"I never caught one, but I know just how it's done," he said, setting his teeth firmly together, as the great fish, now nearly alongside, began to show signs of being exhausted by its struggles.
Holding his shortened line firmly in his left hand, Ben picked up his "gaff"—a short pole, to one end of which a stout hook is affixed. As the dory sank into a great chasm of water, he threw his weight on one side, pressing the gunwale level with the water, so that it almost touched the side of his finny prey. One dexterous movement of both hands and knees, and the halibut—for this was the kind of fish he had secured—was fairly "scooped" into the dory, where it was quickly stunned by a blow on the head.
Ben was exultant, but there was little time in which to pat himself on the shoulder. The gale had been growing and the gloom increasing while he was absorbed in his exciting sport. The dory was tugging at her "killock" like a mad thing, as though realizing the necessity for making an immediate change of base.
He lost no time in getting his anchor, with which he also got a thorough drenching, and began to pull vigorously toward Covert Light, which was streaming out through the storm and gloom. But, alas! hardly had he taken a dozen strokes when his starboard oar snapped off close to the blade, where he had spliced it the day before.
To think was to act with the widow's Ben. Backing water with the other oar to keep the dory "head on" for a moment, he drew it rapidly inboard. Seizing the end of the bow painter, he made a clove-hitch round the middle of the whole oar and the disabled one, lashing the two firmly together. Then, just as the dory was on the point of swinging broadside to the waves (in which case she would have capsized in a twinkling), he threw the whole arrangement over the weather bow.
The resistance of this temporary drag in the water brought the dory head on to the terrible sea, but Ben saw at a glance that she did not ride easy.
"Too much dead weight amidships," he said. And with a sigh he launched the big halibut over the rail, following it with the twenty or more large cod and pollock that he had also taken. This had the desired effect, and now the buoyant craft began to ride the great rollers, scarcely taking any water on board, except the spray blown from the wave crests by the force of the wind, which was now coming in heavy gusts from the northwest.
As Ben sat huddled in the dory's stern, his thoughts were not particularly cheerful. Not that he was utterly cast down, or had given up all hope of being saved—oh no, Ben Buttles was more than ordinarily courageous, or, as his mother used to say, "He was dretful ventur'some."
But he knew the chances were against him. He had forgotten it, but it suddenly occurred to him that it was the 18th of October, and this storm, therefore, was undoubtedly the "line gale." He was drifting seaward before it on the ebb tide, about three knots an hour. Even if the dory lived through the night, the prospect of being picked up next day in such a gale was very small. If anything happened to him, the two-hundred-dollar mortgage on the little brown house would never be paid, interest or principal.
"And mother would have to go," thought Ben, swallowing violently at a hard lump in his throat. For Mr. Travis, who held the mortgage, wanted to get their little house into his possession, and tear it down, that he might build a summer hotel on its site. Mrs. Buttles would have no one but God to look to if Benjie should be taken away. Husband and three sons were all sleeping under the billows. No wonder, then, that while her storm-tossed boy, recalling these things, was praying in his heart, "Lord, comfort and care for mother," she, kneeling by the bed-side at home, was crying out in agony, "Lord, save my boy."