“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.