The Deep Sea's Toll

by James B. Connolly

With the words of their skipper to point the way, most of the Delia’s crew agreed that, after all, it was not their funeral. Lord knows, a crew had enough to do to look out for their own vessel in that spot in bad weather. And as for Artie Orcutt— Lord, they all knew him and what he’d do if ’twas the other way about—if ’twas the Delia was in trouble.

But it was not Orcutt alone. There were nine others. That phase of it the crew argued out below, and that was what they agreed their skipper must be wrestling with up on deck.

The lights gleamed out of forec’s’le and cabin as hatches were slid and closed again, with watch after watch coming and going, but Oddie stayed there on deck. It was a bad deck to walk, too, the vessel pitching heavily and the big seas every once in a while breaking over her. But the Skipper seemed to pay no attention, only stamped, stamped, stamped the quarter.

The men passed the word in the morning. “Walkin’, walkin’, walkin’, always walkin’, speak-in’ aloud to himself once in a while. Man, but if he’s savin’ it up for anybody, I wouldn’t want to be that partic’lar party when he’s made up his mind to unload.”

And what was it his soul was wrestling with? What would any man’s soul be wrestling with if he saw whereby a rival might be disposed of for good and for all? Especially when that rival was the kind of a man that the woman in the case could not but realize after a great while was not the right kind—that no woman could continue to respect, let alone love.

And then? He had only to let him alone now—say no word, and there it was—destruction as certain as the wind and sea that were making, as certain as the sun that was rising somewhere to the east’ard.

All that, and the primal passions of Patsie Oddie for the untamed soul of Patsie Oddie to contend with. No wonder he looked like another man in the morning—that in the agony of it all he groaned—and he a strong man—groaned, yes, and pressed his hands to his eyes as one who would shut out the sight of horrid images. Only to think of Patsie Oddie groaning! Yet groan he did, and questioned his soul—talking to something inside of him as if it were another man. “But it won’t leave me a better man before God—and God knows, too, it won’t make Delia happier. God knows it won’t—it won’t——”

It was light enough then for Patsie Oddie to see that the Eldorado was drifting, drifting, not rapidly as yet, but certainly and to sure destruction, with the ten souls aboard of her doomed as so many thousands of others had been doomed before them. And the wind was ever making, and the sea ever rising. She had both anchors out then, as Patsie Oddie saw, and he saw also when her chain parted. “Now she’s draggin’,” he muttered then, and waited to see what action Orcutt would take. “Why in God’s name don’t he do something?” and ordered the man at the wheel on the Delia to stand down.

Rounding to and laying the Delia as near to the Eldorado as he dared in that sea, he roared out to Orcutt: “What in God’s name are you doing there, Artie Orcutt? Don’t you see your one anchor can’t hold her? Cut the spars out of her—both spars, man!”

Orcutt was frightened enough then, and in short order had the spars over the side. That helped her, but it could not save her. It was too late. She was still dragging—slowly, slowly, but sure as fate, and promising to drag more rapidly as the water grew shoaler. And it was getting shoaler all the time.