II
At about the same hour that the Durlich and the Ice King had breasted Cape Cod Light, the American fisherman Buccaneer, Crump Taylor master, lay hove-to on the Western Banks. On her deck were the two men on watch, alternately looking out for the big seas, and hailing one to the other when a particularly high one threatened to break over her rail.
Young Arthur Gillis, standing forward, suddenly called out to Sam Leary, his watchmate, who was aft, “Here’s one coming aboard, Sam, I think.”
Sam turned, brushed the spray from his eyes with a wet woollen mitt, and had a look. He did not have to look twice. “Think she’s coming! Think!” and leaped for the lee of the mainmast, where he hooked his fingers to a couple of belaying-pins in the fife-rail. Another squint then from around the mast. “Think!” and with a toe to the fife-rail and both hands to the halyards of the furled-up mainsail, he began to climb. “And climb you, too!” Another glance between the mast and bolt-rope of the sail. “Think, do you? Climb’s all I got to say. Climb, you alabaster idjit, and don’t stop till you’re to the masthead! She’s a Himalaya mountain.”
Sam was by then strategically astraddle the main gaff, from where in comfort he could observe Gillis, who was to the lantern-board in the fore-rigging and still climbing. The sea struck her, and over rolled the little Buccaneer, over, over, till her masts were all but flat out on the water. Her waist must have been buried under ten feet of water, but Sam from his perch could manage to keep his head clear of the sea.
He saw that his watch-mate was safe. “Hi, there! are the companion-way hatches down?”
“I think so.”
“You think so! Some day you’ll think you’re alive, and you’ll wake up dead. Is she lifting any for’ard? Can you tell from where you are? Will she come up?”
“I think——”
“Blast you and your thinkin’. Do you ever do anythin’ but think? Don’t you ever know anything?”
“She is lifting.”
“All right, then. How’d you like to be below now, wonderin’ what’s happened her?”
“Not me. ’Tain’t so bad up here, is it?”
“‘Twon’t be—if she comes up.”
“Was this one ever hove down before, Sam?”
“Twice.”
“Worse than this were you ever?”
“Once ’twas worse. This same man in her—he’s a dog, is Crump—nothing jars him. Both mastheads under that time.”
“And come up, did she?”
“And come up, did she?” snorted Sam. “Ain’t she here, and ain’t I here? Watch out—she’s righting now.”
Up she came—a noble little vessel—slowly at first, but more rapidly as she began to free herself of the weight of water on her deck. Her final snap nearly threw Gillis from the rigging. A wild lunge, and he managed to retain his grip in time to save his life.
Sam had to hide his emotion at his mate’s close call. “Didn’t I tell you to hang on? Think you was in a swing at a picnic? H’m—there’s the Skipper bangin’—the hatch is jammed.”
Indications of action were proceeding from the cabin. Calm taps followed by quick strokes, and they seeming inadequate to proper results, one final impatient smash with the axe. Out came the dripping head and shoulders of Crump Taylor.
He surveyed the clean-swept deck. Disgust overcame him. “If that ain’t a clean job—what? I was hopin’ there’d be somethin’ left, but Lord! not so much as would make a boy’s size match to light a cigarette with. Gurry-kids, booby-hatches—not even a stray floatin’ thole-pin left of the dories.” After which he had time for the watch. “So there you are, eh? And which of you two guardian angels was it left that hatch open? Which? Nobody? It opened itself, I s’pose. It’ll get so a man won’t dare to turn in for a nap ’thout he has a rubber suit on. If we get that cabin dry in a month we’ll be doin’ well. And as fine a fire in the stove——”
“Wet the bunks, Skipper?” queried Gillis.
“Wet the bunks, you blithering idjit? Wet, is it?” He regarded Gillis more curiously, then gave him up; and stepping on deck, followed by the rest of the cabin gang, mingled in the waist with the crowd from the forec’s’le.
All hands gazed disconsolately about the deck, but, wise men all, allowed the Skipper to do the talking. “If this ain’t been the twistedest, unluckiest trip! Five weeks from home, and what’ve we got to show? Lost half our gear, and ’most lost four men and two dories. And now we’ve lost the dories altogether—and every blessed thing that ain’t bolted to her deck. Blessed if I don’t think when I get home I’ll go coastering! Yes, sir, coastering. Cripes, but look—even the rails gone from her! Look, will you, no more than the stanchions left to her.”
“A clean deck, Skipper, makes good sailin’,” put in Sam from the gaff.
“Does it, you—you— I b’lieve ’twas you, Sam Leary, left that slide open. A clean deck makes good sailing, do it? Well, try her on sailing, then. Come off that gaff, you menagerie monkey, and give the gang a chance to loose that mains’l. That’s what. Slap it to her and put for home. And drive her. If we can’t do nothing else, we c’n make a good passage of it.”
And with everything on, away went the deck-swept Buccaneer to the west’ard.