“I thought you were from outside.”
“My name is Boyd Mayo. I'm from Mayoport.”
She looked up at him with frank interest.
“My folks built this schooner,” he stated, with modest pride.
“I'm Polly Candage—I'm named for it.”
“It's too bad!” he blurted. “I don't mean to say but what the name is all right,” he explained, awkwardly, “but I don't think that either of us is particularly proud of this old hooker right at the present moment.” He went across the cabin and sat down on a transom and, tested the bump on the back of his head with cautious palm.
She did not reply, and he set his elbows on his knees and proceeded to nurse his private grouch in silence, quite excluding his companion from his thoughts. Now that he had been snatched so summarily from his hateful position on board the Olenia, his desire to leave her was not so keen. After Mayo's declaration to the owner, Marston might readily conclude that his skipper had deserted. His reputation and his license as a shipmaster were in jeopardy, and he had already had a bitter taste of Marston's intolerance of shortcomings. If Marston cared to bother about breaking such a humble citizen, malice had a handy weapon. But most of all was Mayo concerned with the view Alma Marston would take of the situation. She would either believe that he had fallen overboard in the skirmish with the attacking Polly or had deserted without warning—and in the case of a lover both suppositions were agonizing. His distress was so apparent that the girl, from her seat on the opposite transom, extended sympathy in the glances she dared to give him.
“How did you tear your coat so badly in the back?” she ventured at last.
“Spikes your excellent father left sticking out of his martingale,” he said, a sort of boyish resentment in his tones.
“Then it is only right that I should offer to mend it for you.”