“I’m thinkin’, boy, that it’s small use waitin’ around here for the vessel. It’s as thick o’ snow as I’ve seen it in a good many winters, and no sign of it slacking. We’ve got to be doin’ somethin’, and we might’s well be rowin’. But first, where’s your tobacco? Well, throw that over—see now, there goes mine. That’s so that by’n’by you won’t be tempted to smoke. Smokin’ makes you thirsty, and to be thirsty and no water— I mean real thirsty, after two or three days, maybe, without a drink, and you rowin’ hard all the time and the juice sweated out of you—it’s an awful feeling lad. I know, I know, there is the snow. But snow where it touches here isn’t quite what you think it. Not a square inch where the snow strikes here that isn’t crusted with salt, and you know what comes of drinkin’ saltish water. We may be out for days, so let’s get ready. Let me see, now—it oughter be twelve o’clock by this. Yesterday at twelve I mind the tide set to the west’ard. We’ll row across it—so. But first we’ll pitch out the fish. It’s a shame, isn’t it, to have to heave the fine fat fish back after you’ve gone to the trouble of baitin’ up four tubs of trawls—to have to haul a mile and a half of trawls and then have to heave them overboard again after they’re coiled nice in the buckets and the fish to your gunnels after them. Two thousand pounds of good fish there, Eddie. ’Tis a shame, but over with ’em. And don’t try to save one to eat. It’s no use—raw fish. I tried it once, and my stomach was upset by it—and my stomach’s not easy upset. You’d throw it up, Eddie, and that would weaken you for the rowin’. And we’re in for a row now. You’ve rowed a dory around in a harbor, boy, in your day, but now for a real row.”
“To Newf’undland coast, maybe—a hundred and fifty miles—if we’re not picked up.”
“Oh——”
“’Tis discouragin’ to think of, but don’t let yourself think too much about it. After twenty-four or forty-eight hours you won’t be thinkin’ so much about it. ’Twill be more mechanical-like then with you—brain kind of hazy-like from lookin’ at nothing but the level sea over the gunnel and your arms never stoppin’. Do you sit on the for’ard thwart, but take it easy—’tis a long drag, boy—a hundred and fifty mile to Newf’undland.”
And so they set out. ’Twas a long, easy, regular stroke that Martin dropped into; just such a stroke as a man might adopt who looked for a moderately long drag to his vessel—ten or fifteen miles, say.
But this was a hundred and fifty miles. Yes, and more, with allowances to be made for the set of wind and tide and the natural perversity of the dory itself. Whoever has rowed a dory knows that nothing will swerve more easily off its course—that is, if you don’t know how. Martin Carr knew how, but the young fellow with him did not; and it was Martin Carr’s business to make such allowances as would offset the uneven rowing of the lad.
They rowed on. To the boy the silences were appalling. For an hour at a time nothing would be said. Martin, with the instinct of an old trawler, was husbanding every ounce of energy; the boy was numb, overwhelmed. A hundred and fifty miles! The thought of it! He did not shrink from the thought of death, but a hundred and fifty miles of this work! He began to figure it out. Say they drove the dory ten feet a stroke. That was more than five hundred strokes to a mile—one hundred and fifty times five hundred—how much? How slow he was to figure now—but, yes, that was 75,000 strokes. Good Lord! one, two, three—why, it would take twenty-four hours just to count 75,000, without rowing at all. But to row—to reach out with the arms and haul those two heavy blades through a heavy sea—one—two—three—and every other stroke ineffective, certainly for him, if not for the strong-backed Martin Carr, because of the unevenness of the sea. Why, it would take a week, night and day.
He began to figure it up another way. Suppose they made two miles an hour. That was forty-eight miles a day—three days in all. But allowing for cross-tides and cross-winds, the constant heading of the dory straight again—say four days. Four days! And nothing to eat and nothing to drink during those four days of work and toil. And that meant that they must never vary from their course. Naturally they would vary. Say six days and six nights. But no man can row night and day for six days and nights without food and drink. Not even Martin, wonderful man that he was, could do it. Say they rested one-third of the time—eight hours a day. Ashore, men who did practically nothing slept eight hours a day. That surely would not be too much rest after rowing a heavy dory in a heavy sea.
Already, though he had been rowing hardly more than two hours, he was tired, with wrists hot and heavy, and his forearms cramping. And Martin himself must feel it after a day or two. Much as he had heard of these iron men, these deep-sea trawlers, they could not last it out forever. And God! suppose they were heading out across the Atlantic—and could even Martin say they were not, with no sun or stars to guide him? Would it be slow starvation? And why was it, now he thought of it, he wasn’t famished? Twenty-eight hours already without food! Ah, was that why Martin buckled his own belt about his stomach—buckled it tight and made him drink the last of the water? Surely, if nothing else came, that would come—the slow starvation.