Near midsummer our coast was mightily outraged by the sailings of the Sink or Swim, Jim Tall, master—Jagger’s new schooner, trading our ports and the harbours of the Newfoundland French Shore, with a case of smallpox in the forecastle. We were all agog over it, bitterly angered, every one of us; and by day we kept watch from the heads to warn her off, and by night we saw to our guns, that we might instantly deal with her, should she so much as poke her prow into the waters of our harbour. Once, being on the Watchman with my father’s glass, I fancied I sighted her, far off shore, beating up to Wayfarer’s Tickle in the dusk: but could not make sure, for there was a haze abroad, and her cut was not yet well known to us. Then we heard no more of her, until, by and by, the skipper of the Huskie Dog, bound north, left news that she was still at large to the south, and sang us a rousing song, which, he said, had been made by young Dannie Crew of Ragged Harbour, and was then vastly popular with the folk of the places below.
“Oh, have you seed the skipper o’ the schooner Sink or Swim?
We’ll use a rope what’s long an’ strong, when we cotches him.
He’ve a case o’ smallpox for’ard,
An’ we’ll hang un, by the Lord!
For he’ve traded every fishin’ port from Conch t’ Harbour Rim.
”T’ save the folk that dreads it,
We’ll hang the man that spreads it,
They’s lakes o’ fire in hell t’ sail for such as Skipper Jim!“
My sister, sweet maid! being then in failing health and spirits, I secretly took ship with the skipper of the Bonnie Betsy Buttercup, bound south with the first load of that season: this that I might surely fetch the doctor to my sister’s help, who sorely needed cheer and healing, lest she die like a thirsty flower, as my heart told me. And I found the doctor busy with the plague at Bay Saint Billy, himself quartered aboard the Greased Lightning, a fore-and-after which he had chartered for the season: to whom I lied diligently and without shame concerning my sister’s condition, and with such happy effect that we put to sea in the brewing of the great gale of that year, with our topsail and tommy-dancer spread to a sousing breeze. But so evil a turn did the weather take—so thick and wild—that we were thrice near driven on a lee shore, and, in the end, were glad enough to take chance shelter behind Saul’s Island, which lies close to the mainland near the Harbourless Shore. There we lay three days, with all anchors over the side, waiting in comfortable security for the gale to blow out; and ’twas at dusk of the third day that we were hailed from the coast rocks by that ill-starred young castaway of the name of Docks whose tale precipitated the final catastrophe in the life of Jagger of Wayfarer’s Tickle.
He was only a lad, but, doubtless, rated a man; and he was now sadly woebegone—starved, shivering, bruised by the rocks and breaking water from which he had escaped. We got him into the cozy forecastle, clapped him on the back, put him in dry duds; and, then, “Come, now, lads!” cried Billy Lisson, the hearty skipper of the Greased Lightning, “don’t you go sayin’ a word ’til I brew you a cup o’ tea. On the Harbourless Shore, says you? An’ all hands lost? Don’t you say a word. Not one!”
The castaway turned a ghastly face towards the skipper. “No,” he whispered, in a gasp, “not one.”
“Not you!” Skipper Billy rattled. “You keep mum. Don’t you so much as mutter ’til I melts that iceberg in your belly.”
“No, sir.”
Perchance to forestall some perverse attempt at loquacity, Skipper Billy lifted his voice in song—a large, rasping voice, little enough acquainted with melody, but expressing the worst of the rage of those days: being thus quite sufficient to the occasion.