"There's your chance to get to New York ahead of us" said I, turning to
him. It was a smooth day on the water, with little prospect of wind.
"Do you want to be rid of us, Captain?" he asked.
"No, sir" said I emphatically.
"Then we'll stay aboard, if you don't mind, and reach New York when you
do"
I hailed the steamer again. "We need no assistance, thank you. Please
report us all well, and inform the steamship company"
The _Energie_ went on about her business, and soon passed out of sight
ahead. Late in the afternoon a fresh breeze sprang up unexpectedly from
a little to the eastward of north; a breeze that was destined to carry
us all the way to harbour. We braced the yards around to starboard, set
every rag of sail, and laid a course for Sandy Hook with the wind a
couple of points free on the starboard quarter.
Throughout the next day we were running along the southern shore of Long
Island, in smooth water, the breeze still fresh and steady, every stitch
of canvas drawing, and the ship at her best point for sailing, logging
some fifteen knots an hour. The days of the extreme clipper ship had
long since gone by, at the time I'm telling of; but many a moderate
clipper of the later years, with fuller cargo carrying capacity, but
retaining many of the fine lines of the greyhound of the seas, and
embodying all the best of their experience, could reel off a day's run
that might astonish the nautical historian. I'll never forget that
wonderful reach in the _Pactolus_ under the lee of the Long Island
shore. She was a trim and lofty vessel, lean and graceful on the water;
a cloud of canvas aloft, she heeled at a constant angle, as if moving
through a picture, while the long curl of a wave rolled out steadily
from her lee quarter, as she swept like a bird over the smooth sea.
At three in the afternoon, a steamer was reported dead ahead, some ten
or a dozen miles away. Within half an hour, it was apparent that we
were crawling up on her; and in an hour's time, we could estimate that
we had overhauled her by something like five miles. I had a strong
suspicion that she was our old friend, the _Energie_, but said nothing
about it just then. Every one aboard was excited over the race, the
_Santiago's_ company no less so than my own. In fact, the young British
officers could hardly contain themselves, wouldn't for anything have
seen us fail to overtake her, kept running to me and suggesting this and
that, or asking if the wind would hold.
Another hour of this terrific sailing brought us near enough to read her
name. And she was the _Energie_, sure enough. I thought that handsome
young first officer of the _Santiago_ was going to fling his arms around
me, when I took my eye from the long glass and told them the news.
"Hurrah for the _Pactolus_!" he shouted, running forward and waving both
his hands "By Gad, they won't have the chance to report us this time!
We'll do our own reporting"
"She must be foul--although these freighters don't pretend to any speed"
observed Captain Potter, a little concerned, I thought, for the
reputation of steam.
"She's making about ten knots" said I "And we are logging fifteen
steady, and sixteen by spurts, when the breeze puffs a little"
"You don't tell me!" he exclaimed, glancing over the side. Then he
looked up at the clumsy old steamer, ploughing along a quarter of a mile
to leeward. "By Jove, Captain, we're passing her as if she were
standing still!"
Indeed, we were; the spectacle, from a romantic point of view, was an
inspiring one, although it must have been a jealous sight for the German
captain. But now we were drawing in toward the approaches to New York
harbour; our race had been with daylight as well as with steam. For I'd
promised myself that, by hook or crook, we would arrive that night. I
scanned the horizon anxiously for a pilot boat--in those days the New
York pilot boats were small but exceptionally sea-worthy two-masted
schooners; and at seven o'clock in the evening, with half an hour of
daylight still remaining, caught sight of one standing toward us on the
weather bow. We came together rapidly. By this time we had left the
_Energie_ a couple of miles astern.
When the pilot boat was within a mile of us, I called Mr. Ridley and the
mate of the _Santiago_, and had a private conference with them; gave
them instructions to place all hands in position for certain manoeuvres,
but to keep the men out of sight behind the bulwarks. Stepping to the
after companionway, I sang out below "Captain Potter, ask the ladies to
come on deck and see us take the pilot on board" They hurried up in a
flutter of excitement, the captain in their wake. A glance along the
maindeck told him that something unusual was about to happen, but he
kept his own counsel. It's hard to educate a taciturn Britisher to new
ways, but the constant surprise of the experience through which Captain
Potter was passing had begun to make an impression.
The pilot boat was now running down to us on the opposite tack, about
four points on our weather bow. She expected us, of course, to heave-to
and wait for her. We kept on, however, at a racing clip, making not the
slightest movement to check our terrific progress. To add zest to the
game, the wind puffed substantially at that moment, sending us through
the water with a rush really magnificent.
I could see that, on board the pilot boat, they didn't know what to make
of it. As we drew up on them, changing the angle of their bearing, they
shifted their course little by little, letting their craft fall off
before the wind and following us with her nose. In another moment she
stood directly abeam of us, less than three hundred yards away. With a
gesture of dismissal, as it were, they hauled the schooner up again on
the port tack, prepared to stand away to sea and leave us to our own
devices.
At that instant, I waved my hand, and gave a sharp order to the
helmsman. The men jumped from their concealment under the bulwarks; up
went the courses like a piece of magic, down went the helm, and ship and
main yard swung together, as if both controlled by a single turn of the
wheel. The _Pactolus_ came into the wind with a bird-like swoop, felt
the main yard aback, checked her pace, and stopped dead in her tracks;
there she lay, nodding sweetly to the slight swell, the last rays of the
setting sun striking through her sails.
A shout went up from the pilot boat. They fell off immediately, jibbed
to the port tack, crossed our stern waving their hands, and dropped
their skiff overboard. In a few moments the pilot nosed up under our
lee quarter.
"Good Lord, Captain!" he cried, as he came over the rail "What are you
running here, a packet ship? I haven't seen a trick like that turned
since the days of the Black Ball Line"
"I'm in a hurry to get in" I answered "and I don't want to waste time
over it. I have a double crew aboard to help me. This is Captain
Potter, pilot, of the British steamship _Santiago_, burned at sea"
Later that evening we took a towboat off the lightship, and clewed up
our sails. I thought I'd be extravagant and have a second tug, since I
saw another coming toward us; the wind had suddenly shifted into the
northwest, dead ahead, and every one was anxious to get in. A hard
enough tow it turned out, even with two boats ahead, for the wind soon
settled down in earnest for an old-fashioned off-shore gale. I told our
passengers to go to bed as usual; that all was safe now, and they would
wake up next morning to find the ship at anchor.
At three o'clock in the morning we came to off the Statue of Liberty,
and dropped a hook into the bottom. They had passed us through
quarantine under extraordinary dispensation, meanwhile sending word of
the disaster and its happy outcome up the bay ahead of us. At daylight,
the _Santiago's_ company hurried their biggest tugboat alongside,
stocked with emergency provision, if you please, for they expected us to
be half starved. Captain Potter met the representative of his company
at the rail; when they had talked for a while in private, I broke in on
them.
"Captain" said I "it would give us the greatest pleasure if you and your
ship's company would stay on board and have a last breakfast with us.
Permit me to extend the invitation to this gentleman. Tell your tug to
wait for you alongside until we're through"
"Thank you, sir--we'll do it" he answered heartily "Mr. Folsom, this is
my good friend Captain Clark. He has treated us to a reception aboard
the _Pactolus_ unique in the annals of the Atlantic, as you'll be able
to see for yourself when you go below. I'll promise you as good a
breakfast as you would find ashore"
So the tugboat with her emergency provisions waited, while we enjoyed a
hearty breakfast. I finished as soon as possible, however, and said
good-bye to my guests; for a tugboat from my owners had come alongside
in the meanwhile, and I was in a hurry to get ashore. Reaching the deck
with my papers, I found the German tanker _Energie_ churning past us,
bound somewhere up the East River. She had already been discovered from
our forecastle; all hands lined the bulwarks forward, laughing and
jeering, waving their caps at her.
At my appearance on the quarter-deck, a group of three men, led by the
Cockney boatswain of the _Santiago_, detached themselves from the others
forward and met me at the break of the poop.
"Committee from the crew o' the _Santiago_, sir" announced the boatswain
"We has to inform you, sir, that we votes your ship is a beauty, your
officers is gentlemen, and yourself is a man we'd like to sail with
whenever you're looking for a crew. You've treated us like kings,
sir--and we're the boys as knows when we're well treated. We thanks ye,
sir, from the bottom of our hearts"
I was taken aback for a minute, not being a ready speechmaker: "Well,
boys" said I at last, blinking back a tear of emotion "it's been a
pleasure to me to be able to make you comfortable. I can only answer
you in the same words, in a way we all understand: if I needed a crew,
I'd rather have you in the forecastle than any crowd I ever saw. You
have handled yourselves like seamen under trying circumstances. And,
well, I'm damned glad that I came along!"
I jumped aboard the tug, then, to forestall any further demonstration.
But as I drew away from the ship's side, Captain Potter, with Folsom
beside him, mounted the after-house.
"Now, my lads!" he cried "Three cheers for Captain Clark! And give
them with a will!"
They gave them.
"Three cheers, now, for the good ship _Pactolus_! And when we're cast
adrift again, pray God she picks us up!"
You could hear the cheer all over the upper harbour. The Staten Island
ferryboat, on her way from the Battery to St. George, changed her course
and passed close beside us, to see what the excitement was.
*UNDER SAIL*
*UNDER SAIL*
*I*
It was at the time of New England's success and prosperity on the sea
that young Captain Bradley took the ship _Viking_ on her maiden voyage.
In those days the building and sending forth of a ship was a community
enterprise. One sharp November morning, the seaport that had seen her
keel laid down the previous winter, had watched her rise on the stocks
through the long days of summer, and had launched her successfully in
the early fall, turned out to bid the _Viking_ good-bye and Godspeed.
Her crew was made up of home boys; Captain Bradley himself had been born
and reared in the town. He had started out before the mast at the age
of fifteen; now, at twenty-four, he had set his foot on the top rung of
the nautical ladder. The town was proud of him. It was proud of all
its boys; but especially of one who had shown such steadiness and
ability as young Frank Bradley, the old man Jabez Bradley's son.
Perhaps Captain Bradley was a little proud of his own achievement. He
could look back over a clean, hard record. In his nine years of
seafaring he had not spared himself. Obey, work, learn, develop
judgment and decision, be able to handle any job or meet any emergency;
these principles had ruled his life, the _sine qua non_ of old-fashioned
seamanship. The reward had come unexpectedly. Captain Marshall, the
leading shipowner of the town, whose fortune and influence lay behind
the building of the _Viking_, had offered him the ship that summer as
she stood on the stocks.
"I've had my eye on you for a long time, Frank" the old man had told him
"I knew your father before you, and you're a chip off the same block. I
guess you're just the man for my new ship"
But young Bradley had already received too many hard knocks, had learned
too thoroughly how to discipline himself, to be unduly puffed up over
success that came in the course of a deserved advancement. His real
pride, from that moment, was in his ship. She was the finest
square-rigger that had ever been launched in the town, a ship of
eighteen hundred tons, crossing three skysail yards. Her lines were
those of the moderate or commercial clipper. As he looked up from the
quarter-deck at her lofty spars that November morning, while they waited
for the tide--at the maze of freshly tarred rigging and new manila
running gear, at the brightly varnished yards, at the furled sails that
stretched from yardarm to yardarm like caps of snow--a thrill of genuine
sentiment coursed through his blood. His ship--and he loved her
already. Soon those white sails would be set to the breeze, soon those
strong, slender masts would sway against the sky, bearing aloft their
press of flattened canvas, soon those new ropes would snap and sing,
settling into a taut network from deck to truck and from masthead to
masthead, whose every strand would have its use and meaning. Soon the
ship would surge beneath him--his to control, to guide, to learn, to
play upon, as an organist brings out the tone and volume of his
instrument. His trust, too, and his future; at moments like this
responsibility weighed with crushing force. The greater the chance, the
greater the danger; the greater the success, the greater the failure if
things went wrong.
"I won't fail her!" he cried in a rush of emotion "We're going on
together, the _Viking_ and I. By God, I'll sail her as long as she
stays afloat. She shall be my first and last command"
Suddenly he thought of the face that would be appearing every few
minutes, on this morning of his departure, at the southern window of a
house in town. He could see the house plainly, a high brick mansion
facing the bay. "It will be only a year" he had told her the previous
evening "Then I'll be back, dear, and we can be married, and you can go
to sea with me. No more of this sailing and staying at home alone; it's
a miserable business"
She had looked up at him bravely. "Yes, Frank, I know. But come back
safely. Think what might happen in a year!" It was the cry of the
sailor-woman. She had learned it from her mother--and from her father,
who had been lost at sea with all hands on one voyage when his family
had remained at home.
An hour later, when, with all sail set, the _Viking_ had gathered
headway before the light land-breeze, taking her first steps into the
world, Captain Bradley went to the stern-rail and gazed back at the
lessening town. He stood there a long while, lost in thought. He could
still make out the familiar pattern of streets and houses. Home. It
seemed to him as if he had always been either leaving or returning. His
short, quick boyhood was already half-forgotten, like a snatch of
another existence. Five years before, his mother had died there in the
town; he had received the news on his arrival in Singapore. His father
had vanished in a sea tragedy long before he could remember. No home
for him remained, either there or here; he would have to make one. What
was this seafaring life, that he had now asked a young girl to share?
Every day he heard men call it a dog's life, growl that the game wasn't
worth the candle. Perhaps so--but she knew all about it. She had been
born in a ship's cabin; she loved the sea. And here was the _Viking_,
young, strong and beautiful--what better? A fierce determination swept
over him to _make_ life worth while, even the life beyond the horizon;
to give her a worthy gift, a home of love and happiness, all he had.
Any life could be worth while, if full enough of love.
Glancing over his shoulder, to make sure that no one observed him, for
it would not do to give his men the materials of a jest, he leaned
across the rail and waved his handkerchief toward the town. She would
expect it--would be watching with the glasses from that southern window.
Sailor women saw the last of their grief; they didn't turn away and
hide.
"I'll try to make up for the waiting, Grace" he whispered; then swung
forward resolutely, to face the coming years.
*II*
Autumn returned to the old seaport, and with it the _Viking_, back from
her first China voyage. Captain Bradley was welcomed with a hearty "well
done" The voyage had been prosperous; the homeward run from Hong Kong
had been made in the remarkably fast time of eighty-two days. Hereafter
the _Viking_ would be a favourite among Chinese shippers.
A month after his arrival, young Captain Bradley was married in the high
house fronting the bay. That night he and his wife left town to join
the ship, loading in New York for Yokohama.
Then began ten happy years of life. They were the last ten years of
American maritime prosperity, the close of the sailing ship era.
Charters were plentiful; the _Viking_ made money. Captain Bradley found
himself a man of means. Without question, he invested his earnings in
ship-property; most of the transactions passed through Captain
Marshall's hands. Why not put his money into ships? Ships had been his
life and the life of five generations before him, had made him a good
living, had taught him all he knew. Most of his friends were doing the
same thing. Few there were in those days among the old shipping people,
who saw into the next quarter-century, who realized the nature and
magnitude of the coming change.
One year, five thousand dollars went to build a new house in the home
town. Every captain built a new house, whether he used it or not.
Captain Bradley's house was occupied for the length of one China voyage,
while Mrs. Bradley remained ashore and gave birth to a son, their only
child. Except for this voyage, she accompanied her husband constantly
on the sea. She had been reared to the life of wind and wave. In the
_Viking's_ spacious and comfortable cabin, they made their home from
year to year. Their son passed his boyhood on ship-board. He was the
apple of his father's eye. Captain Bradley invariably spoke of him as
"my Frankie" with a note of pride and affection in his voice. Sturdy
and manly, the little boy filled the ship with the interest and activity
of childhood.
On a quiet evening in the trade winds, when Frankie had placed his
mother's deck-chair near the weather rail and crouched beside her,
perhaps weaving for her amusement one of the strange fancies of which
his head was full, it seemed to Captain Bradley that life had brought
him all that a man could desire. A happy wife, a beautiful son, a
splendid ship--good times, comfortable circumstances, a pleasant
prospect: in youth he had dared to hope for such things, but had not
expected to see the hope come true. Now life had given him confidence.
He would sit on the weather bitts beside them, dreaming of the future,
of that day when their son would be grown up, when he and his wife would
retire from the sea.
But the future, in those years, after all seemed unsubstantial; Captain
Bradley believed in enjoying the present reality. A large share of the
money that he earned he spent. He spent it extravagantly, spent it with
a flush hand. In the China ports whither all of his charters led him,
there were always a dozen or twenty American vessels lying in the roads.
Lavish entertainment went the round of the fleet. "What's a little
money, more or less?" Captain Bradley was fond of saying. "Times are
good, aren't they? More will come" He was for ever buying pieces of
cloisonne and rare porcelain for his empty house at home, silks and
embroideries for his wife; things to be packed away in camphor wood
chests after she was dead. The habit of extravagance grew upon him; he
spent more money than he realized.
In fact, from a selfish standpoint, Captain Bradley was a poor business
man. Seamanship was his vocation; he understood few of the ins and outs
of a financial order founded on usury. Its sentiment and psychology he
understood not at all; these were considerations entirely alien to him.
To his mind, money, to be clean, had to be straightforwardly earned.
The plain transactions of a ship's business were all he needed to know.
A certain sum of money put into a ship would, if she were properly
handled, yield certain dividends: a charter at so much the lump sum,
would pay so much on the voyage. Thus it always had been; thus, if he
ever gave the matter a thought, he supposed it always would be.
As the flush years went by, he developed into a typical sea captain of
the old school; a man of honour, of ideals, of simple dignity and
original thought, careless, buoyant, at times a little reckless, a stern
disciplinarian, a wise judge of human nature, a sentimentalist at heart,
a believer in the inherent righteousness of things, a man of sincerity
and individuality. Dishonesty, laziness, hypocrisy, he hated as he
hated crime. Inefficient men found him a hard taskmaster. By nature
and training he was arrogant and imperious; the instinct of command ran
strongly in his blood. He spoke his mind at all times; he was equally
ready to defend his position. His pride in his wife, in his boy, in his
ship, in everything he loved, was enormous. In short, he was a man
singularly adapted to the high and responsible calling of master
mariner--singularly ill-fitted for his coming encounter with the world.
*III*
The first stroke fell out of a clear sky. Captain Marshall died
suddenly, leaving his business affairs in a bad way. For three months,
the town was in turmoil. At the end of that time, it became apparent
that the old shipowner had involved all of his own property, as well as
that of many others, in a series of disastrous speculations. No one
hinted at dishonesty, but the hard fact remained. Ship property had
greatly fallen off in value in the last few years; this, it would seem,
had been the immediate cause of Captain Marshall's financial stringency.
He, too, had banked heavily on the old times.
Captain Bradley arrived that year from Hong Kong, to find himself poorer
by more than half of his modest fortune. All of his ready money was
gone in the wreck; what remained was a bundle of pieces of vessels,
quarters and sixteenths and thirty-seconds. Worst of all, the _Viking_,
the one ship that Captain Marshall had owned outright, with the
exception of the eighth share standing in Captain Bradley's name, would
have to be sold by auction to satisfy the creditors. In this crisis,
Captain Bradley's idealism overcame all other considerations. "By God,
I'll buy her myself!" he cried. His friends told him that he was a
fool; but this only heightened his determination. He called the
creditors together, and made them an offer. By great exertions, he
managed to negotiate on his various ship holdings, disposing of some at
figures below their value, mortgaging others, selling the house, and
finally raising sufficient money to carry out his word. It took all he
had; but he was glad that he possessed enough property to do it. When
he sailed from New York on the next voyage, he was the sole owner of the
vessel. His confidence, momentarily shaken by the failure of one of the
pillars of his world, had begun to return. He realized that times were
not what they had been; but it seemed impossible that the demand for
sailing ships would ever wholly go by.
The next few years, however, seriously undermined his assurance.
Freights were falling rapidly, were even becoming hard to get. One time
he had laid her up in Hong Kong for six months, resolving to wait for a
better figure than had been offered, and had at length been obliged to
accept a charter that barely paid the ship's way. Steam was to blame for
it all. He began to hate steamers with a bitter and unreasoning hatred.
They were driving the fine old sailing ships off the sea.
Then, as suddenly as the financial crash, came the blow from which he
never fully recovered. On the homeward passage, shortly after rounding
the Cape of Good Hope, his wife sickened and died. She had been ailing
ever since they left Anjer, but he had not realized the seriousness of
her condition. They had already caught the trades in the South
Atlantic; it was hopeless to think of putting back to Capetown. He
urged the ship with every rag of sail, trying to reach St. Helena in
time; but the trades held light, the elements were against him. For
three days of nearly flat calm he paced the deck in agony, or sat beside
his wife's bunk while she talked to him in a low voice, telling him of
her love, of what to do when she was gone; trying to make it easy for
him, for she knew that she was dying. On the third day, she died in his
arms. That night his hair turned from black to white. He came on deck
the next morning an old and broken man. The wind continued light and
uncertain, there was no chance of reaching St. Helena in time for the
last rites; and he buried her there in the deep sea.
That voyage, they had left their son at home in school. Alone now in
the empty cabin, Captain Bradley's thoughts were much of his boy. He
himself could stand it, must stand it. But how could he tell Frankie,
his Frankie? Night after night he paced the narrow floor below, going
back over life, living in the past from which he had now been definitely
cut adrift. Perhaps he was not quite sane for the remainder of the
passage; he could never remember clearly those weeks before his arrival.
But always, behind every conscious thought, lay the dread of what he
would have to tell Frankie. This he remembered; it seemed to have been
beaten into his brain.
Then a wonderful thing happened. He arrived home to find that the boy
they had left behind had grown into a young man, had developed a strong
and resolute character of his own. He came to meet his father at the
train; the news had reached him already. "I did all that I could,
Frankie" were Captain Bradley's first words, as they faced each other on
the gloomy platform. His son looked at him steadily, fighting back the
tears. "I know you did, sir" It was the son who put his arms around
the father's shoulders; Captain Bradley had felt a strange hesitation,
almost akin to shame or fear. But now his heart rose for the first time
since his wife had gone. This was the stuff that men were made of. His
son.
They entered the house together--the old Bradley house, where Frankie
lived with his aunt when he was at home. Captain Bradley greeted his
sister, took off his hat and sat down heavily. Suddenly the boy cried
out and fell at his father's feet, holding him by the knees, his whole
body shaking.
"My God, father, your hair is white!"
"Yes, yes, Frankie. That doesn't matter. Poor mother, poor mother!" He
leaned forward to hold the heaving shoulders. For a long while they
cried in each other's arms.
As the days went by, Captain Bradley found himself depending more and
more on the new young strength. The two were inseparable; they seemed
to meet on common ground. Captain Bradley was one of those men who
never lose their youthful outlook; while the boy was in reality older
than his years.
When the time came to sail on another voyage, Frankie insisted on
leaving school and going away with his father. For the next eighteen
months they lived together on the ship, at sea and in foreign ports, and
their intimacy grew profound. They talked, read aloud in the evenings,
studied navigation and history, discussed the mysteries of life and
love; side by side they stood on the quarter-deck through storm and fair
weather, and Frankie learned the lore of seamanship at the hands of a
past-master. Gradually, Captain Bradley got back his grip on life. The
boy had renewed his courage. He even began to dream of the future
again--of marriage and a career for Frankie, no following the sea, but a
safe career ashore.
Then another long voyage, alone this time, for Frankie had entered
college to tackle his education in earnest. He had decided to become a
civil engineer. This voyage was in many ways a hard one for Captain
Bradley. Business was poor; he had a great deal of trouble with his
crew, for only the outcasts of society could now be induced to enter the
forecastle of a sailing ship; a succession of storms followed him, and
at last he lost a foretopmast off the coast of Luzon. He had to face the
fact that the _Viking_ was growing old; for several years he had been
acutely aware that her top-hamper needed extensive overhauling.
As for himself, he knew too well that he had turned the corner of life.
The voyage dragged on to its close. He reached the Atlantic Coast in
the dead of winter. Three weeks of threshing around outside in the
teeth of northeast snowstorms and icy northwesters completed the
disheartenment. But at length ship and man, ice-bound and weary, passed
in by Sandy Hook and made a harbour once more.
The news that met Captain Bradley seemed too heavy to be borne. A month
before his arrival, when the _Viking_ had been somewhere off the
Windward Islands, running up in the northeast trades, his son, skating
on the river beside the college, had fallen through the ice and been
drowned.
*IV*
After a while, Captain Bradley gathered up the fag-ends of his life and
started out in the _Viking_ on another voyage. She was all he had now.
A few more years went by, years of increasing discouragement, aimless
and fugitive. Times were becoming very hard. The day of China charters
was over; steamers monopolized that business now. The _Viking_ became a
tramp ship, they picked up what freights they could get, and the old
ports knew them no longer. The vessel barely paid her way; operating
expenses were retrenched on every hand, there was no money left for
upkeep, and Captain Bradley saw her literally falling to pieces before
his eyes. But the old hull remained sound.
He lived a blank life; but he continued to live, which was something.
The old days were indeed passing, and with them the ships and the men.
Sailors were not what they used to be; business ethics was not what it
used to be. He began to feel as if the very fibre of mankind had
changed. Nothing seemed left but memory and the remnants of an
invincible pride. He could not realize that he had made what would be
commonly called a mistake, in buying the _Viking_ with his last dollar.
His philosophy did not provide the materials for such a conception.
The day came when the old _Viking_ was almost the last of her race, the
only wooden full-rigged three-masted ship to sail out of Atlantic ports.
All her lofty companions had passed away, or had been converted into
coal barges. Her arrival in New York was an item of news. This was the
one substantial reward of Captain Bradley's declining years as a
ship-master; he had sailed his ship beyond her era, he had flaunted her
in the face of a new generation. That compact made with the _Viking_ in
her maiden hour had been no idle sentiment; it had been life's supremest
dedication, and he had kept the vow.
A few old friends remained to him, though he had made no new ones in the
latter years. These friends kept urging him, every voyage, to sell the
_Viking_ for a coal barge while there was time, while even this way
offered for the disposal of an outworn hull. The coal companies were
beginning to build their own barges. The _Viking_ would still be worth
some fifteen thousand dollars as a coal barge. He could retire on the
proceeds, and live in modest comfort for the rest of his days.
"Never!" he invariably answered "Do I look like a man who needs to
retire? She shall never be a coal barge while I live"
Yet it had to come to that; perhaps he had long foreseen it, perhaps the
vehemence of his denial was only the face of pride set against the
inevitable. On a certain voyage he had been obliged to run into debt,
to fit out the vessel. The voyage netted less than nothing. When he
returned to New York the ship was attached for the debt. There was no
business in sight; the bottom had at last dropped out of the shipping
world. He did all that was possible, but he could not raise the money;
he and the _Viking_ were no longer a good risk as borrowers--their
credit was gone. The ship was sold at auction, in equity proceedings,
and was bid in by one of the large coal companies operating along the
Atlantic Coast. Captain Bradley, at sixty years of age, found himself
stranded on South Street without a penny in his pocket. The proceeds of
the sale had barely covered the debt. But his honour, at any rate, was
clear.
"Another wreck for Snug Harbour" the word was passed, as he stalked out
of the room where the transaction had been completed. But they reckoned
without their host. That afternoon the _Viking_ was towed to Erie
Basin, to be stripped for a coal barge. At almost the same hour,
Captain Bradley disappeared from South Street. The shipping world never
saw him again.
*V*
A tramp steamer, dirty and ill-kept about decks, streaked with iron-rust
alongside, came up the bay from Sandy Hook and anchored off Quarantine.
She had arrived from a long and wandering voyage. When the health
officer had left the vessel, the captain called the second mate to the
bridge. An old man stumbled up the steps.
"Mr. Bradley, get your things together and go ashore with me. I'll pay
you off at once. You old trouble-maker, you're not going to stay aboard
the ship an hour longer"
The old mate gazed at his superior officer in silence. Tears of anger
rose to his eyes. He turned away to hide them, walking to the end of
the bridge. His cup of bitterness was running over. Frank Bradley,
commander on the high seas for forty years, discharged from a second
mate's billet on a tramp steamer--discharged by an incompetent captain,
because his incompetence had been found out. He shut his jaws grimly,
recalling the scene of two days before. Out there in the fog he had
refused to obey the captain's orders; had wrested the wheel from the
hands of the quartermaster, had held them both off with threats of
physical violence, while he steered the ship himself; and thus had kept
her from running ashore on Diamond Shoal. The captain's orders had been
completely wrong. He had probably said some sharp things about them; it
had been no time for mincing words. Touch and go--but he had saved the
ship--saved the captain's certificate, too.
He stood at the end of the bridge, staring down at the grey water. What
should he do now? While he struggled with himself, his eyes rose slowly,
resting on a hulk that lay at anchor close alongside, between the
steamer and the hills of Staten Island. For a moment he regarded her
with a dazed and absent concern, trying to fathom the significance of
half-awakened sensations. Then, with a suddenness that stopped his
throat, his heart gave a great leap of recognition. Neither coal dust
nor dismantlement could hide those familiar lines. The _Viking_, his
old ship, lay before him.
A hoarse cry escaped him. Through the dreadful pall of the latter
years, through bitterness, shame and inertia, burst in a blinding flood
the memory and presence of other days. The shock passed
instantaneously, and left him utterly changed. Facing his old ship, he
became once more the man her master had been. Decision and authority
returned to him, as they always did in a crisis; for they were
intrinsic, in spite of life and destiny.
A rowboat was passing the steamer; he hailed it sharply. "Rowboat ahoy!
Come alongside, and wait there for me" He crossed the bridge with
strong steps, stood before the captain, gazed at him steadily, until the
eyes of the other fell.
"I'll leave your dirty tramp immediately, sir. You can keep my wages--I
don't want them. Take them and buy a book on seamanship. You'll need it
the next time you get in shoal water"
"You insolent old devil...!"
"Don't touch me!" The old man's voice was level and hard; his hands
swung at his sides. He advanced threateningly. "You didn't dare touch
me at sea; don't do it now. I..." Speechlessness overcame him. Too
much: it could never be put into words. "My God!" he murmured, turning
away "I was master of a ship before he was born"
Ten minutes later, seated in the rowboat with all his worldly belongings
stacked around him, he directed the boatman to row him aboard the
_Viking_. As they passed under her stern, he looked up at the
well-remembered letters. They were dim now; time and weather had worn
off the gilt. An afternoon in Hong Kong harbour came back to him; he
recalled it vividly. He had been coming off from shore in his sampan,
full of news; the ship had been chartered for home. Grace would be
delighted. Approaching the ship, he had overhauled her with a critical
eye, and found no blemish in her; then, as they rounded the stern, had
looked up at these same letters. His Frankie had called from the rail,
running forward to meet him at the gangway. Time and weather--the awful
dimming of life. He bowed his head in his hands, and wept like a child.
*VI*
A stroke of luck was about to befall Captain Bradley. When he gained
the _Viking's_ deck, he found no one in command of the barge. Four
frightened sailors gathered around him, taking him for their new
captain. Piecing together their incoherent stories, he learned that the
captain of the barge had been killed that morning in an accident at the
loading berth. A hopper had broken loose, and had brained him as he
stood beside the hatch. The mate, a drunken rascal, had disappeared on
shore the evening before, and the captain had not expected him to
return. The moment the scene of the accident had been cleaned up, they
had towed the barge into the stream, in order to free the loading berth.
There she lay, waiting for a new set of officers to be sent off from
shore.
When he had learned this much, a strange idea came to Captain Bradley.
It seemed a slender chance; but a surprising energy and hope had taken
possession of him. He got the address of the coal company's shipping
office, the place where these men had found their jobs; left his things
aboard the _Viking_, gave the boatman two dollars to hurry him ashore,
and went at once to the number on West Street where he had been told to
apply. Luck followed him. He found the shipping office in a quandary
over the _Viking's_ case; they had no waiting list of barge officers,
the tow for Boston was to be made up that afternoon, and the barge could
not be sent to sea without someone in command. Captain Bradley told his
story simply, showing papers that covered a career of nearly fifty years
on the sea. His dignified and authoritative presence bore out the tale.
"Well, Captain Bradley" said the shipping superintendent kindly "the job
is yours. I guess you deserve it, sir"
"Thank you" Captain Bradley gave a wry smile "I think I can fulfil my
duties. I'll try to give satisfaction, sir"
He had not told them of his own relation to the _Viking_, fearing the
injection of sentiment into a business-like application. That afternoon
he joined his old command, at forty dollars a month and all found.
He would not have called it a stroke of luck in the other days. How
incredible, then, to look ahead, would have seemed the natural
development that time had wrought. Could he have foreseen the end that
he was coming to, he would have blown out his brains. But life had
accomplished it easily and inexorably; failure had at last ground down
the keen edge of his spirit, disappointment had rounded off the corners
of his imperative nature. As he stepped across the rail of the barge
_Viking_, only a great and pathetic happiness found place in his heart.
His fight was finished. He had kept his pride at too terrible a cost.
Now he gave it up, freely, gladly. Perhaps he would be allowed to die in
peace, aboard the ship that had shared his better days.
Fine old ship--life had gone hard with her, too. The lofty masts and
spreading spars had been lopped away; nothing remained above decks but
the three lower masts. The decks themselves were grimy with coal dust;
the woodwork had not seen paint for years. How well Captain Bradley
remembered her appearance, when, spick and span from the shipyard, the
best production of her day, he had taken her on her maiden voyage. It
seemed impossible that a whole era of such intense human activity could
so completely disappear, carrying its lore, its lessons, its origins,
its very worth and meaning, into the oblivion of time. An economic
empire had passed away.
Dingy, battered, neglected, yet Captain Bradley loved the old
vessel--loved her all the more for the hard knocks she had seen. A
sentiment that he had thought to be dead reawoke in his heart. He had
not known, he had not dared to admit, how much he had missed her. He
felt as if he had come home.
His duties were light. There were on the barge four men besides
himself. He found time to clean her up. After every loading or
discharging, he would have the decks thoroughly swept and washed down,
and all the paintwork scrubbed. Later, out of his own pocket (he had no
use for money now), he bought paint and freshened her appearance about
decks; for the coal company, knowing that she would not last much
longer, would provide nothing for upkeep. The cabin, the scene of so
much that was sacred to him, he scrubbed and painted with his own hands,
spending many quiet hours over the task while the barge was towing up
and down the coast. It was a labour of peace and love.
For a long while the matter of sails gave Captain Bradley deep concern.
The barge was rigged on the three lower masts with fore-and-aft sails,
to be used in an emergency, when she had broken adrift from her tow.
Often these sails would be set to assist her progress when the wind was
fair. Smothered in coal dust, exposed to sun and rain, the first suit
that had been given her as a barge was now worn out; the canvas would
hardly hold together to be hoisted. Not that Captain Bradley cared a
pin for his own safety; nothing would have better pleased him than to be
lost at sea aboard the _Viking_. But the condition offended his sense
of seamanship and responsibility. It was an indecency to the old ship
to fail to provide her with the ordinary weapons of battle; and there
were other lives than his involved.
At length, seeing that it was hopeless to expect her owners to furnish
the barge with a new suit of sails, he began to save his money. In a
year's time he had laid up enough to supply them at his own expense. It
seemed like a touch of the old seafaring activity to be drawing up their
specifications; he ordered thick duck and stout bolt-ropes, for this was
to be a suit of real heavy-weather sails. When, one afternoon under the
coal chute at Perth Amboy, he was able to stow away this strong white
canvas in the lazaret, together with a couple of coils of first-grade
Manila for reeving off new sheets and halyards, he felt that he could go
to sea again with a clear conscience.
That evening he sat for a long while alone in the cabin. The interest
of looking over and stowing away the sails had passed; he saw the truth
now, saw how things really stood. Buying a suit of sails for a coal
barge: was it for this that he had spent his hard apprenticeship, had
learned and practised the intricate lore of the sea? He could remember
greater triumphs. For two hours of grim thought he sat with hands
clenched on the arms of the chair, facing the world's defeat without
surrender. In his heart of heart he knew that he had not failed. He
had kept respect and dignity, saved his honour, been true to himself
through it all.
He sat on into the night; the storied cabin enclosed him as if with
loving arms; slowly, as the mood of revolt wore away, his mind drifted
back into the old days. He remembered how his wife used to sit there
beside him, on evenings at sea, busy with her sewing; he remembered how
little Frankie used to come running in. These things had happened so
often, so naturally. But not for a long, long time....
Gone with the era, gone with manhood and success, gone with the further
use of life's endeavour. The old man's head fell back against the
chair; tears streamed down his cheeks and sank into his beard.
"What have I done?" he cried in agony. "I cannot understand it. What
have I done?"
*VII*
Two more years passed by, and winter came on. It was the hardest winter
in a decade along the Atlantic Coast. Beginning in the latter part of
November, snowstorm after snowstorm struck in from sea in quick
succession; one of those easterly spells that, to the mariner, seems
destined to hang on for ever. Early in January, the wind backed for a
few days into the northwest, and the harsh weather offered a temporary
respite. Seizing the opportunity, three heavily laden coal barges, in
tow of a powerful seagoing tugboat, set out from Hampton Roads bound for
Boston. The old _Viking_ was the last barge of the string.
The weather permitted them to get well outside the Capes of the
Chesapeake; then it changed. Wisps of clouds gathered in the southern
sky, a heavy bank loomed just above the horizon; the wind began to sing
in the rigging with a low moaning sound. Captain Bradley, pacing his
quarter-deck at the tail of the tow, plainly recognised the signs.
Another spell of easterly weather was coming on.
They were already too far outside to think of turning back, and too far
offshore to run for Sandy Hook. Nothing for it but to push on toward
Vineyard Haven. The towboat was doing her best; a nasty head sea
remained from the last storm, and began to pick up as the wind veered to
the northward and eastward. The barges strained at their hawsers,
pitching and rolling incessantly. Captain Bradley could never accustom
himself to this motion, so different from the motion of a ship under
sail. It annoyed and distressed him to the core of his being.
Together, he and the _Viking_ had once roamed the sea boldly, the man
striking off the course, the ship leaping forward along it, bending to
the wind, sailing free under the sun and stars. Now they dragged about
at the end of a hawser, engaged in a servile traffic, trailing in the
wake of steam.
Minute by minute the clouds piled up from the southward; a grey gloom
fell on the ocean. The wind, now settled in the northeast, rose
steadily, lifting the sea before it. The air grew colder, the chill of
the coming storm. The old ship wallowed and plunged, groaning in every
timber. She was very low in the water; already green seas were coming
over her bows. Soon the night shut in, black as a cavern--and Gay Head
light not yet in sight.
At six o'clock Captain Bradley went below to put on his oilskins and
drink a cup of tea. Coming on deck a little later, rigged for the storm,
he paused a moment beside the binnacle, as an officer fresh from below
always will. In that instant, the hawser parted. He heard no sound, he
saw no sign; but he knew that the ship was free. The fact was
communicated to him through the deck, through the motion of the hull.
He sprang to the rail, and ran forward along the starboard alleyway.
Abreast of the mainmast, he stumbled against the mate in the darkness.
"Hawser's parted, sir!"
"I know it. Turn out all hands, and loose the foresail. She's falling
off to the westward--the wrong way. We must wear her around on the
other tack, and scratch offshore"
"They'll be back to pick us up, Captain, as soon as they miss us"
"Not if they know their duty. It would endanger the other two barges;
this is going to be a bad blow. We'll have to look out for ourselves
now"
"Good Lord, sir, what can we do with this old hooker?"
"Do?--everything! Do as I say. Up with that foresail, now, and be
handy about it. There was a time when you wouldn't have called her an
old hooker! I'll show you what she's made of"
Then it was that the labour of love which Captain Bradley had expended
on the _Viking_ bore worthy fruit. Every block was in order, every rope
was clear and fast in its proper pin. Unconsciously, under his training,
the crew had acquired a measure of seamanship. They had learned to obey
orders, at any rate; had learned, too, to respect and trust their old
wind-jammer commander.
For the first time in many years, an emergency confronted Captain
Bradley. He faced it without hesitation, filled with a certain fierce
joy, sure of his power and ability. Almost before the ship had lost her
towing headway, he had decided on his course. He and the _Viking_ had
more than once clawed off the Jersey shore in the teeth of a
northeaster. They could do it again. Then, when the storm had broken,
he would take her to New York, as if they were arriving from a China
voyage.
Before the little foresail, the ship wore around sweetly, came up to the
wind with her nose pointed toward the broad Atlantic, and hung there
steady and true. The old free motion had returned to her deck, the old
life ran along her keel. Immediately, they set the spanker, mainsail and
jib; this was all the sail she had. The whole area of it would hardly
have equalled her former mainsail, dropping its solid square of canvas
from an eighty foot mainyard; but it was enough for the purpose, and the
_Viking_ answered to it. The gale had struck; the ship heeled sharply,
plunging forward on the port tack at a three-knot gait. She made
considerable leeway, but headed up to east-south-east. Captain Bradley
knew that if he could drive her on this course for the next twelve
hours, they would stand a chance of clearing the danger that lay under
their lee.
Pacing once more the quarter-deck of a ship under sail, a tempest of
recollections beset the old man's mind. Past voyages, dangers, storms,
past conquests of the elements, thronged upon him at the call of an
awakened vocation. Adrift, now, in a long-pent flood of creative
effort, other memories flashed before his eyes; scenes of love and
achievement, scenes of weakness and self-indulgence, scenes of error and
wrong. Life had always been hard for him to live, even at its happiest;
his high spirit had ever been in arms against itself. He seemed
to-night to be able to remember all of it--snatches of conversations,
lights and colours, tones and meanings, touches of hands and the
unspoken messages of hearts--all that had ruled his life and formed his
character.
Through these recollections constantly appeared the figures of his wife
and child. He thought of them deeply, tenderly, calmly. Once, when
they had been at sea with him, the _Viking_ had run into a cyclone off
Mauritius; he recalled his going below in the midst of it, to reassure
them. "How is it, Frank? Will it blow much harder?" "No, dear, the
worst has passed" "Oh, Papa, aren't you afraid?" "No, my son, there is
nothing to be afraid of in the world" He had said those words--he
laughed, now, to remember. God had punished him well for his audacity.
He was surprised to find himself thinking of these things without pain.
A change had taken place within him, a change born of the familiar
exigency. In some inexplicable way, he was happy again. A task of
seamanship lay before him; lives depended on his strength. He was a
master mariner, in charge of his old ship--his ship, as truly as she had
been that other morning, when, full of ambition and pride and courage,
he had looked up at her untried sails. He felt her surge beneath the
heavy cargo, rising, flanking the seas, flinging them off savagely, like
a man striking out from the shoulder. He knew, he understood--that was
the way he felt about it, too. A couple of old hulks, living beyond
their time; but the spirit was in them still.
Unseen, surrounded by darkness, Captain Bradley stood upright against
the weather rail, an indomitable figure, facing the storm. The world
could crush them--never the sea and the wind. The sea was their home,
the wind was their brother. This was the fight that found them armed.
*VIII*
The storm increased; the air was thick with snow, cold with the breath
of Arctic winter. In the middle of the night, the foresail and mainsail
blew out of the bolt-ropes. They bent and set the heavy new sails.
Soon the spanker went, and was replaced. Captain Bradley was driving
the ship without mercy; for the wind was hauling inch by inch into the
east, heading them off toward the dangerous lee shore. The _Viking_
stood the strain; her seaworthiness had never been put to a harder test,
had never shown itself so handsomely. She had been built in a day when
work and honour had gone hand in hand.
The morning dawned on a wild scene. Great waves rushed at the ship,
lifted her high in air, broke above her bows, and stopped her progress
as if she had run against a wall. It was high time to heave her to.
They lowered the mainsail, foresail and jib, and managed somehow to get
them furled. The quarter-deck was comparatively dry; they had no
difficulty in double-reefing the spanker. In his specifications to the
sailmaker, Captain Bradley had insisted on a double row of reef-point
for this sail.
To this tiny patch of canvas the _Viking_ rode hove-to for the next
forty-eight hours, while the storm howled down on them from the waste of
waters. The decks were piled with snow, the ropes and sails were
clogged with ice; slowly, mile after mile, the ship drifted against a
pitiless lee shore. Captain Bradley constantly kept the deck. There
was nothing more to be done--but he had to see the business through.
When the storm broke, they were less than five miles off the Jersey
shore at Atlantic City--so close had been their call. The drive through
the night at the beginning of the storm had saved them; without the
offing made at that time, they would long since have landed in the
breakers at Barnegat. The wind jumped into the southwest, the clouds
quickly rolled away. They chopped the gaskets, cleared the ice away
from the booms and sheets and halyards, and set all sail. The ship paid
off, heading up the coast; from the frozen and snowbound shore the sweet
land-smell, always a miracle to sailors nearing port in winter, came off
to them. Night fell, the air grew crystalline, stars sparkled white and
big in the cloudless sky. Minute by minute the easterly swell
decreased, knocked down by the offshore wind, as the old barge crept
northward. She sunk the lights of Atlantic City, picked up Barnegat,
brought it abeam, dropped it on her port quarter. Then Captain Bradley
left the deck, for almost the first time in three days.
He could not have kept on his feet any longer. The pain in his chest,
that had set in the night before and grown by leaps and bounds during
the last day of the storm, had now become so intense, at spasmodic
intervals, that he felt unable to conceal his distress. At times it was
well-nigh unbearable. His heart seemed trying to burst out of his body.
Perhaps rest would ease the pain. At any rate, he wanted to sit down
somewhere, alone, in an effort to face and compass this new development.
He wanted to give his courage an overhauling.
They had sounded the pumps at sunset, with no result; the splendid old
hull had not leaked a drop throughout the storm. But at midnight they
found two feet of water in the hold. The mate, frightened half out of
his wits, rushed below with the news. Captain Bradley sat like a statue
in the big chair, gripping the arms, his face white and drawn. In his
excitement, the mate did not notice his extraordinary pallor and
rigidity.
"Captain, Captain, she's sprung a leak! There's two feet of water in the
hold already!
"Two feet of water? ... Impossible!"
The old man heaved himself to his feet and stumbled on deck, walking
slowly and carefully, holding tight to the rail. The shock of the news
had loosed the terrible pain again; at every breath he drew, something
seemed to be stabbing him with daggers. He sounded the pumps with his
own hands, to find that the mate's discovery was only too true.
"What can have happened, what can have happened?" he kept muttering
"The change of tack must have done it. That's it!--the change of tack"
Now that he had found an explanation, he could face the issue. They
manned the pumps at once--this was before the day of steam pumps aboard
coal barges. But the leak gained steadily on them, in spite of all they
could do.
It was a race with time now--for both of them. Captain Bradley gave a
bitter laugh; he and the _Viking_ were throwing up the sponge together.
The breeze had freshened, but the old ship was pitifully slow. He swore
to himself as he clung to the weather rail, watching the water drag
past. He was thinking of the speed that she would have shown under her
former canvas; twelve to fifteen knots, she would easily have reeled off
with sky-sails set in this smashing breeze. While he watched, the swift
stabbing went on in his chest, as if some invisible enemy were taking
full and cruel satisfaction. Was he not to be permitted to bring his
old ship to port? Was this final insignificant success to be denied
him?
The winking eye of Navesink came in sight just before dawn. At eight
o'clock, they were abreast the Highland lightship. The old barge was
very low in the water, but she still retained a margin of buoyancy.
With Captain Bradley, conditions for the last hour had been a little
better. He had kept the deck since the pumps began, refusing to give up
to a physical encumbrance; and the pain had eased away, as if
temporarily succumbing to his invincible will.
Soon after passing the lightship, a towboat approached them, hauling up
alongside.
"Barge ahoy! What barge is that?"
"_Viking_. Broke adrift from a tow--three days ago--off Montauk Point"
"The devil you say! I'll send a hawser right aboard"
"You'd better. Snatch us--up the bay--quick as you can. Five feet of
water--in the hold"
"Perhaps I'd better beach you somewhere inside the Hook?"
"No--tow us in. I guess--the leak will stop--in quiet water"
Whether it was judgment or prescience, Captain Bradley's surmise proved
correct. As they towed up the bay, pumping continually, the water in
the hold at first remained for a while at a constant level, then began
slowly to fall, enough to show that they were gaining on the leak.
Below the Narrows, the tugboat dropped astern, ranging up on the
_Viking's_ quarter.
"Well, old man, where have you decided to go?"
Captain Bradley stood in the starboard alley-way, one hand grasping the
rail, the other the corner of the after house. It was the only way that
he could hold himself upright. In the last half hour the pain had
returned with fresh violence. Since its return, he had known what he
would have to do. The ship was all right now; but, for him, little time
remained.
"Anchor us--at Tompkinsville--close inshore. Send word to my office.
Get some men--my crew are--worn out. Bring off a doctor--for God's
sake!..." The strained voice broke in a shrill cry.
The mate ran aft along the alley-way. "Captain!--what's the matter,
sir?"
"Sick" Captain Bradley's hand flew to his breast, clutching his coat in
a great handful. His face turned deathly white, his eyes closed, his
mouth twisted in the intensity of the pain. For an instant he swayed;
then opened his eyes again, and pulled himself upright against the rail.
"I brought her in!" he cried loudly "My old ship ... under sail"
The mate was just in time to catch him as he pitched forward insensible.
*IX*
The doctor came out of the captain's stateroom with a grave look on his
face. The mate stood in the middle of the cabin floor, nervous and
unstrung; he had been fond of Captain Bradley. The afternoon sun
streamed through the cabin skylight. For several hours they had been
watching the old man struggle for breath. The mate's gaze roved
uneasily over the top of the chart table, where, according to his
invariable habit, the captain had that morning spread the tablecover
that he used in port, and had set out a few pictures and ornaments, to
make the cabin look more homelike. He had done it between spasms of
pain, while they had been towing up the bay; had done it for something
to occupy his mind. He always tried to arrange the things as he
remembered his wife used to do.
"He can't last much longer" said the doctor "His heart is practically
gone"