AT THE END OF THE DRAG-ROPE
There were five men all told in the fishing schooner Flying Star. I had known them all well, and had been shipmate with four of them. Captain Johnny Sparks was a Dutchman, a "squarehead," but a good seaman, and he had fished on the Hatteras Banks during three bluefish seasons. His vessel was a Provincetown specimen—what used to be termed the "Gloucester fisherman" type, before the decadence of that port in the industry which once made it famous had ended its shipbuilding.
She was a small vessel, much smaller than the modern Provincetown fisherman, which has a short foremast, a mainmast planted almost amidships, and sweeping canoe bows with overhang. No, she was of the old type—two sticks stuck upright in her at almost equal distances, marking her into three almost equal parts; a main-topmast sprung well forward and stayed well aft to steady the "whip" of long and continuous plunging into a lifting head sea. She was "chunky" in model, bows rather bluff, almost like a coaster, and her stern was of the old-time sawed-off pattern, sunk low in the water, an ugly stern for running in a heavy sea when the lift is quick and fast.
She was not worth over two thousand dollars, but Captain Johnny owned half of her, and he had no criticisms to make of her behavior in heavy weather. With a long, straight keel and full under-body, she was an excellent sea craft, provided she was properly handled.
I was mate of the passenger ship Prince Alfred with Bill Boldwin, running from New York to the West Indies, and as we ran on schedule we often fell in with the Hatteras fishermen twice during a voyage.
Johnny was fishing three miles north of the Diamond Shoal Lightship as we passed him on our voyage out. He stood upon his quarterdeck and waved to me. I was on the bridge, and bawled out I would have some fruit for him on the return trip. He nodded and waved his hand in appreciation, and his cook poked his head out of the galley and grinned. His boats were scattered along the shoal, all hauling up bluefish as fast as they could.
Four other vessels from New York were on the grounds, but I recognized none of them. Our passengers gazed at the small boats tossing as only light-built dories can toss in a lively sea; and they commented on the fishing.
As a rule, the average landsman thinks all fishing is done on the Grand or George's Banks. They get the idea from writers who know these waters well, and it never enters their heads that the northern banks are but a very small part of the great Atlantic fishing grounds, where the professional fisherman must toil to wrest his living from the salt sea.
It was due to a Gloucester Yankee, though, that the great fishing of Campeche Bank became known. Hove-to in a vicious norther a few score miles off Galveston, the "cod-hauler" was driven gradually off shore until he was far away from the land. Suddenly from a fathomless gulf—he had had the perseverance to keep his lead going at intervals—he fetched the ground in thirty fathoms, and gradually shoaled his water.
With a hook just above the lead, he soon began to haul up snappers, and he came running into port a few days later with his schooner loaded to her bearings with as prime fish as ever came out of the sea.
Captain Johnny had fished there a year, but owing to the slowness of the Flying Star he had given it up until the steam patrol boat had been put on to make the rounds and buy the fish on the grounds. It was Johnny who had gone into Sabine once for water when Dick Hollister was marshal.
Hollister was a saturnine chap, who wore a heavy Colt with seven notches in the handle, each notch meant for some beggar he had been forced to perforate in the course of his strenuous career. He was accounted one of the most fearless and able marshals in Texas. One morning he visited the Flying Star, apparently looking for a man he wanted for a certain episode in horses. He swaggered about the decks with his Colt in full view, and caused so much interest that he impeded the work.
Johnny spoke softly to him—he always had a soft way of speaking—and told him he must get ashore. The marshal turned and gazed at the little "squarehead" in disdain; but Captain Johnny, who was sitting on his hatch-combing, looked up with gentle gray eyes and pointed to the jetty.
"You get avay—get oudt wid you, my friend. I don't got no time fer wastin' wid circus-actor mens wid funny fringes and artillery dragging mid dere waist belts—git!"
And as the marshal didn't move, Johnny shied a coiled line at him, hitting him somewhat violently in the body.
Instantly Hollister drew his Colt.
"You blamed little shrimp! if you do that again I'll plug you," he said quietly, wiping the fish scales and salt water from his clothes. "Don't make any mistake; I'm not your friend."
Captain Johnny was especially blue and sad that morning, so he gazed at the marshal, while his hand reached for a heavy sinker.
"If you ain't my friend, fire away not; if you are mine friend, you shoot me, for I'm tired enough wid dis business, an' I don't vant do be livin' always, forever, yet. Shoot, mein dear friend, shoot—or if not mine friend, den take dis!"
And he tossed the pound lead with such precision that it stretched Hollister flat upon the deck before he could take good aim to do more than rip the collar off Johnny's coat with his fire. When he came to, Johnny was bathing his head where the sinker had cut him, and pouring good whisky down his throat.
"You are mine friend—but a poor shot—take another drink with me, and den go. Here's your blunderbust—you interrupts de vork on de deck—git oudt!"
And yet there was a lot of energy in that sturdy form standing there upon the deck of his undermanned schooner waving his acknowledgments to me upon the bridge of the liner. Yes, Captain Johnny Sparks was a good seaman. May the deep ocean hold him gently in its eternal embrace, for he loved it—loved it as only a true seaman does!
We made the run south, and were coming up with a full complement of passengers from Jamaica, when we began to notice a definite change in the weather. It was the hurricane season, September, and the heat was oppressive. The passengers lay about the decks in chairs all day and half the night, getting what air the ship made with her rush of fifteen knots an hour through the quiet sea. We ran along through the Passage, leaving Cape Maysi out of sight before dark, and rapidly hauling up under the lee of the Great Inagua Bank. Here in the smooth sea night fell upon the ocean, and I went on the bridge for the first watch.
As I came into the pilot house to sign the order-book for my course, Captain Boldwin called my attention to the glass. It had fallen rapidly during the last few hours, and was now dangerously low.
"Keep a good lookout," he said, "and call me at the first signs of a change." I signed the order-book, and he went below.
How many times has an officer signed that order-book before even going on the bridge? And how many times has the said officer made an entirely different course from that signed for? But then steamship companies do not supply ships and coal for their officers to study navigation. It would not look well on paper. Every officer of a passenger ship is a licensed master, a captain; and no first-class company will ship any other kind of man to go on the bridge to take charge for the watch of four hours, for during that time the ship is absolutely under his command, and it is necessary that he shall be a skilled navigator, capable of taking the ship along just as safely should accident befall her commander. For this responsibility he receives from seventy-five to a hundred dollars per month; and half of the passengers whose lives he holds in the hollow of his hand for half the night look upon him as little better than a ship's cook!
We appeared to follow the low barometer, or it to follow us, for when daylight came we were still running smoothly across the Atlantic with nothing but an oppressive heat and mugginess to warn the landsman of the low pressure.
"There's something coming along behind us; something there astern that will probably make things howl," said Boldwin, as he came on deck in the morning.
The sun was brassy in a coppery haze, but it was clear enough to get a good sight for longitude. I called off three good sights, took the note, and went below to work the longitude before breakfast. On ships running across the Gulf or Florida Stream from the southward, bound for New York or some port south of it, there is every necessity for getting the westing accurate. We always found that, running diagonally across for the Diamond Shoal Light vessel, we were set about twelve miles to the northeast while running at from twelve to fifteen knots. This was almost a regular fixed factor, but in heavy weather it was not always safe to run full speed inside of it.
To make to the eastward of the lightship was well enough, but to fetch to the westward was the one thing that has always made Boldwin nervous, and rightly so. If he missed it going to the eastward, he would pick up some other landfall to the northward, if he was too far off; but if he missed it going to the westward in a driving gale, when it was too thick to see half a mile—well, we had never done so yet, and had no reason to pray for the experience.
We were a fast liner, full of fruit and passengers, and we could not stop for anything on the run up. With fifty thousand bunches of bananas below, we must drive the ship to her destination as fast as she could go, and neither hurricane nor calm must stop her. The company seldom kept a seaman long who brought in fifty thousand bunches of ruined fruit, some of it twelve hands, and most of it more than eight, selling at retail at nearly a dollar a bunch.
Two years before, Boldwin, after being hove-to for thirty-six hours in a gale, had brought in his ship laden with fruit he had taken under protest, the "yellow" being plainly in sight at the ends of more than half the bunches. He had docked, and a score of men had waded about for several days up to their hips in a mess which, once seen, causes all lovers of bananas to eschew that fruit forever afterward. Banana juice will cut the steel plates of a ship's side almost like diluted sulphuric acid—but they gave him another chance.
It was late in the afternoon of the day we had run clear of the land, when the first signs of the hurricane of September 19, 1903, made its appearance. The swell began to roll heavily from the southeast with a curious cross-roll from the westward, making a peculiarly uncomfortable sea for a steamer running northward. It dropped away from under our counter, and the Prince Alfred dipped her taffrail almost to the unruffled surface. Then she would rise upon it, and, as it lifted well under her underbody, she would roll to port and throw her stern so high that the starboard screw would race in a storm of foam at the surface, shaking her tremendously, and annoying the passengers who happened to occupy after-staterooms.
When the second officer, Smith, came on duty, I made my way aft to take a look over things—to see that the small boats were securely lashed; that gratings and gear were in place, for it was evident that we were to have a piece of dirty weather. A large, fat, pale-faced woman poked her head out of window and demanded that I have the starboard engine stopped at once, as it was too racking on her nerves. She declared she had stood it as long as she could, and would lodge a complaint with the president of the company immediately she got ashore, if her demand were not complied with instantly. I started to argue the case, but she cut me short, exclaiming that "they never did such things on the French boats."
All the gear was in order aft, and I had just made my way to the bridge, when the Captain called my attention to a haze gathering to the southward.
"The glass is starting down again—dropped two more tenths," he said. "We'll run foul of something before eight bells. Looks like it was following the Stream along to the northward; it usually does."
A heavy, blue-black bank of cloud, smooth, and swept into an immense semicircle over the southern horizon, but rising fast, told of the beginning of trouble. Half an hour later we began to feel the squalls, which came suddenly and with vicious spurts of fine rain.
"According to old Captain Valdes," said Boldwin, "if you place your back to the wind, the center of the blow is to the left, or port side, and a bit behind you. This breeze is coming in from the east'ard good and quick, and it looks like we'll fetch the center straight and fair the way we're heading."
"Would you stop her and heave her up?" I asked.
"Stop her? Not as long as she'll swim. What do you think we are—a sand-barge? Stop a liner running on schedule with a fortune of bananas lying below? Get those ventilators trimmed, and put three covers on the after hatch and lash them fast. We'll run her. Who do you think would take this packet out the next voyage if he hove her to?"
As it was only too evident that it would be my chance, I said nothing.
The light grew dim as the gray pall of the storm quickly overspread the sky. The dull gray light made the sea appear queer and dark, with the great heave now running quickly, as though a mighty power were working close behind it. The tops of the breaking combers had a peculiar lift to them as they met the cross-swell, and the racing of the starboard engine became more and more violent. A terrific squall bore upon the ship, seemed to almost lift her bodily before it. The roar of the wind whirling through the heavy standing rigging told of its velocity, and then we waded right into the thick of it, with the Prince Alfred lurching along eighteen knots an hour over a sea which was torn into a white and gray world that ended, so far as our vision was concerned, a few fathoms from the ship's side.
Boldwin was standing on the bridge, holding to the rail, and leaning to the blasts as though it took his whole weight to bear up against them. I came close to him.
"Get every one ... below! Lock in ... passengers!" I caught his words with my ear ten inches from his mouth. "Cover ... hatches ... all fast."
I knew what he meant. When the Prince Alfred closed down her cargo there was something unusual happening. Making my way down the bridge steps, I got the men of the watch together. It was tough work, for the sea was now ugly, and we were running our weather-rail down at each roll, and scooping up plenty of water which she sent across her decks to leeward. To stand up without holding on meant to be blown bodily against the lee rail at the risk of going over.
It was an hour before I got back to the bridge, and when I did so, the squalls were becoming more frequent, and more and more violent, but there was no shift yet. It soon grew dark—a black dark—and we tore along into the blackness, unable to see two fathoms ahead. As yet we were outside the Stream, and consequently not in the usual line of the coasters, which are the dread of the liner's officers, for nothing is so uncomfortable as the sudden raising of the dim and sometimes half-extinguished lights of a schooner on a thick night while tearing along before a gale. Having the right of way, the sailing vessel has nothing to do but keep her course, while the steamship, with but a few seconds to spare, swings quickly to pass, sometimes missing a catastrophe by a few feet. A poor red light on such a night cannot be seen twenty fathoms.
Before midnight the shift began. It came from the southward—a bad sign, for it told plainly that we were nearing the center of the disturbance; and as we were heading diagonally across the path of the storm, we were almost certain to bring up in its dread vortex. As chief officer, it would have been a bit out of place for me to suggest the thing the ordinary seaman would do—that is, heave to and work out of it. Boldwin stood on his bridge and kept her going.
And yet it had to come. Before daylight the sea was terrific—the squalls coming with furious rushes, shifting, and hurling a frightful sea. A huge, lifting hill of water broke high above the taffrail, and roared a full fathom deep over the quarter-deck. The crash shook the steamer through her whole frame. It was as though she had struck a solid rock. The white glint of the foam showed through the blackness, but the dull, thunderous roar drowned all other sounds.
Boldwin went to the speaking tube in the pilot house, called to the chief engineer to stand by to heave her to and watch the engines as she came into the trough.
"We'll have to stop her," he said; and I nodded assent.
In the pilot house the clanking of the steam steering gear sounded dully in the deep, sonorous undertone of the gale outside.
Boldwin waited but a moment, and then gave the order:
"Hard over, sir!" cried the quartermaster; and the rattling clank of the engine sounded the signal for me to take advantage of the opportunity to get outside by the lee door.
If it had been blowing before while we were running, it was now a blast.
The Prince Alfred laid down her whole five hundred feet of steel side into that sea, and the crash of the mighty hill that swept her shook her as though she had been struck amidships by the ram of a battleship. The forward funnel guys parted, and I had a momentary glimpse of a great pillar of iron going over the side to leeward. Then she began to head the sea, and no human could face the storm of flying water which swept the bridge.
With heads down, gasping for breath, Boldwin and myself gripped the bridge rail. The flying atmosphere tore past us. We dared not loose our grasp for an instant, and to get back to the shelter of the pilot house was impossible without following the iron rail aft.
After a thunderous rush of quick and vicious squalls, there was a sudden lull. A giant comber showed ahead, and its white and foaming crest lifted clear into the night. She buried her whole forward deck, and, as the water cleared, we could see about us. The dull snore of a giant sea sounded close aboard. It was uncanny, this sudden stillness, full of a palpitating murmur and pregnant with an ominous power.
"Right in it!" gasped Boldwin. "How does she head now?"
"Southeast by south," I answered. "The next squall will probably come from the northwest."
"Well, I guess we'll swing her while it's still—Lord, what an awful sea!"
The Prince Alfred came slowly around with her engines turning at half speed. The high, leaping hills of water seemed to come from all directions at once. They fell upon her decks and shook her up a bit, but did no damage. Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed. A distant murmuring sounded over the torn sea.
"Which way?" asked Boldwin nervously.
A puff of cool air blew straight in our faces; we had not noted how sultry it was, for we were soaking wet and exhausted. The puff blew to a breeze. Then came a spurt of rain and a faint flash of lightning. In a minute we were facing furious squalls, and the Prince Alfred, with a full head of steam, had all she could do to keep steering way with her nose pointed straight into the blast from nor'-nor'-west.
It was in the gray of the early morning, while Boldwin and I were still on the bridge, and the second and third officers were in charge of the saloons quelling the panic, that we sighted something dead ahead. The squalls were still whirling over us with longer intervals between, but with still undiminished vigor. The great sea began to show in front now through the dim light, and it was all the full-powered liner could do to hold her own head to it. To swerve to either side meant falling off into the dangerous trough, with the hazard of not being able to regain her course. Even as it was, we had to more than once slow the port or starboard engine to enable her to point her nose straight into the hurricane.
Upon the crest of a giant hill of water something showed black. It was a momentary glimpse, but Boldwin and I saw it instantly. It was close aboard and, as we yelled to each other and strained our eyes ahead, we made out the thin line of a mast. Boldwin dropped on his hands and knees and was blown to the pilot-house door. I waved my hand to ease her to starboard a little. Just then a sea struck us heavily upon the starboard bow, and held her with its rush. The next moment the shape ahead was high upon the crest of a mighty sea, and I recognized the stern of a vessel outlined against the gray pall.
I looked over the side. The foam was lying dead with us, showing we were not going ahead more than a knot or two. Boldwin saw it also, and knew that to slew his ship now would mean to get struck a blow in the side which in that sea would probably prove fatal. He thought of his passengers. They must be considered first. Whatever was ahead was going to hit us, and it was due to those we had aboard that it must strike us as fairly upon the stem as we could land it. God help them, we must save our own!
We plunged headlong into the trough, and right above us upon the following crest rose the stern of that sailing vessel. She was plainly in view now; so close that I recognized the sawed-off shape of an old-time fishing schooner. Upon her main a bit of rag like a trysail showed white. She was heading the sea at the end of her sea anchor, a long drag-rope, and as her deck showed, I saw she had been badly swept.
There was no one in sight. She was going astern fast, much faster than we thought, for even while Boldwin tried to edge to starboard, and did all he could to swing his ship without getting his head thrown off with the sea, the stern sank just ahead of us in the hollow of a sea, and our stem rose above. I leaned forward and held my breath. The Prince Alfred fell headlong into the hollow, and just as we struck I read the name Flying Star painted large and white right across the transom.
A dull grinding thud, which shook the Prince Alfred but slightly, was all that came to us. A sea swung the wreck to port, and as she heeled and settled, I saw Johnny Sparks spring from the companionway, followed by several men. The next instant a great comber roared over them and the schooner disappeared, leaving nothing above the foam to show where she had floated a moment before. Something caught in my throat. I shut my eyes, and held my head down for I don't know how long.
We came into port four days later with Boldwin on the bridge, his face lined and haggard. Below, thirty thousand dollars' worth of bananas slushed about in a ghastly mess, in spite of the pens and shorings. But the passengers were happy. Women in gay dresses came on deck and smiled and chatted, and children romped and played. The captain did not look at me—he had not since the collision—but he spoke to me for the first time.
"See that everything is shipshape when we dock," said he, "and then meet me at the company's office at four o'clock. I'll probably not take her out next voyage—take a lay-off for a while—understand?"