Salvage—extra special
Date: 2025-01-09T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Short stories; Sea stories; Ship captains -- Fiction; Smuggling -- Fiction

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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 Western Story Magazine.

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