“We'll go aboard the schooner, Mr. McGaw. It's the place for us.”
“Maybe it is, but I'll speak up if you say the word, and make him set you ashore—even if I leave along with you?”
“Keep your job, sir. Will you pick up my few little belongings in my stateroom and bring them to me, Mr. McGaw? I'd better stay here on deck with my friends.” He emphasized the last word, and Captain Candage gave him a grateful look. “I'm sorry, mates! I can't say any more!” Captain Mayo did not allow himself to make further comment on the melancholy situation. The others were silent; the affair was out of their reckoning; they had no words to fit the case. Polly Candage stood looking out to sea. He had hoped that she would give him a glance of understanding sympathy, at least. But she did not, not even when he helped her down the steps into the tender.
Mate McGaw came with the captain's bag and belongings, and promptly received orders from the owner from the quarter-deck.
“Go on to the bridge and hail that schooner. Tell her we are headed for New York and can't be bothered by these persons!”
Mr. McGaw grasped Mayo's hand in farewell, and then he hurried to his duty. His megaphoned message echoed over their heads while the tender was on its way.
“Ay, ay, sir!” returned the fishing-skipper, with hearty bellow. “Glad to help sailors in trouble.”
“And that shows you—” blurted Captain Candage, and stopped his say in the middle of his outburst when his daughter shoved a significant fist against his ribs.
Captain Mayo turned his head once while the tender was hastening toward the schooner. But there were no women in sight on the yacht's deck. There was an instant's flutter of white from a stateroom port, but he was not sure whether it was a handkerchief or the end of a wind-waved curtain. He faced about resolutely and did not look behind again. Shame, misery, hopelessness—he did not know which emotion was stinging him most poignantly. The oarsmen in the tender were gazing upward innocently while they rowed, but he perceived that they were hiding grins. His humiliation in that amazing fashion would be the forecastle jest. Through him these new friends of his had been subjected to insult. He felt that he understood what Polly Candage's silence meant.
The next moment he felt the pat of a little hand on the fist he was clenching on his knee.