And with everything on, away went the deck-sweptBuccaneerto the west’ard.
The master of the barkHenry Fuller, mahogany-laden and Boston-bound, and, now to anchor in Chatham Harbor on the Cape Cod shore, stood conning a telegram.
“In two hours or so now he ought to be outside and waiting for us. ‘Slip your chains and let her go.’ All right. Only, instead of slipping I’ll see that they part—in the most natural way in the world—and out we’ll go proper.”
And out she went, threatening all sorts of destruction, but curiously missing whatever lay in her road. Thus far all had gone well. But the best-laid plans——
Instead of a moderate gale, the master of theFullerfound a blizzard to combat—a northwester, which in winter is always cold. This one was so cold that in the first sweep of it they almost froze up—in fact, came so near to freezing thatby midnight all hands were spending more time below than on deck in the effort to keep warm.
“Why in the devil’s name didn’t he warn me of this?—up there in Boston, where they have all kinds of weather-bureau information. Why in the devil’s name didn’t he?” complained the master of theHenry Fuller.
TheFuller, to lend a good color by and by to the story of the wreckage and rescue, had to have a leak. The leak had been provided for at the same time that the cables were chiselled. So that was all right. But the leak meanwhile had begun to grow. Whereas theFuller’scaptain had counted on two men to work pumps, or four seeming to be working desperately as the rescuers approached, there were now four men who really had to toil without cessation to keep the ship dry.
It grew colder. The coldest wind of all that ruffles the North Atlantic is a northwester, and this was an exceptionally cold northwester. The bark began to ice up fast, and so many extra men were needed to chop the ice off her that there were not enough left to take sail off. When out from the lee of the land they began to feel the real force of the wind, and so unloosed sails were blown off before they could be set. Then they hove her to. But a square-rigger doesn’t stay hove-to like a fore-and-after, and theFullerwentsliding off to leeward; and sliding too far to leeward off the Cape Cod coast in a northwester means to drift to Georges Shoals, where in places is no more than twelve feet of water. The barkHenry Fullerdrew twenty-one.
The master of theFuller, far from being as crazy as Wiley, to suit his purposes, had described him to Dixey, was in reality a long-headed chap and a good seaman, and here he began to think and act. Calling such of the crew as were chopping ice off her deck and rail, he put them to work setting such extra sail as he had below.
A tedious and difficult job that; and dangerous, with big seas threatening to overpower the logey craft. But it had to be done; and it was done after a long and wracking night.
Sail on her again, the Skipper tried to beat her around the cape. But as a square-rigger won’t lay hove-to as snugly as a fore-and-after, neither will she hold up to the wind like a fore-and-after. A fore-and-after always for coasting work; a square-rigger for trade-winds and the wide ocean wherein to navigate.
TheFullerwould not do it; nor could her master work her under the lee of the land. What with the water in her hold, the ice on her hull, and her insufficiency of sail, she only rolled and drifted in the trough of the sea. And having leftboth anchors in the harbor of Chatham, he could get no grip of bottom to hold her. However, he could do the next best thing—he could lay her to a drag. So getting several of the mahogany logs out of her hold, the crew lashed them together, and, working under protest, mutinous almost in their free discussion of things, they hoisted the drag up and dropped it over the rail after great exertion.
It was again night, and still no signs of a rescuing tug. Another private glance at the telegram revealed nothing new. “We’re altogether too near the shoals for Wiley,” muttered the captain of theFuller, “and even if we weren’t, I guess he’s having all he wants to look after himself in this gale. I wonder is she drifting fast? The lead there, fellows—give her the lead, and see what’s under us.”
One man had life enough to take a sounding. “Forty-five fathom,” he called.
“Forty-five! God, but we’re going into it! Cut that drag adrift and let’s get out of here. Get together, men, and make sail of some kind till we’re by this place.”
“What place is it just, Captain?”
“It’s Georges North Shoal to looard of us.”
They asked no more, but worked with desperation. Frost-bitten, wet, hungry, they made sailof it in some fashion. Anywhere for them now but Georges North Shoal and sure death.
“And once by here, let her go where she will— I’m done with her,” announced the tired captain of theHenry Fuller.
A schemer of fame was Dixey of theIce King. He stayed by theDurlichtill the gale drove her to harbor, and then to harbor he ran with her. He proposed to stay by her, too, till further orders. A proposition to tow a used-up tramp steamer to Portland he waved off impatiently. He was playing for bigger game.
However, when after forty-eight hours in Provincetown Harbor theDurlichshowed no signs of moving out, Dixey began to squirm. He instituted inquiries. Between the firemen of the two towboats existed an amity of feeling that might be turned to profit. So to the hold of theDurlicha begrimed party with a quart of the right stuff in his overcoat pocket found his way; and returned after an unconscionably long visit, somewhat befuddled, but able to report that the gentleman in the fur coat didn’t calculate to expose his precious life in such weather again off Cape Cod.
Dixey considered the situation again in this new light. A long contemplation from all angles, and he went ashore to telephone. He came back again and drew out his charts. “H’m! She’s left Chatham and she’s not been reported yet in Boston. She must be out here somewhere. But where, just?” A further thoughtful whirl of a pair of dividers on the chart. “He may’ve beat up by the Cape, but I don’t think so. It’s a good chance he went into the North Shoal, and if he did, of course he’s lost. But in case he did get by—in case he did—” Dixey whistled down the tube to his engineer. “Warm her up and we’ll get out of here.”
And so it came to pass that Dixey in time sighted the leaking bark, to every appearance a sinking bark, with a crew of imploring, frost-bitten men to her iced-up rail.
The master of the bark told a story of extreme hardship, of just escaping being lost on the shoals of Georges.
“The North Shoal?”
“Aye, the North Shoal. We all but bumped, we were that handy to it. A dozen times we thought we were lost. I don’t understand it myself, but we worked by, and here we are—our hold full of water, everything soaked in the cabin and forec’s’le, where the seas wet everything down. Nothing to eat, no fire fore or aft, and we’re mostfroze up. Put a boat out and take us off, for God’s sake!”
“Goin’ to abandon her?” Dixey’s voice almost betrayed his anxiety.
“Abandon her? Yes, and get as far away from her as anybody will take us. Why, man, we’re froze up, and she’s sinking!”
“Don’t you think you could keep some of your men aboard pumpin’ her out and take a line from me so I can tow you in? This steamer of mine could walk you home at a six-knot clip, deep as you are. It’d mean a lot of money to me. What d’y’ say?”
“No, sir. I wouldn’t stay aboard her another hour, let alone the men, for millions. You haven’t any notion of how things are aboard of her. Everything wet down below, grub and bedding both, and solid ice, man, from rail to rail—likely to go down under our feet any minute. And here’s some of these men half wild with suffering. Take us off, and do what you please with her afterward. For all I care she’s yours—she’s anybody’s that’ll take us off.”
“Blest if I don’t try and take them off just the same.” Dixey waved to his mate to unlash the boat.
The deck-hands of theIce Kingseldom had occasion to launch a boat, and now they made a messof it. When they should have fended the boat off, they allowed the sea to bear it in. Against the side of the towboat it came crashing.
Dixey swore blue oaths from the pilot-house. “What in the name of Beelzebub you tryin’ to do? Stove in, is she?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the mate.
“Bad?”
“So bad that I wouldn’t want to ask any men to go in her—and the men don’t want to go, either.”
“That so? A fine lot of able seamen! Well, they’ll have to take a line—” He hailed the bark. “We can’t help you unless you’ll take a line and let us tow you.”
“What’s the matter with your other boat?”
“They’d smash that, too, and——”
“Ho, Captain—” it was the voice of one of the bark’s crew—“here’s a sail bearing down.”
The sea-sweptBuccaneer, bucking the northwester, was putting in great licks on the southerly tack. Suddenly the forward watch, trying to keep warm in the lee of a bit of canvas tacked to the weather fore-rigging, spied an abandoned vessel.
“Wreck O!” his voice rang above the gale. Crump Taylor and half the crew came piling up to the tumbling deck.
“Where away? Sure enough! Let’s see again. That’s what—a wreck!”
The fast-sailingBuccaneerwas soon abreast of her. “Jibe her over and sail around her—let’s have a closer look,” said Crump, and the man at the wheel did as bid.
“She’s pretty low, and all iced up. She looks bad, but you never can tell. What the devil’s that big tug doin’, and not helpin’ her? But no matter what he’s doin’—drop alongside there—not too close. One roll of her atop of us and our names’d be in the papers with the fine notices they give a man when he’s dead. ‘An honor to their profession,’ ‘Too bad they died,’ and so on—all fine enough, but not healthy. Hi, aboard the bark—what’s wrong?”
Again was the story told—of the harrowing drift past the edge of the shoals and their present plight. “Take us off,” it was then—“for God’s sake, take us off!”
“We got no boat,” said Crump to that. “But wait, there’s that tug,” and motioning to the wheel, “Jog over to the tug.”
“Those men want to be taken off,” hailed Crump when he was close to the towboat.
“Well?” said Dixey.
“And you got two boats?”
“Yes, and one already smashed trying to put it over.”
“Well, there’s the other.”
“And smash that, too?”
“Well, I’ll be damned—and a frost-bitten crew alongside—and their vessel sinkin’ under their feet. How about the busted one towin’ astern?”
“It’s full of water.”
“Well, cast her adrift, and we’ll stand by and pick her up and patch her up and take the bark’s crew off with her.”
“Lord, you’re the devil and all, ain’t you?”
“Now,whatd’y’ think o’ that?” was all the disgusted Crump could splutter by way of condemnation. He turned to his crew. “All there’s to it is, we’ll have to get ’em off ourselves.”
“But how’ll we get ’em off, Skipper, without a boat?”
“I know.” Sam Leary bobbed up. “Let ’em run a line from their masthead to a block in our riggin’ and again a block on deck with a couple of men standin’ by to haul and slack, and let them come down the incline like’s if ’twas a breeches buoy.”
“Sam,” said Crump admiringly, “but you’re sure a wizard.”
Crump hailed to the bark and explained. The bark’s crew did their share. One after the other they came whizzing down to the deck of the fisherman. Her captain, the last to leave, set fire to the few dry places below before he went. An excruciating half-hour it was, but at last the crew of the bark were on the deck of the schooner. “And now go below,” commanded Crump, “and turn into the dry blankets. In five minutes the cook’ll have you full of hot coffee.”
Seeing the strangers on the way to comparative comfort, he returned to active business. Crump was ever a man of action.
“Who’s in for salvage?”
“Me!” said eighteen members.
“And who’ll be the prize crew?”
“Me!” said nineteen, this count including the cook, just then running aft with more hot coffee. The nineteen, and doubtless Crump also, had visions of an adventure that might yet net them a good trip.
“And now to get aboard. How’ll we get a man aboard her for a starter? How about that, Sam? We can’t go up the way they came down, can we? Get your head to working.”
“Why, swing aboard by our dory taykles. When we roll down and our mastheads are ’most over her deck, a man can let go and drop off.”
“And suppose a man misses?” Crump put the question like a lecturer in front of a class.
“He must’nt miss—unless he’s an AIswimmer. If he——”
“O Skipper, they’re making ready to put over a boat from the tug!”
“The devil—tryin’ to steal our prize! Get a move on, fellows! If they’re half-way smart they’ll beat us out, and you know marine law—whoever puts the first man aboard c’n claim salvage rights. We got to beat ’em, Sam, and that dory-taykle scheme’s not quick enough. How’ll we do it now?”
“If you’re good and careful I’ll try the main-boom jump. But you got to be careful—in this sea, Skipper.”
“All right. Sail around her again,” called Crump to the wheelsman. “Now, fellows, when she’s comin’ afore it let her main sheet run to the knot, and put the boom taykle to her and be sure to choke it up hard and tight. This no place for accidents.”
Which they did, and as theBuccaneercame flying down toward the stern of the bark, Sam Leary ran out on the boom, which was then at right angles to her rail, leaning against the sail as he ran. At the end of the boom he gathered himself for the leap. “Steady, Skipper—you know what it means if I miss.”
“Trust me, Sammie.” Crump held the wheel, and in the touch of his hand was the full genius of steering. “Trust me, Sammie,” he repeated, while Sam again gathered himself, and from under the stern of the bark, theBuccaneerlifting to a sea, he made the jump. It was a lesson in helpfulness to see, at the psychological moment, the entire crew’s arms unconsciously raised to waft him on.
Sam’s feet hit the icy rail, and away he went, skating half the length of her quarter and coming down—bam! on the seat of his oilskins.
“Hurt you, Sammie?” came sympathetic voices from the deck of theBuccaneer.
“Never jarred me,” affirmed Sam, and waved his hand at the discomfited master of the tugboat.
“Yes,” commented Crump, looking over to the tug, “that does forhissalvage. And now I’ll put her alongside, Sammie, and we’ll try your dory-taykle scheme.”
When Crump had his tackles rigged he called out: “I’ll hoist the men up and let ’em drop aboard. Only you run an end of a halyard from the bark, Sammie, to haul ’em well inboard.”
“And tell ’em what I said about not missing, Skipper.”
“I’ll give ’em written instructions,” said Crump to that.
“Just like putting fish out on the dock, ain’tit?” hallooed the first man, while he was still in the air. Down he came—plump! and his teeth rattled when he hit the upheaving deck.
“Hurry up, a few more of you, and help to put out the fire here—this no place for jokes.”
When he had seven men, Sam waved an arm to Crump. “No more, no more, Skipper.”
“But me, Skipper, me!” appealed every individual one of those left behind.
“No.”
Despite that, “Just me!” a half dozen men with uplifted arms implored the Skipper. “Just me, Skipper, just me!” Most persistent of all was young Gillis. “Just me, and make a good prize crew. That’ll be eight men and myself—nine men all told. Luck in odd numbers. Besides, I’m Sam’s watch-mate, and Sam said he never had a watch-mate like me.”
“H’m— I cal’late that’s right. Just you, then, but hurry.”
Gillis hurried, so much so that instead of dropping aboard the bark he fell into the sea between the bark and the schooner.
He came spluttering to the top. “Heave me a line, somebody!” A dozen lines were hove at him and two draw buckets; one, hitting him on the head, all but drove him under again.
“Lord, don’t kill me!”
“There’s a fine waste of draw buckets,” commented one of the prize crew ere they had him safe on the bark.
“Oh, but that fire feels good!” chattered Gillis, and took station by the main hatch, where he might heave buckets of water on the fire without removing too far from the heat of it.
It took them the better part of two hours to master the fire. “To the pumps!” said Sam then, and, double-manned by fresh vigorous men, the pumps soon began to lessen the deluge in the hold.
“And now make sail, Sam,” called Crump from theBuccaneer.
“Aye. Who’s ever been square-riggin’?” asked Sam of his prize crew then. Two men answered to that.
“You’ll be captain of one watch, and you of the other. That’s for knowin’ about a square-rigger. And now let’s make sail.”
They could not make sail very well, however, because there was not sail enough to make—that is, to set sail as it should be set on a square-rigger. But there was enough for half-sails, and they made half-sails for her accordingly.
“Now she’s a fore-and-after, isn’t she?” commented Sam. “All right, now—we can do somethin’ with her now—hah, what?”
“Yes, and we won’t need any captains of watches in her, will we, Sam?” queried Gillis, thereby betraying a slight jealousy of the superior ranks.
“That’s so—we won’t, will we? You two square-riggers, you Charlie and you Dinnie, you’ll be just ordinary hands again.”
“Well, well, ordinary hands ain’t bad—there’ll be good prize money out of this, Sam.”
“If we keep her afloat there’ll be.”
“Oh, we’ll keep her afloat, Sam.”
“It’s good you think so. But to the wheel now. Who’s first watch?”
“O Sam”— Gillis was peering into the binnacle—“her compass is busted!”
Sam ran aft to see for himself. “So it is. Man, but they’ve had crazy doin’s aboard this one.”
“Aye, and her rudder’s been pounded off,” came from another.
“No compass and no rudder, hah? Wouldn’t that jolt you, though? Well—” Sam looked around. “O Skipper,” he hailed to his vessel, “you’ll have to come under our stern and make theBuccaneeract as a rudder for this one.”
“It’s easy done,” said Crump, and passed up the lines to hold theBuccaneerin proper fashion to the bark.
With everything fast and taut and the bark beginningto show signs of life, theIce Kingranged alongside theBuccaneer.
Dixey’s head was poked out the pilot-house. “I say, Captain,” he called, “you’ll never be able to beat home with her. What d’y’ say if you take our line and we tow you both to Boston—or Gloucester? It’s out of the question you gettin’ her home under sail. You keep your gang aboard to keep her pumped out, and I’ll tow her and we’ll split the salvage. What d’y’ say? You’ll never see home and you hang on to her.”
“And you the man wouldn’t lend us your old boat?” called back Crump.
“That’s all right, Captain. Business is business. Better take my line. You’ll never see home and you hang on to her that way.”
Sam had to put in a word here. “Don’t you take any old line from him, Skipper. Fine days when steamboat men c’n tell us our business!”
“No fear of me, Sam. Sheer off, you,” and Crump waved the tug contemptuously away.
With a final word from the pilot-house, “Well, don’t blame me if you lose your prize and your men both,” the big sea tug moved toward the northwest, where soon she was lost in the haze.
With the bark under weigh, Sam Leary organized his crew. Four men to the pumps and four men to chop ice, and himself everywhere—alow and aloft, pumping water, chopping ice, and back to the stern to advise with Crump Taylor as to the course.
“How’s she doin’?” Sam would call.
“Fine! fine! Go on—all right. I think she’s liftin’ a mite.”
“Think so?” and Sam, much cheered, would dash around deck again.
The ice was a toilsome proposition. It made about as fast as they could clear it. “I see them harvesting ice on the Kennebec one winter,” said young Gillis, by way of drawing an extra breath—“horses and ice-cutters—and that’s what we ought to have here.”
“I suppose so,” retorted Sam, “and wagons to carry it off, and ice-boats sailin’ around with cushions and young ladies in furs in ’em, and a little automobile engine to work the pumps, so all you’d have to do would be to stand watch once in a while and go below and mug up whenever you felt like it.”
“There,” exclaimed Gillis, “I knew there was something I forgot! What we goin’ to do about eatin’? There’s no grub aboard this one.”
“None at all? How d’y’ know?”
“Oh, I been below.”
“Trust you. At eatin’ or watchin’ out for seas you’re a certificated master. ‘Here’s one Ithinkis comin’ aboard,’ he says the other day, and she high as Mount Shasta ’most, and comin’ like a railroad train. And so no grub, eh? Well, the Skipper’ll have to manage some way to heave some aboard. But quit your conversational chattin’ now and keep pumpin’—and you others go to choppin’. Slack up, and the first thing you know this one’ll go down—plumb! like a rock—and then where’ll we be?”
“And our salvage, Sam—where’d that be, too, hah?”
“That’s so, our salvage. And ’tisn’t only salvage, but we want to show that tug-boat crowd, and those bark people that cast her off, that we c’n get her home. But how’s the pumps? Three thousand strokes yet? Isn’t that the devil, though? And ice enough aboard yet to make a winter’s crop for one of them Boston companies with the fleet of yellow wagons, yes. But keep to it, fellows, and by’n’by we’ll see about grub.”
Later, Sam paid out a long line, which Crumptook aboard theBuccaneerand attached to a great hunk of beef, wrapped in four thicknesses of oilskins, and a can of hot coffee, tightly stoppered. The beef reached the bark somewhat cooled, but in bulk entire. As to the can, the stopper was buffeted out of that, and only salt water was there when Sam hauled it in.
“Now what d’y’ think of that, Skipper?”
“That’s the devil, ain’t it? But better luck next time.”
“Lord, I hope so!”
All that night the prize crew labored. The sails needed but small attention. Hauling in or paying out occasionally sufficed for them, she being on the one tack all night; but the hull of the bark setting so low made the trouble. The seas broke almost continuously over her, and added to that were the icy decks, with footing so uncertain that at any moment a man was likely to be picked up and hurled into the roaring black void. When two or three men had been hove into the lee scuppers, and from there miraculously rescued, Sam saw to it that thereafter every man worked with a life-line about him.
Sam himself was fettered by no lashings. His work called for too extensive an activity. He had to be not only aft, but forward, and aloft as well as below. They could hear him moving in the blackness,grabbing sheets or halyards, fife-rail or rigging, as he stumbled from one place to another. Regularly did he disperse words of cheer. “We’ll get home yet, fellows, and fool ’em all—and then! For you home-bound craft, you that got families, there’s the wife who’ll have new dresses and the children copper-toed boots, and a carriage for the baby, with springs in it. Man, but the time you’ll all have! And the timewe’llhave, we privateers—hah, Gillis?”
“M-m!” murmured Gillis from the region of the port pump-brake, and forced new energy into arms that long ago he had thought were beyond revival.
Morning came, and with it an increase of wind and cold. Crump, from the end of theBuccaneer’sbowsprit, where he managed to hang by the aid of the jib-stay, hailed Sam and offered to put on fresh men.
“No,” said Sam, “we’ll stick it out a while longer.”
“But by’n’by it’ll be too rough, Sammie, and we won’t be able to take you off.”
“Oh, well then, no harm—we’ll stick it out some way.”
“All right, have your way,” and Crump went back to the deck of his vessel.
That afternoon it began to look bad for thebark and the men aboard her. It was her captain, refreshed from a twenty-four hours’ sleep below, who thoughtlessly passed his opinion when he, the first of his crew to revive, poked his head above the companion-way and was astonished by the sight of the ship that he thought he had scuttled. “What—she on top of the water yet!” From the bark his eyes roved to the derailed ice-covered deck of the littleBuccaneer, then up to Sam and his toiling gang again. “Well, they are damn fools, ain’t they, to think they’ll ever get her home?”
He said that to Crump, who answered softly: “Now, Captain, I don’t want to jar your feelings any, but if you don’t do one of two things—go below and stay there, or draw the hatch over your face if you stay up here—then I’m afeared I’ll have to pick you up and tuck you away under the run or somewhere else where you can’t be heard for a while. Damn fools, eh?” snorted Crump, and in sheer derision of some people’s judgment spat several fathoms to leeward.
It turned out as Crump had predicted in the morning—still heavier weather for that afternoon and night. Just when Sam was demonstrating with a long pole that there was at least a foot less water in her hold, the wind and sea began to make. Crump offered to attempt to put fresh men aboard,but Sam waved him off. “No use, Skipper, runnin’ extra risk for the gang—you’d lose some of ’em. We’ll stick it out—we’ll make out some way.”
Throughout that night the men on the bark toiled terribly. Chop ice and man pumps it was, with not even time to crack a joke or indulge in occasional cheering reminiscence. There was not time during most of the night even to carry to the rail and throw to leeward the chopped ice. So they cut it into large blocks and piled them up two or three tiers high and there allowed them to stay until by and by, the bark heaving down sufficiently, away they went in a grand slide overboard. “Everybody sashay,” Sam would cry then, and waft them overboard with graceful arms. And yet, exhausting as was the ice-chopping, the pumping was even more so. It was so terribly monotonous to men accustomed to lively action. No variety to pumping water out of a ship’s hold; never a chance to put in a fancy stroke or shift hands, as in ice-chopping. Up and down—always that—up and down; and when a ship is making as fast as she is lightened, never an inch of encouragement from the sounding pole. Sam had to cut down the spells from an hour to half an hour, and finally to fifteen minutes, so terribly wearing did the grind become to the exhausted men.
Sam himself had no exuberant vitality after that second night; but the unobtrusive will was inflexible as ever, and he had ever an eye for those on theBuccaneer. “Skipper, ain’t she been strainin’ through the night?”
“A little bit, Sammie, a little bit.”
“More than a little, Skipper—there’s been too much pumpin’ aboard you, too, for alittlestrainin’. How many strokes?”
“Oh, maybe two thousand through the night.”
“I thought about that. And now let me tell you something, Skipper—that kind of work won’t do your vessel any partic’lar good. It’s a terrible strain. I know, I know—you can’t tell me a little vessel like theBuccaneercan be a rudder to a big logey rolling ship of this one’s size and not show signs of it. I misdoubt you’ll be able to hang on much longer.”
“Much longer? Let me tell you, boy, we’ll hang on till you or me goes under.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Why won’t we? Who’ll stop?”
“I will. See here.” Sam, balanced on the taffrail of the bark, poised a sharp-edged axe above the lines that held theBuccaneerastern. “One slash here, and one slash there, and you’re adrift.”
“You just try it—just let me see you try it,Sam Leary!” Crump in his wrath shook his fist at Sam, and followed that by furious orders to theBuccaneer’screw. But that fit over, he shook his head. “I misdoubt that bark’ll live the night out. Blast her, blast her, I wish we’d never set eyes on her! What’s millions, let alone a few thousand dollars, to men’s lives—and men that’s sailed with you, and summer breeze or winter blow was always there when you wanted ’em? Damn you, Sam Leary, for an obstinate mule, but if ever I see you aboard this vessel of mine again you won’t leave it in a hurry again to go aboard any old sinkin’ hulk for prize money!”
And still the wind and sea increased; and just before dark Sam appeared at the stern of the bark with the sharp axe in his hand. “O Skipper, Skipper!” he called.
“Aye, Sammie.”
“Time to part company.”
“No, no, Sammie—not yet awhile.”
“Yes, now’s the time. There’s nine of us here and twenty-seven of you there. You lay tied to this one, and if we go down suddenly in the night, down you go, too.”
“No, no, Sammie. I’ll have two men with axes to the lines. I’ll cut, if I see you goin’—as sure as God’s above me, I’ll cut.”
“‘Twon’t do, Skipper. We could roll under in
“You just try it—just let me see you try it, Sam Leary.”
“You just try it—just let me see you try it, Sam Leary.”
“You just try it—just let me see you try it, Sam Leary.”
the dark afore you’d know it and you’d get whirled in——”
“And even so, Sammie—do you believe she’d draw us under?”
“Wouldn’t she? If you didn’t cut quick enough, say. And if she didn’t, you’d be caught aback, and in this breeze you’d capsize in a wink. No, ’twon’t do, Skipper. If we’ve got to go, we got to go, and you goin’ with us won’t help. And there’s nine of us and twenty-seven of you.” He looked all about him then—ahead, abeam, aloft, and once more astern at Crump. “So long, fellows, if we’re not here in the mornin’.” Two sharp slashes and the line parted; wide apart fell the big bark and the little schooner.
Crump, immediately he felt himself free, laid theBuccaneeralongside as near the bark as he dared, and he could dare a great deal.
“Keep off!” called Sam.
“No more than she is now, Sam. And if ever she should go down, tell the fellows to lash themselves to something or other that’ll float high, and we’ll be right there and maybe pick some of you up——”
Sam waved, the last time they were able to see so much as a hand waved ere black night rolled down on them.
From the little schooner all hands watched thenight out for that spot in the darkness where they conceived the bark to be—that is, those that had time to spare from their work. Occasionally they could catch from her deck a call that they knew to be the voice of Sam with his word of cheer. They saw the attempts to light torches on her, the flash and flare, and then the almost immediate dousing when the sea washed aboard.
But fortune attends the brave. She was there in the morning, rolling worse than ever and lower in the water, but still afloat.
“Now, ain’t that amazin’?” demanded Crump of one after another of his crew. “Ain’t it amazin’?” he demanded of the captain of the bark.
That intriguing party could only shake his head at the miracle of it. “Still afloat! And when I left her I give her about an hour. I set her afire myself with my own hand,” he explained, “so nobody’d be misled into tryin’ to save her. ‘No salvage onher,’ I said. ‘Another hour and she’ll be burned to the water’s edge, and then she’ll sink and trouble nobody no more,’ I said. And a good job I thought it was, she was that dangerous-lookin’. And if I’d never set a match to her, she was leakin’ that bad, and that low in the water! And there she is still afloat! Well, that’s past me.”
That afternoon, the weather moderating, Crump sailed close up and once more offered to try to takeoff the worn-out gang of the now wildly sailing bark and put his own fresher men aboard.
“What!” exclaimed Sam—“leave her, and after we got her this far? Why we’re gettin’ to love the old hulk. Let’s finish the job, Skipper, so long’s we started it. Another day and we’ll be home.”
“Sam Leary, am I skipper, or you?”
“Why, of course you’re skipper, and if you order it—orderit, Skipper—we got to obey.”
“Well, come aboard here.”
“How?”
“Rig up that taykle—the same that hoisted your gang aboard.”
“That taykle parted last night, Skipper, and it can’t be rigged.” If one can imagine an impudent, unshaven, hollow-eyed man in iced-up boots, beard, and oilskins, then it is possible to picture Sam Leary as he leaned against the mizzen-rigging of the wallowing derelict and smiled sweetly at his skipper. And imagine Sam Leary’s skipper, after a lot of spluttering, smiling back, and even at last admitting himself beaten.
“All right, go ahead. There’s no gettin’ past you, Sam Leary. Finish your cruise in her.”
And Sam Leary did finish his cruise in her. Three days later, such weary, weary men— But let that pass. Three days later—and in broad daylightit happened, so that their friends at home might share in the full glory of their achievement—they sailed, the bark leading and the little fisherman by way of a rudder astern, into the harbor of Gloucester, where they fancy they know a seaman when they see one.
Of the sequence of events that threw that valuable prize into their hands the crew of theBuccaneerwere not told at that time; but, later, young Gillis, having journeyed to Boston—there in emulation of more noted fishermen the more splendidly to disburse his prize-money—had come back minus his roll, but fat with information.
“And there I was, Skipper, spending my money like a—like a——”
“—a drunken fisherman.”
“No, that’s not how I was goin’ to put it, Skipper. But, anyway, there I was dispensin’ refreshment like a gentleman to a few friends I’d met, when along comes the skipper of the tugboat that wanted us to take his line and we wouldn’t, you mind. And he looks at me hard, and at last asks me was Ireallyone of that gang o’ fishermen thatbrought the mahogany bark back to port. And I says, ‘Why ain’t I,really?’ ‘Well,’ he says, ‘you look so diff’rent dressed up.’ And I said that naturally a man that’d been bangin’ around on the Banks for five or six weeks would look handsome in oilskins and a gale of wind. That kind o’ struck him amidships, I guess, for he said he didn’t mean anything by that, and goes on to tell me how he figured it cost him twelve hundred dollars chasin’ up that bark—in tows he missed that week; and his friend here—he introduced the other steamboat man—’d got a thousand dollars just for doin’ nothin’ but layin’ under the lee of the Cape for three days while it blew, and then for joggin’ around two days off the cape after it moderated. ‘Yes, and the man that paid me is down the wharf now,’ goes on the second steamboat man, ‘and I think he’d like to meet some of your crowd.’ And down the dock we went, and there he was. I forget what he looked like in the face, but he had the swellest fur coat, big enough to ’most make a mains’l for theBuccaneerand fur nigh long enough for reef-points on that same mains’l, and he shakes hands with me and says he didn’t know whether to be sore or not. And just then Sam come bowlin’ along, and he says, ‘This must be one of your crowd, too?’ ‘One!’ I says—‘one! Why, he had charge!’ and just then the first steamboat man he grabs Samand says, ‘Well, I’ll be damned—why, you’re the fellow made the main-boom leap!’ ‘What!’ says fur coat, and has a good look at Sam. ‘Sure enough,’ he goes on, ‘you’re the kind of men I ought to have hired to salve the bark.’ ‘Hired? what d’y’ mean?’ says Sam. ‘Oh, nothing,’ says fur coat to that; ‘but I’m done with the salvage business. Let’s have a drink,’ and then they came so fast, reg’lar ring-a-ring-a-rounder fashion, that——”
“That the next thing you knowed you had an awful headache, and not enough money to pay for your ticket back to Gloucester.”
“Didn’t I, though! Trust me—me, Wise Aleck, goin’ to Boston ’thout a return ticket. But Sam didn’t.”
“No, trust Sam to go the whole hog. How much does he want?”
“Twenty, or twenty-five, he thought would do.”
“Only twenty-five, hah? Mod’rate, ain’t he? Well, give me his address and I’ll telegraph it to him. And how much do you want for yourself?”
“Oh, about fifteen cents for a drink’ll do me, unless——”
“Unless what?”
“‘Less you’d lend me ten on the next trip.”
“No, I won’t lend you ten on the next trip. I’llgiveyou ten dollars, if that’ll do you.”
“And why not lend me the ten on the next trip, Skipper?”
“Because there ain’t goin’ to be no next trip this winter. I’m cal’latin’ to stay ashore a while. This salvage business is good enough for me this winter. A couple of months ashore won’t hurt any of us. And then there’s theBuccaneerneeds calkin’ where steerin’ that bark racked her, and new rail, and a few things around deck. And that’ll give that streak of hard luck a chance to run itself out. So here y’are. I s’pose you’ll go and blow that now as fast as you can?”
“I guess that’s right, too, Skipper,” and up the street rolled Gillis, blithely singing.
Crump gazed after him. “There’s a man oughter be glad he’s alive to-day. But no, he must try and keep up with men like Sam Leary that gets fat on excitement. Where’s that card o’ Sam’s he give me? H’m-m—Élite Hotel, Canal Street. And twenty-five dollars, eh? He must be cal’latin’ to come home in a automobile. Well, after all, I dunno but he’s entitled to automobiles at that.”
OH, but Dannie Keating was the happy man that night! Under the light of the winter stars he drew her to him, and, with her head all but resting on his shoulder and his arm about her waist, they came down the shady side of the street together, and cared no more for the whistling wind than for whatever curious eyes might, from behind drawn blinds, be peeping. “If anybody’s rubbering, they’re all sore,” said Dannie when she protested, and again broke the night air with—he simply couldn’t help it—