Part 12
It turned out as Crump had predicted in the morning--still heavier weather for that afternoon and night. Just when Sam was demonstrating with a long pole that there was at least a foot less water in her hold, the wind and sea began to make. Crump offered to attempt to put fresh men aboard, but Sam waved him off. “No use, Skipper, runnin’ extra risk for the gang--you’d lose some of ’em. We’ll stick it out--we’ll make out some way.”
Throughout that night the men on the bark toiled terribly. Chop ice and man pumps it was, with not even time to crack a joke or indulge in occasional cheering reminiscence. There was not time during most of the night even to carry to the rail and throw to leeward the chopped ice. So they cut it into large blocks and piled them up two or three tiers high and there allowed them to stay until by and by, the bark heaving down sufficiently, away they went in a grand slide overboard. “Everybody sashay,” Sam would cry then, and waft them overboard with graceful arms. And yet, exhausting as was the ice-chopping, the pumping was even more so. It was so terribly monotonous to men accustomed to lively action. No variety to pumping water out of a ship’s hold; never a chance to put in a fancy stroke or shift hands, as in ice-chopping. Up and down--always that--up and down; and when a ship is making as fast as she is lightened, never an inch of encouragement from the sounding pole. Sam had to cut down the spells from an hour to half an hour, and finally to fifteen minutes, so terribly wearing did the grind become to the exhausted men.
Sam himself had no exuberant vitality after that second night; but the unobtrusive will was inflexible as ever, and he had ever an eye for those on the _Buccaneer_. “Skipper, ain’t she been strainin’ through the night?”
“A little bit, Sammie, a little bit.”
“More than a little, Skipper--there’s been too much pumpin’ aboard you, too, for a _little_ strainin’. How many strokes?”
“Oh, maybe two thousand through the night.”
“I thought about that. And now let me tell you something, Skipper--that kind of work won’t do your vessel any partic’lar good. It’s a terrible strain. I know, I know--you can’t tell me a little vessel like the _Buccaneer_ can be a rudder to a big logey rolling ship of this one’s size and not show signs of it. I misdoubt you’ll be able to hang on much longer.”
“Much longer? Let me tell you, boy, we’ll hang on till you or me goes under.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Why won’t we? Who’ll stop?”
“I will. See here.” Sam, balanced on the taffrail of the bark, poised a sharp-edged axe above the lines that held the _Buccaneer_ astern. “One slash here, and one slash there, and you’re adrift.”
“You just try it--just let me see you try it, Sam Leary!” Crump in his wrath shook his fist at Sam, and followed that by furious orders to the _Buccaneer’s_ crew. But that fit over, he shook his head. “I misdoubt that bark’ll live the night out. Blast her, blast her, I wish we’d never set eyes on her! What’s millions, let alone a few thousand dollars, to men’s lives--and men that’s sailed with you, and summer breeze or winter blow was always there when you wanted ’em? Damn you, Sam Leary, for an obstinate mule, but if ever I see you aboard this vessel of mine again you won’t leave it in a hurry again to go aboard any old sinkin’ hulk for prize money!”
And still the wind and sea increased; and just before dark Sam appeared at the stern of the bark with the sharp axe in his hand. “O Skipper, Skipper!” he called.
“Aye, Sammie.”
“Time to part company.”
“No, no, Sammie--not yet awhile.”
“Yes, now’s the time. There’s nine of us here and twenty-seven of you there. You lay tied to this one, and if we go down suddenly in the night, down you go, too.”
“No, no, Sammie. I’ll have two men with axes to the lines. I’ll cut, if I see you goin’--as sure as God’s above me, I’ll cut.”
“‘Twon’t do, Skipper. We could roll under in
the dark afore you’d know it and you’d get whirled in----”
“And even so, Sammie--do you believe she’d draw us under?”
“Wouldn’t she? If you didn’t cut quick enough, say. And if she didn’t, you’d be caught aback, and in this breeze you’d capsize in a wink. No, ’twon’t do, Skipper. If we’ve got to go, we got to go, and you goin’ with us won’t help. And there’s nine of us and twenty-seven of you.” He looked all about him then--ahead, abeam, aloft, and once more astern at Crump. “So long, fellows, if we’re not here in the mornin’.” Two sharp slashes and the line parted; wide apart fell the big bark and the little schooner.
Crump, immediately he felt himself free, laid the _Buccaneer_ alongside as near the bark as he dared, and he could dare a great deal.
“Keep off!” called Sam.
“No more than she is now, Sam. And if ever she should go down, tell the fellows to lash themselves to something or other that’ll float high, and we’ll be right there and maybe pick some of you up----”
Sam waved, the last time they were able to see so much as a hand waved ere black night rolled down on them.
From the little schooner all hands watched the night out for that spot in the darkness where they conceived the bark to be--that is, those that had time to spare from their work. Occasionally they could catch from her deck a call that they knew to be the voice of Sam with his word of cheer. They saw the attempts to light torches on her, the flash and flare, and then the almost immediate dousing when the sea washed aboard.
But fortune attends the brave. She was there in the morning, rolling worse than ever and lower in the water, but still afloat.
“Now, ain’t that amazin’?” demanded Crump of one after another of his crew. “Ain’t it amazin’?” he demanded of the captain of the bark.
That intriguing party could only shake his head at the miracle of it. “Still afloat! And when I left her I give her about an hour. I set her afire myself with my own hand,” he explained, “so nobody’d be misled into tryin’ to save her. ‘No salvage on _her_,’ I said. ‘Another hour and she’ll be burned to the water’s edge, and then she’ll sink and trouble nobody no more,’ I said. And a good job I thought it was, she was that dangerous-lookin’. And if I’d never set a match to her, she was leakin’ that bad, and that low in the water! And there she is still afloat! Well, that’s past me.”
That afternoon, the weather moderating, Crump sailed close up and once more offered to try to take off the worn-out gang of the now wildly sailing bark and put his own fresher men aboard.
“What!” exclaimed Sam--“leave her, and after we got her this far? Why we’re gettin’ to love the old hulk. Let’s finish the job, Skipper, so long’s we started it. Another day and we’ll be home.”
“Sam Leary, am I skipper, or you?”
“Why, of course you’re skipper, and if you order it--_order_ it, Skipper--we got to obey.”
“Well, come aboard here.”
“How?”
“Rig up that taykle--the same that hoisted your gang aboard.”
“That taykle parted last night, Skipper, and it can’t be rigged.” If one can imagine an impudent, unshaven, hollow-eyed man in iced-up boots, beard, and oilskins, then it is possible to picture Sam Leary as he leaned against the mizzen-rigging of the wallowing derelict and smiled sweetly at his skipper. And imagine Sam Leary’s skipper, after a lot of spluttering, smiling back, and even at last admitting himself beaten.
“All right, go ahead. There’s no gettin’ past you, Sam Leary. Finish your cruise in her.”
And Sam Leary did finish his cruise in her. Three days later, such weary, weary men-- But let that pass. Three days later--and in broad daylight it happened, so that their friends at home might share in the full glory of their achievement--they sailed, the bark leading and the little fisherman by way of a rudder astern, into the harbor of Gloucester, where they fancy they know a seaman when they see one.
VII
Of the sequence of events that threw that valuable prize into their hands the crew of the _Buccaneer_ were not told at that time; but, later, young Gillis, having journeyed to Boston--there in emulation of more noted fishermen the more splendidly to disburse his prize-money--had come back minus his roll, but fat with information.
“And there I was, Skipper, spending my money like a--like a----”
“--a drunken fisherman.”
“No, that’s not how I was goin’ to put it, Skipper. But, anyway, there I was dispensin’ refreshment like a gentleman to a few friends I’d met, when along comes the skipper of the tugboat that wanted us to take his line and we wouldn’t, you mind. And he looks at me hard, and at last asks me was I _really_ one of that gang o’ fishermen that brought the mahogany bark back to port. And I says, ‘Why ain’t I, _really_?’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘you look so diff’rent dressed up.’ And I said that naturally a man that’d been bangin’ around on the Banks for five or six weeks would look handsome in oilskins and a gale of wind. That kind o’ struck him amidships, I guess, for he said he didn’t mean anything by that, and goes on to tell me how he figured it cost him twelve hundred dollars chasin’ up that bark--in tows he missed that week; and his friend here--he introduced the other steamboat man--’d got a thousand dollars just for doin’ nothin’ but layin’ under the lee of the Cape for three days while it blew, and then for joggin’ around two days off the cape after it moderated. ‘Yes, and the man that paid me is down the wharf now,’ goes on the second steamboat man, ‘and I think he’d like to meet some of your crowd.’ And down the dock we went, and there he was. I forget what he looked like in the face, but he had the swellest fur coat, big enough to ’most make a mains’l for the _Buccaneer_ and fur nigh long enough for reef-points on that same mains’l, and he shakes hands with me and says he didn’t know whether to be sore or not. And just then Sam come bowlin’ along, and he says, ‘This must be one of your crowd, too?’ ‘_One!_’ I says--‘one! Why, he had charge!’ and just then the first steamboat man he grabs Sam and says, ‘Well, I’ll be damned--why, you’re the fellow made the main-boom leap!’ ‘What!’ says fur coat, and has a good look at Sam. ‘Sure enough,’ he goes on, ‘you’re the kind of men I ought to have hired to salve the bark.’ ‘Hired? what d’y’ mean?’ says Sam. ‘Oh, nothing,’ says fur coat to that; ‘but I’m done with the salvage business. Let’s have a drink,’ and then they came so fast, reg’lar ring-a-ring-a-rounder fashion, that----”
“That the next thing you knowed you had an awful headache, and not enough money to pay for your ticket back to Gloucester.”
“Didn’t I, though! Trust me--me, Wise Aleck, goin’ to Boston ’thout a return ticket. But Sam didn’t.”
“No, trust Sam to go the whole hog. How much does he want?”
“Twenty, or twenty-five, he thought would do.”
“Only twenty-five, hah? Mod’rate, ain’t he? Well, give me his address and I’ll telegraph it to him. And how much do you want for yourself?”
“Oh, about fifteen cents for a drink’ll do me, unless----”
“Unless what?”
“‘Less you’d lend me ten on the next trip.”
“No, I won’t lend you ten on the next trip. I’ll _give_ you ten dollars, if that’ll do you.”
“And why not lend me the ten on the next trip, Skipper?”
“Because there ain’t goin’ to be no next trip this winter. I’m cal’latin’ to stay ashore a while. This salvage business is good enough for me this winter. A couple of months ashore won’t hurt any of us. And then there’s the _Buccaneer_ needs calkin’ where steerin’ that bark racked her, and new rail, and a few things around deck. And that’ll give that streak of hard luck a chance to run itself out. So here y’are. I s’pose you’ll go and blow that now as fast as you can?”
“I guess that’s right, too, Skipper,” and up the street rolled Gillis, blithely singing.
Crump gazed after him. “There’s a man oughter be glad he’s alive to-day. But no, he must try and keep up with men like Sam Leary that gets fat on excitement. Where’s that card o’ Sam’s he give me? H’m-m--Élite Hotel, Canal Street. And twenty-five dollars, eh? He must be cal’latin’ to come home in a automobile. Well, after all, I dunno but he’s entitled to automobiles at that.”
On Georges Shoals
Oh, but Dannie Keating was the happy man that night! Under the light of the winter stars he drew her to him, and, with her head all but resting on his shoulder and his arm about her waist, they came down the shady side of the street together, and cared no more for the whistling wind than for whatever curious eyes might, from behind drawn blinds, be peeping. “If anybody’s rubbering, they’re all sore,” said Dannie when she protested, and again broke the night air with--he simply couldn’t help it--
“O sweetheart mine, I love thee, And in all the sky above--see! No heart like thine, no love like mine-- O sweetheart, but I love thee!”
Oh, but the blood was running riot within him. “Don’t I love you, Katie? Don’t I? And don’t you? And don’t we both?” and in the shadow of the steps of her home he drew her yet closer to him and kissed her--kissed her--a thousand times he kissed her before she could draw a free breath again.
“And in the morning, Katie, I’ll be putting out. You won’t see me, it’ll be so early. And it’ll be the last trip in that old packet, though maybe I oughtn’t say that of her that’s earned a good bit of money for me--earned enough to pay for the new one, Katie--the new one that’ll be ready for me the next trip in. And then, Katie dear, we’ll see--as good as anything of her length and beam out the port. And have you picked a name for her yet? Yes? The _Dannie Keating_, indeed! No, no, I’ve a ten times better one--and you’d never guess, I’ll bet. And she’ll be a vessel! Every cent that you saved for me, dear, went into her.”
“You saved it yourself, Dannie.”
“I saved? Lord bless you, Katie, how much would ever I save if I hadn’t turned it over to you as fast as I made it? How much did I save before I met you? A whole lot, warn’t it, now? Why, girl, the very oilskins I used to wear would be drawn against my next trip. But it don’t matter which of us--every cent the pair of us have saved has gone into her. And she’ll _be_ a vessel, and then, if any man sailing out of this port thinks to make me take my mains’l in----”
“Hush, Dannie, don’t begin by being reckless. And I wish you weren’t going out in the _Pantheon_ again. She’s so old, Dannie, and not the vessel for a winter trip to Georges.”
“Well, there _is_ better. But she’s been a good vessel to me, dear, and that means to you, too. And only one more trip, and then the fast and the saucy--the handsome _Katie Morrison_.”
He parted from her after that, and from the shadow of the doorway she looked after him, her heart jumping and herself all but running after him. Up the street she watched him swing, so straight and strong. Oh, but the shoulders of him! and the spring to his every stride! Then she breathed a prayer for him, and went upstairs and to her bed.
But she could not sleep. All night long she tossed, whatever it was possessed her; and in the dawns she got up to watch by the window until he should come by on his way to the vessel.
He would come by, she knew. He never yet failed to go that half dozen streets out of his way so that he might look up at her window. Oh, the times that she watched from behind the curtains--before she knew him well, that was--and he never suspecting!
And he came at last. It was but five o’clock then, and dark--a winter morning. But she needed no light. Long before she could make out his figure she knew his footfall. How lightly he trod for so big a man--to his toes at every stride, as a strong man should. No doubt or hesitation there--a man to go winter fishing that, and enjoy every whistling breath of it. And he was singing now!
“O sweetheart dear, I love thee!”
When a man sings a love-song at five o’clock of a winter’s morning-- She threw on her mother’s prized cashmere shawl and ran down.
“Dannie!”
Across the street he leaped, three strides from curb to curb and two more to the top step. “Katie-- Katie--and this cold morning!”
“I couldn’t let you go by without saying good luck again, Dannie.”
“Oh, the girl!” He patted her head and drew her to him till he felt her lips making warm little circles against his neck.
“Dannie?”
“Yes, dear.”
“I wish you’d stay at home this trip. The _Pantheon_ is old.”
“Old? So she is. Not the vessel the _Katie_’ll be--not by a dozen ratings. But Lord, Katie, I’ve been through too many blows in her for you to be worrying now, dear.”
“I know it, Dannie, and yet I wish you weren’t going this trip.”
“Well, I wish I warn’t myself. I’d like nothing better than to be staying this month home and watching the new one building--to overhaul every plank and bolt and thread of oakum that’s put in her. All day long watch her building, and every night come and tell you how she is getting on, the pair of us side by side before the fire. That’d beat winter fishing on Georges--fighting your way out of the shoal water when it comes a no’the-easter, and chopping ice off her to keep her afloat when it comes a no’wester. Yes, dear, it cert’nly would be a comfort--home here with you and watching the _Katie_ building. But we can’t both have comfort, dear. You to home and me to sea we’ll have to be for many years yet, dear. I’ll go out this trip as I went out a hundred of others before. When I’m back--why, ’twill be worth the trip, dear, that coming back to you.”
“I’ll be at the dock this time, Dannie.”
“Then the old _Pantheon_ won’t be too close to the slip before somebody’ll be making a flying leap for the cap-log. There, there, dear, this one trip, and then it’ll be Mrs. Dannie Keating and a month ashore--hah, what! There’s the girl! But God bless you, dear, and keep you till I’m home again.”
“Good luck, Dannie. There, but Oh, Dannie?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t go yet--just a minute more, dear.”
He patted her cheek and dried her eyes, and when she wouldn’t stop sobbing, he unbuttoned his coat and made her rest her head on his breast. Her ear against the blue flannel shirt, she could feel his heart. And it was a heart--like all of himself, full of strength. A cold winter’s morning it was, but here all afire. He was right--it would be a storm indeed when he went under. And yet--she could not help it--she broke into sobbing again.
“What’s it now?”
“Oh, Dannie, last night after I left you I heard my father telling that another vessel had been given up for lost. Did you know?”
“I’ve heard, dear.”
“And you never told me. You tell me the danger is small----”
“And ’tis small, dear. Sea room and sound gear, and a good vessel will live forever. Of course, accidents will happen--sometimes something parting at the wrong time, or being run down by a steamer in the fog--which was what happened, I don’t doubt, to the _Tempest_”
“Well, whether she was run down by a steamer, or caught in the shoals, or foundered in the heavy seas, isn’t it all the same to the wives and children of the _Tempest’s_ crew? Think of young Captain Rush’s wife. What an awful thing for her, Dannie!”
“I know, dear, I know. But hush now--that’s the girl. And don’t worry for me. Though they come masthead high and toss us like we’re a pine chip, I’ve only to think of you, Katie, here in the doorway looking down the street after me--a last look for me before I turn the corner. Only to think of that, and I’ll laugh--laugh out loud at them. ‘Come on, you green-backed devils!’ I’ll say--‘come on! You’d overpower us, would you? Higher yet, high as the clouds, if you want, and the _Pantheon_ she’ll ride you down.’ And she will, too, Katie--the old _Pantheon’s_ a wonder hove-to. Yes, Katie, only last trip I hollered like that to ’em one night, and----”
“Oh, but you mustn’t, Dannie--it’s like boasting.”
“Boasting? No, but seamanship, girl--seamanship. It’s knowing, not guessing--knowing how to handle her. Just sail enough and wheel enough and your wake setting so’s to break the backs of them afore they can come aboard with their shoulders hunched up, spitting foam and roaring warnings--green-eyed like. ’Tis they boast and threaten, not me. And if ’tis to an anchor----”
“Well, dear, don’t talk that way again. And go now, while I’m strong to let you. Good luck, Dannie, and don’t forget----”
“Forget what, Katie?”
“You know what.”
“Oh, well, tell me just the same--don’t forget what?” And he laughed in advance to hear her say it. And she whispered it, and he came nigh to crushing her as he heard.
“And don’t I love you, too, Katie?”
“I know it, Dannie. Only with me, if you don’t come back I can never love anybody else again--never, never, never. I love you, Dannie.”
“And do I love you, Katie? Do I? Do I catch my breath and walk the deck on the long black winter nights because I can’t sleep--driving and fighting, days and nights? Tired out I ought to be, but no more tired than the roaring sea itself. Thinking of you, Katie, thinking of you. But I’m off now, dear, and don’t forget-- No need to say what, is there? But tell it again? And sure I will, dear. Whisper”--and he retold it softly in her ear. And she, loving to love, loving to be loved, could not see to let him go for another while. “And will I come home again? Will I? Did I come a hundred times before? Or was it my ghost? Aye, a healthy ghost. But say a prayer for me just the same. Though what’s to be is to be. God bless you, Katie Morrison, and good-by.”
* * * * *
There was every promise of a wild night, and a wicked place to be on a bad night is Georges Bank in shoal water. To the westward, barring escape to deep water and good sea room when the northeaster blows, is a ridge of sand with no more than twelve feet of water. Over that the lightest draught vessel of the Gloucester fleet would not have bumped on a calm June day. So shoal was it and so heavy the seas in there that vessels have been known to pitch head first into bottom at times; their bowsprits have been found so stuck in the sand by fishermen who dared to cut close in on summer days. A vessel striking there was much worse off than if she struck in on a bare beach of the mainland, because while in either case she was sure to be battered to pieces, out there on Georges was no escape for the crew.
As a matter of fact, in very heavy weather a vessel would hardly live to strike the clear beach. She would be smothered long before that. In ten fathoms of water, say, with a big sea and strong tide running, there were rip waters to send the foam mast-high, to catch the vessel up and spin her about as if she were a top such as boys whip around in spring-time. Small wonder fishermen dread shoal water on Georges in a breeze; small wonder that the smart trawlers hustle dories in and bear off in a hurry when they find themselves in less than twenty-five fathoms and a breeze making; small wonder that even the hand-liners quite often jeopardize their chances for a good trip and up anchor and away when it looks too bad.
But there is not always time to get away. Sometimes the storm makes too suddenly. One might say that expert fishermen, above all others, should be quick to foresee a coming storm. They are quick enough, Lord knows--years of perilous observation have made them so. But there are those who won’t leave, come how it will. Every coming storm does not mean that the one terrible storm of years is at hand; and when it is so difficult to get back to just the right spot after a storm has scattered the fleet, why let go for what is only probability, not a certainty, of disaster?--especially when one is on a good spot. It is only one storm in a dozen years when good seamanship, fishermen’s instinct, sound gear, and an able craft do not avail. And what real fishermen would not risk the one storm in ten years? That is how they put it, and therein have some of them come to be lost.