“Mr. Marston wants you to report aft at once,” he announced, brusquely.
Mayo hesitated a moment. They were driving into blankness which had shut down with that smothering density which mariners call “a dungeon fog.” Saturday Cove's entrance was a distant and a small target. In spite of steersman and mate, his was the sole responsibility.
“Will you please explain to Mr. Marston that I cannot leave the bridge?”
“You have straight orders from him, captain! You'd better stop the boat and report.”
The skipper of the Olenia was having his first taste of the unreasoning whim of the autocrat who was entitled to break into shipboard discipline, even in a critical moment. Mayo felt exasperation surging in him, but he was willing to explain.
The whistler and Razee Reef had been blotted out by the fog.
“If this vessel is stopped five minutes in this tide-drift we shall lose our bearings, sir. I cannot leave this bridge for the present.”
“I'm thinking you'll leave it for good!” blurted the secretary. “You're the first hired man who ever told Julius Marston to go bite his own thumb.”
“I may be a hired man,” retorted Mayo. “But I am also a licensed shipmaster. I must ask you to step down off the bridge.”
“Does that go for all the rest of the—passengers?” asked the secretary, angry in his turn. He dwelt on his last word. “It does—in a time like this!”
“Very well, I'll give them that word aft.”
Captain Mayo caught a side glance from Mate McGaw after a time.
“I have often wondered,” remarked the mate to nobody in particular, “how it is that so many damn fools get rich on shore.”
Captain Mayo did not express any opinion on the subject. He clutched the bridge rail and stared into the fog, and seemed to be having a lot of trouble in choking back some kind of emotion.
III ~ THE TAVERN OF THE SEAS
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