Chapter XV.
As Frank rowed down the harbor in the morning, he saw himself clearly, in the light of conscience, as a selfish, contemptible brother. He admitted to himself that he ought to have taken Kate in theCloverand given her a morning’s pleasure on this one of the latest days he should be at home.
Two or three times he half yielded to the impulse to go back for her and began to row with uncertain weak stroke outward, when, with sudden impetus, Victor, from the island, shot past him with the call “You’d better hurry! Capital morning for fishing, and we’re off at high water for Long Island.”
“It’s my last chance to see the fishing-boats and the old mill and everything, and mother won’t let Kate go outside any time,” thought Frank, and he bent to the oars and shot past the coal dock, as seen by Kate and Harry in the last chapter.
At the island everyone was busy preparing to leave for new fishing-grounds—the season for fishing in that part of the Sound being nearly past. The great seines were being taken down from the reels along the side of the wharf, casks of water were going out to sloops in small boats, and every fisherman was getting together his individual belongings, to say good-bye to the island for weeks to come.
Frank made theCloverfast to the wharf, climbed the ladder and wandered about awhile, watching the work that was going on and secretly wondering whether or not if he had worn his uniform the men would have paid more heed to him, for a chance word was all the attention he could elicit, until Victor returned from town. Victor had been to the postoffice to obtain the latest news from the homes of the men before they should set sail. Victor distributed his letters and then went, accompanied by Frank, “to pack up.”
As he proceeded to thrust into a huge carpet-bag his belongings, he said:
“I wanted to see that land toggery of yours you’re going to school in.”
“It isn’t much,” answered Frank. “You’ll see it maybe at Christmas. You’ll be back here before that time to lay up for winter and I’ll be at home at vacation.” Then suddenly turning upon Victor, he asked, “Why don’t you go home for Christmas? I should think you’d want to see your home again.”
“I’m going some day,” said Victor, his blue eyes gleaming and his beautiful white teeth showing to advantage. “I’ll take you home to Germany. There’s much Christmas coming—plenty of time.”
“But folks die between one Christmas and another,” remarked Frank, adding, “however, I hope your folks will not, and I’ve half a mind to run away and go to Germany with you, when you do go, anyhow.”
“I’ll remember you when I let go for the Fatherland,” replied Victor, as he gave vigorous thrusts toget into the bag a pair of boots. The bag, large as it was, refused to close over them; and so he made it fast with a rope, threw it over his shoulder, and carried it down to the landing.
At that instant the dinner-horn was blown from the door of the little house on the island, and every man, notwithstanding his haste, immediately responded with his presence. At the last dinner of the fishing season Frank was present and assisted vigorously, after which he rowed Victor and his big bag in theCloverout to Victor’s boat. Then he bade him good-bye and stood off while the sails went up and the anchors were hoisted on board a dozen yachts of the fishing fleet.
It was a sad sight to Frank and to Captain Green, who was fishing outside the island, to see the brave boats stepping away into the distance. The tide being fair and the wind light, they were a long time in sight; and the old man fishing thought the Sound would be lonely now, and the boy “was rather glad he was going away to school, after all; there wouldn’t be so much fun now on the water, anyway.”
Frank felt dispirited. He would have picked up his oars and rowed for home had he not heard an exclamation from Captain Green, who at the instant pulled in a fish of extraordinary size, which Frank seeing, felt a desire to do likewise. So for the first time that day, Kate’s clams came into service, and Frank fell to fishing with right good will. It was, as Victor had remarked in the morning, “a capital day for fishing”; either the bait was very alluring or the fish were very hungry, for they bit vigorously and came into the boats in great numbers.
TheCloverlay about five hundred feet from Captain Green’s position, and, so rapidly did the fog come down upon them—busy at baiting and pulling in—that neither the experienced man nor the inexperienced boy knew of its approach until it had shut them in.
“Sakes alive!” shouted Captain Green. “Frank! Frank Hallock!”
Frank responded, thinking Captain Green must have pulled up anchor and moved position since last he noticed him.
“Hold on!” called the Captain.
“I’m holding on!” screamed back Frank, trying his best to pierce the fog with his eyes.
“No, no! I’ll hold on and you get up anchor and pull for me—that will be the better way—and we’ll keep together till we get in somewhere.”
“Aye, aye, sir!” yelled Frank, wondering what in the world made Captain Green get around on the other side of him.
“Confound the boy!” thought the man in a rage. “I wonder how he got outside of me without my knowing it.”
Now it so happened that neither boat had changed position since the fishing station had been chosen. Frank toiled at the anchor line and pulled the boat out to it and lifted it on board, then took up his oars and rowed a few strokes. Hearing nothing from Captain Green, he paused and gave a call.
“Here; this way—row this way,” responded the Captain.
“All right; I’m coming,” gleefully from Frank, reached his ears; and then he listened, thinking itquite time he should hear the oar-strokes of the advancing boat. Meanwhile Frank peered cautiously at the veil of fog, trying to discern the outline of his friend’s boat and feeling very glad to know that it was there somewhere near him, even though he could not see it.
“Where are you?” from Captain Green, boomed against the bank of fog. He called again—he shouted—he roared; and Frank, hearing the faintest note of it, kept on rowing in the direction whence the sound seemed to come. Poor Frank was following the voice of Echo, instead of the warm, palpitating notes that the half-distracted Captain sent after him; he was rowing after the phantom voice that lured him farther and farther away from the land.
“It’s time I got to him; I’m sure it is,” thought Frank, no suspicion of the truth entering his mind. Gaily he accosted his neighbor. “Ring the school-bell, Captain, and I will come,” he called, and seemed to hear, in response, a knell of sound, as of some deep, far-away fog-bell booming solemnly.
For the first time in his life, as theCloverlay on the slow swell of the sea that he might listen, Frank Hallock felt a thrill of fear. What could it mean? WherewasCaptain Green?Couldhe have gone off and left him out there all alone?
Frank called and listened, and called again until his voice grew dull and husky with shouting, and the only sound that seemed to respond was that dreadful toll, whether of his own heart beating or of fog-bell, he could not tell.
Meanwhile Captain Green, becoming thoroughly alarmed at the non-appearance of theClover, pulled up his own anchor and began to row in the direction Frank’s boat had lain. After rowing around for awhile, he concluded to let his boat drift with the tide, knowing that in time it would take him toward the land. It so happened that the sound of water, swashing on the stones of the island, assailed his hearing, and, after many attempts, he succeeded in following the sound to its source.
Having landed on the island, he immediately gave the alarm, and, after having secured a boat and an oarsman, set forth in search of Frank, with a compass as guide and the dinner-horn as trumpet.
They rowed north and south and east and west, the Captain acting as trumpeter, and the only answer obtained from all their efforts was one shrill steam-whistle as a passing steamboat made haste to change its course to get out of the way of a supposed sailing vessel.
During all this time Frank Hallock was pulling out to sea, firmly believing that he was making for the Connecticut coast. He heard neither horn nor call nor whistle, as he steadily moved on his course. Meanwhile the afternoon had been passing and the early evening was drawing near. To Frank the fog seemed to be deepening, but it was the deepening of darkness.
Many times he laid down his oars and set his ears to listen with an intentness that made him feel as though he was all ears. He imagined many sounds, but heardnothing except the splash of his own boat’s bow on the sullen sea; then he would take up his oars, and, counting a hundred strokes, lay them down and listen once again; but each and every time with the same sickening failure to hear sound of helping man.
It was not until the darkness grew to night, and night unrelieved by light or star, that Frank became thoroughly alarmed—and that he felt to the full the dulling drench of the fog. It seemed to sink down through the crown of his cap and suffuse hair and brain; it seemed to be swept through him from shoulder to shoulder, and his very feet turned limp and his knees shook as he arose and tried to stand for a moment, to relieve the cramp that had settled down upon them.
“O that it would rain or blow or do anything but fog on like this,” he thought. “I wonder what Kate would do out here now, to-night!” Nevertheless, Frank could not help wishing, far down in his heart, that Kate was with him out there, and he began to be very sorry that she was not, for somehow a savor of comfort seemed always to be around Kate.
Whatever else came of the fog, loss of appetite did not, and Frank began to feel all the beseeching of hunger.
“I wonder how long a fellow could live out here, anyhow,” he murmured, “if it should go on fogging forever, and if, after a day or two of it, I should want my supper as much as I do now? I want a loaf of rye bread and a couple of quarts of milk like everything, and I wouldn’t mind having an apple, or evena glass of water would taste first-rate. There must be sailing craft around here thick as berries in a pudding—if I could only run against one now.” But the only thing Frank ran against was deeper darkness and now and then a denser fog-bank.
The last button of Frank’s coat was buttoned ere long. Whatever else of cold there was to come, he must bear as best he could. He rowed a little to keep warm and shouted a good deal, and began to feel the awful pressure of loneliness clasping him tighter and tighter. At last the cold damp affected his strained eyeballs to such degree that he was compelled to shut his eyes; and then somehow—exactly how he could not understand—he began to see himself, not out there, mistbound in the cool autumn evening, tossing up and down on the swell of the sea, but just himself as he was, as he had been living from day to day in his home, and his selfishness began to grow into something awful. He wished he could remember a few kind, nice, good things that he had done for somebody over there on that queer land, that must be somewhere, but which seemed so far away, and a good deal more like a dream than—but what was that noise? Frank shouted to it, but the rolling porpoise did not think it worth while to wait and make reply.
At last, thoroughly worn out, Frank sank down gradually into his boat and began to sob. There was no one to hear and he sobbed on until the misery of the darkness and the breathing waters grew into him. He wanted something that he had not; he wanted the solid land and safety; home, with its love and warmth,its lights and food; and all at once he wanted something more even than these—he wanted the God of the sea, in whose dreadful clasp he was caught, to be his friend.
He was tired of rowing, tired of calling, tired of everything. He wanted to go to sleep. Yes, Frank was, as he had said, fourteen and over and could take care of himself; but he, for the first time in many, many nights, went back to that most comforting form of petition, “Now I lay me.” With a firm resolve to be a better boy, sell theClover, and be kind to Kate and love everybody, and always tell the truth and do just right, if he ever got to land, Frank sank into a state of damp unconsciousness.
When he awoke, the boat was tossing up and down; the fog was, if anything, denser than ever, and he was so stiff that on the first trial he could not sit up. To have had no supper was uncomfortable, to go breakfastless was hard; but the day was dawning. A light fog would be a few degrees better than a dark one; besides, by this time all the boats in the harbor must be beating about in search of him. But no boat found him all that long, cold day, and another night found Frank Hallock, limp and helpless and half unconscious, lying in theClover, which drifted and drifted in the open Sound. It was the longest fog that had been known in many years.