But progress under such scanty canvas was slow, and when a fishing vessel hove in sight during the afternoon, McKenzie hoisted the ensign, union down, and, when the other craft hove-to, he hailed her. “Send a dory over. I have an injured man I want to send to hospital!” They came and took Sanders away, and within a few minutes the other vessel swung off hot-foot for Eastville.
“I’ll work her in alright,” Donald told her Skipper. “Tell them we’re coming, and that we lost a man—Ainslie Williams—overboard in that blow.”
Two days later, in fine smooth weather, they arrived off Eastville Capes, and a tug plucked them through the headlands and into the harbor. McKenzie steered—as he had steered for two nights and two days—and he looked utterly played out. His face was unshaven and red and swollen by continuous exposure to cold and wind; his shoulders drooped through sheer bodily fatique, and his brown eyes peered, blood-shot, through half-closed lids, heavy for lack of sleep. The skipper of the tug-boat, making fast alongside to shove the schooner into the wharf, stared at the smashed decks and at the weary McKenzie, and he remarked to a deck-hand, “That lad has sure had one hell of a time an’ he’s done well—mighty well—for a kid.”
There was a crowd of people on the wharf when they came alongside, and, thinking of Ainslie Williams, Donald avoided their eyes. They looked down on the schooner’s decks in silence, and the half-masted flag told its own story of death ... outside. He got up on the wharf, still in his sea-boots and oil-clothes, and staggered on the stringpiece as though a deck were still heaving beneath his feet. People spoke to him—kindly voices—but he was tired, too tired to talk. When a man has been three days and three nights on his feet under severe mental and physical strain, he craves but one thing—to throw himself down and sleep, sleep, sleep.
Caleb Heneker, the Alameda’s owner, laid a kindly hand on his shoulder. “You did well, son, to bring her through that breeze. It was a terror—a real bad one, and an awful lot of vessels and lives lost. Run along, Cap’en, and git a rest. Your mother’s at the head of the wharf, and I cal’late she’ll be mighty glad to see ye.” He seemed to rouse at the mention of “mother,” and with a vague recollection of hearing Heneker say that “Sanders was alright, but they had to take his leg off,” he found himself with her arms around his neck and her voice in his ears, sobbing, “Oh, Donald, I’m so glad you’re back home and safe!”
Arm in arm with her, he walked up to his house, and the people strolling down to the wharf to view the schooner, stepped courteously to one side to let them pass. “Young Skipper looks broken up,” they said, sympathetically. “Must have had an awful time.” And they stared after the stooping, oilskinned figure staggering up the road with the mother leading him by the arm, and shook their heads understandingly. It was not the first time they had seen such sights, and oftentimes it would be a silent figure on a plank, and covered with a blanket, which would be carried up from the wharf—a staved and broken human—aftermath of gales.
At home he flopped down into a bedroom chair and the mother took his boots and oilskins off—soothing him with cheerful “There now’s” as she removed his clothing. Leading him to bed, she helped him in, arranged the pillow under his head and covered him with the blanket and quilt just as she used to do when he was a bit of a little lad. Then with a soft kiss, she pulled down the window blind and left him to a slumber which lasted for a full twelve hours.
Youth does not take long to recuperate both mentally and physically, and McKenzie was no exception. When he awoke, he sloughed off the despondency and depression of spirits induced by fatigue and anxiety, and went down to the vessel. They were unloading the salt out of her, and carpenters were already at work on her decks repairing the damages. Archie Surrette, tending a salt tub, hailed him cheerfully, “How’re ye feelin’, Skipper? Catch up on sleep?” His head was bandaged, but he looked none the worse.
“They’re givin’ ye a great name, Cap, for gettin’ this hooker in,” he continued. “’Twas an awful breeze, they say. A power o’ vessels lost an’ bust up. Th’ whole o’ Novy Scotia’s beaches are piled wi’ lobster-traps, stove dories and fishin’ boats, an’ nary a fish house has a roof on it ’twixt here and Cape Sable. It blowed vessels away from the wharves—bust their moorin’ lines, an’ even blowed sails out o’ the stops and tore ’em to rags. It wuz th’ big breeze all right.”
McKenzie nodded. “What—what do they think of—of poor Williams—going?” he ventured hesitatingly.