Wide Courses

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Wide Courses, by James Brendan Connolly

My boy wanted to do the divin', but 'twas me that went down.
JAMES BRENDAN CONNOLLY
AUTHOR OF OUT OF GLOUCESTER , THE SEINERS , THE DEEP SEA'S TOIL , THE CRESTED SEAS , AN OLYMPIC VICTOR , OPEN WATER , ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
1912

Sometimes the notion comes to me while I'm talkin' to people that maybe I don't make myself clear, and it's been so for some time now—the things I see in my mind fadin' away from me at times, like ships in a fog. And that's strange enough, too, if what people tell me so often is true—that it used to be so one time that the office clerks would correct their account-books by what I told 'em out of my head. But sometimes—not often—things come back to me, like to-day—maybe because 'tis a winter day and a gale o' wind drivin' the sea afore it in the bay below there. Things come to me then—like pictures—wind and sea and fog and the wrecks on a lee shore.
Maybe some things—comforts, refinements—I might 'a' practised myself in, got used to 'em like, but could I see in those early days that I'd ever have a grand home—me who'd been cast away at fourteen—even if I'd had time? It was to be able to do without comforts—to make a pleasure out o' hardship—that meant success almost as much as knowin' the business. And I did know my business in those days—or people lied a lot. And it always meant more to me—the name of bein' the great wrecker—than all the money I made, and in those last few years I made plenty of it—I did that. Me who once slaved for six dollars a month as boy in a Bangor coaster. And I mind how I used to look back and say—or was it somebody tellin' me?—that 'twas a great day for me and mine when the old lumber schooner wrecked herself on Peaked Hill Bar—because when she was hove down I was hove into a bigger world. Once in my pride I used to cherish praise like that—but sometimes now I'm not so sure.
There was but little damage to the yacht's bottom—a small matter to find that out—though the skipper he carried was no master of craft. So many of them like that, too. To face the sea like men is not what they're after, not to take winter or summer as it comes, rough or smooth—no—but always the smooth water and soft winds. But he did not sail for the West Indies that day, nor that week, nor winter—something'd gone wrong with the machinery. No concern of mine that. There were those who said later—but that was when my head begun to trouble me—as it does now sometimes, as I said. There was a time, when Sarah was alive, before we had even the old ship's cabin on the end of the old dock by way of an office, when I carried my business in a wallet in my breast pocket—that is, what we didn't carry in our heads—but the mother of those two lads, she was with me then. That's long ago.