“‘On deck everybody—all hands on deck!’ I roars it loud’s I could, and had the gripes slashed off the nest of lee dories by the time they came up flying.
“‘The Skipper is gone,’ says I—‘over with a dory!’ and we had one over in no time, and Jerry and me jumps in— Jerry in his stockin’ feet—and out we goes. We couldn’t sees so much as a star in the sky, if there was one—not even the white tops of the seas—but we drove her out, and ’twas all we could do to keep the dory from capsizin’ by the way. ‘To looard!’ I says, and to looard we pushed her, and then, ‘Hi, the Colleen Bawn! On your lee quarter.’ ’Twas the Skipper’s voice. And maybe we didn’t row! But ’twas one thing to hear his voice, and another in that night and sea and blackness to find him, and keep the dory right side up at the same time. But he kept singin’ out and we kept drivin’ away, and at last we got him. A hard job he must’ve had trying to keep afloat with his big jack-boots on, and everything else on, for the fifteen minutes or more it took us to find him.
“‘Lord!’ says he, ‘but I’m glad to see you. Paddling like a porpoise I’ve been since I went over the side. But drive for the vessel—there’s her port light—and I’ll keep bailin’, if one of ye’ll lend me your sou’wester.’
“We got alongside, and the Skipper climbs over the rail. ‘Put her on her course again,’ he says, and then starts to go below to overhaul his head.
“And then Jimmie Johnson steps up. ‘How’d it come, Captain,’ he says, ‘you fell overboard?’ By the light from the cabin gangway the Skipper sees him, and——
“‘You little— I dunno what—but go below. Take him for’ard, somebody,’ he says, ‘and tie him in his bunk, or give him laudanum out of the medicine-chest, afore we have all hands lost tryin’ to look after him.’
“Then he goes below to fix his head up—the side of his head was laid clean open, with the blood runnin’ scuppers full from him.
“‘Och,’ says he, ‘but ’tis a great pickle—salt water,’ and he takes an old cotton shirt and tears it up and wraps it ’round his head, and goes on deck again.”
“And after that he kept her comin’ just the same, Tommie?”
“Just the same. All night long he kept her comin’, and payin’ attention to nobody. In the early mornin’, I mind we passed Josh Bradley in the Tubal Cain, him bangin’ along with a busted fores’l, remindin’ us of a gull with a broken wing. We passed a whole fleet of old plugs anchored off Highland Light, ripped by ’em roarin’, and they lookin’ over the rails at the Skipper, his head all wrapped up. Imagine her, Peter, with her four lowers and gaff topsail, and the wind makin’ if anything. And then what should happen but he made out the Nannie O ahead. ‘’Tis Tommie Ohlsen,’ he says, ‘under four lowers. We’ll chase him.’ But Tommie must’ve seen us, for soon we saw his tops’l break out. Then we sent up the stays’l, and then Tommie sent up his. Then we came swingin’ round the Cape—and I’d like to had a photograph of her then—with the Skipper standin’ between house and rail to wind’ard, squeezin’ the salt water out of his beard, and Jerry below singin’: