Wide of beam, stout of mast, short-bowspritted, her boom clewed up to
clear her deck load of rough stone; drawing ten feet aft and nine feet
for'ard; a twelve-horse hoisting engine and boiler in her forecastle;
at the tiller a wabbly-jointed, halibut-shaped, moon-faced (partially
eclipsed, owing to a fringe of dark whiskers), sleepy-eyed skipper
named Baxter,--such was the sloop Susie Ann, and her outfit and her
commander, as she lay alongside the dock in New London Harbor, ready to
discharge her cargo at the site of Shark Ledge Lighthouse, eight miles
seaward.
On the dock itself, over a wharf post sprawled her owner, old Abram
Marrows, a thin, long, badly put together man, awkward as a stepladder
and as rickety, who, after trying everything from farming to selling a
patent churn, had at last become a shipowner, the Susie Ann, comprising
his entire fleet. Marrows had come to see her off; this being the
sloop's first trip for the season.
Lying outside the Susie Ann--her lines fast to an off-shore spile, was
the construction tug of the lighthouse gang, the deck strewn with
diving gear, water casks and the like,--all needed in the furthering of
the work at the ledge. On the tug's forward deck, hat off and jacket
swinging loose, stood Captain Joe Bell in charge of the submarine work
at the site, glorious old Captain Joe, with the body of a capstan, legs
stiff as wharf posts, arms and hands tough as cant hooks and heart
twice as big as all of them put together.
Each and every piece of stone,--some of them weighed seven
tons,--stowed aboard the Susie Ann, was, when she arrived alongside the
foundation of the lighthouse, to be lowered over her side and sent down
to Captain Joe to place in thirty feet of water. This fact made him
particular both as to the kind of vessel engaged and the ability of the
skipper. Bad seamanship might not only endanger the security of the
work but his own life as well,--a diver not being as quick as a crab or
blackfish in getting from under a seven-ton stone dropped from tripdogs
at the signal to "lower away."
Captain Joe's inspection of the Susie Ann's skipper was anything but
satisfactory, judging from the way he opened his battery of protest.
"Baxter ain't fittin', I tell ye, Abram Marrows," he exploded. "He
ain't fittin' and never will be. Baxter don't know most nothin'. Set
him to grubbin' clams, Abram, but don't let him fool 'round the Ledge.
He'll git the sloop ashore, I tell ye, or drop a stone and hurt
somebody. Go and git a MAN som'ers and put him in charge,--not a
half-baked--" here he lowered his muzzle and fired point-blank at the
object of his wrath,--"Yes, and I'll say it to your face, Captain
Baxter. You take my advice and lay off for this v'yage,--it ain't no
picnic out to the Ledge. You ain't seen it since we got the stone 'bove
high water. Reg'lar mill tail! You go ashore, I tell ye,--or ye'll lose
the sloop."
Many of the men ranged along the top of the cabin of the tug, or
perched on its rail, wondered at the vehemence of the captain's attack,
"Moon-faced Baxter," as he was called, having a fair reputation as a
seaman. They knew, too, that Captain Joe was aware of the condition of
Marrows's affairs, for it had been common talk that the bank had loaned
Abram several hundred dollars with the sloop as security on the
captain's own personal inspection. Some of them had even been present
when Mrs. Marrows,--a faded old woman with bleached eyes and a
pursed-up mouth, her shawl hooding her head and pinned close under her
chin with her thumb and forefinger,--had begged Captain Joe to try the
Susie Ann for a few loads until Abram could "ketch up," and had heard
his promise to help her.
But they made no protest. Such outbursts on the captain's part were but
the escaping steam from the overcharged boiler of his indignation.
Underneath lay the firebox of his heart, chock full of red-hot coals
glowing with sympathy for every soul who needed his help. If his safety
valve let go once in a while it was to escape from greater danger.
His long range ammunition exhausted, Captain Joe turned on his heel and
walked aft to where his diving gear was piled, venting his indignation
at every step. This time the outburst was directed to me,--(it was my
weekly inspection at the Ledge).
"Can't jam nothin' into his head, sir. Stubbornest mule 'round this
harbor. Warn't for that wife o' his Abe Marrows would a-been high and
dry long ago. Every time he gits something purty good he goes and fools
it away;--sold his farm and bought that sloop; then he clapped a
plaster on it in the bank to start a cook shop. But the wife's all
right;--only last week she come to me lookin' like she'd bu'st out
cryin',--sayin' the sloop was all they had, and I promised her then I'd
use the Susie, but she never said nothin' 'bout Baxter being in charge,
or I'd stopped him 'fore he loaded her. Well, there ain't no tellin'
what nat'ral born fools like Abe Marrows'll do, but it's something
ornery and criss-cross if Abe Marrows does it. That woman's worked her
fingers off for him, but he'll git her in the poor-house yit,--see if
he don't."
Marrows had heard every word of Captain Joe's outburst, but he made no
answer except to lift his thin elbows and spread his fingers in a
deprecatory way, as if in protest. Baxter maintained a dogged
silence;--the least said in answer the better. Captain Joe Bell was not
a man either to contradict or oppose;--better let him blow it all out.
Both owner and skipper determined to take the risk. The Susie Ann had
been laid up all winter awaiting the opening of the spring work, and
the successful carrying out of the present venture was Marrows's only
escape from financial ruin, and Baxter's only chance of getting his
back wages. There was an unpaid bill, too, for caulking, then a year
old, lying in Abram's bureau drawer, together with an account at Mike
Lavin's machine shop for a new set of grate bars, now almost worn out.
Worse than all the bank's lien on the sloop was due in a few weeks.
What money the sloop earned, therefore, must be earned quickly.
And then again, Abram ruminated, Shark Ledge wasn't the worst place on
the coast,--despite Captain Joe's warning,--especially on this
particular morning, when a light wind was blowing off shore. Plenty of
other sloops had delivered stone over their rails to the divers below.
Marrows remembered that he had been out to the Ledge himself when the
Screamer came up into the wind and crawled slowly up until her forefoot
was within a biscuit toss of the stone pile.
What Marrows forgot was that Captain Bob Brandt of Cape Ann had then
held the spokes of the Screamer's wheel,--a man who knew every twist
and turn of the treacherous tide.
So Baxter shook out the sloop's jib and mainsail and started on his
journey eight miles seaward, with orders to make fast on arrival to the
spar buoy which lay within a few hundred yards of the Ledge, and there
wait until the tide turned, when she could drop into position to
unload. The tug with all of us on board would follow when we had taken
on fresh water and coal.
On the run out Captain Joe watched the sloop until she had made her
first tack, then he turned to his work and again busied himself in
overhauling his diving dress; tightening the set-screws in his copper
collar, re-cording his breastplate and putting new leather thongs in
his leaden shoes. There was some stone on the sloop's deck which was
needed to complete a level down among the black fish and torn
cod,--twenty-two feet down,--where the sea kelp streamed up in long
blades above the top of his helmet and the rock crabs scurried out of
his way. If Baxter didn't make a "tarnel fool of himself and git into
one o' them swirl-holes," he intended to get these stones into place
before night.
He knew these "holes," as he did every other swirl around the ledge and
what they could do and what they couldn't. They were his swirls,
really,--for he had placed every individual fragment of the
obstructions that caused them with his own hands, in thirty feet of
water.
Some three years before the site had been marked by a spindle bearing
an iron cage and fastened to a huge boulder known as Shark Ledge Rock,
and covered at low water. The unloading of various sloops and schooners
under his orders had enlarged this submerged rock to a miniature
island, its ragged crest thrust above the sea. This obstruction to the
will of the wind and tide, and the ever-present six-mile current,
caused by the narrowing of Long Island Sound in its onrush to the sea,
acted as a fallen log that blocks a mountain stream, or a boulder that
plugs a torrent. That which for centuries had been a steady "set" every
six hours east and west, had now become a "back-and-in suck" fringed by
a series of swirling undercurrents dealing death and destruction to the
ignorant and unwary.
Not been long since a schooner loaded with concrete had been saved from
destruction by the merest chance, and later on a big scow caught in the
swirl had parted her buoy lines and would have landed high and dry on
the stone pile had not Captain Joe run a hawser to her, twisted its
bight around the drum of his engine and warped her off just in time to
save her bones from sea worms.
As the tug approached, the Ledge, looming up on the dim horizon line,
looked like a huge whale spouting derricks, a barnacle of a shanty
clinging to its back. Soon there rose into relief the little knot of
men gathered about one of the whale's fins--our landing stage,--and
then, as we came alongside, the welcome curl of the smoke, telling of
fried pork and saleratus biscuit.
Captain Joe's orders now came thick and fast.
"Hurry dinner, Nichols,"--this to the shanty cook, who was leaning out
of the galley window,--"And here,--three or four o' ye, git this divin'
stuff ashore, and then all hands to dinner. The wind's ag'in
Baxter,--he won't git here for an hour. Startin' on one o' them long
legs o' his'n now,"--and the captain's eye rested on the sloop beating
up Fisher's Island way.
"And, Billy,--'fore ye go ashore, jump into the yawl and take a look at
that snatch block on the spar buoy,--that clam digger may want it 'fore
night."
This spar buoy lay a few hundred yards off the Whale's Snout. Loaded
vessels were moored to this quill bob, held in place by a five-ton
sinker, until they were ready to drop into the eddy and there discharge
their stone.
Dinner over the men fell to work, each to his job. The derrick gang was
set to shifting a boom on to the larger derrick, the concrete mixers
picked up their shovels, and I went to work on the pay-roll of the
week. This I always figured up in the little dry-goods box of a room
opening out of the galley in the end of our board shanty, its window
looking toward Montauk.
As I leaned my arms on the sill for a glimpse of the wide expanse of
blue and silver, the cotton rag that served as a curtain flapped in my
face. I pushed it aside and craned my neck north and south. The curtain
had acted as a weather vane,--the wind had hauled to the east.
The sky, too, had dulled. Little lumpy clouds showed near the horizon
line, and, sailing above these, hung a dirt spot of vapor, while aloft
glowed some prismatic sundogs, shimmering like opals. Etched against
the distance, with a tether line fastened to the spar buoy, lay the
Susie Ann. She had that moment arrived and had made fast. Her sails
were furled, her boom swinging loose and ready, the smoke from her
hoister curling from the end of her smoke pipe thrust up out of the
forward hatch.
Then I looked closer in.
Below me, on the concrete platform, rested our big air pump, and beside
it stood Captain Joe. He had slipped into his diving dress and was at
the moment adjusting the breastplates of lead, weighing twenty-five
pounds each, to his chest and back. His leaden shoes were already on
his feet. With the exception of his copper helmet, the signal line
around his wrist, and the life line about his waist, he was ready to go
under water.
Pretty soon he would don his helmet, and, with a last word to Jimmy,
his tender, would tuck his chin whisker inside the round opening, wait
until the face plate was screwed on, and then, with a cheerful nod
behind the glass, denoting that his air was coming all right, would
step down his rude ladder into the sea,--down,--down,--down to his
place among the crabs and the seaweed.
Suddenly my ears became conscious of a conversation carried on in a low
tone around the corner of the shanty.
"Old Moon-face'll have to git up and git in a minute," said a derrick
man to a shoveller,--born sailors, these,--"there'll be a red-hot time
'round here 'fore night."
"Well, there ain't no wind."
"Ain't no wind,--ain't there? See that bobble waltzin' in?"
I looked seaward, and my eyes rested on a ragged line of silver edging
the horizon toward Montauk.
"Does look soapy, don't it?" answered the shoveller. "Wonder if Cap'n
Joe sees it."
Cap'n Joe had seen it--fifteen minutes ahead of anybody else,--had been
watching it to the exclusion of any other object. He knew the
sea,--knew every move of the merciless, cunning beast; had watched it
many a time, lying in wait for its chance to tear and strangle. More
than once had he held on to the rigging when, with a lash of its tail,
it had swept a deck clean, or had stuck to the pumps for days while it
sucked through opening seams the life-blood of his helpless craft. The
game here would be to lift its victim on the back of a smooth
under-roller and with mighty effort hurl it like a battering ram
against the shore rocks, shattering its timbers into drift wood.
"Billy," said Captain Joe to the shoveller, "go down to the edge of the
stone pile and holler to the sloop to cast off and make for home.
Hurry, now! And, Jimmy,"--this to his pump tender,--"unhook this
breastplate,--there won't be no divin', today. I've been mistrustin'
the wind would haul ever since I got up this mornin'."
The shoveller sprang from the platform and began clambering over the
slippery, slimy rocks like a crab, his red shirt marked with the white
"X" of his suspenders in relief against the blue water. When he reached
the outermost edge of the stone pile, where the ten-ton blocks lay, he
made a megaphone of his fingers and repeated the captain's orders to
the Susie Ann.
Baxter listened with his hands cupped to his ears.
"Who says so?" came back the reply.
"Cap'n Joe."
"What fur?"
"Goin' to blow,--don't ye see it?"
Baxter stepped gingerly along the sloop's rail. Obeying the order meant
twenty-four hour's delay in making sure of his wages,--perhaps a week,
spring weather being uncertain. He didn't "see no blow." Besides, if
there was one coming, it wasn't his sloop or his stone. When he reached
the foot of the bowsprit Moon-face sent this answer over the water:
"Let her blow and be d--! This sloop's chartered to deliver this stone.
We've got steam up and the stuff's goin' over outside. Get your divers
ready. I ain't shovin' no baby carriage and don't you forgit it. I'm
comin' on! Cast off that buoy line, you,"--this to one of his men.
Captain Joe continued stripping off his leaden breastplate. He had
heard his order repeated and knew that it had been given
correctly,--Baxter's subsequent proceedings did not interest him. If he
had anything to say in answer it was of no moment to him. His word was
law on the Ledge; first, because the men daily trusted their lives to
his guidance, and, second, because they all loved him with a love hard
for a landsman to understand, especially today, when the boss and the
gang never, by any possibility, pull together.
"Baxter says he's comin' on, sir," said Billy, when he reached the
captain's side, the grin on his sunburnt face widening until its two
ends hooked over his ears. Billy had heard nothing so funny for weeks.
"Comin' on?"
"That's what he hollered. Wants you to git ready to take his stuff,
sir."
I was out of the shanty now. I came in two jumps. With that squall
rushing from the eastward and the tide making flood, any man who would
leave the protection of the spar buoy for the purpose of unloading was
fit for a lunatic asylum.
Captain Joe had straightened up and was screening his eyes with his
hand when I reached his side, his gaze rivetted on the loosened sloop,
which had now hauled in her tether line and was drifting clear of the
buoy. The captain was still incredulous.
"No, he ain't comin'," he said to me. "He's all right,--he'll port his
helm in a minute,--but he'd better send up his jib"--and he swept his
eye around,--"and that quick, too."
At this instant the sloop wavered and lurched heavily. The outer edge
of the insuck had caught her bow.
Men's minds work quickly in times of great danger,--minds like Captain
Joe's. In a flash he had taken in the fast-approaching roller,
froth-capped by the sudden squall; the surging vessel and the scared
face of Baxter, who, having realized his mistake was now clutching
wildly at the tiller and shouting orders to his men, none of which
could be carried out. Captain Joe knew what would happen,--what had
happened before, and what would happen again with fools like
Baxter,--now,--in a minute,--before he could reach the edge of the
stone pile, hampered as he was in a rubber suit that bound his arms and
tied his great legs together. And he understood too the sea's game, and
that the only way to outwit it would be to use the beast's own tactics.
When it gathered itself for the thrust and started in to hurl the
doomed vessel the full length of its mighty arms, the sloop's only
safety lay in widening the space. A cushion of backwater would then
receive the sloop's forefoot in place of the snarling teeth of low
crunching rocks.
He had kicked off both shoes by this time and was shouting out
directions to Baxter, who was slowly and surely being sucked into the
swirl:--
"Up with your jib! No,--NO! Let that mainsail alone! UP! Do ye want to
git her on the stone pile, you? Port your helm! PORT! O GOD!--Look at
him!!"
Captain Joe had slid from the platform now and was flopping his great
body over the slimy, slippery rocks like a seal, falling into water
holes every other step, crawling out on his belly, rolling from one
slanting stone to another, shouting to his men, every time he had the
breath:--
"Man that yawl and run a line as quick as God'll let ye--out to the
buoy! Do ye hear? Pull that fall off the drum of the h'ister and git
the end of a line on it! She'll be on top of us in a minute and the
mast out of her! QUICK!"
Jimmy sprang for a coil of rope; Billy and the others threw themselves
after him; while half a dozen men working around the small eddy in the
lee of the diminutive island caught up the oars and made a dash for the
yawl.
All this time the sloop, under the uplift of the first big Montauk
roller,--the skirmish line of the attack,--surged, bow on, to
destruction. Baxter, although shaking with fear, had sense enough left
to keep her nose pointed to the stone pile. The mast might come out of
her, but that was better than being gashed amidships and sunk in thirty
feet of water.
Captain Joe, his rubber suit wet and glistening as a shiny porpoise,
his hair matted to his head, had now reached the outermost rock
opposite the doomed craft, and stood near enough to catch every
expression that crossed Baxter's face, who, white as chalk, was holding
the tiller with all his strength, cap off, his blousy hair flying in
the increasing gale, his mouth tight shut. Go ashore she must. It would
be every man for himself then. No help would come,--no help COULD come.
Captain Joe and his men would run for shelter as soon as the blow fell,
and leave them to their fate. Men like Baxter are built to think this
way.
All these minutes--seconds, really,--Captain Joe stood bending forward,
watching where the sloop would strike, his hands outstretched in the
attitude of a ball-player awaiting a ball. If her nose should hit the
sharp, square edges of one of the ten-ton blocks, God help her! She
would split wide open like a melon. If by any chance her forefoot
should be thrust into one of the many gaps between the enrockment
blocks,--spaces from two to three feet wide,--and her bow timbers thus
take the shock, there was a living chance to save her.
A cry from Baxter, who had dropped the tiller and was scrambling over
the stone-covered deck to the bowsprit, reached the captain's ears, but
he never altered his position. What he was to do must be done surely.
Baxter didn't count,--wasn't in the back of his head. There were plenty
of willing hands to pick up Baxter and his men.
Then a thing happened which, if I had not seen it, I would never have
believed possible. The water cushion of the outsuck helped,--so did the
huge roller which, in its blind rage, had underestimated the distance
between its lift and the wide-open jaws of the rock,--as a maddened
bull often underestimates the length of its thrust, its horns falling
short of the matador.
Whatever the cause, Captain Joe watched his chance, sprang to the
outermost rock, and, bracing his great snubbing posts of legs against
its edge, reversed his body, caught the wavering sloop on his broad
shoulders, close under her bowsprit chains, and pushed back with all
his might.
Then began a struggle between the strength of the man and the lunge of
the sea. With every succeeding onslaught, and before the savage roller
could fully lift the staggering craft to hurl her to destruction,
Captain Joe, with the help of the outsuck, would shove her back from
the waiting rocks. This was repeated again and again,--the men in the
rescuing yawl meanwhile bending every muscle to carry out the captain's
commands.
Sometimes his head was free enough to shout his orders, and sometimes
both man and bow were smothered in suds.
"Keep that fall clear!" would come his order "Stand ready to catch the
yawl! Shut that--" here a souse would stop his breath,--"shut that
furnace door! Do ye want the steam out of the b'iler?"--etc., etc.
That the slightest misstep on the slimy rocks on which his feet were
braced meant sending him under the sloop's bow where he would be caught
between her forefoot and the rocks and ground into pulp concerned him
as little as did the fact that Baxter and his men had crawled along the
bowsprit over his head and had dropped to the island without wetting
their shoes. That his diving suit was full of water and he soaking wet
to the skin, made not the slightest difference to him--no more than it
would to a Newfoundland dog saving a child. His thoughts were on other
things,--on the rescuing yawl speeding toward the spar buoy, on the
stout hands and knowing ones who were pulling for all they were worth
to that anchor of safety;--on two of his own men who, seeing Baxter's
cowardly desertion, had sprung like cats at the bowsprit of the sloop
in one of her dives, and were then on the stern ready to pay out a line
to the yawl when she reached the goal. No,--he'd hold on "till hell
froze over."
A hawser now ripped itself clear from out the crest of a roller. This
meant that the two cats, despite the increasing gale and thrash of the
onrushing sea had succeeded in paying out a stern line to the men in
the yawl, who had slipped it through the snatch block fastened in the
buoy. It meant, too, that this line had been connected with the line
they had brought with them from the island, its far end being around
the drum of our hoister.
A shrill cry now came from one of the crew in the yawl alongside the
spar buoy, followed instantly by the clear, ringing order, "GO AHEAD!"
Now a burst of feathery steam plumed skyward, and then the slow
"chuggity-chug" of our drum cogs rose in the air. The stern line
straightened until it was as rigid as a bar of iron, sagged for an
instant under the slump of the staggering sloop, straightened again,
and remained rigid. The sloop, held by the stern line, crept slowly
back to safety.
Captain Joe looked over his shoulder, noted the widening distance, and
leaped back to the inshore rocks.
Late that afternoon, when the tug, with Captain Joe and me on board,
reached the tug's moorings in New London harbor, the dock was crowded
with anxious faces,--Abram Marrows and his wife among them. It had been
an anxious day along the shore road. The squall, which had blown for
half an hour and had then slunk away toward Little Gull, grumbling as
it went, had sent everything that could seek shelter bowling into New
London Harbor under close reefs. It had also started Marrows and his
wife on a run to the dock, where they had stood for hours straining
their eyes seaward, each incoming vessel, as she swooped past the dock
into the inner basin, adding to their anxiety.
"Wouldn't give a keg o' sp'ilt fish for her. Ain't a livin' chance o'
savin' her," had bellowed the captain of a fishing smack, as he swept
by, within biscuit-toss of the dock, his boom submerged, the water
curling over the rail.
"She went slap ag'in them chunks o' cut stone!" shouted the mate of a
tug through the window of a pilot house.
"Got her off with her bow split open, but they can't keep her free!
Sunk by now, I guess," had yelled one of the crew of a dory making for
the shipyard.
As each bulletin was shouted back over the water in answer to the
anxious inquiries of Marrows, the wife would clasp her fingers the
tighter. She made no moan or outburst. Abram would blame her and say it
was her fault,--everything was her fault that went wrong.
When the tug had made fast to a wharf spile Captain Joe cleared the
stringpiece, and walked straight to Marrows. He was still soaking wet
underneath his clothes, only his outer garments being dry,--a condition
which never affected him in the least, "salt water bein' healthy," he
would say.
"What did I tell ye, Abram Marrows?" he exploded, in a voice that could
be heard to the turnpike. "Didn't I say Baxter warn't fittin', and that
he ought ter be grubbin' clams? Go and dig a hole some'er's and cover
him up head and ears,--and dig it quick, too, and I'll lend ye a
shovel."
"Well, but, Captain Joe,"--protested Marrows.
"Don't you 'well' me. Well, nothin'. You're bad as him. Go and dig a
hole and BOTH on ye git in it!"--and he pushed through the crowd on his
way to his house, I close at his heels.
The wife, who but that moment had heard the glad news of the rescue
from the lips of a deck hand, now hurried after the captain and laid
her hand on his arm. Her eyes were red from weeping; strands of gray
hair strayed over her forehead and cheeks; her lips were tightly drawn;
the anxiety of the last few hours had left its mark.
"Don't go, Captain Joe, till I kin speak to ye," she pleaded, in a
trembling voice,--speaking through fingers pressed close to her lips.
"No,--I don't want to hear nothin'. She's all right, I tell
ye,--tighter 'n a drum and not a drop of water in her. Got some of my
men aboard and we'll unload her to-morrow. You go home, old woman; you
needn't worry."
"Yes, but you must listen,--PLEASE listen."
She had followed him up the dock and the two stood apart from the crowd.
"Well, what is it?"
"I want to thank ye,--and I want--"
"No, you don't want to thank nothin'. She's all right, I tell ye."
She had tight hold of his arm now and was looking up into his face, all
her gratitude in her eyes.
"But I do,--I must,--please listen. You've helped us so. It's all we
have. If we'd lost the sloop I'd 'a' give up."
The captain's rough, hard hand went out and caught the woman's thin
fingers. A peculiar cadence came into his voice.
"All ye have? Do you think I don't know it? That's why I was under her
bowsprit."
"AGAINST ORDERS"
"Here comes Captain Bogart--we'll ask him," said the talkative man.
His listeners were grouped about one of the small tables in the
smoking-room of the Moldavia, five days out. The question was when the
master of a vessel should leave his ship. In the incident discussed
every man had gone ashore--even the life-saving crew had given her up:
the master had stuck to his post.
The captain listened gravely.
"Yes--if there's one chance in a thousand of saving her. Regulations
are pretty plain; can't forget 'em unless you want to," and he walked
on.
That night at dinner I received a message to come to the captain's
cabin. He had some coffee that an old Brazilian had sent him. His
steward hailed from Rio, and knew how to grind and boil it.
Over the making the talk veered to the inquiry in the smoking-room.
"When ought a commander to abandon his ship, Captain?" I asked.
"When his passengers need him. Passengers first, ship next, are the
orders. They're clear and exact--can't mistake 'em."
"You speak as if you had had some experience." A leaf from out the
note-book of a live man doing live things is as refreshing as a bucket
of cool water from a deep well.
"Experience! Been forty years at sea."
"Some of them pretty exciting, I suppose."
"Yes. Half a dozen of 'em."
He emptied his cup, rose from his seat, and pushing back his chair,
began pacing the floor, stepping into the connecting chart-room,
bending for an instant over the map, and stepping back again, peering
through the small window a-grime with the spray of a north-easter.
My question, I could see, had either revived some unpleasant memory or
the anxiety due to the sudden shift of wind--it had been blowing
south-west all day--had made him restless.
As my eyes followed his movements I began to realize the enormous size
of the man. Walking the deck, head up, body erect, his broad shoulders
pulled back, his round, solid girth tightly confined in his simple
uniform, he looked the brawny, dominant, forceful commander that he
was--big among the biggest passengers. Here, pacing the small cabin,
his head almost touching the ceiling, his great frame filled the small
narrow room as an elephant would fill a boudoir. Everything seemed too
small for him--the table, even the chair which he had now regained, the
tiny egg-shell cup which he was still grasping.
Looking closer--his head in full profile against the glow of the
electric light--I caught the straight line of the ruddy, seamed neck--a
bull's neck in strength, a Greek athlete's in refinement of
line--sweeping up into the close-cropped, iron-gray hair. Then came the
round of the head; the massive forehead, strong, straight nose; thin,
compressed lips, moulded thin and kept compressed by a life of
determined effort; square-cut chin and the iron jaw that held the lips
and chin in place.
When he rose to his feet again I had another surprise. To my
astonishment he was not a Colossus at all--not in pounds and inches. On
the contrary, he was but little above the average size. What had
impressed me had not been his bulk, but his reserve force. Tigers
stretched out in cages produce this effect; so do powerful machines
that dig, crunch, or pound--dormant until their life-steam sets them
going.
The gale increased in violence. We got now the lift of the steamer's
bow, staggering under tons of water, and the whir of the screw in
mid-air. The captain glanced at the barometer, drew his body to its
full height, reached for his storm-coat, slipped it on, and was about
to swing back the door opening on the deck, when the chirp of a canary
rang through the room. At the sound he turned quickly and walked back
to where the cage hung.
"Ho, little man!" he cried in the same tone of voice in which he would
have addressed a child; "woke you up, did we? Sorry, old fellow; tuck
your head down again and take another nap."
The bird stretched out its bill, fluttered its wings, pecked at the
captain's outstretched finger, and burst into song.
"Yours, captain?" I had not noticed the bird before.
"Yes; had him for years."
Instantly the absurdity of the companionship broke upon me. What
possible comfort, I thought, could a man like the captain take in so
tiny a creature? It was the lion and the mouse over again--the eagle
and the tom-tit--the bear and the rabbit. He must have noticed my
surprise and amusement, for he added with a smile:
"Must have something. Gets pretty lonesome sometimes when you have no
wife nor children, and there are none anywheres for me." He had
withdrawn his fingers now, and was buttoning his coat close about his
broad chest, his eyes still on the bird that was splitting its little
throat in a burst of song.
"But he's so small," I laughed. "I should think you'd have a dog--seems
nearer your size."
I once saw a man struck by a spent bullet. I remember the sudden
pallor, the half gasp, and the expression of pain that followed. Then
the man uttered a cry. The same expression crossed the captain's face,
but there was no gasp and no cry; only a straightening of the lips and
a tightening-up of the iron jaw. Then, without a word of any kind in
answer, he caught up his cap, swung back the door, and with the wind
full on his chest, breasted his way to the bridge.
When the door swung open a moment later it closed on the first
officer--a square, thick-set, round-headed man, with mild blue eyes set
in a face framed by a half-circle of reddish-brown whiskers, the face
tanned by twenty-five years of sea service, fifteen of them with
Captain Bogart.
"Getting soapy," he said; "wind haulin' to the east'ard. Goin' to have
a nasty night." As he spoke he stripped off his tarpaulins, hung them
to a hook in the chart-room, and wiping the salt grime from his face
with his coat cuff, took the captain's empty seat at the table.
I knew by the captain's silent departure that I had made a break of
some kind, but I could not locate it. Perhaps the first officer might
explain.
"Captain lost his wife, didn't he?" I asked, moving my chair to make
room.
"No--never had one." He leaned forward and filled one of the empty
cups. "Why did you think so?"
"Well, more from the tone of his voice than anything else. Some trouble
about it, wasn't there?"
"There was. His sweetheart was burned to death ten years ago--lamp got
upset." These men are direct in their speech. It comes from their
life-long habit of giving short, crisp, meaning orders. He had reached
for the sugar now, and was dropping the lumps slowly into his cup.
"That explains it, then," I answered. "We were talking about the bird
over there, and he said a man must have something to love, being
without wife or children, and then I told him a big man like himself, I
should think, would rather have a dog--"
The first officer put down his cup, jerked his body around, and said,
his blue eyes looking into mine:
"You didn't say that, did you?"