"You take a skipper who studies his book and is always ready to look the department in the eye, without flinching, he has to mind his own business and mind the other fellow's, too," said Captain Wa.s.s, continuing his monologue of grouch. "Dodging here and there, keeping out of the way, two days behind schedule, meat three times a day or else you can't keep a crew, and everybody hearty at meal-time! My owners have never told me to let the law go to hoot and ram her for all she's worth!

But when I carry in my accounts they seem to be trying to think up language that tells a man to do a thing, and yet doesn't tell him.

What's that?" He put his head far out of the window.

Floating out of the fog came a dull, grunting sound, a faint and far-away diapason, a marine whistle which announced a big chap.

"I should say it is a Union liner, sir--either the _Triton_ or _Neptune_."

They listened. They waited two long minutes for another signal.

"Seems to be taking up his full, legal time," growled Captain Wa.s.s.

"Since Marston has gobbled that line maybe he has put on a special register to keep tabs on tooting--thinks it's waste of steam and will reduce dividends. Expects us little fellows to do the squawking!"

The big whistle boomed again, dead ahead, and so much nearer that it provoked the skipper to lash out a round oath.

"He is reeling off eighteen knots for a gait, or you can use my head for a rivet nut!" He yanked the cord and the freighter howled angrily. The other replied with bellowing roar--autocratic, domineering. With irony, with vindictiveness, Captain Wa.s.s pitched his voice in sarcastic nasal tone and recited another rule--thereby trying to express his irate opinion of the lawlessness of other men.

"Article Sixteen, Mr. Mayo! He probably carries it in his watch-case instead of his girl's picture! Nice reading for a rainy day! 'A steam-vessel hearing apparently forward of her beam the fog signal of a vessel, the position of which is not ascertained, shall, so far as the circ.u.mstances of the case permit, stop her engines and then navigate with caution until all danger of collision is over.' Hooray for the rules!"

Captain Wa.s.s hooked a gnarled finger into the loop of the bell-pull and yanked upward viciously. A dull clang sounded far below. He pulled again and the vibration of the engine ceased.

"Gad rabbit it! I'll go the whole hog as the department orders! If he bangs into me we'll see who comes off best at the hearing."

He gave the bell-loop two quick jerks; then he shifted his hand to another pull and the jingle bell sounded in the engine-room--the _Nequa.s.set_ was ordered to make full speed astern.

The freighter shook and shivered when the screw began to reverse, pulling at the frothing sea, clawing frantically to haul her to a stop.

The skipper then gave three resentful, protesting whistle-blasts.

But the reply he received from ahead was a hoa.r.s.e, prolonged howl. In it there was no hint that the big fellow proposed to heed the protest of the three blasts. It was insistence on right of way, the insolence of the swaggering express liner making time in compet.i.tion with rivals; it hinted confident opinion that smaller chaps would better get out of the way.

The on-comer had received a signal which served to justify that opinion.

Captain Wa.s.s had docilely announced that he was going full speed astern, his whistle-blasts had declared that he had stepped off the sidewalk of the ocean lane--as usual! The big fellows knew that the little chaps would do it!

Mate Mayo leaned from the window, his jaw muscles tense, anxiety in his eyes.

The big whistle now was fairly shaking the curtains of the mists and was not giving him any comforting a.s.surance that the liner was swinging to avoid them.

The quartermaster was taking the situation more philosophically than his superiors. He hummed:

Sez all the little fishes that swim to and fro, She's the Liverpool packet--O Lord let her go!

"Does that gor-righteously fool ahead there think I blowed three whistles to salute Marston's birthday or their last dividend, Mr. Mayo?"

shouted Captain Wa.s.s.

Fogs are freaky; ocean mists are often eerie in movements. There are strata, there are eddying air-currents which rend the curtain or shred the ma.s.sing vapors. The men in the pilot-house of the _Nequa.s.set_ suddenly found their range of vision widened. The fog did not clear; it became more tenuous and showed an area of the sea. It was like a thin veil which disclosed dimly what it distorted and magnified.

In a fog, experienced steamboat men always examine with earnest gaze the line where fog and ocean merge. They do not stare up into the fog, trying to distinguish the loom of an on-coming craft; they are able to discern first of all the white line of foam marking the vessel's cut.w.a.ter kick-up or her wake.

"There she comes, sir!" announced the mate. He pointed his finger at a foaming upthrust of tossing water.

"Yes, sir! Eighteen knots and both eyes shut!" But there was relief mingled with the resentment. His quick glance informed him that the liner would pa.s.s the _Nequa.s.set_ well to starboard--her bow showed a divergence of at least two points from the freighter's course. But the next instant Captain Wa.s.s yelped a shout of angry alarm. "Yes, both eyes shut!" he repeated.

Right in line with the liner's threshing bow was a fisherman's Hampton boat, disclosed as the fog drifted.

The pa.s.senger-steamer gave forth a half-dozen "woofs" from her whistle, answering the freighter's staccato warning, but gave no signs of slowing. But that they were making an attempt to dodge the mite in their path was made known by a shout from their lookout and his shrill call: "Port! Hard over!"

The fisherman had all the alertness of his kind, trained by dangers and ever-present prospect of mischance to grab at desperate measures.

He leaped forward and pulled out his mast and tossed mast and sail overboard.

He knew that he must encounter the tremendous wash and wake of the rushing hull. His sh.e.l.l of a boat, if made topheavy by the sail, would stand small show.

"He's a goner!" gasped Captain Wa.s.s. "She's a-going to tramp him plumb underfoot--unless she's going to get up a little more speed and jump over him!" he added, moved to bitter sarcasm.

They saw the little boat go into eclipse behind the black prow, the first lift of the churning waters flipping the c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l as a coin is snapped by the thumb. The fisherman was not in view--he had thrown himself flat in the bottom of his boat.

"He's under for keeps," stated the skipper, with conviction. "If her bilge-keel doesn't cooper him, her port propeller will!"

So rapidly was the liner moving, so abrupt her swoop to the right, that she leaned far over and showed them the red of her huge bilge. Her high speed enabled her to make an especially quick turn. As they gaped, her two stacks swung almost into line. Her shearing bow menaced the _Nequa.s.set_.

"The condemned old h.e.l.lion is going to nail _us_, now!" bellowed Captain Wa.s.s. In his panic and his fury he leaped up and down, pulling at the whistle-cord.

She was almost upon them--only a few hundred yards of gray water separated the two steamers.

She was the _Triton!_

Her name was disclosed on her bow. Her red hawse-holes showed like glowering and savage eyes. There was indescribably brutal threat in this sudden dart in their direction. It was as if a sea monster had swallowed an insect in the shape of a Hampton boat and now sought a real mouthful.

But her great rudder swung to the quick pull of her steam steering-gear and again she sheered, cutting a letter s. The movement brought her past the stern of the _Nequa.s.set_, a biscuit-toss away. The mighty surge of her roaring pa.s.sage lifted the freighter's bulk aft, and the huge wave that was crowded between the two hulls crowned itself with frothing white and slapped a good, generous ton of green water over the smaller steamer's superstructure.

Captain Wa.s.s grabbed down his megaphone; he wanted to submit a few remarks which seemed to fit the incident.

But the captain of the Triton was beforehand with a celerity which matched the up-to-date speed of his craft. He was bellowing through the huge funnel which a quartermaster was holding for him. His language was terrific. He cursed freighters in most able style. He asked why the _Nequa.s.set_ was loafing there in the seaway without steering headway on her! That amazing query took away Captain Wa.s.s's breath and all power to retort. Asking that of a man who had obeyed the law to the letter! A fellow who was banging through the fog at eighteen knots' speed blaming a conscientious skipper because the latter had stopped so as to get out of the way!

And, above all, going so fast when he asked the question that he was out of ear-shot before suitable answer could be returned!

Captain Wa.s.s revolved those whirling thoughts in a brain which flamed and showed its fires through the skipper's wide-propped eyes.

Then he banged his megaphone across the pilot-house. It rebounded against him, and he kicked it into a corner. He began to whack his fist against a broad placard which was tacked up under his license as master.

The cardboard was freshly white, and its tacks were bright, showing that it had been recently added as a feature of the pilot-house. Big letters in red ink at the top counseled, "Safety First." Other big letters at the bottom warned, "Take No Chances." The center lettering advised shipmasters that in case of accident the guilty parties would feel all the weight of Uncle Sam's heavy palm; it was the latest output from the Department of Commerce and Labor, and bore the signature of the honorable secretary of the bureau.

Mayo noted that his chief was wholly absorbed in this speechless activity; therefore he pulled the bells which stopped the backward churning and sent the freighter on her way. They pa.s.sed the fisherman in the Hampton boat; he was bailing his craft.

"That was a rather close call, sir! I am glad that I have been trained by you to be a careful man. You took no chances!"

"And where have I got to by obeying the United States rules and never taking chances, Mr. Mayo? At sixty-five I'm master of a freight-scow, sa.s.sed by owners ash.o.r.e and sa.s.sed on the high seas by fellows like that one who just slammed past us! If that pa.s.senger-steamer had hit me the lawyers would have shoved the tar end of the stick into my hands! It's all for the good of the h.e.l.lbent fellows the way things are arranged in this world at the present time. I'll be lucky if he doesn't lodge complaint against me when he gets to New York, saying that I got in his way!" He cut off a fresh sliver of black plug and took his position at the whistle-pull. "You'd better go get an heiress," he advised his mate, sourly. "Being an old-fashioned skipper in these days of steam-boating is what I'm too polite to name. And as to being the other kind--well, you have just seen him whang past!"

However, as they went wallowing up the coast, their old tub sagging with the weight of the rails under her hatches, Mate Mayo felt considerable of a young man's ambitious envy of that spick-and-span swaggerer who had yelled anathema from the pilot-house of the _Triton_. It was real steamboating, he reflected, even if the demands of owners and dividend-seekers did compel a master to take his luck between his teeth and gallop down the seas.