Part 10

Bill did not stand watch at the masthead. His eyesight was good enough, but Bill's three hundred pounds climbing up the rigging four or five times a day to the masthead--the skipper said he guessed he'd take pity on the rigging. So Bill stayed on deck to go in the dory, when a fish would be ironed. Also he took the pulpit when the skipper came inboard to eat. The first time John saw Bill go into the pulpit, he let a yell of mock terror out of him from aloft. "Skipper, skipper, he's puttin' her down by the head, and Lard knows she was down by the head enough before. Let she go into a good head sea, she'll never come up an' we'll be lost, all hands!" Which made Bill turn and glare up at John; and when he did that, John hove one of the cook's bright-blue dumplings down at Bill.

That afternoon we sighted our first fish. The skipper was in the pulpit, with the pole half hitched across the pulpit rail. Bill was resting his chest across the gunnel of the top dory and with half-closed eyes studying the sea to wind'ard. Oliver was sitting on the wheel-box, motionless except when he moved an arm or a hand to roll a spoke or two up and down. Aloft, we had not seen a sign of fish, near or far, for an hour or more.

John let out a sharp little cry: "Fish-O!" The skipper stood up and balanced his long pole. Oliver straightened up at the wheel-box. Bill came out of his trance, looked to us aloft and shifted his gaze to leeward. The bright, bald head of the cook shone up the forec's'le ladder. He cast a peek aloft, said "Fish-h?" inquiringly, and stepped onto the deck, smoking his pipe.

"Fair abeam to looard!" John called, and Oliver put the wheel up. Soon they could see the curved three-cornered fin from the deck. A shark's fin is three-cornered, too, but straight-edged, not curved. And a swordfish's tail moves almost without motion through the water.

The skipper balanced his pole, but without looking down at it. His eyes were for the fish only. "Hard up!" called John, and Oliver sent our bow swinging into line.

"Stea-a-dy!" called John.

The skipper was swaying from the waist. A big-boned, rangy man the skipper, more than six feet high and wide-shouldered, with a great reach and a strong-looking back. He hefted his pole--more than a week since he had ironed a swordfish--and he looked to see that the line running from his pole to a tub in the waist of the vessel was all clear. To look after that was the cook's business, and now, meeting the skipper's look: "All clear!" he sang out, and stowed his pipe in his stern pocket.

We were within half the vessel's length of our fish when, he dived. "Port!" called John. "Stea-a-dy! stea-a-dy! Lard, man, stea-a-dy-y!" They could not see the fish from the deck, but we at the masthead could follow his course under water.

The fin and tail showed again. We swung around to head him off in his course. The skipper, to loosen up his waist and back muscles, was swaying from his hips.

We were almost on the big fish. He was cruising lazily. The skipper drew back his right arm and shoulder, but fin and tail took a sudden shoot. John was in command at the masthead. "Luff--luff!" called John. The vessel shot up, the skipper leaned far over the pulpit rail. Fin and tail were gone from his sight, but from aloft we could follow the blue-black shadow of the body under water. Suddenly the shadow turned and shot diagonally back under our bowsprit. John called a warning. The skipper rose on his toes--with that long right arm raised above and behind his head, he looked seven feet tall--and waited. We feared he was waiting too long, when whing!--a backward swoop of the arm, a downward thrust of the pole, and "Gottim!" said the cook, and tossed the bight of the warp over the rail and calmly bent on a new warp for the skipper's pole. The skipper took a backward look at the flying fish; then quickly, but with never a hurry, rigged a fresh iron and line to his pole. After a man has ironed a few thousand swordfish it is probably hard to get excited over one more.

The big fish was gone, deep down, and after him the warp was whirling out of the tub in the ship's waist. In no time the whole fifty-fathom line was gone, and atop of the sea the black-and-white-painted barrel was going a good clip. And then under it went, but not for long. Up it came, and around in a quarter-circle and then straight away again with a grand little wake after it. By this time Bill had been dropped into a dory and was rowing after the buoy.

The buoy ran round another big circle before Bill caught up with it. When he did he took the buoy into the dory and began to warp in the fish, and had him alongside and was about to lance him in the head, when whir-h-h! tail and sword beat the sea white, and Bill cast him loose.

Now, if John, or Oliver, or Shorty had ever got that fish snubbed up under the dory gunnel like that, they would have finished him. If he was as long and big around as a dory, be sure they would, or try to; but getting on to middle age was Bill, and he probably had in mind a clear picture of every doryman that was ever killed swordfishing.

Bill was going after them in his own way. He'd get 'em just the same. Just let that fish play hisself out. Which he did after an hour or so, and then Bill hauled him under the dory's quarter, and reached over and a dozen times or so drove the long lance into his head. The fish flurried around and churned white water, but the deep lance thrusts did for him at last. And then Bill hitched him around the tail and waited for the vessel; and Oliver, who had been having a windward eye to the dory all the time, put over to him, and the dory tackle was hooked under the tail-knot and the fish hauled in.

A swordfish is a handsome creature when fresh caught. Plump and tapering in body, with pointed head and big eyes, and his skin a lovely dripping blue-black, which had not faded hours later when he was lowered into the hold after being dressed. The cook had a fine large round of beef on top of the ice in the hold, but it had to come out on deck to make room for that first fish--which is how deep the _Henriette_ was loaded.

He weighed perhaps three hundred pounds. A good-sized fellow. "Jist the size to be lively," said Bill. "And to fight--I don't take no chances with them kind."

The iron had gone diagonally through his body amidships. It was now hanging out with six inches of the line on the under side of him. A great stroke, passing through almost two feet of solid meat and just grazing the back-bone on the way. The cook explained that he had seen the skipper drive his iron clean through the backbone and then clear through the body of bigger ones than that.

By dark we had four good fish in, and all hands were pleased. The cook, before he turned in for the night, told us more about his blueberry patch. The skipper came below and broke in on the cook to talk about the weather. "A sea the same's if there was gasolene poured over it," said the skipper. "A clear sky, but a swell and near the horizon at sunset clouds piled up with gashes of green and purple and a hundred other shades. Wind there--plenty of it--we'll see to-morrow."

To-morrow came, but no breeze. The skipper felt put out. "I'd 'a' bet it," he said.

That night came an ugly sunset. No oily sea this time, but a gray tossing and murmuring, and showing behind among the clouds, long deep-red streaks paralleling the horizon, and the horizon lifting up and down like it had something the matter with it, too.

Next morning nothing, or no more than what Shorty said when he came down from his watch at eight o'clock. "Just a good liver shaker aloft," said Shorty.

Just before ten o'clock came a stirring out of the sea; but nothing much. Another stirring and the skipper took a good look around, and then came in from the pulpit. He called out to us to come from the masthead. We came, and took sail off her--all but her foresail. No word was given to hurry, but there was no loafing over it. Oliver, a great fellow to keep looking clean, said he guessed he'd take a chance to shave himself; and then he took another look around at sea and sky, and then he said he guessed he'd wait awhile.

While a man would be drawing on a pair of rubber-boots it came--oh, whistling! And four hours of it followed. Wind to blow a man's ears off. And rain! Oh, rain! Not rain in sheets--nothing so soft and easy as that; but rain which came driving in like a billion bullets at once. We could pick out where every one hit us. The wind blew maybe eighty miles an hour for four hours. And then the real thing came. For an hour or so more wind really blew. How many miles? Lord knows. John said a good hundred miles. Bill snorted: "A hunderd? Take on'y what's above a hunderd an' you'd git a gale by itself!"

With all the wind there was a high-running sea; and wind and sea together were driving us into shoal water. And the shoal water of Georges is bad--no worse anywhere. We sounded and got ten fathoms. Bad. There was nothing but to make a little more sail and get out. Put jumbo and trysail to her, was the word; as we started to do that a forepeak block came away, and the halyards and block got fouled with the jib-stay aloft. The skipper sent John and me aloft to clear it.

We went; and were lying out to get it, when we saw this sea come at us. It was a white yeast all around the vessel, but this one was a solid white, solid as marble almost. It came roaring like a mad bull at us. I took one peek at it and "Hang on, John!" I yelled. I did my best to leave the print of my fingers on the steel stay with the way I hung on myself--we were both of us to the masthead and that sea was just high enough to roll over our heads. I could just see a light-green color over my head as it passed.

As we stuck our heads through and looked at each other, John was saying something. There was a ringing in my ears. I asked him: "What? What did you say, John?"

"You told me to hang on," said John. "To hang on! Lard Gard, boy, did y' think I was goin' to dive into it?"

On deck when they saw it coming they had all jumped below and pulled the hatches after them. They began to come out now, and the skipper called for us to come down. Nothing was washed from her deck. Of course, everything before that had been double-lashed--dories and barrels of gasolene--before that. The skipper now ordered the bung pulled from a full barrel of gasolene. We stove one in and let the oil run out; and the seas calmed to leeward and we threw a dory to the lee rail, after lashing an empty gasolene barrel to each side of her.

"Whoever's handiest jump in!" yelled the skipper.

Big Bill was handy to the dory, but he never would have made it if John hadn't stopped to push him over the gunnel from behind. Shorty and Oliver leaped over the other gunnel. I waited for John; but the skipper had called "More oil and another dory!" and John had turned back.

We four--Bill, Shorty, Oliver, and myself--were hardly in when a sea came over the vessel's deck and swept our dory away--wh-f-f! like that. She all but filled to the gunnels before we were fair away from the vessel's side, but the two empty barrels kept her from sinking. And before another sea could get a fair chance at her Oliver and Bill were busy bailing her, and Shorty and I keeping her head to the sea with an oar astern. We looked back to the vessel, and could see them rigging up another dory and breaking out another barrel of oil.

We kept going in our dory--none of us could say how long, whether it was one hour or four, we were all so busy--Big Bill and Oliver with their heads down bailing her out with their sou'-westers, and Shorty and I with an oar keeping her head to windward. Bill and Oliver had to bail pretty fast. Bill kept getting out of wind and Oliver's eye-glasses kept getting wet with salt water so he couldn't see out of them.

"What d'y' want to see out of 'em for?" asks Shorty. "We're here in the stern to do the seein' an' the steerin'. Might's well heave your specks overboard."

Oliver hove them overboard.

So far as our seeing went we never saw the vessel which picked us up until after she saw us. She was the _Esther Ray_ and she was under a jumbo and storm trysail, working off from the shoal water and having trouble enough; but they saw us, and stood down and hailed. We made out what they said, more by their signs than by what words we heard.

"I'll tack and come by close to looard of you!" called Tom Haile, her skipper; "and when I do, take your chance and come board. You'll maybe have to jump!"

He had to watch his chance to tack. He waited maybe five minutes, both hands on the spokes, waiting and watching. And then he gave her the wheel; and when he did, it was something to look at. Between seas and sky she hung for I don't know how long--maybe five seconds, maybe ten, maybe thirty seconds--between heaven and hell she hung, before she came over. And, man, when she did, she wouldn't have started a pack thread. Judgment there, boy! Then falling and rising, and falling again, she came down onto us. A sea lifted our dory straight for her; up we went and down--straight for her windward rail. We watched. We jumped--all but Bill. He was hove aboard. The dory under us was smashed on her rail as we jumped, but we could spare the dory--we were safe aboard the _Esther_.

Once we were aboard they gave the _Esther_ a little more sheet, and off she went on her ear till we made twenty-five fathoms of water; and there we brought her to. And while we lay there hove to the wind moderated to fifty miles or so, and as the wind came down the seas went up. Higher and higher they kept mounting. Just to look at the height of them would make your back ache. And then the wind backed into the northwest, and the seas came two ways together. No dodging them at all now, and the little _Esther Ray_--stripped to her last little white shift, a corner of a storm trysail--lay to a drogue and took it.

I'd been fishing mostly in big vessels before this trip, and for the first time in my life I saw a little boat stand up and take a beating. She was a few tons bigger than the _Henriette_, but still little enough--the _Esther_. Little and deep-laden, she lay there and took it.

Little and deep-laden, yes; but, man, a stout one, too. When she was building it was Tom Haile himself who drove every bolt--every trenail--into her. He had seen to it that her timbers were heavy enough for a vessel four times her tonnage. Believe him, a vessel the _Esther_! A solid block of oak, yes! And like a solid block of oak she lay there, and "Come on, damn you, come on and get me!" we could almost hear her saying to the big seas.

Of course, she could not do it all herself. After all, she was no five-hundred-foot steamer, that no matter how it came all you had to do was to let her lay and no harm come to her. There were the moments when it was up to the skipper and her crew. But a capable skipper on her quarter and a quick-moving, handy crew in her waist--when your vessel is well-found leave the rest of it to them! They were all there, and there on the jump when wanted. No talk, no questioning--when the word was passed the word was carried out. By seven o'clock that night the little _Esther_ had ridden out the gale in glory. To be sure, it was a thunderer of a night that followed, with seas pounding her solid little head, and perhaps the man in the peak bunk did not have a word to say about that in the morning! But with the morning--Glory be!--'twas a silver sunrise and a little schooner smiling and bowing like to the baffled ocean.

But not all the swordfishing fleet were there in the morning. Bill Jackson was there, and the big, ugly sloop, and we thought we could make out Bill Rice and Tom O'Brien on the horizon. But where was the _Norma_? And the _Master_? And Bob Johnson? And the _Alarm_ of Boston? And our own little _Henriette_?

We made sail, and after a time the big sloop with the ugly bow also made sail. And we jogged back to where we had left the good fishing, and, the sea having moderated sufficiently, lookouts went aloft and the _Esther's_ skipper to the pulpit. Vessels and men may be lost, but men and vessels have to keep on with the fishing just the same.

But there were no fish to be seen. The storm had scattered them. The skipper wanted to know what somebody else thought of the storm. He ran down to speak to Bill Jackson.

Bill was sitting on the wheel-box whittling a piece of red cedar when we drew alongside. Bill's half-bared chest seemed to be trying to burst through his undershirt, and above the shirt his seamed neck rose ruggedly. Neck, arms, and chest were burned red. His beard, red in the shadows and gold in the sun, was ten days old at least. Fifteen centuries ago it must have been men of Bill Jackson's style that left the marshes of the Elbe and, sailing westward across the North Sea, looted the shores of wherever they happened to beach their keels.

"How'd you make out yesterday, Bill?" asked Tom.

"Rolled our sheer-poles under," said Bill, "not once in a while, but reg'lar. An' not a stitch o' canvas on her to the time, nuther. An' washed over everything that warn't bolted. When I see it warn't lettin' up, I ran her under bare poles. Logged eight and a half knots under bare poles. Goin' some? I call it so. Glad not to be lost, we were."

"Same here. I'm worried about some o' the fleet, Bill."

"Some of 'em's gone, all right. I don't want to see another day like yesterday in a hurry, Tom."

"Nor me, Bill. A good breeze o' wind I call it, Bill."

"A _damn_ good breeze o' wind I call it," said Bill.

"I guess by this time there's no argument 'bout it bein' a pretty good little blow," said Shorty.

We left Bill Jackson. The middle of the morning it was, a fine day, and, still hoping for fish, the Esther's lookouts were aloft. One called out something--not Fish-O!--and pointed. We looked. It was part of a drifting mast, the lower part, broken off raggedly from a foot or two above the saddle. It drifted on by.

"A white-painted saddle," said Tom Haile, looking at Shorty and me.

"The _Henriette's_ saddles was painted white," said Shorty. "But she ain't the only vessel with white-painted saddles."

"That's right," said the _Esther's_ crew, "she ain't."

A few minutes later a floating gasolene barrel drifted by, and soon another. Tom Haile reached out with a boat-hook and gaffed in that second barrel. There was a hole in the head of it--made by an axe. That didn't mean anything--it could have washed off the _Henriette's_ deck, off anybody's deck. The surprise would be in a barrel staying on her deck in the shoal water she was in when we left her. Yes, that could be, agreed the _Esther's_ crew.

From the masthead then they saw a dory--bottom up.

"A yellow dory?" Shorty and I asked.

The lookout scanned the water. "A yellow dory, yes."

The skipper put off for the yellow dory, and when he towed it back, there was the name:

HENRIETTE

on her bow planks.

"That's her other dory, all right," said Shorty. "But they still have the vessel under them." Nobody said anything to that.

Next we picked up a hatch-cover. And the hatch-cover, when we got it aboard, had a star carved on it.

"Yes, the main hatch-cover o' the _Henriette_ had a star carved on it," said Shorty. "But there's plenty o' chances for her yet."

What looked like a watermelon came drifting up.

Shorty looked to see better. "If it's a watermelon, I give up--she's gone," said Shorty. "They's nobody heaves a watermelon overboard to lighten a vessel."

It was a watermelon; and we all gave up. Everybody knew that the _Henriette's_ cook was a great fellow to ship a watermelon and keep it down among the ice for the passage home. As Shorty said, there was no reason ever for a watermelon being hove overboard. And it couldn't have floated out of her hold unless the vessel had broken up. The mast, the gasolene-barrel, the dory, the hatch-cover, and now the melon.

Shorty made a flying leap into the yellow dory towing astern, and, leaning far enough out to lay the dory over on her side, he spread wide his arms and the melon floated right in over the gunnel and into his arms, and he took it to his bosom.

Big Bill hurried to take the melon when Shorty passed it up over the rail. "Poor little _Henriette_ an' the good fellers in yer--where are yer now, I wonder?" said Bill, looking down on the melon. And then he tested it for soundness. "Only one soft spot where she bumped into somethin'," announced Bill. He called for a knife and cut it up, and tasted a piece.

"Not a touch o' salt," he said, and passed slices of it around.

A good-tasting melon, everybody said; and eating it on the _Esther's_ quarter we said all the good things we knew of the Henriette and her skipper and crew.

Two days later the _Esther_ put into Newport. We came past Point Judith in a night of black vapor--a bad night for Big Bill. He saw steamer lights all sides of him, and never went to sleep at all.

We stood up Narragansett Bay in the dawn, and the cook of the _Esther_, smoking his pipe on the deck, was the boy could tell all about the big summer houses on the bluffs. There is that about cooks--they always seem to hold more gossip than anybody else aboard a vessel. Names of who owned the cottages, how many millions--and how they made the millions--was what the cook could tell us, with a few bits of flaming gossip added on.

Some big schooner-yachts from New York were anchored in Newport Harbor. One of them, as large again as any fresh halibutter that ever was launched--a great black-enamelled cruising schooner with a high free-board, perhaps fifteen times the tonnage of the _Henriette_--held the eyes of all. "If we'd only had her out there the other day!" was what most of us were thinking.

"She'd be the girl to walk us out o' shoal water in that breeze!" put in Shorty. "We'd had her 'nd we'd 'a' washed her face for her!"

"And mebbe a few o' them fancy skylights and brass rails off her deck, too," said Big Bill.

"Maybe. But I'd like to had her tried out, just the same."

Tied up to the other side of Long Wharf when we got in was Tom O'Brien's vessel. Big Bill, like a good gossip, waddled over to get the news, and soon came galloping back.

"She's gone!" he called out, and showed us a Boston paper with the report of how four men's bodies with a life-preserver marked _Henriette_ had been picked up off Nantucket the day before. There was also the story in a New York paper of how a big ocean liner had been in the storm. She was six hundred foot long and bound for New York. There was a bishop aboard, and when it got too rough for the passengers, some of them wrote notes to the bishop asking him to hold a prayer-meeting in the saloon. He started to hold the prayer-meeting but it grew too rough. They had to quit.

"And they in good deep water where they were! I wonder what they'd 'a' thought if they'd been in this little one and where she was?" said Tom Haile.

"Maybe they'd held the prayer-meetin' anyway, then," said Shorty.

We had come away from the _Henriette_ in only our oilskins and trousers and undershirts. Tom Haile and Tom O'Brien and a couple of fish-buyers on Long Wharf started a collection to get us some clothes. We took the money up Thames Street to some clothing dealer who was a brother Moccasin to Tom Haile and O'Brien. But belonging to the same order didn't make any difference. The clothing dealer wouldn't take a cent off.

"Not even for shipwrecked seamen?" asked O'Brien.

"Being shipwrecked seamen don't make the clothes cost any less to me," said the dealer.

"A hell of a fine brother Moccasin you are!" said O'Brien.