Part 11

The _Fuller_, to lend a good color by and by to the story of the wreckage and rescue, had to have a leak. The leak had been provided for at the same time that the cables were chiselled. So that was all right. But the leak meanwhile had begun to grow. Whereas the _Fuller’s_ captain had counted on two men to work pumps, or four seeming to be working desperately as the rescuers approached, there were now four men who really had to toil without cessation to keep the ship dry.

It grew colder. The coldest wind of all that ruffles the North Atlantic is a northwester, and this was an exceptionally cold northwester. The bark began to ice up fast, and so many extra men were needed to chop the ice off her that there were not enough left to take sail off. When out from the lee of the land they began to feel the real force of the wind, and so unloosed sails were blown off before they could be set. Then they hove her to. But a square-rigger doesn’t stay hove-to like a fore-and-after, and the _Fuller_ went sliding off to leeward; and sliding too far to leeward off the Cape Cod coast in a northwester means to drift to Georges Shoals, where in places is no more than twelve feet of water. The bark _Henry Fuller_ drew twenty-one.

The master of the _Fuller_, far from being as crazy as Wiley, to suit his purposes, had described him to Dixey, was in reality a long-headed chap and a good seaman, and here he began to think and act. Calling such of the crew as were chopping ice off her deck and rail, he put them to work setting such extra sail as he had below.

A tedious and difficult job that; and dangerous, with big seas threatening to overpower the logey craft. But it had to be done; and it was done after a long and wracking night.

Sail on her again, the Skipper tried to beat her around the cape. But as a square-rigger won’t lay hove-to as snugly as a fore-and-after, neither will she hold up to the wind like a fore-and-after. A fore-and-after always for coasting work; a square-rigger for trade-winds and the wide ocean wherein to navigate.

The _Fuller_ would not do it; nor could her master work her under the lee of the land. What with the water in her hold, the ice on her hull, and her insufficiency of sail, she only rolled and drifted in the trough of the sea. And having left both anchors in the harbor of Chatham, he could get no grip of bottom to hold her. However, he could do the next best thing--he could lay her to a drag. So getting several of the mahogany logs out of her hold, the crew lashed them together, and, working under protest, mutinous almost in their free discussion of things, they hoisted the drag up and dropped it over the rail after great exertion.

It was again night, and still no signs of a rescuing tug. Another private glance at the telegram revealed nothing new. “We’re altogether too near the shoals for Wiley,” muttered the captain of the _Fuller_, “and even if we weren’t, I guess he’s having all he wants to look after himself in this gale. I wonder is she drifting fast? The lead there, fellows--give her the lead, and see what’s under us.”

One man had life enough to take a sounding. “Forty-five fathom,” he called.

“Forty-five! God, but we’re going into it! Cut that drag adrift and let’s get out of here. Get together, men, and make sail of some kind till we’re by this place.”

“What place is it just, Captain?”

“It’s Georges North Shoal to looard of us.”

They asked no more, but worked with desperation. Frost-bitten, wet, hungry, they made sail of it in some fashion. Anywhere for them now but Georges North Shoal and sure death.

“And once by here, let her go where she will-- I’m done with her,” announced the tired captain of the _Henry Fuller_.

IV

A schemer of fame was Dixey of the _Ice King_. He stayed by the _Durlich_ till the gale drove her to harbor, and then to harbor he ran with her. He proposed to stay by her, too, till further orders. A proposition to tow a used-up tramp steamer to Portland he waved off impatiently. He was playing for bigger game.

However, when after forty-eight hours in Provincetown Harbor the _Durlich_ showed no signs of moving out, Dixey began to squirm. He instituted inquiries. Between the firemen of the two towboats existed an amity of feeling that might be turned to profit. So to the hold of the _Durlich_ a begrimed party with a quart of the right stuff in his overcoat pocket found his way; and returned after an unconscionably long visit, somewhat befuddled, but able to report that the gentleman in the fur coat didn’t calculate to expose his precious life in such weather again off Cape Cod.

Dixey considered the situation again in this new light. A long contemplation from all angles, and he went ashore to telephone. He came back again and drew out his charts. “H’m! She’s left Chatham and she’s not been reported yet in Boston. She must be out here somewhere. But where, just?” A further thoughtful whirl of a pair of dividers on the chart. “He may’ve beat up by the Cape, but I don’t think so. It’s a good chance he went into the North Shoal, and if he did, of course he’s lost. But in case he did get by--in case he did--” Dixey whistled down the tube to his engineer. “Warm her up and we’ll get out of here.”

And so it came to pass that Dixey in time sighted the leaking bark, to every appearance a sinking bark, with a crew of imploring, frost-bitten men to her iced-up rail.

The master of the bark told a story of extreme hardship, of just escaping being lost on the shoals of Georges.

“The North Shoal?”

“Aye, the North Shoal. We all but bumped, we were that handy to it. A dozen times we thought we were lost. I don’t understand it myself, but we worked by, and here we are--our hold full of water, everything soaked in the cabin and forec’s’le, where the seas wet everything down. Nothing to eat, no fire fore or aft, and we’re most froze up. Put a boat out and take us off, for God’s sake!”

“Goin’ to abandon her?” Dixey’s voice almost betrayed his anxiety.

“Abandon her? Yes, and get as far away from her as anybody will take us. Why, man, we’re froze up, and she’s sinking!”

“Don’t you think you could keep some of your men aboard pumpin’ her out and take a line from me so I can tow you in? This steamer of mine could walk you home at a six-knot clip, deep as you are. It’d mean a lot of money to me. What d’y’ say?”

“No, sir. I wouldn’t stay aboard her another hour, let alone the men, for millions. You haven’t any notion of how things are aboard of her. Everything wet down below, grub and bedding both, and solid ice, man, from rail to rail--likely to go down under our feet any minute. And here’s some of these men half wild with suffering. Take us off, and do what you please with her afterward. For all I care she’s yours--she’s anybody’s that’ll take us off.”

“Blest if I don’t try and take them off just the same.” Dixey waved to his mate to unlash the boat.

The deck-hands of the _Ice King_ seldom had occasion to launch a boat, and now they made a mess of it. When they should have fended the boat off, they allowed the sea to bear it in. Against the side of the towboat it came crashing.

Dixey swore blue oaths from the pilot-house. “What in the name of Beelzebub you tryin’ to do? Stove in, is she?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the mate.

“Bad?”

“So bad that I wouldn’t want to ask any men to go in her--and the men don’t want to go, either.”

“That so? A fine lot of able seamen! Well, they’ll have to take a line--” He hailed the bark. “We can’t help you unless you’ll take a line and let us tow you.”

“What’s the matter with your other boat?”

“They’d smash that, too, and----”

“Ho, Captain--” it was the voice of one of the bark’s crew--“here’s a sail bearing down.”

V

The sea-swept _Buccaneer_, bucking the northwester, was putting in great licks on the southerly tack. Suddenly the forward watch, trying to keep warm in the lee of a bit of canvas tacked to the weather fore-rigging, spied an abandoned vessel.

“Wreck O!” his voice rang above the gale. Crump Taylor and half the crew came piling up to the tumbling deck.

“Where away? Sure enough! Let’s see again. That’s what--a wreck!”

The fast-sailing _Buccaneer_ was soon abreast of her. “Jibe her over and sail around her--let’s have a closer look,” said Crump, and the man at the wheel did as bid.

“She’s pretty low, and all iced up. She looks bad, but you never can tell. What the devil’s that big tug doin’, and not helpin’ her? But no matter what he’s doin’--drop alongside there--not too close. One roll of her atop of us and our names’d be in the papers with the fine notices they give a man when he’s dead. ‘An honor to their profession,’ ‘Too bad they died,’ and so on--all fine enough, but not healthy. Hi, aboard the bark--what’s wrong?”

Again was the story told--of the harrowing drift past the edge of the shoals and their present plight. “Take us off,” it was then--“for God’s sake, take us off!”

“We got no boat,” said Crump to that. “But wait, there’s that tug,” and motioning to the wheel, “Jog over to the tug.”

“Those men want to be taken off,” hailed Crump when he was close to the towboat.

“Well?” said Dixey.

“And you got two boats?”

“Yes, and one already smashed trying to put it over.”

“Well, there’s the other.”

“And smash that, too?”

“Well, I’ll be damned--and a frost-bitten crew alongside--and their vessel sinkin’ under their feet. How about the busted one towin’ astern?”

“It’s full of water.”

“Well, cast her adrift, and we’ll stand by and pick her up and patch her up and take the bark’s crew off with her.”

“Lord, you’re the devil and all, ain’t you?”

“Now, _what_ d’y’ think o’ that?” was all the disgusted Crump could splutter by way of condemnation. He turned to his crew. “All there’s to it is, we’ll have to get ’em off ourselves.”

“But how’ll we get ’em off, Skipper, without a boat?”

“I know.” Sam Leary bobbed up. “Let ’em run a line from their masthead to a block in our riggin’ and again a block on deck with a couple of men standin’ by to haul and slack, and let them come down the incline like’s if ’twas a breeches buoy.”

“Sam,” said Crump admiringly, “but you’re sure a wizard.”

Crump hailed to the bark and explained. The bark’s crew did their share. One after the other they came whizzing down to the deck of the fisherman. Her captain, the last to leave, set fire to the few dry places below before he went. An excruciating half-hour it was, but at last the crew of the bark were on the deck of the schooner. “And now go below,” commanded Crump, “and turn into the dry blankets. In five minutes the cook’ll have you full of hot coffee.”

Seeing the strangers on the way to comparative comfort, he returned to active business. Crump was ever a man of action.

“Who’s in for salvage?”

“Me!” said eighteen members.

“And who’ll be the prize crew?”

“Me!” said nineteen, this count including the cook, just then running aft with more hot coffee. The nineteen, and doubtless Crump also, had visions of an adventure that might yet net them a good trip.

“And now to get aboard. How’ll we get a man aboard her for a starter? How about that, Sam? We can’t go up the way they came down, can we? Get your head to working.”

“Why, swing aboard by our dory taykles. When we roll down and our mastheads are ’most over her deck, a man can let go and drop off.”

“And suppose a man misses?” Crump put the question like a lecturer in front of a class.

“He must’nt miss--unless he’s an A1 swimmer. If he----”

“O Skipper, they’re making ready to put over a boat from the tug!”

“The devil--tryin’ to steal our prize! Get a move on, fellows! If they’re half-way smart they’ll beat us out, and you know marine law--whoever puts the first man aboard c’n claim salvage rights. We got to beat ’em, Sam, and that dory-taykle scheme’s not quick enough. How’ll we do it now?”

“If you’re good and careful I’ll try the main-boom jump. But you got to be careful--in this sea, Skipper.”

“All right. Sail around her again,” called Crump to the wheelsman. “Now, fellows, when she’s comin’ afore it let her main sheet run to the knot, and put the boom taykle to her and be sure to choke it up hard and tight. This no place for accidents.”

Which they did, and as the _Buccaneer_ came flying down toward the stern of the bark, Sam Leary ran out on the boom, which was then at right angles to her rail, leaning against the sail as he ran. At the end of the boom he gathered himself for the leap. “Steady, Skipper--you know what it means if I miss.”

“Trust me, Sammie.” Crump held the wheel, and in the touch of his hand was the full genius of steering. “Trust me, Sammie,” he repeated, while Sam again gathered himself, and from under the stern of the bark, the _Buccaneer_ lifting to a sea, he made the jump. It was a lesson in helpfulness to see, at the psychological moment, the entire crew’s arms unconsciously raised to waft him on.

Sam’s feet hit the icy rail, and away he went, skating half the length of her quarter and coming down--bam! on the seat of his oilskins.

“Hurt you, Sammie?” came sympathetic voices from the deck of the _Buccaneer_.

“Never jarred me,” affirmed Sam, and waved his hand at the discomfited master of the tugboat.

“Yes,” commented Crump, looking over to the tug, “that does for _his_ salvage. And now I’ll put her alongside, Sammie, and we’ll try your dory-taykle scheme.”

When Crump had his tackles rigged he called out: “I’ll hoist the men up and let ’em drop aboard. Only you run an end of a halyard from the bark, Sammie, to haul ’em well inboard.”

“And tell ’em what I said about not missing, Skipper.”

“I’ll give ’em written instructions,” said Crump to that.

“Just like putting fish out on the dock, ain’t it?” hallooed the first man, while he was still in the air. Down he came--plump! and his teeth rattled when he hit the upheaving deck.

“Hurry up, a few more of you, and help to put out the fire here--this no place for jokes.”

When he had seven men, Sam waved an arm to Crump. “No more, no more, Skipper.”

“But me, Skipper, me!” appealed every individual one of those left behind.

“No.”

Despite that, “Just me!” a half dozen men with uplifted arms implored the Skipper. “Just me, Skipper, just me!” Most persistent of all was young Gillis. “Just me, and make a good prize crew. That’ll be eight men and myself--nine men all told. Luck in odd numbers. Besides, I’m Sam’s watch-mate, and Sam said he never had a watch-mate like me.”

“H’m-- I cal’late that’s right. Just you, then, but hurry.”

Gillis hurried, so much so that instead of dropping aboard the bark he fell into the sea between the bark and the schooner.

He came spluttering to the top. “Heave me a line, somebody!” A dozen lines were hove at him and two draw buckets; one, hitting him on the head, all but drove him under again.

“Lord, don’t kill me!”

“There’s a fine waste of draw buckets,” commented one of the prize crew ere they had him safe on the bark.

“Oh, but that fire feels good!” chattered Gillis, and took station by the main hatch, where he might heave buckets of water on the fire without removing too far from the heat of it.

It took them the better part of two hours to master the fire. “To the pumps!” said Sam then, and, double-manned by fresh vigorous men, the pumps soon began to lessen the deluge in the hold.

“And now make sail, Sam,” called Crump from the _Buccaneer_.

“Aye. Who’s ever been square-riggin’?” asked Sam of his prize crew then. Two men answered to that.

“You’ll be captain of one watch, and you of the other. That’s for knowin’ about a square-rigger. And now let’s make sail.”

They could not make sail very well, however, because there was not sail enough to make--that is, to set sail as it should be set on a square-rigger. But there was enough for half-sails, and they made half-sails for her accordingly.

“Now she’s a fore-and-after, isn’t she?” commented Sam. “All right, now--we can do somethin’ with her now--hah, what?”

“Yes, and we won’t need any captains of watches in her, will we, Sam?” queried Gillis, thereby betraying a slight jealousy of the superior ranks.

“That’s so--we won’t, will we? You two square-riggers, you Charlie and you Dinnie, you’ll be just ordinary hands again.”

“Well, well, ordinary hands ain’t bad--there’ll be good prize money out of this, Sam.”

“If we keep her afloat there’ll be.”

“Oh, we’ll keep her afloat, Sam.”

“It’s good you think so. But to the wheel now. Who’s first watch?”

“O Sam”-- Gillis was peering into the binnacle--“her compass is busted!”

Sam ran aft to see for himself. “So it is. Man, but they’ve had crazy doin’s aboard this one.”

“Aye, and her rudder’s been pounded off,” came from another.

“No compass and no rudder, hah? Wouldn’t that jolt you, though? Well--” Sam looked around. “O Skipper,” he hailed to his vessel, “you’ll have to come under our stern and make the _Buccaneer_ act as a rudder for this one.”

“It’s easy done,” said Crump, and passed up the lines to hold the _Buccaneer_ in proper fashion to the bark.

With everything fast and taut and the bark beginning to show signs of life, the _Ice King_ ranged alongside the _Buccaneer_.

Dixey’s head was poked out the pilot-house. “I say, Captain,” he called, “you’ll never be able to beat home with her. What d’y’ say if you take our line and we tow you both to Boston--or Gloucester? It’s out of the question you gettin’ her home under sail. You keep your gang aboard to keep her pumped out, and I’ll tow her and we’ll split the salvage. What d’y’ say? You’ll never see home and you hang on to her.”

“And you the man wouldn’t lend us your old boat?” called back Crump.

“That’s all right, Captain. Business is business. Better take my line. You’ll never see home and you hang on to her that way.”

Sam had to put in a word here. “Don’t you take any old line from him, Skipper. Fine days when steamboat men c’n tell us our business!”

“No fear of me, Sam. Sheer off, you,” and Crump waved the tug contemptuously away.

With a final word from the pilot-house, “Well, don’t blame me if you lose your prize and your men both,” the big sea tug moved toward the northwest, where soon she was lost in the haze.

VI

With the bark under weigh, Sam Leary organized his crew. Four men to the pumps and four men to chop ice, and himself everywhere--alow and aloft, pumping water, chopping ice, and back to the stern to advise with Crump Taylor as to the course.

“How’s she doin’?” Sam would call.

“Fine! fine! Go on--all right. I think she’s liftin’ a mite.”

“Think so?” and Sam, much cheered, would dash around deck again.

The ice was a toilsome proposition. It made about as fast as they could clear it. “I see them harvesting ice on the Kennebec one winter,” said young Gillis, by way of drawing an extra breath--“horses and ice-cutters--and that’s what we ought to have here.”

“I suppose so,” retorted Sam, “and wagons to carry it off, and ice-boats sailin’ around with cushions and young ladies in furs in ’em, and a little automobile engine to work the pumps, so all you’d have to do would be to stand watch once in a while and go below and mug up whenever you felt like it.”

“There,” exclaimed Gillis, “I knew there was something I forgot! What we goin’ to do about eatin’? There’s no grub aboard this one.”

“None at all? How d’y’ know?”

“Oh, I been below.”

“Trust you. At eatin’ or watchin’ out for seas you’re a certificated master. ‘Here’s one I _think_ is comin’ aboard,’ he says the other day, and she high as Mount Shasta ’most, and comin’ like a railroad train. And so no grub, eh? Well, the Skipper’ll have to manage some way to heave some aboard. But quit your conversational chattin’ now and keep pumpin’--and you others go to choppin’. Slack up, and the first thing you know this one’ll go down--plumb! like a rock--and then where’ll we be?”

“And our salvage, Sam--where’d that be, too, hah?”

“That’s so, our salvage. And ’tisn’t only salvage, but we want to show that tug-boat crowd, and those bark people that cast her off, that we c’n get her home. But how’s the pumps? Three thousand strokes yet? Isn’t that the devil, though? And ice enough aboard yet to make a winter’s crop for one of them Boston companies with the fleet of yellow wagons, yes. But keep to it, fellows, and by’n’by we’ll see about grub.”

Later, Sam paid out a long line, which Crump took aboard the _Buccaneer_ and attached to a great hunk of beef, wrapped in four thicknesses of oilskins, and a can of hot coffee, tightly stoppered. The beef reached the bark somewhat cooled, but in bulk entire. As to the can, the stopper was buffeted out of that, and only salt water was there when Sam hauled it in.

“Now what d’y’ think of that, Skipper?”

“That’s the devil, ain’t it? But better luck next time.”

“Lord, I hope so!”

All that night the prize crew labored. The sails needed but small attention. Hauling in or paying out occasionally sufficed for them, she being on the one tack all night; but the hull of the bark setting so low made the trouble. The seas broke almost continuously over her, and added to that were the icy decks, with footing so uncertain that at any moment a man was likely to be picked up and hurled into the roaring black void. When two or three men had been hove into the lee scuppers, and from there miraculously rescued, Sam saw to it that thereafter every man worked with a life-line about him.

Sam himself was fettered by no lashings. His work called for too extensive an activity. He had to be not only aft, but forward, and aloft as well as below. They could hear him moving in the blackness, grabbing sheets or halyards, fife-rail or rigging, as he stumbled from one place to another. Regularly did he disperse words of cheer. “We’ll get home yet, fellows, and fool ’em all--and then! For you home-bound craft, you that got families, there’s the wife who’ll have new dresses and the children copper-toed boots, and a carriage for the baby, with springs in it. Man, but the time you’ll all have! And the time _we’ll_ have, we privateers--hah, Gillis?”

“M-m!” murmured Gillis from the region of the port pump-brake, and forced new energy into arms that long ago he had thought were beyond revival.

Morning came, and with it an increase of wind and cold. Crump, from the end of the _Buccaneer’s_ bowsprit, where he managed to hang by the aid of the jib-stay, hailed Sam and offered to put on fresh men.

“No,” said Sam, “we’ll stick it out a while longer.”

“But by’n’by it’ll be too rough, Sammie, and we won’t be able to take you off.”

“Oh, well then, no harm--we’ll stick it out some way.”

“All right, have your way,” and Crump went back to the deck of his vessel.

That afternoon it began to look bad for the bark and the men aboard her. It was her captain, refreshed from a twenty-four hours’ sleep below, who thoughtlessly passed his opinion when he, the first of his crew to revive, poked his head above the companion-way and was astonished by the sight of the ship that he thought he had scuttled. “What--she on top of the water yet!” From the bark his eyes roved to the derailed ice-covered deck of the little _Buccaneer_, then up to Sam and his toiling gang again. “Well, they are damn fools, ain’t they, to think they’ll ever get her home?”

He said that to Crump, who answered softly: “Now, Captain, I don’t want to jar your feelings any, but if you don’t do one of two things--go below and stay there, or draw the hatch over your face if you stay up here--then I’m afeared I’ll have to pick you up and tuck you away under the run or somewhere else where you can’t be heard for a while. Damn fools, eh?” snorted Crump, and in sheer derision of some people’s judgment spat several fathoms to leeward.