The Deep Sea's Toll

by James B. Connolly

Sometimes Martin Carr thought he would move the body to the bow, where he might not have it forever before his eyes. But again he wasn’t quite sure that he would not see it just as clearly even if behind him; and somehow he was not quite sure that he did want it moved, even if he could do it now, which he doubted, his own fingers frozen as they were to the oars. Or his hands once removed, he was not sure he could reshape them to the handles of the oars again. So perhaps it was just as well, and he faced the dead boy anew.

For two days and two nights more, with his dead dory-mate’s face ever staring at him from the stern—for six frosty days and six freezing winter nights in all—through that northern wind, and sea, and snow, and hail, Martin Carr rowed the dory. And made land at last. It did not look much—an iron-bound shore, where the sheer rock rose straight as the wall of a church and against which the high seas beat furiously. He could not land there—he had to hunt a harbor. He made out one at last—an inlet, with signs of people near by. His eyes were no more than pin-points in his head, but he could make out the five or six low huts set up on the rocks, and for them he headed. The way was caked in ice, and that made hard work of it for a man who had come so far without food or drink to force his way through. Using the oars as poles, he might with less labor have beaten a channel through, but his fingers, frozen to the oars, were not yet to be unsealed. He could do only one thing, and that was row. And so he rowed, ever rowed, making a channel by forcing the bow of the dory over the ice till of its own weight it broke through and went on.

In that laborious fashion he advanced. Hours in that little bay alone, but at length he reached the shore. He made sure it was the shore by a long examination before he relinquished the oars. To free himself of the oars, he had to knock the ends of them one over the other—had to do that to loosen the ice from about his hands so that he could slip his fingers free. They came away as he had frozen them, shaped in cylindrical form to the handles. Taking note of how smoothly they came away, he reflected that he might with safety have slid them off before this—if for no more than to break the ice off his unshaven chin or to wipe the hail from his eyes, or to set back on Eddie’s head the sou’wester which had blown off in the night. But a man sees many things when it is past the time.

However, that wasn’t getting on. There was Eddie yet to be taken care of. Christian burial he had asked for, and Christian burial he should have. He crawled out of the dory, and reached over the gunnel with one leg till the toe of his boot touched the ice on solid land. Finding it firm, he drew his other leg after the first.

He pushed away from the dory. One step, and down he went to hands and knees, and could not get up, try as he would. He almost cried—perhaps if he had been stronger he would have cried. He, Martin Carr, whose strength used to be the boast of every crew that ever he sailed with, here he was, weak as a young child.

But he must get on. If he couldn’t walk, he could creep. And so creep he did, on hands and knees, a hundred yards, perhaps, to the door of the nearest hut.

They opened to his knock, a bearded man and behind him a stout woman, with a brood of fat children peering out curiously. Seeing how it must be with him, they lifted him up, set him down on a chair, and told him that in a minute or two the hot tea would be ready for him; or if he would wait but ten minutes, they would run over to the store and get him a glass of brandy—good brandy from Saint Pierre.

“I want no tea and I want no brandy,” said Martin Carr, “and yet thanks to ye the same. I’ve a dory-mate below, and he’s waitin’ burial. Help me with him, help me get him ashore, for I’m weak to cryin’ ’most, and after that prayers and a burial and Martin Carr will never forget ye both.”

Back to the dory they went with him, the man that Martin Carr had knocked up and two of his neighbors. Under Martin’s directions they essayed to lift the body from the dory, one being within the dory and two ashore. They had the body among them, suspended between the dory and shore, but it was an awkward weight, and the feet of one slipping, through the ice and out of sight went the body.

“He’s gone!” they shouted, and stared at the hole in the ice.