Bahama Bill, Mate of the Wrecking Sloop Sea-Horse

by T. Jenkins Hains

Anchoring with the fore and mainsails still up, the small boat went slowly into the bay. There was little or no surf on the lee of the bank, and the party landed without difficulty. Then they began carrying their outfit to the wreck. They would break her up, stripping the plates from her sides for old iron and tearing apart the most valuable portion of her engines to sell at Key West. It was a job that the men who had been there before them had declined as unprofitable, for it required considerable work to strip the plates, and the engines were well rusted in the half-submerged hull. At high water there was little of value uncovered in her hold; but the wrecking crew had not been successful that season, and it was a case of getting what they could. Wrecks had been few, and the sponging industry, which all wreckers of the bank usually follow during the summer and hurricane season, had paid small returns. Dynamite was expensive to use; but it was just as well to explode a part of it as to have it spoil on their hands. They could still keep enough for a few loads of fish, for the law of the reef and bank was never enforced in regard to high explosives, and they were far away from any prying eyes.

The crew carried sledges and hydraulic jacks, with a spare tackle or two, and the mate carried the explosive. They reached the high side where the dry sand had banked against it, and one by one mounted to the deck, the Captain going aft, still gazing at the old hulk in an absent manner. She was a long ship, and he walked the entire length of her deck until he reached the taffrail. Then he turned and looked at the cabin house. His mind was far away from the work he intended. He saw that deck as it had been in the days gone by, the days of his youth, and as he looked a strange feeling of loneliness came upon him.

The deck was there before him, and upon it he saw the faces of the people who had walked or sat upon it. Even a blistered bit of paint on the deck-house recalled a certain day in the time gone when he sat there with the one woman he had lived for, the wife of his youth. A soft voice called to him and spoke the words he remembered so well. He almost started, and a choking feeling came in his throat. Yes, he had sat near that particular spot many times and listened to that voice; now still, but which seemed to call again. There were the stitches in the canvas deck covering she used to rub with her foot while talking, sitting there as they used to do in the old days when the company allowed him to take his wife with him on the run across. The deck seemed to slant away and roll from side to side, and he balanced himself to meet the roll of the ship. The stillness about him was unbroken save by the distant murmur of the sea and the low voices of the men waiting forward for the work to begin; but he heard nothing save the voice of the past.

He went into the deck-house. There was the old settee, now without the red upholstered cushions. He remembered how many times he had sat there in the evenings after the voyage was run, and how for years they had chatted under the light of the saloon lamp when the passengers had all gone ashore and the ship was deserted by all save the crew. About him were the signs of wreck and ruin, and he stood for some minutes gazing about the cabin. A woman's shoe lay mouldy and green upon the floor near a stateroom door, and it brought a dull pain in his heart as he noted it. The owner was dead, long dead, probably lost in the hurricane when the vessel went into her last resting-place. Far away in Nassau was a mound, grass grown and storm swept, the resting-place of the one who had made life worth living for him. Soon the sand would bank up and cover the old hull, and the long beach grass would grow over it, blotting out all.

He looked into a deserted room. The door was broken and hung slantwise upon its one rusty hinge. Then he stepped softly back into the middle of the saloon and listened. A thousand little things brought back memories, and he raised his head. "Oh, God! the loneliness of it all!" he cried.

In the stillness he thought he heard the laughter of a woman's voice. No, it was the sobbing, and he started. A land crab scuttled across the floor of the cabin, making a disagreeable rattling as it went. In the ghastly stillness of the lost ship a thousand sounds seemed to fall upon his listening ears. He saw the table set and the people sitting about it, the stewards getting the dinner, and the old questions asked him of the day's run; but foremost and always was the form of one woman whose bright smile welcomed him from the table end. He stole forward and went into his room, the Captain's room of the liner. The wreck and confusion here were even greater than aft; but he saw nothing now save the time when they used to sit there, she sewing upon some piece of woman's work and he poring over the chart which held his course.

His heart seemed bursting. The ghastly wreck was awful,—it was the wreck of his hopes,—and he bowed his head and covered his face with his hands as he sat upon the edge of the bunk. The light was fading; but he failed to note it. Fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes he sat there, and the mate, who had returned with the rest of the gear left in the boat, was searching for him. The sun sank below the sea before that officer broke into the room and saw him sitting there.

"It's dun gitting too late toe do enny mo' this evenin', Cap," said he with a tone of complaint.

"All right. Go aboard, I'll stay here awhile," said Sanders.