Two of the men, Swede and Johnson, were ahead of me. Swede began a song. It was his bravery, his daring to sing in the face of near death that put courage into me. If Swede could sing then I could hold out too, for wasn’t I a regular sailor, and here was a supreme test.
I plowed on through the seas. I thought I had been swimming hours, when Father’s voice a few yards abreast me called:
“Just ahead now—there she looms!”
That was all I remembered until the next morning at daybreak. I came to on the iron deck of the lightship with only a man’s vest on my naked torn body. A strange man was bending over me. He turned out to be the keeper of the lightship.
“She must be a damn fine swimmer because young things is hard to kill.”
He lifted me off the deck and carried me to his warm cabin where I lost consciousness again. The cats were gone! Somewhere in that last quarter mile they were lost.
Late that afternoon I awoke. The engineer of the lightship gave me a warm suit of dungarees and a heavy sweater to wear, and then we learned what had happened. The look-out on the lightship had seen the fire on board. He attempted to launch a small boat to come to rescue us when the Southerly Buster squall arose and made the feat impossible. He and his men watched from the crow’s nest on the mast all night through. They saw the ship capsize. Through powerful binoculars they scanned the sea for a sign of us in our lifeboat. At almost daybreak Swede and Oleson reached the lightship, then followed Johnson, the cabin-boy and Bulgar. Swede swam back to get me and he dragged my limp body to the lightship. The lightship keeper threw over a running bowline which Swede made fast around my stomach and back and they hoisted me on deck. Father and the mate were the last to be pulled aboard.
We stayed on the lightship for three days. Father couldn’t speak. He stood by the rail for hours at a time just staring out towards the sea. He refused food. I tried to talk with him but he didn’t hear me.
“From a skipper to a bum!—I’m through forever now,” he finally said, more to the sea than to any person, as the Government cutter from Melbourne steamed alongside the light ship to take us ashore, in answer to the S.O.S. call sent by the lightship Keeper.
And Father was through too. The day of steam ships has come. Old sailing captains have no place any longer. My father was seventy years old, and broken by the wreck. He is living ashore now, near the coast on the Pacific, but his spirit is not on the land—it is far off in the tropics dreaming of a fair wind and the stars of the Southern Cross to steer a course by.