Under Sail

by Lincoln Colcord

In fact, from a selfish standpoint, Captain Bradley was a poor business man. Seamanship was his vocation; he understood few of the ins and outs of a financial order founded on usury. Its sentiment and psychology he understood not at all; these were considerations entirely alien to him. To his mind, money, to be clean, had to be straightforwardly earned. The plain transactions of a ship's business were all he needed to know. A certain sum of money put into a ship would, if she were properly handled, yield certain dividends: a charter at so much the lump sum, would pay so much on the voyage. Thus it always had been; thus, if he ever gave the matter a thought, he supposed it always would be.

As the flush years went by, he developed into a typical sea captain of the old school; a man of honour, of ideals, of simple dignity and original thought, careless, buoyant, at times a little reckless, a stern disciplinarian, a wise judge of human nature, a sentimentalist at heart, a believer in the inherent righteousness of things, a man of sincerity and individuality. Dishonesty, laziness, hypocrisy, he hated as he hated crime. Inefficient men found him a hard taskmaster. By nature and training he was arrogant and imperious; the instinct of command ran strongly in his blood. He spoke his mind at all times; he was equally ready to defend his position. His pride in his wife, in his boy, in his ship, in everything he loved, was enormous. In short, he was a man singularly adapted to the high and responsible calling of master mariner—singularly ill-fitted for his coming encounter with the world.

III

The first stroke fell out of a clear sky. Captain Marshall died suddenly, leaving his business affairs in a bad way. For three months, the town was in turmoil. At the end of that time, it became apparent that the old shipowner had involved all of his own property, as well as that of many others, in a series of disastrous speculations. No one hinted at dishonesty, but the hard fact remained. Ship property had greatly fallen off in value in the last few years; this, it would seem, had been the immediate cause of Captain Marshall's financial stringency. He, too, had banked heavily on the old times.

Captain Bradley arrived that year from Hong Kong, to find himself poorer by more than half of his modest fortune. All of his ready money was gone in the wreck; what remained was a bundle of pieces of vessels, quarters and sixteenths and thirty-seconds. Worst of all, the Viking, the one ship that Captain Marshall had owned outright, with the exception of the eighth share standing in Captain Bradley's name, would have to be sold by auction to satisfy the creditors. In this crisis, Captain Bradley's idealism overcame all other considerations. "By God, I'll buy her myself!" he cried. His friends told him that he was a fool; but this only heightened his determination. He called the creditors together, and made them an offer. By great exertions, he managed to negotiate on his various ship holdings, disposing of some at figures below their value, mortgaging others, selling the house, and finally raising sufficient money to carry out his word. It took all he had; but he was glad that he possessed enough property to do it. When he sailed from New York on the next voyage, he was the sole owner of the vessel. His confidence, momentarily shaken by the failure of one of the pillars of his world, had begun to return. He realized that times were not what they had been; but it seemed impossible that the demand for sailing ships would ever wholly go by.

The next few years, however, seriously undermined his assurance. Freights were falling rapidly, were even becoming hard to get. One time he had laid her up in Hong Kong for six months, resolving to wait for a better figure than had been offered, and had at length been obliged to accept a charter that barely paid the ship's way. Steam was to blame for it all. He began to hate steamers with a bitter and unreasoning hatred. They were driving the fine old sailing ships off the sea.

Then, as suddenly as the financial crash, came the blow from which he never fully recovered. On the homeward passage, shortly after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, his wife sickened and died. She had been ailing ever since they left Anjer, but he had not realized the seriousness of her condition. They had already caught the trades in the South Atlantic; it was hopeless to think of putting back to Capetown. He urged the ship with every rag of sail, trying to reach St. Helena in time; but the trades held light, the elements were against him. For three days of nearly flat calm he paced the deck in agony, or sat beside his wife's bunk while she talked to him in a low voice, telling him of her love, of what to do when she was gone; trying to make it easy for him, for she knew that she was dying. On the third day, she died in his arms. That night his hair turned from black to white. He came on deck the next morning an old and broken man. The wind continued light and uncertain, there was no chance of reaching St. Helena in time for the last rites; and he buried her there in the deep sea.

That voyage, they had left their son at home in school. Alone now in the empty cabin, Captain Bradley's thoughts were much of his boy. He himself could stand it, must stand it. But how could he tell Frankie, his Frankie? Night after night he paced the narrow floor below, going back over life, living in the past from which he had now been definitely cut adrift. Perhaps he was not quite sane for the remainder of the passage; he could never remember clearly those weeks before his arrival. But always, behind every conscious thought, lay the dread of what he would have to tell Frankie. This he remembered; it seemed to have been beaten into his brain.

Then a wonderful thing happened. He arrived home to find that the boy they had left behind had grown into a young man, had developed a strong and resolute character of his own. He came to meet his father at the train; the news had reached him already. "I did all that I could, Frankie" were Captain Bradley's first words, as they faced each other on the gloomy platform. His son looked at him steadily, fighting back the tears. "I know you did, sir" It was the son who put his arms around the father's shoulders; Captain Bradley had felt a strange hesitation, almost akin to shame or fear. But now his heart rose for the first time since his wife had gone. This was the stuff that men were made of. His son.

They entered the house together—the old Bradley house, where Frankie lived with his aunt when he was at home. Captain Bradley greeted his sister, took off his hat and sat down heavily. Suddenly the boy cried out and fell at his father's feet, holding him by the knees, his whole body shaking.