Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast

by Holman Day

  IX ~ A MAN'S JOB

  O Nancy Dawson, hi--o! Cheer'ly man! She's got a notion, hi--o! Cheer'ly manl For our old bo'sun, hi--o! Cheer'ly man! O hauley hi--o! Cheer'ly man! --Hauling Song.

  Boyd Mayo soon found that his ancestors had put no scrub timber into the_Polly_. The old oak rib was tough as well as bulky. The task of sawingwith merely the tip of the blade in play required both muscle andpatience, and the position he was obliged to assume added to hisdifficulties. He rested after he had sawed the rib in four places, anddecided to give Oakum Otie something to do; the mate had been beggingfor an opportunity to grab in. He was ordered to knock away as much ashe could of the sawed section with hammer and chisel. Mayo figured thatwhen this section of rib had been removed it would leave room for a holethrough the bottom planks at least two feet square--and there were noswelling girths in their party.

  The mate had strength, and he was eager to display that helpful spiritof which he had boasted. He went at the beam with all his might.

  Mayo's attention had been centered on his task; now, with a moment'sleisure in which to note other matters, he was conscious of somethingwhich provoked his apprehension; the air under the hull of the schoonerwas becoming vitiated. His temples throbbed and his ears rang.

  "Ain't it getting pretty stuffy in here?" asked the master, puttingwords to Mayo's thoughts.

  "I have been feeling like a bug under a thimble for some little time,"stated Otie, whacking his chisel sturdily.

  "Her bottom can't be awash with all this lumber in her. If we can onlyget a little speck of a hole through the outside planking right now,we'd better do it," suggested Candage.

  "That's just what I have been doing," declared Mr. Speed. "I'm rightafter the job, gents, when I get started on a thing. Helpful andenterprising, that's my motto!"

  The next moment, before Mayo, his thoughts busy with his new danger ofsuffocation, could voice warning or had grasped the full import of thedialogue, the chisel's edge plugged through the planking. Instantlythere was a hiss like escaping steam. Mayo yelled an oath and set hishands against the mate, pushing him violently away. The industrious Mr.Speed had been devoting his attention to the planking instead of to thesawed beam.

  Wan light filtered through the crevice made by the chisel and Mayoplanted his palm against the crack. The pressure held his hand as if itwere clamped against the planks, and the hissing ceased.

  The schooner, as she lay, upside down in the sea, was practically adiving-bell; with that hole in her shell their safety was in jeopardy.The girl seemed to understand the situation before the duller minds ofher father and his mates had begun to work. She frenziedly sought forMayo's disengaged hand and thrust some kind of fabric into it.

  "It's from my petticoat," she gasped. "Can you calk with it?"

  "Hand me the chisel," he entreated.

  As soon as she had given the tool to him he worked his hand free fromthe crack and instantly drove the fabric into the crevice, crowding itfold by fold with the edge of the chisel.

  "Hope I didn't do anything wrong, trying to be helpful," apologized Mr.Speed.

  "I'll do the rest of this job without any such help," growled thecaptain.

  "But what are you stopping the air for when it's rushing in to liven usup?" asked Dolph, plaintively.

  "It was rushing out, fool! Rushing out so fast that this lumber wouldhave flattened us against the bottom of this hull in a little while."

  "I would have figgered it just t'other way," stated Mr. Speed, humbly."Outside air, being fresh, ought nat'rally to rush in to fill the holeswe have breathed out of this air."

  Mayo was in no mood to lecture on natural phenomena. He investigated thecut which had been made by the incautious mate and estimated, by whathis fingers told him, that the schooner's bottom planks were threeinches thick. He settled back on his haunches and gave a little thoughtto the matter, and understood that he had a ticklish job ahead of him.Those planks must be gouged around the complete square of the proposedopening, so that the section might be driven out in one piece by a blowfrom beneath. That section must give way wholly and instantly. They weredoomed if they made a half-job of it. In that pitchy blackness he hadonly his fingers to guide him. That one little streak of light from theopen world without was tantalizing promise. On the other side of thoseplanks was God's limitless air. The poor creatures penned under thathull were gasping and choking for want of that air. Mayo set bravely towork, hammering at the chisel-head above him.

  All were silent. They felt the initial languor of suffocation and knewthe peril which was threatening them.

  "If there is anything I can do--" ventured Otie.

  "There isn't!"

  Captain Mayo felt the lack of oxygen most cruelly, because he wasworking with all his might. Perspiration was streaming into his eyes, hewas panting like a running dog, his blows were losing force.

  He found that Otie had partly cleared out the rib before thattoo-willing helper had taken it into his head to knock a hole throughthe planking. The rib must come away entirely! The tough oak resisted;the chisel slipped; it was maddeningly slow work. But he finished thetask at last and began to gouge a channel in the planking close to theother ribs. Torpor was wrapping its tentacles about him. He heard hiscompanions gasping for breath. Then, all at once, he felt a little paton his shoulder. He knew that tap for what it was, though she did notspeak to him; it was the girl's reassuring touch. It comforted him to betold in that manner that she was keeping up her courage in the horriblesituation. He beveled the planks as deeply as he dared, and made his cutaround three sides of his square. He was forced to stop for a moment andlay prostrate, his face on the lumber.

  "Take that saw, one of you, and chunk off a few short lengths of plank,"he whispered, hoarsely. The rasp of the hand-saw informed him that hehad been obeyed.

  He held his eyes wide open with effort as he lay there in the darkness.Then he struggled up and went at his task once more. Queerly coloredflames were shooting before his straining eyes. He toiled in partialdelirium, and it seemed to him that he was looking again at thephantasmagoria of the Coston lights on the fog when the yachtsmen wereserenading the girl of the Polly. He found himself muttering, keepingtime to his chisel-blows:

  "Our Polly O, O'er the sea you go--"

  In all the human emotions there is no more maddening and soul-flayingterror than the fear of being shut in, which wise men callclaustrophobia. Mayo had been a man of the open--of wide horizons,drinking from the fount of all the air under the heavens. This hideousconfinement was demoralizing his reason. He wanted to throw down hishammer and chisel and scream and kick and throw himself up against thepenning planks. On the other side was air--the open! There was still oneside of the square to do.

  Again that comforting little hand touched his shoulder and he wasspurred by the thought that the girl was still courageous and had faithin him. He groaned and kept on.

  Lapse of time ceased to have significance. Every now and then the hammerslipped and bruised his hand cruelly. But he did not feel the hurt. Bothtools wavered in his grasp. He struck a desperate--a despairing blow andthe hammer and chisel dropped. He knew that he had finished the fourthside. He fell across Polly Candage's lap and she helped him to hisknees.

  "I'm done, men," he gasped. "All together with those joists! Striketogether! Right above my head."

  He heard the skipper count one--two--three. He heard the concerted blow.The planks did not give way.

  "We don't seem to have no strength left," explained the mate, in hoarsetones.

  They struck again, but irregularly.

  "It's our lives--our lives, men!" cried Mayo. "Ram it to her!"

  "Here's one for you, Captain Mayo," said Candage, and he thrust a lengthof plank into the groping hands.

  "Make it together, this time--together!" commanded Mayo. "Hard--one,two, three!"

  They drove their battering-rams up against the prisoning
roof. Fury anddespair were behind their blow.

  The glory of light flooded into their blinking eyes.

  The section had given way!

  Mayo went first and he snapped out with almost the violence of a corkpopping from a bottle. He felt the rush of the imprisoned air past himas he emerged. Instantly he turned and thrust down his hands and pulledthe girl up into the open and the others followed, the lumber pushingunder their feet.

  It seemed to Captain Mayo, after those few frenzied moments of escape,that he had awakened from a nightmare; he found himself clinging to theschooner's barnacled keel, his arm holding Polly Candage from slidingdown over the slimy bottom into the sea.

  "Good jeero! We've been in there all night," bawled Captain Candage. Helay sprawled on the bottom of the Polly, his hornbeam hands clutchingthe keel, his face upraised wonderingly to the skies that were floodedwith the glory of the morning. Otie and Dolph were beside him, mouthsopen, gulping in draughts of the air as if they were fish freshly drawnfrom the ocean depths.

  There was a long silence after the skipper's ejaculation.

  Thoughts, rather than words, fitted that sacred moment of theirsalvation.

  The five persons who lay there on the bottom of the schooner stared atthe sun in its cloudless sky and gazed off across the sea whose blue wasshrouded by the golden haze of a perfect summer's day. Only a lazy rollwas left of the sudden turbulence of the night before. A listless breezewith a fresh tang of salt in it lapped the surface of the long,slow surges, and the facets of the ripples flashed back the sunlightcheerily.

  Captain Candage pulled himself to the keel, sat upon it, and foundspeech in faltering manner.

  "I ain't a member of no church, never having felt the need of j'ining,and not being handy where I could tend out. But I ain't ashamed to sayhere, before witnesses, that I have just been telling God, as best Iknow how, hoping He'll excuse me if I 'ain't used the sanctimonious way,that I'm going to be a different man after this--different and better,according to my best lights."

  "I believe you have spoken for all of us, Captain Can-dage," said Mayo,earnestly. "I thank you!"

  They all perceived that the _Polly_ had made offing at a lively paceduring her wild gallop under the impetus of the easterly.

  Mayo balanced himself on the keel and took a long survey of the horizon.In one place a thread of blue, almost as delicate as the tracery of avein on a girl's arm, suggested shore line. But without a glass he wasnot sure. He saw no sign of any other craft; the storm had driven allcoasters to harbor--and there was not wind enough as yet to help themout to sea again. But he did not worry; he was sure that something,some yacht or sea-wagon, would come rolling up over the rim of the oceanbefore long. The faint breeze which fanned their faces was from thesouthwest, and that fact promised wind enough to invite shipping tospread canvas.

  Only the oval of the schooner's broad bilge showed above water, and theold Polly was so flat and tubby that their floating islet afforded onlyscant freeboard.

  Mayo shoved his arm down into the hole through which they had escaped.After the air had been forced out the lumber was within reach from theschooner's bottom. He fumbled about and found the ax. Some of the shortbits of lumber which they had used as battering-rams were in the jawsof the hole. He busied himself with hewing these ends of planks into bigwedges and he drove them into cracks between the planks near the keel.

  "It may come to be a bit sloppy when this sou'wester gets its gait on,"he suggested to the skipper. "We'll have something to hang on to."

  Captain Candage's first thankfulness had shown a radiant gloss. Buthe was a sailorman, he was cautious, he was naturally apprehensiveregarding all matters of the sea, and that gloss was now dulled a bit byhis second thought.

  "We may have to hang on to something longer 'n we reckon on. We're toofar off for the coasters and too far in for the big fellers. And unlesssomething comes pretty clost to us we can't be seen no more 'n as if wewas mussels on a tide reef. We'd ought to have something to stick up."

  "If we could only work out one of those long joists it would make alittle show." Captain Mayo shoved his arm down the hole again. "But theyare wedged across too solidly."

  "I think there's a piece of lumber floating over there," cried the girl.She was clinging to one of the wedges, and the composure which she felt,or had assumed, stirred Mayo's admiration. The plump hand which she heldagainst her forehead to shield her eyes did not tremble. From the littleDutch cap, under the edge of which stray locks peeped, down over herattire to her toes, she seemed to be still trim and trig, in spite ofher experiences below in the darkness and the wet. With a sort of mildinterest in her, he reflected that her up-country beau would be veryproperly proud of her if he could see her there on that schooner's keel.

  "What a picture you would make, Miss Candage, just as you are!" heblurted. She took down her hand, and the look she gave him did notencourage compliments. "Just as you are, and call it 'The Wreck,'"he added.

  "Do I look as badly as all that, Captain Mayo?"

  "You look--" he expostulated, and hesitated, for her gaze was distinctlynot reassuring.

  "Don't tell me, please, how I look. I'm thankful that I have no mirror.Isn't that a piece of lumber?" she inquired, crisply, putting a stop onfurther personalities. "Wait! It's down in a hollow just now."

  The sea lifted it again immediately. Mayo saw that it was a longstrip of scantling, undoubtedly from the deckload that the _Polly_had jettisoned when she was tripped. It lay to windward, and that factpromised its recovery; but how was the tide? Mayo squinted at the sun,did a moment's quick reckoning from the tide time of the day before, andsmiled.

  "We'll get that, Miss Candage. She's coming this way."

  Watching it, seeing it lift and sink, waiting for it, helped to pass thetime. Then at last it came alongside, and he crawled cautiously down thecurve of the bilge and secured it. After he had braced it in the holein the schooner's bottom with the help of Mr. Speed, the girl gave him acrumpled wad of cloth when he turned from his task.

  "It's the rest of my petticoat. You may as well have it," she explained,a pretty touch of pink confusion in her cheeks.

  Mr. Speed boosted Mayo and the young man attached the cloth to thescantling and flung their banner to the breeze. Then there was not muchto do except to wait, everlastingly squinting across the bright sea tothe horizon's edge.