After making 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, and
sharks--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 be _heard_ in fogs, than _seen_ in 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 a giant 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, the _West Wind_ was 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 only conscious 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 the _Livadia's_ fantail 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 to him 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--_Livadia_ of 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! _Livadia_ of
Piraeus! Humph!"
Pieces of the _West Wind_ floated 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 the _Frank 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.