“Buyer?”
“Yep! To whatever junkman is fool enough to bid her in. She's stuck fast. Underwriters have gone back on that tug, and are going to auction her. I'm here to help keep off pirates and take her men ashore after she has been handed over. You a pirate, Mayo?” he asked, with a grin.
“I'm almost anything nowadays, if there's a dollar to be made,” returned the young man.
The Ransom's captain gave him a wink. “I'm on to what happened on board the Olenia” he confided. “Feller who was in the crew told me. You're good enough for old Marston's girl. Why haven't you gone up to New York and taken—”
“Cut that conversation, Dodge,” barked Mayo, his face hard and his jaw jutting threateningly. “Good day!” added the young man, slamming the pilot-house door behind him.
His schooner, standing off and on, picked him up.
“There's no use hanging around here,” he informed the old skipper. “They're going to junk her, if they can find anybody fool enough to bid. She'll be guarded till after the auction.”
Therefore the Ethel and May shook out all her canvas and headed full and by for Maquoit to secure her fresh supply of bait.
“It's a shame,” mourned Captain Candage, staring over the taffrail at the ice-sheathed steamer. “'Most new, and cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to build, if I remember right what the paper said when she was launched.”
“If she was making money they'll have another one in her place,” said Mayo.