Bahama Bill, Mate of the Wrecking Sloop Sea-Horse

by T. Jenkins Hains

What would his family do without him? He could see their amazed and terrified looks when the news would be brought to them. His poor wife who adored him and whose only thought had been for him and the little ones. No, he could not die. No, no, by God, he would not die. He shook the water from his face and dashed it out of his eyes with his hand, and raised his head again for a look. The snoring roar of a comber sounded near, but even as he noted it he thought he heard the surging wash of something floating heavily in the sea. He knew there might be pieces of wreck about him. It was a chance and he flung himself high out of the water to see. The next instant the bursting wave fell over him and bore him down again into the blackness below. It seemed a long time it held him down, and he was exhausted when he got his head out again and drew in a mixture of water and air. A few more heavy seas and he would be very weak. The knowledge of it caused a terror within him. His heart began to beat rapidly. The end was really approaching in spite of his struggles. He was beginning to realize it, to realize that death could win after all.

But the thought of those ashore still steadied him. He must do his utmost. Had he been alone in the world the futility of his exertions would have been instantly apparent. He would have made a slight, ordinary effort, the effort of the animal who instinctively fears death, but his reason would have quickly told him that the sooner he went under the better it would be for him. He would have died like the twenty-five souls who had been in his care half an hour before. But he, no, he could not go, he would swim on, and on, and on.

He had been in the water half an hour now and he saw nothing but the house where his family lived. The sun was shining bright and the grass was green near the front gate. His wife stood upon the front steps and smiled at him. He reached toward her, but she seemed to recede and smile at him, leading him on, and on, and on.

He was still swimming but did not know it. His breath had gone to little choking gasps which hardly reached his half-filled lungs. His jaws were working spasmodically, clinching under the strain and opening to gasp out the briny mixture which he was forced to breathe. But always before his vision, before his blinded eyes, was that picture of his home. The whirling, choking blackness around him seemed to close in upon him. He stopped time and again to drive the drowning spray and spume from his face. He was drowning. The wind and sea were too heavy for a man to face for any length of time. The great combing crests of the seas swept over him, and it was only by that dogged, persistent effort to reach the vision before him that he managed to keep himself upon the surface after the smothering foam held him under. Once he seemed to realize his hopeless surroundings and raised himself out to the shoulders to try to see. He happened to be upon the lee slope of a hill of water and he got a momentary glimpse of the turmoil about him. All around was the gloom of the night, lit here and there by the white flashes of foam. It dawned upon his fading senses that he had reached the limit, he was going under, there was no hope.

Like the lamp that flares up before it dies, the flame of his life rose again in one more desperate resolve. He would keep on fighting, he would not go.

The pitiful futility of his struggle roused his expiring senses to a strange fury. He struck out fiercely, driving himself ahead before the wind and raising himself with each stroke. He sank into the hollow of a great sea, the slopes on either hand raised high above him and he was in a sheltered spot for a second. The surging wash of some heavy floating thing again came to his half-filled ears, and as he rose upon the crest he made a mighty effort. He raised himself and shook the water from his face. Right alongside of him lay a black object outlined by a white fringe of foam which now and then showed phosphorescent flares. He had been swimming now for more than fifty minutes.

With failing brain and cramping muscles he strove for it, swimming, striking, reaching, the last expiring effort of a dying man who dies hard in the full powers of his manhood. His headway through the water was almost nothing. He was not a good swimmer. Few sailors can swim at all. A sea hurled him close to the object, and another swept him clear out of sight of it. Then one drove him against it heavily and he clutched frantically for a hand-hold.

When he set his fingers upon an edge about three feet above the surface he hung and rested. His senses were failing and he fought instinctively. Something within him seemed to tell him that he must get upon that object, that he must get clear of the water about him, and he rested before making the effort which must decide his fate. It was a high lift for an exhausted man and he set his strength slowly and persistently, hauling steadily with all his remaining energy. He managed to get his face level with the edge, but here he stopped. His head wobbled weakly with the surge of the sea. His eyes were closed and his jaws set. The sunshine seemed to play upon the green grass before him and the form of his wife stood beckoning. He sank an inch lower. A sea washed over him and he was slipping slowly back as it went past. He gave a choking cry, a strangling groan of despair and slipped down again into the sea just as a hand reached over the edge and closed upon his shirt collar.

The sun was shining and the wind-swept sea presented a beautiful aspect the following morning. The water broke over the lower edge of the deck-house upon which he lay, but only reached to his feet, foaming down the slant until it made a whirlpool in a mass of line which floated in a tangle. A line about his waist was made fast to a ring-bolt near him, and sitting alongside of him, with his head thrust forward peering out over the sea, was Garfunkle, his second mate.