammed into jail.”
“Ye gods! Is the woman crazy?” gasped Bachelor Bent.
Captain Coombs stared thoughtfully into the crown of his sou’wester and
was studiedly discreet in his reply. “Lots of good folks lately are
acting queer about this liquor business, sir, and I’d hate to be passing
any word as how they belong in the crazy coop. I’ll simply say that Marm
Wallace has organized the Wimmen’s Crusaders on Lumbo and they’re all
under oath, f’r instance, to doctor home-brew when it has been
located--not simply dumping it, but fixing it so a man will never darst
take another drink after swigging the foxbait peppered up by the
ladies.”
“Gad!” It was another gasp from the bachelor. “It’s a wonder some of the
husbands haven’t been killed off.”
“Waal, I’ll admit there have been several close shaves from sudden death
on Lumbo since the Crusaders have got into full swing, but I wouldn’t go
so far as to say it’s on account of what has been slyed into the brew by
the ladies; the boys do rig up some tumble oppydildock for theirselves.”
“I say these women have gone crazy, Captain Coombs!”
“Oh, I guess there ain’t any more craziness in ’em than is mixed into
killing off folks in the cities nowadays, if I read the papers right.
But we’d best not get switched too far away from the business of day and
date, sir. I’ve mentioned the item about Marm Wallace only to show you
she can’t well be managed. I’ll have to take my medicine, either out of
one bottle or the other.”
Captain Bent reassumed his rigidity. “You understand, of course, Captain
Coombs, I’ll be obliged to tow your packet to my home station, reporting
contraband.”
“Aye, aye, sir! That’s your duty.”
“Even if the woman with the tongue could be eliminated, I’d tow you in
just the same.”
“I say again it’s your duty. And I hope the sense of duty comes from my
training of you.”
“Sense of duty was sufficiently well pounded in by you, sir.” The cutter
commander pressed the button of a buzzer.
Promptly a lieutenant appeared.
“Mr. Blaise, return Captain Coombs aboard his ship.”
The officer saluted smartly, swung about and held the door open for the
veteran skipper.
The latter shuffled his rubber boots backward for a few steps, bowed,
then went on his way.
Each skipper, by a sly side glance, noted that the other was avoiding a
direct meeting of the eyes. It was mariner method of the old school
hard-shelled stuff.
Treading along behind the lieutenant, Captain Coombs whistled softly a
chantey tune, his visage serene. His manner suggested that he was going
from what had been an entirely satisfactory interview.
Executive Officer Todd tapped on Captain Bent’s door and entered. “May I
ask orders, sir?”
“When ready, make a tow of it to Portland, Mr. Todd. When inside the
cape, drop alongside the tow, make fast to her with breastlines, and
take her to our dock. I’ll be on the bridge before we enter harbor.”
When he was alone, Captain Bent again arranged his cards on the table.
He always found it easier to think and plan while he played solitaire.
He went leisurely to the bridge some hours later.
_Arrowsic_ was entering harbor.
Evening was merging into night. Tall lighthouses held aloft their steady
beacons; revolving lanterns flashed white and red.
Looking over the end of the bridge, Captain Bent inspected. His orders
had been carefully carried out. The ancient hooker had been made fast to
the port beam of the cutter. In proceeding to her berth the _Arrowsic_
offered her starboard side to observation from the water-front wharves.
The schooner was not wholly concealed under the protecting wing, of
course, but she was not patently advertised, to say the least. The
visible tangle of her tophamper seen past the cutter’s masts and funnel,
put her into the class of cripples brought to port by the _Arrowsic_ in
the ordinary course of salvage.
Disclosed by his binnacle lamp, Captain Coombs paced his quarter-deck
alone. None of his crew was in sight. The closed hatch of the aft
companionway was evidence that the mother and her brood were cooped
below.
The two captains neither saluted nor passed speech.
The _Arrowsic_ was made fast at the pier head and the schooner was
warped into the dock and was laid alongside the wharf.
“Mr. Todd, put our whole crew at the work of discharging cargo from that
schooner,” directed Captain Bent. “Have those cases stacked neatly on
the wharf. Set the master-at-arms with a detail to keep guard till
relieved. Notify me when the cargo is on the wharf.”
Commands instead of union hours are observed by a coast-guard crew.
Nor was it theirs to wonder why it seemed essential that a cargo of
canned clams must be piled out under cover of night. The job was
dispatched and its completion was reported aft.
Captain Bent received the report after he had retired to his berth.
“Thank you, Mr. Todd. Order out our two motor sailers and tow that
schooner to the lower harbor for anchorage. By the way, her anchors are
at Popham. Put aboard her one of our spare killicks, with cable.”
The commander spoke again before the executive was out of hearing. “Give
my respects to Captain Coombs. Inform him that I’ll come aboard the
_Harvest Home_ some time before noon.”
Turning to an easier position on his mattress, Captain Bent murmured the
clipper name several times before he dropped off into slumber.
* * * * *
At eight bells, forenoon watch, an important gentleman arrived aboard
the _Arrowsic_. His visit was the result of a telephone call. The
officer of the deck escorted the visitor aft and ushered him into the
presence of the commander, who was surveying breakfast viands which a
mess boy was arranging on the table.
Captain Bent, as chilly as the ice lump which he dumped out of a halved
cantaloupe, broke in on the visitor’s apologies for intrusion at meal
hour. “I left orders to have you shown aft on your arrival, sir. You
noted a stack of cases, I presume, walking past them on your way down
the wharf?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hard liquor in them, canned under clam labels. Poor judgment, of
course, putting whisky in tin--but it’s all poor judgment in the booze
business these days. Kindly check up on the stuff and pass me a
receipt.”
The gentleman purred compliments on the efficiency of the coast guard.
He disclosed a badge when he pushed aside the lapel of his coat to get
at his official blanks. “Merely the formalities of proper record,
Captain Bent! Name of carrier and the master. Circumstances of capture
and----”
“I have no official information for you, sir, on those points.”
“But such an attitude is extraordinary, Captain Bent!”
The captain took his time in consuming a bit of chilled cantaloupe.
“Sir,” persisted the official, “our department was long ago informed of
your request that the service of this cutter be confined to salvage
work, ice patrol and so forth. Now, we----”
“Just a moment, if you please. You are informed correctly. The
_Arrowsic_ with her thirteen knots top speed, chasing booze speed boats,
would be distinctly humorous. I am not a humorist. Salvage is my
specialty. A vessel on reefs, or disabled, does not try to run away,” he
commented dryly. Then he pressed the buzzer and the executive popped in.
“Mr. Todd, relieve the master-at-arms. Deliver at once custody of
salvage to this gentleman.” He turned to the official. “Salvage--simply
salvage, sir. Within two minutes it will be left unguarded, unless you
hurry.”
The prohibition man hurried--and Captain Bent peacefully enjoyed his
breakfast.
An hour or so later the _Arrowsic_ halted abreast the anchored _Harvest
Home_ and Captain Bent was conveyed aboard the schooner in his gig.
Captain Coombs was pacing the quarter-deck, conning the work of his men,
who were busy with the tangle of the fore hamper. They tussled nimbly,
showing the recuperative power of sleep and remorse.
The visitor swung a glance aloft; then he smiled with full understanding
of sailor nature, winking at Captain Coombs.
The two walked into the lee alley and leaned against the house.
“Not troubling you with petty details, Captain Coombs, I’m merely
saying that regulations have been stretched a bit and nothing now lies
against you or your schooner. I’m mighty sorry that you’re losing your
freight money.”
“Collected it in advance!” curtly returned the other. “Made sure of it,
seeing as how I didn’t know the man who chartered me, claiming he bought
up the cannery output! After this I’m taking no chances. I’ll be loading
lime and bricks, taking damnation good pains to be sartain the bricks
ain’t hollow. But what in time-mighty did you tell the prohibition
feller? I take it you turned the stuff over to him.”
“I told him nothing which hitches you and your schooner up with the
case. If anybody says anything to you on guesswork or hearsay, merely
chew a toothpick and look innocent.”
“Aye! And stupid. That’ll be easy for a coaster skipper.”
“Captain Coombs, I did not tell him I had salvaged something very
important--something outside a booze cargo. No hint to him about what
the special salvage was. He wouldn’t understand, anyway. As for you, I
needn’t waste talk on what it was.”
Captain Coombs leaned forward and plucked a strand from the frayed end
of a halyard. His movement concealed his countenance. He mumbled,
twisting the yarns, “Deep-water fellers best not blow long-winded
speeches to cool off nice, warm porridge.”
“Where’s your next lading port, sir?” asked Captain Bent.
“Dumbo lime quarry, captain.”
“I am headed that way. I’ll tow you.”
“But it’ll be putting you out, and then----”
“I’m heading for Dumbo, I tell you, sir,” said Captain Bent. “I’m going
ashore with that woman and her children and I’ll be putting matters
shipshape and A-1. Canner Wallace needs a good story to account for his
name on canned hooch. Also, perhaps I can do something sensible in the
case of those Crusaders.”
He snapped briskly to his feet and strode forward, calling for all to
hear, “Shorten cable, sir, and stand ready to take our hawser.”
“Aye, aye, sir! And thank you!” shouted Captain Coombs.
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the April 20, 1929 issue
of The Popular Magazine.]
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