The Deep Sea's Toll

by James B. Connolly

VI

With the bark under weigh, Sam Leary organized his crew. Four men to the pumps and four men to chop ice, and himself everywhere—alow and aloft, pumping water, chopping ice, and back to the stern to advise with Crump Taylor as to the course.

“How’s she doin’?” Sam would call.

“Fine! fine! Go on—all right. I think she’s liftin’ a mite.”

“Think so?” and Sam, much cheered, would dash around deck again.

The ice was a toilsome proposition. It made about as fast as they could clear it. “I see them harvesting ice on the Kennebec one winter,” said young Gillis, by way of drawing an extra breath—“horses and ice-cutters—and that’s what we ought to have here.”

“I suppose so,” retorted Sam, “and wagons to carry it off, and ice-boats sailin’ around with cushions and young ladies in furs in ’em, and a little automobile engine to work the pumps, so all you’d have to do would be to stand watch once in a while and go below and mug up whenever you felt like it.”

“There,” exclaimed Gillis, “I knew there was something I forgot! What we goin’ to do about eatin’? There’s no grub aboard this one.”

“None at all? How d’y’ know?”

“Oh, I been below.”

“Trust you. At eatin’ or watchin’ out for seas you’re a certificated master. ‘Here’s one I think is comin’ aboard,’ he says the other day, and she high as Mount Shasta ’most, and comin’ like a railroad train. And so no grub, eh? Well, the Skipper’ll have to manage some way to heave some aboard. But quit your conversational chattin’ now and keep pumpin’—and you others go to choppin’. Slack up, and the first thing you know this one’ll go down—plumb! like a rock—and then where’ll we be?”

“And our salvage, Sam—where’d that be, too, hah?”

“That’s so, our salvage. And ’tisn’t only salvage, but we want to show that tug-boat crowd, and those bark people that cast her off, that we c’n get her home. But how’s the pumps? Three thousand strokes yet? Isn’t that the devil, though? And ice enough aboard yet to make a winter’s crop for one of them Boston companies with the fleet of yellow wagons, yes. But keep to it, fellows, and by’n’by we’ll see about grub.”

Later, Sam paid out a long line, which Crump took aboard the Buccaneer and attached to a great hunk of beef, wrapped in four thicknesses of oilskins, and a can of hot coffee, tightly stoppered. The beef reached the bark somewhat cooled, but in bulk entire. As to the can, the stopper was buffeted out of that, and only salt water was there when Sam hauled it in.

“Now what d’y’ think of that, Skipper?”

“That’s the devil, ain’t it? But better luck next time.”

“Lord, I hope so!”

All that night the prize crew labored. The sails needed but small attention. Hauling in or paying out occasionally sufficed for them, she being on the one tack all night; but the hull of the bark setting so low made the trouble. The seas broke almost continuously over her, and added to that were the icy decks, with footing so uncertain that at any moment a man was likely to be picked up and hurled into the roaring black void. When two or three men had been hove into the lee scuppers, and from there miraculously rescued, Sam saw to it that thereafter every man worked with a life-line about him.

Sam himself was fettered by no lashings. His work called for too extensive an activity. He had to be not only aft, but forward, and aloft as well as below. They could hear him moving in the blackness, grabbing sheets or halyards, fife-rail or rigging, as he stumbled from one place to another. Regularly did he disperse words of cheer. “We’ll get home yet, fellows, and fool ’em all—and then! For you home-bound craft, you that got families, there’s the wife who’ll have new dresses and the children copper-toed boots, and a carriage for the baby, with springs in it. Man, but the time you’ll all have! And the time we’ll have, we privateers—hah, Gillis?”

“M-m!” murmured Gillis from the region of the port pump-brake, and forced new energy into arms that long ago he had thought were beyond revival.

Morning came, and with it an increase of wind and cold. Crump, from the end of the Buccaneer’s bowsprit, where he managed to hang by the aid of the jib-stay, hailed Sam and offered to put on fresh men.

“No,” said Sam, “we’ll stick it out a while longer.”

“But by’n’by it’ll be too rough, Sammie, and we won’t be able to take you off.”

“Oh, well then, no harm—we’ll stick it out some way.”

“All right, have your way,” and Crump went back to the deck of his vessel.

That afternoon it began to look bad for the bark and the men aboard her. It was her captain, refreshed from a twenty-four hours’ sleep below, who thoughtlessly passed his opinion when he, the first of his crew to revive, poked his head above the companion-way and was astonished by the sight of the ship that he thought he had scuttled. “What—she on top of the water yet!” From the bark his eyes roved to the derailed ice-covered deck of the little Buccaneer, then up to Sam and his toiling gang again. “Well, they are damn fools, ain’t they, to think they’ll ever get her home?”

He said that to Crump, who answered softly: “Now, Captain, I don’t want to jar your feelings any, but if you don’t do one of two things—go below and stay there, or draw the hatch over your face if you stay up here—then I’m afeared I’ll have to pick you up and tuck you away under the run or somewhere else where you can’t be heard for a while. Damn fools, eh?” snorted Crump, and in sheer derision of some people’s judgment spat several fathoms to leeward.

It turned out as Crump had predicted in the morning—still heavier weather for that afternoon and night. Just when Sam was demonstrating with a long pole that there was at least a foot less water in her hold, the wind and sea began to make. Crump offered to attempt to put fresh men aboard, but Sam waved him off. “No use, Skipper, runnin’ extra risk for the gang—you’d lose some of ’em. We’ll stick it out—we’ll make out some way.”

Throughout that night the men on the bark toiled terribly. Chop ice and man pumps it was, with not even time to crack a joke or indulge in occasional cheering reminiscence. There was not time during most of the night even to carry to the rail and throw to leeward the chopped ice. So they cut it into large blocks and piled them up two or three tiers high and there allowed them to stay until by and by, the bark heaving down sufficiently, away they went in a grand slide overboard. “Everybody sashay,” Sam would cry then, and waft them overboard with graceful arms. And yet, exhausting as was the ice-chopping, the pumping was even more so. It was so terribly monotonous to men accustomed to lively action. No variety to pumping water out of a ship’s hold; never a chance to put in a fancy stroke or shift hands, as in ice-chopping. Up and down—always that—up and down; and when a ship is making as fast as she is lightened, never an inch of encouragement from the sounding pole. Sam had to cut down the spells from an hour to half an hour, and finally to fifteen minutes, so terribly wearing did the grind become to the exhausted men.

Sam himself had no exuberant vitality after that second night; but the unobtrusive will was inflexible as ever, and he had ever an eye for those on the Buccaneer. “Skipper, ain’t she been strainin’ through the night?”

“A little bit, Sammie, a little bit.”

“More than a little, Skipper—there’s been too much pumpin’ aboard you, too, for a little strainin’. How many strokes?”

“Oh, maybe two thousand through the night.”

“I thought about that. And now let me tell you something, Skipper—that kind of work won’t do your vessel any partic’lar good. It’s a terrible strain. I know, I know—you can’t tell me a little vessel like the Buccaneer can be a rudder to a big logey rolling ship of this one’s size and not show signs of it. I misdoubt you’ll be able to hang on much longer.”

“Much longer? Let me tell you, boy, we’ll hang on till you or me goes under.”

“No, you won’t.”

“Why won’t we? Who’ll stop?”

“I will. See here.” Sam, balanced on the taffrail of the bark, poised a sharp-edged axe above the lines that held the Buccaneer astern. “One slash here, and one slash there, and you’re adrift.”

“You just try it—just let me see you try it, Sam Leary!” Crump in his wrath shook his fist at Sam, and followed that by furious orders to the Buccaneer’s crew. But that fit over, he shook his head. “I misdoubt that bark’ll live the night out. Blast her, blast her, I wish we’d never set eyes on her! What’s millions, let alone a few thousand dollars, to men’s lives—and men that’s sailed with you, and summer breeze or winter blow was always there when you wanted ’em? Damn you, Sam Leary, for an obstinate mule, but if ever I see you aboard this vessel of mine again you won’t leave it in a hurry again to go aboard any old sinkin’ hulk for prize money!”

And still the wind and sea increased; and just before dark Sam appeared at the stern of the bark with the sharp axe in his hand. “O Skipper, Skipper!” he called.

“Aye, Sammie.”

“Time to part company.”

“No, no, Sammie—not yet awhile.”

“Yes, now’s the time. There’s nine of us here and twenty-seven of you there. You lay tied to this one, and if we go down suddenly in the night, down you go, too.”

“No, no, Sammie. I’ll have two men with axes to the lines. I’ll cut, if I see you goin’—as sure as God’s above me, I’ll cut.”

“‘Twon’t do, Skipper. We could roll under in

“You just try it—just let me see you try it, Sam Leary.”

the dark afore you’d know it and you’d get whirled in——”

“And even so, Sammie—do you believe she’d draw us under?”

“Wouldn’t she? If you didn’t cut quick enough, say. And if she didn’t, you’d be caught aback, and in this breeze you’d capsize in a wink. No, ’twon’t do, Skipper. If we’ve got to go, we got to go, and you goin’ with us won’t help. And there’s nine of us and twenty-seven of you.” He looked all about him then—ahead, abeam, aloft, and once more astern at Crump. “So long, fellows, if we’re not here in the mornin’.” Two sharp slashes and the line parted; wide apart fell the big bark and the little schooner.

Crump, immediately he felt himself free, laid the Buccaneer alongside as near the bark as he dared, and he could dare a great deal.

“Keep off!” called Sam.

“No more than she is now, Sam. And if ever she should go down, tell the fellows to lash themselves to something or other that’ll float high, and we’ll be right there and maybe pick some of you up——”

Sam waved, the last time they were able to see so much as a hand waved ere black night rolled down on them.

From the little schooner all hands watched the night out for that spot in the darkness where they conceived the bark to be—that is, those that had time to spare from their work. Occasionally they could catch from her deck a call that they knew to be the voice of Sam with his word of cheer. They saw the attempts to light torches on her, the flash and flare, and then the almost immediate dousing when the sea washed aboard.

But fortune attends the brave. She was there in the morning, rolling worse than ever and lower in the water, but still afloat.

“Now, ain’t that amazin’?” demanded Crump of one after another of his crew. “Ain’t it amazin’?” he demanded of the captain of the bark.

That intriguing party could only shake his head at the miracle of it. “Still afloat! And when I left her I give her about an hour. I set her afire myself with my own hand,” he explained, “so nobody’d be misled into tryin’ to save her. ‘No salvage on her,’ I said. ‘Another hour and she’ll be burned to the water’s edge, and then she’ll sink and trouble nobody no more,’ I said. And a good job I thought it was, she was that dangerous-lookin’. And if I’d never set a match to her, she was leakin’ that bad, and that low in the water! And there she is still afloat! Well, that’s past me.”

That afternoon, the weather moderating, Crump sailed close up and once more offered to try to take off the worn-out gang of the now wildly sailing bark and put his own fresher men aboard.

“What!” exclaimed Sam—“leave her, and after we got her this far? Why we’re gettin’ to love the old hulk. Let’s finish the job, Skipper, so long’s we started it. Another day and we’ll be home.”

“Sam Leary, am I skipper, or you?”

“Why, of course you’re skipper, and if you order it—order it, Skipper—we got to obey.”

“Well, come aboard here.”

“How?”

“Rig up that taykle—the same that hoisted your gang aboard.”

“That taykle parted last night, Skipper, and it can’t be rigged.” If one can imagine an impudent, unshaven, hollow-eyed man in iced-up boots, beard, and oilskins, then it is possible to picture Sam Leary as he leaned against the mizzen-rigging of the wallowing derelict and smiled sweetly at his skipper. And imagine Sam Leary’s skipper, after a lot of spluttering, smiling back, and even at last admitting himself beaten.

“All right, go ahead. There’s no gettin’ past you, Sam Leary. Finish your cruise in her.”

And Sam Leary did finish his cruise in her. Three days later, such weary, weary men— But let that pass. Three days later—and in broad daylight it happened, so that their friends at home might share in the full glory of their achievement—they sailed, the bark leading and the little fisherman by way of a rudder astern, into the harbor of Gloucester, where they fancy they know a seaman when they see one.