pretty quick,” Otie informed her.
“Well, it ain't much use to load your mind down with that kind of sculch,” stated Captain Candage, poising a potato on his fork-tines and peeling it, his elbows on the table. “That yacht and the kind of folks that's aboard that yacht ain't of any account to folks like us.”
The memory of some remarks which are uttered with peculiar fervor remains with the utterer. Some time later—long after—Captain Candage remembered that remark and informed himself that, outside of weather predictions, he was a mighty poor prophet.
V ~ ON THE BRIDGE OF YACHT “OLENIA”
O the times are hard and the wages low, Leave her, bullies, leave her! I guess it's time for us to go, It's time for us to leave her. —Across the Western Ocean.
Captain Mayo was not finding responsibility his chief worry while the Olenia was making port.
It was a real mariner's job to drive her through the fog, stab the harbor entrance, and hunt out elbow-room for her in a crowded anchorage. But all that was in the line of the day's work. While he watched the compass, estimated tide drift, allowed for reduced speed, and listened for the echoes which would tell him his distance from the rocky shore, he was engaged in the more absorbing occupation of canvassing his personal affairs.
As the hired master of a private yacht he might have overlooked that affront from the owner, even though it was delivered to a captain on the bridge.
But love has a pride of its own. He had been abused like a lackey in the hearing of Alma Marston. It was evident that the owner had not finished the job. Mayo knew that he had merely postponed his evil moment by sending back a reply which would undoubtedly seem like insubordination in the judgment of a man who did not understand ship discipline and etiquette of the sea.
It was evident that Marston intended to call him “upon the carpet” on the quarter-deck as soon as the yacht was anchored, and proposed to continue that insulting
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