With Boyne following him, he climbed down the swaying ladder, and was
lifted from the lower rungs over the tug's rail to a secure footing.
After the lines had been cast off and the tug went floundering away at
a sharp angle, Captain Wass scuffed into his pilot-house and gave the
bells.
"She seems to feel it--honest she does!" he told Mate Mayo. "She goes
off logy. She doesn't pick up her heels. Nor could I do it when I walked
in here. Going to be scrapped--the two of us! Cuss their picking and
stealing and fighting and financing. They ain't steam-boating any
longer. They're using good boats to play checkers in Wall Street with.
Well, son," he mourned, hanging dispiritedly over the sill of the window
and staring up the wind-swept Chesapeake, "I ain't going to whine--but
I shall miss the old packet and the rumble and racket of the old machine
down there in her belly. I'd even take the job of watchman aboard her if
he would hire me."
"He seems to fancy me a bit. I'll ask him to hire you," proffered the
mate, eagerly.
"I reckon you didn't get the look in his eye when he fired me," said
Captain Wass. "I won't allow you to say a word to him about me. You go
ahead, boy, and take the job he has offered. But always remember that
he's a slick operator. See what he has done to Uncle Vose; and we
haven't been able to worm it out of that passenger how it was done,
either. Financing in these days comes pretty nigh to running without
lights and under forced draught. It gets a man to Prosperity Landing in
a hurry, providing he doesn't hit anything bigger than he is. They're
going to haul up this freighter and blame it on to me because I ain't
making money for the owners. They'll have plenty of figgers to show it.
Look out that they don't lay something worse and bigger to you. They're
going to play a game with the Vose line, I tell you! In the game of big
finance, 'tag-gool,' making 'it' out of the little chap who can't run
very fast, seems to be almighty popular."
He slowed the freighter to a snail's pace when he approached the dredged
channel, and at last the leadsman found suitable bottom. Both anchors
were let go.
The old skipper sounded the jingle, telling the chief engineer that the
engine-crew was released. In a speaking-tube the captain ordered both
boilers to be blown off.