“Haven’t done it yet.” With a wooden expression of countenance, the skipper continued to stare at the fire.
Mrs. Cathles spoke. “Ah, David, ’tis little use tryin’ to pick the bravest when all is so brave. But I do think none will ever do braver’n what that fishin’ skipper did—him we was hearin’ about yesterday.”
“Ay, that was a man!” her son agreed.
“What was it?” the girl inquired, with a veiled glance of indignation at Captain Whinn, who appeared quite uninterested, if not actually bored.
“You tell it, David,” said the mother. “Big moniments ha’ been put up for less.”
“Go on, David,” murmured Esther.
“’Twas something like this,” he began. “They had hauled the nets and was makin’ for port in the early mornin’, in hazy weather, when a U-boat comes up almost alongside. I reckon they was scared, for at that time fishin’ boats was bein’ sunk right and left. Then the commander comes on deck and asks, in first-class English, which o’ the seven was skipper. And the skipper he holds up his hand like as if he was a little boy in the school. ‘All right,’ says the ’Un, ‘I guess you can navigate hereabouts—eh?’ The skipper answers slow that he has been navigatin’ thereabouts ’most all his life. ‘Very well,’ says the ’Un, ‘there’s a way you can save your boat, and the lives o’ them six fine men, and your own.’ He waits for a little while; then he says: ‘This is the way. You come on board here, and take this ship past the defenses and into —. That’s all. I give you three minutes to make up your mind.’
“’Tis said the skipper looked like a dyin’ man then, and all the time one o’ the U-boat’s guns was trained on the fishin’ boat. ‘Time’s up,’ says the ’Un; ‘which is it to be?’ And the skipper says: ‘I’ll do what ye want.’ I never heard what his mates said; and I should think their thoughts was sort o’ mixed. But they puts him on board the U-boat and clears out, as he told them to do; and the last they see of him was him standin’ betwixt two ’Uns, each wi’ a revolver handy. And then him and the ’Uns goes below, and so does the U-boat.”
“He was surely a coward!” the girl exclaimed.
“Wait a bit,” said David. “Can’t ye see that he saved the lives o’ his mates?”