In spite of what his eyes and ears told him, it all seemed to be some sort of hideous unreality.

"It's a big responsibility," proceeded Captain Downs, mumbling his words and talking half to himself in his uncertainty. "I've been trying to get some light on it from another--from a man who ought to understand more about it than what I do. It's too much of a problem for a man to wra.s.sle with all alone."

He turned his back on them, gazed at the stateroom door, tipped his cap awry, and scratched his head more vigorously than he had in his past ponderings.

"Say, you in there! Mate!" he called, clumsily preserving Mayo's incognito. "I'm in a pinch. Say what you really think!"

There was no word from the stateroom.

"You're an unprejudiced party," insisted the skipper. "You have good judgment. Now what?"

"Who is that, in there?" demanded Bradish.

"Why should this person, whoever he is, have any-thing to say about my affairs?" asked the girl.

"Because I'm asking him to say!" yelped the skipper, showing anger. "I'm running this! Don't try to tell me my own business!" He walked toward the door. "Speak up, mate!"

"It's an insult to me--asking strangers about my private affairs!" The protest of the girl was a furious outburst.

"I resent it, captain! Most bitterly resent it," stated Bradish.

The old skipper walked back toward them. "Resent it as much as you condemned like, sir! You're here asking favors of me. I want to do what is right for all concerned. You ought to be married--I admit that. But what sort of a position does it leave me in? Are you going to tell me this girl's name?"

"I'm Alma Marston!" She volleyed the name at him with hysterical violence, but he did not seem to be impressed. "I am Julius Marston's daughter!"

The skipper looked her up and down.

"Now you will be so good as to proceed about your duty!" she commanded, haughtily.

"Well, you can't expect me to show any special neighborly kindness to the Wall Street gouger who kept me tied up without a charter two months last spring with his steamboat combinations and his d.i.c.ker deals!"

"How are we to take that, sir?" asked Bradish.

The girl was staring with frank wonder at this hard-sh.e.l.led mariner whom she had not been able to impress by her name or her manner.

"Just as you want to."

"I demand an explanation."

"Well, I'll give it to you, seeing that I'm perfectly willing to. Take it one way, and I'm willing to wallop Julius Marston by handing him the kind of a son-in-law you'd make; take it the other way, and I ain't particular about doing anything to accommodate anybody in the Marston family." He eyed them sardonically.

"So, you see, I'm betwixt and between in the matter! It's like settling a question by flipping a cent. And I'll tell you what I'm going to do!"

He smacked his palm on the table. He strode back toward the stateroom door. "Mate, ahoy, there! Sailor to sailor, now, and remember that you have asked something of _me!_ If you were captain of this schooner would you marry off these two?"

They waited in silence, in which they heard the whummle and screech of the wind outside and the angry squalling of the sheathing of the plunging schooner's cabin walls.

The voice which replied to Captain Downs's query did not sound human. It was a sort of m.u.f.fled wail, but there was no mistaking its positiveness.

"No!" said the man behind the door.

Back to the table lurched Captain Downs. He pounded down his fist. "That settles it with me!" Then he poised his big hand on the edge of the table-cover. "I was ready to tip one way or the other and it needed only a little push. I have tipped." Down came the palm flat on the table-cloth with final and decisive firmness. "Young man," he informed Bradish, "there's an extra stateroom, there, off this dining-saloon. You take it!"

"What can I tell my father?" wailed the girl, the fire of her determination suddenly quenched by sobbing helplessness.

"You can tell him that I temporarily adopted you as my daughter at three bells on this particular evening, and I'll go to him and back you up if it becomes necessary." He opened the door leading aft and bowed. "Now, you trot along to your stateroom, sissy!"

After hesitating a few moments she hurried away. The skipper locked the door and slipped the key into his pocket.

"Do you think I'm going to--" began Bradish, angrily.

"I ain't wasting any thoughts on you, sir. I'm saving 'em all for the _Drusilla M. Alden_ just now."

The craft's plunging roll gave evidence that the sea was making. At that instant the first mate came down a few steps of the forward companionway, entering through the coach-house door.

"She's breezing up fresh from east'ard, sir!" he reported.

"So I've judged from the way this sheathing is talking up. I'll be on deck at once, Mr. Dodge."

That report was a summons to a sailor; Mayo came staggering out of the stateroom. He looked neither to right nor left nor at either of the men in the saloon. He stumbled toward the companionway, reaching his hands in front of him after the fashion in which a man gropes in the dark.

"Are you letting a n.i.g.g.e.r--and a crazy one at that--decide the biggest thing in my life?" raged Bradish.

"I know what I'm doing," Captain Downs a.s.sured him. But the skipper was manifestly amazed by the expression he saw on Mayo's face.

"I won't stand for it! Here, you!" Bradish rushed across the room and intercepted Mayo.

"Come away from that man!" commanded the skipper.

But Bradish was not in a mood to obey authority. "There's something behind this and I propose to be let in on it! Stop, you!" He pushed Mayo back, but the latter's face did not change its expression of dull, blank, utter despair which saw not and heard not. Mayo recovered himself and came on again, looking into vacancy.

"If you have a grudge against me, by the G.o.ds, I'll wake you up and make you explain it!" shouted Bradish. He drew back his arm and drove a quick punch squarely against the expressionless face. The blow came with a lurch of the vessel and Mayo fell flat on his back. He went down as stiffly as he had walked, with as little effort to save himself as a store dummy would have made.

But he was another man when he came upon his feet.

Bradish had awakened him!

The master of the _Alden_ hurried around the table, roaring oaths, and tried to get between them, but he was an unwieldy man on his short legs.

Before he was in arm's-length they were at each other, dodging here and there.

Bradish was no shrimp of an adversary; he was taller than his antagonist, and handled his fists like a man who had been trained as an amateur boxer.

They fought up and down the cabin, battering each other's face.

The indignant master threatened them with an upraised chair, tried to strike down their hands with it, but they were in no mood to mind a mediator. They fought like maddened cats, banging against the cabin walls, whirling in a crazy rigadoon to find an opening for their fists; Captain Downs was not nimble enough to catch them. Uttering awful profanity, he threatened to shoot both of them and rushed into the main saloon, unlocking the door.

"I'm coming back with a gun!" he promised. But the fight ended suddenly in a wrestling trick.

Mayo closed in, got Bradish's right hand in a grip, and doubled the arm behind his adversary's back. Then he tripped the city man and laid him backward over the table and against its edge with a violence that brought a yell of pain and made Bradish limp and pa.s.sive. Mayo held him there.