“I reckon that they'll back down when they, see that you've caught him foul,” stated the skipper, consolingly. “I've got a lot of confidence in your grit, sir. But I must say it's a terrible tricky gang we're up against, so it seems to me.”
“This may be just the right string for us to pull,” returned Mayo; “there's no pleading with them, but we may be able to scare 'em.”
“I'm afraid I'm too much inclined to look on the dark side,” confessed Captain Candage. “You're going to find 'em all agin' ye ashore, sir. But the last words my Polly tells me to say to you was to keep up your courage and not to mind my growling. She thinks We have got a sure thing here—and that shows how little a girl knows about men's work!”
And yet, that one little message of good cheer from the main so comforted Mayo that he went on his way with the whimsical thought that girls who knew just the right time to give a pat and bestow a smile did understand man's work mighty well.
XXVIII ~ GIRL'S HELP AND MAN'S WORK
We know the tricks of wind and tide
That make and mean disaster,
And balk 'em, too, the Wren and me,
Off on the Old Man's Pastur'.
Day out and in the blackfish there
Go wabbling out and under,
And nights we watch the coasters creep
From light to light in yonder.
—The Skipper.
It was the period of January calms—that lull between the tempest ravings of the equinoxes, and the Ethel and May made slow time of it on her return to the main. In Mayo's mood of anxious impatience, hope in his affairs was as baffling as the winds in the little schooner's sails.
His passenger sat on the rail and gave the pacing captain occasional glances in which irony and sullenness were mingled.
“So you're going to put me into court, eh?” he inquired, when at last they drifted past the end of the breakwater at Limeport. “Well, that will give you a good excuse for throwing up your work on that wreck.”