Part 14

He looked over an envelopeful that the salesman emptied on to the glass case. “But I don’t want any red or yellow or fancy colors--a good white one I want. Now here’s one. A hundred dollars? Something better than that. This one now? A hundred and fifty? And this one? A hundred and seventy-five, is it? And here’s a two hundred one, you say? But here’s a better one, isn’t it? It’s a bigger one, anyway. Only a hundred and eighty? Like men, aren’t they--the biggest not always the best? Like men, yes--and like women, too--the showiest not always the best. I’ll take this one, the two hundred and fifty dollar lad. Martin, how do you like that? Would a young woman be pleased with that, d’y’ think?”

“The woman, skipper, that wouldn’t be pleased with that ought to be hove over the rail.”

“Well, I hope we won’t have to heave nobody over the rail. But pick out a little somethin’ for yourself, Martin-boy. There’s somethin’ there’d go fine in your necktie when you’re ashore. Hush, hush, boy--take it, and don’t talk. And now”--to the man behind the case--“how much all told? This little pin for myself, too.”

“Two hundred and fifty, and twenty for your friend’s pin, and the little thing for yourself, five dollars-- I’ll throw that in Captain--two hundred and seventy. And if you have a mind to change that diamond any time, we’ll be willing to give you something else for it.”

Patsie looked down at the floor and then up at the salesman. “I don’t think I’ll want to change it. I mayn’t have any use for it, but whether I do or not, you won’t see it back here any more. Let’s be movin’, Martin.”

He led the way out and away from Main Street and stopped on a corner. “Martin, do you wait under the lee of this house whilst I jogs on a bit. ’Tisn’t long I’ll be gone. Swing off when you see me headin’ back, and wait for me at the bottom of the hill.”

Martin waited, but not for long. It seemed to him that he had taken no more than a dozen drags of his pipe when he saw his skipper coming back. Down the hill went Martin, and after him came his skipper.

Not a word said Patsie Oddie until they were on Main Street again. Then it was only, “The stores’ll be aboard by now, don’t you think, Martin?”

“They ought to, Skipper.”

“Then we’ll put out.” He threw a glance at the sky and then a look to the flag on the Custom House as they turned off Main Street to go down to the dock. At the head of the dock they met Wesley Marrs.

“Hulloh Patsie,” said Wesley.

“Hulloh Wesley,” said Patsie. “Go on to the vessel, you, Martin, and tell them to make sail. I’ll follow on.” Then, when Martin had gone on ahead, “When’d you get in, Wesley?”

“Just shot in.”

“How’s it outside?”

“Plenty of the one kind,” said Wesley. “Anybody that likes it no’west ought to be pleased. Tack, tack, tack, for every blessed foot of the way. All but put in to Shelburne once to give the crew a rest. Night and day, tack, tack, tack-- I cal’late the rudder post’s worn ’most out. Yes, sir. And never a let-up choppin’ ice--had to, to keep her from sinkin’ under us. Fourteen days from Fortune Bay that I’ve run in fifty-odd hours in the _Lucy_ with the wind to another quarter. Man, but I was beginnin’ to think the baby’d be grown a man afore I’d see him again. Well, I’m off, Patsie.”

“Where to?”

“Where to? Home, of course.”

“Oh, home?”

“Of course--the baby and the wife. Patsie, but you ought to marry. You’ll never be half a man till you marry.”

“Yes? And who’ll I marry?”

“Oh, some nice, fine girl. Man, but there’s whole schools of girls’d jump to marry you--whole schools, man. Heave your seine and you’d get a deck-load of ’em--or a dory-load, anyway.”

“No, nor a dory-load, nor a single one caught by the gills in mistake--me that has no more learnin’ than a husky out o’ Greenland. Not me, Wesley, that can’t read my own name unless it’s wrote in plain print, and that c’n only find my way about by dead reckonin’. I c’n haul the log, and, knowin’ her course and allowin’ for tides and one thing or another that’s set down and the other things that aren’t set down, but which a man knows nat’rally----”

“Yes, Patsie, and knows it better than nineteen out o’ twenty that has sextants and quadrants, and can run them--what do they call ’em--sumner lines?”

“Well, maybe as well as some, Wesley. But, Wesley, girls aren’t lookin’ for the likes o’ me. Patsie Oddie’ll do to handle a vessel, maybe, and he’ll take her where any other man that sails the sea’ll take her, and he’ll bring her home again. And he’s good enough to get the fish and bring them to market, to hang out in a blow, to carry sail till all’s blue, and the like o’ that. But his style don’t go these days, Wesley. No, there may be schools o’ girls swimmin’ around somewheres, but they’re divin’ the twine when Patsie Oddie makes a set. Anyway, it wouldn’t make any difference to me if whole rafts of ’em was to come swimmin’ alongside and poke their heads up and say, ‘Come and take me.’ I’m one o’ them queer kind, Wesley, that only goes after one girl. And I set for her--and didn’t get her.”

Wesley said nothing to that for a while. Then it was: “Well, Patsie, never mind. I didn’t think when I spoke first. I’ll say, though, that I don’t think much of the girl that wouldn’t stand watch with you if you asked her. If she wanted a man, Patsie, I’m sure I don’t know where she’d get a better one--that’s if it’s a _man_ she wanted. If she don’t want a man, but only a smooth kind of arrangement that plays a banjo or c’n stand up to a pianner and sing, ‘I loves yer, I loves yer,’ or some other damn mess--and the same to every girl that looks his way--one of the kind that’s hell ashore, but can’t take in sail in a gale without washin’ a couple of men over the lee-rail, one of the kind that gives this way and that to every tide that ebbs and flows, like a red-painted whistlin’ buoy--why, then, maybe somebody else’d look prettier swashin’ around for the people to look at and make use of. Maybe,” went on Wesley, “she’d take a notion to some bucko like Artie Orcutt that just lost the _Neptune_. Heard of it?”

“’Twas in the papers this mornin’, so they tell me. I’m not much of a hand to read papers, you know.”

“Well, he lost his vessel and ten of his men, and ought to lose his papers. With half a man’s courage and a quarter of the seamanship any master of a vessel oughter have, he’d’ve saved his vessel and all his men. He c’n thank the _Lucy Foster’s_ ableness and the courage of some of her crew that a soul of them got home at all. They came home with us--all but Orcutt--from Fortune Bay. He was goin’ to get a passage over to St. Pierre and wait a while there.”

“My!” said Patsie, “that’ll be a bad bit o’ news to Delia.”

“What!”

“Yes, Orcutt is the man. I think ’tis him, anyways. I know he used to hang around there when I was to sea--and a word dropped this mornin’-- It must be somebody; and who but him?”

Wesley looked at Patsie. “Well, if it is him, may the Lord forgive me for pickin’ him off. I wish I’d knowed it, though maybe, after all, I couldn’t ’a’ managed it to leave him and take the others. Oh, well, it’s all in the year’s fishin’. He’s lucky. Maybe he’ll live to teach this girl of his what a man oughtn’t be, though I don’t suppose you’ll care so much about it by the time she’s learned the lesson. Man, but I can’t believe Delia Corrigan’d throw you for Artie Orcutt. No, Patsie, I can’t. But here’s the Anchorage fair on our beam. What d’y’ say to a little touch, hah? A pretty cold morning, Patsie.”

“I don’t mind, Wesley.”

“What’ll it be to, Patsie?” Wesley raised his glass and waited for Patsie. They were leaning against the rail by that time.

“What to? Oh, to the _Neptune’s_ gang--the whole ten of ’em.”

“Sure enough--the whole ten. Here’s a shoot--but hold up. Which ten, Patsie--the ten lost or the ten saved?”

“The ten saved? To hell with the ten saved!” said Patsie--“the Lord’s looked out for them that’s saved.” Patsie raised his glass: “Here’s to them that died.”

“Them that died? H’m--and yet I don’t know but what you’re right. They’ve got their share, come to think--you’ve got it right, Patsie. Here’s to them that was lost.” And Wesley gulped his liquor down.

“And which way, Patsie?” Wesley inquired after the return drink.

“To the east’ard,” said Patsie.

“To the east’ard, is it? Well, I don’t need to say fair wind to you, for you’ve got it. This wind holds, and you’ll be heavin’ trawls in that fav’rite spot of yours on Sable Island no’th-east bar in forty hours or so. I cal’late you’ll keep on fishing there till some fine day you get caught. Well, good luck and drive her, Patsie, till you’re back again.” And Wesley swung off for his wife and baby.

“Drive her,” Wesley had said, and certainly Patsie Oddie drove her that trip to the east’ard. Before a whistling gale and under four whole lower sails the _Delia_ went away from Eastern Point and across the Bay of Fundy like a ghost in torment. Two or three new men, not yet in full sympathy with their skipper, began to inquire what it all meant. They could see the sense of driving a vessel like that on a passage home, but going out!

On that passage to the east’ard only the watch stayed on deck where a man had his choice--the watch and the Skipper--the Skipper walking the quarter and dodging the seas that came after her between little lines of some song he was humming to himself. Every man on coming below after a watch spoke of the Skipper and his singing, but only a word did they catch now and then to remember afterward.

“Out in the snow and the gale they rowed, And no man saw them more,”

was what one caught.

“And a fine thing that, to be singing on a cold winter’s night with a howling gale behind and the seas breaking over her quarter. Yes, a fine thing, that,” said the crew, in the security of the cabin below.

“And no man saw them more----”

Some men lost in dories the skipper must have been talking about, and after that:

“And should it be the Lord’s decree Some day to lay me in the sea, There’ll be no woman to mourn for me-- For that, O Lord, here’s thanks to Thee!”

under his breath generally, but his voice rising now and then with the wind.

Martin Carr, who happened to be at the wheel just then, made out that snatch of his skipper’s song as he walked the tumbling quarter. And he kept walking the quarter, walking the quarter--and a cold night it was for a man to be walking the quarter--a word to the watch once in a while, but saying nothing mostly, except to croon the savage songs to himself.

Surely nothing peaceful was coming out of that kind of a song, thought watch after watch, bracing themselves at the wheel to meet each new blast of the no’-west wind.

In the morning he was still there walking the quarter--less mournful, perhaps, but in a savage humor. Men who had sailed with him for years did not know what to make of it. There was the incident of the big bark, a good part of whose sail had evidently been blown away and the most of what was left tied up. Under the smallest possible canvas she was heading close up to the wind and making small way of it.

“Why the divil don’t they heave her to entirely!” snapped Patsie. “Look at her, will ye, the size of her and the sail she’s carryin’, and then the size of this little one and the sail _she’s_ carryin’.”

The men chopping ice on the bark’s deck stood transfixed as they saw the little _Delia_ sweep by. Under her four lowers, and going like the blizzard itself was she, with a big bearded man, wrapped to his eyes in a great-coat, waving his arms and swearing across the white-topped seas at them.

“And did you never see a vessel afore?” barked Patsie. “Well, look your fill, then, and get our name while you’re about it, and report us, will you?--the _Delia Corrigan_, Gloucester, and doin’ her fifteen knots good, will you?”

And then, turning away to his own: “The likes o’ some of ’em oughtn’t be allowed a cable-length off shore. Their mothers ought to be spoke to about it. There’s a fellow there ought to be going along about his business--and look at him, hove to! Waitin’ for it to moderate! Lord, think of it--as fine a day as this and waitin’ for it to moderate! The sun shinin’, and as nice a green sea as ever a man’d want to look at! It’s the like o’ them that loses vessels and men--makes widows and orphans.”

So much for his crew. Then a dark look ahead and beyond the green and white seas that were sweeping by the _Delia’s_ bow, while the bearded lips moved wrathfully. “Ten men lost, blast him! And drinkin’ wine, maybe, in Saint Peer now, if we c’d only see him! Yes, and he’ll come back to Gloucester with a divil of a fine story to tell. ’Tis a hero he’ll make himself out to be. Looked in the face o’ death and escaped, he’ll say--blast him!”

* * * * *

Sable Island--sometimes, and not too extravagantly, termed the Graveyard of the Atlantic--is set among shoal waters that afford the best of feeding-ground for the particular kinds of fish that Gloucestermen most desire--halibut, cod, haddock, and what not--and so to its shoal waters do the fishermen come to trawl or hand-line.

Lying about east and west, a flat quarter moon in shape, is Sable Island. Two long bars, extending north-westerly and north-easterly, make of it a full deep crescent. Nowhere is the fishing so good (or so dangerous) as close in on these bars, and the closer in and the shoaler the water, the better the fishing. There are a few men alive in Gloucester who have been in close enough to see the surf break on the bare bar; but that was in soft weather and the bar to windward, and they invariably got out in a hurry.

Two hundred and odd wrecks of one kind or another, steam and sail, have settled in the sands of Sable Island. Of this there is clear and indisputable record. How many good vessels have been driven ashore on the long bars on dark and stormy nights or in the whirls of snowstorms and swallowed up in the fine sand before ever mortal eye could make note of their disappearing hulls, there is no telling.

Gloucester fishermen need no tabulated statement to remind them that the bones of hundreds of their kind are bleaching on the sands of Sable Island, and yet of all the men who sail the sea they are the only class that do not give it wide berth in winter. And of all the skippers who resorted to the north-east bar in winter, Patsie Oddie was pre-eminent. Some there were who said he was reckless, but those that knew him best answered that it would be recklessness indeed if he did not know the place; if he did not know every knoll and gully of it that man could know, including gullies and knolls that were not down on charts--and never would be, because the men that made the charts would never go in where Patsie Oddie had gone and sounded when the weather allowed.

It was on the Sable Island grounds--the north-east bar--that the _Delia_, after a slashing passage, let go her anchor on the morning of the second day. Twenty fathoms of water it was, shoal enough water any time, but good and shoal for that time of the year, when gales that made lee shore of the bar were frequent. The _Delia’s_ crew were not worrying, though; they gloried in their skipper.

Lying there close in, with the wind north-west, the _Delia_ was in the lee of the north-east bar, and that first day, too, was not at all rough. And the fish were thick there, and as fine and fat as man would want to see. Fifteen thousand of halibut and ten thousand of good cod--certainly that was a great day’s work. Was it not worth fishing close in to get a haul like that? Turning in that night they were all thinking what a fine day they had made of it, and wondering if the fellow they had seen to the eastward--in deeper and safer water--had done so well. But they all felt sure he had not. “In the morning,” said Martin Carr, “he’ll get up his courage and come in and give us a look-over, and finding we did so well, maybe he’ll anchor close in and make a set, too.”

Nobody saw him in the morning, however, for it came on thick of snow and the wind to the eastward. Wind in that quarter would be bad, of course, if it breezed up; but it had not yet breezed up, and the _Delia’s_ crew were not minding any mere possibility. It was not too bad to put the dories over, and between squalls they hauled again, heaving up the anchor, however, before leaving the vessel, so that their skipper could stand down and pick them up flying.

“We’ll clear out, I’m thinkin’, for to-night,” said Patsie when they were all hauled. And clear out they did, which was well, too, for that night the wind increased to a bad gale, and, safe and snug below, alongside the hot stove or under the bright lamp, it did them all good to think that the north-east bar was not under their lee.

Even when they were jogging that night it looked bad; but they knew they might do it and live. They had to keep an eye out, of course, and stand ready to stand off in a hurry, for should it come too bad it would mean lively work to get out.

Safe away to the eastward of them, watch after watch of the _Delia_ stamping about deck could make out the riding light of the other vessel to anchor.

“In the mornin’, whoever he is, he’ll be gettin’ his courage up, and maybe he’ll drop down,” said the _Delia’s_ crew.

They were in great good-humor. And well they might be, with twenty-five thousand of halibut and fifteen thousand of fine cod after two days’ fishing. Yes, well they might be--halibut sixteen and eighteen cents a pound when they left Gloucester.

It was worth taking chances to get fish like that; and with a skipper who knew the bar as most men know their own kitchens, who could foretell the weather better than all the glasses in the country, who could keep run of a vessel and tell you where you were any time of the day or night out of his head--no need for him to be everlastingly digging out charts and taking sights--they were safe. Yes, sir, they were safe with this man. Fishing in twenty fathoms of water in that kind of weather looked bad--very bad--and they would not care to try it with everybody in heavy weather, but with a short scope and with Patsie Oddie on the quarter--why, that was a different matter altogether.

In the morning it was so thick that they could not see a length ahead; so the skipper, to be safe, kept the lead going. That afternoon it cleared, and they saw to anchor, but now inside of them, their neighbor of the day before.

Patsie Oddie looked her over. “What do you call her?” he asked finally of Martin Carr.

“The _Eldorado_ or the _Alhambra_-- I wouldn’t want to say which, they bein’ alike as two herrin’.”

“That’s right--they do look alike, Martin. But she’s the _Eldorado_-- Fred Watson. But what’s got into him this trip? Generally he fishes farther off. But ’tis Watson’s vessel, anyway, and the blessed fool’s got his dories out. He must be drunk--if he isn’t foolish. But he don’t drink--not gen’rally. What ails him at all? She’ll be draggin’ soon, if she isn’t already. He don’t seem to know too much about that swell in there with an easterly wind-- I misdoubt he ever fished in so close before--and if he don’t let go his other anchor he’ll soon be where a hundred anchors won’t do him any good. And look at where some of his dories are now!”

Getting nervous under the strain, Oddie stood down and hailed the two men in the dory farthest from the _Eldorado_. They said they did not know quite what to do--no signal to haul had yet been hoisted on the vessel. They guessed, though, they would hang on a while longer.

Patsie understood their feelings. No fisherman wants to be the first to cut and go for the vessel, and so lose fish and gear also. Losses of that kind have to be shared by the men equally. Not only that, but to have somebody look across the table at supper and say, “And so there were some that cut their gear and ran for it to-day, I hear?” No, men face a good bit of danger before that.

In the next of the _Eldorado’s_ dories they were pretty nervous, but said that as long as the others were not cutting they were not going to.

“That’s right,” said Patsie, “that’s the way to feel about it. But take my advice and you’ll buoy your trawls and come aboard of me. It’s goin’ to be the divil to pay on this bar to-night--and in these short days ’twill soon be night.”

And they, knowing Patsie Oddie’s reputation, buoyed their trawls and came aboard the _Delia Corrigan_. And after that Patsie picked up three more dories out of the blinding snow and took them aboard the _Delia_. By the time Patsie had those four dories of the _Eldorado_ safe, it was too rough to attempt to put the men aboard their own vessel. “But I’ll stand down and hail her fer ye,” said Patsie.

Now all this time it never occurred to Patsie Oddie that anybody but Fred Watson was master of the _Eldorado_. In the hurry and bustle of picking up the stray dories, there had been no time to talk of anything but the work in hand; and so his immense surprise when he made out Artie Orcutt standing by the quarter rail of the _Eldorado_, and so his anger when Orcutt called out before he himself had a chance to hail: “If you’re getting so all-fired jealous of me, Patsie Oddie, that you can’t even see me get a good haul of fish without you trying to steal it from me----”

The rest of it was lost in the wind, but there was enough in that much to make Patsie Oddie almost leap into the air. “So it’s you, is it? Lord, and I’d known that, you c’n be sure I’d never tried to help you out.” That was under his breath, with only a few near by to hear him. He wanted to say a whole lot more, and say it good and hard, evidently, but he did not. All he did say to Orcutt before bearing away was, “You take my advice, Artie Orcutt, and you’ll let go your second anchor.” Just that, and sheered off and left him.

“And how comes it Artie Orcutt’s got the _Eldorado_?” he then asked of one of the men he had picked up.

“He came aboard at Saint Peer, where we put in with Captain Watson sick of the fever. He came aboard there and took charge.”

“H’m!” Oddie stroked his beard and smiled--smiled grimly. “I don’t see but what he brought it on himself.” But that last as though he were talking to himself.

He looked over toward the _Eldorado_ again. “I can’t see that we can help him, anyway,” he said again, and the grim smile deepened. “We might just as well go below--there’s the cook’s call. Have your supper, boys, and we’ll sway up, sheet in and stand out. Whatever Orcutt does, I know I’ll not hang around here this night.”

With the words of their skipper to point the way, most of the _Delia’s_ crew agreed that, after all, it was not their funeral. Lord knows, a crew had enough to do to look out for their own vessel in that spot in bad weather. And as for Artie Orcutt-- Lord, they all knew _him_ and what _he’d_ do if ’twas the other way about--if ’twas the _Delia_ was in trouble.

But it was not Orcutt alone. There were nine others. That phase of it the crew argued out below, and that was what they agreed their skipper must be wrestling with up on deck.

The lights gleamed out of forec’s’le and cabin as hatches were slid and closed again, with watch after watch coming and going, but Oddie stayed there on deck. It was a bad deck to walk, too, the vessel pitching heavily and the big seas every once in a while breaking over her. But the Skipper seemed to pay no attention, only stamped, stamped, stamped the quarter.

The men passed the word in the morning. “Walkin’, walkin’, walkin’, always walkin’, speak-in’ aloud to himself once in a while. Man, but if he’s savin’ it up for anybody, I wouldn’t want to be that partic’lar party when he’s made up his mind to unload.”