At Close Range

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

"Oughter git the Cap'n to tell ye how he got that lady ashore last winter from off that Jamaica brig."

At the sound of Saul's voice Captain Shortrode rose quickly from his chair, picked up his report and spectacles, and with a deprecating wave of his hand, as if the story would have to come from some other lips than his own, left the room—to "get an envelope," he said.

"He won't come back for a spell," laughed Jerry. "The old man don't like that yarn." "Old man" was a title of authority, and had nothing to do with the Captain's fifty years.

I made no comment—not yet. My ears were open, of course, but I was not holding the tiller of conversation and preferred that someone else should steer.

Again Saul piped up, this time to me, reading my curiosity in my eyes:

"Well, there warn't nothin' much to it, 'cept the way the Cap'n got her ashore," and again Saul chuckled quietly, this time as if to himself. "The beach was full o' shipyard rats and loafers, and when they heared there was a lady comin' ashore in the breeches-buoy, more of 'em kept comin' in on the run. We'd fired the shot-line and had the anchor buried and the hawser fast to the brig's mast and the buoy rigged, and we were just goin' to haul in when Cap'n looked 'round on the crowd, and he see right away what they'd come for and what they was 'spectin' to see. Then he ordered the buoy hauled back and he got into the breeches himself, and we soused him through the surf and off he went to the brig. He showed her how to tuck her skirts in, and how to squat down in the breeches 'stead o' stickin' her feet through, and then she got skeered and said she couldn't and hollered, and so he got in with her and got his arms 'round her and landed her, both of 'em pretty wet." Saul stopped and leaned forward in his chair. I was evidently expected to say something.

"Well, that was just like the Captain," I said, mildly, "but where does the joke come in?"

"Well, there warn't no joke, really," remarked Saul with a wink around the room, "'cept when we untangled 'em. She was 'bout seventy years old, and black as tar. That's all!"

It seemed to be my turn now—"the laugh" being on me. Captain Shortrode was evidently of the same opinion, for, on reentering the room, he threw the envelope on the table, and settling himself again in his chair looked my way, as if expecting the next break in the conversation to be made by me. Two surfmen, who had been asleep upstairs, now joined the group, the laughter over Saul's story of the "lady" having awakened them half an hour ahead of their time. They came in rubbing their eyes, their tarpaulins and hip-boots over their arms. Jerry, Tom, and Saul still remained tilted back in their chairs. They should have been in bed resting for their next patrol (they went out again at four A.M.), but preferred to sit up in my honor.

Dozens of stories flashed into my mind—the kind I would tell at a club dinner, or with the coffee and cigarettes—and were as instantly dropped. Such open-air, breezy giants, full of muscle and ozone, would find no interest in the adventures of any of my characters; the cheap wit of the cafés, the homely humor of the farm, the chatter of the opera-box, or whisperings behind the palms of the conservatory—nothing of this could possibly interest these men. I would have been ashamed to offer it. Tom's simple, straightforward story of his baby and his brother Bill had made it impossible for me to attempt to match it with any cheap pathos of my own; just as the graphic treatment of the fitting out of the negro cook by the Captain, and of the rescue of the "lady" by Saul, had ended all hopes of my entertaining the men around me with any worm-eaten, hollow-shelled chestnuts of my own. What was wanted was some big, simple, genuine yarn: strong meat for strong men, not milk for babes: something they would know all about and believe in and were part of. The storming of a fort; the flagging of a train within three feet of an abyss; the rescue of a child along a burning ledge five stories above the sidewalk: all these themes bubbled up and sank again in my mind. Some of them I only knew parts of; some had but little point; all of them were hazy in my mind. I remembered, with regret, that I could only repeat the first verse of the "Charge of the Light Brigade," and but two lines of "Horatius," correctly.