“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!