_In Which the Impossible Becomes the Possible_
Four hours had I floated on the tumbling sea, with the clouds above
gradually breaking and with the moon finally paleing under the stronger
light of the advancing sun. The blackness disappeared. A wind-driven
sky arched the sea. And I lay looking up into heaven, waiting for the
end.
For I was in a sort of mesmerized state toward the last, and kept
myself afloat automatically. It must have been so; by no other means
can I explain that I was still floating on the surface when the sun
arose.
The rocking motion of the swells soothed me to a strange content that
I can neither explain nor talk about sanely. I remember I babbled
something or other over and over again; I was talking to the moon
riding so high there among the rifted clouds.
* * * * *
In the night of July 14, 1886, the British ship Conqueror, fourteen
days out from Liverpool, bound for the lumber and fishing ports of
the Miramichi, in the Straits of Northumberland, lost overboard
Robert Johnson, A. B. The fact is registered on the ship’s log. Three
days after the Conqueror reached Miramichi, the Bark Adelaide, from
Belfast, likewise came into port and when she was warped into her berth
beside the Conqueror, the first man to step from the Adelaide to the
Conqueror’s deck was Bob Johnson.
There are reasons for the sailor-men being superstitious. The crew of
the Conqueror would not sail with Bob Johnson again. He was _fey_. But
really, he had only experienced a strange and harsh adventure. The
Adelaide, following the unmarked wake of the Conqueror, had picked him
up after he had floated for some hours.
And there are plenty of similar incidents in the annals of those who go
down to the sea in ships to match this narrative of Bob Johnson.
* * * * *
The men who picked _me_ up told me that I shouted to them; but I do not
remember it. They were a crew of a boat put overboard by the Seamew,
and they brought me aboard and I lay in a bunk in the fo’castle all
that day without knowing where I was, or how I had been snatched from
an ocean grave.
About the first thing I remember clearly was that a young man stood
beside my berth and looked down upon me with a rather quizzical smile.
I knew him at once and thought that I must be in my old bunk aboard the
Gullwing.
“I--I--. Have I been sick, Mr. Barney?” I asked, and was surprised to
find my voice so weak.
He seemed surprised for a moment, too, and then I saw his face flush.
He exclaimed:
“By the great hornspoon! this fellow is off the Gullwing.”
“I _was_ off the Gullwing,” I whispered. “But I guess this is no dream?
I am aboard again now.”
“No you’re not!” he declared, but he still seemed bewildered.
“This isn’t the Gullwing?”
“It’s the Seamew,” he said.
“But--but--you’re Mr. Barney?”
“I am,” he said, grimly. “But not the Mr. Barney you know, young man.”
Then the mystery broke and I understood. It was Mr. Alf Barney I was
talking to, the second mate of the Seamew.
“Then--then you picked me up,” I murmured.
“And we had an idea that you were a merman,” he said, with a quick
laugh. “Out here in the ocean without a stitch of clothing on you.”
I told him how I had got rid of my garments after falling overboard
from the other ship. The men below gathered around to listen. They were
men of about the same class as manned the Gullwing, I saw.
“You’re the luckiest fellow that ever drew breath, I believe,” said the
second mate, finally. “You stay abed here till morning. Then you can go
forward and talk to the captain. It’s almost unbelievable.”
And I scarce believed it myself--at least, not while I was so
lightheaded and weak. But being a husky fellow my strength quickly came
back to me, and the care of the kind fellows in the fo’castle set me on
my pins the next day. I had a brief interview with Captain Si Somes--a
long, cadaverous, hatchet-faced man who barked his words at one as
though he did not like to waste either voice or words.
“So Cap’n Joe didn’t try to pick ye up?”
“I reckon he couldn’t. It was blowing pretty hard just then.”
“That’s like the old murderer,” he snapped. “Didn’t clew down his
tops’ls quick enough of course. He means to beat me if he kin.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Well, he won’t. We’ll pick him up if the wind keeps this a-way.”
“No chance of my getting back to her I sp’ose?” I suggested.
“To the Gullwing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wa-al! I ain’t goin’ to waste no time puttin’ you aboard. He’s
short-handed anyway. He allus is. I’ll feed ye for the sake of keepin’
ye,” and he cackled rather unpleasantly.
I didn’t like him as well as I did Captain Bowditch. And my interest
was centered in the success of the Gullwing, too. I wanted to get back
to her and see her win the race.
I found the fo’castle hands of the Seamew just as much interested
in the rivalry of the two ships as the Gullwing’s hands were. They
believed they were on the better craft, too.
“Why, she sails a foot and a half to the Gullwing’s one in fair
weather,” one man told me. “Wait till we get out of this latitude.
You’ll see something like sailing, then, when the Seamew gits to going.”
I thought she was sailing pretty fast just then, and said so.
“If she ever struck another craft--or anything drifting in the
sea--she’d just about cut it down with that sharp bow,” I observed.
“Ain’t much danger of running into anything down here. We ain’t seen
another sail but the Gullwing--save one--for a week.”
“We hadn’t spoken a vessel on the Gullwing for a number of days,” I
replied.
“No. Not many windjammers just now in these waters. And all the
steamers go through the Straits,” my informant said. “But this craft we
spoke three days ago was a-wallowin’ along pretty well--and she had a
tow, too.”
“A steamship, then?”
“No. She was a two-stick schooner, but she had a big auxiliary engine
and was under both steam and sail. The Sea Spell, she was.”
“The Sea Spell!” I cried, in surprise. “I know her. I’ve been aboard
her. Cap’n Tugg, skipper and owner.”
“That’s the Yankee,” said my friend. “And ain’t he a cleaner? What do
you suppose he had in tow?”
I was too amazed to answer, and the man went on:
“That’s one cute Yankee, that Adoniram Tugg. If there wasn’t but two
dollars left in the world he’d have one in his pocket and a mortgage
on the other.”
I had to laugh at this description of the master of the Sea Spell. And
it hit off Adoniram pretty well, too.
“That Yankee has made a killing this time,” continued my informant. “He
has been for weeks cruising south of here, so he yelled across to Cap’n
Somes, hunting for an old whaler stranded in the ice.”
“The Firebrand. I know about her. Indeed, I’ve seen her,” I said, and
told him the story of my cruise on the Gypsey Girl and how we had come
across the frozen ship and I had boarded her.
“Well! don’t that beat cock-fighting!” ejaculated the seaman, who was
called Job Perkins. “That old ile boiler was worth a mint of money.”
“I know it. They said she had fifty thousand dollars in oil aboard.”
“And if Adoniram Tugg makes port with her he’ll turn a pretty penny.
Salvage and all,” ruminated Job.
“What do you mean?” I gasped, suddenly awakened to the fact that I was
listening to a mighty queer story.
“Why, that’s what Tugg was tugging,” and Job smote his knee and laughed
at his own joke.
“He was tugging _what_?”
“Why, I told you he had a ship in tow. She was a sight, she was! Her
masts were just stumps; there wasn’t ten feet of her rail that hadn’t
carried away, and she was battered and bruised and looked like she’d
sink under the surface every time a wave struck her.
“But that cute Yankee had broached oil barrels on her deck, and she
was just wallowin’ along in a pond of ile--a reg’lar slick. The waves
couldn’t break over her,” declared Job, still laughing. “I reckon he’d
patched up her hull in some way, and it looked to me as though he’d tow
her into San Pedro, at least.”
“But, man alive!” I cried. “What was she? What was the Sea Spell
towing?”
“Why, that Firebrand,” he said. “And he’ll make a mint of money out of
her, as sure as you’re a foot high.”