Dorymates: A Tale of the Fishing Banks

by Kirk Munroe

But the reaction came quickly. The men who fish on the Newfoundland Banks learn to forget their perils almost before they have passed. At the hoarse command of “Ready about! Stand by the jib-sheets!” the crew of the Vixen seemed to awaken as from a troubled dream.

Within fifteen minutes their vessel was again at anchor in nearly the same place she had occupied before the berg drove them from it. Her sails were furled, and all who could be accommodated at the little mess-table were eating, with a relish, the breakfast that the cook had been steadily preparing amid all the exciting scenes that had just passed. He knew that, to live and to work, men must eat, and that so long as the vessel held together and floated, it was his duty to prepare food for them.

The berg that had caused all this trouble and anxiety was a solitary rover that had left its frigid companions in order to pursue its own erratic course. It was not even accompanied by large floe-cakes, but only by quantities of the small drift or “lolly” ice. This would not interfere to any great extent with the handling of the trawls, though it would render the work particularly cold and disagreeable.

As the daylight strengthened, however, practised eyes on board the Vixen detected a pale glimmer on the northern horizon that indicated the presence of those vast ice-fields that frequently sweep over the Newfoundland Banks in the spring of the year. They often carry death and destruction to the fishermen and their vessels, always bring hard, dangerous work, and threaten a disastrous loss of gear. Therefore, on the present occasion the skipper hurried the men through their meal, and despatched them as quickly as possible in the dories to haul their trawls. They were ordered to cut the lines if necessary, and to return to the schooner with all speed the moment the close approach of the ice should be indicated by the signal of the ship’s flag displayed in the main rigging.

In the present position of the schooner the trawl belonging to dory No. 6 was at some distance astern of her, and our dorymates had a long pull before reaching its outer buoy. They worked like beavers in getting the trawl aboard; and as it was nearly bare of fish, the ice having seemingly driven them away, they succeeded in hauling the whole of it before the recall signal was shown.

Just as he had got in the last anchor, Wolfe, casting a glance in the direction of the schooner, observed the flag, though there was not now wind enough to flutter it, and exclaimed, “There it is, Breeze! the skipper’s giving us the recall, and he is not the man to do it until the last moment. You may count on the ice being close to her now, as well as on the fact that we’ve got a stiff pull ahead of us to get back in time.”

And it was a stiff pull. The strong young backs straightened out splendidly with every stroke, the tough oars bent and rattled sharply against their confining thole-pins, and the white water sped away from the prow of the old dory, as though she were a racing boat. But they had been too heavily handicapped; the ice had been allowed too great a start, and they were still several hundred feet from the schooner when a shout from her deck caused them to look around.

What they saw made them heart-sick, and for a moment their case seemed hopeless. They were already cut off from the vessel by several great cakes of ice that were grinding and crashing together angrily. Others were rapidly drifting into, and narrowing, the open space that still remained, and they could not see any chance of ever being able to pass this moving, treacherous barrier. All at once the loud cries and eager gestures of those on board the schooner directed their attention to a buoy lying on one of the cakes nearest to them. To their great joy they saw that to it was attached a line that was being paid out over the stern of the vessel. Somebody had been thoughtful enough to make this use of the cake as it drifted by.

Altering their direction slightly, the boys had, in a minute more, snatched the buoy from its ice raft, and Wolfe was making the line it had brought them fast to the rope becket in the bow of the dory. At the same moment a shout was heard from another direction. Looking up they saw another dory still farther off than they were, and evidently about to be cut off, not only from the schooner but from them, by the cruel ice.