“I wonder where Juddy and Helena went to?” suddenly exclaimed Ruth. Donald laughed and his teethgleamed white in the moonlight. “Nice teeth!” mentally remarked Ruth.
“I think I can hear him talking on top of the Cape,” he answered. “Listen!” In the quiet of the evening, Judson’s voice floated down to them. He was giving Helena a lesson on the stars, and they could imagine him pointing them out.
“There’s Ursa Majoris! There’s Polaris! Arcturus! Sirius! Andromeda! Cassiopeia!” and so on. Ruth chuckled. “Juddy evidently has scared up something interesting for Helena. She adores that sort of thing. I was afraid he would find nothing to talk about but royal sails and gallant topsails and that sea stuff.”
“You misjudge your brother, Ruth,” said Donald. “He is a well-read man and can converse on many subjects not connected with the sea and ships.”
“He ought to be. He was at school long enough. He had a good education, though, by the way he talks sometimes, you’d think he never saw the inside of a school-room. But I’m very fond of Juddy. I like him the best of all, and I would like to see him married and settled. Don’t you think Helena and he would make a good match?” She watched him curiously when she asked the question.
“I most certainly do,” replied Donald heartily. He thought he detected a faint expression of relief on her face at his answer, and the thought pleased him mightily.
“We’d better skip along, folks! There’s a fog rolling in.” It was Judson calling from the hill path. Regretfully, Donald rose and assisted Ruth to her feet, and taking her arm, helped her up the slope. When upon the path again, he evidently labored under the delusion that his partner was short-sighted or unable to walk without assistance, as he failed to withdraw the aiding arm. To his secret delight, the girl made no protest or attempt to withdraw. Upon such trivial actions do we record another knot ahead on the log slate of love!
Back on the verandah of the house, they separated into two groups, and the intimate hour passed all too quick for Donald. The skipper struck a match and looked at hiswatch. He would have liked to have sat the whole night out with Helena, but he had the old-fashioned notion that half-past ten was a pretty late hour ashore. “I suppose you girls’ll be making for bed naow?” he observed regretfully.
“I guess we must,” said Helena, smiling to herself. Helena was city bred. “What time do you sail, Judson?”
“We’ll go out on the first of the ebb-tide at six, I expect.”
“I’ll be up at five to give you a cup of coffee,” said Ruth. Her brother protested. “No use of your getting up to do that, Sis. Don and I will go right down aboard th’ vessel. McGlashan will have breakfast all ready—”
“And I suppose you prefer your old cook’s coffee to mine!” interrupted Ruth tartly. McKenzie unconsciously voiced her protest. He wanted to see all he could of her.
Judson slipped his arm around his sister’s shoulders. “There, there, naow, Petsy!” he soothed. “She shall get up an’ make her brother an’ Don a cup of coffee. It shall never be said we refused yours for any old cook’s brew of water bewitched. We’ll see you in the morning.” He turned and extended his hand to Helena.
“I guess I’d better bid you good-bye—”
“In the morning,” she answered. “I’ll be up with Ruth. Good-night!”
Donald retired that night feeling indescribably happy. He felt that he was on the high road to winning Ruth Nickerson’s heart and hand. He was in love with her, he admitted. He wanted her for his own, and he felt that she was favorably disposed towards him. This being his first love, he had no precedents to disillusion him or conjure up obstacles. It would take time, he knew. He had to make a home for his mother first and a position for himself. He would work hard and study for master, and when he skippered his own vessel, he would be all right. Then he would build a house in the hollow near the Cape—the place they had visited that evening—and he would ask Ruth to marry him. As he planned, so he dreamed, and everything was plain sailing and fine weather.
“Skin up you an’ loose y’r mizzen r’yal!” came a snarling voice in his ear. Old habit made Donald leap up, rubbing his eyes and wondering if he had committed the crime of sleeping on watch. Judson, lighting the lamp, laughed. “By gum, Don, that fetched you! I’ll bet you thought you were aboard th’Kelvinhaughand that I was singin’ aout?”
They went downstairs smiling, and found Ruth scurrying around laying cups on the table. She was in a kimono, and looked, in Donald’s eyes, a picture of feminine loveliness. “Some day,” he mused, “she would be making a snack specially for him when he was going out on an early morning tide.” Alas! his shore hours were too short. He would not see her again until the fall.
Helena came down, and they all drank the coffee as in a mystic farewell rite—a valedictory communion. It is wine and the wafer for the soldier going into battle, but it is coffee and biscuits for the sailor going to sea!
Seamen hate farewells. Make a brave welcome if you must, but let us slip away to sea unobtrusively—between sunset and dawn—with the last ringing laugh in our ears, but do not let us go regretfully, with the memory of a long hand-clasp and hint of tears in an upturned face. These are the usual seamen’s desires—merely to depart with a nonchalant “So long!”, but Donald had no notion of such a curt parting. He wanted to spin the bitter-sweetness of it out, as lovers are fain to do. He gave Ruth’s hand a warm squeeze and held it for a moment. She was looking at him with wide-open blue eyes, with a hint of fear in them. “Good-bye, Ruth,” he said quietly, “I hope to see you when we come back. Good-bye!” She murmured something, and abruptly he swung away.
TheWest Windslipped out of the harbor and Don stared up at the Nickerson house to see if Ruth would wave. A female figure stood on the verandah and Donald made a farewell gesture with his cap. It might have been Ruth—he was not sure—but the girl waved in return, Donald was certain, and the skipper, taking a squint through his binoculars, said it was his sister.
“Wonder where Helena is?” said McKenzie.
“Oh, guess she’s in the house somewhere,” replied the skipper somewhat dolefully, looking back at the receding house on the hill. He turned to the wheel. “She’s a mighty fine girl, Miss Stuart,” he remarked, looking aloft at the main-gaff. The other smiled. “She sure is, Captain. A fine girl!”
Clear of the Eastville Cape, they hoisted the light sails and headed up the coast to the eastward, bound for the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence for a baiting of fresh herring. With this secured, they would fish in the Gulf and on the Newfoundland Banks during the summer, until their “salt was wetted.” “We’ve got to hustle to beat Ira Burton,” remarked the skipper. “He’s at the Islands now, I’ll be bound, and yet ... he may not. I h’ard there was a mull of ice in Canso Straits and I’m wondering what is the best course to take.”
Next morning they were up with Cranberry Island—the north-eastern extremity of Nova Scotia, and the skipperpiloted the schooner into Canso Harbor. “Um!” he grunted as he scanned the anchorage. “No schooners here. Must ha’ gone up the Straits.” They came to an anchor, dropping the headsails only, and the skipper and Don pulled ashore in a dory. “We’ll go up to the Post Office first, Don, an’ see the weather bulletins, and then we’ll do some scouting around for news of what’s doing in the Straits.” At the Post Office, Captain Nickerson asked to see the weather reports for two weeks past, and when they were handed to him, he read them carefully. Then he went to a telephone and called up Port Hawkesbury—a small town in the Straits about twenty-five miles from Canso. When he came from the telephone he had a concerned look on his face and was pulling nervously at his moustache. “Ira Burton was there a day or two ago,” he said, “but they tell me he slipped away in the night. Naow, I see by the bulletins that the wind for the last two weeks a’most has been from a quarter that’ll drive all the Gulf ice into the mouth of Canso Straits, and it’ll need a stiff southerly or easterly to clear it. I’m thinkin’ Burton has figured that all aout, and he’ll be gone north-about, same as I’m plannin’, and he’ll get to the Madaleens through Cabot Straits. When the drift ice is crowdin’ down here it’ll be clear up above.”
They got aboard, they got their anchor, hoisted the headsails and shot out of Canso and up the coast and around Cape Breton Island. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, between Cape North and the islands of St. Paul, they came up with two fishing schooners steering west. It had just broken daylight and the wind was light, and when the day grew brighter they saw that one vessel was a Lunenburg schooner of a new model, but the sight of the other craft caused Nickerson to jump below for his binoculars.
“It’s Burton!” he cried, after a short scrutiny. “I’d know his old hooker’s small fores’l and long bowsprit anywheres.” He paced the quarter, whistling softly to himself—a curious whistle, as though he were calling a dog—and ever and anon he would murmur, “Come wind! Come wind! Come wind!” The gang stared at the schoonersto leeward and one of their number pulled a bait-knife from a cleat. “I’ll raise something,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll stick this in th’ forem’st. That’ll raise a breeze, by Jupiter! Never knew it to fail yet!”
The wind was light and variable under the lee of the Cape Breton mountains, towering a thousand feet high to port, but when they glided past Cape St. Lawrence, it came away in fresh gusts from the south’ard. The sky was overcast and there was a rainy haze around the horizon.
“It’s agoin’ to blow right enough,” said Nickerson, taking over the wheel from Donald. “We’ll get aour breeze afore long ... all we want of it!” And he sniffed the air and looked to leeward. The other schooners had caught the draught flowing over St. Lawrence’s high head-land and were bowling off for the Magdalen Islands and rapidly leaving theWest Windastern.
“Jig up everything, boys!” bawled the skipper. “An’ get yer sheets aft. We’ll have a little shoot of fifty miles with those jokers ahead, and I be damned if we’re agoin’ to be the last. Th’ Lunenburger might trim us, but I’ll be cussed if Burton does. They’re mayn’t be much herring at the Islands, but we want to get what there is an’ get it quick!” The breeze caught theWest Windas the gang sweated up and sheeted-in, and she tore after the other vessels under four lowers, main-topsail, main-staysail and balloon jib. Nickerson himself took the wheel and held her to a N.W. by W. course for Amherst Harbor on Amherst Island of the Magdalen group.
The barometer had dropped to 29.6, and with the southerly came a cold, rainy mist. Within a half-hour of its commencement, the wind stiffened into a squally blow and a short, violent chop arose, which had the schooner plunging and rolling and driving sprays over her bows. But through it all, she was running along like a hound, with the white-water racing aft and the wake abroiling.
“It kicks up nasty here,” remarked the skipper from the wheel. “There’s a surface current of the water from the melting ice up the River St. Lawrence streaming down the Gulf this time of year, and it sets hard to the east’ard.With this southerly blowing across it and the tide arunning up the Gulf and only twenty fathom under our bottom, it makes a dirty jobble of sea hereabouts.”
When the ice moves out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the spring, the migrating herring “strike in” around the shores of the Magdalen Islands in countless swarms. They have done so for many years, and the inhabitants of those bleak and isolated islets trap them in nets as they seek the shores to deposit their spawn, and while some are pickled and barrelled for use as food, a considerable quantity is sold to the fishing schooners for use as bait. In May and June, a large fleet of Canadian, American, Newfoundland and French fishing craft repair to the Magdalens to secure fresh bait, and the rule is “first come, first served.” Nickerson knew this, and the skippers of the other schooners knew it, too, and all three drove their vessels as hard as they would go. A further incentive to speed lay in the fact that there would be a fleet of a hundred sail storming out from Canso Straits with the southerly driving the ice barrier away. With so many vessels hunting for bait, the demand would be greater than the supply.
Within an hour the breeze had freshened into half a gale, and the three schooners were laying down to it with their lee scuppers awash and their decks, gear and canvas drenched with spray and rain. On theWest Wind, which was slightly astern of the other two, the gang were all on deck and lounging aft with sou’westers and oilskins and sea-boots on, and the skipper, seated astride of the wheel-box, gripped the spokes in his strong hands and glanced, ever and anon, at sails, compass and the schooners ahead and to leeward.
There is nothing a Bank fisherman loves more than a race. Not one of your summer jaunts of a few miles on a measured course in a ladies’ wind, but a genuine thrash to windward in a scupper breeze with all the “muslin” hung. A race of fifty, or a hundred miles, or even more, which gives the contestants a chance to show what they can do, is fishermen’s sport, and Donald got an opportunity, inthis fifty-mile “shoot” to the Magdalens, to see the Banksmen on their mettle.
With faces wet and reddened with the wind and slashing rain and spray, oilskins glistening and dripping water, the men lolled on the cabin house, laughing and joking, singing and smoking, and when she rolled down in the puffs, they howled with hilarious delight and prayed for a breeze “to tear a patch off’n her!”
“Neptune! Boreas! Amphitrite! and all the little windy sea-gods, give us a breeze!” shouted Nickerson, laughing at McKenzie. He had hardly spoken, when, with the suddeness which is a characteristic of Gulf “blows,” the southerly began snapping up in savage squalls. The schooners to leeward were blotted out in the rainstorms, and theWest Wind, with never a sheet started, dragged her lee rail under and the lower dead-eyes of the rigging tore through the broil of water to loo’ard and the scuppers frothed half-way up the deck. It was brave sailing, as over the short, savage seas the schooner plunged and reared, and clouds of spray enveloped her as she stormed along at fourteen knots.
Bang! With a report like a shot from a gun, the main-gafftopsail split, and within a moment slatted into a sunburst of ribboned rags. “Clew up what’s left!” bawled the skipper calmly, and to Donald he shouted. “A job o’ sail mending for you, son! I hope ye can handle palm an’ needle?”
The other grinned. “You bust ’em and I’ll sit up nights mending ’em,” he shouted excitedly. “This is what I call sailing! Give it to her, Skipper, and trim our friend Burton there.”
Nickerson nodded. “Leave it to me!” he replied grimly. “I’ll trim him or jump the masts out of this one, by Jupiter!” And by the look in his eyes, he meant it.
The rags of the topsail were scarce clewed up when another blast struck theWest Windand she rolled down until her whole lee deck vanished out of sight in the seething water. The gang jumped like scared cats for the weather rail and the port nest of dories, and from theseplaces they actually looked down into the foaming water which churned and sloshed over the cable and the nest of dories on the starboard side. With the vessel heeling over at a dangerous angle, the men glanced nervously at the skipper, but that individual was hanging on to the wheel-spokes, chewing nonchalantly, and standing with his feet braced against the side of the wheel-box. “That guy’s a perishin’ terror!” shouted someone excitedly. “I wonder ef he knows what a vessel’ll stand? He’ll spill us all into th’ drink afore we’re through, by Judas!”
Cr-a-ack! Bang! Bang! Flap! Flap! A thundering row aloft—the big staysail was adrift, slatting and banging and threatening to whip the top-mast out of her. “Stays’l sheet’s carried away! Belayin’ pin broke!” cried a fisherman, and the skipper barked, “I reckon so! Get that sheet, boys, an’ make her fast again!”
A mob of oilskinned men slid down into the water to leeward and scrambled up the slack lee main rigging. Aloft, the sail was thrashing about and the sheet was whirling around like a whip and slashing at the rigging as the canvas flogged in the wind. When the rope flicked inboard, a dozen hands would make a grab for it.
“Shoot her up, Skipper—” shouted a fisherman.
“An’ be damned!” bawled Nickerson, with something of his oldKelvinhaughtruculence. “None o’ you fellows got guts enough to grab a loose bit o’ string? Don’t be scared of it—’twon’t bite ye!” Thus adjured, and after receiving some savage blows from the snapping rope, they managed to grab it, and while sixteen men stood up to their thighs in water laying their weight on the straining sheet which held the sail, Donald jammed an iron belaying pin into the rail and took a turn of the rope around it. With wild shouts and lurid phrases, the fishermen hauled in the slack and belayed, then returned, panting to their weather-side perches.
A man jumped out of the fo’c’sle companion in the sprays and clawed his way aft. He was laughing. “Golly, fellers, ye sh’d be below in th’ fo’c’sle naow!” he shouted above the roar of wind and sea. “Cook’s wild! She’schucked all his pots off’n th’ stove an’ half his plates are smashed. Th’ fo’c’sle floor is slushin’ with pea-soup, rice pudding an’ beans an’ everything’s swilling with th’ water acomin’ daown th’ scuttle and th’ ventilator. Scotty’s in one hell of a rage and he’s alyin’ in his bunk cursin’ an’ swearin’ that he won’t cook or clean up a gol-derned thing ontil this here sail-draggin’ is over!”
The skipper grinned and gave a hasty glance to windward. “By Gorry, boys, there’s a black squall acomin’,” he bawled quickly. “Jump an’ haul daown yer balloon an’ stays’l or th’ sticks’ll go. Look sharp!” The men raced to obey the command; halliards were cast off; downhauls manned, and as the canvas was dragged from aloft, bellying and flapping thunderously, the squall struck the vessel as the skipper eased the helm down.
TheWest Windseemed to stagger to its onslaught and rolled over until the sea rose to the lee-side of the cabin house and frothed over the coamings of the main-hatch. Donald, at the stays’l downhaul, thought she was going to capsize, and one of the men yelled in fright, “God save us! She’s goin’ over—she’s goin’ over! Cut yer dory gripes! Cut yer dory gripes!” Two men reached for bait-knives and began to hack at the stout ropes that lashed the weather nest of dories, when the skipper roared menacingly, “Leave them gaul-derned gripes alone, you crazy lunk-heads! She’s all right, I’m tellin’ ye! ’Tis only a puff!”
“Only a puff?” growled a fisherman. “Only a puff? Another like that one and there’ll be a drowndin’ scrape araound here—” He stopped and yelled, “For th’ roarin’ ol’ Judas! Look at him! He’s swingin’ her off! He’s swingin’ her off!” Nickerson was spoking the helm up, and Donald hung on to the main-rigging in time to save himself from flying over the lee rail when she careened to the weight of the wind. “This is th’ perishin’ worst I ever saw in sail-draggin’!” remarked someone huskily. “Does that bucko at th’ wheel there think he’s sailin’ th’Flyin’ Cloud’round Cape Horn? Ef he don’t strip her or lift th’ spars out the ol’ hooker yet, I’m a Dutchman!”
The least concerned in the crowd was Nickerson. Cool and calm, with a truculent look on his stern face, he strained at the spokes with just the suspicion of a grin on his lips. With his bronzed face streaming water and his mustache dripping, he glanced into compass and up at the straining sails and gear with exultant eyes. “Good iron! Good timber!” he murmured, and broke into the words of an old chantey—
“Blow, winds, blow!To Cal-i-for-ni-o!There’s plenty of gold, so I’ve been told,On the banks of Sacramento!”
“Blow, winds, blow!To Cal-i-for-ni-o!There’s plenty of gold, so I’ve been told,On the banks of Sacramento!”
“Blow, winds, blow!
To Cal-i-for-ni-o!
There’s plenty of gold, so I’ve been told,
On the banks of Sacramento!”
The man seemed to be carried away with the thrill of it—this wild, roaring, hurling through the water, and Donald gazed on vessel and steersman with shining, worshipping eyes. Here was a man—a marine Ajax defying the wind and sea!
It was an inspiring sight, truly! The whole lee side of the schooner was under from cat-head to the end of the cabin house, and she was storming along, leaping and plunging, with the sea to leeward in a welter of white water, seething and roaring, in the drive of her passage. The wind was whistling in the rigging and drumming in low thunder from under the bending booms, and with sheets and weather shrouds bar-taut and the sails as full and as hard as though cut in marble, theWest Windtore along with her gang hanging on to the weather gear and her skipper holding her cleaving bow down to her course.
“Look at Burton!” yelled someone. In the lift of the rain, they saw theAnnie L. Brownastern and running off. Her foretopmast had carried away and her balloon jib, the topmast, and a raffle of wire stays and halliards were being salved by her crew. “He’s out of it now,” remarked a fisherman, “but he did well. Where’s th’ Lunenburg feller?”
For a minute she could not be discerned, but when the rain dissipated, she showed up on the beam, forging along under her four lowers. She was a big vessel—a West Indiavoyager, strongly rigged and well ballasted. The first fury of the squall was easing off now and theWest Windwas showing her rail again.
“Away ye go on yer stays’l!” bawled Nickerson. “That feller’ll trim us ef we don’t watch aout!” And when the big fisherman’s stays’l went up between the masts, the whole gang tallied on to the sheet and swayed it down with excited yells, and the schooner rolled her rail under again.
In his seafaring, Donald had never experienced such a contest. He had seen some sail-carrying on theKelvinhaughandHelen Starbuck, but nothing to equal this. Judson was pressing the vessel to the limit, but he could do it, as he had nineteen husky men he could depend on to haul the sail off her when the time came. In theKelvinhaugh, with her gang of no-sailors and weaklings, it couldn’t be done; in theStarbuck, with a small crowd, it would be suicidal. “If it were only for these races alone, I’d love this fishing game,” said Donald to the skipper. “This is simply great!” And he chuckled and snapped his fingers with the exhilaration of this windy driving of wood, iron and canvas.
With the stays’l on her, theWest Winddrew ahead and the Lunenburger was evidently content to allow her the advantage, as he did not send his stays’l up. It was found out afterwards that he had none to send up—it having split to rags in one of the squalls. The skipper laughed. “We’ve trimmed ’em both,” he remarked happily. To Donald, he said, “Read the log!”
“Forty-six miles, skipper!”
“Good!” he said. “Forty-six miles in three hours and a half is fair going. We must ha’ logged sixteen knots in some o’ them bursts of wind. It’s easing off naow—her rail’s showin’.” And he grinned contentedly, while a fisherman remarked, “We kin trim Burton sailin’ anyway, an’ I cal’late we kin trim him afishin’ too—”
“Land ahead!” came the shout from for’ard. The skipper peered into the rainy mist and put the wheel over a spoke. A huge block of reddish stone showed up on theport bow a mile ahead. “Entry Island!” he observed. “I steer as good as Captain Clincher when he laid a course for the Eddystone Light and knocked it daown! Ye can keep a look-out for Pearl Rock buoy on the starb’d hand and get fifteen fathom of chain over th’ windlass.”
When they passed the island, the sea became smoother and the wind eased off. A misty rain was falling, which obscured the land, but a steamer could be seen anchored ahead. “Ice-breaker or Fishery Cruiser, I cal’late,” said Judson. “He’ll be anchored in plenty water, so we’ll jest jog to the west’ard of him without letting go the hook. Haul yer stays’l daown an’ git a dory over!”
They ran slowly past the Fishery Cruiser, and a rising of the mist revealed the bare hills of Amherst Harbor and the little wooden houses of the village. A flag was flying from a staff on a hill above the harbor, and the skipper commented, “There’s the bait flag aflyin’! There must be bait around somewheres.” Leaving the schooner in charge of Donald, Captain Nickerson jumped into a dory and was pulled ashore. Within half an hour he was aboard. “There’s a little herring at Alright Island,” he announced. “Ef we’re spry, we’ll get it. Slack off yer sheets!” He took the wheel again. “We’re darned lucky,” he said. “There’s been a lot of bad weather here an’ they haven’t had much herring so far. Burton’ll have a job to get any for a while.”
They stood over for Cape Alright a few miles away, and met the Lunenburg schooner running into Amherst. Nickerson hailed him. “Come over to Alright, Cap’en! There’s some herring there—enough for two of us!” The other skipper waved his hand and his schooner followed in theWest Wind’swake.
Off the island, the dories were hoisted out and pulled in to the traps anchored off the beach. Here they were loaded with living herring bailed from the seine, and the men rowed back to theWest Wind, sitting in herring up to the thwart strips. With eight dory-loads aboard and stowed on ice in the hold, the skipper chuckled gleefully, “Me’n th’ Lunenburg feller hev scoffed all the bait hereabouts.Ira Burton’ll hev to do some pokin’ araound these Islands when he hits here, and he’ll hev fifty or a hundred other craft to compete against. Now, boys, we’ll get under way an’ start for the grounds. We’ll shoot for th’ Straits and the Western Bank again.”
As they ran out of the bay, the mist lifted and theAnnie L. Browncame bowling up. Her fore-topmast showed but a splintered stump just above the fore-mast cap. “Haul in by him, skip!” earnestly requested the gang, and Judson swung theWest Windtowards the oncoming schooner. As she approached, theWest Windersseized herrings, and holding them aloft, jeered and yelled, “Thar ain’t no more, bullies! We scoffed ’em all!” Sallies and jibes flew thick and fast between the rival crews, but the two skippers steered and remained silent.
“Why’n blazes, Harry, don’t ye ship in a craft what kin sail?” roared aWest Winderto a friend on theBrown.
“There goes the Old Trawler’s Home!” shouted another in derision. “Come a trip with us, me sons, an’ you’ll bait small an’ catch large, as well as learn haow to sail a vessel. Why ain’t you got yer ridin’ sail on her? Ye’re gittin’ reckless!” And so they jibed and shouted until the other vessel passed out of hearing.
Running to the south’ard for the Canso Straits, the wind veered and the mist blew away and revealed a wonderful sight. Standing in to the Islands under all sail, came a mighty Armada of fishermen—fifty or sixty beautiful, clean-lined schooners, yacht-like with their white canvas and painted and varnished spars—and all were racing for bait. With booms sheeted in and decks sloped at angles which had the froth boiling in the scuppers, they stormed along with the white-water shearing away from their sharp bows and their crews shouting and bawling rude jests at each other. TheWest Windran down among them, and as they flew past, she was greeted with cheers as the “first hooker to bait at the Madaleens!”
“Any herrin’ left for us?” they enquired in stentorian tones. And this question was asked by all the vessels which passed them within hail.
“By George,” exclaimed McKenzie, “but this is a sight! This is worth coming a long way to see. It’s wonderful!”
“Aye,” remarked Judson, “it’s a great snarl of canvas, an’ many a wealthy yachtsman would give a thousand dollars to be in that fleet racing for the Islands. This happens every spring in aour fisheries, an’ when they’re all anchored in Pleasant Bay of a night, their ridin’ lights make ’em look like th’ streets of a town.”
Within an hour, they passed the stragglers, and soon they came up with evidences of the blockade in the pieces of floating field ice which littered the sea ahead. As far as the eye could discern, the white pans of ice flecked the green of the water, but it was small and mushy and not particularly dangerous. A good look out was kept and the vessel was steered to avoid the large pieces, and by nightfall, she passed through them into clear water.
The May days slipped into the summer days of June and theWest Windwandered from Bank to Bank, with her crew working hard from daylight to dark. On Sundays they rested, though a good many fishermen work Sundays, yet Nickerson remarked, “We’re workin’ double-tides on this hooker, and a Sunday lay-off gives a feller a chance to rest up. We can work all the harder for it.”
“Do all the fleet work like we do?” enquired Donald.
“No, indeed they don’t,” replied the skipper. “We’re only driving like this because we’re out to win that bet. The other Bankers take it easier, an’ they loaf around a lot. You take it this spring. The fleet lay around Port Hawkesbury for a week doin’ nawthin’, then they’d lay around the Madaleens for another week, maybe. Then they’d run off to the Banks an’ fish their bait, an’ then some of them’ll start cruisin’ around Noof’nland ports for the capelin bait. In the blows, they’ll run in to port an’ lay ontil it’s over, butIdon’t believe in that. I’d sooner ride it aout hove-to an’ keep the drift of her an’ hang on to the grounds. By using my knowledge of navigation, I can always make my berth again, but some of these other skippers have to run in to the land to get a new departurefrom which they’ll steer to the Banks again ... which wastes time. Then again, all these fellers won’t h’ist dories over in thick or hazy weather like we do, and if I hadn’t a good husky, willing gang, we wouldn’t do it either.”
“What counts in successful fishing—luck or work?”
“Luck—some,” replied Judson, “but mostly work. You take all the Gloucester an’ Lunenburg high-liners—they’re all hustlers. They work hard, skippers and men, and it pays them when the share checks are given aout. Some of those smart high-line skippers will make as much as two thousand dollars out of the summer’s fishin’, and if they fish winters as well, they’ll often make five thousand in the year. Haow many liner skippers are gettin’ a thousand pounds a year? I doubt if there’s a one! I claim this work ain’t as hard as when I was in th’ merchant service. What was I gettin’ as mate of thatKelvinhaugh? Nine ruddy pounds a month! Forty-five measly dollars! D’ye wonder at me gittin’ aout? What doyouthink?”
Donald looked over the summer sea at the dories, which here and there dotted its blue expanse. In every boat two men were pulling the lines up from the ocean floor and toiling like beavers. Not heart-breaking, hopeless toil, but work at which a man can sing, at which he is wresting silver dollars for his effort. Some of them were singing, and their voices carolled across the lazy water. When the heart is glad there is no hardship in toil! From the sea, he gazed on the schooner sluggishly rolling in the swell, with a cheeping of boom jaws and a pattering of reef-points on the great stretches of canvas which reared aloft. It was very quiet and peaceful. For’ard, McGlashan, in white apron, was shifting his galley funnel for a better draught, and he, too, was crooning a lay to—
“Bonnie wee Leezie—tha floo’er o’ Dundee!”
“Bonnie wee Leezie—tha floo’er o’ Dundee!”
“Bonnie wee Leezie—tha floo’er o’ Dundee!”
A delicious whiff of fresh-baked bread floated aft, suggestive of the good fare upon which they lived, and the summer breeze blew soft and warm. In the pens were a number of fine cod-fish awaiting the splitter’s knife, and on the cabin roof was a pillow where he and Judson hadbeen dozing in the sunshine after the dories left the vessel. The memory of his days in the fishing fleet passed through his mind and they were pleasant memories. He thought of what he had seen of the sea in the past; thought of the rollicking, good-natured fellows he was now shipmates with, of Eastville and its people, and taking a deep breath, he replied, “This is the life, Skipper, and the more I see of it, the more I am convinced that you are a wise man!”
They fished steadily throughout the long summer days and worked to the north and east. On St. Pierre Bank they “jigged” a great baiting of squid—an octopus-like creature which may be caught near the surface on calm nights by dangling a small, umbrella-like hook overside. The squid enveloped the jig with its tentacles and would be whisked aboard squirting sepia in protest. With this bait—beloved by cod—they fished on St. Pierre and over on Grand Bank, and the rough grained salt in the bins got lower and lower, and the kenched cod in the fish-room grew daily higher, and theWest Windsettled deeper in the water with the weight of it.
Times there were when they fished in plenteous company, and many a dawn would show sails all around the horizon. Oft-times they swung a dory over and “visited”—sitting in a stranger’s cabin with all hands crowded in listening while the skippers talked “fish.” In these visits, Nickerson would pick up all the news and gossip of the great fleet which did business on the huge watery areas from Le Have to the Virgin Rocks, and he would give information and prospects as freely as the other man. On one occasion they boarded a large French topsail schooner out from St. Servan, and Donald essayed a conversation in halting French. The outcome of this visit did not result in much fishery news, but the skipper received a bottle of cognac in return for a few plugs of tobacco, and McKenzie came away wondering how the deuce the Frenchmen got around in the clumsy, straw-stuffedsabotsand ponderous cow-hide, wood-soled sea-boots they wore.
In mid-August, they ran down to Western Bank again on the strength of a rumor that cod were extremely plentifulthere, but they had only made one set when one of the crew developed a sickness which looked suspiciously like typhoid fever.
“We’ll run to Eastville, Donald,” said Judson. “We’d better land Wesley at his home and we’ll fill up the tanks with water that we’re sure of.” At this announcement, McKenzie felt a strange thrill. “Eastville ... Ruth!” The names were synonymous, and it was quite possible that the skipper had the same incentive, but with a different objective. Under all sail, they crowded her home in a rare sailing breeze, and “with the Eastville girl ahauling on the tow-line,” they stormed in past the Capes on a lovely August morning and tied up to the dock. Wesley, muffled in blankets, was landed and rushed to his home, and the doctor pronounced it as a touch of typhoid, not a bad case, but enough to keep him in bed and ashore for a spell.
“I’ll have to pick up another man for his dory,” said Judson, but Donald broke in, “How about me, Skipper? Don’t you think I’m able enough to go in the dory with Jack Thomas?” The skipper laughed. “If Jack will agree, I will! It’ll leave me without a spare hand, though, but as the summer’s near over, I don’t mind.” Jack Thomas was agreeable, and McKenzie would go in the dory as a full-fledged fisherman when theWest Windmade her next set.
After landing the sick man and giving orders for the tanks to be disinfected and re-filled, Judson and Donald went up to the house. Donald, feeling strangely elated, walked with springing steps, wondering if Ruth would be as glad to see him as he to see her. There was no sign of her on the veranda when they approached, and it was Mrs. Nickerson who met them, surprised and pleased. McKenzie nervously awaited Ruth’s appearance.
“Where are the girls?” enquired the skipper, after kissing his mother.
“They’ve both gone to Halifax for a visit,” replied the old lady. “Just went this morning, too. Isn’t that too bad!” Donald said nothing, but felt it was a calamity. Another month now before he would see her again, and amonth is an age when one is in love. He felt very blue, but when Judson was called away to the telephone, he perked up and chatted with Mrs. Nickerson as amiably as if he had never been disappointed in his life.
When the skipper came back, he announced, “Tom Haskins wants to buy aour fish. Wants to git some dried an’ shipped afore the fleet comes in, and he offers a good price. We’ll unload right away and git aout to-night so’s we’ll git a day’s fishin’ to-morrow. We’ll come up for supper, mother.”
With Captain Bill Smith, the harbor-master, checking the weights as they discharged the fish, they emptied theWest Wind’shold clean to the floors. “You got a good jag, Judson,” said the Captain. “You must ha’ fished hard to git all them in that time.”
“D’ye s’pose we’ll be high-line, Cap’en?” asked Jud with a twinkle in his eye.
The old harbor-master bit off a chew of tobacco. “Ye might,” he answered non-committally. “Ye never kin tell.”
“Burton, naow—d’ye s’pose he landed as much as we did on his spring trip?” queried Nickerson quizzically.
“He might have,” replied the old man, with an unemotional visage. “Ye never kin tell ... ’til th’ tally’s published.” Judson chuckled and clapped the other on the back.
“Closer’n a clam, you are, Cap’en, but you’re quite right. I’m agoin’ to beat him sure! I’m off to-night for another jag.”
That evening they slipped out of Eastville for the Banks again.
Aftermaking a few sets on Western Bank, they ran up on to Grand again and anchored on the south-western edge of the ground. Donald went in the dory with Jack Thomas, and the two of them got along very well together, but Donald found the dory work considerably different from the deck labor of a fishing vessel. Rowing the heavy boat to windward or against the tide for a mile or two was genuine hard work, and hauling a trawl against the same wind and tide for the best part of a day was a job well-calculated to try the muscles of the arms and back. However, with time, he soon “caught on,” and after a couple of weeks over the side, he could do his share of hauling trawl in the dory-bow and at baiting up the gear.
When he got into the swing of it, Donald really enjoyed the work. There was something indescribably alluring in being out on old ocean’s breast in a frail boat a hundred miles from the nearest land and pulling up the finny spoil from the sea floor, anywhere from two hundred to five hundred feet below. And one never knew what was on the hooks until they were hauled up fathom by fathom, but standing in the dory bow on smooth days, one could see a long way into the pellucid green, and the wriggling fish would show a flash of white belly thirty or forty feet from the surface. To the man of scientific leanings, much could be learned from this very intimacy with the ocean. Whales often broke water within a biscuit toss of the dories, andsharks—snapping at the fish on the trawl—were common sights. Porpoises and black-fish played around them in schools on numerous occasions, and Donald once witnessed a most terrific fight between a whale, a sword-fish and a thrasher. Prodded or slashed by the sword-fish from below and flayed by the tail of the thrasher from above, the huge cetacean forged to the surface and hove its great bulk out of the sea in a desperate effort to shake off its tormentors, and the splash of its impact with the sea again reverberated across the water for miles.
Besides cod, haddock, cusk, pollock and hake, which they usually got on the hooks, a numerous variety of other fish were caught, and Donald examined them with studious interest. Star-fish of many kinds, sea anemones, sea vegetables—lemons, cucumbers, potatoes and cabbage, came from the depths, besides crabs, scallops and cockles, and odd fish species, such as sculpins, anglers or monk-fish, dogfish, wolf-fish, cat-fish, lump-fish, halibut, flounders, skate and others. These “curiosities” he brought aboard and examined and dissected, and the postmortems often revealed strange facts. In the stomach of an angler would be found a large spiny sculpin; in that of a wolf, or cat-fish, the crushed shells of scallops and crabs ground up by the powerful jaws and canine teeth of these fish, and Donald would wonder how it is possible for such tough fare to be digested.
Sometimes they had the sea all to themselves; at others, the horizon would be dotted with fishing craft, and occasionally they would be in company with a St. Malo barque, or St. Servan brig, fishing on the ground. Oftentimes, steamers would pass, but, strangely enough, more could beheardin fogs, thanseenin clear weather. On a memorable occasion, they saw a huge iceberg stranded on the Eastern Shoals of Grand Bank, and they sent the dories in to pick up pieces of the broken ice drifting to leeward of the monster for the purposes of keeping their squid bait fresh.
Thus the August days passed and time slipped along into September. Days of lazy calms, when the sea stretched oily and undulated with a slow heave like the breast of agiant in slumber, and the vessel rolled so lightly as to be almost imperceptible; days of brave west winds, when the sea was whipped into blue corrugations crested with foam which glistened in the sun and tossed the dories up and down on comber and trough; days of storm, with rain and savage squalls, which forced the schooner to drift under a foresail and jumbo until the blow passed and they could commence fishing again after the enforced, but welcome rest; and most dreaded of all, days of smoking fogs which covered the sea in a thick, viewless pall and kept the fishermen nervous and wide-awake for the shrieking sirens of the liners racing across the Banks. And they had reason for fear!
On September 12th, theWest Windwas lying to a hawser anchor in twenty-six fathoms on the eastern edge of Banquereau, or Quero Bank. It was foggy when the men went over the side in the morning, and towards noon the fog shut down so thick that Captain Nickerson decided to keep the gang aboard after they discharged their first haul of fish. The first dory to get alongside was Thomas and McKenzie, and they pitched their catch out and hoisted their dory on the rail and left the tackles hooked into the bow and stern beckets. Thomas went down into the forecastle to get a mug of tea from McGlashan, while Donald went aft to talk with the skipper. While they sat chatting on the cabin house, they were startled out of their wits by the jarring roar of a steamer’s whistle close aboard.
Thomas, in the forecastle, was up on deck in a trice, closely followed by Joak, and Nickerson bawled, “Ring th’ bell! Ring th’ bell! He’s acomin’ slap bang for us!” Donald jumped down into the cabin for the skipper’s shot-gun and a few shells, and was just coming up the companion steps when he heard Nickerson shout, “God Almighty! He’s into us!” There was a terrific crash, followed instantly by the rending, grinding and splintering of wood, and as the schooner rolled down, McKenzie leaped out of the cabin companionway in time to avoid the sweep of the mainmast and maintopmast as it thundered down across the quarter. For a second he was dazed, and onlyconscious of a huge bulk immediately back of him, then the deck tilted up beneath his feet and he was hurled violently into the water.
His first instinct was to swim away from the monster smashing and rending him, and with his head down he trudgeoned hard for almost half a minute. Then, pausing for breath, he swung around, and trod water. The first thing that met his eyes was the rust-streaked hull of a large steamer gliding past in the mist but a scanty fifty feet away. He could see her funnel and boat deck looming in the fog, but his vision was mostly centred on the red strake of her water-line, a white-painted load-line mark, the condenser water pouring from a sluice in that blank wall of riveted steel plating, and the broil of foam from the churning screw. The latter sight caused him to swing around again and swim for a frantic half-minute. He did not want to get caught in that vortex and cut to pieces, and when he had exhausted himself in his spurt, he turned under the ship’s stern and read the name,Livadia—Piraeus.
Panting for breath, he attempted to shout, but was unable to render more than a husky croak, “Help! Help!” A piece of the schooner’s deck surged up out of the water close beside him, and as he grasped it, he saw theLivadia’sfantail become misty in the fog, and finally vanish altogether. “Swine!” gasped Donald. “He’s leaving us.... Greek swine!” And for a minute he clung to the wreckage regaining his wind and scattered senses.
“Help! Help!” A faint cry came out of the mist to his right. It sounded like the skipper’s voice. “Hold on! I’m coming!” shouted Donald, and taking a deep breath, he slipped into the sea again and struck out in the direction of the cry. Dodging pieces of splintered timber, he came upon Nickerson hanging to the cover of the wheel-box. It was scarce enough to float him and his head was very low in the water, while every now and again he would go under altogether. Blood flowed from a gash in his scalp, and by the look on his face he was nearly all in.
“Here I am, Skipper!” cried Donald, swimming up tohim and thrusting an arm under his elbow to lift his head out.
Judson’s eyes turned and looked into his. “I—I—can’t—swim!” he gasped. Donald nodded. “Don’t get nervous, Jud!” he cried, reassuringly. “I’ll fix you up in a minute if you’ll do as I tell you. Grab that box with both hands and kick your feet out like a frog.”
“Can’t.... Too—heavy—boots!” gasped the other.
“Wait! I’ll slip them off!” And Donald, free of his own, ducked under and hauled the skipper’s heavy leather boots off his legs. Blowing and puffing, he came up. “Now you’re all right,” he said. “Do as I tell you and I’ll get you over to a larger piece of wreckage.”
The skipper nodded and commenced striking out with his feet. Donald, treading water beside him, scanned the sea for wreckage. At last he spied what looked like the main-mast about a hundred feet away. “I see the mast over there,” he said. “You keep paddling, Jud, and I’ll swim over and bring back a line and tow you!” In a few minutes he was back with the gaff-topsail sheet, and hitching this through a ring in the wheel-box cover, he cautioned Judson to hang on. Swimming over to the mast with the line in his teeth, he gained the spar and managed to haul the skipper up to it.
Sitting astride the long pole, Donald caught Nickerson by the shoulders and dragged him over it. Judson was heavy, and he seemed to have no strength in his arms, and McKenzie was pretty well played out by the time he got the skipper on the spar and with his legs astride of it. “Take a breather for a spell, Skipper,” he said. “Just lie quiet. I’ll see that you don’t roll off.” For ten minutes Nickerson lay prone—sick with the salt water he had swallowed—but after a while, the color returned to his face and he looked up.
“I’m all right naow, Don,” he said. “Who was that sweep that hit us? Don’t appear to have stopped ... or launched a boat.”
McKenzie replied with bitterness in his voice, “A dirty Greek. I got her name—Livadiaof Piraeus.”
Nickerson nodded. “That’s near Athens,” he observed. “A clumsy, lubberly Greek. He cut his stick for fear of the consequences, but he won’t get away with it. We’ll make him sweat, by Godfrey!Livadiaof Piraeus! Humph!”
Pieces of theWest Windfloated past them in the smooth sea, and the skipper began identifying them. “There’s a bit of the cabin house. There’s a bait-knife still stuck in the cleat, see? There’s the chain cable box, and there’s a slew o’ pen boards. Some of the boys’ blankets over yonder—Godfrey! my head’s buzzin’ and achin’. Th’ main-mast or the gaff gave me a devil of a wipe when it came down an’ knocked me overboard!”
Nickerson evidently received a hard blow, and as time passed he began to jabber meaningless phrases. “I want a drink in the worst way, Don,” he cried. “Get me a drink, like a good chap!” It was very quiet on the water and the fog blanket lay very thick. Donald was shouting for help at intervals, but the mist seemed to stifle his voice. The prospects were beginning to look black, and he yelled and shouted until his voice began to crack. Real fear began to clutch at his heart. If other vessels or dories were in the vicinity, they might pass close by and never see or hear them.
They had been on the spar for almost an hour, and Donald was really anxious. Nothing could be heard save the lapping of the water around the broken mast and Nickerson’s mutterings. He was lying face down, apparently oblivious of his surroundings, and McKenzie had passed a line around his body to prevent him sliding off. He collected his energies for another spell of yelling and had bawled the first “Help! Help!” when an answer came, “Keep ashoutin’ ’til we pick you up!”
In a voice as hoarse as a crow’s, he continued crying out, until a dory loomed out of the mist and rounded alongside the spar. She was a fisherman’s dory, and there were two men at the oars.
“Get the skipper in first,” croaked Don. “He’s had a crack on the head. Who are you? Where’s your vessel?”
“We’re off theFrank and Mary—of Gloucester,” replied one of the men. “We picked up th’ rest o’ your gang in th’ dories, an’ some of us are scoutin’ around lookin’ for youse.”
“Did you get our cook and my dory-mate—a man called Thomas?” asked Donald anxiously, as he clambered into the boat.
The fisherman shook their heads. “Naw,” they answered. “We only picked up fellers in dories. We never got any fellers but youse out the water.” McKenzie’s heart flopped like a lump of lead in his breast. “Poor Joak,” he murmured almost tearfully. “Poor Joak ... my old chum. And Jack Thomas ... one of the best!” He looked over the mist-wreathed water with his fingers twining together nervously. Then he recalled the vision of a steel stem—grinding, smashing and rending—the Beast of the Banks—and he ground his teeth in an excess of rage and bitterness at the suddeness and the ruthlessness of their hurling into Eternity. He gripped the dory gunnel convulsively in fingers of steel. “They’ll pay for this! They’ll pay for this!” he cried aloud.
“You got th’ steamer’s name?” queried a fisherman, pulling away.
McKenzie started. “Aye ... we got her name!”
A big schooner under sail loomed out of the mist and a voice shouted, “Here they are, an’ they’ve got a couple o’ them!” Within a minute they rounded up alongside and the skipper was handed over the rail and taken down into the cabin. He was in a dazed state from exhaustion and the effects of the blow on the head. Donald, little the worse for his experience, went down into the forecastle, where he was surrounded by theWest Wind’sgang and questioned as to how it all happened. After he had related the affair as he knew it, they shook their heads dolefully. “Poor cook! Poor Thomas!” they murmured. John McGlashan and James Thomas could be listed with the yearly toll of the Banks.
“Drowned on Banquereau when the fishing schr.West Windof Eastville, N.S., Nickerson, Master, was run down while at anchor and sunk by the Greek steamerLivadiaof Piraeus.”
“Drowned on Banquereau when the fishing schr.West Windof Eastville, N.S., Nickerson, Master, was run down while at anchor and sunk by the Greek steamerLivadiaof Piraeus.”
That would be their epitaph! After drinking a cup of hot coffee and a bowl of warm soup, Donald turned into a bunk, and thinking over the loss of his chum and his dory-mate, cried—not like a baby—but like a man.
He lay quiet for an hour, then he got up. His clothes were being dried at the cook’s stove, so he wore a pair of pants and a sweater lent him by one of theFrank and Mary’screw. “How’re ye feelin’?” asked the men lounging around on the lockers and bunks.
“Not so dusty,” answered McKenzie.
“Yer skipper says ye saved his life,” observed the cook from the stove. “He was jest alettin’ go when you came up an’ hauled him to that spar. It’s a great thing to be able to swim.”
“How is he?” enquired the youth eagerly.
“He’ll be alright,” replied the other. “I fixed up his head an’ gave him a slug of old Jamaikey to wash the salt water outa his stomach. He’s asleep now, but he’ll be fit when he wakes.”
One of theWest Wind’scrowd spoke. “We’ve cruised all around the wreckage, Donald, but thar’ ain’t no sign of the cook or Thomas. Cal’late they must ha’ gone under when th’ steamer crashed into yez. Lucky thing for us we was out in the dories, or there’d ha’ bin a bigger drowndin’ scrape.”
McKenzie sat quiet for a moment, until he heard the dull mutter of a bow wave outside and felt the slight rolling of the vessel. “Under way?” he enquired.
“Baound fur Halifax,” answered the cook. “Aour skipper’s agoin’ to land yez there.” He busied himself around the stove for a while and then remarked, “Lucky thing for youse fellers that you landed most of yer season’s fish. You ain’t agoin’ to lose too much—”
“Won’t we?” ejaculated aWest Winder. “We’ll lose a bet we had with theAnnie L. Brown’sgang. I had a hundreddollars on that. Th’ skipper had five hundred, an’ most of the boys put up a dollar or two. We’d ha’ trimmed that outfit hands daown. Ira Burton ain’t in it with Jud Nickerson fur ketchin’ fish.” And he growled anathema on the Grecian ship.
Captain Nickerson was himself again by supper time, but was dreadfully upset on hearing of the loss of McGlashan and Thomas. “I would have gone, too, if it hadn’t been for you, Donny-boy,” he said. “Can’t swim, y’know, and there’s not many fishermen that can. Water’s too cold around our coasts for bathing. You pulled me through, son—”
“Just as you did on a good many other occasions,” interrupted Donald, “so that makes us quits.”
The skipper smiled faintly. “We also lose our bet, I’m afraid, though I don’t think Ira Burton can collect from us. However, it don’t matter. I’ll get another vessel again—theWest Windwas insured—and I’ll have no trouble next season in getting a gang—that’s certain.”
They were landed in Halifax forty hours after the accident, and Captain Nickerson immediately reported the facts of the collision to the marine authorities. As luck would have it, the Grecian steamer was then in the harbor. She had made no report of the mishap—a damning feature—and, as she was about to sail for Baltimore, she was libelled and held, and her master and watch officers were hailed before the authorities to explain. At first they absolutely denied sinking any schooner, or even scraping one, and they had even altered the ship’s log-book to show that they were not in the vicinity when the collision happened, but under expert cross-examination their story broke down, even though they refused to admit the facts. Inspection of the steamer’s bows revealed dents and scrapes freshly painted over, and eventually, a sailor with a grudge, failed to corroborate the officers’ evidence and bluntly stated that they had run down an anchored schooner on the Banks and deliberately steamed away from the scene. The master and owners of theLivadiawere required to furnish bonds for fifty thousand dollars before the steamer was allowed to proceed. The official inquiry was set for the week following,at which all parties were required to attend the Court in Halifax.
Captain Nickerson, Donald and theWest Wind’screw boarded the packet steamer that evening for Eastville Harbor, and just a minute prior to sailing, two men came running down the wharf. Shouting “Wait a minute!” they ran up the gang-plank and staggered into the midst of theWest Wind’scrowd, who greeted their unceremonious boarding with incredulous oaths and shouts of surprise.It was Joak McGlashan and Jack Thomas!
“Where in the name of all that’s sacred did you fellers spring from?” gasped the skipper, while Donald grabbed Joak to see if he were really alive. “Jist came in, Skipper,” answered McGlashan breathlessly. “Jist got put aff a schooner a wee while ago an’ we’ve had tae rin like blazes tae catch this wee boat here. They tel’t us on the wharf that yez was a’ picket up.”
“By Jingo, Joak,” said McKenzie, “I’ve been weeping over you as being drowned on Quero. How the deuce did you escape?”
“Gimme a chanst tae get ma wind!” McGlashan sat down on a pile of freight and wiped the perspiration from his brow. “It was like this, ye see,” he said, when he had recovered his breath. “We came up on deck when yon steamer whustled, an’ we ran fur the dory which Donald and Jack had jist left hanging on the rail. The steamer hit her abaft the main-mast, aboot the gurry-kid, and it didna hit the dory. Me’n Jack jist tumbled intae it, and when the mast went, the dory went intae the water. We lost the oars and were driftit awa’ frae the schooner, but efter two hours floatin’ aboot we were picket up by a Yankee schooner and landed in Halifax a while syne. That’s all there is tae tell, except that we were sure the skipper and Donald were lost, as we knew you were baith aft when the steamer hit.” He gave a deep sigh and continued. “Anyway, we’re all here, thank God, but the schooner’s gone, and ma good clothes are gone, and ma alarrm clock, too, and I had a fine codfish chowder on the stove fur yer dinners that day that also went—” Hespoke so solemnly that the listeners laughed immoderately. “By gorry, cook, you’re a haound!” they chuckled. What was at first thought to be a tragedy, was now looked upon as an experience, an incident for yarning and joking about, and they spent much time in chaffing McGlashan about the loss of his “alarrm clock,” his clothes and the chowder.
Arriving back in Eastville Harbor, Donald and the skipper were disappointed to find that Ruth was in Halifax staying with the Stuarts. Had they known, they would have looked the girls up before coming home. However, they would be in Halifax at the inquiry the following week, and Donald looked forward to seeing Ruth then with feelings of anticipatory pleasure. He had not seen or heard from her for four months, and when a youth is in love with a pretty and very desirable girl, four months is a terribly lengthy period.
At the Nickerson home, Jud’s parents were kindness personified. Old Mrs. Nickerson took Donald in hand and purchased him an outfit of both sea and shore clothes. They were not expensive clothes, but they were of good wearing stuff. For the first time in over a year, he possessed a shore suit, and, even though it was ready-made store clothes and of a fit and pattern a good deal poorer than he had worn at other times and in other circumstances, he was glad to have them and to know that he could call on Ruth in Halifax without qualms as to his personal dressing. He fancied nice clothes, and would like to be able to purchase a complete rig-out of good quality and finished tailoring, but when a lad is earning thirty-five dollars a month and saving to make a home for his mother, he cannot spend money in dress. Donald accepted Mrs. Nickerson’s gifts with deep appreciation, but with a sneaking suspicion that Judson had engineered the whole thing as a reward for services rendered.
TheWest Wind’stwo trips of fish were sold, and the skipper announced that they had landed altogether three thousand five hundred quintals. Had they completed the season, theWest Windwould have made a record catch, but, as it was, the crew were eminently satisfied with sharechecks in the neighbourhood of $600 per man, with a possible addition for gear, clothes and fish lost when the collision case was tried and judgment secured against the Greek steamer’s owners. Donald received a check for $140. “And there’s more acomin’ to you,” said Judson when he paid him. “You’ll draw a fisherman’s share for this last trip, but we’ve got to get the money from those Greeks first. They’ll pay us enough to help build a new vessel, for the fish we lost, and all our outfit and gear. They’llhaveto pay, for they haven’t a leg to stand on. The money is as good as ours naow!” And he chuckled grimly.
When the inquiry was over, Donald intended to ship in a vessel for Glasgow and bring his mother out to Nova Scotia. He had already written her to that effect, and before he went to Halifax, he and Mrs. Nickerson arranged to rent a neat little cottage on the hill street just back of the town, and not far from the Nickerson home. It was secured furnished, and as it was at present untenanted, Donald worked around the place for a few days painting the floors, doors and wood-work, after scrubbing it out thoroughly from top to bottom. It was not a large cottage, but it was a warm one, and built of squared spruce logs shingled on the outside and match-boarded inside. There was a kitchen addition, and the main part of the house had a dining-room, parlor, and two small bedrooms upstairs. It was a vastly different place from the red sandstone villa in Maxwell Park, with its tiled bathrooms, hot and cold water, electricity and gas, but it was clean and cosy, and the rent was extremely moderate. The furniture was plain and meant to be utilized. Most of it was made by ship-carpenters, and there was no veneer or elaborate carvings. The beds were of wood, and in lieu of springs, there were mattresses of plucked feathers so soft and downy that one almost vanished in their cosy embrace. Picked rag mats covered the floors, and the place was heated in winter by a small box stove which burned wood, and which stood in the dining-room, and disseminated heat into the parlor through a square opening in the wall.
An acre of good garden ground went with the place, and there was a small building suitable for a stable and wood-shed immediately back of the dwelling. A well, equipped with a pump, stood near the kitchen door in handy proximity to save laborious water carrying, and the former tenants had planted vines which clustered over the little front porch, and there were rose bushes, lilacs, and hollyhocks around the front and sides of the house.
On the eve of his departure for Halifax and Scotland, Donald viewed his future home and tried to imagine what it would be like when his mother arrived and was installed within. He could picture her reading by the stove of a winter’s night, or working in the garden in summer. She would have chickens, of course, and maybe a pig or two. His mother knew all about these things. Then he thought of Ruth.... Of course, she wouldn’t live in a cabin like that, but by the time he was in a position to marry her, he hoped to have a home of his own—a big wooden house like what other Eastville skippers owned—a house with four or five bedrooms, hot air furnaces and plastered walls and modern plumbing. They all had pianos, a horse and buggy, and good furniture imported from Halifax. He would get that ... in time. He’d go with Judson in the dory again next summer, then he would go to navigation school in Halifax and get his second mate’s ticket for off-shore. He was able to pass the examination now, but he hadn’t the necessary sea-time in to qualify. Another year or two fishing and he would go skipper—fishing in the summer and running fish and lumber to the West Indies in winter. He would be skipper, if all went well, by the time he was twenty, and when he attained his majority, he would ask Ruth to marry him. With these pleasant thoughts, he squared up a rumpled rag mat on the floor of his future home, straightened a deal table and studied the effect of a cheap vase—he knew it was cheap and gaudy and he wanted to stow it away—on the sideboard—and after a final look around, he gave a satisfied sigh and locked the front door. At the front fence, he looked back at the cottage—nestling cosily amid a few dwarf spruce—andwhistling cheerfully he swung down the road ruminating over a suitable name for his coming domicile. “Shelter Harbor! That’s a good one,” he murmured. “I think mother would like that. M-m! Shelter Harbor—that’s the name, for it’ll be a shelter harbor for the both of us!”