“I’ll risk your living to be a hundred, unless, of course, the sea gets you,� insisted the dealer; but the old mariner smiled and shook his head.
“Of course, John, it aint got me yet; but I dare say that some time it and me’ll have a tussle when I’ll come off second best. But I’ll not have the steam winch till I can pay cash for it.�
“All right! Go it, you stubborn old shell-back!� laughed the chandler; and then as Captain Josh continued his rolling, clumping way down the narrow street, smiled at his obstinacy, and discovering that his new assistant, who had but recently arrived from Bristol, was at his side said garrulously: “There he goes, white of head and clean of heart. Unbending! And I can remember, as a boy, when he was six feet two tall, and the broadest-shouldered man in all the port. Admiral of the fleet, for more than twenty years. As good a sailorman as ever cleared from Brixham. Fight as well as he can pray. One time, about twenty years ago, when he was nigh on to fifty-five, there was a free-for-all ruction down on the quay. He tried to be a peacemaker and quoted the Bible at ’em; but when that didn’t work, he sailed in; and Lord, love me, boy! He gave ’em more fight than they’d ever seen in all their lives! He made ’em sick of fightin’ in about three minutes. When he got through, they was layin’ about like dog-fish, gaspin’ and wrigglin’ like mad. All the fight was gone out of ’em; but they do say that the language he used while things was hot indicated that for the time being he’d forgotten all the scripture ever he knew. You’re from Bristol, young fellow, but take a look at that old feller, so’s you’ll know him again, because, I tell you, you’re lookin’ at a man!�
And the new assistant, to please his employer, looked, and—smothered a derisive grin!
The ships in the harbor rocked and swayed, lifted and fell in the rhythmic upheave and downfall of the swell that pushed in and out of Torbay. They seemed a part of that splendid beauty of gray or red cliffs that reared themselves about it, a part of the sea that in lazy mood merely rippled its shores, or in sou’easterly tempests tore in fury inward as if to rip the red and gray cliffs from their foundations and obliterate the encircling earth. But the red and gray cliffs invariably won.
The ships in the harbor, ketch-rigged, red-sailed, able to live in seas where huge liners perished, were eager to be liberated from their moorings. Their crews, clumsy, awkward, inept on land, but dexterous, apt and graceful on sea-washed decks, breathed deeply, freely, once they stepped aboard the dinghies that they must row from the placidity of the inner harbor out into the surge. The battered, ugly hands, torn perpetually by the gash of rope and trawl, tarred to blackness, thick-fingered, huge-knuckled, that ashore swung aimlessly and ungainly, seemed now to be endowed with power, decision and skill. The feet that, incased in the high leather boots, stumbled over the cobbles of the village streets, now deftly adapted themselves to the roll of the sea.
The land was not their element. It was foreign. It was sometimes distasteful. It was too hard. It did not yield and sway and give. It had no life in itself. It was a dead thing that never moved and never met their tread, and when it lay inert beneath them, they sustained a subconscious distrust of its solidity. To these men who throughout all their years had been habituated to the great, comforting roll of the sea, or the petulant unrest of it when like an angry child it had stormed as if at restraint, the land was stagnant, uncomfortable, unnatural, a sullen thing without soul or spirit of its own.
The dinghies rocked and rolled and tossed when they left the pier; but in each one man sat and pulled at a heavy oar that was of feather’s weight in his time-trained hands, while another stood, faced the bow and pushed, ever keeping an eye on destination. And ever he balanced as delicately and as surely as a Circus-rider on the bare back of a horse, yielding, taking, but adroitly maintaining his mastery. The men in the boats passed comments that might sound strange to the ears of the land-accustomed. They shouted their comments. And always the interchanges were relative to the sea, for to them it was paramount.
As if each boat had mastered a puzzle of action, each came eventually to the side of a ship, and its men climbed aboard. Always, when they felt the familiar deck beneath their feet, they glanced around, their eyes sweeping over the homely objects in scrutiny of which most of their lives were passed—here the winch, there the end of the warp, here the trawl-beam with its iron heads, there the rigging that swept upward in a maze of tarred ropes and shrouds to stay the high and swaying masts. And always the final look was at the vane, that tiny thing at the peak of the mainmast, from forty to sixty feet overhead, where fluttered the gay emblem showing whether the wind was fair or foul. That was invariably the immediate solicitude, for it told the tale of toil—whether they must beat against head-winds, handling and hauling sail, straining muscles to gain way, or lounging in luxurious idleness and content when, with a fair breeze, the ship put out to sea.
Captain Joshua stood longest of all, thinking of the change. He sniffed the air, and thought he still detected the smell of gasoline.