Part 2

He returned and with his uninjured and still powerful arm fell to hacking the warp whose drag threatened momentarily to end the _I’ll Try_. The severed ends whipped like giant lashes into the air, and he narrowly escaped a second blow as the ship-end whistled through the air. The wind from its tarred and spraying strands lashed within an inch of his eyes as he instinctively jerked his head backward. The _I’ll Try_ leaped upward, leaned over, sprang free and seemed to fly outward like a tortured wild bird released from captivity. The water on her decks swept in a torrent across to the other side in great sheets. It carried with it loosened objects, and rope-ends that trailed as if eager to follow. The heavy ax with which Captain Josh had cut the imperiling warp was lifted, despite its weight, and vanished overboard in a smother of green. An iron handspike seemed to bound toward freedom, and brought up against the bulwark. The _I’ll Try_ lay far over now, and disregarding the wheel that swung idly to and fro, swept aimlessly before the storm. And even as she disregarded the wheel, Captain Josh disregarded her struggles. He jerked a sodden handkerchief from beneath his sodden jersey, tried to tie it about his bare head with one hand, realized that it was impossible, and hurried to the cabin boy. “Lad,” he said, more quietly and in a voice pitched barely high enough to surmount the tempest’s roar, “’ee have two hands. Help me to bind this up and belay it to my head. I can’t see with all they blood in my eye. Come, be brave, lad. Bind it fast and hard.”

The boy forgot his pain under the influence of that steady old voice, and obeyed. His young fingers trembled at their task; struggled with a simple knot.

“Now,” said Captain Josh, “us must work fast if us are to make port again. I know it’s hard, for ’ee has a hurt foot, I take it; but if us can make port, it’ll heal. Brace up, for if ’ee doan’t, us’ll never again see they harbor lights. All right now?”

“Aye, sir,” the boy asserted with a bravery that his voice belied.

“Then get down the companion and do best ’ee can when I lower away they other two. Hang on with one hand to they steps at the bottom and try to ease they down. You see us cain’t leave they on deck, lest they drown. Can do it?”

“Aye, sir, I can try,” the boy asserted, striving valiantly to meet such brave example.

“Then down ’ee goes. Here, I'll give a hand,” said Captain Josh, and did his best to assist the boy down the narrow opening and the steep steps. “Now stand by to help,” he called as he disappeared from the boy’s uplifted and encouraged eyes.

* * * * *

Captain Josh seized the ancient by the folds of tarpaulin and jersey, thrusting heavy, horny fingers next to the unconscious skin, and dragged his burden across the deck. The toes of the worn sea-boots dragged listlessly. The inert hands dragged with equal helplessness. But this was no time for anything but action. Captain Josh almost pitched headfirst into the companionway under the roll and swing of the sea as he lowered his burden downward. Under its weight the cabin-boy rocked and swung, standing upon one foot, imbued by the indomitable spirit above, and at least lessening the shock of the ancient’s fall.

“Cans’t drag him inside, lad? Good! A good lad! Then stand by for Bill. It’ll be hard on ’ee, because Bill be heavier than the old ’un,” he cautioned; and now with one hand, a bleeding head, but with an unconquered soul and resolute intent, he lowered through the narrow space the last stricken survivor of his crew.

The boy standing upon one foot was not equal to the burden. The weight fell heavily. It thumped upon the boards.

“What the hell do ’ee mean by--” began Captain Josh, inspired by habitual exercise of discipline; and then, remembering, changed it to: “Sorry, lad. Bill be mighty heavy for your arms. Doan’t ’ee worry. You’m be doin’ the best ’ee can. He aint hurt no worse than was by the fall. I be comin’ down now.”

He stood for a moment, inspecting with swift regard the skies, the waves, the aimless drift of the struggling ship, and then muttered, “She’ll ride! She must! It’s our only chance,” and then painfully dropped below.

At the foot of the companion stairs he found one of his men. Through the doorway in the cabin he caught sight of the cabin-boy struggling on one foot and despite pain to get the other off the floor and up to the bench or the bunk. He crowded inward, and the task was accomplished. The other man was also brought in, lifted upward, and laid supine. Shutting his teeth against his own anguish, and probing with one hand, the skipper fumbled an examination.

“Bill,” he said sagely, “has got, I think, some broken ribs. One side. Can’t see what’s wrong with the old ’un. But they both be sleepin’ and so aint hurted, now. Cut the boot off ’ee, lad, and fall to. Heed what I tell ’ee, because ’ee must stay here by them--stay to the last, lad, no matter what may happen, for I be goin’ on deck to bring the _I’ll Try_ home.”

* * * * *

And then, quickly, knowing that at any moment death might interrupt, Captain Josh gave all the instructions he could, and while he talked, fashioned for his broken arm a sling. He squatted down on the floor in front of the boy so that the lad’s hands could tie the knots. Once he admonished him.

“Tighter, lad! Tighter! Make ’em fast so they can’t slip loose.”

He climbed laboriously up the companion steps, bent over and called reassuringly: “I be goin’ to shut ’ee in, so if mayhap more rough weather comes, the wash wont drown ’ee out. So doan’t be afraid. I'll be at the wheel and--we’ll go home, lad, somehow.”

But when alone he looked at the skies, at the sea and at the sails, and shook his head.

“Lord God of all the seas,” he cried, lifting his head and reverently closing his fatigued and pain-stricken eyes, “for the sake of all they below, help thy unworthy servant, who is so old, so broken, so tired, to take the _I’ll Try_ home. But if it be Thy will that we are to see no harbor lights again but those by Thy everlasting gates, pray let use see them shine clear to bring us to Thy port.”

He rolled aft to the wheel that swayed helplessly to and fro, and using alternately his hand and knee against the spokes, brought the staggering ship up to her work. She seemed grateful for the attention, and eager to respond. Her mere rags of red sails filled, and she was ready to fight the storm.

“Good old girl! Good old girl!” Captain Josh muttered approvingly. “That’s it! Take hold of the wind. Hang on to it!”

For an hour she half fought, half fled with that nearly motionless figure steering her, and yet the storm showed no signs of abatement. The dusk came early, filled with flying clouds, with wind-torn spray and the unceasing charge of great waves. Captain Josh shifted anxious eyes skyward, seeking some hope of a break. In all his sixty years at sea he had never been more troubled and perplexed.

“If only there’d come a lull at sunset,” he muttered aloud after the long stillness, and was slightly startled by the sound of his own voice. He considered for a moment whether it was better to think aloud, for the companionship of that sound, or to keep his lips shut. For the time being he chose the former method and went on: “I can’t make or douse sail with one hand, and I be so damned tired now that it hurts. It’s mighty risky to let her fall off; but--us must have lights! I’ve just got to take the chance and let her come round. There’s nothing else to be done.”

* * * * *

He crouched against the wheel, waiting to seize one of the momentary lulls when the gale paused to catch breath for another blast.

“Now!” he cried at last, as if addressing his full crew. “Around she goes!” and with hand and knee, he deftly worked the wheel until the canvas flapped and fluttered, and then under way of impetus and storm the _I’ll Try_ hesitated, paid off, leaned over so far that her lee rail was awash, was in danger of coming to beam ends if the storm sent a quick gust of wind, struggled, recovered, threw water from her deck, and fell away. She was not an instant too soon in setting her keel, for the blast of wind came, as if angered by the skill of ship and man that had robbed it of its prey. It snapped the wet canvas. It shrilled through rigging. It screamed across the spume. Again she drifted as helplessly as a wreck, buffeted by wind and wave, lurching drunkenly, moving aimlessly, shuddering spasmodically, and with her wheel free.

Across her decks, slipping, sliding in his big and clumsy sea-boots, struggled her skipper, wondering meanwhile if she could possibly ride and survive, and hoping only to reach the lanterns that had fortunately, if carelessly, been stowed in a stationary fish-box. He reached them at last and was vastly concerned by the fear that they might have been so drenched that they would not light. He sat flat upon the wet and streaming deck in the tiny lee of the companionway, caught a lantern in his knees and after many attempts succeeded in lighting it. To hoist it with one hand was another trying task. He accomplished it, after a time, by first using his few and worn teeth, and when they failed, by clutching the rope between his knees. He spat a broken tooth out between his bleeding lips, and belayed the line to the mainmast.

“Bad and not proper it be, but--mayhap it’ll keep some of they big smoke boats from ridin’ us down,” he remarked, hopefully, as he saw the swaying, tossing gleam aloft. “Now for the starn lights!” But despite his patient efforts, he could light none. He swore with inconsequent oaths when one slid from the grasp of his knees and rolled swiftly outward, bounding and bumping across the deck, found an opening and plunged overboard. He used more expletives when he discovered that another had a broken globe, and was useless. Night was advancing, black and chill, and he sat for a moment more, flat on the deck, and questioning whether he dared risk the great venture of going below to see how the stricken remnant of his crew fared. The wind defiantly answered him. The ship was straining too hard under the stress of storm.

“Nope. I can’t do anything to help ’em, or myself,” he growled. “I must get back to the wheel and bring her back to course again, before it’s too black. If I could have but a cup of tay and a bit of biscuit! Damn it, why didn’t I think to put some of they biscuit in my pocket before I came back on deck!”

He stumbled aft again, and again seized the idle and aimlessly revolving wheel. Again he watched like a cat, waiting to pounce, and seize the momentary advantage of a lull. Again he brought the ship back to a course. Whether it was a true one, he could not be certain. He was depending now upon his sense of direction alone. There was nothing to guide him, not even a solitary star shining through the murk. He made mental calculations, reasoning that in the beginning the _I’ll Try_ must have been so many miles sou’west off the reef-bordered Prawl Point, that the wind had come from due west, and that therefore it must be safe to run.

“If it weren’t for they below,” he soliloquized, “I’d lay her to. If I were alone, I’d not risk the carrying on, and--mayhap--could make it. But--they be badly hurt. So--I must get somewhere. If Prawl Point be sixty mile away, and--”

* * * * *

Endlessly he debated the menacing dangers, and dared them. In the blackness of the night he fought against an almost unconquerable drowsiness; for by now he had been alert for more than forty hours. His broken arm throbbed with an ever poignant and increasing anguish, but even pain may be dulled by time and endurance, inasmuch as there is a climax where kindly nature brings either partial or complete unconsciousness. Sometimes in the long hours he felt himself swooning, and then he clung harder to the spokes and begged that God, in Whom he had such unlimited, unquenchable trust, might enable him to keep awake, that he might still sprawl across the wheel.

Dawn had come, and the sea was sobbing and spent; Captain Joshua was surrendering to the tiredness of long effort; endeavoring to recover kindliness after tempestuous outburst, before he reached the ultimate end of endurance. He was no longer aware of change. He was still fighting, ruggedly and unrelinquishing to the last. His dimmed eyes could no longer see. The world rocked and swayed. That off on the horizon lay still; pale cliffs, meant nothing to him. All that he could concentrate upon was holding the battered ship up to the wind. That the wind was dying meant nothing. He thought it still a-rage. His uninjured hand seemed paralyzed. He could no longer hold a spoke and strove to steer with an elbow, and bony knees.

Mute but fighting to the end, Captain Joshua finally let go the wheel, made a last effort, crawled to reach the loose end of a halyard, crawled back to the wheel, pulled the _I’ll Try_ up again, seated himself upon the wet deck and with one hand and broken teeth lashed himself clumsily to the wheel, his back against it, his dying legs and feet outsprawled, inert in their heavy and sodden sea-boots; and then his weary hand fell listlessly by his side.

A thousand confused conjectures, fears, hopes, and solicitudes flashed through Joshua’s brain. He tried to ask the Lord of all the seas, whom he had so long followed and loved, to take charge of the ship and bring her home. Her destination was no longer of moment to him, whether it were the gateways of earthly ports or the harbor lights of that haven and heaven to which he had so long aspired. And so, clumsily lashed with his back to the wheel, unyielding to the last, still fighting when the fight was done, the faint balance of sanity swung across to peace as had the sea after the storm, and dreaming that he was in his Brixham chapel on the hill, he fell to singing in a wavering voice: “Abide with Me.”

Some recess of his brain contained the words he had so many times sung, so long loved. Cracked and broken they issued between cracked and broken lips, quavering aimlessly into the air his fealty to a faith--that hymn written in the old, old port of Brixham town from which he and his forbears had sprung; and as a prelude he cried: “God, O God! Help me, for I can do no more. ‘Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.... And I am far from home.’”

* * * * *

The steam trawler _Williwaw_, after twenty days at sea, rimed by the storm, black, and with a heavy plume of smoke wallowing out of her funnel, was laying her course for Brixham Port. Captain Moran was staring at the streaks of rust and appeared anything but pleased by his inspection. His honest, sea-tanned face took on the look of preoccupation of one who is engaged in mental calculations as to the cost of paint. He was even disturbed when his mate Long, grave-eyed, came across the steel deck to him and said: “Looks to me, sir, as if there’s something wrong with a ship off there to sta’b’d. Her don’t act natural at all, sir.”

Captain Moran turned and trudged past the complex litter of mechanism and gear to have a look. After but a moment he shouted back to his mate: “You’re right about that, Mr. Long. Run down to ’em.”

The wheel in the pilot house of the _Williwaw_ whirled, and she turned her nose inquisitively on the new course.

“Somethin’ wrong? Aye? There be,” declared one of the crew to others who came leisurely up to the starboard rail. “Her be in trouble, sure! Look at they sails, what’s left of ’em, and her be yawin’ this way and that as if her had no hellum.”

They heard Captain Moran shout to the pilot: “Turn her loose. Put on full speed. No use in wasting time.” And from the engine-room sounded the clang of shovel and slice-bar; the funnel plume blackened, and the _Williwaw_ began to “foam at the mouth” as she closed down on the ketch. When her engine was rung down, a peculiar silence enveloped her that was broken by Moran’s hail:

“Ahoy there! _I’ll Try_! Ahoy! What’s wrong with you men?”

But he evoked no answer. Under silent way the _Williwaw_ bore closer, and now there became faintly audible a cracked old voice monotonously droning:

“Abide with me, fast falls the eventide. The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide. When other helpers fail and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.”

The voice that came quavering across the sullen waves, as if blanketed by the leaden skies, held the men of the _Williwaw_ in its spell. They clung to the rail, staring with perplexed eyes and parted lips until aroused to action by Moran’s shout: “Stand by to lower away a boat there, you men. Mr. Long, go over and learn what’s up.”

* * * * *

The boat splashed into the water, and down the steel side of the _Williwaw_ went the men to man it. Her screw thrust the sea again to hold her off at a safe distance, for the swells still surged and lifted forward; but the voice still carried on:

“I fear no woe, with Thee at hand to bless; Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness. Where is Death’s sting; where, grave, thy victory? I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.”

Sturdily pulled, as if eager to reach the black and battered hull of the half-wrecked _I’ll Try_, the boat bobbed upward and downward as it was rowed across the intervening space. It came alongside, where, standing, swaying, some of its rowers clutched at hand-holds, and Long, young, powerful, leaped for strake and rail. He threw a heavy boot over inboard and landed on both feet. For an instant he paused, bending forward as if doubting sight. He saw a man with white hair, stained red here and there, and with a reddened handkerchief bound awry over his head and falling over one eye. Streaks of red ran down over the disordered white beard. He saw the rope with which the man had bound himself to the wheel, and the halyard-end that had at last worked free and lay idly upon his lap. He saw the bandaged arm, the sprawling feet in sea-boots, the free wheel, and constantly he heard that same droning song of faith.

* * * * *

Long rushed over and laid his hand on the broad, bent shoulder, and said:

“Josh! Captain Josh! Skipper! Don’t you know me--Long--of the _Williwaw_?” But the closed eye did not open or look up, and the monotonous reiteration of song went on.

The mate ran to the side and shouted: “Come aboard here, you men. This looks bad. I’m going to need help, I think.”

And then, as they clambered inward, he ran to the closed companionway, lifted the hatch, recoiled from the foul air, and disregarding the steep steps, dropped nimbly below. A whimpering sound, as it issued from the lips of a pain-exhausted, terrified boy stabbed his ears, and with it mingled a babbling noise that could come from nothing else than human delirium.

For an instant his eyes probed the gloom until they accustomed themselves to the change from broad daylight. In one of the bunks lay a figure that was still and quiet. In another lay the man who moaned and babbled. In another lay the boy who now lifted himself to an elbow and said: “I couldn’t help it, sir. Skipper, he told me to stay here and do my best. I did, sir, and--and--the old un has never spoke a word, and the second hand has taken to talkin’ like that all the time; and my foot, sir, my foot--oh, it do hurt something awful, and I can’t walk no more, I can’t! I tried, sir, I did, and--”

Then the voice broke in a long wail of boyish grief. The strain had been too much for even that obdurate, steadfast youthful bravery.

“Steady, lad! Steady!” the mate’s voice quieted him. “You’re all right now. Be a sailorman. Don’t give up.”

The boy started to tell the tale of tragedy, but the mate of the Williwaw was gone and hurrying upward. On deck he shouted his discoveries to Captain Moran of the Williwaw, which now lay close by. No time was wasted in this urgent plight. A heavy line was brought across, a half-dozen men put aboard, and within a few minutes the _I’ll Try_ was being towed through the sea. The funnel of the _Williwaw_ now belched smoke as if she were steaming a race against time on the reach to Brixham Town. Around the breakwater’s end she swung in a flashing sweep to the outer and up to the very gates of the inner harbor before she stopped. Surmising tragedy, boats put off to meet them, and fishermen swarmed about the _I’ll Try_ to assist. Broken men were tenderly carried away. The harbor-master’s telephone urged a surgeon to haste. The men on the landing-pier thrust and jostled, all eager to serve.

The survivors of the _I’ll Try’s_ crew had come to port at last.

“The lad will pull through,” the surgeon announced to those who waited outside the harbor-master’s office, which had been turned into a temporary hospital. “The second hand may, though his ribs are caved in. The old man you call Scruggs the Ancient, must have died very lately because his body is still warm. And Captain Joshua--well--they say that when they found him, he tried to tell them something about the Harbor Lights.” The surgeon paused, looked away from the staring eyes, and then added softly: “He has found them.”

* * * * *

When, taken from her iced bunkers by hand, sorted, pulled ashore to the great flagged spaces of the fishmarket, carefully laid thereon and brought to the “liberal” buyers’ attention by the sonorous clang of the auctioneer’s bell and voice, the catch of the _I’ll Try_ brought six pounds, fourteen shillings and sixpence--nearly twenty-six dollars, to be divided amongst the sole survivors of the hapless crew. Captain Joshua’s share as owner and skipper came to nearly four pounds, or sixteen dollars! The undertaker charged fifteen pounds--about sixty dollars--for the coffin; the cemetery company charged five pounds, about twenty-five dollars, for the six-by-three feet of space which he might forever own as his last allotment of earth; and there were certain minor claims for flowers in that land where flowers run wild upon great cliffs, but must be paid for when laid upon a grave. All that was left thereafter, Captain Joshua’s grandsons and widowed daughter might have to live upon.

Up on the Brixham hills that night rain fell. Somehow it seemed to freshen the handful of flowers that some one had thrown on the grave of the lone and ancient mariner, as if he, who after all his sea-toil had come to land-rest, merited that humble recognition. Perhaps some one loved him, as well as Skipper Joshua. Perhaps God in His majestic but kindly pity would send other wild-flowers to climb across their graves, blanketing them in the radiance of that only One who marks the sparrow’s fall!

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the April 1922 issue of Blue Book magazine.]