Part 7

“I lifted him up, and the two of us clung to the end of the bowsprit. He looked weak as water then, and I pitied him, and pitying him I pointed out what chance we had. ‘There’s the cliff, and there’s what’s below. It’s one chance in ten to a man that can leap well.’

“‘I never could leap well, Martin.’

“‘No, you couldn’t--nor do anything much that other boys could do--no money in leaping, I s’pose. But there it is--and you c’n have your choice. Will you jump first, or last?’

“‘You go first, Martin. If you make it, maybe you c’n help me--maybe pass me a bit of line or something. See, I’ve got a bit of line I took along. You go first, Martin--you go first. It’s an awful jump to take, though.’

“‘There’s men of your crew took more awful jumps to-night, George Hoodley. They jumped from this world to the other when the spars went. Well, I’m going. Give me room to swing my arms. Now, if I miss, good-by. If we both miss, then I s’pose we’ll be standing up and giving account together in a few minutes. I’ve got enough on my conscience, but I’m glad I’m not you. Stand clear of me now--when she lifts, I’m going.’

“The _Cromwell_ lifted. Her bowsprit rose up and up till the end of it was higher than the ledge in the wall of rock before us. I waited till the last little second--till the bowsprit swayed in toward the cliff, and then, while it balanced there and before it started to settle again, knowing, as you all know, the power that’s in the uplift of a sea, I gathered myself and jumped. And ’twas a good leap. I didn’t think I could do it, cold and numb as I’d been feeling. A good leap, yes. And ’twas the wet, slippery shelf of rock I landed on; but I went a yard clear, and even when I slipped a little I checked myself before I slipped back to the edge, and was safe. Well, I lay there till I felt my nerve steady again, then stood up and called for the line from the Skipper.

“‘Now, when you jump,’ I says, ‘I’ll get what brace I can here, so if you slip on the edge same’s I did there’ll be a chance to save you. But mind you, George Hoodley, if I find I can’t hold you up--if it’s to be your life or mine--it’s you that’s got to go. Mind that. And hurry--throw it quick, or I’ll cast off the line altogether. That bowsprit won’t be there in a few minutes, maybe. Hurry up!’

“‘But you’ll hang on, won’t you, Martin? You’ve got the strength, if you want to use it.’

“‘Jump, man, jump afore you lose your nerve entirely,’ I hollers.

“He threw the line to me, after taking one end of it around his waist. The other end I took around my waist, my end half hitched so I could slip it in a hurry. I warn’t throwing my life away for him, if I knew it.

“Well, he jumped at last. And the bowsprit rose full as high and gave him full as good a chance as I’d got. But even so he fell a little short. His feet only caught the edge of the shelf. He staggered, and seeing how it was, I braced my feet well as I could and hauled. He came in, sagged away, I bracing my feet--they were slipping. In a crack in the rock of the ledge I dug the fingers of one hand, the other hand to the line, and hung on. We were gaining; he was fairly on his feet, and I felt the strain easing, when a sea that swept up the side of the cliff like a tidal wave took him clear of everything. It would have swept me, too, but I gripped where I could get a hold, with the fingers of my one loose hand in the crack in the rocks, and hung on there--one hand to the crack and the other to the line--hung on so, supporting the weight of myself and the Skipper, until I felt my muscles getting hot and heavy and my breath coming fast. He was floundering somewhere on the edge of the cliff. I hollered to him, though feeling almost certain he was battered to pieces by then--‘How is it with you, George--how is it, man?’ but there was no answer. Again I hollered, and again no answer. And then, when I was satisfied that it was only the last ounce of strength I had left, I called out, ‘Help yourself, George--why don’t you help yourself?’ No answer. Once more I called, and once more getting no answer, I knew then he must’ve been beaten to death against the rocks, and that ’twas his dead weight was hanging to me. And yet I called once more to make sure. But still getting no answer, ‘The Lord have mercy on your soul, George Hoodley,’ I said, and let slip the line.”

* * * * *

Toward the end of Martin’s story it had become very quiet in the forec’s’le. Nobody said anything, neither broke in with a question nor offered any comment, until after a long silence, and then not until after Martin himself had repeated absently, as if to himself, and after a long indrawn breath, “And then I let slip the line.” Only then did he look around and seem to realize that he was not on the ledge off Whitehead.

“And after you cast off the line, what then, Martin?”

“Well,” resumed Martin, “the weight being gone made a great difference to me, but it was quite a while before I could stand on my feet. Even then I didn’t have the courage to look down right away, but climbing to one side to the very top of the cliff, I laid flat on my stomach and looked over the edge. ’Twas good light then, and I could see the body of George Hoodley below--tossing about like an eggshell, as if ’twas no more than sea-weed in a sea-way. And that was the end of it. Even if he warn’t dead at the time--even if he warn’t dead when I let go the line and it had to be me or him, it ought to’ve been him. If it was a friend, now--if it was Dan, say-- I don’t know what I would do. I hope I’d have the strength not to cast loose the line.”

It was very quiet again. The boot-heels of the new watch on deck, the rasping of the booms as the vessel jibed, the whistle of the rising gale, the slap of the sea outside them, the Skipper’s voice on deck, the atmosphere, stirred Martin again. “’Twas a night like this we swung the _Cromwell_ off to the west’ard. I shouldn’t wonder but what he’d be takin’ the mains’l off her soon, won’t he?”--this to the old watch, who had just come down the companion-way and was wringing his mitts out by the stove.

“The mains’l, Martin?” repeated the watch in surprise. “Why, the mains’l’s been off her for hours--she’s under a trys’l and jumbo.”

“The mains’l, Martin,” explained one, “was taken off her just after you and Johnnie were taken aboard. You were pretty tired and didn’t notice, maybe, at the time.”

“Lord, I must’ve been tired--not to know it when the mains’l’s taken off a vessel I’m in. There was never a minute the night the _Cromwell_ was lost that I was tired as that. No, sir, not even when I laid on the cliff in the morning and looked down for George Hoodley’s body.”

“Speakin’ of that, Martin, didn’t some of the bodies come ashore?” This from the cook, who incidentally, feeling a little less hurried, was putting a few shovels of coal into the stove before he should turn in for the night.

“There were two bodies came ashore,” resumed Martin. “And that was a sad thing, too. I was going up to see if I couldn’t get some clothes to hide my nakedness, and maybe a pair of boots and a bite to eat and a bit of fire to warm up by somewhere, when I met a man. ’Twas good light by then. He was coming down a bit of beach behind the cliff. I told him my vessel had been wrecked, and I was all that was left of the crew. And he fixed me up as well as he could and came back with me to the beach, and there’s where the sad part came in. One of the _Cromwell’s_ crew, Angus MacPherson, had been fishing out of Gloucester twelve years, and every fall he said he was going home to see the old people. I knew that as well as I knew that he’d been sending money home regularly to the old people. If it hadn’t been for Angus they’d’ve had a hard time of it, I cal’late, those twelve years. Well, he never went home, as he said; but here was the very place Angus came from, and this was the way he came home at last. That same afternoon I helped to bury him and to carry his old mother away from the grave when she couldn’t carry herself. God help us, but there’s hard spots in life, ain’t there?

“The other body that came up was the Skipper’s. And him I went to Gloucester with. And maybe there’d be no more to that, but getting into the Gloucester station, just as the train hauled up, who should happen to be at the station but the Skipper’s wife--his widow, then, of course. She knew well enough what had happened--everybody in Gloucester knew--the papers full of it the day before; but she didn’t know that I, the one man saved from the wreck, was on the train. Nobody knew. I didn’t send any word ahead. It was only three days since the vessel was lost, but was she crying her eyes out? Was she?--the--the-- But I won’t say it.

“I goes up to her. ‘Mrs. Hoodley,’ says I, ‘I’ve brought home your husband’s body for burial.’

“D’y’ think she thanked me? Indeed, I saw by her face I’d made a mistake not to bury him with Angus down Whitehead way. And then she makes eyes at me-- God’s truth--makes eyes at me, while the box that her husband’s corpse was in--and I knew what a battered, bloody corpse it was--was being lifted out of the baggage-car and put into a wagon. She gave orders then and there to have it taken straight to the graveyard; and when it was buried, mind you, she warn’t there--not even for decency’s sake. But going from the station while her husband’s body was being carried away, she held her head up and took note of who was looking at her. That’s what she liked--people to notice her. And looking at her I cursed George Hoodley for a fool that didn’t drown her if he was bound to drown somebody, instead of the man that he thought had wronged him. So there you have it--the truth of the _Oliver Cromwell_--the part that didn’t get into the papers.”

“What was it the papers did say about it, Martin?”

“Oh, what they said was pretty near right so far as it went, but they didn’t know the whole truth, and don’t yet. They said a word or two ’bout his leaving a wife. No great harm done in that, I s’pose. As for himself, they said he was thrifty, and hard-working, and careful--gen’rally careful, they might’ve said--and successful. And so he was, I s’pose. But I think I’ll be turning in, for after all there’s nothing like a good sleep, is there? Where’s Johnnie? Still asleep? Well, he’s the wise lad to be getting his good sleep ’stead of listening to my long-winded stories. Maybe if we all turn in there’ll be more of us good and strong to haul a trawl again to-morrow.” He picked up his pipe. It was cold. “And now there’s something. The man that’d invent something to keep a pipe going when you lay it down without smokin’ itself all up’d make a lot of money, wouldn’t he? And yet maybe it’s just as well for some of us. I cal’late I’ve smoked enough, anyway.”

“But, Martin, before you turn in, what’s become of Hoodley’s widow?”

“Oh, her? She and Dan Powell got married since, and they’re both getting all that’s coming to them. He’ll go out and get lost some day too, maybe, to get away from her. I wouldn’t be surprised, anyway, if he did. Only before he goes, being a different kind of a man from George Hoodley and knowing women of her kind better, he won’t worry so much about the man as about her. He’ll see that she’s put out of the way before he sails--or at least that’s my idea of it; or maybe it’s only that I half hope he will. But I think I’ll be turning in.”

He tucked his pipe away under his mattress, slipped out of his slip-shods, slacked away his suspenders, and laid his length in his bunk. He was about to draw the curtain, but his eye catching the eye of the watch, who was then hauling off his wet boots, he had to ask, “What’s it look like for the morning, Stevie--what’d the Skipper say?”

“He says that unless it moderates a bit more than it looks as if ’twill now, we’ll stay aboard in the morning.”

“Well, here’s one that ain’t sorry to hear that. I don’t mind sayin’, now that it’s all over, that hanging on to the bottom of that dory warn’t any joke to-day. I’m good and tired. ’Twas a night like this we headed the _Cromwell_ to the west’ard. ‘Hell or Gloucester,’ says he, and hell it was for him. Good-night.”

Strategy and Seamanship

I

Harry Glover, master of the _Calumet_, was generally admitted to be a great diplomat; he himself allowed he was a little something that way. And everybody said he must be--diplomat, strategist, or whatever it was--else how could he, a man who had never had even ordinary luck at bank fishing, induce so shrewd a man as Fred Withrow, something of a schemer too, to build him a fine vessel like the _Calumet_ and send him to the Newfoundland coast for frozen herring on a trip wherein an owner stood to lose more money possibly, should things go wrong, than in any other venture of fishermen.

The _Calumet_ was lying into Little Haven, Placentia Bay, when Glover, sitting in his cabin, heard a hail and an inquiry for Captain Marrs of the _Lucy Foster_.

Glover, ever wide awake, was on deck in an instant. It was a man in a boat and looking tired. “Captain Marrs, did you say?” asked Glover.

“Yes, sir-- Captain Wesley Marrs.”

“Why, he was here, but he’s gone.”

“Been gone long?”

“Oh, two days now.”

The messenger looked discouraged. “Did he say where he was going to, sir?”

“Why, yes--but you look froze up. Come aboard. You don’t never take a little touch of anything--something nice and warm from Saint Peer--something that’ll melt the frost inside your chest afore you know you got it down--or do you? On a cold day like this,” insinuated Captain Glover, “with frost in the air and maybe a long row ahead of you.”

“It is more than a common cold day,” assented the messenger.

“Cold day! I should say! Why, I don’t know how you ever stood it comin’ as far away as you did--ten miles, did you say you came?”

“Ten mile? Ten mile?” snorted the messenger.

“Ten miles. Why, yes. Ain’t that what it is to Saint Mary’s?”

“Saint Mary’s? I didn’t come from no Saint Mary’s. I came from Folly Cove--eighteen mile.”

“Lord, but you don’t tell me! What d’y’ say, now--another little touch? Let me see. Who’s that fellow down there who’s such a great hand to get herring? Let me see now-- Johnson? Burke? No, not Burke. Robbins? No, not Robbins, nor Lacey. That’s queer-- I know him so well and yet can’t remember his name.”

“Do you mean Rose, John Rose?” suggested the messenger.

“Rose, is it? Is it Rose you’ve come from?”

“Yes, sir-- John Rose.”

“That’s it, come to think of it, old John Rose.”

“Why, he ain’t so old.”

“No? Well, it’s so long since I’ve seen him. Have another little touch, and don’t be afraid of it. There’s another jug when that one’s empty. Seen John lately?”

“Seen him? I should say. Last man I spoke to before I left.”

“That so? Any herring down there?”

“A few. But I must be getting along. Rose’d talk to me if he knew I’ve been loafing here. Which way, Captain, did you say I’d find Captain Marrs?”

Glover carefully headed the messenger about as far off Wesley Marrs’s course as the length and breadth of Placentia Bay would admit. He waited just long enough for the messenger to double the nearest headland, then up anchor, made sail, and away for Folly Cove. It was ten in the morning when he weighed anchor, and early afternoon found him knocking at the door of John Rose’s little house.

He at once introduced himself. “Captain Glover of the _Calumet_. But maybe you’ve been expecting me.”

“Not that I knows of,” said Rose.

“What, ain’t Captain Marrs sent word yet?”

“Word from Captain Marrs? Why, it was him I was expecting.”

“I know-- I know, but he’s sailed for home. By this time I cal’late he’s to the west’ard of Miquelon, streaking it across the Gulf, laying to it for home. Filled up, did Wesley, night afore last, at Little Haven.”

“Filled up at Little Haven? Why, when did any herrin’ hit in there?”

“Two days ago. And Wesley got ’em. And the last thing he said afore wearing off was, ‘Harry, you know I got some good friends across the bay, and maybe one or two of ’em’ll be having some herrin’ saved up for me after this cold snap. If you hear of any and can help any of ’em out by taking ’em off their hands at a fair price, why, I’ll consider it a great favor--a great favor to me, Harry. There’s John Rose down to Folly Cove, a great friend of mine. I’ll send him word ’bout you, Harry, so in case he gets hold of any he’ll maybe let you have ’em.’ Wesley and me’s great friends, you see, Mr. Rose, and Wesley, no doubt, thinkin’ there mightn’t be any market, wanted to do you a good turn too.”

“Oh, there’s plenty market. Herrin’s been that scarce this winter that people been from everywhere lookin’ for a load--yes. But I was savin’ them for Wesley. But if Wesley’s gone, and you’re such a great friend of Wesley’s--any friend of Wesley’s a friend of mine--and sailin’ from the same firm in Gloucester, you say?”

“The same firm, the Duncans.”

“That so? Well, I can’t say as ever I heard Wesley speak of you or any mention of your name down this way before--but that ain’t extraor’nary, maybe. Anyway, being as you’re a friend of Wesley’s, you can have them herrin’ just the same as if you was Wesley himself.”

The loading of the _Calumet_ was a record performance. By dark she was off and away.

And as she cleared the last headland of Placentia Bay, as she squeezed by Shag Rocks and left Lamalin astern, Captain Harry Glover had to laugh aloud. “O Lord, but I call that getting ahead of a man!” he chuckled. “It was too easy. Talk about strategy!”

II

The _Lucy Foster_ was lying into Big Whale Gut with Wesley Marrs chafing to complete his cargo. Five hundred barrels would just about fill her up--fill her up nicely.

A man in a rowboat came into the cove. The one sail on the boat had evidently been blown away, for only some strips of canvas were tied to the little mast.

Wesley Marrs, leaning against the main rigging of the _Lucy_, watched the weary oarsman approach.

“Looks as if he’d been boxin’ the compass in strange waters,” commented Wesley meditatively. “What’s wrong?” he hailed.

“Captain Marrs?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been three days looking for you, Captain Marrs. But I don’t cal’late you have such a thing as a drink of good liquor aboard, have you, Captain? I’m most famished.”

Wesley said no more--only led the way to the cabin and handed out a jug, a jug so full that from it the cork was yet to be taken for the first time. The messenger took the cork out and without help. He bit it out, and let the red rum of old Saint Pierre gurgle down after the manner in which all men said it should.

“Good?” asked Wesley.

The messenger sucked in his cheek and his lips kissed together lingeringly. “Good--m--m--you ought to try it yourself, Captain Marrs.”

Wesley did try it--a small, safe drink. “It is good, ain’t it?” and was about to put it back in the locker of his stateroom--was about to, but looking around and observing that wistful gathering he hadn’t the heart. Six of his own crew and a dozen natives were there, and they passed it along the locker, though not too rapidly. When Wesley got it back he “hefted” it. It felt pretty light. He shook it up. Gauging by sound was a good way, too, when the jug itself was heavy. It was light. “Lucky ’twas the little jug,” said Wesley, and he laid it at his feet with a sigh. “But what was it you was goin’ to say?” he asked of the boatman he had rescued from famishing.

“John Rose, of Folly Cove--you know him, Captain?”

“For more than twenty year. But what of him?”

“Well, John’s got five hundred barrels of as fine frozen herrin’ as ever a man laid eyes on, and he says for you to come and get ’em.”

“Five hundred barrels? Man, but that’s good news--better have another little touch.”

After that second drink, the boatman, who had been nursing a few little suspicions for two days now, thought he had better tell Captain Marrs of his meeting with Captain Glover. And he did, or rather began to. He was about one-quarter through when Wesley jumped for the companionway. “Break out the anchor and make sail,” ordered Wesley, and then, dropping back into the cabin, and suggesting to the boatman that he had better have one more drink, he started to fill his pipe. With his pipe going freely Wesley could think more rapidly--could fathom things more surely.

“Harry Glover,” said Wesley, to himself as he supposed, but really half aloud, “I know you, Harry Glover, and your father and your grandfather afore you, and all the rest of your fore-people on Cape Ann by hearsay, and not one of you I’d trust with so much as the price of a bait-knife--no. Now, let’s see-- Glover, he’s got them herrin’.”

“But how’s he going to get ’em, Captain? John Rose is keepin’ ’em for you,” said the belated boatman at this point.

“Who in the devil,” began Wesley, but recovering himself, pushed the jug toward the messenger. “About one more drink is what you need, and that about empties the jug, too. Take it and keep quiet, or I’ll carry you up on deck and heave you over the rail, and heave the jug after you to make sure you go down.

“Let’s see, now”-- Wesley resumed his meditations--“he’s got them herrin’ and off long afore this. Now, where’ll he go first? To Saint Peer? That’s it, to Saint Peer for a few cases of wine to take home. And then? To Canso, of course, to see that girl that’s makin’ such a fool of him. Yes, and he’ll make a great fellow of himself by givin’ a case of cassy wine to her people. It’s most Christmas-time, and he’ll make a great hit, and it won’t cost him too much--a dozen bottles of cassy. And then? Then he’ll tell the girl, and everybody else in Canso, that he’s the first vessel to leave Newf’undland with anything like a load of frozen herrin’ this winter. And he’ll be right--he’ll be easy the first to Gloucester this season--or oughter be. And ‘Let me tell you how I filled up,’ he’ll say, and go on to spin a fine yarn on how he got the best of Wesley Marrs. Never let on he lied and cheated, not Mister Glover. And they’ll think he’s a devil--yes, sir, a clean devil of a man. ‘And Wesley Marrs,’ he’ll go on to say, ‘Wesley’s all right--he can handle a vessel pretty well, can Wesley, but when he gets to figurin’ against Harry Glover--’” Wesley drew a breath--“If I get near enough to lay my hands on him and don’t welt the head off him, then may the dogfish get me and----”

“Anchor’s hove short up, sir,” came down the companion-way.

Wesley took the jug from the messenger and locked it up. Then he went on deck.

Five minutes later the _Lucy Foster_ was off and away. “I’ll chase him,” muttered Wesley, “chase him clear to Gloucester, but I’ll get him,” and himself standing close to the wheel, he drove the _Lucy_ out of Big Whale Gut and across Placentia Bay.

“Just a minute at Folly Cove to drop this blessed fool of a messenger John Rose sent, and just another minute to hail John himself and make certain, and then across the Gulf to Canso,” said Wesley, and stood on the _Lucy’s_ quarter and watched her go along.

III

It was night, and a northeast gale and falling snow was making the thick night thicker. The _Lucy Foster_ had come across the Gulf like a runaway horse, and now they were expecting to strike in somewhere.

Wesley was standing aft, when a long, low, warning moan came to them over the water. “There’s the whistle--we ought to see Cranberry Light soon--watch out.”

The forward watch, hanging on to her fore-rigging and peering sharply ahead, soon called out: “There it is--no--it’s a vessel’s port light.”

Wesley looked. “’Tis a vessel, sure enough, and hove-to, ain’t she? Maybe we’d better speak her”--this last to the man at the wheel. The helmsman brought her up, and “Hi-i!” roared Wesley.

“Hi-i!” came back--“who’re you?”

Wesley swore softly. “Harry Glover, by the Lord! Here, Charlie, you answer him. There ain’t many knows you. Ask him what’s wrong--and don’t get too near him, you to the wheel.”

“What’s wrong?” called Charlie Green.