“And no man saw them more——”
Some men lost in dories the skipper must have been talking about, and after that:
“And should it be the Lord’s decree
Some day to lay me in the sea,
There’ll be no woman to mourn for me—
For that, O Lord, here’s thanks to Thee!”
under his breath generally, but his voice rising now and then with the wind.
Martin Carr, who happened to be at the wheel just then, made out that snatch of his skipper’s song as he walked the tumbling quarter. And he kept walking the quarter, walking the quarter—and a cold night it was for a man to be walking the quarter—a word to the watch once in a while, but saying nothing mostly, except to croon the savage songs to himself.
Surely nothing peaceful was coming out of that kind of a song, thought watch after watch, bracing themselves at the wheel to meet each new blast of the no’-west wind.
In the morning he was still there walking the quarter—less mournful, perhaps, but in a savage humor. Men who had sailed with him for years did not know what to make of it. There was the incident of the big bark, a good part of whose sail had evidently been blown away and the most of what was left tied up. Under the smallest possible canvas she was heading close up to the wind and making small way of it.
“Why the divil don’t they heave her to entirely!” snapped Patsie. “Look at her, will ye, the size of her and the sail she’s carryin’, and then the size of this little one and the sail she’s carryin’.”
The men chopping ice on the bark’s deck stood transfixed as they saw the little Delia sweep by. Under her four lowers, and going like the blizzard itself was she, with a big bearded man, wrapped to his eyes in a great-coat, waving his arms and swearing across the white-topped seas at them.
“And did you never see a vessel afore?” barked Patsie. “Well, look your fill, then, and get our name while you’re about it, and report us, will you?—the Delia Corrigan, Gloucester, and doin’ her fifteen knots good, will you?”