THE DEEP SEA’S TOLL
“’Tis Tommie I’m after,” hollers back the Skipper.
THE DEEP
SEA’S TOLL
BY
JAMES B. CONNOLLY
AUTHOR OF “OUT OF GLOUCESTER,”
“THE SEINERS,” ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
W. J. Aylward & H. Reuterdahl
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK::::::::::::::::::::1905
Copyright, 1905, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
——
Published, September, 1905
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Sail-Carriers
IT was a howling gale outside, but howling gales were common things to Peter, and he did not see why this one need hinder his taking a little stroll along the docks. Something in the appearance of the vessel just rounding the Point helped to give new life to the idea he had been entertaining for some minutes now—that a little trip along the harbor front wouldn’t be a half bad notion.
Exactly what that something was Peter could not say. Queer inner workings were not to be argued as if they were Trust or Tariff questions; but this vessel—and she certainly was an able vessel—and the vessel just before her was an able vessel too—both these vessels, he might say, tearing around the Point, rails buried and booms dragging, did suggest in some way Peter couldn’t quite reason out, that his intended little voyage was a good idea.
It had been ever so with Peter. Never one of his favorites came swinging in before a breeze that he did not begin to get nervous. So, having made a note of the Colleen Bawn, Tom O’Donnell master, under a note of the Nannie O, Tommie Ohlsen master, and seeing nothing further to hinder he just the same as conferred a decoration on the most meritorious of his volunteer staff by giving him full charge of the tower while he should be gone. Then, with conscience clear, he climbed down the winding back stairs and out onto the street.
In and about among the wharves did Peter jog under easy sail until he felt somewhat more rested. He was, indeed, about to return to Crow’s Nest, but happening to glance down Duncan’s Dock, he made out Dexter Warren painting dories under the lee of the long shed. “Miracles!” murmured Peter, “Dexter’s workin’.” Picking his course over the planks of the dock, tacking in and out among the fish flakes, empty hogsheads and old broken spars, Peter noticed Dexter step away from his dories, raise his hands to his eyes, take a squint across the harbor, shake his head sadly, come back and resume his dory-painting.
But resumed it leisurely, for Dexter, as everybody in Gloucester that knew him knew, was not the man to do things in a bull-headed way. That some men painted portraits with less care than Dexter painted bankers’ dories was readily believed by anyone who had ever seen Dexter painting dories. Dexter would have told you that the dories were the more useful. He was now putting in the discriminating touches that distinguish the type of man who works for something other than the money there is in it. It was the precise little dab of the brush here and a deft little flirt of the wrist there, and the holding of the head first to one side and then the other, that caught the eye of Peter when he rounded to under Dexter’s quarter and hailed.
“Hulloh, Dexter-boy, and what’s it you’re paintin’?”
“Miniachoors—miniachoors on iv’ry,” responded Dexter, with brush suspended at arm’s length, and himself swinging slowly around. He had some more little repartee on the tip of his tongue, but seeing who it was he forgot it, and “Hulloh, Peter,” he said instead, “and what ever druv you out this mornin’?”
“I dunno. The confinement, maybe.”
“Ah, that’s bad—too much confinement.”
“That’s what I was thinkin’ myself. For who are the dories?”
“Captain O’Donnell.”
“For the Colleen Bawn? A man’d think’d be a new vessel and not new dories he’d be gettin’—the old one’s that wracked apart. Red bottoms, yeller sides, and green gunnels—m’m—but they’ll be swell-lookin’ dories when you get ’em done, won’t they?”
“They’ll be the prettiest dories that was ever put aboard a trawler out of Gloucester,” said Dexter, appreciatively.
“I’ll bet. And he’ll be pleased with ’em, I know—’specially the green gunnels—and he ought t’ be along soon.”
“Who along soon?—not the Colleen Bawn?”
“Sure. She was comin’ around the Point just as I left Crow’s Nest.”
“No! Well, I’m glad,” breathed Dexter. “I’m glad he’s home again. And so’ll his wife be, too. There was that gale just after she left. His wife, I’ll bet, ain’t slept a wink since.”
Peter straddled the sheer of a broken topmast. “Whose wife, Dexter?—not meanin’ to be inquisitive.”
“Why, Jimmie Johnson’s. He’s on the Colleen this trip.”
“Him? The little fellow lumps around here sometimes? Why, we used to scare him ’most to death up in Crow’s Nest tellin’— How came it he got it into his head to go fishin’?”
“Oh, it was what the papers’d call a little matrimonial difference. I expect that him and his wife ain’t got real well acquainted with each other yet. He’s pretty young yet, and she don’t know too much about the world. I know, because she’s my first cousin. Young married couples, I s’pose, got to have ’bout so many arguments before they find each other out. I ain’t married myself, but ain’t it about that way, Peter?”
“Well, gen’rally, Dexter, though not always.” Peter jabbed the point of his knife-blade into his spar. “You see, Dexter, it’s a good deal like vessels. You don’t always know how to take them at first. There’s some sails best down by the head, and some by the stern. There’s some’ll come about in the wildest gale under headsail alone, and others you have to drive around with the trys’l or a bit of the mains’l and that, too, when a minute too late means the vessel gone up on the rocks. Some you c’n find all about how they trim the first trip, and some you c’n never find out about; and some fine day they rolls over or goes under, and the whole gang’s lost. But about Jimmie, Dexter—how’d Tom O’Donnell ever come to ship him?”
“Lord, I dunno. I only know I came down on the dock that mornin’, and he was standin’ right where I am now, just goin’ to begin on a new set of dories for the Scarrabee that was fittin’ out to go halibutin’. When I came along I was wonderin’ where I could get about a week’s work. I didn’t want more’n a week, because I’d been promised a job in the glue factory the first of the month, and I never did see the use of wearin’ yourself out beforehand when you’re goin’ to start in soon on a steady job, would you, Peter?”
“Well,”— Peter made a few more thoughtful jabs into the topmast—“well, no, maybe not—more especially if ’t was a glue factory job.”
“That’s what I say. Well, I notices something was wrong, and I asks what the matter was. ‘Tired of work?’ I says, thinkin’ to cheer him up.”
“‘Tired of everything,’ says Jimmie, and I see he was ’most ready to cry. Well, you know the kind he is, Peter. He ain’t one of them fellows that’ll go out and have a few drinks for himself and forget it. No; he thinks over things that don’t amount to nothin’ till he’s near crazy—you’ve met them kind? Yes? Well, Jimmie was that way this mornin’. I drew it out of him that he’d had a scrap up home. He told me, knowin’ I wouldn’t tell it all over the place, and——”
“And he wound up by shippin’ with Tom O’Donnell? How’d Jimmie ever get a chance with that gang? They’re an able crew.”
“Lord, I dunno. I went away, and warn’t gone more than an hour when the boy from the office came huntin’ for me and says that Jimmie Johnson’d gone a haddockin’ trip in the Colleen Bawn and did I want his job? And I came back and went to work thinkin’ I had a week ahead of me or so, and here it’s the fourteenth day—not countin’ Sundays—and I’m glad he’s back, and I hope he hurries ashore as soon’s they come to anchor. Fourteen days now paintin’ dories and lumpin’ around this dock, and——”
“And that poor boy out in the Colleen Bawn in that last blow! Well, maybe it’ll do him good. Your cousin, you say, Dexter? I think I’ve seen her—and a nice little woman, too—though I expect there was a little to blame on both sides. There gen’rally is. But I must be gettin’ back. I left a lad in charge of Crow’s Nest that I’m afeard ain’t able to pick out a Georgesman from an Eyetalian barque loaded with salt till they’re under his nose, and maybe he won’t be reportin’ one or two to the office till after they know it themselves, and then somebody’ll ketch the devil—me, most likely. So, so long, Dexter.”
Regretfully relinquishing his old topmast, and leaving Dexter and his dories in his wake, Peter gradually gathered steerage-way, and headed up the dock, from where, in time, he managed to work into the street, and then, with Duncan’s office to port and a good beam wind, he bore away for Crow’s Nest. He had it in mind to go by way of the Anchorage, and laying his course therefor—no’west by nothe—he hauled up for the Anchorage corner.
Luffing the least bit to clear the brass railings outside the Anchorage windows, and having in mind all the while how fine it would be once he was around with a fair wind at his back, and bending his head at the same time to the breeze, Peter ran plump into somebody coming the other way.
“I say, matey, but could you swing her off a half-point or so?” sung out the other cheerfully.
“Swing off? Why, of course, but gen’rally a vessel close-hauled is s’posed to have right of way where I come from.”
“Close-hauled are you? Well, so’m I—or I thought I was.”
“And so maybe y’are, if you’re so round-bowed and flat-bottomed a craft you can’t sail closer than seven or eight points. Anyway, I’m starb’d tack.”
“Well, who in—” The other peered up. “Why, hello-o, Peter!”
“What! Well, well, Tommie Clancy! the Colleen Bawn in already?”
“To anchor in the stream not two minutes ago. I hurried ashore on an errand for her.”
“And what kind of a trip did y’ have?”
“Oh, nothing extra so far as the fish went, but good and lively every other way. Stayed out in that breeze week before last and left Georges last night with that latest spoon-bow model and I guess she’s still a-comin’. Some wind last night comin’ home, Peter.”
“M-m— I’ll bet she came a-howlin’.”
“Oh, maybe she didn’t. Peter boy, but if you only could’ve seen her hoppin’ over the shoals last night and comin’ up to Cape Ann this mornin’! But let’s step inside, and have a little touch.”
“Well, I don’t mind, seein’ the kind of a day it is, Tommie. And I want to ask you about that little fellow you shipped— Jimmie Johnson.”
“Ho, ho—‘Your oilskins are too loose,’ says the Skipper to him. Ho, ho—wait and I’ll tell you about him, Peter—‘Your oilskins too loose—’ ho, ho.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“Wait, till I tell you, Peter-boy. But let’s sit down and drink in comfort. There y’are. Here’s a shoot. G-g-g-h-! m-m-! but ain’t it fine to feel that soaking into your inside planking after you’ve been carryin’ a dry hold for sixteen days? Ain’t it? What? You bet! And about the little lumper-man—it was funny from the start. I was down the end of the dock the mornin’ we left, with the dory, waiting for the Skipper, when along comes this little fellow lookin’ like something sad’d happened. I kind of half knew him from seein’ him around the dock now and again. He seemed to be lookin’ for some good sympathetic party to tell his troubles to and I let him pour them into me. He talks away and I listens and before he’s through I begin to see what the trouble was. ‘What you need is a couple of drinks,’ I says—‘What d’y’ say if we step up the dock and have a litle touch?’
“‘No, no,’ says he, ‘I ain’t drunk a drop since I got married—and I never will whilst I am married.’
“‘Then if you don’t hurry up and get a divorce, I can see that you are goin’ to carry around an awful thirst,’ I says, but the way he took it I see he didn’t want any foolin’. And then, to soothe him, I asked why he didn’t go a haddockin’ trip, and forget it.”
“‘Do you think I’d forget it?’ he asks, eager-like.
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘I can’t say. Some people remember things a long time, but you go a trip with Tom O’Donnell, and you’ll stand a pretty good chance ’specially ’bout this time o’ year,’ I says. ‘And maybe it’ll teach people a lesson,’ I insinuates. And just then down the dock comes the Skipper, with big Jerry Sullivan. Ain’t he a whale though—big Jerry?”
“Yes, and gettin’ bigger every day.”
“Yes. Well, the Skipper was layin’ down the law to big Jerry, and you could hear him the length of the dock. He was sayin’, ‘I told him we’d leave at nine o’clock, and it’s quarter-past now, and I told him above all the others, knowin’ his failin’. He knows me, and he oughter know that when I say nine o’clock that ’tis nine o’clock I mean, and not ten, or eleven, or two in the afternoon; and we’ve been in two nights now, and he’s had plenty o’ time to loosen up since.”
“‘That’s right enough, Skipper,’ says Jerry. ‘I heard you myself, and I said myself, “Now, mind, Bartley, what the Skipper’s tellin’ you.” But you see, Skipper, it was a weddin’ last night, and a wake the night before——’
“‘A wake and a weddin’! And whose weddin’—his?’ roars the Skipper.
“‘Why, no,’ says Jerry.
“‘Was it his wake, then?’
“‘Why, Skipper, don’t you know it couldn’t been his wake?’
“‘Not his wake and not his weddin’? Then what the divil reason has he?’
“‘Why,’ said Jerry, ‘I ain’t sayin’ he’s got any good reason. But you know what he thinks of you and of the vessel. He’s been in the Colleen ever since she was built, and he’s a fisherman—a fisherman, Skipper, stem to stern a fisherman—and he knows your ways and the vessel’s ways,’ says Jerry.
“‘Indeed, and I’m not sure he knows my ways too well,’ says the Skipper. ‘It’s so proud he should be to sail in the Colleen Bawn, the fastest, ablest vessel out of Gloucester, if I do say it myself, that— But no more talk. To the divil with him. There’s the dory—jump in and go aboard.’
“‘But what’ll I do for a dory-mate?’ says Jerry.
“‘Oh, I’ll get you a dory-mate. When we put into Boston for bait there’ll be plenty to pick up on T wharf.’
“Well, just there I nudges the little lumper, and he sets his jaws and steps up: ‘Captain, could you give me a chance? I’d like to ship with you for a trip.’
“The Skipper looks down at him. ‘And who are you?’
“And right away he begins to tell his troubles to the Skipper, and the Skipper—you know the Skipper—listens like a father. But he near spoiled it all by windin’ up, ‘Oh, I’ve been workin’ around the dock lately, but I used to be quartermaster on a harbor steamer in Boston one time,’ to let the Skipper know he wouldn’t have a passenger on his hands.
“The Skipper looks him up and looks him down. ‘Quartermaster on a harbor steamer once, was you? Think of that, now. It’s the proud man you oughter be! And about as big as a pair of good woolen mitts! But’—and he looks over at Jerry sideways—‘you’ll have a mate that’s big enough. Jerry,’ and he begins to smile sly-like, ‘Jerry, here’s the dory-mate you’ve been screechin’ for.’
“‘What!’ howls Jerry, ‘him—him! Why, I could slip him into one of my red-jacks. That little shrimp! A shrimp? No—a minim!’
“It was scandalous, of course, to speak out like that to the little man to his face, but Jerry and Bartley were great friends, you see; and Jerry’d kept on, but the Skipper puts an end to it quick, and we went aboard.
“Well, we puts into Boston for the bait, gets it up to T wharf and puts out. Coming down the harbor it was Jerry and the little man’s watch on deck. Jerry put him to the wheel. ‘Bein’ quartermaster of a harbor steamer here once, of course you know the channel,’ says Jerry, and leaves him and goes for’ard. Well, we went along till we were pretty near the little light-house on the thin iron legs that sets up like it was on stilts. Well, you know how the channel is there, Peter, and this time it was blowin’ some—wind abeam. I mind the little man askin’ Jerry afore this if it warn’t pretty bad weather to be puttin’ to sea and Jerry sayin’ maybe it would be for harbor steamers. We were crowdin’ along at this time, Jerry for’ard by the windlass, me in the waist, and the little man to the wheel. We gets near to the little light-house—like a spider on long legs it was— Bug Light is the name of it, and a good name for it, too. We were crowdin’ through, and I was thinkin’ of askin’ Jerry if he hadn’t better take the wheel himself, and then I thought I wouldn’t. It warn’t my watch, and you don’t like to be hintin’ to a man that he don’t know his business, you know, not even to a man that was green as this one might be in handlin’ a fisherman. Well, we gets nearer and I noticed the little man beginnin’ to fidget like he was nervous or something. At last he hollers out to Jerry, ‘I say, matey, what’ll I do? I don’t know’s I c’n keep her away from the light, and there’s rocks on the other side. What’ll I do, matey?’
“Jerry turns around. ‘Whatever you do, don’t call me matey. And whatever you do again, don’t put this vessel up on the rocks or the Skipper’ll swing you from the fore-gaff peak and let this fine no’therly blow through you.’
“‘But we won’t go by,’ hollers the little man; ‘we’re goin’ to hit it.’
“‘Well, hit it if you want to,’ says Jerry—‘it’s your wheel. You shipped in Bartley Campbell’s place, now do Bartley Campbell’s work. Anyway,’ goes on Jerry, ‘you won’t do any great harm if you do. It’s bent to one side anyway here where some old coaster or other hit it a clip last fall. Maybe you c’n straighten it out.’
“Jerry no more than got that out than the vessel got way from the little man and ran into the light. She hit it fair as could be, with her bowsprit against one of the long, thin iron legs, and she did give it a wallop. There was a man climbin’ up the ladder the other side of the light—to fill his lamps, I s’pose—and when we hit the light he shook off like an apple from a tree, and drops into the water. The vessel bounces off where we hit, and the Skipper and the rest of the gang comes rushin’ up on deck. ‘What the divil’s that?’ says the Skipper; and seein’ the man in the water, he rushes to the side and gaffs him in nice and handy.
“‘What the devil do you mean?’ says the man the Skipper’d gaffed, soon’s he’d got his mouth clear of salt water.
“‘What the divil do you mean?’ says our Skipper, ‘by comin’ aboard this vessel?’ He’s about as quick a man to see a thing—that Tom O’Donnell—as ever I saw in my life.
“‘What do I mean?’ says the man. ‘What do you mean by running that gaff into me the way you did?’
“‘Holy Mother!’ says the Skipper, ‘but will you listen to him? It’s gold medals we should be gettin’ from the Humane Societies for savin’ the life of him, and now it’s nothin’ but growling because we did save it.’
“‘Saved my life!’ sputters the light-house lad. ‘My boat was right there when I fell. Why, it ain’t your vessel’s length away now under the light’—the Colleen was beginnin’ to slide away again—‘and I want you to know I c’n swim like a fish.’
“‘Then swim, ye divil ye, swim!’ says the Skipper quick’s a wink, and picks him up and heaves him over the rail. ‘Yes,’ says big Jerry, ‘swim, you lobster, swim!’ and he pushes him along with an oar he’d grabbed out the top dory. And he did swim, too.
“And then the Skipper comes aft. ‘Who the divil,’ says he, ‘was to the wheel?’ and spots the little man, who was lookin’ more surprised than the light-keeper in the water. ‘And where’d you ever steer a vessel before?’ says the Skipper.
“‘I dunno’s I did so very bad,’ answers the little man. ‘I used to be quartermaster on a harbor steamer once, and I kept her off the rocks.’
“The Skipper looked at him like he was a new kind of fish. ‘Indeed, was you now? And you kept her off the rocks? And did you ship for a fisherman or what?’ And the Skipper looks at him a little more, then laughs and takes the wheel himself. ‘Maybe,’ says he, ‘the insurance company would like it better if I took her the rest of the way out of the harbor myself. And I don’t want to lose her myself. She’s too good a vessel—the fastest and the ablest out o’ Gloucester. But go below now, boy, and have your supper.’
“Well, that passed by all right, but outside the harbor, off Minot’s, we ran foul of the Superba—that’s the new one, the latest spoon-bow model. He sees her comin’ and sways up, but she comes on and goes on by—goes on by nice and easy. ‘And she used to be a good vessel once,’ says Dick Mason, her skipper, to some of his gang standing aft. We could hear him—he meant us to hear him—‘of course, a good vessel once, the Colleen Bawn, but she’s been wracked so she can’t carry sail no longer.’
“Imagine Tom O’Donnell, Peter, havin’ to stand on the quarter of his own vessel and take that from Dick Mason—imagine it, Peter, and from Dick Mason that, standing on deck and wide-awake, couldn’t sail a vessel like Tom O’Donnell could from his bunk below and half asleep. The Skipper looked after her, then he turns us to, and it was sway up and no end to the trimmin’ of sheets. But no use. The Superba kept goin’ on away, and the Skipper couldn’t make it out. He stood with one foot on the house, his chin in his hand, and his elbow on his knee, and tried to figure it out as he looked after her. It was by the wind, and plenty of it—the rail nice and wet—couldn’t been better for our vessel. ‘There’s something wrong,’ says he. And there was something wrong. We found it after awhile. It was one of the iron bands that was holdin’ her together—the one for’ard was loose and draggin’ under her bottom. The Skipper was tickled to death when he found what it was. ‘Troth, and I knew there was something wrong with her,’ he says; and puts into Provincetown and has it bolted on again. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘she’ll be nice and tight again when we wants to drive her. And if we runs foul of that spoon-bow again, we’ll see.’ We warn’t out the harbor hardly before the wind gettin’ at her, she begins to leak for’ard, but the Skipper pretended he didn’t see it, puts around the Cape and off for Georges, where we got to just about in time to ketch that no’west gale that was riotin’ out there the week before last. We were blowed off, but banged her back, blowed off and banged her back again, tryin’ to hang on to shoal water so’s to be handy to good fishin’ when it moderated. But it was a week before it did moderate, and by that time the Colleen was pretty well shook up, with the water sizzlin’ through her like she was a lobster-pot for’ard, and the gang makin’ guesses on how long before she’d come apart altogether. The Skipper, he didn’t seem to mind. ‘She’s a little loose,’ says he, ‘but don’t let it worry ye. Keep your rubber boots on, and don’t mind. So long as the iron bands hangs to her planks, she’s all right.’
“Well, as I said, it moderated, and we got a chance to fish a little on and off for another week, and the troubles of Jerry with his dory-mate would fill a book that week. ‘It’s two men’s work you have now, Jerry,’ I says to him. ‘’Tisn’t two but three,’ says Jerry. ‘It’s my own work and his work and another man’s work to see he don’t get tangled up in the trawls or capsize the dory or fall over himself and get lost.’ However, fishin’ on and off brought us to yesterday, when, with the wind makin’ all the time, it got too rough toward the evenin’ to put the dories out, and we used the time up till along toward dark in dressin’ what fish we had on deck and cuttin’ fresh bait for next day—to-day that’d be. We’d done all that, and was gettin’ ready to make ourselves comfortable for the night with the Skipper sayin’: ‘Ten thousand more, and I’d swing her off for Gloucester, I would. But another set, and, with any kind of luck, we’ll get that, and then we’ll swing her off.’ He’d only just said that—he was havin’ a mug-up for’ard at the time—when whoever was on watch sticks his head down the gangway, and calls out: ‘Captain, here’s the Superba, and she’s goin’ home, I think.’
“‘What!’ says he, and gulps his coffee and leaps for the gangway, and we knew that our notions about a comfortable night might’s well be forgotten. He takes a look at the vessel comin’. ‘That’s Dickie Mason, sure enough. Shake the reef out the mains’l, and we’ll put after her.’
“‘Mason’s under a trys’l, Skipper,’ says big Jerry.
“‘And so would I be in that cigar-box,’ says the Skipper.
“We drives up and shoots under her stern. ‘Hi-i, Captain Mason!’ sings out our Skipper.
“‘Hi-i, Captain O’Donnell,’ hollers Mason.
“‘I sure do.’
“‘And this vessel?’
“‘That old wrack?— I’d know her in a million.’
“‘Would you now? Then swing on your heel and follow her home.’ And then he turns to us, ‘Boom her out now, boys—boom her out—no’west by west and never a slack.’ And off he goes straight for the shoals, with a livin’ south-easterly gale and the black night on us.
“‘Twarn’t more than an hour, or maybe two, runnin’ like that, when we couldn’t make out the Superba’s lights any more. The Skipper himself went to the masthead and looked. ‘She’s put to the nothe’ard, I think,’ he said, comin’ down. ‘But then again maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s put them out. Anyway, we’ll keep on and make a holy show of her—the fine Superba, indeed! that don’t dare to follow the Colleen Bawn, all wracked as they say she is! Maybe he’ll get his courage up and come after us later, but whatever she does we’ll keep this one as she is.’
“We were fair into the shoal water then with the Skipper keepin’ the lead goin’ himself. ‘Billie Simms in the Henry Parker showed me in the Lucy Foster the short course over these shoals,’ he says—‘and it cost me twelve hundred and odd dollars, and I haven’t forgotten the road.’ He warn’t tellin’ anybody what water he was gettin’. It was pretty shoal though, man, it was. Once or twice, I swear, we were real worried. But he’s the lucky man, is Tom O’Donnell. The wind hauled and he swung her fore-boom over and tried to spread a balloon. It carried away her foretopm’st, which maybe was just as well. And all night long he kept her goin’——”
“Lord, but you must’ve had it, Tommie. And Jimmie Johnson—how was he makin’ out?”
“Jimmie Johnson? Ho, ho! the little lumper. Let me tell you. In the middle of the night, thinkin’ the worst of it was over, with the shoals behind us, the gang went below and turned in, all but me. I gets my pipe from my bunk and was havin’ a smoke, and thinkin’ of turnin’ in too, when this Jimmie Johnson came down, lookin’ pretty well worried.
“‘Ain’t it awful?’ he says.
“‘Ain’t what awful?’ I asks.
“‘Why, the night—the vessel—the way she’s sailin’—and everything else.’
“‘Why don’t you turn in?’ I asked.
“‘It’s no use turnin’ in now,’ he answers; ‘my watch comes in half an hour or so.’
“‘Turn in,’ says I; ‘I’ll stand your watch.’
“‘Will you?’ he says, and looks like a load’d come off his chest.
“He was goin’ to turn in then, when he happened to think he’d like to have a mug-up. So he gets a mug of coffee and a slice of pie, and takes a seat on the wind’ard locker. There was plenty wind stirrin’ then, mind you, but there he was havin’ a nice little mug-up for himself, sittin’ on the weather-locker and all oiled-up, leanin’ over the table, his mug o’ coffee to one hand and a wide wedge o’ pie to the other. Man, I have to laugh every time I think of him. ‘The cook of this vessel does make the finest apple pie, don’t he?’ he says, and you could see his spirits was beginnin’ to rise, with the hot coffee gettin’ inside of him. The Colleen was bumpin’ herself all this time, rollin’ over like she was goin’ to lie down, and then gettin’ up again, rearin’ her head and fannin’ herself with her forefeet, standin’ on her hind legs and then comin’ down again, doin’ all those kind of things you gets used to on her when the Skipper’s tryin’ to sail her in a blow. Well, I watches this little Jimmie for awhile, till I happens to think that so long’s I had another watch to stand I might’s well have another pipeful while I was waitin’. I was thinkin’ of steppin’ over for a bit of tobacco out of big Jerry’s bunk, which was right over where this Jimmie Johnson was sittin’, when the Colleen gave an extra good lurch, and with it all at once this lad sank down about a foot or so, and Jerry at the same time most comes through the bottom of his bunk. The lad, he gets pale, and makes as if he was tryin’ to stand up but couldn’t. ‘What is it?’ I said, and wonders what was wrong with him. ‘My oil-skins,’ said he. ‘All the looseness in my oil-pants is ketched tight.’ And then Jerry woke up, with the noise he made in fallin’, I s’pose, and the most surprised man you ever saw. ‘Mother o’ mine!’ says Jerry, ‘what’s that?’ and just for’ard of him Aleck McKenzie leaps a full three feet into the air, hittin’ the deck beam so hard he must’ve left pieces of himself stickin’ to it. ‘What in the—!’ says Aleck, and when he got that far he sees this Jimmie Johnson. ‘Did you do that?’ he says.
“‘No,’ says he, and tryin’ himself to get off the locker Aleck notices him.
“‘What you doin’ there anyway?’ says Aleck.
“‘I dunno,’ says Jimmie, and just then the Colleen falls the other way and lets him loose again, and he leaps for the gangway and up on deck. Man, he fair flew, and I went up after him, not knowin’ what might happen to him, and Jerry and Aleck below swearin’ like crazy men.
“Up on the deck there was the Skipper just able to keep his feet and talkin’ to Dal Skinner,
“All the looseness in my oil-pants is ketched tight.”
who was to the wheel. It was dark enough, but you c’d make him out where the light of the binnacle hit on his wet oil-skins. Up to him popped the little man from somewhere. ‘My God, but it’s a wild night, ain’t it, Captain?’ says he.
“‘Who the divil’s that?’ says the Skipper, and he peeks along the deck to where Jimmie was hangin’ to the weather rail. After takin’ another peek and seein’ who it was, the Skipper don’t pay no more attention to him, but goes on talkin’ to Dal.
“‘I’m thinkin’,’ says the Skipper, ‘that it’s moderatin’ a bit and maybe she’d stand the stays’l pretty soon.’ Jimmie, I guess, was listenin’ to that and couldn’t hold in any longer. ‘Oh, Captain, Captain,’ says he, ‘she’s fallin’ apart forward,’ and tells him what happened in the forec’s’le. ‘How long you been sleepin’ for’ard?’ asks the Skipper.
“‘Four nights now,’ says Jimmie.
“‘Only four nights? That’s it, you’re not used to sleepin’ for’ard yet. You mustn’t mind that. They all used to think that at first. But Lord bless you, don’t you mind that. That’s just a little way she has. She don’t mean any harm.’
“‘But Jerry fell through his bunk.’
“‘And why wouldn’t he? sure he weighs a ton.’
“‘But,’ says Jimmie, ‘she pinched my oil-pants, her planks opened up so wide!’
“‘That so? And what size oil-skins do you wear?’
“‘I dunno,’ says he—‘these belong to Clancy.’
“‘There it is,’ said he, ‘Clancy’s a big man, and your oil-skins are too loose. Go below and see if you can find some that are four sizes smaller and get the loan of ’em. Go below anyway,’ says he, ‘and finish your mug-up. You’ll feel better.’
“‘If you don’t mind, Captain,’ says he, ‘I’d rather stay on deck awhile—it’s safer, I think.’
“‘All right,’ says the Skipper, ‘but don’t get in the way.’
“He hadn’t got that fair out, when ‘Hard down—hard down!’ comes ravin’ from the watch for’ard. ‘Down,’ hollers Dal, and the Colleen makes a shoot, and the booms start to come over. And just then the Skipper makes a jump for the waist after this Jimmie and slings him out of the way of the fore-boom. He saved Jimmie from having his head split open and knocked overboard and lost, but he couldn’t save himself. Even a man like Tom O’Donnell can’t sling a man out of the way on a wet and driving deck with one hand like he was a feather, and the boom ketches him side the head just as the vessel heels down again on the other tack and over the railing he goes——”
“Not overboard, Tommie!”
“Yes, overboard and into the black sea, and me standing by couldn’t save him from it. I jumped, but he was gone, and over on the other side the clumsy ark of a vessel we had to turn out for went on by. The watch must’ve been asleep aboard of her. I stood and cursed her lights as they went away from us. Yes, sir, cursed ’em out between the times I was hollering for the gang to come up.
“‘On deck everybody—all hands on deck!’ I roars it loud’s I could, and had the gripes slashed off the nest of lee dories by the time they came up flying.
“‘The Skipper is gone,’ says I—‘over with a dory!’ and we had one over in no time, and Jerry and me jumps in— Jerry in his stockin’ feet—and out we goes. We couldn’t sees so much as a star in the sky, if there was one—not even the white tops of the seas—but we drove her out, and ’twas all we could do to keep the dory from capsizin’ by the way. ‘To looard!’ I says, and to looard we pushed her, and then, ‘Hi, the Colleen Bawn! On your lee quarter.’ ’Twas the Skipper’s voice. And maybe we didn’t row! But ’twas one thing to hear his voice, and another in that night and sea and blackness to find him, and keep the dory right side up at the same time. But he kept singin’ out and we kept drivin’ away, and at last we got him. A hard job he must’ve had trying to keep afloat with his big jack-boots on, and everything else on, for the fifteen minutes or more it took us to find him.
“‘Lord!’ says he, ‘but I’m glad to see you. Paddling like a porpoise I’ve been since I went over the side. But drive for the vessel—there’s her port light—and I’ll keep bailin’, if one of ye’ll lend me your sou’wester.’
“We got alongside, and the Skipper climbs over the rail. ‘Put her on her course again,’ he says, and then starts to go below to overhaul his head.
“And then Jimmie Johnson steps up. ‘How’d it come, Captain,’ he says, ‘you fell overboard?’ By the light from the cabin gangway the Skipper sees him, and——
“‘You little— I dunno what—but go below. Take him for’ard, somebody,’ he says, ‘and tie him in his bunk, or give him laudanum out of the medicine-chest, afore we have all hands lost tryin’ to look after him.’
“Then he goes below to fix his head up—the side of his head was laid clean open, with the blood runnin’ scuppers full from him.
“‘Och,’ says he, ‘but ’tis a great pickle—salt water,’ and he takes an old cotton shirt and tears it up and wraps it ’round his head, and goes on deck again.”
“And after that he kept her comin’ just the same, Tommie?”
“Just the same. All night long he kept her comin’, and payin’ attention to nobody. In the early mornin’, I mind we passed Josh Bradley in the Tubal Cain, him bangin’ along with a busted fores’l, remindin’ us of a gull with a broken wing. We passed a whole fleet of old plugs anchored off Highland Light, ripped by ’em roarin’, and they lookin’ over the rails at the Skipper, his head all wrapped up. Imagine her, Peter, with her four lowers and gaff topsail, and the wind makin’ if anything. And then what should happen but he made out the Nannie O ahead. ‘’Tis Tommie Ohlsen,’ he says, ‘under four lowers. We’ll chase him.’ But Tommie must’ve seen us, for soon we saw his tops’l break out. Then we sent up the stays’l, and then Tommie sent up his. Then we came swingin’ round the Cape—and I’d like to had a photograph of her then—with the Skipper standin’ between house and rail to wind’ard, squeezin’ the salt water out of his beard, and Jerry below singin’:
‘What’s that a-drivin’ in from sea,
Like a ghost from out the dawn?
And who but Tom O’Donnell
And his flying Colleen Bawn.’
“‘’Tis fine and gay they’re feelin’,’ says the Skipper, ‘with their singin’, thinkin’ they’ll soon be home. In a minute, now, there’ll be something to sing about. Look at what’s coming,’ and she gets it fair and full. And it was too much for the gang. He floats them all out below. From fore and aft they comes runnin’ up on deck. ‘For God’s sake, Skipper, what is it?’ says they. ‘Don’t worry,’ says the Skipper, ‘’tis only a little squall, and the Nannie O ahead.’ ‘But what’re we goin’ to do, Skipper? We can’t stay below.’ ‘Oh, climb on the weather-rail,’ says the Skipper, ‘and if she goes over, ’tis only a mile to shore.’ And then the face of little Jimmie! ‘My God, my God—my poor, poor wife!’ he says. ‘Whisht, lad, whisht,’ says the Skipper, patting his head, ‘’tis to your wife we’re takin’ you,’ and he keeps on chasin’ the Nannie O across the bay.”
“And then?”
“And then? Why, he kept her goin’ across the bay. Half-way home, there was a big white steam yacht layin’ to both anchors. She was big enough to tow the Colleen ten knots an hour.
What’s that a-drivin’ in from sea, like a ghost from out the dawn?
‘You’d think it was banshees we was, the way they look out from between the lace curtains,’ says the Skipper, and we rips by her stern like the express train goin’ by West Gloucester station.
“A little while after that we overhauled Eben Watkins. Eben, you know, used to brag some about that vessel of his one time, but now he was under a storm trys’l. ’Twas kind of thick—we’d lost sight of the Nannie—and the Skipper was goin’ on by without intendin’ to say anything, but Eben hails him.
“‘Where were you about two hours ago?’
“‘Roundin’ the Cape,’ says the Skipper.
“‘What sail d’y’ have on her?’
“‘What she’s got now.’
“‘That stays’l?’
“‘That stays’l—yes.’
“‘Get that squall?’
“‘Oh, a little puff.’
“‘A little puff?’ says Eben, and he stretches his head at us—‘a little puff. And how’d she stand it?’
“‘Just wet our rail—just wet our rail.’
“‘Go to hell!’ says Eben—‘just wet your rail.’ And I don’t blame him, for the Colleen was down to her hatches then. ‘I s’pose Tommie Ohlsen just wet his rail too,’ says Eben. ‘All we could see of him goin’ by a while ago was the weather-side of his deck.’
“‘’Tis Tommie I’m after,’ hollers back the Skipper and gets out of hearing.
“I don’t know whether we gained or lost on the Nannie O, but we carried our stays’l every foot of the way from Cape Cod to Eastern Point and we carried into the harbor just the same’s we came across the bay. Did you see her beatin’ in? No? Well, it was a scandal. Her deck was slidin’ back and forth under our feet—we could feel it, and you’ve seen a soap-box with the top and bottom gone floatin’ about in the tide? Yes? And how it lengthens out sometimes when a sea hits it broadside? Well, that’s the way the Colleen was shiftin’ back and forth comin’ in the harbor. She was that loose ’twas immoral. ‘She’s ten feet longer when she stretches herself real well,’ says Jerry. ‘She is a bit loose,’ says the Skipper, ‘but she sails better loose. When she lengthens out like that, she’s doin’ her best reachin’.’
“And that’s the way she came in. When we came to anchor the Skipper went into her peak with a lantern, tryin’ to find out what it was. ‘I think she’s a little more loose than ordinary this trip,’ he says—‘it must be the calkin’. But before he got through he discovered that it was her iron band had dropped off altogether. And then it was he told me to go ashore to see about a place for her on the railway. And I guess I’d better hurry along. But afore we go, Peter, just a little touch to the Colleen Bawn, for God bless her, loose as she is, there’s nothing like her out the port.”
“And are you goin’ to stay on her and she like that?”
“And she that way? And why not? He’s going to put four-inch joists in her fore and aft this time on the railway, and then she’ll be all right. She’ll leak a little maybe, but what’s a little leak? And anyway I’d rather be lost in her with Tom O’Donnell than live a thousand years with some. And so here’s to her, Peter-boy. One thing, you know you’re alive on her—and here’s to the Colleen Bawn.”
“To the Colleen Bawn, Tommie, and I don’t know but what you’re right.”
When Peter came out of the Anchorage again, the atmosphere had cleared. The blush of the sky was a marvellous thing for March. Peter could not remember when he had ever seen so rosy a morning for that time of year. And it was a fair wind, too—so fair that Peter could not but remark it. “If we was comin’ home in the Colleen Bawn, or the Nannie O, in this breeze, our wake’d be fair boilin’. The Colleen Bawn with the Irishman aboard, or the Nannie O with Tommie Ohlsen—they’d be loggin’ fifteen knots—yes, and sixteen maybe.” He looked over his shoulder, and for twenty fathoms back he could see the smooth, white log-line and the brass-bound log whirling like mad. It was a rosy morning, and Peter rolled along for Crow’s Nest.
Along the road he overhauled Dexter Warren, who seemed to be out taking the air.
“Seen Jimmie Johnson yet, Dexter?” asked Peter.
Dexter took a hand out of one pocket to gesture. “Jimmie? Yes, and he’s crazy. He came up the wharf like a ghost. ‘Hulloh, what kind of a trip’d you have, Jimmie?’ I asked, ‘and how do you like Captain O’Donnell?’
“‘Yah,’ he says, ‘your oil-skins is too loose.’ ‘What?’ I hollers after him—he goin’ up the dock like a streak. ‘Take to the weather-rail—it’s only a mile to shore,’ he waves his hand and hollers back to me. And then his wife popped around the corner. ‘Jimmie!’ says she. ‘Jennie!’ says he, and in a second it was all off. The pair of them flew up the dock like a pair of gulls before a no’the-easter and I picked up my pots and brushes and went up to the office and told the old man that I guessed I’d quit.”
“Did I? And why wouldn’t I? Jimmie’s job is waitin’ for him if he ain’t too crazy to take it, and if he is it don’t matter to me. There’s my glue-factory job the first of the month. ‘Your oil-skins is too loose,’ says he. He must be crazy, Peter—plumb crazy.”
It was in the middle of the morning when the Colleen Bawn came to anchor. It was late in the afternoon, almost dark, and Peter was fillin’ his last pipe at Crow’s Nest, when the Superba came to anchor in the stream. By and by Dickie Mason came up the dock and hailed for “twenty-five thousand haddock and ten thousand cod.”
“Twenty-five thousand haddock and ten thousand cod—aye, aye. Any news?”
“Well, yes; and, if it turns out to be true, it’s pretty bad.”
“That so, Captain? What is it?”
“I think we’ve seen the last of the Colleen Bawn and Tom O’Donnell. Last night, comin’ on dark, he left us on Georges for a short cut across the shoals. The gale hit in right hard after, and I guess he’s gone—you know how loose and wracked his vessel is—and the last we saw of her she was swung out and goin’ before it—all four lowers, and a livin’ gale. She couldn’t have lived through it. We swung off and came around. We drove all the way and just got in. It’s too bad if it turns out to be so—though maybe he’ll wiggle home in spite of it. Of course, he’d get her to home if anybody could, but you know them shoals in a gale and how loose and wracked his vessel was.”
“Yes,” said Peter. He leaned over the taffrail of Crow’s Nest and put it as politely as he could. “Yes, she’s loose and wracked, Captain Mason, but there’s a few planks of her left, and if you was up here, Captain Mason, and could look over the tops of buildings same’s I can, you’d see her main truck stickin’ up above the railway. I heard them sayin’ she left the same time your vessel did, but she got home so long ago, Captain, that her fish is out and her crew got their money, and if you was to drop up to the Anchorage you’d probably find Tommie Clancy and a few more of her gang havin’ a little touch—and maybe they’ll tell you how they did it.”
Peter spoke with some moderation while his head was outside and his voice within range of the astounded master of the Superba, but once inside, with only his trusted staff to testify, he gave vent to less restrained comment. “Them young skippers, and some of them late models, give me a pain in the waist. ‘The last we see of her,’ says he, ‘she was goin’ over the shoals, and you know how loose and wracked she was, Peter.’ And so she is. But, Lord! I’d like to told him she’d be comin’ home trips yet when his fancy model’d be layin’ to an anchor. Lemme see now—telephone one of you the Superba’s trip—twenty-five thousand haddock and ten thousand cod. And make a note on a slate of the Colleen Bawn’s trip. She don’t sail for the firm, but I do like to keep track of her. Forty thousand haddock and ten thousand cod—loose she is, and her deck crawly under your feet, and they have to wear rubber boots in her forehold, when Tom O’Donnell starts to drive her, and iron bands around her for’ard to hold her together. But, Lord she was an able vessel once—an able vessel once. I think I’ll be goin’ along to supper pretty soon—yes, sir, an able vessel was the Colleen Bawn.
“‘What’s that drivin’ in from sea,
Like a ghost from out the dawn?
And who but Tom O’Donnell
And the flying Colleen Bawn.’
M-m—the flyin’ Colleen Bawn.”
So hummed Peter, and closed in the hatches of Crow’s Nest with a feeling that his little morning trip along the water front had not been without its reward.
The Wicked “Celestine”
SAILING out of Boston is a fleet of fishing schooners that for beauty of model, and speed, and stanchness in heavy weather are not to be surpassed—their near admirers say equalled—by any class of vessels that sail the seas; and, saying that, they do not bar the famous fleet of Gloucester.
This Boston fleet is manned by a cosmopolitan lot, who are all very proud of their vessels, particularly of their sailing qualities. Good seamen all—some beyond compare— Irishmen still with the beguiling brogue of the south and west counties, Yankees from Maine and Massachusetts, Portuguese from the Azores, with a strong infusion of Nova Scotians and Newfoundlanders, and scattering French, English and Scandinavians.
No class of men afloat worry less about heavy weather than do these men; nowhere will you find men more deeply versed in the ways of vessels or quicker to meet an emergency; none will carry sail longer, or, if out in a dory, will hang on to their trawls longer if it comes to blow, or the fog settles, or the sea kicks up. In the matter of courage, endurance and skill, they are the limit.
The standard for this superb little navy was first raised by a lot of men of Irish blood, from Galway and Waterford originally, who chose this most hazardous way to make a living—and in other days, with the old-class vessels, it was terribly hazardous—who chose his life, tenderhearted men and men of family though most of them were, in preference to taking orders from uncongenial peoples ashore.
They are still there, an unassuming lot of adventurers taking the most desperate chances in the calmest way—great shipmates all, tenderness embodied and greatness of soul beyond estimation. And it was one of the best known of them, a dauntless little Irish-born, who, squaring his shoulders and swinging his arms, spat right and left and moved up the dock to a hail of salutations this beautiful winter morning. “Good-morning, Captain,” and “How are you, Coleman?” and “Are you to take the new one this trip, Skipper?” All this, and more, as Captain Coleman Joyce, not above five feet in height nor a hundred and thirty pounds in weight, but of a port to subdue Patagonians seven feet high, as with a beard that curled and shoulders that heaved he rolled gloriously up the dock.
An abstemious man was Captain Joyce; but there were times and circumstances, say now, for instance, when before casting off for a haddocking trip to Georges Banks it became necessary to consummate one of the rites without which no man could conceive a fishing trip to be lucky. These rites, incidentally, were two: One consisted of taking a good drink before going out; the other was to take a good drink after getting in. Simple, but not to be overlooked.
And now, when, after a beat up Atlantic Avenue to the saloon that is nearest the south side of the wharf, Coleman found himself leaning against the bar and looking at the barkeeper, that suave party, without further orders, set before him a small glass of water and a small glass empty and the same old bottle with the horse and rider on the outside.
Raising his filled glass, and absent-mindedly looking about him by the way, Captain Joyce observed that it was a wistful crowd which was watching him. It was always a wistful crowd. He nodded amiably to four or five, but gazed vacantly at the others. All told, there must have been twenty loafers in the place, and everyone undeniably thirsty, with a thirst that was immeasurably intensified by the sight of this successful skipper preparing to take a drink.
Coleman, regarding them again, pulled out an old wallet and from it took a five-dollar bill. Every pair of expectant eyes in the place saw the V on the bill. Plainly, too, he was not trying to hide it. A symphony of short, hacking coughs foretold clogged throats clearing for action— Captain Joyce always was free with his money. Following the bill, but only after a lot of digging about with his fingers, Captain Joyce extricated a silver coin—a quarter of a dollar, they saw. Coleman held it up to his eyes that he might the better see it. Nobody, looking at those eyes of his, would ever suspect that they were weak. He put back the bill, restrapped the wallet, replaced it in his pocket, laid the quarter on the bar, and took his drink, first the whiskey, then the water, and both rapidly, as a man of action should.
Smacking his lips and regarding the change on the bar—a dime and a nickel—at the same time casting a sly glance at the barkeeper, he beckoned with his hand over his shoulder, but without looking around. “Let ye all come up,” he said, and bolted for the door to escape the rush.
Outside the door of the saloon he was hailed by a shore-going friend, once a fisherman, but now a grocer, whose chief income arose from provisioning fishing vessels, and so one who kept up with all the gossip of the fleet. “Hello, Captain Joyce! What’s this they’re telling me about you having a new vessel—a new style model, too.”
“It’s the truth.”
“And given up the Maggie—that was built for you—that I heard you say a hundred times was not a bad sailer at all and the ablest vessel of her tonnage that ever sailed past Boston Light?”
“Yes, or past any other light. She’s that and more. But Lord bless you, she can’t sail with some of the new ones, and I’m tired to my soul of havin’ every blessed model of a fisherman that was ever launched comin’ up on my quarter and goin’ by like I was an old sander. This last time who was it, d’y’ think? You’d never guess. Name every vessel that ever sailed out of T Dock and she’d be the last you or any other man’d name. Who but the Bonita—yes. The black-whiskered divil, Portugee Joe, yes—with the rings in his ears. Faith, an’ had I hold of him when he said it, ’tis in his nose he’d be wearin’ them. ‘Captain Joyce,’ he hails, and the bloody Dago he can’t talk United States yet—‘Captain Joyce, what you carry, hah?—breeks or gran-eet or what?’ Gran-eet, mind ye, with the Western Islands brogue of him! Yes, and goes on by the same’s if the Maggie was r’ally loaded with granite. ‘By the Lord,’ I calls out after him, ‘but the next time you and me try tacks I’ll make a wake for you to steer by or I’ll know why.’ And I’ve got a vessel now, b’y, a vessel that can sail or I don’t know fast lines when I see them. And the Portugee he’s just gone down the harbor—he’ll be waitin’ for me outside the lightship, he says. So I’m off.”
Captain Joyce journeyed on and, standing on the cap-log at the end of the wharf, he looked down on his new vessel and his eyes shone with joy in the sheer beauty of her. “Purty, purty, purty,” he murmured; “just like she was whittled out of a block.” And, turning to a man who was taking his bag ashore, the last man of the old gang to leave her, he inquired, “She can sail, they tell me, this one?”
“Oh, she can sail all right.”
“And how does she handle?”
“Handle? She’s that quick in stays that you want to watch her.”
“Watch her, eh? And stiff is she?”
“I don’t know about that. One day we used to think she was a house, but again she’d roll down in a twelve-knot breeze, and in a way to make your hair curl.”
“Man alive! But whisper, was that why Jimmie Eliot gave her up?”
“I don’t know about that. He wouldn’t say, the Skipper wouldn’t.”
“And that’s queer, too, come to think.”
“It do look queer, but maybe he thought it wouldn’t be fair to the owners.”
“’Tis the divil and all of a mystery. And where is he now?”
“Went to Gloucester last night.”
“That’s too bad. When another man’s been in a vessel I gen’rally likes to get his notions of her myself. You can’t tell a vessel by just lookin’ at her—you have to be in her a while. Well, whatever she is, we’ll put out in her now. Let ye hoist the mains’l, b’ys, and we’ll go. Portugee Joe is waitin’ for us below.”
Captain Joyce and his able crew put out from the dock and a great crowd lined the cap-log to see her off. Down the harbor she went, creeping before the light westerly as if she had a propeller hidden somewhere below.
Captain Joyce and his old friend Jerry Connors looked her up and looked her down.
“I say, Jerry, but did ever y’ see annything scoot like her—hardly a breath and she goin’ along like she is. It’s not right, Jerry—hardly a ripple in her wake.”
“Oh, you’ve been so long in the old Maggie, Skipper——”
“The old Maggie, is it? She’s not too old—ten year.”
“I know. Ten year is nothing in a good vessel, but they been improving them so fast. Last fall, the trip you didn’t wait for me, you know, I went in the Jennie and Katie. Y’oughter seen her skipper. Handle? Like a little naphtha launch to pick up dories. And sail? Man, but she could sail!”
“That so? And how’d she behave in heavy weather?”
“Well, we didn’t have any heavy weather that trip.”
“No breeze at all?”
“Well, one day it did breeze up. We had her under a balanced reef mains’l. She did slap around a bit. ’Twas the devil and all to stay in your bunk, but she did pretty well. But you mustn’t get ’em out of trim. The first two doryloads of fish that came aboard that trip was pitched into her after-pens and, man, she reared right up in the air—right straight up on her hind legs and began to claw out with her fore feet like she was trying to climb up a wall——”
“You’d think ’twas a horse you were talkin’ about, Jerry. But she could sail, you say?”
“Sail? Like a plank on edge—and greased.”
“Well, this one can sail, too. Look at her. Not a blessed hop out of her—just smoochin’ along like a girl slidin’ on ice ashore, isn’t she?”
Off the lightship they found the Bonita. “There he is,” announced Coleman, “with his rings in his ears. Keep her as she is till the pair of us come together. Trip afore last he sailed a couple of rings around the Maggie by way of amusin’ himself, but I’ll amuse him now or I’ll tear the sail off this one.”
In a freshening breeze and both vessels soon swinging all they had, it was a good chance for a try-out. Four hours of that and the victory went to the handsome Celestine, for off Cape Cod, after a run of fifty miles, Coleman had the Bonita two miles to leeward.
For an hour after that Coleman could hardly be coaxed down to eat. Standing on the Celestine’s quarter, he chuckled, and chuckled, and chuckled. Even after taking his place at the table, he had to climb up the companionway to have one more look at the beaten Bonita. “A good vessel for rip-fishin’ the Portugee’s got—she drifts well,” he said, “and maybe ’tis me won’t tell him next time we meet.”
And yet in the middle of the meal he suddenly set down his mug of coffee and leaned across the table. “Don’t it strike you, Jerry, that for a vessel of her model this one is the divil for stiffness?”
“We were saying among ourselves a little while ago, Skipper, that we never before saw a vessel that barely wet her scuppers in a breeze like this.”
“That’s it— I don’t know what it is. But she’s a queer divil altogether. Sometimes when she luffs she fetches up in a way to shake every tooth in your head. And there was what one of the men that was in her last trip said of her.”
“And what did he say, Skipper?”
“He said—but come to think, he didn’t say anything, and that’s the divil of it. One or two little outs in a vessel, if you know what they are, aren’t always a great harm. But when you don’t know how to take her!”
The crew agreed with their Skipper that there was something queer about this new vessel of theirs, but no illuminating discussion came of it until next morning when, having cleared the north shoal of Georges, it became necessary to head southward.
Heading to the east’ard in a southerly breeze, she had been on the starboard tack up to that time. Now her helmsman shot her head across the wind, her sails shook, shivered, her booms began to swing, and over on the port tack went the Celestine. Everybody looked to see her roll down some, but in that breeze—they hadn’t even taken their stays’l in—nobody looked to see her do what she did. Least of all her Skipper, who, standing carelessly by the starboard rail, would have gone overboard and been lost probably, but for Jerry Connors.
“Wheel down! wheel down!” roared Jerry, and hauled the Skipper back aboard.
“Down it is!”
“Cripes!” said the Skipper when he found his breath—“cripes, but she’s left-handed.”
“Left-handed?”
“Yes, and double left-handed, the cross-eyed whelp! Just barely put her scuppers under on one tack and down to her hatches on the other. Man alive, but if we have to put her on the wrong tack makin’ a passage, what’ll we ever do with her? Put her back, put her back—back on the other tack with her and keep her there till we get some sail off her. Man, man, but when we have to put a vessel under her four lowers in a little breeze like this——”
They kept her so until next morning, when they hove her to—they had to heave her to—with Georges north shoal bearing twenty-three miles west by north and a howling gale in prospect. With the glass showing a scant 29 and the sea coming to them in a long swell, they all foresaw a good lay-off with a chance to catch up on sleep or read up, or overhaul their gear.
The storm hit in hard that night. A northeaster it was, with a thick snow in its wake and a whistle that made a bunk feel most comfortable. The snow passed, and after two days the worst of the breeze also; but after it came the tremendous seas that make such a terrible place of the northerly edge of Georges shoals in the wrong kind of winter weather.
Nobody aboard the Celestine worried particularly. They had been having that sort of thing all their lives. After a while it would pass. Only when it lasted for too long a time it did make slow fishing. They put her under jumbo and riding sail and let go their chain anchor. Next day they took sail off her altogether and made ready their hawser and big anchor. Under both anchors, if it came to that, she certainly would be safe.
This gale was some time in passing. And now it was coming on evening of the fourth day—two days of a heavy breeze and two days of the great seas. All the men, excepting the watch, were below, about half for’ard and half aft, those for’ard mugging-up or overhauling trawls, those aft listening to Jerry Connors, a great reader, who was now reeling off a most interesting story with dramatic emphasis. It was the “Cloister and the Hearth,” and Gerald was up in the tree with the bear after him—the Celestine dancing like a lead-ballasted cork figure all the while. In the middle of it all the watch hailed something from deck. The Skipper, trying to keep from sliding off the locker and, at the same time, above the howling of the wind get what Jerry was reading, grew wrathy at the interruption.
“What’s that ballyhooin’ on deck—whose watch?”
One had risen, and now from the companion steps, his head above the slide, passed on the word. “It’s John’s.”
“Oh, John is it? Don’t mind John—the least thing worries John. But what was he sayin’?”
“He says there’s some big seas coming, and getting bigger all the time; and true enough, they are.”
“Big seas, is it? Cripes, a man don’t need to stand watch on deck or stick his head out of the hatch, like a turkey in a crate, to find that out.”
“Big seas coming aboard, he says, and hadn’t we better make ready to put out the big anchor, she being on her weak tack?”
“Her weak side! That’s so—maybe we had. Tell him yes and call the gang for’ard. Now go on, Jerry, whilst we’re waitin’. What did that divil of a bear do then?” The Skipper leaned forward from the locker. “What did he do? Hurry on, Jerry-boy.”
“And then he—” recommenced Jerry, but got no further. A scurry of boots was heard on deck, a quick slamming back of the slide, and down the companionway came John. Feet first he came flying and hauled the slide after him. “Here’s one big as a church and——”
That was all he got out when the sea struck. Over went the Celestine—over, over—the Skipper was shot from the locker through the open door of his stateroom across the cabin. Jerry, who had been sitting by the stove, was shot into that same room ahead of the Skipper. Another, lying comfortably in his bunk to windward, was thrown clear across the cabin and into the opposite bunk on the lee side, and his bedding followed him and covered him up. Another of the crew, doubled up in the after windward bunk, was sent past the lazarette and in on top of his neighbor, who had a moment before been comfortably lying in his bunk to leeward, passing the time of day with a pleasant word and a pipe in his mouth. The bedding also followed that man. Everything loose went from the windward bunks to the lee bunks—from the whole windward side to the lee side.
The vessel poised so for perhaps ten seconds, while men called one to another. “What’s it?” “Are you hurted, Joe?” “God help us—what in the divil’s this?” “What in the devil’s name—” “Man, let me up—’tis smothered I am!” Cries of surprise and cries of consternation, while through it all the Celestine seemed balanced between going down for good and never coming up at all. The wall-lamp flared and then started to blaze. It looked like a possible fire to add to the rest of it, but the Skipper, like a flash, threw a smothering wet oil-jacket over it. The binnacle lamp then started, but only for a moment—suddenly went out, and then for the first time they heard the rush of the sea coming on them in the dark.
“Did you think to draw the slide tight, John?” bellowed the Skipper.
“Tight? ’Tis tighter than the lid of hell.”
“Then somebody must’ve left the binnacle slide open—there’s men without sense to be found wherever you go—you can’t dodge them.”
A short space of that, and she rolled part way back. “Up she comes,” said the Skipper—“’tisn’t in nature she won’t come—she’s got to come up soon or go down entirely.” And it did seem as if she was coming up, but the next big sea hit her—bigger than the one that had hove her down. Down inside the Celestine they never quite agreed on what happened. They knew that for a moment or two they were standing on the roof of the cabin, that the red-hot cover fell off the stove and hit that same roof, that the hot coals fell out of the stove and began to sizzle among the loose bedding. They knew, too, that in the middle of it all John’s voice was heard exclaiming, “Oh, my poor wife!” and again, “O God, O God, we’re lost!” and that the Skipper said, “Hush up your caterwauling—we’re a long way from bein’ lost yet,” even while the loose bedding began to take fire and blaze up.
Then all at once she righted, and so suddenly that they were thrown one against the other, across the floor and back again. And Jerry Connors became entangled in a tub of trawls that somebody had been overhauling. Six hundred hooks, every hook attached to three feet of ganging, and the whole hanging to two thousand feet of line—it was an awful mess to get mixed up with at a time like that. Twenty hooks at least were sticking in him here and there, and Jerry swore prodigiously.
They smothered the fire with blankets and old clothes and lit the lamp again. That done, they noted that the print of the red-hot stove cover had been left on the roof of the cabin, showing that the vessel had been keel up. “D’y’ s’pose she went clean over and over, or did she go half-way and back again, Jerry?” was the first inquiry of the Skipper when the lamp was lit.
“In God’s name, wait till I get some of these hooks out of me—they’re into me gizzards, some of them.”
Up on deck they met the gang coming out of the forec’s’le, the cook in the lead.
“How was it for’ard?” asked the Skipper.
‘I was lying in my bunk to looard,” began the cook, “and Jack was in his bunk to wind’ard just opposite. Jack was playing with the cat. Well, sir, when she went over I forgot the cat, but through the air came this great black thing with forty claws and fourteen green and yellow eyes and got me by the hair, and Jack with his two hundred pound weight on top of him again. And the cat gets his claws in among me whiskers——”
“Shut up!” roared the Skipper—“you and the cat and your whiskers. Is anybody gone? Who was on watch with you, John?”
“Mattie.”
“Is he here now?”
“Here, Skipper,” responded Mattie for himself. “When John dove for the cabin I dove for the forec’s’le. I didn’t lose no time.”
“I’ll bet you didn’t, if you came down red-jacks first the way John Houlihan did. Well, that’s all right, then. Let’s see what’s left on deck. Get up a few torches—and have a care some of you aren’t washed overboard.”
Nothing was left on deck. The spars had been torn out when she went over and were now lying alongside threatening to punch holes in her side as they lifted and dropped to every big sea. The Skipper took the big axe and the cook his hatchet, and others got out their bait knives, and all began to chop and hack and cut until the wreckage of the spars was clear of the vessel.
Then they took a further look. Dories were gone, booby hatches were gone, the rail was gone. Only the stanchions sticking up above the deck showed where the rail had been. But the wonderful thing was yet to appear. Going forward, the Skipper noticed a turn of chain around the vessel’s bow. He looked again—and again. When he had satisfied himself he thoughtfully combed his beard.
“Forty winters I’ve been comin’ to Georges, and this is the first time ever I see that. There’ll be people that’ll say it never happened—that it couldn’t have happened. But there’s the cable around her bows, a full turn, to prove she went clean over—down one side and up the other. We’re blessed lucky to be alive, that’s what I say.”
“That’s what we are,” affirmed Jerry, and had another look for himself. And they all had another look for themselves. “Blessed lucky,” they all agreed. “And what’ll we do now, Skipper?”
“Do?” He looked around and saw only the stumps of masts projecting above her deck—no sails, no rigging, nothing. The bowsprit, even, was gone and their chain parted—and the north shoal of Georges bearing twenty miles to leeward. “Give her the other anchor, and whilst we’re layin’ to that we’ll see what we can do.”
That night they hung grimly on to the other anchor. In the morning the Skipper chewed it over. “We can’t lay here forever—that’s certain. We must try and get her out. I don’t like that shoal to looard. With this one there’s no tellin’ what she’ll take it into her head to do—to go adrift maybe, and then it’s all swallowed up we’ll be in short order.”
So they prepared to work her out. For masts they could do no better than take the pen-boards out of the hold, split them up and fish them together. They were of two-inch stock, and when they had used them all up they made but sorry-looking spars. For sails they shook the bedding out of their mattresses, took the ticking and their blankets and sewed them together with pieces of oilskins by way of patchings. There was some record-breaking sewing aboard the Celestine that morning, for all were thinking of the shoal under their lee.
They set up the pen-boards by way of masts, laced the bedding and blankets to them for sails, and then they had it—a medley of colors! Blue and white striped ticks, green and gold and red blankets—the masterpieces of fond wives ashore—and two crazy-quilts. One particular crazy-quilt the Skipper eyed with regret. “I mind the night the wife won that at the church fair. A hundred and fourteen chances she took—at ten cents a chance—me payin’ for them. Nine hundred and ninety-nine pieces in it. ‘There’ll be the fine ornament for your bunk, Colie,’ says she to me. ‘And warm, too,’ she says, ‘on a winter’s day.’ ’Tis tears she’d be sheddin’ could she see it this winter’s day, usin’ it by way of a cloth to a fores’l up where the single reef cringle should be.”
They spread them all at last, brought her head to and warped in the anchor. “And now, you slippery-elm divil, sail! Sail, you black, fatherless, left-handed, double left-handed divil, sail!”
She did sail, after a fashion. She did not go along like the saucy vessel that had put out from T Dock less than a week before, not quite like a greased plank on edge or a girl sliding on ice, but she made headway. It was heart-breaking headway that promised to make a long voyage of the something like two hundred miles to Boston, but the crew had hopes—if the wind stayed to the east’ard.
But the wind did not stay to the east’ard. After two days it hauled to the north-west, and they had to tack. They tacked to the north and they tacked to the south, always with a respectful eye to her weak side; but it was slow work. More, it was cold, and the seas that came aboard iced her up. And, having no rails to her, the crew had to be painfully careful or they would slide overboard.
“And yet no great danger bein’ lost, for even with oilskins a man could swim as fast as this one’s sailin’. But it’s so blessed cold!” said Jerry.
They were sighted several times and other vessels bore down, but the Skipper waved them off. “If they think because we’re short on sails and spars they’re goin’ to get salvage out of this one, we’ll fool ’em,” and onward he sailed with a dory, which they had picked up, lashed amidships.
They ran out of grub and fuel. They had fitted out for market fishing, with ten days or two weeks as the probable length of the trip. They were now four weeks out, with Cape Cod not yet weathered. Something had to be done. Four times they had got all but abreast of the cape—four times the no’-wester had beaten them back. Under their rig they had to take whatever came. They could not force her around when around she would not go.
Nobody murmured. They were enjoying themselves. For one thing they learned how Gerald made out with the bear, and Jerry read in his round voice of Gerald’s further adventures; and they would not have minded it much, though, to be sure, there was not much money in it for their families—but that was the luck of fishing—only they were cold and hungry.
It was then that for the first time the Skipper hailed a vessel. She was one of the big liners, a fourteen-thousand tonner, bound out from Boston to Liverpool. Beside her huge hulk the little Celestine, with her ridiculous jury-rig, looked like a burlesque toy. But Coleman wasn’t apologizing for looks.
Stood by and took them as they came down.
“I know ye’ll be carryin’ the mail and in the divil’s own hurry, but we’re a little short of grub,” he explained when the steamer had come to a stop. “Our head steward doubts there’ll be oysters and ontrees enough for our seven o’clock dinner to-night, and if ye’ll stay hove-to for a half hour I’ll come under your lee and go aboard.”
“All right. But how will you carry the stuff?”
“Carry it, is it? Why, in the dory, to be sure.”
“What? Put a dory over to-day?”
“And why not?”
“She’ll swamp.”
“The divil she will.” They put the dory over. Coleman and Jerry got in it, rowed alongside, and climbed up the sea-ladder. Half-way up the Skipper looked back—there was a good bit of water in the dory. “Jerry, you’ll have to go down again and bail her out.” Which Jerry did, while the Skipper kept on to the steamer’s deck to negotiate.
“And what can I help you to?”
“Well, we’ll need a little coal.”
“All right. How much?”
“Oh, maybe half or three-quarters of a ton.”
“Three-quarters of a ton? And where’ll you carry It?”
“In the dory.”
“In this sea?”
“I’ve carried twenty-five hundred of fish in a dory in more sea than this.”
“All right—in it goes. What else?”
“Oh, some wood.”
“Wood all gone, too?”
“We burned the last of our bunk-boards this morning.”
“Gracious! How much wood?”
“Oh, two or three barrels.”
“All right. But won’t it overbalance your dory?”
“L’ave that to me. And have you some vegetables, say a barrel of potatoes——”
“Sure. And where’ll you put them?”
“In the dory. And a barrel of odds and ends—turnips and cabbage and——”
“And that in the dory, too?”
“In the dory—where else? And a tub of butter, and a case or two of canned beef, and a bit of fresh beef, and some coffee and tea, and a box of hard bread——”
“And all in the——”
“In the dory, yes.”
“All right. Stand by and over they go.”
And the Skipper and Jerry stood by and took them as they came down and piled them all in the dory, to the wonder of all who saw. “And send the bill to the man I told you—he’s the owner. And ’twould be servin’ him no more than right if you charged him good and high, for a man that would ask men to go to sea in a circus vessel like this—sure he deserves no better.”
As they were about to push off, the steamer captain lowered down another case. “Of bouillon,” he said, “for yourself, Captain—for the nerve of you. And here’s for the boys to have a drink,” and tossed down a quart of whiskey.
“Thank ye kindly,” said Coleman, and he and Jerry pulled off.
From the steamer they watched them anxiously, expecting to see them swamped and lost. But not so. There is an art in managing a loaded dory in a heavy sea.
Their shipmates greeted them affectionately. “And I’ll begin with the bully soup, Skipper,” said the cook. “’Twill be the quickest made.”
And the cook did that, putting the twenty-four quarts into one immense boiler, and they finished it in the first rush. Then the Skipper drew the cork out of the bottle of whiskey.
“A nice man, that steamer captain,” said Coleman, “but not much judgment. ‘Tell the boys to have a drink on me,’ he says, and that same was good of him. But one quart among twenty-two men! Oh, Lord!”
“Lord forgive him,” said Jerry, “’tisn’t enough for an aggravation.”
After that, and a good warming-up and drying out of wet clothes, they went on deck and turned to as if it was canoeing on the Charles River they were. They coaxed the Celestine along, always with an eye to her weak side. And the wind came fair, and the first thing they knew—no more than a couple of days more of careful night and day work it was—they found themselves abreast of Boston lightship. And here a tug bore down and hailed them.
“You’re lookin’ in bad shape. Will I heave a line aboard?”
“Will you? I don’t know. How much to the wharf?”
“Oh, about five hundred dollars, I guess.”
“You guess, do you? Well, I’ll make a guess you won’t.”
“Well, what d’y’ say to two fifty?”
“No, nor one fifty—nor a single fifty, nor the half of fifty. We’ve beat two hundred and odd mile this way, and I cal’late we can make ten mile more to the dock.”
“Come two hundred miles in that rig?”
A tug bore down and hailed them.
“Yes, sir—from Georges—and could come it again.”
“From Georges—in the weather we’ve had? Angel Gabriel! I’ll take you up for nothing.”
“No, no, you won’t. We’ll give you what’s due you—ten dollars.”
“All right—ten dollars.”
And so the Celestine came back to T Dock. And an appreciative aggregation of connoisseurs in seamanship were there to greet her. But the crew of the Celestine: It did not take them long to hustle ashore after she was tied up—and they all had their bags with them. No more of her for them, thank you.
And Coleman? After a look over to Eastern Packet Pier to see that his own Maggie was still there, Coleman hurried up the dock and headed for the bar of the saloon that is nearest the south side of T Dock, there to consummate the second of the rites without which he could conceive no trip to be lucky.
The bartender set down the glass of water and the glass empty and the bottle with the horse and rider on the outside. Coleman raised the bottle. But looking about him before he drank and observing the wistful crowd, he set his filled glass down again and drew his old wallet from his pocket, and from there dug out a bill. It was a five-dollar bill—they all saw it, with the V in plain sight. That, Coleman laid down on the bar, and motioning back over his shoulder, said heartily, “Let ye all come up—and have a drink on the Maggie Joyce—the Maggie for me from this out.”
“And how about that new one, Captain?” said one when the rush was over and a dozen throats had been properly sluiced.
“That one, is it? That one! The wicked— I won’t say it, but if ever I set foot on her deck again may— That one—why, ’tis bad as pickin’ up a painted drab on the street and your own decent wife to home. Let ye drink again—d’y’ hear me?” And not a man of them but heard.
The Truth of the Oliver Cromwell
MARTIN CARR did a fine thing that afternoon. Martin and John Marsh were hauling trawls, when a sea capsized their dory. The same sea washed them both clear of the dory. John Marsh could not swim. It looked as if he had hauled his last trawl, and so beyond all question he had, but for Martin, who seized one of their buoy-kegs, which happened to bob up near by, and pushed it into John’s despairing arms. “Hang on for your life, John!” said Martin, and himself struck out for the dory, knowing that the buoy could not support two. It was perhaps forty feet to the bottom of the dory—not a great swim, that; but this was a winter’s day on the Grand Banks, and a man beaten back by a rough sea and borne down by the weight of heavy clothing, oilskins, and big jack-boots. When he had fought his way to the dory he had to wait a while before he dared try to climb up on it, he was that tired; and after he got there he found no strap to the plug, and so nothing to hang on to. He remembered then that he and John had often spoken of fixing up a strap for the plug, but had never fixed it.
“My own neglect,” muttered Martin, “and now I’m paying for it.”
Clinging to the smooth planking on the bottom of the dory was hard work that day, and becoming harder every minute, for the sea was making. And there was John to keep an eye on. “How’re you making out, Johnnie-boy?” he called.
“It’s heavy dragging, but I’m all right so far,” John answered.
“And how is it with you now, Johnnie-boy?” he called in a little while again.
“I can hang on a while yet, Martin.”
“Good for you!” said Martin to that.
“Can you see the vessel?” asked John after another space.
“He’s giving out, and I see no vessel,” thought Martin, but answered cheerily, “Aye, I see her.”
“And how far away is she, and what’s she doing?”
Aloud Martin said, “Five or six miles, maybe, up to wind’ard; and she’s taking aboard all but the last dory, and there’s men gone aloft to look for us.” But under his breath, “And God forgive me if I go to my death with that lie on my lips; but ’tis no deeper than my lips—no deeper.”
Then they waited and waited, until John said, “Martin, I’ll have to go soon— I can’t hang on much longer.”
“Bide a while, Johnnie-boy—bide a while. Dory-mates we’ve been for many a trip—bide a while with me now, Johnnie.”
But Martin knew that it would be for but a little while for John—for them both, if help did not come soon. Scanning the sea for whatever hope the sea might give, he saw the trawl-line floating on the water. That was the line that ran from their anchor somewhere on the bottom to the buoy-keg to which John was clinging. If he could but get hold of that line he could draw John to the dory, with a better chance to talk to him—to put heart into him, for Johnnie was but a lad, no more than five and twenty.
To get the line, he would have to swim; and to swim any distance in that rising and already bad sea he would have to cast off most of his clothing. And with most of his clothing gone he would not last too long. Certainly if the vessel did not get them by dark, he would never live through the night. He would freeze to death—that he knew well. But could he live through the night, anyway? And even if he could— But what was the good of thinking all night over it? He pulled off his boots, untied his oilskins, hauled off his heavy outer woollens.
“Johnnie-boy, can you hang on a while longer?”
“I dunno, Martin— I dunno. Where’s the vessel?”
“She’s bearing down, John.” And with the thought of that second lie on his lips Martin scooped off for the buoy-line, which, after a battle, he grabbed and towed back to the dory. It was a hard fight, and he would have liked well to rest a while; but there was Johnnie. So in he hauled many a long fathom of slack ground-line, with gangings and hooks, and after that the buoy-line. He sorrowfully regarded the fine fat fish that he passed along; every hook seemed to have a fish on it. “Man, man, but ’twas only last night I baited up for ye in the cold hold of the vessel—baited with the cold frozen squid, and my fingers nigh frost-bitten.” But every hook was bringing him nearer to his dory-mate.
He felt the line tauten at last. “Have a care now, Johnnie, while I draw you to me,” and hauled in till Johnnie was alongside.
But “Good-by,” said Johnnie ere yet Martin had him safe.
“Not yet, Johnnie-boy,” said Martin, and reached for him and held him up and lashed him to the buoy. “You can rest your arms now, lad,” he said, and Johnnie gratefully let go.
“’Tis made of iron a man should be that goes winter trawling,” said Martin, and up on the bottom of the dory he climbed again, this time with infinite difficulty.
They had had the leeward berth and now were farthest from the vessel, and by this time it was dark. But Martin knew the Skipper would not give them up in a hurry, as he explained to John. And by and by they saw the torches flare up.
“Wait you, John,” said Martin then, “and save your strength. I’ll hail when I think they’re near enough to hear.” Which he did, in a voice that obeyed the iron will and carried far across the waters.
Then the vessel saw them and bore down, the Skipper to the wheel and the men lining the rail.
“Be easy with John,” said Martin to the man who first stretched his arms out and remarked, “I’m thinking he’s nigh gone.”
“Nigh gone? He is gone,” as they lifted John aboard.
“But all right with him now,” they said as they passed him along the deck. “And how is it with yourself, Martin?” they asked him as he was about to step over the rail.
“Fine and daisy,” said Martin. “How is it yourself, boy?” stepping jauntily up, and then, unable longer to stand, falling flat on the deck.
Seeing how it had been with him, they made him go below also, which he, with shipmates helping, did; and also, later, put on the dry shift of clothes they made ready. In the middle of it all he asked, “Where’s Johnnie?”
“In his bunk—and full of hot coffee—where you’ll be in a minute.”
“The hell I will! there’s my dory yet to be hoisted in.”
“Your dory, Martin? Why, she’s in, drained dry and griped long ago.”
“What! and me below? And dory in already? What was it? Did I fall asleep, or what? Lord! but it’s an old man I must be getting. I wouldn’t’ve believed it. In all my time to sea, that’s the first time ever I warn’t able to lift hand to tayckles and my own dory hoisting in.” He made for the companion-way, but so weak was he that he fell back down the companion-way when he tried to make the deck.
But a really strong man recuperates rapidly. An hour later Martin was enjoying a fine hot supper, while the crew sat around and hove questions at him. They asked for details, and he gave them, or at least such of them as had become impressed on his mind; particularly did he condemn, in crisp phrases, the botheration of boots that leaked and the need of a second plug-strap on the bottom of a dory. “There ought to be a new law about plug-straps,” said Martin.
“Did ever a man yet come off the bottom of a dory and not speak about the plug-straps?” commented one.
“And leaky boots is the devil,” affirmed another—a notorious talker this one, who bunked up in the peak, where he could be dimly seen now, his head out of his bunk that his voice might carry the better. “I bought a pair of boots in Boston once—a Jew up on Atlantic Avenue——”
“In Heaven’s name, will you shut up, you and your Atlantic Avenue boots? We’ll never hear the end of those boots.”
The man in the peak subsided, and he who had quelled him, near to the stove and smoking a pipe, went on for himself: “And what were you thinkin’ of, Martin, when you thought you were goin’?”
“Or did you think any time that you was goin’?” asked somebody else.
“Indeed and I did, and a dozen times I thought it—and that ’twas a blessed cold kind of a day for a man to be soaking his feet in the ocean.”
“And yet”—the lad in the peak was in commission again—“and yet warn’t it some professor said in that book that somebody was reading out of the other day—warn’t it him said that salt water ain’t nigh so cold as fresh. Is it, Martin?”
“As to that,” answered Martin, “I dunno. But I wish ’twas that professor’s feet, not mine, was astraddle the bottom of that dory—not to wish him any harm. But winter’s day and the wind no’therly, I found it cold enough.”
“I went into a Turkish bath parlor in New York one time,” came the conversational voice from the peak, “and hot? My Lord——”
“The man,” said the next on watch, taking his mitts from the line above the stove—“the man that’d talk about hot Turkish baths on a night like this to sea— Turkish baths, and, Lord in heaven, two good long hours up there——” He halted to take a sniff up the companion-way. “Two hours—what ought to be done with the like o’ him?”
The man by the stove, who a while before had vanquished the lad in the peak, took his pipe long enough from his mouth to observe, “And for four years now, to my knowledge, he’s been tryin’ to tell how hot ’twas in that Turkish bath.”
“Hit him with a gob-stick,” suggested the cook—“or this rolling-pin.” He was flattening out pie-crust.
“A gob-stick or a rolling-pin,” said the next on watch, “is too good for him. Here, take this,” and passed the cook’s hatchet along the lockers.
The opening and closing of the hatch after the watch had gone on deck admitted a blast of air that made the man in the bunk nearest the steps draw up his legs. The flame in the lamp flared, whereat the original inquirer got up to set the lamp chimney more firmly over the base of the burner, and before he sat down put the question again. How did Martin feel when he thought he was sure enough going. “The last fifteen or twenty minutes or so I bet you did some thinkin’—didn’t you, Martin?”
“A little,” admitted Martin, and with a long arm gaffed another potato. “Toward the end of it the sea did begin to take on a gray look that I know now was grayer than any mortal sea ever could’ve been.”
“And what were you thinkin’ of then, Martin?”
“What was I thinking of? What— Lord, but these apple dumplings are great stuff, aren’t they? You don’t want to let any of those dumplings get past you, Johnnie. Never mind how used-up you feel, come out of your bunk and try ’em. Five or six good plump dumplings inside of you and you’ll forget you ever saw a dory.”
“He’s asleep, Martin.”
“Is he? Well, maybe ’tis just as well. ’Twas a hard drag for poor John to-day. What was I thinking of? you asked me. Well, I’ll tell you what I was thinking of. You know what store I set by a good razor. I’d go a hundred mile for a good razor—a good razor—any time. You all know that, don’t you?”
“Yes—yes——”
“Well, this last time out I brought aboard as fine a looking razor as ever a man laid against his face. Oh, I saw you all eying it the last time I took it out. Don’t pretend— I know you. It’s right there in my diddy-box, and before I turn in to-night it’s a good scrape I’m going to give myself with it—yes. Well, when Johnnie’d said ‘Good-by, Martin’—said it for the second time—‘Good-by, Martin, don’t mind me any more, look out for yourself’—said that, and I’d said, ‘Hold on a little longer’ to him for about the tenth time—well, about that time, when I did begin to think we were sure enough going—with it coming on dark and no sign of the vessel in sight—then it was I couldn’t help wondering who in hell aboard the vessel was going to get that razor.”
When everybody had done laughing, and after two or three had told how they felt when they were on the bottom of a dory, the persistent one asked again, “Martin, but you must’ve had some close calls in your time?”
“My share—no more.” He was taking a look around the table as he spoke—a lingering, regretful look—and then he gave up any further thought of it. “Ah-h,” he sighed, “but I cert’nly took the good out of that meal,” and leaning against the nearest bunk-board—his own—drew out his pipe from beneath the mattress. “My share and no more,” he repeated, and reached across to the shelf in his bunk and drew forth a plug of tobacco. He cut off the proper quantity and rolled it around between his palms the proper length of time before he spoke again. With the pipe between his teeth he had to speak more slowly. “Any man that’s been thirty years trawling will nat’rally have a few things happen to him. To-day makes the third time I’ve been on the bottom of a dory, and cold weather each time—just my blessed luck—cold weather each time”—three times he blew through the stem of his pipe—“and I don’t want to be there the fourth. Eddie-boy, hand me a wisp out of the broom at your elbow.”
While Martin was cleaning out his pipe somebody put the question generally. Would they rather be on the bottom of a dory out to sea, or on a vessel piled up on the rocky shore somewhere?
“On the rocks for me.”
“And for me.”
“Yes, a chance to get ashore from a wreck, but the bottom of a dory with the sea breaking over you, and it cold maybe—cert’nly it’s never any too warm—wr-r-h!”
There seemed to be no doubt of what they would take for their choice. “And yet,” commented Martin when the last word had been said, “I dunno but the closest call ever I had was when the Oliver Cromwell went ashore and was lost off Whitehead.”
“Cripes, but I’m glad I warn’t on her. A bad business that—a bad business. Hand me that plate, will you, Martin”—this from the cook.
“Sure, boy—here y’are—an armful of plates. Cook on a fisherman’s the last job I’d want—you’re never done. And you’re right it was a bad business, cook. When you’ve seen nineteen men washed over one after the other, every man—every man but one, that is—putting up the divil’s own fight for his life before he went— I dunno but what it must be worse than going down at sea altogether, all hands in one second, with no chance at all—though that must be hard enough, too.”
Silence for a while, and then Martin continued: “If I had it to do over again”—two long puffs—“to do it over and be lost instead of saved, I dunno but what I’d rather founder at sea myself. Nineteen men lost—eighteen good men— Lord, but ’twas cruel!”
Martin, with his head back, was gazing thoughtfully up at the deck-beams. A gentle leading question, and he resumed.
“We left Gloucester that trip with the Skipper’s— But to tell that story right a man ought to begin away back. But will you give me a match, somebody?”
He lit up again, and then settled himself snugly between the edge of the table and his bunk-board, after the manner of a man who is in for a long sitting-out. Once he really started there were but few interruptions. The loss of the Cromwell was a serious affair, and nobody broke in thoughtlessly; and only when Martin would stop to refill his pipe, or to light up again when he found he had let it go out, did he make any halt himself.
“What the Hoodleys of Cape Ann were, and are still,” began Martin, “of course all of you, or most all of you, anyway, know. Or maybe some of you don’t know. Well, they were a hard crowd—but didn’t know it—the kind of people that whenever they got to talking about their own kind, never had any tales to prove maybe that there was even the lightest bit of wit or grace or beauty among them; no, none of that for the Hoodleys of Cape Ann. But to show you what thrifty, hard-headed fore-people they had, they could spin off, any of ’em, a hundred little yarns, almost any day, as if anybody on earth that knew those of them that were alive would ever doubt what the dead-and-gone ones must’ve been. Hard they were—even neighbors that didn’t take life as a dream of poetry said that much of them. Hard they were—man, yes—the kind that little children never toddled up to and climbed on to their knees, nor a man in hard luck by any mistake ever asked the loan of a dollar of—the kind that never a man walked across the street to shake hands with. That’s the kind they were. Take ’em all in all, I guess that the Hoodleys were about as hard a tribe as you’d find in all Essex County—surely ’tisn’t possible there were any harder. And yet you couldn’t pick a flaw in ’em before the law. They were honest. Everybody had to say that for them—paying their debts, their just debts—as they put it themselves—and collecting their own dues, don’t fear, and a great respect for the letter of the law—for the letter of it. And I mind they used to boast that for generations their people had kept clear of the poorhouses, and that all had been church-members in good standing. Well, not exactly all; for, to be exact and truthful—they themselves used to put it that way—there was one here and there that had broken away. But such had been rare, as one of them—a strong church-member—used to put it, and the devil is ever active; and speaking of the devil, this particular member’d go on, there is always the blistering pit for the unrighteous. That last I s’pose he thought he ought to put in, because everybody knew that of all the people that fell from grace, the wickedest, the most blasphemous, the most evil of all evil livers had been those of the Hoodleys that had back-slided. Once they went to the bad they cert’nly went beyond all hope; and nobody did they curse out more furiously than their own people every time they did start in.
“Well, the Hoodleys weren’t a seafaring people originally. They moved over to Gloucester, y’see, at one particular time when everybody was expecting in some way to make money out of fishing. George Hoodley was a lad then—seventeen—with the hard kind of a face and the awkward body that everybody nat’rally looked for in one of his breed. And he had the kind of a mind, I cal’late, that his father would like a boy of his to have. Well, George signed right away for a boy’s wages with a prudent master—old Sol Tucker it was—that went in the Distant Shore so long. They used to say that Sol wore the same pair of jack-boots out of her that he had when he first went aboard, and there was eighteen years between his first and last trips in her. I mind the jack-boots—and they were cert’nly well patched when I saw them—though no more than twelve year old then. That’ll give you an idea of Sol. And George Hoodley put in thirteen years with Sol, and thirteen long hard drags of years they must’ve been. I misdoubt that any of us here could’ve stood those thirteen—no, sir, not for vessel’s, skipper’s, and hand’s share together. Well, George stood it, and I don’t b’lieve he ever knew he was missing anything in life. But he had something to show for it, as he’d say himself. When he left old Sol he was able to buy a half interest and go master of a good vessel. I went with him in her—the Harding—two trips—just two, no more.”
Martin halted to light up again, and somebody asked, “Warn’t it the Harding, Martin, that had the small cabin?”
“Yes, the smallest, they say, that ever was seen in a fisherman. Just about room to stand between the steps and the stove and between the stove and the bulkhead again; and not much better for’ard—a forec’s’le so small that the crew used to say they had to go on deck to haul on their oilskins. She was all hold. Well, while he was in the Harding George made a great reputation for all kinds of carefulness. Most men that went with him said he was altogether too careful for any mortal use; and maybe that was so. But his savings kept piling up, and there was plenty of other careful men to ship with him and abide by him.
“One thing that George and his people used to boast about was that he warn’t like a good many other fishermen. While a good many of them were putting in time ashore drinking, skylarking, or if it warn’t no more than to spend a quiet sociable evening with their friends or their own families—during all that George was attending to business, for business it was to him. He was talking one day of those who said fishing was a venture, or even adventure, and he’d been reading somewhere, he said, of the joy that somebody thought fine, strong men ought to get out of fishing. He almost smiled when he was telling it. The joy of fishing! If you had a good trip of fish and got a good price for it, why, yes, fishing was good fun then. But as far as he could see it was like any other kind of work. You put in about so much time at it and took good care of your money, and at the end of the year you had about so much to show for it. And as for the fun of fighting a breeze of wind that some of them talked about, seeing how long you could hang on to your canvas without losing your spars, or how far down you could let your vessel roll before she’d capsize—none of that for him. And it was all rot, their pretending they got any fun out of it. They had the same blood and nerve and senses as any other humans, and he knew that for himself he was content to stay hove-to when it blew one of the living gales they talked about, and satisfied, too, to shorten sail in time, even if he was bound home, when it blew hard enough. Gloucester would be there when he got there—it wouldn’t blow away. Cert’nly, he’d admit, the drivers’d outsail him on a passage and beat him out of the market once in a while; but in the long run his way paid best. He could name the foolish fellows that’d been lost, and the fingers of both hands wouldn’t begin to name them. Yes, and left families to starve, some of ’em. And he himself was alive and still bringing home the fish, and everybody in Gloucester knew what he had to show for it.
“Well, by that time everybody in Gloucester did know what he had to show for it, and everybody in Gloucester said it was about time he began to look around for a wife, though nobody expected George Hoodley to look around for a wife after the regular manner of fishermen, who don’t look around at all, so far as I c’n see. We ourselves, or most of us, anyway, liking the girl pretty well and she willing, gen’rally hurry up to get married ’bout as soon as we find ourselves with a couple of months’ rent ahead.
“But not that way with George Hoodley. It wasn’t until he was forty-five that he began to look around after the manner of his people for a wife. There was to be no rushing into the expenses of matrimony; but with two good vessels, and a house all clear, a man might well think of it—or leastways I imagine that’s the way he thought it out, if he wasted any time thinking of it at all.
“Now, if George Hoodley had not been like other men during all the years he was fishing, if he hadn’t joined in the talk of his mates on what was worth having in life—you know how fishermen gen’rally talk when they get going on some things—even if George Hoodley pretended to think that he thought they were a lot of blessed fools, yet it is more than likely that the opinions of the men he went to sea with had their influence with him just the same. It stands to reason they were bound to, after years of it. And then, clear back he must’ve come of flesh-and-blood people, like anybody else. For, though nobody could imagine the Hoodleys having weaknesses like other people, yet cert’nly, if you went far enough back, there must’ve been ancestors among ’em all—one or two—that enjoyed life the same as other people.
“Well, for a wife George took a very pretty girl who was young enough—some of you that know her know that well—young enough to have had grandchildren to him. Twenty or twenty-one, light-haired, pretty face, and a trim figure. I didn’t like her eyes or her mouth myself, but everybody agreed she was pretty. She had never been so far away from home that she could not be back again the same day—and that certified to her character with some people. For other things, she would come into some money when her father died. And her father didn’t object to George Hoodley. He was a thrifty man, too, and said all right—made George’s way easy, in fact.
“Now, I cal’late that George thought that he never did a wiser thing in all his life than when he married that girl. Among the men he knew there were some that’d got pretty wives, but no money; and others money, but plain-lookers. He was getting both, good looks and money, and he could laugh at them all—those who wanted her because of the money in prospect or those others who were in love with her face. And maybe he didn’t laugh at some of ’em!—the sail-carriers and others who imagined that a reputation for foolishness at sea won women’s hearts. It was a great stroke of business altogether. He would get his share of good living yet—he boasted of that. He had always taken the best care of himself—never drank and seldom smoked, and then only in the way of business—was in the prime of life, had a tough constitution, and his wife-to-be was young and pretty. He could laugh at all of them.
“Nearly everybody in Gloucester said nice things to George. ‘My, but you’re the deep one—and lucky? Oh, no, you’re not a bit lucky! But you always did have a long head—’ That’s the way most people talked to him, and he liked it. As for the few who didn’t seem pleased—the three or four who hinted, but didn’t ask outright if he thought he was doing a wise thing— George said it was easy enough to place them—they’d like to get her themselves. If he was only another kind of a man he might have been warned in time, but he was that kind that nobody felt sorry for. And that’s a hard thing, too.
“Well, they were married, and the wonderful thing of George letting his vessel go out a trip without him was on exhibition to the people of Gloucester. Yes, sir, she went to sea the day he was married. He stayed ashore that trip—that trip, but not the second.
“The truth was, they didn’t get along well together; which warn’t remarkable, maybe—she young and pretty, and he the age he was and more than looking it. Forty-seven’s a fine age for some men, but not for George’s kind. Leather-skinned he was, with lean chops of jaws, a mouth as tight as a deck beam, a turkey neck—you’ve seen turkey necks—and eyes that were cold as a dead haddock’s.
“George, I cal’late, was beginning to learn that a woman was a different proposition from a vessel, and that there were things about a woman that had to be studied out. Not that I think he tried overhard to study this one out. Listening to him as I had many a time before he got married, I knew that he figured that a woman, like everything else, had her place in the universe, and she ought to know it, or be made to know it. And now here was his wife’s case: a steady man for a husband, a good house to live in, grub and her clothes all found, or, anyway, as much clothes as he thought fit and proper for her to have. Could a woman expect more, or a man do more, than that?
“’Twarn’t long after he got married that things began to go wrong, not only at home but out to sea. There was the trip he broke his ankle. Coming home, he looked maybe for a little show of grief on the part of his wife, but, if he did, he didn’t find it. Indeed, she even said he ought to go to a hospital instead of making it hard for her at home. ’Twas common talk that she said that.
“Going out his next trip, with his leg not yet well-knit and himself having to limp out the door, he and his wife had words. Billie Shaw, passing by, heard them. ‘I don’t care if I never see you again,’ he said. ‘And if you think I’d care if I never saw you again either, you’re mistaken. I wouldn’t care if you’re lost—you and your vessel. Only I wouldn’t like to see all the crew lost.’
“That last must have set him to thinking, for he didn’t sail that day, as he said he would, but put in a day talking to people around town. I know he asked me, for one, a lot of questions. I didn’t know till later what he was driving at. ’Twas while he was questioning me that he coaxed me into shipping with him. ‘Just this trip, Martin,’ he said. ‘And your cousin Dan Spring’s thinking of coming out with me this time, to help me out. Two men left me suddenly to-day, and if you’ll come out Dan’ll surely come.’ And so out of good-nature I said I’d go with him. It’s blessed little he got out of me, though, in answer to his other questions, but he found plenty of others willing to talk.
“Well, on the passage out we all noticed he seemed an absent-minded man. We noticed, too, or thought we did, that he used to forget that his leg warn’t yet very strong, and that now and then he had to pull up when it seemed to hurt him bad.
“That trip—well, it was a queer one from the first. With myself and my cousin Dan, who were dory-mates, it warn’t nothing but accidents. There was that after the first haul of fish when we were dropping down to come alongside. It was a bit rough, that’s a fact. Some said that for so careful a man it was surprising that the Skipper had ordered the dories out at all that day. However, we were just ahead of her—under the end of her bowsprit almost—and of course Dan and myself nat’rally looked for the Skipper to look out for us. We were so near that Dan had taken in his oars and had the painter ready to heave aboard. I was at the oars. One stroke more, I thought, and we’ll be all right, when whing! the first thing we knew around came the vessel and down on us. I couldn’t do anything with the dory, she being down to her gunnels with fish. Well, Dan had time to holler to me, and I hollered to him—no more than that—when she was on us. By a miracle, you might say, we both managed to grab the bob-stay. The stem of the vessel cut the dory like it was a cracker, and then under her keel it went.
“Not knowing what to make of it all, we climbed aboard over the bow. Our faces were no more than above the knight-heads than the Skipper yelled. We ran aft and asked him what was wrong. He stared at us for a second as if he couldn’t understand.
“‘What’s it?’ I asked.
“‘Why, I thought you two were gone.’
“‘And so we were, for all of you. A man that’s been to sea as long you, George Hoodley,’ I said, ‘and put a wheel the wrong way! Nobody ever said you were the cleverest man out of Gloucester to handle a vessel, but cert’nly you know down from up.’
“‘Martin,’ he said, ‘I give you my word. Just as I grabbed the wheel that time a sea came aboard, the vessel lurched, and down on deck I went, with my weak ankle giving way under me.’
“Well, our dory was gone, but later in the trip one of the crew, Bill Thornton, was troubled with a felon on his finger. ’Twarn’t anything very bad, and Bill himself said it didn’t amount to anything, but the Skipper thought Bill’d better stay aboard, and his dory-mate with him. ‘And Martin, you and Dan take his dory,’ says the Skipper—‘you two being so used to each other it’ll be the best way.’
“Well, that was all right. We took their dory and gear and went out the next set—only two days after our own dory had been lost, mind you. Well, this time we got lost in the fog and were out overnight. It turned out a snowy night, and cold, with fog again in the morning. That morning, so we heard from the crew later, the Skipper said, after a little jogging about, ‘They must be gone; we may as well give it up.’ Well, everybody aboard thought there was a good chance for us yet, and one or two hinted at that. But he wouldn’t have it. ‘Run her westerly,’ he said, and went below. Well, to everybody’s surprise we popped up just then almost under her bow. ’Twas quite a little sea on at the time, but the man at the wheel this time didn’t have any bad ankle. He jibed her over in time and we climbed aboard. One man ran down to call the Skipper and tell him the news, but the Skipper only swore at him. ‘Do you mean to tell me that the watch shifted the course of this vessel without orders from me? I’ll talk to him.’ And he did talk to him, and in a most surprising way. We didn’t know what to make of it. He raved. ‘Discipline,’ he said—he’d always been a great hand for discipline aboard his vessel, but this warn’t any case for discipline—’twas men’s lives.
“Well, they expected to have two or three more days of fishing aboard the Cromwell after that day, but I made a kick. Never again would I haul a trawl for a skipper of his kind, I said.
“‘What?’ asked the Skipper. ‘You mean to mutinize on me?’
“‘Call it mutiny or what you please,’ said I, ‘but myself and Dan don’t leave this vessel again in a dory.’
“‘Don’t you know I can run into the nearest port, Newf’undland or Nova Scotia, and put you ashore?’
“‘I do.’
“‘Or take you both back to Gloucester and have you up before the court?’
“‘You can put us up before forty courts—the highest in the land, if you want—and maybe they’ll sentence us to ten years in jail, or to be strung up to a yard-arm somewheres. But I don’t cal’late they will— I don’t cal’late so—not after we tell our story. It’s a fine thing fishermen have come to when their own skippers try to lose ’em.’
“‘Lose you? Me try to lose you? And why, in God’s name, would I try to lose you?’
“‘Lord knows. But you do, and there’s an end of it. Dan and I don’t swing any dory over the rail of this vessel this trip again.’
“He said nothing to that. Only he looked at me, then a long look at Dan, and turned into his bunk again. Later in the day he drew out a quart bottle of whiskey and began to drink. That was a new thing to his crew that knew him so long. They’d pretty good reason to believe that he’d kept a bottle in his closet under lock and key for a little drink on the quiet when the dories were out and nobody by; but they knew he did it slyly so as not to have the name of it, or maybe so’s not to have to ask anybody to join him, and so save expense. But everybody knew that whatever liquor he took that way was not enough to hurt him. Yes, a sober man he’d always been—everybody had to say that for him. But now he was drinking with all hands looking on, taking it down in gulps, and when the first quart was gone he brought out another, drinking by himself all the time.
“However, he warn’t drunk by a good deal when in the middle of the night he ordered all hands on deck to make sail. The men thought he was crazy; but he was the skipper. If anything happened, ’twas his lookout, not theirs. So they gave her the full mains’l, and then he ordered the man at the wheel to swing her off.
“‘Yes, sir, and what course?’
“‘What course? Didn’t I say to swing her off? Put her fair before it. Jibe over your fores’l and let her run—let her run, I tell you! Whichever way she goes, let her run.’
“And we let her run all that night and all next day. She was under her winter rig—in March it was—no topm’sts; but the four lower sails alone were enough for any Gloucester fisherman that second night. I mind ’twas nine o’clock that night, and Abner Tucker’s watch. A staid, sober man was Abner. He’d been to sea for twenty years, and been with George for ten years—stayed with him because he knew him for a prudent man, I s’pose. Well, Abner took the wheel, and getting the feel of it, cried out, ‘Lord in heaven, it’s like trying to steer two vessels—she’s running wild!’ and braced himself against the wheel, but warn’t braced firm enough, or he warn’t strong enough, for he let her broach, and a sea swept her quarter, burying him and the vessel both. Over the top of the house went that sea and down into the cabin by the ton. They were floated out in the cabin and came tumbling up on deck. Josh Whitaker, a bait knife in his hand, jumped to the main peak halyards.
“The Skipper noticed him. ‘What you goin’ to do?’
“‘Cut,’ says Josh.
“‘You cut, and I’ll cut you!’ The Skipper, too, had a bait-knife, and he lunged with it for Josh. Then he stood guard by the halyards. ‘Or if anybody else thinks to cut’—and we saw the rest of it in his face—dark as it was, we saw that.
“The Skipper was still on guard there when Dan and myself came on deck for our watch. That was eleven o’clock. Dan went for’ard to look out and I took the wheel from Abner, and glad enough he was to turn the wheel over when he gave me the course. I looked in the binnacle to make sure he had it right.
“‘Still on that course?’ I asked, when I’d seen ’twas so. ‘Where’s the Skipper?’
“‘Here,’ said the Skipper himself from between the house and the weather rail, where he was still watching that nobody bothered the halyards, I s’pose. ‘What’s it?’
“‘How about the course?’ I asked.
“‘What’s wrong with the course?’
“‘No’west by west half west—is it right?’
“‘No’west by west half west, or whatever it is—yes. And why not?’
“‘Oh, nothin’, if you say it’s right.’
“‘And why isn’t it right? Why not? Why don’t you spit it out? What’s wrong, anyway?’
“‘What’s wrong?’ I said. ‘Don’t you know we warn’t much more than three hundred miles off shore on this course when we swung her off last night, and we’ve been coming along now for twenty-three hours—and the clip she’s been coming!’
“He said nothing to that for a while, and then it was, ‘And so you don’t think the course is right?’
“‘No, I don’t—not if you’re intending to make Gloucester.’
“‘That so? Not if I was intending to make Gloucester? And where in the name o’ heaven am I headin’ for if not Gloucester?’
“‘Where? where? Damned if I know,’ says I. ‘Hell, maybe.’
“‘That so? Well, Gloucester or hell, drive her you.’
“‘Oh, I’ll drive her.’ I threw it back in his teeth that way, spat to looard, took a fresh hold of the wheel, and did drive her just to let him know he couldn’t scare me. Cripes, but I gave her all she wanted!
“It was wicked, though, the way she was going. She warn’t a big sailer, the Cromwell— George Hoodley never did believe in the racing kind—but any old plug could’ve sailed that night. Along toward midnight it got thick o’ snow, I mind, and we came near running into a vessel hove-to under a fores’l. ‘A fisherman!’ Dan for’ard called out, and as we shot by her a warning hail came to us.
“‘What’s that he said?’ asked the Skipper of Dan.
“‘Something about where we’re bound for,’ answered Dan.
“‘That so? What’s it of his business?’ and went below for a spell.
“From the wheel I could see him taking another drink under the cabin light. He had got to where he wasn’t bothering to pour it into a mug, but took it straight from the bottle—long pulls, too. He came on deck again just as my watch and Dan’s was up. To Charlie Feeney, who was next man to the wheel, I said that the Skipper ought to be spoken to about hauling her up. So Charlie did.
“‘Who in the devil’s name is skipper of this vessel, anyway?’ was all the answer he got.
“Henry Carsick, who was Charlie’s dory-mate, said he didn’t know what to make of it. ‘I’m blessed if ever I knew him to carry half this sail in a breeze before, and I’ve been with him three years,’ said he to me as he went for’ard.
“Well, Dan and me hadn’t more than got off our oilskins after standing watch, when a hail came from Henry on watch for’ard. ‘Some kind of a roaring ahead of us,’ repeated Charlie from the wheel. And just then it was that, leaping like a hound, she hit something good and hard—a check, a grinding along her bottom, a rearing of her bow. But nothing small was going to stop her the clip she was going then, and whatever it was, she was clear of it. By that time the whole crew was tumbling up on deck. ‘God in heaven, what is it?’ they called out one to another. Another leap of her, and it was clear white astern and on either side. ‘A wall of rock ahead!’ said Henry Carsick, and came tumbling aft—‘a ledge of solid rock, Skipper!’
“‘Yes,’ said the Skipper, in a kind of studyin’ tone—‘and it was hell or Gloucester, warn’t it’—he turned to me. ‘I said it’d be, didn’t I?’
“‘That’s what you did,’ said I, ‘and it ain’t Gloucester. You ought to be proud of yourself—nineteen men, maybe, lost for you—nineteen men. I’m not counting yourself—you ought to be lost. Will we put a dory over?’
“‘Put it over, if you want to. Do what you please. I’m done with this vessel— I’m done with fishing.’
“‘I guess that’s right,’ says I. ‘And I guess you ain’t th’ only one that gets through with fishing to-night.’ Then I turned to the crew: ‘What d’y’ say if we try and get a dory over and see what’s around us?’
“They said all right, and we unhooked the tackles. A few heaves, and up went the dory into the air. It hung there for a second or two. We tried to push it over, but the wind took it, tore it from us and dropped it into the sea. The sea took it, tossed it up and back against the rail and on to the deck. One smash—another—another—and it was kindling-wood.
“‘Try another,’ said Dan, who was standing by the rail to his waist in water. He had a line about his waist, and that was all kept him inboard. We hoisted another dory out of the nest, and we had to fight, even as we were hoisting, for a footing on her deck, it was that steep and the great seas running clean over her. Up into the air we hoisted the second dory—up and out again. Once more the howling wind and the boiling sea took it—once more ’twas kindling-wood.
“‘There’s seven more left—try another,’ said Dan. A great man, Dan. If I go to sea for forty years I never expect to see a better— I could ’most cry when I think of how he was lost that night.
“‘One of my hands mashed to a pulp,’ said somebody.
“‘Well, we can’t stop to doctor you,’ I called to him. ‘Let somebody take your place at the tayckles. Now then, lads. I don’t know that it’ll do any good when we do get it over, but maybe we c’n take a look around—maybe find a landing-place somewheres.’
“‘I’ll go in her,’ calls out someone. ‘Give me a chance now——’
“‘My chance,’ said Dan—‘my chance, ain’t it, Martin?’
“‘Yes,’ says I to Dan, and looking back at it now I say, ‘God forgive you, Martin Carr,’ and yet ’twarn’t no fault of mine.
“Out went the dory, and when she hung for a second Dan swung himself after it. He made it, and called, ‘Pay out that line!’ and dug in with the oars. We could just see him. We were still paying out the line, we could still hear his voice, when ‘Haul in! I broke an oar!’ he called.
“‘Haul in!’ said I; but when we went to haul in there was nothing to haul—the line had parted.
“‘God, he’s gone!’ said somebody.
“‘That’s what he is,’ said a voice beside me—‘I was bound he would be.’
“’Twas the Skipper. From by the rail he crept up to me with a knife-blade shining—a bait-knife it was, the same he’d had all night. And then I knew what it meant—he had cut the line. I stood away from him first, then I grabbed him and picked him up, and had a mind to heave him over the rail, and then— I don’t know why— I didn’t. I dropped him on the deck. ‘You’ll get yours before this night’s over,’ I said.
“‘A devil of a lot I care,’ he said.
“The rest of them, or at least those that warn’t too busy with the next dory or trying to look out for themselves, called out to ask what was wrong with the two of us. I didn’t answer, nor did the Skipper.
“Dan was the first to go that night. We kept trying to launch dories—trying, but losing them—smashed to kindling-wood they were, until the whole nine of them were gone. During that time four men were washed over. One, with a line about him, made a desperate try, but was hauled back dead, I mind. We laid his body on the house, and afterward, when I went to look for it, it was gone—swept over. The seas were wicked.
“The wind was blowing harder, the big combers were coming even higher, and the gang began to be washed off her deck and lost one after the other. We took to the rigging when we saw ’twarn’t any more use on deck. And in the middle of it all, what d’y’ think the Skipper did? What d’y’ think he did, the man that was the cause of it all? Well, while his crew were going—to heaven or hell, as it might be—washed over and lost, one after the other—he goes below and has a mug-up for himself. Yes, sir, goes into the forec’s’le and has a mug of coffee and a piece of pie. Somebody that’d seen him going below called out to the rest of us. The Lord’s truth, that. And the rest of us blasphemed to God, we were that black with rage against him.
“Well, there was ten of us, I think, in the rigging, all hoping to be able to last until daylight, when we thought we might be able to see where we were. Hoping only—’twas not expecting—for ’twas getting colder, with the spray beginning to freeze where it struck and making hard work of holding on to the rigging. ’Twas wild—her sails still up, with the reef points beating a devil’s tattoo where the canvas warn’t tearing up and flying out like long-tailed, ghostly things in the blackness. Lashed to the rigging we must’ve been for all of two hours, I cal’late. Some began to take note of the numbness creeping over them—one or two—the most discouraged. The warmer-blooded, or the strongest, tried to keep up a cheering talk—tried to crack jokes and one thing or another.
“Well, we had hope, some of us, of lasting through the night, when crack! We knew what was coming then. I slipped the half-hitch that had been holding me to the shrouds and climbed higher. I was ’most to the mast-head, clear of the gaff, when over the side went her forem’st, half a dozen men clinging to the forerigging, a-swaying and shaking; and after it went the mainm’st, with four more, I think, in her rigging.
“Well, sir, when the forem’st went I was thrown into clear water. I had plenty of line to my hand, with a turn of it around the mast-head, and with that I hauled myself back. I hung on to an arm of the cross-trees for a while there before I started to work my way back along the mast toward the vessel. I didn’t believe then I’d ever live to reach the vessel. The sail, as I said, had been kept standing on her, and now it was lying flat on the water, now sagging down with the weight of the water over it, and now bellying into the air when a great sea would get under it. I saw a shadow of a man—hanging on to a reef point he was—go down with that sail once, then go up with it once, and then the sail split under the weight of the sea, and I never saw him again. But I heard him holler as he went. What he said I don’t know— I had to keep on crawling. The hoops of the sail were around the mast, of course, and I used them and the bolt-rope of the fores’l where the sail was torn away to pull myself along. And, mind you, I had to watch out for the forem’st itself. It reared and tossed with one sea after another—me astride it most of the time—like a man on horseback, though hard riding enough I found it. The least little tap of that, and I knew where I’d be—bait for the fishes that I’d baited for so often. Well, between the hoops and the bolt-rope and the rigging I hauled myself along. And the way that mast rolled! Forty times I swear I thought I was good as dead. But no. And so I dragged myself along, watching out when I went upon the crests and holding my breath when I was pulled down into the depths—hung on desperately, mindful that the quietest knock of that big spar would end me then and there, and mindful, too, that once my grip loosed I’d be swallowed up in the roaring. Tired I was, aye, and weak, but I kept on working toward the vessel’s hull always.
“Against the white sails and white foam I made out two others struggling like myself. ‘That you, Bill?’ said one. ‘Yes—that you, Mike?’ I heard from the other. I knew who they were then, and called out myself. Between two seas one slipped from sight. The other still crept on. ‘That you, Bill?’ I called out. ‘Bill’s gone,’ said the voice. ’Twas Mike Cannon. ‘That’s tough,’ I said. ‘It is that,’ says Mike, ‘after the fight he put up. But how’re you making out yourself?’ ‘Pretty good; how’re you?’ I said. ‘Kind of tired. I doubt if I’ll hold out much longer—something smashed inside my oilskins. My chest and a few ribs, I think—and one arm, too. A wild night and tough going, Martin.’
“There was no more chance to talk. Two awful seas followed, and after the second a quiet spell—the back suction. I looked around. I thought I saw Mike, but warn’t sure. I guess now I didn’t, for another sea, the biggest of all, tossed the whole lot of wreckage back against the hull of the Cromwell. There was a grinding and a battering as the spars met the hull. Myself up in the air, I looked down and found myself over her deck, and then—my guardian angel it must’ve been that whispered me then— I let go. ‘God in heaven!’ I found myself saying, and fetched up on her deck, the luckiest man in all the North Atlantic.
“Against what was left of the rail I found myself, close to the balance of the forerigging. At first I warn’t sure just where I was at all, but that’s where I found myself when my eyes were clear to see again. And when my eyes were clear I looked around. The hull of her was heaving to every sea, moving inshore maybe a foot at a time, with her bowsprit pointing to a shadow of rock or cliff ahead. I looked around again, and, so far as I could make out, everything—house, gurry-kids, booby-hatches, everything—was gone off her. Only the two stumps of her masts seemed to be left on deck. But, no—the forec’s’le hatch was left. Her bow, being so much higher than her stern, saved that. I saw that, and— I don’t know why—toward the forec’s’le I crawled. The hatches were closed. I slid them back. Down the steps I went, and when I was below— I don’t know why, either— I thought of the razors in my bunk. I might’s well get them couple of razors, I says to myself, and starts for my bunk, which was in the peak—the same bunk, clear for’ard on the starb’d side, that the Turkish-bath lad is in now. ’Twas like swimming down there. The water by the butt of the forem’st, ’bout like where I’m sitting here to-night, was over my waist. I couldn’t help thinking then how deep ’twas, and getting deeper fast, with the seas pouring down the companionway. I was thinking of that—thinking I ought to’ve closed the hatches after me—and was looking back toward the steps, when I heard a little noise, or thought I did, for the pounding of the seas overhead was making an awful racket and I warn’t sure. But I heard it again, the clinking of crockery like, and I looked around—back behind the steps—at last, and there, behind the stove, leaning up against the cook’s lockers— I’d clean forgot him—was the Skipper. He was having another mug-up for himself.
“‘God! ‘I said, ‘you here?’
“He half-turned, dropping a coffee mug he had in his hand. Then taking a second look: ‘Man, but I thought it was the ghost of Dan Spring. But you two look something alike. Come to think, you’re cousins, ain’t you? Man, if you could only see yourself! Blood, blood, and bruises—and your eyes, man—your eyes! But have a mug of coffee. Warn’t it lucky? here’s the coffee-boiler hove up here on the lockers, and some coffee still left in it—and hot. And there’s a pie in the grub locker—on the top shelf. If it’d been on the bottom shelf it’d be all wet and floating around. Ain’t that luck? And look here—a good half pint of whiskey left yet! It’s been an awful night, ain’t it? What d’y’ say?”
“He held the bottle toward me. I took it from him and smashed it on the stove. And then I gave him a bit of my mind. ‘And so, George Hoodley, you’re so afraid, after all, to go to your death that you must go drunk, hah? The soul that the Lord gave you—that soul is going from a drunken body straight to the God that’s going to judge you. And how’ll you be judged, d’y’ think, for this night’s work, George Hoodley? Could you listen to what was said on deck to-night and not die of fright at what you’ve done? Did you hear Sam Catiss? “I’m not afraid to go, if go I must,” says Sam, “but, Lord, there’s one or two things I wish I hadn’t done,” says Sam. You heard him—we all
He was having another mug-up for himself.
heard him—and then he was swept over. And but for you, George Hoodley, maybe he’d have had time to make his peace before he went. And up in the rigging—you warn’t there, I know—even you, if you’d heard what Peter Harkins said when we all knew her spars were going—when Peter heard the first crack and knew what it meant; and knowing he was going, with his last free breath he said things of you that if I had an enemy I wouldn’t want him to hear—not if I hated him bad enough to want to see him in the bottom of the deepest, hottest hold of hell——’
“‘Hell!’ he breaks in—‘there ain’t no hell—nor heaven, nor God, nor anything.’
“‘God forgive you for that! You——’
“‘God forgive me? Martin, you talk like an old woman. I tell you, since I was no higher than one of my jack-boots I’ve been listening to talk of hell and heaven—mostly hell, though—and I used to believe it one time. Nobody believed it any more than I did till when—till I began to see that the very people that was talking it so hard warn’t governed by what they said. What they wanted was everybody else to be governed by what they preached. I tell you I know. I’ve seen it in my own people— I know them better than you do. It’s years now— I was one of the fools, one that never let anybody, I thought, get the best of me at anything. You’re one—though you’re a good man in your fool way, Martin. I had no grudge against you, not even when I tried to lose you in the dory. But I had to get rid of your dory-mate.’
“‘Get rid of Dan? And why Dan?’
“‘Why? There again! You mean to tell me you don’t know?... I looked around before I went out this trip. Nobody’d tell me, but I knew his first name was Dan— Dan something. One day, when the crew was out hauling the trawls, I rummaged his bunk and found part of a letter in my wife’s writing under his mattress. That was the same day I ran over Dan and you in the dory. ’Twas for that chance I’d been pretending my ankle warn’t better. Weak ankle, bah!’ He drove the bad foot against the stove and crushed in the oven door. ‘Anything weak about that foot!—bah! “Dear Dan,” the note read— I know my wife’s handwriting, and his name’s Dan.’
“‘Wait a bit—wait a bit. How do you know it was this Dan? Are there no other Dans in Gloucester?’
“‘How do I know? And it in his bunk—under the mattress in his bunk.’
“‘That’s all right. And whose bunk was it before Dan Spring got it? Another Dan’s, warn’t it— Dan Powell’s? And didn’t he leave the mattress behind him when he left this vessel, trip before last? Didn’t he? And warn’t Dan Powell just the kind of a man that’d do a thing like that, and not Dan Spring, my own cousin? And so that’s the bottom of it? Nineteen souls gone because you thought—just thought only—that one of them was fooling you. And for a woman that warn’t worth Dan Spring’s little finger. That’s the truth, George Hoodley. But if you’d been brought up different, if you’d studied to understand the good side of people, instead of the other side, and how to get the best of them and to make money out of them and save it, you both might’ve come safe out of it. But you warn’t that kind. ’Twarn’t in your blood, nor in none of your people. Wrong’s wrong— I got nothing to say about that—but human nature’s human nature. Why should you expect, George Hoodley, to get the fine things in life? Why warn’t you content with money? You’d earned that. What had you to offer a handsome young woman that liked a good time? What had you, even supposing she was the kind you could trust—anything that women love? Not a blessed thing. You’ve spent your life with about one idea in your head, and that idea had nothing to do with being pleasant or kind to others, or good to anybody but yourself. Miles away from the kind of thing that women love were you all the time. You come to nigh fifty year of age—you, with your hard face and hard mouth, and eyes like— God! like a dead fish’s eyes to-night, no less—don’t you know that whoever was going to marry you warn’t going to for love? You had a right to marry some lean old sour-mouthed spinster with a little money like yourself. What made you think that beauty and love was for you? But even in marrying you thought to make a good bargain—and got fooled. And by the daughter of a man of your own kind, too. D’y’ s’pose her father didn’t know? God help you, George Hoodley, ’twas him hooked you—’twas him made the good bargain, not you. Why, before ever you married her ’twas common talk she warn’t the girl for any man to trust. But what good is it to talk of that now? Nineteen men gone, for I don’t count you—you’re no man. You’re a— But I won’t say it. Lord, but I’m tempted to choke you where you stand. Only when I think of those fine men—and poor Dan Spring——”
“‘Dan Spring? Don’t tell me ’twarn’t Dan Spring, the——’
“‘Hold up,’ I says to that—‘hold up, or close as we both are to death now and soon to go, I’ll choke you where you stand— I’ll send you to your God, or to the devil, with the print of my fingers around your turkey gobbler’s throat, if you say aught of Dan. Dan was my own kind and I knew him. Whatever faults he had—and maybe he had some—it warn’t in the heart of Dan Spring to undervalue good women, or to mix with married women of any kind, let alone the wife of a man he was to go ship-mate with. No, sir, not if he didn’t have a wife and children of his own—wife and children that’ll have to suffer all their lives because of you, and never know what brought it all about. But years from now they’ll still be without food and clothing because of you. When I think of it, George Hoodley, I misdoubt they’d count it against me in the other world, where we’ll both be soon with the others, if I was to take you by the throat and wind my fingers around your windpipe, and choke and choke and squeeze and squeeze you till your tongue came out and your eyes popped, and your face got blue and then black, and you——’
“He drew back against the lockers and put his hands before his face. ‘Martin, Martin, don’t!’ he said; for, in truth, I all but had hold of him in spite of myself.
“‘I’m not going to,’ I said. ‘I have enough already to account for. There’s two or three things I wish I hadn’t done, and maybe if I sent you to death a few minutes sooner than you’re going, I’d be sorry for it, too, later on. I’m going on deck now. This vessel won’t last much longer. She’s breaking as it is—and up to our chests in water here now.’
“Well, all the time we were below the big seas never let up. Some of her outside planks were working loose from their frames when I left him to go on deck again. Her deck planking, too, was coming apart. I almost fell into her hold when I was coming out of the forec’s’le. I didn’t know what to do quite, but climbed up on toward her bow at last, hanging on where I could, dodging seas and the loose bits of wreck they were carrying with them. At the knight-heads I looked around and ahead. Astern and to either side ’twas nothing but rocks and the white sea beating over them. Ahead I could make out a wall of rock— I guessed where I was—to the west’ard of Canso, off Whitehead. I knew that coast, and a bad coast it was. Up on the bowsprit, crawling out with the help of the footropes and the stops hanging down and the wreck of the jib and stays, I began to think I had a chance—if I could only live till the daylight that was coming on. I climbed farther out. Hard work it was, and I soon cast off my boots. At the end of the bowsprit I got a better look. A dozen feet away was the ledge with a chance for a footing. If a man could jump that—but what man could, from a vessel’s bowsprit? But now and then, perhaps every minute or so, the bowsprit, under a more than average big sea, lifted and sagged a little nearer the cliff. At the right time a man might make the leap, I thought. But if he missed? I looked down with the thought and saw nothing but rocks and a white boiling below. ‘If you miss, Martin,’ I said to myself, ‘maybe you’ll live five seconds, maybe ten—but more likely maybe you’d keep clear of being mashed to jelly for just about a wink of your eye.’ And ’twas enough to make a man wink his eyes just to look at the white boiling hell beneath. I cast off my oilskin jacket while I was thinking of it, and then my oil pants. After that went my jersey, flannel shirt, and trousers. I meant to have a good try at it, anyway.
“Looking back before I should leap, who did I see but the Skipper. In the noise of the sea I had not heard him. He, too, had cast off his boots and was even then unbuttoning his oilskins. He must’ve known I was watching him, for he said, ‘Don’t throw me off, Martin—don’t!’
“‘Who’s going to?’ I asked.
“‘That’s right—don’t. Give me a chance now, Martin.’
“‘Like you gave your crew?’
“‘Oh, don’t, Martin—don’t! I was crazy. All that I said about not believing in God and hell, I didn’t mean that. I’m afraid of it—afraid. I was always afraid of it, but never like now, Martin—never so afraid of the burning pit as now—never, never. Help me up, Martin— I’m weak— I can hardly stand. Help me, won’t you, Martin? You’re twice the man I am—no man ever sailed with me had your strength, Martin. Help me, won’t you, Martin?’
“I lifted him up, and the two of us clung to the end of the bowsprit. He looked weak as water then, and I pitied him, and pitying him I pointed out what chance we had. ‘There’s the cliff, and there’s what’s below. It’s one chance in ten to a man that can leap well.’
“‘I never could leap well, Martin.’
“‘No, you couldn’t—nor do anything much that other boys could do—no money in leaping, I s’pose. But there it is—and you c’n have your choice. Will you jump first, or last?’
“‘You go first, Martin. If you make it, maybe you c’n help me—maybe pass me a bit of line or something. See, I’ve got a bit of line I took along. You go first, Martin—you go first. It’s an awful jump to take, though.’
“‘There’s men of your crew took more awful jumps to-night, George Hoodley. They jumped from this world to the other when the spars went. Well, I’m going. Give me room to swing my arms. Now, if I miss, good-by. If we both miss, then I s’pose we’ll be standing up and giving account together in a few minutes. I’ve got enough on my conscience, but I’m glad I’m not you. Stand clear of me now—when she lifts, I’m going.’
“The Cromwell lifted. Her bowsprit rose up and up till the end of it was higher than the ledge in the wall of rock before us. I waited till the last little second—till the bowsprit swayed in toward the cliff, and then, while it balanced there and before it started to settle again, knowing, as you all know, the power that’s in the uplift of a sea, I gathered myself and jumped. And ’twas a good leap. I didn’t think I could do it, cold and numb as I’d been feeling. A good leap, yes. And ’twas the wet, slippery shelf of rock I landed on; but I went a yard clear, and even when I slipped a little I checked myself before I slipped back to the edge, and was safe. Well, I lay there till I felt my nerve steady again, then stood up and called for the line from the Skipper.
“‘Now, when you jump,’ I says, ‘I’ll get what brace I can here, so if you slip on the edge same’s I did there’ll be a chance to save you. But mind you, George Hoodley, if I find I can’t hold you up—if it’s to be your life or mine—it’s you that’s got to go. Mind that. And hurry—throw it quick, or I’ll cast off the line altogether. That bowsprit won’t be there in a few minutes, maybe. Hurry up!’
“‘But you’ll hang on, won’t you, Martin? You’ve got the strength, if you want to use it.’
“‘Jump, man, jump afore you lose your nerve entirely,’ I hollers.
“He threw the line to me, after taking one end of it around his waist. The other end I took around my waist, my end half hitched so I could slip it in a hurry. I warn’t throwing my life away for him, if I knew it.
“Well, he jumped at last. And the bowsprit rose full as high and gave him full as good a chance as I’d got. But even so he fell a little short. His feet only caught the edge of the shelf. He staggered, and seeing how it was, I braced my feet well as I could and hauled. He came in, sagged away, I bracing my feet—they were slipping. In a crack in the rock of the ledge I dug the fingers of one hand, the other hand to the line, and hung on. We were gaining; he was fairly on his feet, and I felt the strain easing, when a sea that swept up the side of the cliff like a tidal wave took him clear of everything. It would have swept me, too, but I gripped where I could get a hold, with the fingers of my one loose hand in the crack in the rocks, and hung on there—one hand to the crack and the other to the line—hung on so, supporting the weight of myself and the Skipper, until I felt my muscles getting hot and heavy and my breath coming fast. He was floundering somewhere on the edge of the cliff. I hollered to him, though feeling almost certain he was battered to pieces by then—‘How is it with you, George—how is it, man?’ but there was no answer. Again I hollered, and again no answer. And then, when I was satisfied that it was only the last ounce of strength I had left, I called out, ‘Help yourself, George—why don’t you help yourself?’ No answer. Once more I called, and once more getting no answer, I knew then he must’ve been beaten to death against the rocks, and that ’twas his dead weight was hanging to me. And yet I called once more to make sure. But still getting no answer, ‘The Lord have mercy on your soul, George Hoodley,’ I said, and let slip the line.”
Toward the end of Martin’s story it had become very quiet in the forec’s’le. Nobody said anything, neither broke in with a question nor offered any comment, until after a long silence, and then not until after Martin himself had repeated absently, as if to himself, and after a long indrawn breath, “And then I let slip the line.” Only then did he look around and seem to realize that he was not on the ledge off Whitehead.
“And after you cast off the line, what then, Martin?”
“Well,” resumed Martin, “the weight being gone made a great difference to me, but it was quite a while before I could stand on my feet. Even then I didn’t have the courage to look down right away, but climbing to one side to the very top of the cliff, I laid flat on my stomach and looked over the edge. ’Twas good light then, and I could see the body of George Hoodley below—tossing about like an eggshell, as if ’twas no more than sea-weed in a sea-way. And that was the end of it. Even if he warn’t dead at the time—even if he warn’t dead when I let go the line and it had to be me or him, it ought to’ve been him. If it was a friend, now—if it was Dan, say— I don’t know what I would do. I hope I’d have the strength not to cast loose the line.”
It was very quiet again. The boot-heels of the new watch on deck, the rasping of the booms as the vessel jibed, the whistle of the rising gale, the slap of the sea outside them, the Skipper’s voice on deck, the atmosphere, stirred Martin again. “’Twas a night like this we swung the Cromwell off to the west’ard. I shouldn’t wonder but what he’d be takin’ the mains’l off her soon, won’t he?”—this to the old watch, who had just come down the companion-way and was wringing his mitts out by the stove.
“The mains’l, Martin?” repeated the watch in surprise. “Why, the mains’l’s been off her for hours—she’s under a trys’l and jumbo.”
“The mains’l, Martin,” explained one, “was taken off her just after you and Johnnie were taken aboard. You were pretty tired and didn’t notice, maybe, at the time.”
“Lord, I must’ve been tired—not to know it when the mains’l’s taken off a vessel I’m in. There was never a minute the night the Cromwell was lost that I was tired as that. No, sir, not even when I laid on the cliff in the morning and looked down for George Hoodley’s body.”
“Speakin’ of that, Martin, didn’t some of the bodies come ashore?” This from the cook, who incidentally, feeling a little less hurried, was putting a few shovels of coal into the stove before he should turn in for the night.
“There were two bodies came ashore,” resumed Martin. “And that was a sad thing, too. I was going up to see if I couldn’t get some clothes to hide my nakedness, and maybe a pair of boots and a bite to eat and a bit of fire to warm up by somewhere, when I met a man. ’Twas good light by then. He was coming down a bit of beach behind the cliff. I told him my vessel had been wrecked, and I was all that was left of the crew. And he fixed me up as well as he could and came back with me to the beach, and there’s where the sad part came in. One of the Cromwell’s crew, Angus MacPherson, had been fishing out of Gloucester twelve years, and every fall he said he was going home to see the old people. I knew that as well as I knew that he’d been sending money home regularly to the old people. If it hadn’t been for Angus they’d’ve had a hard time of it, I cal’late, those twelve years. Well, he never went home, as he said; but here was the very place Angus came from, and this was the way he came home at last. That same afternoon I helped to bury him and to carry his old mother away from the grave when she couldn’t carry herself. God help us, but there’s hard spots in life, ain’t there?
“The other body that came up was the Skipper’s. And him I went to Gloucester with. And maybe there’d be no more to that, but getting into the Gloucester station, just as the train hauled up, who should happen to be at the station but the Skipper’s wife—his widow, then, of course. She knew well enough what had happened—everybody in Gloucester knew—the papers full of it the day before; but she didn’t know that I, the one man saved from the wreck, was on the train. Nobody knew. I didn’t send any word ahead. It was only three days since the vessel was lost, but was she crying her eyes out? Was she?—the—the— But I won’t say it.
“I goes up to her. ‘Mrs. Hoodley,’ says I, ‘I’ve brought home your husband’s body for burial.’
“D’y’ think she thanked me? Indeed, I saw by her face I’d made a mistake not to bury him with Angus down Whitehead way. And then she makes eyes at me— God’s truth—makes eyes at me, while the box that her husband’s corpse was in—and I knew what a battered, bloody corpse it was—was being lifted out of the baggage-car and put into a wagon. She gave orders then and there to have it taken straight to the graveyard; and when it was buried, mind you, she warn’t there—not even for decency’s sake. But going from the station while her husband’s body was being carried away, she held her head up and took note of who was looking at her. That’s what she liked—people to notice her. And looking at her I cursed George Hoodley for a fool that didn’t drown her if he was bound to drown somebody, instead of the man that he thought had wronged him. So there you have it—the truth of the Oliver Cromwell—the part that didn’t get into the papers.”
“What was it the papers did say about it, Martin?”
“Oh, what they said was pretty near right so far as it went, but they didn’t know the whole truth, and don’t yet. They said a word or two ’bout his leaving a wife. No great harm done in that, I s’pose. As for himself, they said he was thrifty, and hard-working, and careful—gen’rally careful, they might’ve said—and successful. And so he was, I s’pose. But I think I’ll be turning in, for after all there’s nothing like a good sleep, is there? Where’s Johnnie? Still asleep? Well, he’s the wise lad to be getting his good sleep ’stead of listening to my long-winded stories. Maybe if we all turn in there’ll be more of us good and strong to haul a trawl again to-morrow.” He picked up his pipe. It was cold. “And now there’s something. The man that’d invent something to keep a pipe going when you lay it down without smokin’ itself all up’d make a lot of money, wouldn’t he? And yet maybe it’s just as well for some of us. I cal’late I’ve smoked enough, anyway.”
“But, Martin, before you turn in, what’s become of Hoodley’s widow?”
“Oh, her? She and Dan Powell got married since, and they’re both getting all that’s coming to them. He’ll go out and get lost some day too, maybe, to get away from her. I wouldn’t be surprised, anyway, if he did. Only before he goes, being a different kind of a man from George Hoodley and knowing women of her kind better, he won’t worry so much about the man as about her. He’ll see that she’s put out of the way before he sails—or at least that’s my idea of it; or maybe it’s only that I half hope he will. But I think I’ll be turning in.”
He tucked his pipe away under his mattress, slipped out of his slip-shods, slacked away his suspenders, and laid his length in his bunk. He was about to draw the curtain, but his eye catching the eye of the watch, who was then hauling off his wet boots, he had to ask, “What’s it look like for the morning, Stevie—what’d the Skipper say?”
“He says that unless it moderates a bit more than it looks as if ’twill now, we’ll stay aboard in the morning.”
“Well, here’s one that ain’t sorry to hear that. I don’t mind sayin’, now that it’s all over, that hanging on to the bottom of that dory warn’t any joke to-day. I’m good and tired. ’Twas a night like this we headed the Cromwell to the west’ard. ‘Hell or Gloucester,’ says he, and hell it was for him. Good-night.”