They were making a reach across the harbor to an anchorage well up toward the wharves, and were passing under the stern of a big yacht. Mayo looked up. It was the Olenia.
“But excuse me for calling it a friend, Captain Mayo,” bawled the mate, with open-water disregard of the possibilities of revelation in his far-carrying voice.
A man rose from a chair on the yacht's quarter-deck and came to the rail. Though the schooner passed hardly a biscuit-toss away, the man leveled marine glasses, evidently to make sure that what he had guessed, after Mr. Speed's remark, was true.
Mayo felt an impulse to turn his back, to dodge below. But he did not retreat; he walked to his own humble rail and scowled up into the countenance of Julius Mar-ston. The schooner was sluggish and the breeze was light, and the two men had time for a prolonged interchange of visual rancor.
“I didn't mean to holler so loud, Captain Mayo,” barked Oakum Otie, in still more resonant manner, to offer apology. “But seeing her, and remembering last time I laid eyes on her—”
“Shut up!” commanded the master. “I'll take the wheel. Go forward and clear cable, and stand by for the word!”
He looked behind, in spite of himself, and saw that a motor-tender had come away from the Olenia. It foamed along in the wake of the schooner. It circled her after it had passed, and kept up those manouvers until the schooner's anchor was let go. Then the tender came to the side and stopped. The mate and engineer in her were new men; Mayo did not know them. The mate tipped respectful salute and stated that Mr. Marston had sent them to bring Captain Mayo on board the yacht at once.
“My compliments to Mr. Marston. But I am not able to come.”
They went away, but returned in a short time, and the mate handed a note over the rail. It was a curt statement, dictated and typewritten, that Mr. Marston wished to see Captain Mayo on business connected with the Conomo, and that if Captain Mayo were not able to transact that business Mr. Marston would be obliged to hunt up some other party who could do business regarding the Conomo. Remembering that he had the interests of others to consider, Mayo dropped into the tender, sullen, resentful, wondering what new test of his endurance was to be made, and feeling peculiarly ill-equipped, in his present condition of courage and temper, to meet Julius Marston.
The latter had himself under full restraint when they met on the yacht's quarter-deck, and Mayo was more fully conscious of his own inadequacy.