Dorymates: A Tale of the Fishing Banks

by Kirk Munroe

By the rays of the riding-light, that still burned steadily just abaft the foremast, Breeze could make out the several members of the crew clinging to whatever seemed to promise the greatest safety, the fife-rail, halyards, or rigging. Away forward, beside the groaning windlass, was a figure which he knew to be that of the skipper, crouching, axe in hand, ready to cut the cable.

All this had been taken in at one glance, the next revealed the cause of the outcry from the watch on deck. A light dead ahead was bearing swiftly down upon them. It was that of a fishing schooner torn from her anchorage, and being hurled by the storm giant, like a bolt of destruction, through the helpless fleet.

During the fearful suspense of the next minute the boy did not breathe, and his very heart seemed to cease its beating. Twice the gleaming axe in the skipper’s hand was raised to strike. Each time he thought of the vessels anchored astern of the Albatross, upon which she must drive in turn if cut adrift, and the blow was withheld.

Now the threatening light rose high above them, and then it swooped down and rushed past so close that they could almost have sprung aboard the drifting schooner. They caught a momentary glimpse of white faces, heard one wild cry, and felt the dragging of the broken cable as it was drawn across their own. Then all was again swallowed up in the furious blackness astern, and for them that danger was past.

The night was bitterly cold, but the first sensation of which Breeze was aware, when it was all over, was that of the profuse perspiration in which he was bathed.

There being no longer any need of their presence on deck, the members of the crew, after a fresh watch was set, again sought the shelter of the cabin. Here Breeze was advised to try and get some more sleep, as it would be his turn to go on watch at four o’clock. He lay down, but felt as though he should never sleep again; for he could not close his eyes without seeing, once more, the drifting phantom of destruction that had just swept past them. He started fearfully at each lurch of the reeling vessel, and fancied that he heard cries in the shriek of the blast overhead. Although he dreaded to go on deck, it seemed as though he should prefer it to remaining in the cabin, and it was a relief when he was called to go on watch.

The lad’s watchmate was much older than he, a weather-beaten sailor who had witnessed a hundred such gales, and felt that so long as the cable held, there was not much to fear. He helped Breeze up on the foregaff, where he would escape the worst of the great seas that continually broke over the schooner’s bows, sweeping her from stem to stern, and bade him keep a sharp lookout from there.

At last, faint and uncertain, the prayed-for, long-deferred, and anxiously awaited light of day began to creep over the wild scene, and the white foam-crests stretched away farther and farther. The snow ceased to fall, and there was some promise of a cessation of the gale. One of the first things they distinguished in the early light was the huge dim form of a square-rigged vessel that, under bare poles, drove past them, less than a quarter of a mile away, and vanished almost as soon as she was seen. Nothing was said, for only a shout close to the ear could be heard amid the tumult; but Breeze shuddered to think how powerless their little schooner would have been to resist that driving mass had they chanced to lie in its course.

They next saw a schooner plunging at her anchor, a short distance ahead of them, and noted how she had dragged during the night, for they had seen her the day before, but then much farther away. Her anchors had only caught just in time to save both her and them, and again Breeze realized the narrowness of their escape from the night’s perils.

As the daylight revealed her sad plight, they turned their attention to their own craft. The seas no longer broke over her so furiously as they had, but crushed bulwarks, and the deck swept clear of boat, gurry-kids, and everything not absolutely built into it told of their awful force.