It was two in the morning, and McKenzie, keeping a watch by standing
inside the cabin gang-way with his head and shoulders above the slide,
noticed that the foresail was too much for the vessel in the hurricane
squalls then blowing. To Wesley Sanders, standing on the cabin house
hanging on to the main-boom, he bawled, "Go'n call the boys. We'll
have to reef that fores'l!"
Sanders clawed his way forward in the darkness and Donald waited for
the men to muster aft. As they peered at the huge seas rushing to
loo'ard and felt the terrific force of the wind, they realized that it
was time to clip the _Alameda's_ wings, for if they didn't reef the
sail, either mast or sail would go and they would be in a nasty mess.
Never, in his years at sea, had he ever seen such a gale, nor had old
Archie or any of the others. It was an awe-inspiring sight--something
to put fear in the heart of the boldest, and McKenzie admitted to
himself that he was nervous, but not afraid. He was constrained to
marvel at the Providence which kept them comparatively safe up to the
present in this tremendous broil of wind-thrashed water--this war of
elemental Titans in the midst of whom the schooner was tossed like a
chip. As he waited for the men to report aft, he thought of some
verses about the Gloucester fishermen in the big gale of 1879.
"Oh, the black, black night on Georges,
When eight-score men were lost!
Were you there, ye men of Gloucester?
Aye, ye were there, and tossed
Like chips upon the water
Were your little craft that night,
Driving, swearing, calling,
But ne'er a call of fright."....
He thought it must have been a night just like this one, but the
vessels in those days were not the able, well-ballasted craft of his
time. It had been blowing like the devil for some hours now and a
hell's own sea was running, but so secure did the crowd feel that
those off duty could sleep peacefully in their rocking bunks with
implicit trust in the seaworthiness of the vessel and the skill of him
who commanded her.
Moving figures in the gloom for'ard showed that the four men from the
forecastle were coming aft with Sanders, and Donald scrambled out of
the cabin gang-way and hauled the slide shut. As he leaped out on top
of the cabin house, a violent blast of wind struck the schooner and he
grasped the gaff-bridles to save himself from being hurled overboard
as the vessel rolled down. The squall kept her pressed lee-rail under
for fully a minute, during which time McKenzie and the others could do
nothing but hang on to the main-boom and the gear around the mast
until its fury was expended.
Slowly, very slowly, the vessel came up as the sail eased off, and the
water poured over the lee rail. Then Saunders gave a frightened shout,
"Watch aout!" McKenzie peered quickly under his arm to windward in
time to see a huge wall of water piling up with a roaring crest, livid
in the blackness of the night. It was a "boarder"--he saw that--and he
swung himself on the lashed gaff and scrambled up the peak halliards
as fast as he could go. He was climbing when the sea struck, and the
shock of its onslaught hove the _Alameda_ down until her masts were
level with the water. McKenzie was almost hurled from the halliards he
was climbing, and when the schooner rolled down he found his feet
trailing in the sea and his body at right angles to the
masts--outlined in the gloom by the frozen sleet adhering to them.
Clutching desperately at the halliards, he waited for the vessel to
come up and wondering how the others fared, and if the hull was
damaged. She lifted a little, but would come up no further. This time
she was hove-down on her beam ends. "Cargo's shifted!" muttered
McKenzie, and he scrambled down to the gaff again with half his body
dragging through seething sea. Crawling over the boom with fingers
numb and frozen and the chill sleet melting and running down his neck,
he made the weather side of the house and clawed his way along to the
main-mast, where men were standing hanging on to the gear and working
at something. In the darkness it was impossible to discern anything
distinctly, save by the film of frozen sleet which outlined objects.
Also, nothing could be heard above the thunder of wind and sea. As
McKenzie slid down the slanting decks to the mast to see if all hands
were safe and the condition of the foresail, Surrette bawled in his
ear, "Main-boom's out of the saddle, Skipper, an' Wesley's jammed in
it--!"
With a grim foreboding in his heart, Donald felt and stared around the
after-side of the mast until he made out the oilskinned figure of
Sanders lying head down to leeward. He was writhing and twisting and
crying out, and his right leg was jammed against the mast by the jaws
of the unshipped main-boom. At every roll of the beam-ended schooner
in the sea-way, the man's head and shoulders were submerged and he was
screaming, "For th' love o' Christ set me free! Get my leg clear! Oh,
God! It's killin' me!" His cries could be heard above the noises of
the gale.
"Let's have a pump-handle!" bawled McKenzie quickly--horror-struck at
the man's plight. "Get a fluke-bar--anything.... God's sake don't let
him suffer like that! Get down and hold his head clear of the water,
you Archie!"
With four of them tugging and straining on a pump-brake, they failed
to lever the boom-jaws clear. When the vessel rolled, the great
sixty-five foot spar swayed and ground against the captive limb and
Wesley screamed with the frightful agony of it. "Oh, God!" he
shrieked, and his shouts would be stifled by the seas which washed
over them from time to time. "Cut my leg away! Cut it away! Holy
Mother! I can't stand it! I can't stand it!"
Surrette was hanging to loo'ard with one arm around the fife-rail and
the other supporting Sanders to keep his head clear of the water. He
was trying to soothe the agonized man. "Hold a minute, Wesley-boy,
we'll git ye adrift in a minute! Keep cool, my son, ye'll soon be
alright!" But, eventually, Nature did what Surrette couldn't do, and
Sanders mercifully fainted.
Every grind of the boom-jaws against the man's leg wrung Donald's
sensitive heart. He saw that all efforts to budge the heavy boom by
levering it away were of no avail. "Get me an ax!" he yelled, panting
and perspiring and with the blood running cold within him at the
terror of it all. When the axe was handed to him, Joak whimpered,
"Ye're no goin' tae cut his leg aff, are ye, Donal'?"
"Leg? Hell!" snapped the skipper. "Stand clear! I'm going to chop
through the boom!" And he swung the keen blade into the wood until he
had severed the jaws and Wesley was released.
"God's truth, that was awful!" he panted. "Get him down in the cabin
and place him in a lee bunk. His leg must be crushed to a pulp."
Staggering along the deck with the groaning man and deluged with spray
and solid water, they reached the gangway and managed to get Sanders
into the cabin. They placed him tenderly in a bunk in the darkness and
scrambled on deck again for still more strenuous work.
The _Alameda_ was lying on her beam-ends in the trough of the sea and
the waves were making a complete breach over her. "Slack away the
fore-sheet!" shouted McKenzie calmly. "And if that don't lift her,
we'll try and haul the sail off her!" A half an hour's desperate work
on the part of the five men failed to bring the schooner up, and
Donald realized there was only one other thing to do. "Get me your
axe again, Joak," he shouted, and when it was brought to him he slid
down into the water to leeward and hacked the lanyards of the
main-shrouds. Crawling up to windward, he bawled to Surrette, "Cast
off your main-sheet and crotch-tackles! I'm going to cut away the
main-mast!" And when this was done, he waited a moment when the vessel
rolled to leeward and swung his axe into the taut weather lanyards.
With a twang of the spring-stay as it parted, the big spar went by the
board and into the sea.
Relieved of the main-mast and with the foresail down, the schooner
slowly came up from her beam-end position, but wallowed in the trough
with her decks listed to port. The foremast, with nothing to stay it
aft, was reeling precariously in the step and threatened to topple
over the side until McKenzie and Surrette clawed their way aloft and
stayed it with two lengths of three-inch halliard which they carried
to the gypsy-winch and hove taut.
When this work was done, they double reefed the foresail and set it,
and Donald sent Ainslie Williams to the wheel. "We'll jibe her over on
the other tack and get to work on that salt which has shifted up
inside her port top-sides. It'll shift back some when we put her
over.... Lash yourself to the box, then let her run off for a spell
and watch for a lull and a smooth before you put the helm up on her!"
And he and the three others stood by a jibing tackle which they rigged
to ease the fore-boom over.
Under sail again, the schooner ran before the wind and sea, and then
Ainslie shouted and put the wheel over. Bang! The foreboom whipped
from port to starboard with a jarring shock which caused the stout
halliard backstays to stretch and McKenzie to glance anxiously at the
mast.
"She's alright," he ejaculated grimly, and he was about to make a leap
for the fore-rigging as the schooner came up, when another big sea
piled over the stern and, catching him in its terrific onrush, drove
him with sickening force into the fore pin-rail. For almost half a
minute he was under water, and when he emerged dazed, sputtering and
gasping, it was to find Surrette washing about in the water, which
seemed to fill her decks from stem to stern.
Hauling the old fisherman to his feet, McKenzie found him unconscious
from a blow on the head, but, sensing from the slatting of the
foresail, that the wheel was deserted, he propped the man against a
splintered dory and ran aft to find nobody at the spokes. Before he
could swing the wheel down, the foresail jibed, and the sail split
from head to foot and was soon a rectangle of slatting rags.
Joak and Jim from out of the darkness appeared aft. "Where's Ainslie?"
bawled Donald. "God Almighty, but this is one hell of a night! Go
for'ad, you fellows, and get Surrette into the cabin. He's lying
stunned against a dory!" And he slipped the wheel into the becket
lashed hard down, and searched the lee quarter for the missing Ainslie
with a chill dread gripping his heart. When the other two brought
Surrette aft, Donald met them. "Ainslie's gone!" he said huskily. "God
be good to him!"
With the schooner lying broad in the sea, they went below, and
McKenzie lit the lamps and went over to examine Wesley, who was lying
where they had left him. Cutting the clothing away from the injured
limb, Donald found the leg fearfully bruised and swollen. Fixing it up
as best he could, he made the injured man comfortable by shoring him
with pillows and blankets, and he turned to Surrette. The old man had
been hove against the bulwarks and had received a nasty cut on the
head, but when a spoonful of rum had been forced between his teeth, he
became conscious. After bathing and dressing the wound, Donald left
him in a bunk, and scanned the barometer.
"Rising!" he grunted wearily, and to the other two he said, "We'll get
a bite of something and cut our way into the hold and trim that salt.
Then when it eases off, we'll get some sail on her and get her in."
The others nodded gloomily, and they all went forward to the
forecastle and ate like starving men.
When Joak brought Donald a cup of coffee, he found him with his head
on the table, crying silently. "What's th' maitter, Donal'?" he asked,
patting his old chum on the shoulder. "Are ye thinkin' aboot Ainslie?"
The other nodded and looked up with the tears streaming from his tired
eyes. "I wonder--if I shouldn't have taken--the wheel--myself--that
time?" he said brokenly.
Jim answered, "No, no, Skipper! It wasn't any fault of yours. I h'ard
ye tell him to lash hisself an' he couldn't ha' done it. It was his
fate. Poor lad! I hope he died quick an' easy. That's th' best a
feller kin wish. God rest his soul, for he was a good lad!"
McKenzie was only a boy after all and he felt Ainslie's loss keenly.
It was awful to go like that--to be swept into eternity in the
twinkling of an eye--and it un-nerved him. He had put in a frightful
night and he was feeling the strain, and it wasn't over yet. The other
two--older men and unhampered with responsibility--cheered him up, and
when he went on deck again, he felt better and ready to tackle the
problems before him.
Breaking into the hold, they trimmed the cargo of salt, and came on
deck again when the grey dawn was breaking. The wind had eased off to
a moderate gale, but the sea was still running high and the schooner,
on an even keel once more, looked a sorry sight in the growing light.
Ice filmed rigging and the bulwarks, and everything moveable was gone
from the deck--dories, stays'l box and cable box, and the chain was
scattered around. The starboard anchor was hove off the rail and
inboard, and a splintered stump showed where the main-mast had been,
while a gap in the port bulwarks marked the place where it crashed
overboard. The foremast stood denuded of sail, with gaff and boom
swinging idly and festoons of canvas flapping from them. The halliards
were trailing overside, and gleaming ice covered everything.
"She's rim-racked for sure, Skipper," grinned Jim, "but she's still
tight. Ain't no more'n ordinary water when I tried th' pumps ... good
hull to stand th' bangin' she's had this time."
Donald surveyed the schooner and he said hoarsely, "We'll work her
in. We'll hoist the riding sail on the foremast, and with that and the
jumbo, we'll get her along. Let's get busy."
With the easing off of the gale, McKenzie got the schooner underway
again, and after figuring out his position by dead reckoning, he
shaped a course for Eastville, and found, even without after-canvas
that she would lay it. Eastville Harbor was their nearest port, and he
was anxious to get Sanders ashore and into a doctor's hands.
But progress under such scanty canvas was slow, and when a fishing
vessel hove in sight during the afternoon, McKenzie hoisted the
ensign, union down, and, when the other craft hove-to, he hailed her.
"Send a dory over. I have an injured man I want to send to hospital!"
They came and took Sanders away, and within a few minutes the other
vessel swung off hot-foot for Eastville.
"I'll work her in alright," Donald told her Skipper. "Tell them we're
coming, and that we lost a man--Ainslie Williams--overboard in that
blow."
Two days later, in fine smooth weather, they arrived off Eastville
Capes, and a tug plucked them through the headlands and into the
harbor. McKenzie steered--as he had steered for two nights and two
days--and he looked utterly played out. His face was unshaven and red
and swollen by continuous exposure to cold and wind; his shoulders
drooped through sheer bodily fatique, and his brown eyes peered,
blood-shot, through half-closed lids, heavy for lack of sleep. The
skipper of the tug-boat, making fast alongside to shove the schooner
into the wharf, stared at the smashed decks and at the weary McKenzie,
and he remarked to a deck-hand, "That lad has sure had one hell of a
time an' he's done well--mighty well--for a kid."
There was a crowd of people on the wharf when they came alongside,
and, thinking of Ainslie Williams, Donald avoided their eyes. They
looked down on the schooner's decks in silence, and the half-masted
flag told its own story of death ... outside. He got up on the wharf,
still in his sea-boots and oil-clothes, and staggered on the
stringpiece as though a deck were still heaving beneath his feet.
People spoke to him--kindly voices--but he was tired, too tired to
talk. When a man has been three days and three nights on his feet
under severe mental and physical strain, he craves but one thing--to
throw himself down and sleep, sleep, sleep.
Caleb Heneker, the _Alameda's_ owner, laid a kindly hand on his
shoulder. "You did well, son, to bring her through that breeze. It was
a terror--a real bad one, and an awful lot of vessels and lives lost.
Run along, Cap'en, and git a rest. Your mother's at the head of the
wharf, and I cal'late she'll be mighty glad to see ye." He seemed to
rouse at the mention of "mother," and with a vague recollection of
hearing Heneker say that "Sanders was alright, but they had to take
his leg off," he found himself with her arms around his neck and her
voice in his ears, sobbing, "Oh, Donald, I'm so glad you're back home
and safe!"
Arm in arm with her, he walked up to his house, and the people
strolling down to the wharf to view the schooner, stepped courteously
to one side to let them pass. "Young Skipper looks broken up," they
said, sympathetically. "Must have had an awful time." And they stared
after the stooping, oilskinned figure staggering up the road with the
mother leading him by the arm, and shook their heads understandingly.
It was not the first time they had seen such sights, and oftentimes it
would be a silent figure on a plank, and covered with a blanket, which
would be carried up from the wharf--a staved and broken
human--aftermath of gales.
At home he flopped down into a bedroom chair and the mother took his
boots and oilskins off--soothing him with cheerful "There now's" as
she removed his clothing. Leading him to bed, she helped him in,
arranged the pillow under his head and covered him with the blanket
and quilt just as she used to do when he was a bit of a little lad.
Then with a soft kiss, she pulled down the window blind and left him
to a slumber which lasted for a full twelve hours.
Youth does not take long to recuperate both mentally and physically,
and McKenzie was no exception. When he awoke, he sloughed off the
despondency and depression of spirits induced by fatigue and anxiety,
and went down to the vessel. They were unloading the salt out of her,
and carpenters were already at work on her decks repairing the
damages. Archie Surrette, tending a salt tub, hailed him cheerfully,
"How're ye feelin', Skipper? Catch up on sleep?" His head was
bandaged, but he looked none the worse.
"They're givin' ye a great name, Cap, for gettin' this hooker in," he
continued. "'Twas an awful breeze, they say. A power o' vessels lost
an' bust up. Th' whole o' Novy Scotia's beaches are piled wi'
lobster-traps, stove dories and fishin' boats, an' nary a fish house
has a roof on it 'twixt here and Cape Sable. It blowed vessels away
from the wharves--bust their moorin' lines, an' even blowed sails out
o' the stops and tore 'em to rags. It wuz th' big breeze all right."
McKenzie nodded. "What--what do they think of--of poor
Williams--going?" he ventured hesitatingly.
The old man bit off a chew. "It was too bad, Skip, that he went, but
it wuz his own fault. He niver lashed hisself to the wheel-box after
you warned him. He sh'd ha' known better--he's bin at sea a long while
and he knowed what was liable to happen. Ef he'd have taken a turn
with a bit o' line around his waist, he'd have bin here to-day 'stead
of over the side. Don't you worry, Skip," and he patted him on the
shoulder, "it ain't your fault, and nobody's sayin' it is. Good thing
he was a single man. Now, poor Sanders ... that's bad. They had to
take his leg off to save his life. He'll pull 'raound, but he's got
six of a family to keep, an' I cal'late he won't want to go to sea any
more after what he went through. And I don't blame him!"
Feeling himself again, Donald went into Heneker's office to discuss
the chance of getting command of the _Alameda_ for the spring fishery.
"I'd like to give her to ye, son," said the old man, "but Tommy
Himmelman'll be goin' back in her." He noticed the disappointment in
McKenzie's eyes, and he added encouragingly, "I'm plannin' to build
another vessel this summer which Himmelman'll take next year, an' by
that time, I can promise you first chance on the _Alameda_. Y'know,
son, you're young yet. Put in another season in the dory and learn all
ye can. It'll be good training." He turned and picked up a letter from
his desk. "Here's a letter from the insurance company what has the
policy on the _Alameda_. They're sending you a gold watch for bringin'
her in, and well they might, for it's saved them a good four thousand
dollars anyway."
When he left the office, Donald muttered grimly, "A gold watch? Very
nice, but a gold watch will not help poor Williams or Sanders. I'd
give a thousand gold watches to see them as they were!"
For a couple of days he remained at home helping his mother and
cutting wood for her summer firing, then Mr. Nickerson sent for him to
get Judson's schooner ready for the spring fishery. He spent a week
working on her when Judson himself arrived from Halifax.
"By gorry, Don," remarked the skipper after the greetings were over,
"but that was one devil of a session you had after you left me. A
dirty easterly! We get one every winter, but that one was a terror.
Awful sea, they tell me, running everyways and piling aboard. That's
what does the damage, and no vessel can avoid them. So Caleb Heneker
can't give you the _Alameda_ this season? Oh, well, you're young yet,
and another summer in the dory won't hurt you."
"I suppose you saw Helena in Halifax," observed Donald. "And Ruth? How
are they?"
The other made a gesture. "By Jingo, I nearly forgot my message. I've
to tell you they're both tickled to death to hear of your escape, but
Ruth wants to know why you did not write her since you came in. She
thinks you are most unfriendly."
McKenzie smiled. "I'll write to-night," he said simply; glad that she
resented his neglect. He had not felt like writing after his
disastrous trip, and the piece of convent-made lace which he had
purchased for her in Calle O'Reilly, Havana, had been ruined by salt
water and was no longer presentable.
When mid-March came around, the Spring fleet were swinging off for the
Banks again and Nickerson's schooner, the _Windrush_ was about ready
for sea, with an eight-dory gang. Donald was going dory-mates with old
Archie Surrette.
"Let's take a shoot up to Halifax for a day," suggested Judson, and
when McKenzie gave him a quizzical stare, he reddened under his tan.
"If I don't," he added in excuse, "Helena will be getting hitched to
one of those Willy-boys that's forever flappin' araound her. Get into
your glad rags and come along." And the two men ran for their
respective homes, changed, and caught the packet steamer a half-minute
before she pulled out.