The Deep Sea's Toll

by James B. Connolly

And then, turning away to his own: “The likes o’ some of ’em oughtn’t be allowed a cable-length off shore. Their mothers ought to be spoke to about it. There’s a fellow there ought to be going along about his business—and look at him, hove to! Waitin’ for it to moderate! Lord, think of it—as fine a day as this and waitin’ for it to moderate! The sun shinin’, and as nice a green sea as ever a man’d want to look at! It’s the like o’ them that loses vessels and men—makes widows and orphans.”

So much for his crew. Then a dark look ahead and beyond the green and white seas that were sweeping by the Delia’s bow, while the bearded lips moved wrathfully. “Ten men lost, blast him! And drinkin’ wine, maybe, in Saint Peer now, if we c’d only see him! Yes, and he’ll come back to Gloucester with a divil of a fine story to tell. ’Tis a hero he’ll make himself out to be. Looked in the face o’ death and escaped, he’ll say—blast him!”

Sable Island—sometimes, and not too extravagantly, termed the Graveyard of the Atlantic—is set among shoal waters that afford the best of feeding-ground for the particular kinds of fish that Gloucestermen most desire—halibut, cod, haddock, and what not—and so to its shoal waters do the fishermen come to trawl or hand-line.

Lying about east and west, a flat quarter moon in shape, is Sable Island. Two long bars, extending north-westerly and north-easterly, make of it a full deep crescent. Nowhere is the fishing so good (or so dangerous) as close in on these bars, and the closer in and the shoaler the water, the better the fishing. There are a few men alive in Gloucester who have been in close enough to see the surf break on the bare bar; but that was in soft weather and the bar to windward, and they invariably got out in a hurry.

Two hundred and odd wrecks of one kind or another, steam and sail, have settled in the sands of Sable Island. Of this there is clear and indisputable record. How many good vessels have been driven ashore on the long bars on dark and stormy nights or in the whirls of snowstorms and swallowed up in the fine sand before ever mortal eye could make note of their disappearing hulls, there is no telling.

Gloucester fishermen need no tabulated statement to remind them that the bones of hundreds of their kind are bleaching on the sands of Sable Island, and yet of all the men who sail the sea they are the only class that do not give it wide berth in winter. And of all the skippers who resorted to the north-east bar in winter, Patsie Oddie was pre-eminent. Some there were who said he was reckless, but those that knew him best answered that it would be recklessness indeed if he did not know the place; if he did not know every knoll and gully of it that man could know, including gullies and knolls that were not down on charts—and never would be, because the men that made the charts would never go in where Patsie Oddie had gone and sounded when the weather allowed.

It was on the Sable Island grounds—the north-east bar—that the Delia, after a slashing passage, let go her anchor on the morning of the second day. Twenty fathoms of water it was, shoal enough water any time, but good and shoal for that time of the year, when gales that made lee shore of the bar were frequent. The Delia’s crew were not worrying, though; they gloried in their skipper.

Lying there close in, with the wind north-west, the Delia was in the lee of the north-east bar, and that first day, too, was not at all rough. And the fish were thick there, and as fine and fat as man would want to see. Fifteen thousand of halibut and ten thousand of good cod—certainly that was a great day’s work. Was it not worth fishing close in to get a haul like that? Turning in that night they were all thinking what a fine day they had made of it, and wondering if the fellow they had seen to the eastward—in deeper and safer water—had done so well. But they all felt sure he had not. “In the morning,” said Martin Carr, “he’ll get up his courage and come in and give us a look-over, and finding we did so well, maybe he’ll anchor close in and make a set, too.”

Nobody saw him in the morning, however, for it came on thick of snow and the wind to the eastward. Wind in that quarter would be bad, of course, if it breezed up; but it had not yet breezed up, and the Delia’s crew were not minding any mere possibility. It was not too bad to put the dories over, and between squalls they hauled again, heaving up the anchor, however, before leaving the vessel, so that their skipper could stand down and pick them up flying.

“We’ll clear out, I’m thinkin’, for to-night,” said Patsie when they were all hauled. And clear out they did, which was well, too, for that night the wind increased to a bad gale, and, safe and snug below, alongside the hot stove or under the bright lamp, it did them all good to think that the north-east bar was not under their lee.