Part 11

Most wonderful of all it was to see Jack handling the small boat in heavy weather. While the wee cockle-shell was rolling and bungling under our quarter, he would jump on the rail, measure his distance perfectly, spring on to the boat's gunwale and fend her off before she made the return roll. A marvellous performance that was, and the marvel only increased when you saw the young fellow pitching heavy boxes of fish on to the deck of the great steam cutter.

With a roar, and a savage sweep the big seas came; on their mountainous sides the shrill eddies of wind played, and the lines of foam twined in wavering mazes. Hill on hill gathered, and the seas looked like swelling Downs piled heap on heap, while the sonorous crests roared on hoarsely, and sometimes the face of the wild water was obscured in the white smoke plucked off by the gusts.

Jack did not mind weather; the steamer hurled herself up on the bulge of a sea, and then you could get a glimpse of a tall, lithe figure, straining in the small boat alongside the rearing iron hulk. That splendid, lithe young lad performed prodigies of strength and courage; the hulk and the little boat sank down,--down until the steamer's mast-head disappeared; then with a rush the wave slid away, and the craft came toppling down the hither side of the mountain, and still that lithe figure was there, toiling fiercely and cleverly. Soon with a bound and a loud laugh, he was on board of us again, and no one could tell from one tremor of his merry, tawny face that he had been, of a truth, looking into the very jaws of death.

This splendid man was innocent as a child of all worldly affairs unconnected with the sea. He once told me, "I can make a shift to get along with an easy book; but if I come to a hard word, I cry 'Wheelbarrows,' and skip him." On his own topics he was very sensible, and no owner could have found fault with him had he not been just a little racketty on shore. In my refined days I remember reading in one of Thackeray's books about a young lord who was much loved by one Henry Esmond: My friend Jack was very like that young man, and you could not get vexed with him,--or, at any rate, you could not keep vexed very long.

We soon made friends in The Chequers, and before midnight we were confidential. On my expressing wonder at seeing a Barking lad among us, Jack winked with profound meaning, and said, "I ain't Barking at all, only for this trip. My gal's a Lowestoft gal, and she've come up here, so I'm ready for her Sunday out to-morrow. See?"

Our second interview took place next day, and I saw the sweetheart. She was an ordinary pretty servant-girl, such as most of the fishermen pick up when they marry out of their own class; but I could see that she was likely to make some difference in John's rather convivial habits. She spoke like an ignorant woman with strong natural sense, and when Jack proposed having some beer, she said, "Ay, so! That's the way you fare to go. I've seen them, as soon as ever they leaves the pay-office, turning into the public-house. And a master lot o' good that do, doan't it now? Men workin' like beasts for two months, and then dropping all their money into the till in a week, and then off to sea short of clothes, besides very likely getting into trouble. Nay! Have yow a glass of ale if yow care, but no good never come on it, what I know. Leastways, not for men that goes to the sea."

So Jack and I deferred to Sally's opinion--until nine o'clock in the evening, and then we made up for lost time. It was amusing to see the cool way in which the handsome lad parted from his sweetheart. They had not met for two months, and yet I do not believe that they exchanged kisses either at meeting or parting.

These folk are strangely undemonstrative. They are fond of each other, and most faithful, but they show nothing. On a grim morning after a gale, when the vessels are towing up with flags half-mast high, the women will gather on the tow-path and by the quays; you see white, drawn faces, but rarely a tear. The bleak, perilous life of the men seems to be known intimately to the women, and they accept the worst fortune with a dry pathos that is heartbreaking. Jack and his sweetheart were in the flush of youth--nay, of physical beauty; they were passionately fond of each other; and they parted like casual strangers. When Jack went again below to the filthy, frowsy cabin of the smack, and thought over the months of cold, toil, drenching weather, and hard fare, I have no doubt but that he thought of the pretty girl, but he said very little, and larked on as usual as soon as he got over his parting carouse.

For several trips after this, my handsome fellow was wild and careless; his splendid constitution enabled him to drink with impunity the abominable stuff sold by the Copers, and he was merely merry when older soakers were delirious. His father and he parted, and the old man stayed at home as ship's husband to a firm of smack owners, and the lad had his head free. He was as desperately brave as ever, for the subtle poison was long in attacking his nerve; but many of his ways were queer, and the men who went home in the returning smacks carried unpleasant reports about him. At times, like Robert Burns, George Morland, and men of that kidney, he would give way to a passionate burst of repentance; but in his case the repentance always departed with the return of health and buoyancy.

One night he stayed on board a coper until a breeze came away; he then insisted on straddling across the bow of the boat on the return journey, and he lost his grip for once in his life and went overboard. A dip of that sort, with heavy sea-boots on, is rather dangerous, and Master Jack felt as though all the water in the North Sea was dragging at his legs; but he was hauled in at last. Even that experience only cured him for a week, and then his resorts to the brandy-bottle began again.

At last, when he was putting fish aboard the carrier, a letter was handed to him; he looked at it with rough tenderness, and crammed it, all greasy and gruesome, under his jumper. On getting aboard, he went to a quiet corner where the men could not tease, and he read,

"Dear John,--I write these few lines hoping you are quite well as this leaves me at present, but i don't think as you can be well if all is trew as we hear you are very wild and you ont have no money to come home if you doant watshe it. You must either stop the beer or stop goin with me and then my heart would be broak, every girl I see which married a drinking man has supped sorrow for sertain, and the man the same, and you will be just the same. Pray, my dear, do take the right tirning, or I must keap my word. So no more at present from your loveing SARAH KERRISON."

Jack cursed once, and then muttered "Werra well, let her. Let her go and take on some one better;" but he was amazingly unhappy despite his defiance, and his unhappiness drove him to frantic excesses. He used to scare his companions by saying, "If God takes my girl, they can talk about Him as they like, but He shan't take my soul, not if I damn for it." Then when the shuddering men said, "For mercy's sake, shut up. It's enough to sink the wessel," he would make answer, "Werra good, let her sink; and the sooner the better."

The days wore away, and the time came for Jack to run home. The smack was well clear of the fleets and spinning along nicely to southward on a dark night, and Jack was at the wheel. His nerve was just a little touched, and he muttered, "This is a devil of a night. I wish we were well home."

It was indeed a weird night; the wind thrummed on the cordage; the gaff whistled with tremulous sounds, as though some frightened soul were shivering at the mast-head; and when the inky waves rolled out of the gloom, they showed no definite shape--only a sliding dark cloud fringed with white flame. There is always a steady roar from the sails, and one hears it better at night; Jack had often heard the roar rise to a howl, but no noise that ever he knew had such effect on him as the rushing moan from the sails that night.

There are only two men in a watch on board a smack, and it often happens that one will go below to fetch some of the tea which the seamen drink so insatiably. Jack's mate was below, but the helmsman had no fear, as all was clear. He mused on, always peering sharply round for a few minutes when suddenly, over the haze which was rising, he saw a white light, and then the loom of a green. "All right; well clear," he muttered. "Glad the fog's no higher. Why doesn't he use his whistle?" Then, with the suddenness of lightning, he found the red light opened on him, and, with a chill at his heart, he discovered that he could not get his own vessel out of the road. Once he sang out, and then came the looming of a black mountain over him. Until the monster's stem took him on the quarter and the smack hurled over--hustled into the sea by the impetus of the steamer--Jack never left go of his wheel; he had a few seconds, and, with his nimble spring, he rushed to the mizen rigging, nicked the strings of one lifebuoy; lifted another from forward of the companion, and then made his rush for the forehatch.

"All out. No time for the boats!"

One man sprang up panting and Jack said, "Here you are, Harry. Shove that on, and jump. Jump to windward." The smack reared up; there was a long crashing rush of the swift water; then Jack saw the liquid darkness over him, and he was just beginning to hear that awful buzzing in the ears when, with a roar, he felt the upper air swoop round him.

He could just see a coil of foam on the blackness to mark where the smack had gone down, and, as he cleared his eyes, he saw the cloudy shape of the steamer far away. "Harry, boy!" he sang out, but Harry must have been hit by a spar, and Jack Brown was left alone on that bleak, black waste of wandering water.

"A lingering death," he murmured, as he felt the spray cut round his head; but he struggled resolutely to keep his face front the set of the sea, and the buoy supported him bravely. His thoughts ran on things past; he had spoken unkindly of Sally, behind her back; he had been tipsy--Ah! how often! Then he thought, "Shall I pray and repent?" All the dare-devil in the deluded lad's soul arose at this question, and he snarled "No. Blowed if I snivel just yet, only because I'm in a bad way." Oh, Jack, Jack! And the deep grave weltering below you, and only a ring of cork and oilskin to keep you out of that cold home. Was there never a shudder as you thought of the crowding fishes? Their merciless cold eyes! Their grey, slimy skin! But Jack was at that day a reckless fellow, and he lived to be passionately sorry for his splenetic madness.

The cold grew worse and worse, and it seemed to creep toward Jack's heart. He gave one cry, and instantly he heard a faint answer. Could it be the scream of a gull? Nay, they rest at night. He called again, and the voice of his agony was answered by a loud hail; then a flare was lit, and Jack knew that the steamer's boat had been searching for him.

"Easy. Shove the painter under his arms, and then two of you haul."

So Jack was plumped into the boat, and lay limp and sick. In an hour he was warm asleep in his berth on board the steamer, and, I am afraid to say that he begged hard for a pipe before he dozed over.

The steamer took him home, and he was received in a matter-of-fact way by his people. He had had a dousing! Yes, but it was all in the day's work. That is the way in which the good folk talk.

Jack was never the same again, and some of the old men said "he looked as if he had seen something." Yes, he had seen something, and he said to Sally, "All right about that letter of yours. Let it stick to the wall." The man was very grave and kind, and he spoke freely to those of his cronies who were on shore; but he would not go near his old haunts, and some people thought he must have got religious. Perhaps he had. At any rate something that happened not long afterwards made the supposition probable. Jack was on the Ter Schelling bank when his turn came to go home again, and he was moodily wondering whether any such ordeal would ever be put on him as that which he endured when the steamer sank his vessel.

The weather looked ugly; the glass went fast down, and a wild and leprous-looking moon shone lividly through a shifting mask of troubled clouds. A sullen calm fell, and the smack rolled with clashing blocks and groaning spars, making night hideous. In the morning a gale broke and soon came a blinding fall of snow. It was impossible to see many yards through the rushing drift of murky yellow, but Jack took in all four reefs, and ran on with a rag of sail and a three-cloth jib.

It was not a sea that came away; it was a mere enormous cataract that poured on irresistibly. Jack knew that so long as he could keep the boat moving, he might escape having his decks stove in, so he determined to try it--neck or nothing. No man on board knew when the sea might come which would heave her down, and they watched grimly as the gallant craft tore on. Some wanted to heave-to, but the skipper knew that he would stand a good chance of being smothered that way, and he resolved to get as near home as possible, in case the hurricane grew worse. After boring for ten hours in the worst of the tremendous sea, he saw a vessel to leeward of him, flying signals of distress. She was sinking, and her boat was smashed. The mate said, "That poor chap on't see land." Jack thought a little, and then he said, "I'm going to try. Out with your boat." Discipline on board the smacks is not very strict, and the men were inclined to question the wisdom of Jack's proposal; but Englishmen always lean to humanity, and with a little persuasion, all hands volunteered. Jack took one unmarried man, and then coolly proceeded to make his wild attempt. It was a forlorn kind of chance for everybody, but as Jack said, "I was saved once, and I know what them poor bloods feel like."

The little boat had first of all to run down on the sinking smack, and then, at the risk of capsizing, Jack's vessel ran to leeward and came round, sending everything shaking as she came up. Only desperately brave and supremely kindly people would have dared such a thing, and even the skipper of the foundering vessel said, "Well, chaps, I thought no one but a mad one would a-tried it on; but Gord bless you all the same."

After that, Jack was obliged to let go his anchor within sound of breakers, and his fight with death lasted all night. The lifeboats could not get out to him, and he could only pray that the snow-curtain might lift. In the morning a slant of wind came which enabled him to get away from the gnashing breakers, and he got in with the loss of his gaff. Sally was home for Christmas-time, and she was mighty proud when no less a person than the Mayor presented Jack with a town's subscription, which was quite enough to fit up a house.

Jack is my favourite of all the loose fish I have known, and if ever I take up my place again--alas!--I shall have him with me, and make him live ashore.

SWIFT & Co., Printers, 2, Newton Street, High Holborn, W.C.

Transcriber's note

The following typos have been corrected in the text:

Page Problem Correction

10 to a a queer to a queer 14 found the found that the 16 the nthe then the 21 had manage had managed 30 everybody, The everybody. The 74 How is this? "How is this? 79 laulo Rye. laulo Rye." 79 Rye. Rye.) 95 We must have "We must have 95 enagagement engagement 125 No one better "No one better 129 you are touched you are touched. 130 convervation conversation 137 fraced traced 141 youself yourself 143 six at night six at night. 143 all the day all the day. 162 Ned Donnelly's? Ned Donnelly's. 200 ower power 201 Do you want "Do you want 208 bargue barque

The following words with and without hyphenation were left as in the text:

arm-pits armpits mast-head masthead