“I can smell that damn’d stuff yet, Bill,� he growled to his mate or “second hand,� who was nearly as white-headed and sea-scarred as himself.
“It hangs on worsen gin to an old woman’s breath,� growled that worthy, who was a vociferous teetotaler and never lost an opportunity for comparison. “They aint nothin’ smells wuss’n that peetrul, unless it’s one o’ they polecats what lives around with farmers because they don’t know no better. I tell ’ee, Skipper, the Lord gives us the wind, and it bean’t natural for either men or ships to try to run on alcohol.�
“Alkerhol? Hell! They bean’t no alkerhol in that peetrol,� insisted Bob Noon, the only member of the crew who ever imbibed, and was the constant source of solicitude for the mate, who strove persistently to reform him. “It looks like gin, and it smells strong, but it aint the same at all. I knows. I tried it.�
“’Course you would! You be an unreginerate soul! Oh, I know all about you,â€� roared the mate. “Di’n’t I hear tell how when you was at say in them windjammers what went Hawaiian-wise, you’m got drunk on cologne-water? And aint I told ’ee, scores an scores o’ times, that you’m a—â€�
“S’pose us stows the gab and gets to sea,� Captain Joshua interrupted, as he had done hundreds of times before when argument threatened.
The I’ll Try cast loose her mooring. Her big mains’l crawled up, traveler hoops a-creak, block and tackle singing a shrill song. She took on way and edged out into Torbay like a maiden pretending shy modesty. Her running bowsprit was loosened, slid outward, and from it sprouted more red sails. Her mizzen spread red canvas, and above it climbed another sheet. Her trim, sharp bow lifted and fell, carelessly ripping and imperiously dividing the rash waves. But the waves joined again, and were undismayed. They chuckled when they reunited at the stern, and fell together in the boiling wake. They conspired mischievously; for in that Channel, the greatest maritime artery on the whole globe, are perhaps the moodiest of waters. Fickle as the affections of a jungle-bred lioness, playful as a lioness can be and—dangerous and savage as the lioness when crossed. On that Channel a single hour of time may change the sea from the placidity of a lake to the ferocity of a tempest.
But two days had passed since the I’ll Try sailed from Brixham in the sunshine, with the Channel all aglow with turquoise lights, and over waves that seemed playfully dancing with gladness and good will; but now she lay beaten and distracted under the shortest possible canvas, cringing as if from oft-repeated blows upon her oaken ribs. On her wet, slippery and heavily rolling and bounding deck, with tarpaulins and sou’westers dripping with driven rain and spray, every man of her crew, from skipper to cabin-boy, fought doggedly, desperately at the hand-winch. For seven hours thev had labored thus, unceasingly, until now they were too wearied and spent for speech. They laid breasts, hands or shoulders to the long bars, bent their backs, planted their feet, lowered their heads like bulls in a charge and tried again to make the weary treadmill round in the hope of hoisting the trawl. The great net, held open by a forty-foot beam and towed along the bottom of the sea floor upon “trawl-heads� that were like huge steel sled-runners, had caught what the men of the I’ll Try surmised must be a sunken wreck. A trawl, one of the most expensive pieces of gear known to the craft, could not be abandoned until all hope was gone. Time and again had the thick warp been worked in and out, by sheer stubbornness of toil and strength; time and again as the ship swung off and lurched, the tired men hopefully thought they had felt the trawl, scores of fathoms down, yield; but time and again that hope had proved fallacious. And always, as they worked, they blinked the sweat from their eyes and lifted their anxious regard to the steadily increasing storm. A heavier blast smote the ship until she lay so far over that her lea bulwark met the water, and waves swept the length of her scuppers.
“’Vast heaving!� rumbled Captain Josh, holding an end of a long winch-bar in his hand, and the others fell heavily over the ones upon which they had been exerting themselves, to catch breath. “It’s no use,� panted the beaten old skipper. “Storm’s got so high it’s dangerous to hold on any longer. Us must bend a line on the warp, rig a buoy, cut loose, and hope to find our gear another day.�
“Aye! And they be one chance in a million for that,� growled Scruggs, the “ancient� of the ship, who having never married, having no kinfolk, living forever alone, was regarded by his fellows as a pitiable old pessimist.
“It do be the devil’s own luck!� asserted the second hand.