Gone with the era, gone with manhood and success, gone with the further use of life's endeavour. The old man's head fell back against the chair; tears streamed down his cheeks and sank into his beard.
"What have I done?" he cried in agony. "I cannot understand it. What have I done?"
VII
Two more years passed by, and winter came on. It was the hardest winter in a decade along the Atlantic Coast. Beginning in the latter part of November, snowstorm after snowstorm struck in from sea in quick succession; one of those easterly spells that, to the mariner, seems destined to hang on for ever. Early in January, the wind backed for a few days into the northwest, and the harsh weather offered a temporary respite. Seizing the opportunity, three heavily laden coal barges, in tow of a powerful seagoing tugboat, set out from Hampton Roads bound for Boston. The old Viking was the last barge of the string.
The weather permitted them to get well outside the Capes of the Chesapeake; then it changed. Wisps of clouds gathered in the southern sky, a heavy bank loomed just above the horizon; the wind began to sing in the rigging with a low moaning sound. Captain Bradley, pacing his quarter-deck at the tail of the tow, plainly recognised the signs. Another spell of easterly weather was coming on.
They were already too far outside to think of turning back, and too far offshore to run for Sandy Hook. Nothing for it but to push on toward Vineyard Haven. The towboat was doing her best; a nasty head sea remained from the last storm, and began to pick up as the wind veered to the northward and eastward. The barges strained at their hawsers, pitching and rolling incessantly. Captain Bradley could never accustom himself to this motion, so different from the motion of a ship under sail. It annoyed and distressed him to the core of his being. Together, he and the Viking had once roamed the sea boldly, the man striking off the course, the ship leaping forward along it, bending to the wind, sailing free under the sun and stars. Now they dragged about at the end of a hawser, engaged in a servile traffic, trailing in the wake of steam.
Minute by minute the clouds piled up from the southward; a grey gloom fell on the ocean. The wind, now settled in the northeast, rose steadily, lifting the sea before it. The air grew colder, the chill of the coming storm. The old ship wallowed and plunged, groaning in every timber. She was very low in the water; already green seas were coming over her bows. Soon the night shut in, black as a cavern—and Gay Head light not yet in sight.
At six o'clock Captain Bradley went below to put on his oilskins and drink a cup of tea. Coming on deck a little later, rigged for the storm, he paused a moment beside the binnacle, as an officer fresh from below always will. In that instant, the hawser parted. He heard no sound, he saw no sign; but he knew that the ship was free. The fact was communicated to him through the deck, through the motion of the hull. He sprang to the rail, and ran forward along the starboard alleyway. Abreast of the mainmast, he stumbled against the mate in the darkness.
"Hawser's parted, sir!"
"I know it. Turn out all hands, and loose the foresail. She's falling off to the westward—the wrong way. We must wear her around on the other tack, and scratch offshore"