Part 8

"You're in luck. We're ready to go to sea as soon as you get aboard. Hit it just right, didn't you? The pilots'll be glad to see you again. They was tickled to death over the piece you wrote for the paper when the _Eben Tunnell, Number Three_, come in after fightin' through the '88 blizzard, and specially what you wrote about ol' 'Pop' Markle stickin' by the _Morgan Castle_ when she ketched fire off the Capes two year ago. And, say, they still talk about that jack-pot you sky-hooted clean through the cabin skylight, and how th' Pilots' Association went in mournin' for thirty days after that poker game. Two o' them boys is aboard this cruise, with the chips all stacked an' waitin', and their knives whetted. I'm sorry I missed the fun before."

James Arbuthnot Wilson gulped hard at these lamentable tidings. He was vaulting from the frying-pan into the fire. These rude and reckless men would probably heave him overboard. And, alas, the penny-ante of his mild college dissipations had left him as deficient in poker prowess as in sea-lore. The foremast hand from the _Albatross_ was somewhat crestfallen over his capture. If this slip of a boy was the seasoned and capable "Doc" Wilson, able to hold his own in all weather and any company, then appearances were basely deceiving, and the escort felt a sense of personal grievance.

The boat was waiting at the pier and the four slouching seamen rowed out to the black schooner, which lazily rolled her gleaming sides off the end of the Breakwater. Wilson climbed awkwardly aboard and was saved from sprawling his length on deck by a strong hand, which yanked him in a welcoming grip. Then a stocky man with a grizzled mustache stepped back and fairly shouted:

"Why, hell! You ain't 'Doc' Wilson. What kind of a game is this? I popped up from below in time to see your hat coming over the side. Kick me, please. I'm dreamin', as sure as my name's McCall."

He fished a rumpled telegram from his blue clothes, and flourished it before the nose of his guest, as he cried formidably:

"Read that!"

"'Doc' Wilson, of the _Standard_, will be down on afternoon train. Take him aboard and treat him right."

Young Wilson looked at the half mile of water between the schooner and the beach, and thought of trying to swim for it. But the bully-ragging tone of the pilot struck a spark of his latent pluck and he answered with some spirit:

"I'm mighty sorry you're so disappointed. My name is Wilson, James Arbuthnot Wilson, of the _Standard_. The order to join your boat was delivered to me. If there's been a mistake, and I'm so unwelcome, I'll have to put you to the trouble of setting me ashore again."

The innate hospitality of his kind smothered the pilot's first emotions, and he regretted his rudeness as he smote the lad on the back and shouted:

"All right, Jimmy Arbutus. I guess there's no great damage done. It's now or never for your newspaper, and if we can't carry the skipper, we'll get along with the mate of your outfit. And we'll give you a cruise to make your lead-pencil smoke. Tumble below and shake them natty clothes. The boat-keeper will fit you out with a pair of boots and a jumper."

Sore and abashed, with the hateful emotions of an intruder, Wilson crept below and faced another ordeal. In the pilots' roomy cabin, which ran half the length of the schooner, four men were changing their clothes and tidying up their bunks. One of them emerged from the confusion to yell at the invader's patent leather ties:

"Hello, Doc, you old pirate. Is that you? Glad to see you aboard. Well, I will be damned!"

His jaw dropped and he looked sheepish as a hurricane voice came through the open skylight:

"Don't hurt the kid's feelin's. I've done plenty of that. This is Jimmy Arbutus Wilson, apprentice to 'Doc,' and he's doin' the best he can. 'Doc' got stranded somewheres, and the lad is takin' his run. I don't fathom it a little bit, but what's the odds?"

The passenger was introduced to all hands, who showed a depressing lack of enthusiasm, and the pilots returned to their tasks. Wilson retired, blushing and confused, to the edge of his bunk. Presently the oldest man of the party sat down beside the intruder, and shook his hand for the second time. Wilson raised his downcast face to the white-haired veteran, who said softly:

"Now, sonny, don't let the boys rile you none. They're kinder sore on some of the greenhorns that writes pieces all wrong for the Philadelphy papers, and this 'Doc' Wilson knows sailor ways and sailor lingo, and they sorter took a shine to him and his style. But fur's I know, you can write rings around him. And Old Pop Markle, as they calls me, will see you through, blow high, blow low. It's my last cruise, this is. I'm past seventy year, sonny, and my oldest boy is a pilot; he brought a tanker in yestiddy, and my grandson is servin' his apprentice years, and he'll be gettin' his papers pretty soon. It's time for me to quit. I was goin' to lay up ashore in the spring, but I kinder wanted to wind up with the old _Albatross_. Better come on deck, sonny; we're shortenin' cable."

Wilson smiled his gratitude at the gentle and garrulous old pilot, whose smooth-shaven face was webbed with fine-drawn wrinkles, as if each salty cruise had left its own recording line. The blue eyes were faded from staring into fifty years of sun and wind, but they held a beaming interest in the welfare of this tyro struggling in the meshes of hostile circumstance.

The reporter followed his guardian on deck, and his spirits swiftly rose. The _Albatross_ was paying off under a flattened forestaysail, while her crew tailed onto the main-sheet with a roaring chorus, for they, too, felt a thrill of sentiment in this last cruise. The wind held fresh from the south'ard, and under the smooth lee of Cape Henlopen the _Albatross_ shot seaward, as if they were skating over a polished floor. Now the pilots came tumbling up, and shouted as they turned to and helped set the maintopsail and staysail. The schooner staggered down to it, until the white water hissed over her low bulwark, and sobbed through the scuppers. "Old Pop" Markle slapped his knee and cried huskily:

"Give her all she'll stand, boys. It's like old times when we raced that dodgasted _Number Four_ and hung to the weather riggin' by our teeth, and bent a new suit of sails every other cruise."

Holding the wind abeam, the _Albatross_ drove straight out to sea, and then, once clear of Cape May, slid off to the north'ard. Now, the quartering sea picked her up and she swooped down the slopes and tried nimbly to climb the frothing hills, as the jolly wind smote her press of canvas and jammed her smoking through them. A new exhilaration surged in young Wilson's veins. He was drinking it all in, the buoyant flight of the low, slim schooner, the intimate nearness of the sea, the sweetness of the wind, and the solemnity of the marching twilight. He would not have been elsewhere for worlds. Then the fat and sweating face of the cook appeared from below, and bellowed an inarticulate summons.

The pilots obeyed with ardor, and Wilson followed timidly in their wake. Supper smoked on the cabin table, and the guest was glad to survey the stout fare of hash, cold meat, potatoes, green peas, flaky hot biscuits, and a mammoth pudding. "Old Pop" Markle took the youngster under his protecting wing, and found a seat on the locker beside his own. The reporter fell to, while the pilots chatted with bursts of gusty laughter. He made one desperate rally to join the talk, and in a quiet moment asked a neighbor:

"How do you know when a ship wants a pilot?"

"We generally have a trained green parrot that flies over and asks 'em," was the cruel response. "But we ran short of stores last cruise, and had to eat him. This voyage we intend to mail 'em postal cards."

There was an appreciative roar, and Wilson winced as "Old Pop" Markle whispered:

"Don't mind that Peter Haines. He's got a heart as soft as mush. It's only their skylarkin', sonny. Hit 'em back. That's what they like."

But the victim had lost all self-confidence, and now he was beginning to feel dizzy and forlorn. The smell of food, the heat, and the jerky plunging of the cabin were overwhelming. He staggered to his bunk and crept in. This was the last blow, that on top of his false pretences he should be laid low before the eyes of this hostile crowd. He knew not what happened, until hours after he awoke from a semi-stupor to find "Old Pop" Markle sponging his face with cold water and calling in his ear:

"There's a steamer coming up from the east'ard. Brace up and get on deck. It's a pretty sight."

The boy clambered through the companionway as the boat-keeper touched a match to an oil-soaked bunch of waste in a wire cage at the end of his torch. The schooner and the near-by sea were bathed in a yellow glare. Out in the darkness a blue Coston light glowed a response. Some one shouted: "On deck for the skiff," and five minutes later the boat-crew was pulling off in the night to the waiting steamer, with a pilot in the stern-sheets.

"There goes your friend, Peter Haines," chuckled "Pop" Markle. "I knowed you'd take it hard if I didn't give you a chance to say good-bye to him. He won't pester you no more this cruise."

The wind blew some of the cobwebs from poor Wilson's muddled head, and he felt refreshed. Soon the pelting spray drove him below deck and he curled up on a locker, watching the poker game from which youth and inexperience barred him. And what was more cutting, he was not even asked to play.

"It would be like taking pennies from a blind child," callously commented the strapping McCall who had welcomed him aboard. But the white-haired patriarch of them all did not join the game, and he said cheerily to Wilson:

"You're too young and I'm too old to be wastin' our wages in them pursuits, ain't we, sonny? There's an old lady and a cottage at Lewes that takes care of my rake-off. And instid of raisin' the limit, I raise vegetubbles for my fun."

Wilson opened his bruised heart and told the old pilot the story of his venture, and felt relieved that his masquerade had been thrown away. "Pop" Markle's blue eyes twinkled:

"See here, Jimmy Arbutus, I'll see that you write a fust-rate piece for your paper. Ask me anything your amazin' ignorance tells you to. The boys wanted me to take in the fust vessel we met, and was willin' to shove their turns aside, but I told 'em it was my last cruise, and I was goin' to see her through to the finish. So we've lots of time to talk pilotin' together. What was the most remarkable experience ever I had? Pshaw, that sounds like a full-rigged reporter, sonny, really it does.

"Well, I never got drownded boardin' a vessel, but I once fell afoul of a skipper that was a worse blunderin' idjit than you've been. It may sound kinder comfortin' to you. About fifty miles off the Capes, I clumb aboard an Italian bark. Her captain said he was bound for Wilmington, and would I take him in? He got a tow-boat at the Breakwater, and we were goin' up the river all right, when plumb by accident this benighted Dago imparted to me that he was bound for Wilmington, North Caroliny. 'Great Scott! You dodgasted lunatic,' says I, 'you're pretty nigh up to Wilmington, Delaware.' He went crazier than ever, and put about for sea after I showed him on the chart where he was at. He had been runnin' by dead-reckonin', and didn't know where he was. So, when he picked up a pilot and found he was headed all right for Wilmington, he figured his troubles were over. So there's worse than you afloat, Jimmy Arbutus."

At his suggestion, Wilson dug up his notebook and scribbled therein many other yarns, for the old pilot warmed to his task, and insisted that each of the poker players should contribute a story to the fund. When he was routed out for breakfast, the party had lost another pilot who had found his ship at daybreak. The wind had drawn into the northeast, and the _Albatross_ was snuggled down under double reefs. The barometer was falling, and the boat-keeper shook his head when the pilots insisted upon edging further off shore.

"Drive her till she cracks," shouted McCall. "This is the trip when we keep going till we get our ships. The _Albatross_ goes home empty, you bet your boots."

With much daring and difficulty one man was put aboard a liner late in the afternoon. Three pilots were left, and they swept Wilson into their genial comradeship, as the little party clawed its way to supper, and hung onto the table by its eyelids. In his mind, Wilson began to see the page story, "full of human interest and color." To-morrow he would work at his "introduction," and the thought of really making a start at filling those stately columns was perturbing. He felt something like stage-fright at the notion of it.

Before midnight, James Arbuthnot Wilson had forgotten his "story," and was thinking only of the awful turmoil above him. The wind had leaped to the might of a sudden summer gale. The schooner was hove to and battened tight, and like a tightly corked bottle she danced over the shouting seas. Made sick and giddy, Wilson sought "Old Pop" Markle, who was peacefully snoring in the next bunk, and shook him awake.

"Pshaw, sonny," the old man muttered, "she's safer than a big ship. She'll rare and tear and sputter till it blows over. If it'll ease your mind any, I'll take a peek on deck."

The pilot slipped into his oil-skins and vanished.

"It's pretty thick," he said when he came below, "but there ain't no great sea on, not for us. Rainin' hard and blowin' some. McCall is standin' watch with the boat-keeper. You're safer than if you was in the _Standard_ office. You can't lose your job out here, Jimmy."

Somewhat comforted, Wilson tried to sleep. It was a terrifying experience for the greenhorn, with more "local color" than he had bargained for. Some time later in the night he was half dreaming that "Doc" Wilson was holding his head under water and drowning him with the most enjoyable deliberation.

With a crashing sound like the explosion of a great gun in his ears, he was flung headlong clear across the cabin, and on top of him came "Old Pop" Markle, sputtering harmless curses. The cabin floor sloped like the side of a house and stayed there as Wilson scrambled to his hands and knees. Then came a more sickening lurch, and before the hanging cabin lamp was smashed against the deck-beams, the lad saw that the old man was dazed. He gave him a hand, and together they climbed the slope, and grasped the legs of the stationary table. They heard the other pilots stumble up the companion ladder, and hammer back the hatch, with yells of terror lest they be trapped.

Forward of the cabin bulkhead, they heard the roar of inrushing water, and smothered outcries among the watch below. While the old man and the boy tried to grope their way aft to the ladder, the sea crashed through the bulkhead door from the galley beyond, and instantly they were picked up and hurled aft, choking and fighting for life. Wilson chanced to grasp a step of the ladder, and with his free arm pulled "Old Pop" Markle to this refuge. The reporter did not want to die, and he knew that death dragged him by the heels. And it was with no heroic prompting that he pushed the old man up ahead of him. It was done on the instant, as one friend would help another in a pinch, without wrought-out purpose.

The water was sucking at his waist as he fought his way up, and partly out, and managed to double himself over the hatch coaming, with the old man's legs across his shoulders. Thus they were half jammed in the cramped exit. Just then the flare torch was lighted by a seaman. In the yellow glare "Old Pop" Markle saw the two pilots and two, only two, of the crew wrestling with the one skiff left at the davits. One of them stopped to beckon wildly to the old man and started to go to his aid.

In this moment the schooner lurched under with a weary, lifeless roll, and a black sea stamped across her sodden hull. It licked up the boat and the handful of toiling men, it leaped forward and pulled down the black figure with the torch. The two men still jammed in the hatchway were cruelly battered, but they could not be wrenched away. And when the towering comber had passed, there was darkness and silence, and no more shouting voices on the schooner's deck.

The old pilot wriggled free and got his hands on a life-buoy that hung within his reach at the after end of the cabin hatch. Wilson dragged himself after him, and pitched against a splintered mass of planking upended against the wheel. They listened and heard a steamer's imploring whistle, and one faint cry off to leeward. "Pop" Markle groaned as he fumbled in the darkness and laboriously passed a tangle of line around the wreck of the skylight cover to which Wilson was clinging.

"Hang on, sonny," he gasped. "I've made the buoy fast to the loose timber. We'll go off together with the next sea, sure. My God! here it comes."

The dying schooner seemed to sink from beneath them, and clinging to their frail bit of a raft, they were spun off to leeward in the arms of the sea that swamped the rock-ballasted _Albatross_. Turned over and over, the two men fought for breath until the skylight cover righted, and they came to the surface. They slid swiftly into a murky hollow, and were borne to the tattered crest whose froth was strangling.

But the wind was falling fast. Such seas as those which had broken over the helpless _Albatross_ were running in swollen billows when they met no barrier to check them. Therefore the castaways could cling and breathe, and even made shift to pass the loose ends of the line around their waists while they waited for the end. Now their spray-blinded eyes dimly saw the lights of the steamer that had bitten halfway through the pilot-schooner. She was blundering far to windward, and her signal rockets cut red gashes in the night. They could watch her swing in a useless circle as she sought to find the craft she had struck. Drifting away to leeward, the old pilot and the young reporter tried to shout, but their little rasping cries were pitifully futile. They coughed the racking brine from their throats, and saw the last rocket soar, saw the steamer's lights fade in the rain, become twinkling points and vanish.

There were no words between them until the day began to break. Now and then one sought the other's hand and found a feebly responsive grip. Thus they knew that death had not come to the little raft. With the gray light, the wind veered round to the south'ard, and except for the swinging swell, the sea was smoothed to summer gentleness. The eternal miracle of dawn had never come to more grateful hearts than these two. Youth had survived the battering ordeal with mind still alert, but old age was near passing with hurts and exhaustion. Now that he could see no help, the boy so managed it that the pilot could lie half across the life-buoy, which floated high with the supporting planking beneath it.

"Them as wasn't drownded and smashed in their bunks, couldn't swim, or none to speak of," sighed the old man. "I knew 'em all from boys. Two left.... And we're the most wuthless of the lot, sonny. But you may learn how to make an honest livin' some day.... Don't bother with me.... I'm due to go.... The old lady has the cottage, and there's the pension from the Pilot's Fund.... And two more pilots in the family.... Ain't you sorry you didn't let 'Doc' Wilson come?"

The boy sputtered:

"No, we aren't dead yet, and if we're picked up it's the story of a lifetime. I don't believe the Lord saved us from the wreck to die on a summer morning like this. And, my, but you were good to me, Mr. Markle."

They floated in silence while the June sun rose higher, and heat and thirst piled up their wretchedness. The seasoned fiber of the old man had been toughened for such a stress as this. He hung on grimly because he had always hung on grimly to whatever life set him to endure. Although they were out on the edge of traffic bound in and out of the Delaware Capes, he still hoped, but mostly for the boy.

Six hours after the _Albatross_ had gone to the bottom, a boat from a crippled brig, laden with salt from Turk's Island, picked up a bit of wreckage to which were lashed a white-haired man and a beardless lad. Both were too weak to talk, and the British skipper had them put into bunks, and poured raw Jamaica rum down their throats. Wilson was the first to revive, but he could not rise, and had to content himself with tidings that the pilot was alive and conscious. Night had come before the reporter could totter as far as the mate's cabin and see his comrade.

The pilot's leathery face was strangely bleached, and he could no more than whisper with a faltering huskiness:

"God bless their poor souls. They was all neighbors of mine. Hello, Jimmy Arbutus, have you begun to write that piece for the paper? There's something wrong with my insides. I think I busted some of 'em when we was jammed in that hatch. Well, we're going home, my son. Are you all taut again?"

Wilson tried to hide his anxiety and set himself to nursing the old man as best he could. His clumsy attentions were received with a sweet resignation, but the old man showed signs of impatience. At length, unable to restrain his desire, he asked:

"Why don't you begin to write your piece instead of wastin' time on my old hulk? I want to see it's done all ship-shape. We ain't goin' to have no 'Doc' Wilson nor a lot of fresh young pilots laughin' at our blunders. I'll overhaul the writin' for you."

Wilson was eager to begin. The skipper found a half-filled log-book, and the butt of a pencil, and the reporter sat by the pilot's bunk, and wrote with frowning effort. His labor was so evident that at length the interested pilot asked:

"You seem to be making heavy weather of it, Jimmy. Mind my lookin' over the nigh end of it?"

Wilson passed the log-book over with a flutter of expectancy. He was proud of his opening paragraphs. He flattered himself that he had caught the spirit of the tragedy of the last and lost pilot-schooner. The old man read them with puckered brow, and laid the book down without comment. Wilson waited and had to break the awkward silence:

"Anything the matter with that?"

"Well, I had only a common school education, and I've been at sea fifty years. I'm no judge, I guess. It's too high-falutin' for me. Those dictionary words are mighty imposin', and the opening verse of poetry looks gilt-edged. But, well, every man to his trade."

The very young reporter looked hurt, and the pilot tried to soothe him by flatly denying the truth of everything he had said. Wilson put the book away and went on deck. In his mind there was a glimmering notion that his literary method might be open to criticism. The old fear and lack of self-confidence came back. He would rest another day and try again.

Next morning the brig was beating against a baffling wind, and the Delaware Capes were two hundred and fifty miles away. A mattress was brought on deck, and the old man was laid on it beneath an awning. He was growing weaker, and began to fret when he found the brig was making so little headway toward her port and his home. Wilson was moody and worried about his comrade. He had no heart for his "story."

After a while the British skipper sat down beside the old man, and began to ask him about the loss of the _Albatross_. The pilot began with the start of the last cruise, and with crisp and homely detail, and with many breaks in his voice, he carried the tale down to the loss of the vessel, the loss of his comrades, and the escape of the oldest and youngest of those that had sailed in her. And because he felt it all so deeply, the story did not once wander from its chartered course.