Part 9

That’s when it would be breezin’ up. Dory-mates were we, the same as you and me be now, lad. And he was a dory-mate. I had to fight almost to keep him from doin’ half my work as well as all his own, at times. I mind how he used to speak of you when we’d get a breath between haulin’, or maybe walkin’ the deck of a night-watch together. ‘Martin, but if you could see how he’s growin’,’ he’d say. ‘Every trip in he looks a head taller. And the grip of him, Martin, when he winds his five little fingers around my one finger! And the beauty of him--the spit of his mother, Martin,’ he’d say. ‘And if you could see him of a mornin’ climb up on the bed and grab the mustache of me and twist it. Only two year old, Martin, and talk--man, he c’n talk better than I can--the long words of him, Martin! And I do hope he’ll never have to go fishin’!’ He said that last many a time. ‘I do hope he’ll never have to go fishin’ for a livin’! But if he do have to go, I’d lie easy in my grave--wherever my grave may be, Martin--if he was to have a dory-mate like you.’ And to think now we’re dory-mates-- Jack Teevens’s boy and Jack Teevens’s old dory-mate. And he had to be lost, your father. Some things are hard to take, believe in a Divine Providence much as we like. And then your mother had to die, too.”

“Yes, Martin. And I often wondered if she were not glad to go. What did she have to live for? And I think of it, what have I got to live for? If it comes to that, what have you, Martin--no wife, no family--what have you to live for?”

“What have I? Lad, it grieves me to hear you talk that way. What haven’t I to live for? I’ve hundreds of things to live and be thankful for. There’s my friends. There’s the little ones I’ve seen--not my own--my own were taken away, please God, and their mother--but my friends’ children that I’ve seen in the bornin’ almost and now growin’ up around me. And out here, never do I step aboard the vessel after a long day’s haulin’ and draggin’ that I’m not glad to see the fresh faces lookin’ at me over the rail--if it’s no more than the Skipper hangin’ to the wheel or the cook standin’ by the painter. And at home, boy! Never a time we breast Cape Sable goin’ home that I don’t begin to feel cheerful, no matter how hard and rough and maybe profitless a trip we’ve had. And when we raise Eastern Point! and goin’ into the harbor of Gloucester! Lad, lad, but my eyes run water ’most to think of the people I’m soon to see--to talk and shake hands with, maybe sit up a night or two with before I go out again. Lord, boy, if there warn’t a man or woman in the whole wide world to hail good-mornin’ to you--if it was no more than to look at happy people’s faces when you’re ashore--or out to sea again, if it’s no more than to look at the sky and the fine tumblin’ ocean! Even the sea in a blow, boy, is somethin’ to soothe a troubled man’s soul.”

“To soothe? Lord, Martin, is it soothing now? Look at it. How we’re staying gunnels up is more than I know.”

“Gunnels up? What, now? Why, Eddie, when you’ve seen it as I’ve seen it! But _’tis_ growin’ a bit more rough--isn’t it? Have a care for some of those seas. That oar in the becket astern, have an eye to that, and when you notice a bad sea comin’, just give the oar a little flirt--so--and put her head or stern to it, whichever’s handiest. It’ll save a capsizin’ some day, maybe. And now ’tis time to begin haulin’. The signal’s been to the peak some time now, but I like to give ’em a good set myself. I c’n make up the time on the haulin’. But we’ll begin now, and do you coil, boy. Here we go, four tubs of line--a mile and a half of a trawl to haul. ’Tis the rare appetite it’ll give us; and when----”

“Isn’t the vessel rather far away, Martin?”

“Let me see. Where is she now? Oh, yes. She is a bit away, but it must be the lee dories have gone adrift. Let’s see who’s in the lee dory. That’ll be--let me see, now-- Jethro and Eben. Eben’s a good man, but Jethro’s not much of a man in a dory--big enough, but not much use.”

“And I guess he’s not the only useless man out here to-day.”

“Hush, boy, hush. What kind of talk is that?”

“It’s true. Don’t I know that I could no more haul trawls in this sea than---- Why? A mile and a half of trawl to be hauled, and don’t I know that as your dory-mate I ought to haul half of it? And will I? Could I, even if you’d allow me, Martin? Oh, yes--about as well as I could winch in the vessel’s anchor alone. Don’t I know what it means--a man that can’t do his share out here? It means that one of the crew is eating his share of grub and by and by will get his share of the stock, and yet who is no more use in a dory than the painter when the dory’s aboard, and no more use aboard the vessel itself than the spare anchor with the vessel in harbor. Don’t I know, Martin?”

“Eddie, listen to me. You talk again like that, and sure’s my name’s Martin Carr I’ll take the privilege of your father’s friend and bat the jaw of you. I will, boy, much as I like you. And let me tell you, ’tis dory agen dory out here, and our dory’ll bring her share of fish aboard this night.”

“This night? Will we get aboard this night, do you think, Martin?”

Martin looked about him--looked long about him, but said only, “Is there a drop of water left in the bottle, Eddie?”

“About half a mugful.”

“Half a mugful? Well, keep that by you, and by’n’by you’ll have it to drink--not now.”

“I’ll save it for you, Martin.”

“That’s your father’s own boy, Eddie, but never mind me. What’s a mouthful of water to me that’s been without it seven days on end? It’s nothin’--nothin’ at all. Keep it for yourself and by’n’by drink it. It may mean a lot to you, for I know that already you’re wringin’ with the sweat. And you’re tired, too, aren’t you, lad?”

“A little, Martin.”

“Oh, but it’s the cruel work for you, boy. But what are you at now?”

“I was going to have a smoke.”

“Well, I wish you wouldn’t yet awhile, Eddie.”

“And why, Martin?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“Tell me now--what’s wrong, Martin?”

“Well, we’re astray, lad--astray. Did you never hear what ’tis to be astray on the Banks? And now night’s ’most on us, and ’tis small use rowin’. The dories, last time I looked, were all points of the compass and the vessel standin’ after them--a strong tide and their lines parted, no doubt. I haven’t seen her for an hour or more now. We’ll be the last to be picked up, anyway. She’ll get to us by mornin’, no doubt.”

“If she ever does get to us, Martin.”

“And why won’t she get to us? You’re not like your father there, boy. ’Twarn’t in your father ever to give up, boy. With him, the blacker it came the brighter he’d get. You’re more like your mother’s people in that, Eddie.”

“I think I must be, Martin--everybody says so, anyway.”

* * * * *

Throughout the long cold night they drifted. Eddie, shivering in the stern, broke a long silence:

“It must be near morning now, Martin?”

“Gettin’ to it, boy, gettin’ to it.”

“And the water smoother, don’t you think, Martin?”

“A lot smoother, Eddie-boy”; and under his breath, “I only wish it hadn’t moderated for a while longer.”

“And the air not quite so cold, Martin?”

“Not quite, Eddie-boy”; and again under his breath, “And that’s not for the best, either, just now.” He looked out ahead--out and up. It was quite a little while before Eddie noticed what Martin had foreseen--the white flakes fluttering down. Only when they began to settle on the back of his woollen mitts did the young fellow take note of them--resting there for a moment and then melting under the warmth of his hand. He regarded the first flake curiously. That he could see it at all was proof that morning was at hand, and he felt glad. What it might mean to them did not then dawn on him. When his brain awoke to the warning it brought he did not obey his first impulse--to shout out his discovery. Instead, he waited and thought it all out, and as he waited and pondered the flakes fell faster.

When he had thought it all out he looked toward Martin, who was leaning over the bow. Thinking he might be asleep--he felt drowsy enough himself-- Eddie feared to waken him at first. But he finally ventured to call, “Martin!”

“Aye, boy.” Martin turned with eyes that clearly had not lately been closed, eyes that regarded him tenderly.

“Will it last? Don’t be afraid to tell me, Martin. I think I know what it means now.”

“And you’re not afraid?”

“Afraid? Why, no. ’Twas the work--the hardship I dreaded--not the danger of being lost. None of my people were ever afraid to die. And yet, I’m afraid of the sea, Martin. That must have come from my mother. She was always afraid of it--on account of my father being on it so much, I suppose. I hate to think of being drowned and being found floating in it, or even lying on the bottom of it. There’s a good many lying on the bottom hereabouts, aren’t there, Martin?”

“The sands hereaway, Eddie, are covered with the bones of lost fishermen.”

“Well, that’s what I dread. If I could only die ashore, or be buried ashore--a Christian burial with a little prayer, and then the dry earth over you. Don’t _you_ fear being buried in the sea, Martin?”

“Fear it? Not me, boy. Sea or shore, it’s all one to Martin Carr, though maybe I do like the sea a bit the more.”

“Ugh! I don’t. And promise me, Martin--promise me, if it rests with you, that you’ll bury me ashore.”

“Hush, boy, hush. It’s not right now to be thinkin’ such things.”

Again Martin looked out from the bow, and the young fellow huddled in the stern. He could not stand the long silences. “What are you thinking of, Martin?”

“I’m thinkin’, boy, that it’s small use waitin’ around here for the vessel. It’s as thick o’ snow as I’ve seen it in a good many winters, and no sign of it slacking. We’ve got to be doin’ somethin’, and we might’s well be rowin’. But first, where’s your tobacco? Well, throw that over--see now, there goes mine. That’s so that by’n’by you won’t be tempted to smoke. Smokin’ makes you thirsty, and to be thirsty and no water-- I mean real thirsty, after two or three days, maybe, without a drink, and you rowin’ hard all the time and the juice sweated out of you--it’s an awful feeling lad. I know, I know, there _is_ the snow. But snow where it touches here isn’t quite what you think it. Not a square inch where the snow strikes here that isn’t crusted with salt, and you know what comes of drinkin’ saltish water. We may be out for days, so let’s get ready. Let me see, now--it oughter be twelve o’clock by this. Yesterday at twelve I mind the tide set to the west’ard. We’ll row across it--so. But first we’ll pitch out the fish. It’s a shame, isn’t it, to have to heave the fine fat fish back after you’ve gone to the trouble of baitin’ up four tubs of trawls--to have to haul a mile and a half of trawls and then have to heave them overboard again after they’re coiled nice in the buckets and the fish to your gunnels after them. Two thousand pounds of good fish there, Eddie. ’Tis a shame, but over with ’em. And don’t try to save one to eat. It’s no use--raw fish. I tried it once, and my stomach was upset by it--and my stomach’s not easy upset. You’d throw it up, Eddie, and that would weaken you for the rowin’. And we’re in for a row now. You’ve rowed a dory around in a harbor, boy, in your day, but now for a real row.”

“How far, Martin?”

“To Newf’undland coast, maybe--a hundred and fifty miles--if we’re not picked up.”

“Oh----”

“’Tis discouragin’ to think of, but don’t let yourself think too much about it. After twenty-four or forty-eight hours you won’t be thinkin’ so much about it. ’Twill be more mechanical-like then with you--brain kind of hazy-like from lookin’ at nothing but the level sea over the gunnel and your arms never stoppin’. Do you sit on the for’ard thwart, but take it easy--’tis a long drag, boy--a hundred and fifty mile to Newf’undland.”

And so they set out. ’Twas a long, easy, regular stroke that Martin dropped into; just such a stroke as a man might adopt who looked for a moderately long drag to his vessel--ten or fifteen miles, say.

But this was a hundred and fifty miles. Yes, and more, with allowances to be made for the set of wind and tide and the natural perversity of the dory itself. Whoever has rowed a dory knows that nothing will swerve more easily off its course--that is, if you don’t know how. Martin Carr knew how, but the young fellow with him did not; and it was Martin Carr’s business to make such allowances as would offset the uneven rowing of the lad.

They rowed on. To the boy the silences were appalling. For an hour at a time nothing would be said. Martin, with the instinct of an old trawler, was husbanding every ounce of energy; the boy was numb, overwhelmed. A hundred and fifty miles! The thought of it! He did not shrink from the thought of death, but a hundred and fifty miles of this work! He began to figure it out. Say they drove the dory ten feet a stroke. That was more than five hundred strokes to a mile--one hundred and fifty times five hundred--how much? How slow he was to figure now--but, yes, that was 75,000 strokes. Good Lord! one, two, three--why, it would take twenty-four hours just to count 75,000, without rowing at all. But to row--to reach out with the arms and haul those two heavy blades through a heavy sea--one--two--three--and every other stroke ineffective, certainly for him, if not for the strong-backed Martin Carr, because of the unevenness of the sea. Why, it would take a week, night and day.

He began to figure it up another way. Suppose they made two miles an hour. That was forty-eight miles a day--three days in all. But allowing for cross-tides and cross-winds, the constant heading of the dory straight again--say four days. Four days! And nothing to eat and nothing to drink during those four days of work and toil. And that meant that they must never vary from their course. Naturally they would vary. Say six days and six nights. But no man can row night and day for six days and nights without food and drink. Not even Martin, wonderful man that he was, could do it. Say they rested one-third of the time--eight hours a day. Ashore, men who did practically nothing slept eight hours a day. That surely would not be too much rest after rowing a heavy dory in a heavy sea.

Already, though he had been rowing hardly more than two hours, he was tired, with wrists hot and heavy, and his forearms cramping. And Martin himself must feel it after a day or two. Much as he had heard of these iron men, these deep-sea trawlers, they could not last it out forever. And God! suppose they were heading out across the Atlantic--and could even Martin say they were not, with no sun or stars to guide him? Would it be slow starvation? And why was it, now he thought of it, he wasn’t famished? Twenty-eight hours already without food! Ah, was that why Martin buckled his own belt about his stomach--buckled it tight and made him drink the last of the water? Surely, if nothing else came, that would come--the slow starvation.

Or would it be just madness? How unreal it all was! One--two--three--four--the chafing of the oars came to him as if from some other dory in the distance. So certain was he that the noise was not made by himself and Martin that he stopped and listened.

“What’s it, lad?”

“Isn’t there another dory somewhere near, Martin?”

“Maybe--there’s no tellin’, it’s so thick,” answered Martin aloud, but to himself, “Already,” and shook his head sorrowfully.

The lad, after a moment or two of listening, came to see how he had misled himself.

He resumed his examination of Martin’s back--the regular bend and heave he noticed. He could not see the face, but he knew the calm set of eyes and jaw. What a man! But even Martin would have to go, too, and when they would be found, even Martin, the iron man, would be stiff and cold also, as others had been found before him. But so few were found! And why weren’t they found! Capsized and drowned. That was it--or was it that they went crazy and jumped overboard? He pictured that--the sudden dropping of the everlasting oars, the last wild cry, the dive over the gunnel. He wondered would it be that way with himself.

He looked about, his first long look, and noted the sea. He certainly never had imagined the sea as it was now--not nearly so rough as on the day before--almost smooth, in fact, as if beaten down with the weight of snow which lay upon it like--like what? He had seen that often, of course--the new-fallen snow on land. But nothing like this--the cold gray waste hidden until all was white. What was it like now, that white covering? Oh, yes--why had he not thought of it before?--like the white sheet they sometimes drew over dead people.

“Martin!” he called out then.

“Aye?”

“Isn’t it awful?”

“’Tis--in a way. ’Tis solemn, boy. Here we are hid away--a vessel could be fifty feet away and we not see her. She could be twenty feet away and she not see us--we’re that white. But there’s a consolation--the thicker it comes the sooner it’ll stop.”

“Then this should stop soon.”

It did stop finally; after what Martin judged to be ten or twelve hours. It melted from the sea, then thinned above, and the sky shone through. Not a broad sweep at first, but patches here and there. It was later before the clear dome and the familiar stars shone out.

“There’s the Great Dipper, boy--see it? It must be three o’clock in the mornin’ by the placin’ of it.”

“Three in the morning--and we rowing since three o’clock yesterday afternoon!”

“Aye, boy. And there’s the North Star and those other little stars I don’t know the names of. We’ll keep the North Star one good point off the starb’d bow, boy, and on that course till mornin’, and then we’ll go by the sun.”

The morning came, and the boy noted that six inches of snow covered the inside of the dory everywhere--gunnels, strakes, and thwarts, except where they had been sitting, and the bottom of the dory, except where their champing boots and the heat from within them had beaten it into a slush; and that the snow was dazzling white under the morning sun. But above all he felt the cold.

“The wind must have shifted, Martin, it’s so much colder.”

“Aye, boy. ’Tis no’west now.”

“A cold wind--the coldest of all, isn’t it, Martin?”

“Aye, boy, but one great comfort with it--’tis mostly a clear wind, a no’wester. Should any vessel be about now they’ll soon see us. But rest a while, boy. Go aft and lie in the stern--you’ll be trimmin’ ship better there--every little tells in a long haul; or stamp up and down and slap your arms, or take the bailer and shovel out the snow.”

Having cleared the dory of snow, the boy strove vainly to overcome his inclination to lie down. But he did lie down at last. His legs were so numb that he hadn’t the strength to go aft, he said, and so Martin took him in his arms and set him in the stern. “And don’t rest too long there, boy. There’s such a thing as freezing to death in a no’wester. A cold wind, lad, is a no’wester.”

The boy lay there till Martin bade him rise and stamp about. But he could not keep up the stamping for long. “I’m so tired, Martin, and hungry--oh, so hungry!” He sucked at a bit of snow-crust.

“Aye, boy. One older and tougher than you might say it. And don’t eat too much of that stuff, and try, boy, try a while again to keep movin’ your arms and legs.”

He tried, but could not. So Martin bade him lie down again. And the boy lay down and began to drowse, at which Martin shook his head. But what could he do? He had to keep rowing himself. Oh, yes--he took off his own cardigan jacket and forced the boy into it. The boy, only half awake, protested--a feeble protest--as Martin, with a soft “Hush, lad, hush--weren’t me and your father dory-mates for many the long year together?” buttoned it about him.

“My, Martin, but that’s warming!”

“Aye, boy, that it is. Many a cold winter’s day it’s helped to warm me.”

To remove his cardigan jacket, which was under his oil-coat, Martin had to expose himself to the biting no’wester, and so cold and searching was it that he took many minutes to button his oil-jacket again. To overcome the numbness--“Or soon I wouldn’t be able to hold an oar at all,” he muttered--he beat his hands against the gunnels, noticing the while that he not only knocked off the last little films of frozen snow-crust, but also, though this rather curiously than sympathetically, that the ends of his fingers bled under the impact of the blows. “Man, but ’tis cold, when it comes to that!” and bent over the boy to fix the jacket more securely around his neck. “Forty-eight hours now without food or drink--’tis hard on you, lad--hard on you.”

Back to his rowing, and no cessation till he heard the lad muttering in his sleep. “What’s it now?” said Martin, and bent toward him.

“-- But to be floating around in the water or lying somewhere on bottom for the fish to eat up--” murmured the sleeping boy.

“Lad, lad, but you’re right--’tis hard.”

“-- If it was no more than a Christian burial--”

“Christian burial, lad? Make your mind easy, but if I live, and you die, ’tis Christian burial you’ll get, boy. But ’tis both of us together’ll go, I’m thinkin’ now.” He shook the lad. “Wake--wake now, Eddie-boy--wake, boy, wake, and try and row again a bit. ’Tis cruel I am--aye, the hard heart of me--aye, boy. But now you must row, and maybe you’ll warm up a while yet. Lay there, and in two hours more ’tis stiff as the oar itself you’ll be.”

And so the boy crept to his seat and resumed rowing, though his oars no more than slid over the surface of the sea. The lad thought he was helping--he saw the oars pass from forward to aft and back again--but it was only the dory slipping away under the ceaseless drive of Martin’s irresistible strength.

Throughout all that cold winter’s day they rowed. And night came, and once more the boy sought the stern and lay there; and as he lay, Martin took off his oil-jacket and buttoned it about the lad’s body. “There, now, a cardigan jacket and two oilskins. You ought to keep warm now. And now, Martin Carr”--he was back to his seat again--“’tis harder than ever you’ll have to row or yourself freeze to an icicle.”

All through that long night Martin called to the lad. Until well into the night, as he considered it, he could catch the responses. But gradually Eddie’s voice became duller, and toward morning Martin got no answer at all. “Asleep, the poor boy!” muttered Martin, himself by then not too wide awake.

The stars dulled away, the dawn broke gray, and then the first long rays of the winter sun glinted the white of the crested seas. The weary man in the waist of the dory roused himself. He found himself still rowing, but that his mind had slept he felt certain. He looked about him--astern, ahead, to either side. No sail--nor smoke. He took note of the dory. Iced to a depth of six inches it was, and with every fresh slap of the sea more ice was adding. “A mile away now and we’d look like a lump of ice to any passing vessel,” he thought aloud.

The no’wester whistled over the ridged seas. A no’west wind and white-tipped seas that broke over them--could man invent anything more freezing? And all night long it had been so.

“Eddie,” called Martin, “Eddie-boy!” Again, “Oh, Eddie-lad-- Eddie-boy, shake yourself now, dear.” But no answer coming from the boy, Martin more closely regarded the figure in the stern. The rising rays of the sun were tinting the stiffened yellow oilskins, but the low-drawn sou’wester allowed Martin no glimpse of the features. The hands were encased in the heavy woollen mitts, which Martin now noted were coated with ice. Still, ice was no great matter. How he wished his own oilskins--what was left of them--were iced up, too. Ice kept out the biting wind.