They walked on to the cottage.
"Good night," he said at the door.
"And you have no plan as yet?"
"Maybe something will come to me in a dream."
The dream did not come to him, for his sleep was the profound slumber of
exhaustion. He went down in the early dawn and plunged into the sea, and
while he was walking back toward the cottage an idea and a conviction
presented themselves, hand in hand. The conviction had been with him
before--that he could not back out just then and leave those poor people
to shift for themselves, as anxious as he was to be off about his own
affairs; his undertaking was quixotic, but if he abandoned it at that
juncture a queer story would chase him alongcoast, and he knew what sort
of esteem mariners entertained for quitters.
However, deep in his heart, he confessed that it was not merely sailor
pride that spurred him. The pathetic helplessness of the tribe of Hue
and Cry appealed with an insistence he could not deny. He understood
them as he understood similar colonies along the coast--children whom an
indifferent world classed as man and treated with thoughtless injustice!
Work was prescribed for them, as for others! But, they did not know how
to work or how to make their work pay them.
The idea which came to him with the conviction that he must help these
folks concerned work for them.
After breakfast he took Captain Candage into his confidence, much to the
skipper's bland delight at being considered.
"I hope it's something where we can fetch Rowley in," confessed the
skipper. "I don't care anything for them critters," he added, assuming
brusqueness. "Don't want it hinted around that I'm getting simple in my
old age. But they give me an excuse to bingdoodle Rowley."
"To carry out that plan I have outlined we need some kind of a packet,"
said Mayo.
"Sure! We'll go right to Rowley. He'll know. If there's anything in
this section that he 'ain't got his finger on some way--bill of sale,
mortgage, debt owed to him or expecting to be owed, then it ain't worth
noticing."
Mr. Rowley listened in his back office. He stroked his beard contentedly
and beamed his pleasure when he saw the prospect of making another
profitable dicker with men who seemed to be reliable and energetic.
"I had a mortgage on the Ethel and May when Captain Tebbets passed on
to the higher life," he informed them. "Widder gave up the schooner when
I foreclosed, she not desiring to--er--bother with vessel proputty. So I
have it free and clear without it standing me such a terrible sum! Shall
be pleased to charter to you gents at a reasonable figure. Furthermore,
seeing that industry makes for righteousness, so we are told, your plan
of making those critters go to work may be a good one, providing you'll
use a club on 'em often enough."