The Deep Sea's Toll

by James B. Connolly

VII

Of the sequence of events that threw that valuable prize into their hands the crew of the Buccaneer were not told at that time; but, later, young Gillis, having journeyed to Boston—there in emulation of more noted fishermen the more splendidly to disburse his prize-money—had come back minus his roll, but fat with information.

“And there I was, Skipper, spending my money like a—like a——”

“—a drunken fisherman.”

“No, that’s not how I was goin’ to put it, Skipper. But, anyway, there I was dispensin’ refreshment like a gentleman to a few friends I’d met, when along comes the skipper of the tugboat that wanted us to take his line and we wouldn’t, you mind. And he looks at me hard, and at last asks me was I really one of that gang o’ fishermen that brought the mahogany bark back to port. And I says, ‘Why ain’t I, really?’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘you look so diff’rent dressed up.’ And I said that naturally a man that’d been bangin’ around on the Banks for five or six weeks would look handsome in oilskins and a gale of wind. That kind o’ struck him amidships, I guess, for he said he didn’t mean anything by that, and goes on to tell me how he figured it cost him twelve hundred dollars chasin’ up that bark—in tows he missed that week; and his friend here—he introduced the other steamboat man—’d got a thousand dollars just for doin’ nothin’ but layin’ under the lee of the Cape for three days while it blew, and then for joggin’ around two days off the cape after it moderated. ‘Yes, and the man that paid me is down the wharf now,’ goes on the second steamboat man, ‘and I think he’d like to meet some of your crowd.’ And down the dock we went, and there he was. I forget what he looked like in the face, but he had the swellest fur coat, big enough to ’most make a mains’l for the Buccaneer and fur nigh long enough for reef-points on that same mains’l, and he shakes hands with me and says he didn’t know whether to be sore or not. And just then Sam come bowlin’ along, and he says, ‘This must be one of your crowd, too?’ ‘One!’ I says—‘one! Why, he had charge!’ and just then the first steamboat man he grabs Sam and says, ‘Well, I’ll be damned—why, you’re the fellow made the main-boom leap!’ ‘What!’ says fur coat, and has a good look at Sam. ‘Sure enough,’ he goes on, ‘you’re the kind of men I ought to have hired to salve the bark.’ ‘Hired? what d’y’ mean?’ says Sam. ‘Oh, nothing,’ says fur coat to that; ‘but I’m done with the salvage business. Let’s have a drink,’ and then they came so fast, reg’lar ring-a-ring-a-rounder fashion, that——”

“That the next thing you knowed you had an awful headache, and not enough money to pay for your ticket back to Gloucester.”

“Didn’t I, though! Trust me—me, Wise Aleck, goin’ to Boston ’thout a return ticket. But Sam didn’t.”

“No, trust Sam to go the whole hog. How much does he want?”

“Twenty, or twenty-five, he thought would do.”

“Only twenty-five, hah? Mod’rate, ain’t he? Well, give me his address and I’ll telegraph it to him. And how much do you want for yourself?”

“Oh, about fifteen cents for a drink’ll do me, unless——”

“Unless what?”

“‘Less you’d lend me ten on the next trip.”

“No, I won’t lend you ten on the next trip. I’ll give you ten dollars, if that’ll do you.”

“And why not lend me the ten on the next trip, Skipper?”

“Because there ain’t goin’ to be no next trip this winter. I’m cal’latin’ to stay ashore a while. This salvage business is good enough for me this winter. A couple of months ashore won’t hurt any of us. And then there’s the Buccaneer needs calkin’ where steerin’ that bark racked her, and new rail, and a few things around deck. And that’ll give that streak of hard luck a chance to run itself out. So here y’are. I s’pose you’ll go and blow that now as fast as you can?”

“I guess that’s right, too, Skipper,” and up the street rolled Gillis, blithely singing.

Crump gazed after him. “There’s a man oughter be glad he’s alive to-day. But no, he must try and keep up with men like Sam Leary that gets fat on excitement. Where’s that card o’ Sam’s he give me? H’m-m—Élite Hotel, Canal Street. And twenty-five dollars, eh? He must be cal’latin’ to come home in a automobile. Well, after all, I dunno but he’s entitled to automobiles at that.”

On Georges Shoals

OH, but Dannie Keating was the happy man that night! Under the light of the winter stars he drew her to him, and, with her head all but resting on his shoulder and his arm about her waist, they came down the shady side of the street together, and cared no more for the whistling wind than for whatever curious eyes might, from behind drawn blinds, be peeping. “If anybody’s rubbering, they’re all sore,” said Dannie when she protested, and again broke the night air with—he simply couldn’t help it—

“O sweetheart mine, I love thee,
And in all the sky above—see!
No heart like thine, no love like mine—
O sweetheart, but I love thee!”

Oh, but the blood was running riot within him. “Don’t I love you, Katie? Don’t I? And don’t you? And don’t we both?” and in the shadow of the steps of her home he drew her yet closer to him and kissed her—kissed her—a thousand times he kissed her before she could draw a free breath again.

“And in the morning, Katie, I’ll be putting out. You won’t see me, it’ll be so early. And it’ll be the last trip in that old packet, though maybe I oughtn’t say that of her that’s earned a good bit of money for me—earned enough to pay for the new one, Katie—the new one that’ll be ready for me the next trip in. And then, Katie dear, we’ll see—as good as anything of her length and beam out the port. And have you picked a name for her yet? Yes? The Dannie Keating, indeed! No, no, I’ve a ten times better one—and you’d never guess, I’ll bet. And she’ll be a vessel! Every cent that you saved for me, dear, went into her.”

“You saved it yourself, Dannie.”

“I saved? Lord bless you, Katie, how much would ever I save if I hadn’t turned it over to you as fast as I made it? How much did I save before I met you? A whole lot, warn’t it, now? Why, girl, the very oilskins I used to wear would be drawn against my next trip. But it don’t matter which of us—every cent the pair of us have saved has gone into her. And she’ll be a vessel, and then, if any man sailing out of this port thinks to make me take my mains’l in——”

“Hush, Dannie, don’t begin by being reckless. And I wish you weren’t going out in the Pantheon again. She’s so old, Dannie, and not the vessel for a winter trip to Georges.”

“Well, there is better. But she’s been a good vessel to me, dear, and that means to you, too. And only one more trip, and then the fast and the saucy—the handsome Katie Morrison.”

He parted from her after that, and from the shadow of the doorway she looked after him, her heart jumping and herself all but running after him. Up the street she watched him swing, so straight and strong. Oh, but the shoulders of him! and the spring to his every stride! Then she breathed a prayer for him, and went upstairs and to her bed.

But she could not sleep. All night long she tossed, whatever it was possessed her; and in the dawns she got up to watch by the window until he should come by on his way to the vessel.

He would come by, she knew. He never yet failed to go that half dozen streets out of his way so that he might look up at her window. Oh, the times that she watched from behind the curtains—before she knew him well, that was—and he never suspecting!

And he came at last. It was but five o’clock then, and dark—a winter morning. But she needed no light. Long before she could make out his figure she knew his footfall. How lightly he trod for so big a man—to his toes at every stride, as a strong man should. No doubt or hesitation there—a man to go winter fishing that, and enjoy every whistling breath of it. And he was singing now!

“O sweetheart dear, I love thee!”

When a man sings a love-song at five o’clock of a winter’s morning— She threw on her mother’s prized cashmere shawl and ran down.

“Dannie!”

Across the street he leaped, three strides from curb to curb and two more to the top step. “Katie— Katie—and this cold morning!”

“I couldn’t let you go by without saying good luck again, Dannie.”

“Oh, the girl!” He patted her head and drew her to him till he felt her lips making warm little circles against his neck.

“Dannie?”

“Yes, dear.”

“I wish you’d stay at home this trip. The Pantheon is old.”

“Old? So she is. Not the vessel the Katie’ll be—not by a dozen ratings. But Lord, Katie, I’ve been through too many blows in her for you to be worrying now, dear.”

“I know it, Dannie, and yet I wish you weren’t going this trip.”

“Well, I wish I warn’t myself. I’d like nothing better than to be staying this month home and watching the new one building—to overhaul every plank and bolt and thread of oakum that’s put in her. All day long watch her building, and every night come and tell you how she is getting on, the pair of us side by side before the fire. That’d beat winter fishing on Georges—fighting your way out of the shoal water when it comes a no’the-easter, and chopping ice off her to keep her afloat when it comes a no’wester. Yes, dear, it cert’nly would be a comfort—home here with you and watching the Katie building. But we can’t both have comfort, dear. You to home and me to sea we’ll have to be for many years yet, dear. I’ll go out this trip as I went out a hundred of others before. When I’m back—why, ’twill be worth the trip, dear, that coming back to you.”

“I’ll be at the dock this time, Dannie.”

“Then the old Pantheon won’t be too close to the slip before somebody’ll be making a flying leap for the cap-log. There, there, dear, this one trip, and then it’ll be Mrs. Dannie Keating and a month ashore—hah, what! There’s the girl! But God bless you, dear, and keep you till I’m home again.”

“Good luck, Dannie. There, but Oh, Dannie?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t go yet—just a minute more, dear.”

He patted her cheek and dried her eyes, and when she wouldn’t stop sobbing, he unbuttoned his coat and made her rest her head on his breast. Her ear against the blue flannel shirt, she could feel his heart. And it was a heart—like all of himself, full of strength. A cold winter’s morning it was, but here all afire. He was right—it would be a storm indeed when he went under. And yet—she could not help it—she broke into sobbing again.

“What’s it now?”

“Oh, Dannie, last night after I left you I heard my father telling that another vessel had been given up for lost. Did you know?”

“I’ve heard, dear.”

“And you never told me. You tell me the danger is small——”

“And ’tis small, dear. Sea room and sound gear, and a good vessel will live forever. Of course, accidents will happen—sometimes something parting at the wrong time, or being run down by a steamer in the fog—which was what happened, I don’t doubt, to the Tempest”

“Well, whether she was run down by a steamer, or caught in the shoals, or foundered in the heavy seas, isn’t it all the same to the wives and children of the Tempest’s crew? Think of young Captain Rush’s wife. What an awful thing for her, Dannie!”

“I know, dear, I know. But hush now—that’s the girl. And don’t worry for me. Though they come masthead high and toss us like we’re a pine chip, I’ve only to think of you, Katie, here in the doorway looking down the street after me—a last look for me before I turn the corner. Only to think of that, and I’ll laugh—laugh out loud at them. ‘Come on, you green-backed devils!’ I’ll say—‘come on! You’d overpower us, would you? Higher yet, high as the clouds, if you want, and the Pantheon she’ll ride you down.’ And she will, too, Katie—the old Pantheon’s a wonder hove-to. Yes, Katie, only last trip I hollered like that to ’em one night, and——”

“Oh, but you mustn’t, Dannie—it’s like boasting.”

“Boasting? No, but seamanship, girl—seamanship. It’s knowing, not guessing—knowing how to handle her. Just sail enough and wheel enough and your wake setting so’s to break the backs of them afore they can come aboard with their shoulders hunched up, spitting foam and roaring warnings—green-eyed like. ’Tis they boast and threaten, not me. And if ’tis to an anchor——”

“Well, dear, don’t talk that way again. And go now, while I’m strong to let you. Good luck, Dannie, and don’t forget——”

“Forget what, Katie?”

“You know what.”

“Oh, well, tell me just the same—don’t forget what?” And he laughed in advance to hear her say it. And she whispered it, and he came nigh to crushing her as he heard.

“And don’t I love you, too, Katie?”

“I know it, Dannie. Only with me, if you don’t come back I can never love anybody else again—never, never, never. I love you, Dannie.”

“And do I love you, Katie? Do I? Do I catch my breath and walk the deck on the long black winter nights because I can’t sleep—driving and fighting, days and nights? Tired out I ought to be, but no more tired than the roaring sea itself. Thinking of you, Katie, thinking of you. But I’m off now, dear, and don’t forget— No need to say what, is there? But tell it again? And sure I will, dear. Whisper”—and he retold it softly in her ear. And she, loving to love, loving to be loved, could not see to let him go for another while. “And will I come home again? Will I? Did I come a hundred times before? Or was it my ghost? Aye, a healthy ghost. But say a prayer for me just the same. Though what’s to be is to be. God bless you, Katie Morrison, and good-by.”

There was every promise of a wild night, and a wicked place to be on a bad night is Georges Bank in shoal water. To the westward, barring escape to deep water and good sea room when the northeaster blows, is a ridge of sand with no more than twelve feet of water. Over that the lightest draught vessel of the Gloucester fleet would not have bumped on a calm June day. So shoal was it and so heavy the seas in there that vessels have been known to pitch head first into bottom at times; their bowsprits have been found so stuck in the sand by fishermen who dared to cut close in on summer days. A vessel striking there was much worse off than if she struck in on a bare beach of the mainland, because while in either case she was sure to be battered to pieces, out there on Georges was no escape for the crew.

As a matter of fact, in very heavy weather a vessel would hardly live to strike the clear beach. She would be smothered long before that. In ten fathoms of water, say, with a big sea and strong tide running, there were rip waters to send the foam mast-high, to catch the vessel up and spin her about as if she were a top such as boys whip around in spring-time. Small wonder fishermen dread shoal water on Georges in a breeze; small wonder that the smart trawlers hustle dories in and bear off in a hurry when they find themselves in less than twenty-five fathoms and a breeze making; small wonder that even the hand-liners quite often jeopardize their chances for a good trip and up anchor and away when it looks too bad.

But there is not always time to get away. Sometimes the storm makes too suddenly. One might say that expert fishermen, above all others, should be quick to foresee a coming storm. They are quick enough, Lord knows—years of perilous observation have made them so. But there are those who won’t leave, come how it will. Every coming storm does not mean that the one terrible storm of years is at hand; and when it is so difficult to get back to just the right spot after a storm has scattered the fleet, why let go for what is only probability, not a certainty, of disaster?—especially when one is on a good spot. It is only one storm in a dozen years when good seamanship, fishermen’s instinct, sound gear, and an able craft do not avail. And what real fishermen would not risk the one storm in ten years? That is how they put it, and therein have some of them come to be lost.

This was a case of sudden storm and everybody aware that it was to be a wild night; but such fishing as they had been having that day was too tempting to leave. Certainly aboard the Pantheon they had no notion of leaving it. They only knocked off for the night when the tide got altogether too strong for them. With sixty fathoms of line in twenty-five fathoms of water their ten-pound leads struck bottom only twice before they came swirling to the surface again.

John Gould was the last to haul in his line. “You don’t often see the tide any stronger than this,” he observed to his skipper.

“That’s a fact, John, you don’t,” answered Dannie, together with John half turning a shoulder and ducking his head to the drenching sea that was coming aboard. “And some of the fleet’s takin’ notice, too. There’s old Marks and Artie Deavitt and McKinnon and Matt Leahy givin’ her more string. That’s what they think of it already. M-m— Lord, smell that breeze!” He took another look about. “Better have another look for’ard, John, there, and see she’s not chafin’ that hawser off. All right? That’s good.”

A moment more and he shook his head, and five minutes later called all hands. “Might’s well give her a little more string, fellows. Didn’t intend to give it to her so soon, but this lad up to wind’ard, I see he’s givin’ her some more, and we’ll have to put out more or he’ll be on top of us. I cal’late he’s got half a mile of hawser out now. A man that figures on gettin’ worried so soon ought to keep off by himself somewhere.”

That was at eight o’clock, with the tide racing toward the shoals before a fifty-mile northeaster. There was not a great deal of sea by then. There never is when tide and wind run together and it is the first of a breeze. But when that tide turns!

“Yes, sir, when this tide turns—if anybody wants to see somethin’ superfine in the way of tide-rips, right here’ll be the place,” remarked the Skipper, and, seeing that the extra length of hawser was paid out, dropped below for a mug-up. “There’s no tellin’ when we’ll get a chance again for a cup of coffee,” he said. “‘Twill be a long night, I’m thinkin’. But what’ll that mess be, cook, when it’s done cookin’?”

“Tapioca puddin’, Skipper.”

“That’s good.” He helped himself to a mug of coffee, saying no further word, barely giving ear to John Gould, a miraculous man, who had survived thirty-five winters on Georges, and was still rugged as oak.

“When our old cook used to make tapioca puddin’, ’twas a sure sign of heavy weather comin’, warn’t it, Skipper?”

The Skipper barely inclined his head, and John turned to his less preoccupied mates. “That last big breeze—let’s see. Yes, ten year ago this month. I’ll never forget that gale. Nobody will, I cal’late, that was out that night. The Skipper here was in this same vessel—she twenty year old then, though only the Skipper’s second year as skipper in her. The glass was down that afternoon, I mind, but the sea smooth—that is, for that time o’ year. But by ten that night! Lord, what a night that was! Wind! and sea! Forty vessels and five hundred men in the hand-linin’ fleet that night, and every third man and vessel gone by the mornin’. God, how they did smash into each other! And their spars—like fallin’ trees when they’d come together in the dark.”

John passed from narrative to reflection. “Some widows made that night, warn’t there, Skipper?”

“Aye, John—and some maids widowed.” The Skipper did not even smile at his own pun.

“There ought to be a law, I think,” continued John, “to keep vessels from anchorin’ so close to each other. Take it that night. If the fleet warn’t bunched up so close there wouldn’t ’a’ been half so many lost. Yes, sir, there oughter be a law, don’t you think, Skipper?”

“What?” The Skipper came out of his abstraction. “What—oh! a law, eh? And who’d come out here to see it lived up to? Gover’ment vessels? No, John, no law would do. Where there’s good fishin’ there men and vessels will go, and devil take the risk. I know we oughtn’t be huddled in here like we are. I know that if another such breeze as that one ten years ago hits in here to-night there’ll be just as many of us lost as there was that night. Yes, sir, just as many.” He stopped by the companionway to button his sou’wester under his ear—“Good pie that, cook. I hope the tapioca’ll taste as well in the mornin’”—drew on his mitts, and went on deck.

Down the companionway soon came his voice. “Everybody up, and give her a little more string. There’s one or two of them beginnin’ to drift a’ready.”

They heard his voice roll along the deck then. “Aft there, call all hands to give her more hawser—and the chain with it!”

They did so, noting as the chain rattled out that the wind had increased perceptibly. “When this tide’s settin’ back there’ll be some sea kickin’ up here,” they heard their Skipper say. And then his voice again—from aloft this time: “Give her more yet—another fifty fathom.” Down he dropped to the deck with, “It’s goin’ to be hell around here to-night! If ’twas some vessels I’ve been in—or if ’twas the Katie Morrison now, that’s not finished—it’d be slip cables and out of here—and in a hurry. But not in this old packet—’twouldn’t do. She’d most likely split in two tryin’ to beat out, and cert’nly she wouldn’t get back here in a week if the wind hauled. No, sir. But what’s this?” He held up a bare palm.

The entire crew began to sniff the air then, and, holding out their palms, to catch and taste whatever the wind had brought.

Snow! A howling no’the-easter in shoal water on Georges, the vessel dragging—And snow!

The Skipper made no comment. Even after he had made certain of it, he said nothing, nor made any new move—only stood by the fore-rigging and tried to map out in his mind the location of the others of the fleet.

“And now let’s see—we’re pretty nigh the most westerly of the bunch. Jack Kildare, he’s about east by south. If he does drag he’ll most likely miss us. Simms—the Parker—he’s about east by no’the and maybe two cable-lengths away. She won’t drag, I’m sure—rides easy as a gull. Jim Potter, he’s about right to fetch us—no’the-east—and those two that dropped in just to the no’the-ard of him at dark to-night—they might, too. Any of those three’ll get us in short order if they get to draggin’.” Again he held his palm up. “Gettin’ wetter—and thicker. There’ll cert’nly be hell to pay round here to-night, and the old Pantheon—but, Lord, she’s been through too many blows to——”

The vessel leaped under him, sagged back and started to rush forward again. His quick ear caught the first of the crunching. “Stand clear of her for’ard!” he warned, and himself jumped to the protection of the foremast, as through her bow planking they heard her chain go zipping.

A moment of almost a dead stop, a breath of portentous quiet, and she swung broadside to the sea. “Wa-atch out!” roared the Skipper. Aboard came the sea in tons. “Hang on! hang on!” called one to another. All clung grimly to whatever was nearest. It passed on, submerging everybody, but leaving the vessel still right side up.

“Everybody all right?” called the Skipper.

Each for himself answered—all but one.

“Henry!” called the Skipper. “Henry Norton!”

No answer. And again no answer.

“I cal’late he’s gone, Skipper.”

“He must be. God help him!”

“And his folks, Skipper—he’s the third of his family been lost out here.”

“And there’ll be more before the night’s over,” muttered one at the Skipper’s elbow.

“Maybe there will,” snapped the Skipper, “but in God’s name wait till it happens. Below there— Oh, cook, hand up a torch, and let’s see what’s to be done.”

“Chain parted, Skipper.”

“Well, it don’t take any magician to see that. But let’s see what else.”

The chain, before parting, had torn through her iron-bound hawser hole, and three of the stout stanchions had gone as if they were cardboard.

“Some tide that!” observed old John Gould, and his voice was that of a connoisseur in tides.

“Yes,” admitted the Skipper. “But go aloft, one of you—you, John—and see if you can see anybody comin’. There’ll be somebody down on us soon. And the rest of you stand by to put sail on her. It’ll be too much to expect that single hawser to hold her. And go aft, you Dick, and take a soundin’.”

Came John’s voice from aloft. “Can’t see half a length away.”

“All right, come down.” He turned toward the stern. “What water?”

“Twenty fathom.”

“Twenty? Drifting as fast as that? Put sail on her—the big trys’l first. Jib? No, not yet. Give this one too much headsail and she’ll be into the hummocks before you could half put the wheel down on her.”

“Nineteen fathom.”

“Nineteen? All right, boy, keep soundin’, and loose your jib now, fellows.”

“Eighteen fathom, Skipper.”

“Eighteen fathom? Man, I think I hear it roar,” observed one.

“I hear it, too. Is that the surf?” came from another.

“‘Is that the surf?’ Who’s that damn fool? Oh, it’s the new man. Well, maybe you’re part way excusable. Yes, that’s the surf under your lee. If ’twas light you could see it break. But don’t mind that, boy— I’ve heard it before and come away.”

“Maybe you have,” commented one unthinkingly, “but there’s not been too many that’s been near enough to hear it and got home to tell about it—not too many.”

“For God’s sake, choke that croaker, somebody! And drive her, fellows—no time to lose now.” The Skipper was all over her deck. “And stand by with the axe, you Fred, so when we have to, and I give the word, cut and we’ll run for it.”

“I s’pose she couldn’t stand the mains’l, Skipper?”

“No, John, she couldn’t—not this old hooker in this breeze. Just the extra weight of that boom outward now and over she’d flop, sure as fate. She’s thirty year old, this one. Lord, if ’twas only the Katie, wouldn’t we go skippin’ out of here! But go aloft again, John.”

In the whirl and thickness of snow they tried to follow John as he climbed the rigging, swinging and clinging, fighting his way up.

John’s voice, but too muffled to be understood, came down to them. One man jumped into the rigging and passed the word along.

“He says a ridin’ light to wind’ard—two of em.”

“To anchor are they? Make sure.”

An exchange of words above. “John says he thinks one of ’em’s driftin’—only her ridin’ light shows, but the other’s just showed a side-light—her port light.”

“Port light? That’s bad for us. Look sharp to the wheel. And for’ard, who’s got the axe—you, Fred? Well, get up the other axe and stand by with it you, Tim. Slash to it, both of you, when I give the word. Can you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

He stepped back to the break and tried to catch John’s voice for himself. Not getting it easily, he jumped into the rigging. “What’s that last—of that one sailin’——”

“Another vessel driftin’ down—and another—two draggin’ and two sailin’, but not makin’ much headway. An awful wind aloft, Skipper.”

“Aye, John—and below, too. But what’s that? Hell!” He dropped to deck and leaped to the wheel. He was just in time to dodge the side-sweep of a vessel’s bowsprit as she swirled by his quarter. Another moment and it caught the stern davits, the dory slung up to them, and then the end of the Pantheon’s main boom. Cr-s-sh!—cr-s-sh! The bowsprit of the stranger cracked sharp off, the Pantheon’s dory went to kindlings, and her boom smashed at the slings. “Hi-i! you blasted loon, where you goin’?”

“Hi-i!” came back a yet hoarser voice—“couldn’t help it—parted both cables.”

“That’s bad——”

“Yes—good-by.”

Dannie fanned the snow from his eyes. “If that ain’t hell—talkin’ to men you can’t see and they driftin’ away to be lost! And the dory gone, though it’s more than a dory we’ll need to-night.”

“Oh, Skipper!” came from aloft again.

“Aye, John.”

“Near’s I can make out, there’s four or five vessels bearin’ down——”

“Close by?”

“Pretty close—yes, sir.”

“Wait— I’ll be with you.” Aloft climbed the Skipper. ’Twas a fight to go aloft, such was the force of the wind and so wildly swayed the rigging of the old Pantheon.

From the deck the crew gazed after the Skipper till they could see his swaying shoulders no more. Soon he came flying down, and after him came John, both by way of the snow-slushed, slippery halyards.

“Cut!” roared the Skipper before he had fairly hit the deck—“and at the wheel there, let her pay off.”

“Cut—cut!” Away went the twelve-inch rope in stubborn convolutions through the hawse-holes. Around came the Pantheon, and by her bow came driving a great white shadow. White sail against white snow on a black night she came driving on, and only a memory of a dim light to mark her when the shadow of the sails could not be made out.

“No side-lights—draggin’?”

“Aye, and draggin’ fast as some vessels ever sail.”

Again a shadow, and from out of the night inarticulate voices—voices that grew in volume, rang loud, louder yet—not so loud, muffled, yet more muffled, quiet again—voices as if from another world, not to be clearly distinguished. “Did anybody catch what they said?”

“Nobody? Well, that’s their end.”

“God help ’em, yes.”

“Sixteen fathom, Skipper.”

“Sixteen! We cert’nly can’t be weatherin’ it much.”

“Lord, I should say not. And seas to swallow us alive. Looks bad for us, too, don’t it, Skipper?”

“Looks bad for who? Dry up! There’s a whole ocean to the east’ard of us—how’s she pointin’?”

“Su’the-east by east.”

“Su’the-east by east? That the best the old whelp can do? That means she’ll point no better than no’the by west when we jibe her. Try and hold her up.”

For a moment the snow lifted and they caught points of light—a red and a green and several white lights. “Most of ’em still to anchor. I hope none of ’em get in our way.”

The snow fell again, and once more John Gould went aloft.

“One on the starb’d tack, Skipper.”

“Aye, don’t mind her—only on the port tack.”

“Aye. Here’s one, wherever in the devil she came—hardalee, hardalee!”

“Hardalee!” The Skipper jumped to the wheel and helped to hold it down. “Where’s she now?”

“I’ve lost her. Thick o’ snow again. Here she is—and another on the other tack.”

“God in heaven! one on each tack?”

He got no further. A hail came from somewhere aloft, and yet not from the Pantheon’s masthead—a voice, not John’s, called out something or other—a dozen voices called—a roar of voices mingled with the shriek of the wind, and then slipped by another dread shadow.

“Fifteen fathom, Skipper.”

“Aye,” breathed the Skipper. He made out the shadow, not altogether with his eyes—the deeper senses do the work on such nights—and let her pay off. “But we can’t run this way long—we’d be smothered in the shoal water.” Again he tacked, again in a shadow of sails. “She’s in the same fix,” he muttered, and tacked again. No shadow pressed and he drew breath, but hardly a whole breath, when again voices, from aloft as well as from across the water. All about him he looked to make out. When he did make out anything there were two of them—one to each side. There was nothing to do, then, but try to outrun them both. He eased off his sheets and away went the old Pantheon.

“Running to perdition if I hold this long.” He could hear the roar quite plainly now, and, hearing it, groaned. “But I’ve got to keep clear. God! why don’t they hold up?”

And then it came—from straight ahead and so suddenly that no human power could avert, no quickness of hand or eye or trick of seamanship or weatherliness of vessel could avail. Head on to the old Pantheon it was—a phantom of white above and a band of black below showed through the driving snow. One awful wait that was worse than the actual collision, and then it came. The Pantheon cut into the other’s topside planking, her bowsprit bore through the other’s rigging and foresail—cr-s-sh!—cr-s-sh!—the smash of breaking timbers, the tearing of stiff canvas, and above all the howl of the wild gale.

Men hailed out questions, oaths, and words that no man could understand. They held so, the bow of one into the waist of the other, long enough for men from the Pantheon to leap aboard the other and then to leap back. “Man, she’s worse than we are!” shouted one, as back he came. The sea poured in by way of the great gashes. A moment more and it poured unchecked over the Pantheon’s rails. Then the spars of the stranger went over the side and across the Pantheon’s deck. Somebody moaned that he was hurt, but there was no time to find out who. The stranger’s dory bobbing up alongside, one man made a wild leap for it, fell short, and that ended him, though that mattered not much—he had no chance either way. Others—wraith-like voices—were heard calling from the sea before they went under smothering. One man called to a mate, “Take hold, boy,” and both rode grimly to their death, cresting high the great seas, astraddle the Pantheon’s chain-box.

Dannie clung to the wheel, hoping that the wind and sea would carry the Pantheon clear, and that, being ready, he might force her off. But not so. They did come apart, but apart they settled even more rapidly. The stranger went down stern first; the Pantheon stern hove high, pointed her bow after the stranger, and began to settle that way, bow first.

The Skipper was alone at the wheel when she made her plunge, and defiantly clung to her till he was carried far under. He rose to the surface and caught his breath. And that breath he gave to the Pantheon as he saw her mast-heads plunging. “You were a good vessel to me,” he murmured, even as the sea tossed him far away. He reached for something in the swash and found he had the wheel-box. He grasped it, but it was all smooth-sided—no place for his hands to get a grip, and the terrible tide rips tore him loose. One sea, and another, now high where the heavens touched the crests almost, and again in the depths and roarings he was cast like the flying spume itself.

Enveloped in foam so thick that even when his head was above the surface he could not breathe fairly, he still tried to justify that last catastrophe. “And yet you were a good vessel to me.”

There is always a last sea, and that last sea caught him fair and overbore him. He knew it when it came. The physical agony was by then and the soul surmounting all. Not till then did he indulge himself so far as to let his heart dwell on the memory of her as he last saw her, standing in the doorway when he turned the corner. For the last time he had turned that corner. Ah, but she was beautiful—and was it to lose her he came to sea?

The roar of Georges Shoals was in his soul. He began to hear the voices then, voices of his own men—he knew them—and voices he had never heard before—voices, no doubt, of men lost in these long years of toil in waters where the sands below are white with lost men’s bones. Her voice he heard, too—heard it above all. “Dannie, Dannie,” it whispered, plain as could be. By that he knew that she needed no newspaper to tell her—even at that moment she knew—knew, and was suffering. And all her life she would have to suffer. And so it was “God help you, Katie Morrison!” that parted his foam-drenched lips at the last.

The Katie Morrison was launched and rigged, but ’twas another young and hopeful skipper that sailed her out to sea.

Patsie Oddie’s Black Night

“To hell with them that’s saved,” said he—
“Here’s to them that died.”

’Twas Patsie Oddie said that—that is, said it first. Many people have repeated it since, but with Patsie Oddie it was born. He said a whole lot more—enough for somebody to make a song of—but the two lines quoted above serve to sum the matter up.

It was a winter’s morning he said it. Cold? Oh, but it was cold. Wind from the north-west and blowing hard—a sort of dry blizzard. Every vessel coming in had stories to tell of what a time they had to get home and how long it took them.

“It’s been tack, tack, tack from St. Peter’s Bank, till we fair chafed the jaws off the boom of her,” said Crump Taylor.

“Four days and four nights from Le Have,” said Tom O’Donnell. “Four days and four nights for the able Colleen Bawn to come three hundred miles. Four days and four nights to butt her shoulders home—and glad to get home at that.”

That was the story from all of them when they came in. And they were sights coming in, too. Ice? You had to look half-way to the mast-head to see anything but ice. Anchors, bows, dories in the waist, cable on deck—all was solid as could be—all on deck from rail to rail and clear aft to the wheel—ice, ice, ice.

The crew of the Delia Corrigan were putting her stores aboard. Her skipper, Patsie Oddie, was standing on the dock and looking her over. He hummed a song as he looked. This was just after he had painted her black. She had come to him black, but in a run of bad luck he had painted her blue; and having worked off the bad luck, he had painted her black again. Now she looked beautiful—black and beautiful—and able! Let no man cast eye on the Delia and not praise her ableness while Patsie Oddie was by.

All at once he called out to one of his men: “Martin, let’s take a walk up the street.” And Martin went gladly enough.

First they had a drink, and then Patsie stepped into the shop of what all fishermen rated the best tailor in Gloucester. “Measure me for a suit of sails,” was his word of greeting there. “Give me a Crump Taylor vest, a Wesley Marrs jacket, and a Tom O’Donnell pair of pants, and all of the best. And mind the mains’l.”

“The overcoat, Captain?”

“The overcoat? What else? Isn’t she the biggest sail of all? Mind when you come to that—put plenty of duck to it, the best and finest of duck. And good stout duck, double-ought, like what gen’rally goes into a fores’l. And the best and finest of selvin’ and trimmin’s along the leach and the luff and in the belly of it. And let it hang low—the latest fashion, same’s you made Crump Taylor. Crump steps ashore a while ago with one down to the rail. He tells me he has to sway it up every now and then to keep it off the deck. Five weeks to-day I’ll want it. Mind now, the best.”

“And which way do you go now, Captain?” said the tailor when he had taken the big skipper’s measure.

“To the east’ard,” said Patsie.

“But not to-day?” said the tailor. “Too blowy, ain’t it?”

“Maybe,” said Patsie, “you’d like to go skipper o’ the Delia Corrigan? S’pose now you go on with that suit, and let me go to the east’ard. And you tell me what’ll be and I’ll pay you now. How much?”

“Will you go as high as forty-five dollars for the suit and sixty-five for the coat, a hundred and ten dollars in all, Captain?”

“Yes, and a hundred and forty-five and a hundred and sixty-five and three hundred and ten in all, if need be. The best of cloth I want, mind, and double-ought in the big coat—no less. It’s to be a weddin’, maybe.”

“Best man?” said the tailor.

“I dunno,” said Patsie, “whether ’twill be best man or second-best man, but that’s the way of it now. Maybe I’ll know more about it afore we put out. But if I don’t call for it next trip, you c’n wear it yourself. Here’s your money. Come along, Martin.”

Down the street he stopped at a jeweller’s shop. “A diamond ring I want, and I don’t know much about them.”

He looked over an envelopeful that the salesman emptied on to the glass case. “But I don’t want any red or yellow or fancy colors—a good white one I want. Now here’s one. A hundred dollars? Something better than that. This one now? A hundred and fifty? And this one? A hundred and seventy-five, is it? And here’s a two hundred one, you say? But here’s a better one, isn’t it? It’s a bigger one, anyway. Only a hundred and eighty? Like men, aren’t they—the biggest not always the best? Like men, yes—and like women, too—the showiest not always the best. I’ll take this one, the two hundred and fifty dollar lad. Martin, how do you like that? Would a young woman be pleased with that, d’y’ think?”

“The woman, skipper, that wouldn’t be pleased with that ought to be hove over the rail.”

“Well, I hope we won’t have to heave nobody over the rail. But pick out a little somethin’ for yourself, Martin-boy. There’s somethin’ there’d go fine in your necktie when you’re ashore. Hush, hush, boy—take it, and don’t talk. And now”—to the man behind the case—“how much all told? This little pin for myself, too.”

“Two hundred and fifty, and twenty for your friend’s pin, and the little thing for yourself, five dollars— I’ll throw that in Captain—two hundred and seventy. And if you have a mind to change that diamond any time, we’ll be willing to give you something else for it.”

Patsie looked down at the floor and then up at the salesman. “I don’t think I’ll want to change it. I mayn’t have any use for it, but whether I do or not, you won’t see it back here any more. Let’s be movin’, Martin.”

He led the way out and away from Main Street and stopped on a corner. “Martin, do you wait under the lee of this house whilst I jogs on a bit. ’Tisn’t long I’ll be gone. Swing off when you see me headin’ back, and wait for me at the bottom of the hill.”

Martin waited, but not for long. It seemed to him that he had taken no more than a dozen drags of his pipe when he saw his skipper coming back. Down the hill went Martin, and after him came his skipper.

Not a word said Patsie Oddie until they were on Main Street again. Then it was only, “The stores’ll be aboard by now, don’t you think, Martin?”

“They ought to, Skipper.”

“Then we’ll put out.” He threw a glance at the sky and then a look to the flag on the Custom House as they turned off Main Street to go down to the dock. At the head of the dock they met Wesley Marrs.

“Hulloh Patsie,” said Wesley.

“Hulloh Wesley,” said Patsie. “Go on to the vessel, you, Martin, and tell them to make sail. I’ll follow on.” Then, when Martin had gone on ahead, “When’d you get in, Wesley?”

“Just shot in.”

“How’s it outside?”

“Plenty of the one kind,” said Wesley. “Anybody that likes it no’west ought to be pleased. Tack, tack, tack, for every blessed foot of the way. All but put in to Shelburne once to give the crew a rest. Night and day, tack, tack, tack— I cal’late the rudder post’s worn ’most out. Yes, sir. And never a let-up choppin’ ice—had to, to keep her from sinkin’ under us. Fourteen days from Fortune Bay that I’ve run in fifty-odd hours in the Lucy with the wind to another quarter. Man, but I was beginnin’ to think the baby’d be grown a man afore I’d see him again. Well, I’m off, Patsie.”

“Where to?”

“Where to? Home, of course.”

“Oh, home?”

“Of course—the baby and the wife. Patsie, but you ought to marry. You’ll never be half a man till you marry.”

“Yes? And who’ll I marry?”

“Oh, some nice, fine girl. Man, but there’s whole schools of girls’d jump to marry you—whole schools, man. Heave your seine and you’d get a deck-load of ’em—or a dory-load, anyway.”

“No, nor a dory-load, nor a single one caught by the gills in mistake—me that has no more learnin’ than a husky out o’ Greenland. Not me, Wesley, that can’t read my own name unless it’s wrote in plain print, and that c’n only find my way about by dead reckonin’. I c’n haul the log, and, knowin’ her course and allowin’ for tides and one thing or another that’s set down and the other things that aren’t set down, but which a man knows nat’rally——”

“Yes, Patsie, and knows it better than nineteen out o’ twenty that has sextants and quadrants, and can run them—what do they call ’em—sumner lines?”

“Well, maybe as well as some, Wesley. But, Wesley, girls aren’t lookin’ for the likes o’ me. Patsie Oddie’ll do to handle a vessel, maybe, and he’ll take her where any other man that sails the sea’ll take her, and he’ll bring her home again. And he’s good enough to get the fish and bring them to market, to hang out in a blow, to carry sail till all’s blue, and the like o’ that. But his style don’t go these days, Wesley. No, there may be schools o’ girls swimmin’ around somewheres, but they’re divin’ the twine when Patsie Oddie makes a set. Anyway, it wouldn’t make any difference to me if whole rafts of ’em was to come swimmin’ alongside and poke their heads up and say, ‘Come and take me.’ I’m one o’ them queer kind, Wesley, that only goes after one girl. And I set for her—and didn’t get her.”

Wesley said nothing to that for a while. Then it was: “Well, Patsie, never mind. I didn’t think when I spoke first. I’ll say, though, that I don’t think much of the girl that wouldn’t stand watch with you if you asked her. If she wanted a man, Patsie, I’m sure I don’t know where she’d get a better one—that’s if it’s a man she wanted. If she don’t want a man, but only a smooth kind of arrangement that plays a banjo or c’n stand up to a pianner and sing, ‘I loves yer, I loves yer,’ or some other damn mess—and the same to every girl that looks his way—one of the kind that’s hell ashore, but can’t take in sail in a gale without washin’ a couple of men over the lee-rail, one of the kind that gives this way and that to every tide that ebbs and flows, like a red-painted whistlin’ buoy—why, then, maybe somebody else’d look prettier swashin’ around for the people to look at and make use of. Maybe,” went on Wesley, “she’d take a notion to some bucko like Artie Orcutt that just lost the Neptune. Heard of it?”

“’Twas in the papers this mornin’, so they tell me. I’m not much of a hand to read papers, you know.”

“Well, he lost his vessel and ten of his men, and ought to lose his papers. With half a man’s courage and a quarter of the seamanship any master of a vessel oughter have, he’d’ve saved his vessel and all his men. He c’n thank the Lucy Foster’s ableness and the courage of some of her crew that a soul of them got home at all. They came home with us—all but Orcutt—from Fortune Bay. He was goin’ to get a passage over to St. Pierre and wait a while there.”

“My!” said Patsie, “that’ll be a bad bit o’ news to Delia.”

“What!”

“Yes, Orcutt is the man. I think ’tis him, anyways. I know he used to hang around there when I was to sea—and a word dropped this mornin’— It must be somebody; and who but him?”

Wesley looked at Patsie. “Well, if it is him, may the Lord forgive me for pickin’ him off. I wish I’d knowed it, though maybe, after all, I couldn’t ’a’ managed it to leave him and take the others. Oh, well, it’s all in the year’s fishin’. He’s lucky. Maybe he’ll live to teach this girl of his what a man oughtn’t be, though I don’t suppose you’ll care so much about it by the time she’s learned the lesson. Man, but I can’t believe Delia Corrigan’d throw you for Artie Orcutt. No, Patsie, I can’t. But here’s the Anchorage fair on our beam. What d’y’ say to a little touch, hah? A pretty cold morning, Patsie.”

“I don’t mind, Wesley.”

“What’ll it be to, Patsie?” Wesley raised his glass and waited for Patsie. They were leaning against the rail by that time.

“What to? Oh, to the Neptune’s gang—the whole ten of ’em.”

“Sure enough—the whole ten. Here’s a shoot—but hold up. Which ten, Patsie—the ten lost or the ten saved?”

“The ten saved? To hell with the ten saved!” said Patsie—“the Lord’s looked out for them that’s saved.” Patsie raised his glass: “Here’s to them that died.”

“Them that died? H’m—and yet I don’t know but what you’re right. They’ve got their share, come to think—you’ve got it right, Patsie. Here’s to them that was lost.” And Wesley gulped his liquor down.

“And which way, Patsie?” Wesley inquired after the return drink.

“To the east’ard,” said Patsie.

“To the east’ard, is it? Well, I don’t need to say fair wind to you, for you’ve got it. This wind holds, and you’ll be heavin’ trawls in that fav’rite spot of yours on Sable Island no’th-east bar in forty hours or so. I cal’late you’ll keep on fishing there till some fine day you get caught. Well, good luck and drive her, Patsie, till you’re back again.” And Wesley swung off for his wife and baby.

“Drive her,” Wesley had said, and certainly Patsie Oddie drove her that trip to the east’ard. Before a whistling gale and under four whole lower sails the Delia went away from Eastern Point and across the Bay of Fundy like a ghost in torment. Two or three new men, not yet in full sympathy with their skipper, began to inquire what it all meant. They could see the sense of driving a vessel like that on a passage home, but going out!

On that passage to the east’ard only the watch stayed on deck where a man had his choice—the watch and the Skipper—the Skipper walking the quarter and dodging the seas that came after her between little lines of some song he was humming to himself. Every man on coming below after a watch spoke of the Skipper and his singing, but only a word did they catch now and then to remember afterward.

“Out in the snow and the gale they rowed,
And no man saw them more,”

was what one caught.

“And a fine thing that, to be singing on a cold winter’s night with a howling gale behind and the seas breaking over her quarter. Yes, a fine thing, that,” said the crew, in the security of the cabin below.

“And no man saw them more——”

Some men lost in dories the skipper must have been talking about, and after that:

“And should it be the Lord’s decree
Some day to lay me in the sea,
There’ll be no woman to mourn for me—
For that, O Lord, here’s thanks to Thee!”

under his breath generally, but his voice rising now and then with the wind.

Martin Carr, who happened to be at the wheel just then, made out that snatch of his skipper’s song as he walked the tumbling quarter. And he kept walking the quarter, walking the quarter—and a cold night it was for a man to be walking the quarter—a word to the watch once in a while, but saying nothing mostly, except to croon the savage songs to himself.

Surely nothing peaceful was coming out of that kind of a song, thought watch after watch, bracing themselves at the wheel to meet each new blast of the no’-west wind.

In the morning he was still there walking the quarter—less mournful, perhaps, but in a savage humor. Men who had sailed with him for years did not know what to make of it. There was the incident of the big bark, a good part of whose sail had evidently been blown away and the most of what was left tied up. Under the smallest possible canvas she was heading close up to the wind and making small way of it.

“Why the divil don’t they heave her to entirely!” snapped Patsie. “Look at her, will ye, the size of her and the sail she’s carryin’, and then the size of this little one and the sail she’s carryin’.”

The men chopping ice on the bark’s deck stood transfixed as they saw the little Delia sweep by. Under her four lowers, and going like the blizzard itself was she, with a big bearded man, wrapped to his eyes in a great-coat, waving his arms and swearing across the white-topped seas at them.

“And did you never see a vessel afore?” barked Patsie. “Well, look your fill, then, and get our name while you’re about it, and report us, will you?—the Delia Corrigan, Gloucester, and doin’ her fifteen knots good, will you?”

And then, turning away to his own: “The likes o’ some of ’em oughtn’t be allowed a cable-length off shore. Their mothers ought to be spoke to about it. There’s a fellow there ought to be going along about his business—and look at him, hove to! Waitin’ for it to moderate! Lord, think of it—as fine a day as this and waitin’ for it to moderate! The sun shinin’, and as nice a green sea as ever a man’d want to look at! It’s the like o’ them that loses vessels and men—makes widows and orphans.”

So much for his crew. Then a dark look ahead and beyond the green and white seas that were sweeping by the Delia’s bow, while the bearded lips moved wrathfully. “Ten men lost, blast him! And drinkin’ wine, maybe, in Saint Peer now, if we c’d only see him! Yes, and he’ll come back to Gloucester with a divil of a fine story to tell. ’Tis a hero he’ll make himself out to be. Looked in the face o’ death and escaped, he’ll say—blast him!”

Sable Island—sometimes, and not too extravagantly, termed the Graveyard of the Atlantic—is set among shoal waters that afford the best of feeding-ground for the particular kinds of fish that Gloucestermen most desire—halibut, cod, haddock, and what not—and so to its shoal waters do the fishermen come to trawl or hand-line.

Lying about east and west, a flat quarter moon in shape, is Sable Island. Two long bars, extending north-westerly and north-easterly, make of it a full deep crescent. Nowhere is the fishing so good (or so dangerous) as close in on these bars, and the closer in and the shoaler the water, the better the fishing. There are a few men alive in Gloucester who have been in close enough to see the surf break on the bare bar; but that was in soft weather and the bar to windward, and they invariably got out in a hurry.

Two hundred and odd wrecks of one kind or another, steam and sail, have settled in the sands of Sable Island. Of this there is clear and indisputable record. How many good vessels have been driven ashore on the long bars on dark and stormy nights or in the whirls of snowstorms and swallowed up in the fine sand before ever mortal eye could make note of their disappearing hulls, there is no telling.

Gloucester fishermen need no tabulated statement to remind them that the bones of hundreds of their kind are bleaching on the sands of Sable Island, and yet of all the men who sail the sea they are the only class that do not give it wide berth in winter. And of all the skippers who resorted to the north-east bar in winter, Patsie Oddie was pre-eminent. Some there were who said he was reckless, but those that knew him best answered that it would be recklessness indeed if he did not know the place; if he did not know every knoll and gully of it that man could know, including gullies and knolls that were not down on charts—and never would be, because the men that made the charts would never go in where Patsie Oddie had gone and sounded when the weather allowed.

It was on the Sable Island grounds—the north-east bar—that the Delia, after a slashing passage, let go her anchor on the morning of the second day. Twenty fathoms of water it was, shoal enough water any time, but good and shoal for that time of the year, when gales that made lee shore of the bar were frequent. The Delia’s crew were not worrying, though; they gloried in their skipper.

Lying there close in, with the wind north-west, the Delia was in the lee of the north-east bar, and that first day, too, was not at all rough. And the fish were thick there, and as fine and fat as man would want to see. Fifteen thousand of halibut and ten thousand of good cod—certainly that was a great day’s work. Was it not worth fishing close in to get a haul like that? Turning in that night they were all thinking what a fine day they had made of it, and wondering if the fellow they had seen to the eastward—in deeper and safer water—had done so well. But they all felt sure he had not. “In the morning,” said Martin Carr, “he’ll get up his courage and come in and give us a look-over, and finding we did so well, maybe he’ll anchor close in and make a set, too.”

Nobody saw him in the morning, however, for it came on thick of snow and the wind to the eastward. Wind in that quarter would be bad, of course, if it breezed up; but it had not yet breezed up, and the Delia’s crew were not minding any mere possibility. It was not too bad to put the dories over, and between squalls they hauled again, heaving up the anchor, however, before leaving the vessel, so that their skipper could stand down and pick them up flying.

“We’ll clear out, I’m thinkin’, for to-night,” said Patsie when they were all hauled. And clear out they did, which was well, too, for that night the wind increased to a bad gale, and, safe and snug below, alongside the hot stove or under the bright lamp, it did them all good to think that the north-east bar was not under their lee.

Even when they were jogging that night it looked bad; but they knew they might do it and live. They had to keep an eye out, of course, and stand ready to stand off in a hurry, for should it come too bad it would mean lively work to get out.

Safe away to the eastward of them, watch after watch of the Delia stamping about deck could make out the riding light of the other vessel to anchor.

“In the mornin’, whoever he is, he’ll be gettin’ his courage up, and maybe he’ll drop down,” said the Delia’s crew.

They were in great good-humor. And well they might be, with twenty-five thousand of halibut and fifteen thousand of fine cod after two days’ fishing. Yes, well they might be—halibut sixteen and eighteen cents a pound when they left Gloucester.

It was worth taking chances to get fish like that; and with a skipper who knew the bar as most men know their own kitchens, who could foretell the weather better than all the glasses in the country, who could keep run of a vessel and tell you where you were any time of the day or night out of his head—no need for him to be everlastingly digging out charts and taking sights—they were safe. Yes, sir, they were safe with this man. Fishing in twenty fathoms of water in that kind of weather looked bad—very bad—and they would not care to try it with everybody in heavy weather, but with a short scope and with Patsie Oddie on the quarter—why, that was a different matter altogether.

In the morning it was so thick that they could not see a length ahead; so the skipper, to be safe, kept the lead going. That afternoon it cleared, and they saw to anchor, but now inside of them, their neighbor of the day before.

Patsie Oddie looked her over. “What do you call her?” he asked finally of Martin Carr.

“The Eldorado or the Alhambra— I wouldn’t want to say which, they bein’ alike as two herrin’.”

“That’s right—they do look alike, Martin. But she’s the Eldorado— Fred Watson. But what’s got into him this trip? Generally he fishes farther off. But ’tis Watson’s vessel, anyway, and the blessed fool’s got his dories out. He must be drunk—if he isn’t foolish. But he don’t drink—not gen’rally. What ails him at all? She’ll be draggin’ soon, if she isn’t already. He don’t seem to know too much about that swell in there with an easterly wind— I misdoubt he ever fished in so close before—and if he don’t let go his other anchor he’ll soon be where a hundred anchors won’t do him any good. And look at where some of his dories are now!”

Getting nervous under the strain, Oddie stood down and hailed the two men in the dory farthest from the Eldorado. They said they did not know quite what to do—no signal to haul had yet been hoisted on the vessel. They guessed, though, they would hang on a while longer.

Patsie understood their feelings. No fisherman wants to be the first to cut and go for the vessel, and so lose fish and gear also. Losses of that kind have to be shared by the men equally. Not only that, but to have somebody look across the table at supper and say, “And so there were some that cut their gear and ran for it to-day, I hear?” No, men face a good bit of danger before that.

In the next of the Eldorado’s dories they were pretty nervous, but said that as long as the others were not cutting they were not going to.

“That’s right,” said Patsie, “that’s the way to feel about it. But take my advice and you’ll buoy your trawls and come aboard of me. It’s goin’ to be the divil to pay on this bar to-night—and in these short days ’twill soon be night.”

And they, knowing Patsie Oddie’s reputation, buoyed their trawls and came aboard the Delia Corrigan. And after that Patsie picked up three more dories out of the blinding snow and took them aboard the Delia. By the time Patsie had those four dories of the Eldorado safe, it was too rough to attempt to put the men aboard their own vessel. “But I’ll stand down and hail her fer ye,” said Patsie.

Now all this time it never occurred to Patsie Oddie that anybody but Fred Watson was master of the Eldorado. In the hurry and bustle of picking up the stray dories, there had been no time to talk of anything but the work in hand; and so his immense surprise when he made out Artie Orcutt standing by the quarter rail of the Eldorado, and so his anger when Orcutt called out before he himself had a chance to hail: “If you’re getting so all-fired jealous of me, Patsie Oddie, that you can’t even see me get a good haul of fish without you trying to steal it from me——”

The rest of it was lost in the wind, but there was enough in that much to make Patsie Oddie almost leap into the air. “So it’s you, is it? Lord, and I’d known that, you c’n be sure I’d never tried to help you out.” That was under his breath, with only a few near by to hear him. He wanted to say a whole lot more, and say it good and hard, evidently, but he did not. All he did say to Orcutt before bearing away was, “You take my advice, Artie Orcutt, and you’ll let go your second anchor.” Just that, and sheered off and left him.

“And how comes it Artie Orcutt’s got the Eldorado?” he then asked of one of the men he had picked up.

“He came aboard at Saint Peer, where we put in with Captain Watson sick of the fever. He came aboard there and took charge.”

“H’m!” Oddie stroked his beard and smiled—smiled grimly. “I don’t see but what he brought it on himself.” But that last as though he were talking to himself.

He looked over toward the Eldorado again. “I can’t see that we can help him, anyway,” he said again, and the grim smile deepened. “We might just as well go below—there’s the cook’s call. Have your supper, boys, and we’ll sway up, sheet in and stand out. Whatever Orcutt does, I know I’ll not hang around here this night.”

With the words of their skipper to point the way, most of the Delia’s crew agreed that, after all, it was not their funeral. Lord knows, a crew had enough to do to look out for their own vessel in that spot in bad weather. And as for Artie Orcutt— Lord, they all knew him and what he’d do if ’twas the other way about—if ’twas the Delia was in trouble.

But it was not Orcutt alone. There were nine others. That phase of it the crew argued out below, and that was what they agreed their skipper must be wrestling with up on deck.

The lights gleamed out of forec’s’le and cabin as hatches were slid and closed again, with watch after watch coming and going, but Oddie stayed there on deck. It was a bad deck to walk, too, the vessel pitching heavily and the big seas every once in a while breaking over her. But the Skipper seemed to pay no attention, only stamped, stamped, stamped the quarter.

The men passed the word in the morning. “Walkin’, walkin’, walkin’, always walkin’, speak-in’ aloud to himself once in a while. Man, but if he’s savin’ it up for anybody, I wouldn’t want to be that partic’lar party when he’s made up his mind to unload.”

And what was it his soul was wrestling with? What would any man’s soul be wrestling with if he saw whereby a rival might be disposed of for good and for all? Especially when that rival was the kind of a man that the woman in the case could not but realize after a great while was not the right kind—that no woman could continue to respect, let alone love.

And then? He had only to let him alone now—say no word, and there it was—destruction as certain as the wind and sea that were making, as certain as the sun that was rising somewhere to the east’ard.

All that, and the primal passions of Patsie Oddie for the untamed soul of Patsie Oddie to contend with. No wonder he looked like another man in the morning—that in the agony of it all he groaned—and he a strong man—groaned, yes, and pressed his hands to his eyes as one who would shut out the sight of horrid images. Only to think of Patsie Oddie groaning! Yet groan he did, and questioned his soul—talking to something inside of him as if it were another man. “But it won’t leave me a better man before God—and God knows, too, it won’t make Delia happier. God knows it won’t—it won’t——”

It was light enough then for Patsie Oddie to see that the Eldorado was drifting, drifting, not rapidly as yet, but certainly and to sure destruction, with the ten souls aboard of her doomed as so many thousands of others had been doomed before them. And the wind was ever making, and the sea ever rising. She had both anchors out then, as Patsie Oddie saw, and he saw also when her chain parted. “Now she’s draggin’,” he muttered then, and waited to see what action Orcutt would take. “Why in God’s name don’t he do something?” and ordered the man at the wheel on the Delia to stand down.

Rounding to and laying the Delia as near to the Eldorado as he dared in that sea, he roared out to Orcutt: “What in God’s name are you doing there, Artie Orcutt? Don’t you see your one anchor can’t hold her? Cut the spars out of her—both spars, man!”

Orcutt was frightened enough then, and in short order had the spars over the side. That helped her, but it could not save her. It was too late. She was still dragging—slowly, slowly, but sure as fate, and promising to drag more rapidly as the water grew shoaler. And it was getting shoaler all the time.

Oddie threw up his hands. “They’re goin’! To-night will see her and them buried in the sand.” He turned to his crew, standing in subdued groups about the Delia’s deck. “I want a man to go with me in the dory. Maybe we c’n get them off.”

There were plenty ready to go; but he wanted only one. “No,” he said to one, “you’ve got a wife,” and to another, “You’ll be missed, too. I want somebody nobody gives a damn about—like myself!” and took a young fellow—there is always one such in every crew of fishermen—that swore he had not mother, father, brother, sister, nor a blessed soul on earth that cared whether he ever came home or was lost. And doubtless he was telling the truth, for he certainly acted up to it. A hard case he was, but a good fisherman. And courage? He had courage. He laughed—no affected cackle, but a good round laugh—when he leaped over the side and into the dory with Patsie Oddie.

“If I don’t come back,” he called to his bunkmate, “you c’n have that diddy-box you’ve been so crazy to get—the diddy-box and all’s in it. For the rest, you c’n all have a raffle and give the money to the Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund, back in Gloucester.”

“Malachi-boy, but you’re a man after my own heart,” said Oddie, as the dory lifted on to the seas and away from the shelter of the Delia’s side. And Malachi laughed at that. There was what he lived for—where Patsie Oddie praised one must have been a man.

A dory is the safest small boat that the craft of man has yet devised for living in troubled waters. Handled properly, it will live where ships will founder. And yet, though Patsie Oddie and Malachi Jennings were the two men to the oars, it was too much even for the dory in that sea; and over she went before they were half-way to the Eldorado. The crew of the Delia, seeing them bob up, and for the time safely clinging to the plug-strap, whisked another dory to the rail and ready, but their Skipper waved them back.

“Pay out an empty dory!” came his voice above the wind’s opposition. Which they did, and speedily, and Patsie and Malachi got into it; and with great care, the two men lying in the bottom of it were hauled alongside the Delia and helped aboard.

“No man can row a dory this day,” was Patsie’s first word. “And a man with big boots and oilskins overboard in that sea—too small a chance. But put a longer line on that same dory and pay it out again.” Which they did also, and in that way began to take the gang off the Eldorado.

Five trips of the dory were made, two of the Eldorado’s crew coming back each trip, one crouched in the stern and the other lying flat on the bottom amidships. It was the roughest kind of a passage, and even when the dory would come alongside the Delia the most careful handling was needed to get them safely aboard.

Orcutt, of course, was the last man to come aboard. Bad as he was, he could do no less than that—stand by his vessel to the last. When he came alongside the Delia, he rose from the bottom of the dory, his companion having safely boarded the Delia, and lunged for the rail. Never a quick man on his feet, nor quick to think and act, and now trembling with anxiety, Orcutt made a mess of boarding. He had to stop long enough, too, to look up at Oddie and think what a fool of a man Oddie was altogether—a mind like a child! So, in the middle of it all, he did not get the rise of the dory to throw him into the air. He waited just that instant too long—it took nerve—and then he had to hurry, and the uprise of the dory was not there to throw him into the air and on to the Delia’s rail. Clothes soaked in brine and heavy boots, a man is not a buoyant thing in the water, and this was a heavy sea. So Orcutt, falling between dory and vessel, went down—deep down—and when he came up it was where the tide swept down under the vessel’s quarter.

Patsie Oddie, standing almost above him, caught the appeal of Orcutt’s eyes, and then saw him go under again. “If he comes up again ’twill be clear astern,” thought Oddie, “and the third time with all that gear on him he’ll never come up—and if ’tisn’t Providence, then what is it?” And this was a cold winter’s day, and Oddie himself soaked in sea-water. “And if he don’t come up,” thought Oddie, “if he don’t come up— Lord God, must I do more than I’ve done already for a man I don’t like—a man that I know is no good—for a man in my way—a man, too, that would no more go overboard for me, even on the calmest day, than he’d cut his own throat?” And there was that queer smile that Orcutt had thrown at him as he stood up in the dory— Oddie did not forget that. And then he saw Orcutt’s sou’wester on the water and the man himself beneath it.

No more thought of that. Overboard went Oddie with all his own weight of clothes, oilskins, woolens, and big boots, while quick-witted men hove the bight of the main-sheet after him; and Oddie, grappling with the smothering and frightened Orcutt, smashed him full in the face. “Blast you, Artie Orcutt, there’s fun in beating you even here,” and hooked on to the collar of Orcutt’s oil jacket with one hand and grabbed the main-sheet just before the tide would have carried them out of reach.

Safe on the deck of the Delia, Orcutt offered his hand to Oddie, who did not seem to notice, but said, “If you go below, Captain Orcutt, you’ll find a change of dry clothes in my room, and you c’n turn in there and rest yourself.”

“But I want to thank you,” said Orcutt, overwhelmed.

“Take your thanks to the divil,” said Oddie to that. “’Twas for no love of you I stood by. You c’n have the best on this vessel, but take your hand? Blast you, no! Go below, or I’ll throw you below.” And Orcutt went below without delay.

It was late in the afternoon then. Even while they were hoisting that last dory over the rail Oddie had given his orders to drive out. At first all thought she would come clear, but in a little while they began to doubt, and doubt turned to misgiving, and misgiving to certainty. Sea and wind were too much for them now. In saving the Eldorado’s crew they had waited too long—the tide was now against them also—and now it was no use. It was Oddie himself who said so at last, and went aloft before it was too dark to take a look at the surf they were falling into.

He stayed aloft for about ten minutes, and when he came down all hands knew it was to be desperate work that night.

“Put her about,” was his first order, and “Take a sounding, Martin,” his second.

She came about in the settling blackness and started for shoal water.

“You might’s well put her sidelights up,” he said next. “Nobody’ll get in our road to-night—nor we in anybody else’s—but we’ll go ship-shape. And what do you get?” he asked of Martin, when the lead came up.

“Eighteen fathom,” was the word from Martin. Eighteen fathom, and this a winter gale and a winter sea, and the strongest of tides against them!

“Eighteen fathom and goin’ into it straight’s ever a vessel c’n go,” said Oddie. “Wicked ’tis, but the one thing’ll make me laugh when we go——”

“Sixteen fathom!” from Martin.

“Sixteen? She’s sure shoaling——”

Oddie was at the wheel himself then, and the Delia was beginning to feel the pounding. They could not see the sky at all, it was that black, but all around they could see the combers breaking white—so white that they made a kind of light of their own. And then it was, with the Lord knows how much wind behind them and seas mast-head high and the little vessel taking it fair abeam, that the crew of the Delia and the crew of the Eldorado guessed what was running in Patsie Oddie’s mind. He was to drive her across the bar! With all the sail in the Delia on her, to let her take the full force of it and bang her across the shoals, where soon there would not be enough water to let her set up on an even keel!

Martin Carr was heaving the lead all the time, and all noted how he made himself heard when it came to ten fathom.

“Ten fathom!” the crew repeated, and murmured it over till one got courage to ask, “Is it going to drown us you are, Captain Oddie?”

“I’m trying to save you, boys,” he answered, and his voice was as tender as could be and yet be heard above a roaring gale.

“Nine and a half,” and then, “Nine fathom!” came from Martin Carr, barely able to hold his place by the rail, the vessel was pitching so.

It was at eight fathoms that Artie Orcutt raised a cry of protest, and, hearing that, Oddie ordered Martin to sound no more. “Bring the lead here, Martin,” said Oddie, and taking a big bait knife he always kept on the house, with one stroke cut the lead-line off short. Then he opened the slide of the cabin companion-way and hove the lead on to the cabin floor with a “There, now, maybe we are goin’ to be lost. I think myself that maybe we will, but some of ye mayn’t die of fright now, anyway.”

She was fair into it then, making wild work of it, with Oddie himself to the wheel, and all his great strength needed to hold her. He called one of his men to help him once, and he, feeling the full force of it, now and again would start to ease her up a little, but the moment a spoke went down so much as a hair’s breadth Patsie Oddie’s big arms would work the other way. “Maybe you think this is a place to tack ship,” Oddie said once, and the wheel stayed up and she took it full force.

How Oddie ever expected to save the Delia nobody ever knew, beyond trying to lift her across with the sheer weight of the wind to her sails. And that would be sheer luck, such luck as had never befallen a vessel in their plight before. Other men of courage with stout vessels must have tried that, they knew, and none of them had ever got over, nor come back to tell how close they came to it.

And that was all there was to it—sheer luck, Oddie would have told them, had they asked him. And yet it was not luck altogether. True, he knew no channel across—there was no channel across—and yet he knew there were little gullies scooped out here and there on the sand-ridges. And if a man could make one now and one again, jumping over the almost dry beach, as it were, between them—who knows?—it might be done. On a black night like this nobody could see the gullies, or on any kind of a night, for that matter; but then there was that something—he did not know what to call it—inside of him that told him the things he could not hear nor see nor feel. And then again, let a vessel alone, and she will naturally shy for the deep water. Force her with the rudder, and she will go where the rudder sends her. Oddie forced her, but only to make her take the full weight of the wind. It was necessary to drive her over if ever she was to get over at all. That same something inside told him when her nose was nearing the high shoals—it came to him as if her quivering planks carried the message; there it was, put her off now, and now again, now hold her that the wind may have its lifting effect, now let her go and she’ll find the way. That was the way of it—bang, bang, bang, on her side mostly, with her planks smashing against the bare bottom as she drove over the sand-ridges—her stem rushing through at an awful clip when she found a gully a little deeper than usual.

The great seas broached over her, and it became dangerous to remain on deck. So Oddie ordered all hands below and the slides drawn tight after them, fore and aft.

“I don’t see the difference whether we’re washed off up here or drowned below,” said one. “Go below, just the same,” said Oddie, and below they all went, while Oddie, lashing himself hard and fast, prepared for what further fury wind and sea had in store for himself and the Delia.

It was a sea to batter a lighthouse down. It takes shoal water for wicked seas, and this certainly was shoal water, with the sand off bottom swirling around deck. A noble vessel was the Delia, but when the sea took charge that night everything was swept clean from her decks. Dories first—her own eight and the four of the Eldorado’s that had been picked up, twelve in all—went with one smash. Oddie allowed himself a little pang as he watched them and heard the crash. It was too dark to see them clearly; but he knew how they looked, floating off in the white combers in kindling-wood. The booby-hatches went next, and after them the gurry-kids—match-wood all. Everything that was not bolted went. The very rails went at last, crackling from the stanchions as if they were cigar-box sides when they did go.

“‘Twill be the house next,” muttered Oddie. “And then her planks will come wide apart—and then——” He rolled it between his teeth. “Well, then we’ll all go together. But”—he locked his jaws again—“drive her you must, Patsie Oddie,” and bang, bang, smash, bang, and smash again he held her to it.

And in the morning she came clear; still an awful sea on and wind to tear the heart out of the ocean itself, but clear water—beautiful, clear water. By the morning light he saw what he could not see in the dark night, that her port anchor was gone from her bow—scraped off against the bottom—and that her decks were covered with the sand off the bottom also; but she herself—his darling Delia—was all right. There was nothing gone that could not be replaced—maybe a bit loose in the seams, but, Lord, Gloucester was full of good calkers—and now they had the beautiful clear water. God be praised! And, after all, if never a woman in all the world smiled on him again, ’twas worth while saving men’s lives.

Oddie drew the slide back from the cabin companion-way. “Set the watch,” he called, and the first on watch, Martin Carr, came up and took the wheel from him.

“Gloucester,” said Oddie—“you know the course, Martin. And be easy on her. ’Tisn’t in nature for a vessel not to loosen a bit after last night, but there’ll be nothing the pumps won’t clear. I know that by the heave of her under me. She’s all right, Martin—a great vessel. We owe our lives to her ableness this night, but pump her out,” and went below to draw off his boots. His legs were so swollen that he had to split the leather from knee to heel to get them off, and when he turned them upside down sand ran out of the legs of them. “A wild night,” he said, and looked curiously at the sand—a wild night it was—“and I’m tired. Since leavin’ Gloucester I’ve not seen my bunk. Call me in two hours,” and turned in on the floor and fell instantly asleep.

After a storm it should be good to see the fine green water rippling again under the sun, but to Patsie Oddie it brought no sense of joy. He only glowered and glowered as down the coast he sailed the Delia. Even the sight of Cape Sable, which generally brings a smile to the faces of fishermen homeward bound, had no effect on him. He drove her on, and even seemed to welcome the cold nor’-wester that met him when he straightened out for what in a fair wind, and his vessel tight, would have been one long last riotous leg.

He smashed into that nor’-wester, and it smashed into him. Tack, tack, tack—the Delia did not have her own way all the time. Three days and three nights it was, with the able Delia gradually encasing herself in ice. Only the ice seemed to please Patsie Oddie. The day he left Gloucester it had been just like that on incoming vessels. And that was a bitter day, and it was a bitter day again when he was coming back—and not with cold alone. Ice, ice, ice—“Let her ice up,” and from Cape Sable to the slip in Gloucester Harbor he kept her going.

The Delia was no sooner tied to the dock than away went the crew of the Eldorado. Away also went the Delia’s crew as soon as they had tidied things up and the Skipper had given the word.

Patsie himself did not hurry. There was nothing for him to hurry for. So he cleaned up, changed his clothes, locked the cabin of the Delia, and went slowly up the dock.

He was hailed on the way by any number of people—fishermen, dealers, lumpers, idlers. Those who knew him tendered congratulations or shook hands, slapped him on the shoulder—he had done a fine thing. Some there were who stood in awe of him, only looked at him, examined face and figure for further indications of the daring of the man. The whole water-front was talking over it. Rapidly the whole town was learning it.

Patsie nodded, shook hands, said, “How is it here?” and “Thank ye kindly,” and went on his way to the owner’s store. He reckoned up his trip, ordered a few things immediately needed on the vessel, and said, “That’s all I’m thinkin’ for now,” and went up the street. On the way he passed Delia Corrigan’s house. He did not mean to, but he could not help it—he looked up for sign of her as he got abreast of the windows. There she was, cold as it was, window raised and calling to him. He waited to make sure, and she again said, “Won’t you come in?”

Patsie went up the steps and into the snug livingroom, where Delia was waiting—a rosy, wholesome-looking young woman, now bravely trying to smile.

“Home again, Patsie?”

“Home again, Delia—yes.”

“And a fine thing you did.”

“No fine thing that I can see to it. There were men on a vessel that might have been lost, and I took them off and gave them a passage home.”

“Patsie——”

“Yes?”

“You left me in a hurry that morning, Patsie. You shouldn’t have rushed out so. After you were gone Captain Marrs stepped in to tell me about his rescue of Captain Orcutt and part of his crew. And then he began to tell me other things—about you. He’s a good friend of yours, Patsie. It was good to listen to him, though I knew it all before—and more. Don’t fear that all the good things you did aren’t known to me. But after a time I began to see what it was he meant, and without letting him finish I ran out to see you. But you were gone. I could just see your vessel going out by the Point in all that gale. You put to sea in all that gale, Patsie?”

“Put to sea? Yes, and lucky I did, maybe, for I was no more than in time to bring back the man you want—and he’d never seen Gloucester again if I hadn’t.”

“Who was that?”

“Who was that? Why, Delia!”

“Who was that?”

“Who? Why, who but Orcutt.”

“Captain Orcutt? No, Patsie—it wasn’t Orcutt. He did come back in your vessel, the man I want—but it wasn’t Orcutt.”

“Not Orcutt? Not Orcutt?”

“No, not Orcutt. Oh, Patsie, but it is hard on a woman! Oh, if you only knew what a hard man you are to make understand! I suppose I have to do it—you’re that backward yourself. It’s hard on me, Patsie, but you’ll go no more to sea in a gale, and me here shaking with fear for you. You did bring back the man I want, Patsie. Over Sable Island bar he drove the Delia, but it wasn’t Orcutt.”

Patsie, trembling, stared at her. “Not Orcutt, Delia?”

“Patsie, I’ve said it a dozen times. It wasn’t Orcutt, and yet ’twas somebody in your vessel. Oh, why did you mistake me that morning, Patsie? Would I be a woman and not have a word of pity for a man that came so nigh being lost as Captain Orcutt would have been but for Wesley Marrs? And you are such a backward man, Patsie. Don’t you hear me, Patsie? Then look at me, dear—look at me—it wasn’t— And who can it be? Who was it, Patsie, that drove the Delia over Sable Island bar, himself to the wheel?”

“Oh!” gasped Patsie—“Delia mavourneen, mavourneen, mavourneen!”

He drew back a step, got another look at her face, and clasped her again. “And ’twas me all the time, asthore?”

“You all the time. And if you hadn’t been in such a hurry I’d have told you that morning.”

“Oh, Delia, Delia,” and from his beard she caught the murmur—“and the black, black night I put in on Sable Island bar! Oh, the black, black night I almost left him and his men to die. Oh, Delia, Delia, there was hate and murder in my heart that night.”

“Never mind that now, Patsie. You had it out with yourself, and it wasn’t hate nor murder at the last, Patsie.”

“Delia, dear, but ’tis a wicked man couldn’t be good with you,” and gathered her to him.

“Yes, but——”

“But what, alanna?”

“My breath, dear.” She raised her head and looked into his eyes. “Patsie, Patsie, but the strength of you!”

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