warn’t like a good many other fishermen. While a good many of them were
putting in time ashore drinking, skylarking, or if it warn’t no more
than to spend a quiet sociable evening with their friends or their own
families--during all that George was attending to business, for business
it was to him. He was talking one day of those who said fishing was a
venture, or even adventure, and he’d been reading somewhere, he said, of
the joy that somebody thought fine, strong men ought to get out of
fishing. He almost smiled when he was telling it. The joy of fishing! If
you had a good trip of fish and got a good price for it, why, yes,
fishing was good fun then. But as far as he could see it was like any
other kind of work. You put in about so much time at it and took good
care of your money, and at the end of the year you had about so much to
show for it. And as for the fun of fighting a breeze of wind that some
of them talked about, seeing how long you could hang on to your canvas
without losing your spars, or how far down you could let your vessel
roll before she’d capsize--none of that for him. And it was all rot,
their pretending they got any fun out of it. They had the same blood and
nerve and senses as any other humans, and he knew that for himself he
was content to stay hove-to when it blew one of the living gales they
talked about, and satisfied, too, to shorten sail in time, even if he
was bound home, when it blew hard enough. Gloucester would be there when
he got there--it wouldn’t blow away. Cert’nly, he’d admit, the drivers’d
outsail him on a passage and beat him out of the market once in a while;
but in the long run his way paid best. He could name the foolish fellows
that’d been lost, and the fingers of both hands wouldn’t begin to name
them. Yes, and left families to starve, some of ’em. And he himself was
alive and still bringing home the fish, and everybody in Gloucester knew
what he had to show for it.
“Well, by that time everybody in Gloucester did know what he had to show
for it, and everybody in Gloucester said it was about time he began to
look around for a wife, though nobody expected George Hoodley to look
around for a wife after the regular manner of fishermen, who don’t look
around at all, so far as I c’n see. We ourselves, or most of us, anyway,
liking the girl pretty well and she willing, gen’rally hurry up to get
married ’bout as soon as we find ourselves with a couple of months’ rent
ahead.
“But not that way with George Hoodley. It wasn’t until he was forty-five
that he began to look around after the manner of his people for a wife.
There was to be no rushing into the expenses of matrimony; but with two
good vessels, and a house all clear, a man might well think of it--or
leastways I imagine that’s the way he thought it out, if he wasted any
time thinking of it at all.
“Now, if George Hoodley had not been like other men during all the years
he was fishing, if he hadn’t joined in the talk of his mates on what was
worth having in life--you know how fishermen gen’rally talk when they
get going on some things--even if George Hoodley pretended to think that
he thought they were a lot of blessed fools, yet it is more than likely
that the opinions of the men he went to sea with had their influence
with him just the same. It stands to reason they were bound to, after
years of it. And then, clear back he must’ve come of flesh-and-blood
people, like anybody else. For, though nobody could imagine the Hoodleys
having weaknesses like other people, yet cert’nly, if you went far
enough back, there must’ve been ancestors among ’em all--one or
two--that enjoyed life the same as other people.
“Well, for a wife George took a very pretty girl who was young
enough--some of you that know her know that well--young enough to have
had grandchildren to him. Twenty or twenty-one, light-haired, pretty
face, and a trim figure. I didn’t like her eyes or her mouth myself, but
everybody agreed she was pretty. She had never been so far away from
home that she could not be back again the same day--and that certified
to her character with some people. For other things, she would come into
some money when her father died. And her father didn’t object to George
Hoodley. He was a thrifty man, too, and said all right--made George’s
way easy, in fact.
“Now, I cal’late that George thought that he never did a wiser thing in
all his life than when he married that girl. Among the men he knew there
were some that’d got pretty wives, but no money; and others money, but
plain-lookers. He was getting both, good looks and money, and he could
laugh at them all--those who wanted her because of the money in prospect
or those others who were in love with her face. And maybe he didn’t
laugh at some of ’em!--the sail-carriers and others who imagined that a
reputation for foolishness at sea won women’s hearts. It was a great
stroke of business altogether. He would get his share of good living
yet--he boasted of that. He had always taken the best care of
himself--never drank and seldom smoked, and then only in the way of
business--was in the prime of life, had a tough constitution, and his
wife-to-be was young and pretty. He could laugh at all of them.
“Nearly everybody in Gloucester said nice things to George. ‘My, but
you’re the deep one--and lucky? Oh, no, you’re not a bit lucky! But you
always did have a long head--’ That’s the way most people talked to him,
and he liked it. As for the few who didn’t seem pleased--the three or
four who hinted, but didn’t ask outright if he thought he was doing a
wise thing-- George said it was easy enough to place them--they’d like to
get her themselves. If he was only another kind of a man he might have
been warned in time, but he was that kind that nobody felt sorry for.
And that’s a hard thing, too.
“Well, they were married, and the wonderful thing of George letting his
vessel go out a trip without him was on exhibition to the people of
Gloucester. Yes, sir, she went to sea the day he was married. He stayed
ashore that trip--that trip, but not the second.
“The truth was, they didn’t get along well together; which warn’t
remarkable, maybe--she young and pretty, and he the age he was and more
than looking it. Forty-seven’s a fine age for some men, but not for
George’s kind. Leather-skinned he was, with lean chops of jaws, a mouth
as tight as a deck beam, a turkey neck--you’ve seen turkey necks--and
eyes that were cold as a dead haddock’s.
“George, I cal’late, was beginning to learn that a woman was a different
proposition from a vessel, and that there were things about a woman that
had to be studied out. Not that I think he tried overhard to study this
one out. Listening to him as I had many a time before he got married, I
knew that he figured that a woman, like everything else, had her place
in the universe, and she ought to know it, or be made to know it. And
now here was his wife’s case: a steady man for a husband, a good house
to live in, grub and her clothes all found, or, anyway, as much clothes
as he thought fit and proper for her to have. Could a woman expect
more, or a man do more, than that?
“’Twarn’t long after he got married that things began to go wrong, not
only at home but out to sea. There was the trip he broke his ankle.
Coming home, he looked maybe for a little show of grief on the part of
his wife, but, if he did, he didn’t find it. Indeed, she even said he
ought to go to a hospital instead of making it hard for her at home.
’Twas common talk that she said that.
“Going out his next trip, with his leg not yet well-knit and himself
having to limp out the door, he and his wife had words. Billie Shaw,
passing by, heard them. ‘I don’t care if I never see you again,’ he
said. ‘And if you think I’d care if I never saw you again either, you’re
mistaken. I wouldn’t care if you’re lost--you and your vessel. Only I
wouldn’t like to see all the crew lost.’
“That last must have set him to thinking, for he didn’t sail that day,
as he said he would, but put in a day talking to people around town. I
know he asked me, for one, a lot of questions. I didn’t know till later
what he was driving at. ’Twas while he was questioning me that he coaxed
me into shipping with him. ‘Just this trip, Martin,’ he said. ‘And your
cousin Dan Spring’s thinking of coming out with me this time, to help
me out. Two men left me suddenly to-day, and if you’ll come out Dan’ll
surely come.’ And so out of good-nature I said I’d go with him. It’s
blessed little he got out of me, though, in answer to his other
questions, but he found plenty of others willing to talk.
“Well, on the passage out we all noticed he seemed an absent-minded man.
We noticed, too, or thought we did, that he used to forget that his leg
warn’t yet very strong, and that now and then he had to pull up when it
seemed to hurt him bad.
“That trip--well, it was a queer one from the first. With myself and my
cousin Dan, who were dory-mates, it warn’t nothing but accidents. There
was that after the first haul of fish when we were dropping down to come
alongside. It was a bit rough, that’s a fact. Some said that for so
careful a man it was surprising that the Skipper had ordered the dories
out at all that day. However, we were just ahead of her--under the end
of her bowsprit almost--and of course Dan and myself nat’rally looked
for the Skipper to look out for us. We were so near that Dan had taken
in his oars and had the painter ready to heave aboard. I was at the
oars. One stroke more, I thought, and we’ll be all right, when whing!
the first thing we knew around came the vessel and down on us. I
couldn’t do anything with the dory, she being down to her gunnels with
fish. Well, Dan had time to holler to me, and I hollered to him--no more
than that--when she was on us. By a miracle, you might say, we both
managed to grab the bob-stay. The stem of the vessel cut the dory like
it was a cracker, and then under her keel it went.
“Not knowing what to make of it all, we climbed aboard over the bow. Our
faces were no more than above the knight-heads than the Skipper yelled.
We ran aft and asked him what was wrong. He stared at us for a second as
if he couldn’t understand.
“‘What’s it?’ I asked.
“‘Why, I thought you two were gone.’
“‘And so we were, for all of you. A man that’s been to sea as long you,
George Hoodley,’ I said, ‘and put a wheel the wrong way! Nobody ever
said you were the cleverest man out of Gloucester to handle a vessel,
but cert’nly you know down from up.’
“‘Martin,’ he said, ‘I give you my word. Just as I grabbed the wheel
that time a sea came aboard, the vessel lurched, and down on deck I
went, with my weak ankle giving way under me.’
“Well, our dory was gone, but later in the trip one of the crew, Bill
Thornton, was troubled with a felon on his finger. ’Twarn’t anything
very bad, and Bill himself said it didn’t amount to anything, but the
Skipper thought Bill’d better stay aboard, and his dory-mate with him.
‘And Martin, you and Dan take his dory,’ says the Skipper--‘you two
being so used to each other it’ll be the best way.’
“Well, that was all right. We took their dory and gear and went out the
next set--only two days after our own dory had been lost, mind you.
Well, this time we got lost in the fog and were out overnight. It turned
out a snowy night, and cold, with fog again in the morning. That
morning, so we heard from the crew later, the Skipper said, after a
little jogging about, ‘They must be gone; we may as well give it up.’
Well, everybody aboard thought there was a good chance for us yet, and
one or two hinted at that. But he wouldn’t have it. ‘Run her westerly,’
he said, and went below. Well, to everybody’s surprise we popped up just
then almost under her bow. ’Twas quite a little sea on at the time, but
the man at the wheel this time didn’t have any bad ankle. He jibed her
over in time and we climbed aboard. One man ran down to call the Skipper
and tell him the news, but the Skipper only swore at him. ‘Do you mean
to tell me that the watch shifted the course of this vessel without
orders from me? I’ll talk to him.’ And he did talk to him, and in a
most surprising way. We didn’t know what to make of it. He raved.
‘Discipline,’ he said--he’d always been a great hand for discipline
aboard his vessel, but this warn’t any case for discipline--’twas men’s
lives.
“Well, they expected to have two or three more days of fishing aboard
the _Cromwell_ after that day, but I made a kick. Never again would I
haul a trawl for a skipper of his kind, I said.
“‘What?’ asked the Skipper. ‘You mean to mutinize on me?’
“‘Call it mutiny or what you please,’ said I, ‘but myself and Dan don’t
leave this vessel again in a dory.’
“‘Don’t you know I can run into the nearest port, Newf’undland or Nova
Scotia, and put you ashore?’
“‘I do.’
“‘Or take you both back to Gloucester and have you up before the court?’
“‘You can put us up before forty courts--the highest in the land, if you
want--and maybe they’ll sentence us to ten years in jail, or to be
strung up to a yard-arm somewheres. But I don’t cal’late they will-- I
don’t cal’late so--not after we tell our story. It’s a fine thing
fishermen have come to when their own skippers try to lose ’em.’
“‘Lose you? Me try to lose you? And why, in God’s name, would I try to
lose you?’
“‘Lord knows. But you do, and there’s an end of it. Dan and I don’t
swing any dory over the rail of this vessel this trip again.’
“He said nothing to that. Only he looked at me, then a long look at Dan,
and turned into his bunk again. Later in the day he drew out a quart
bottle of whiskey and began to drink. That was a new thing to his crew
that knew him so long. They’d pretty good reason to believe that he’d
kept a bottle in his closet under lock and key for a little drink on the
quiet when the dories were out and nobody by; but they knew he did it
slyly so as not to have the name of it, or maybe so’s not to have to ask
anybody to join him, and so save expense. But everybody knew that
whatever liquor he took that way was not enough to hurt him. Yes, a
sober man he’d always been--everybody had to say that for him. But now
he was drinking with all hands looking on, taking it down in gulps, and
when the first quart was gone he brought out another, drinking by
himself all the time.
“However, he warn’t drunk by a good deal when in the middle of the night
he ordered all hands on deck to make sail. The men thought he was crazy;
but he was the skipper. If anything happened, ’twas his lookout, not
theirs. So they gave her the full mains’l, and then he ordered the man
at the wheel to swing her off.
“‘Yes, sir, and what course?’
“‘What course? Didn’t I say to swing her off? Put her fair before it.
Jibe over your fores’l and let her run--let her run, I tell you!
Whichever way she goes, let her run.’
“And we let her run all that night and all next day. She was under her
winter rig--in March it was--no topm’sts; but the four lower sails alone
were enough for any Gloucester fisherman that second night. I mind ’twas
nine o’clock that night, and Abner Tucker’s watch. A staid, sober man
was Abner. He’d been to sea for twenty years, and been with George for
ten years--stayed with him because he knew him for a prudent man, I
s’pose. Well, Abner took the wheel, and getting the feel of it, cried
out, ‘Lord in heaven, it’s like trying to steer two vessels--she’s
running wild!’ and braced himself against the wheel, but warn’t braced
firm enough, or he warn’t strong enough, for he let her broach, and a
sea swept her quarter, burying him and the vessel both. Over the top of
the house went that sea and down into the cabin by the ton. They were
floated out in the cabin and came tumbling up on deck. Josh Whitaker, a
bait knife in his hand, jumped to the main peak halyards.
“The Skipper noticed him. ‘What you goin’ to do?’
“‘Cut,’ says Josh.
“‘You cut, and I’ll cut you!’ The Skipper, too, had a bait-knife, and he
lunged with it for Josh. Then he stood guard by the halyards. ‘Or if
anybody else thinks to cut’--and we saw the rest of it in his face--dark
as it was, we saw that.
“The Skipper was still on guard there when Dan and myself came on deck
for our watch. That was eleven o’clock. Dan went for’ard to look out and
I took the wheel from Abner, and glad enough he was to turn the wheel
over when he gave me the course. I looked in the binnacle to make sure
he had it right.
“‘Still on that course?’ I asked, when I’d seen ’twas so. ‘Where’s the
Skipper?’
“‘Here,’ said the Skipper himself from between the house and the weather
rail, where he was still watching that nobody bothered the halyards, I
s’pose. ‘What’s it?’
“‘How about the course?’ I asked.
“‘What’s wrong with the course?’
“‘No’west by west half west--is it right?’
“‘No’west by west half west, or whatever it is--yes. And why not?’
“‘Oh, nothin’, if you say it’s right.’
“‘And why isn’t it right? Why not? Why don’t you spit it out? What’s
wrong, anyway?’
“‘What’s wrong?’ I said. ‘Don’t you know we warn’t much more than three
hundred miles off shore on this course when we swung her off last night,
and we’ve been coming along now for twenty-three hours--and the clip
she’s been coming!’
“He said nothing to that for a while, and then it was, ‘And so you don’t
think the course is right?’
“‘No, I don’t--not if you’re intending to make Gloucester.’
“‘That so? Not if I was intending to make Gloucester? And where in the
name o’ heaven am I headin’ for if not Gloucester?’
“‘Where? where? Damned if I know,’ says I. ‘Hell, maybe.’
“‘That so? Well, Gloucester or hell, drive her you.’
“‘Oh, I’ll drive her.’ I threw it back in his teeth that way, spat to
looard, took a fresh hold of the wheel, and did drive her just to let
him know he couldn’t scare me. Cripes, but I gave her all she wanted!
“It was wicked, though, the way she was going. She warn’t a big sailer,
the _Cromwell_-- George Hoodley never did believe in the racing kind--but
any old plug could’ve sailed that night. Along toward midnight it got
thick o’ snow, I mind, and we came near running into a vessel hove-to
under a fores’l. ‘A fisherman!’ Dan for’ard called out, and as we shot
by her a warning hail came to us.
“‘What’s that he said?’ asked the Skipper of Dan.
“‘Something about where we’re bound for,’ answered Dan.
“‘That so? What’s it of his business?’ and went below for a spell.
“From the wheel I could see him taking another drink under the cabin
light. He had got to where he wasn’t bothering to pour it into a mug,
but took it straight from the bottle--long pulls, too. He came on deck
again just as my watch and Dan’s was up. To Charlie Feeney, who was next
man to the wheel, I said that the Skipper ought to be spoken to about
hauling her up. So Charlie did.
“‘Who in the devil’s name is skipper of this vessel, anyway?’ was all
the answer he got.
“Henry Carsick, who was Charlie’s dory-mate, said he didn’t know what to
make of it. ‘I’m blessed if ever I knew him to carry half this sail in a
breeze before, and I’ve been with him three years,’ said he to me as he
went for’ard.
“Well, Dan and me hadn’t more than got off our oilskins after standing
watch, when a hail came from Henry on watch for’ard. ‘Some kind of a
roaring ahead of us,’ repeated Charlie from the wheel. And just then it
was that, leaping like a hound, she hit something good and hard--a
check, a grinding along her bottom, a rearing of her bow. But nothing
small was going to stop her the clip she was going then, and whatever it
was, she was clear of it. By that time the whole crew was tumbling up on
deck. ‘God in heaven, what is it?’ they called out one to another.
Another leap of her, and it was clear white astern and on either side.
‘A wall of rock ahead!’ said Henry Carsick, and came tumbling aft--‘a
ledge of solid rock, Skipper!’
“‘Yes,’ said the Skipper, in a kind of studyin’ tone--‘and it _was_ hell
or Gloucester, warn’t it’--he turned to me. ‘I said it’d be, didn’t I?’
“‘That’s what you did,’ said I, ‘and it ain’t Gloucester. You ought to
be proud of yourself--nineteen men, maybe, lost for you--nineteen men.
I’m not counting yourself--you ought to be lost. Will we put a dory
over?’
“‘Put it over, if you want to. Do what you please. I’m done with this
vessel-- I’m done with fishing.’
“‘I guess that’s right,’ says I. ‘And I guess you ain’t th’ only one
that gets through with fishing to-night.’ Then I turned to the crew:
‘What d’y’ say if we try and get a dory over and see what’s around us?’
“They said all right, and we unhooked the tackles. A few heaves, and up
went the dory into the air. It hung there for a second or two. We tried
to push it over, but the wind took it, tore it from us and dropped it
into the sea. The sea took it, tossed it up and back against the rail
and on to the deck. One smash--another--another--and it was
kindling-wood.
“‘Try another,’ said Dan, who was standing by the rail to his waist in
water. He had a line about his waist, and that was all kept him inboard.
We hoisted another dory out of the nest, and we had to fight, even as we
were hoisting, for a footing on her deck, it was that steep and the
great seas running clean over her. Up into the air we hoisted the second
dory--up and out again. Once more the howling wind and the boiling sea
took it--once more ’twas kindling-wood.
“‘There’s seven more left--try another,’ said Dan. A great man, Dan. If
I go to sea for forty years I never expect to see a better-- I could
’most cry when I think of how he was lost that night.
“‘One of my hands mashed to a pulp,’ said somebody.
“‘Well, we can’t stop to doctor you,’ I called to him. ‘Let somebody
take your place at the tayckles. Now then, lads. I don’t know that
it’ll do any good when we do get it over, but maybe we c’n take a look
around--maybe find a landing-place somewheres.’
“‘I’ll go in her,’ calls out someone. ‘Give me a chance now----’
“‘My chance,’ said Dan--‘my chance, ain’t it, Martin?’
“‘Yes,’ says I to Dan, and looking back at it now I say, ‘God forgive
you, Martin Carr,’ and yet ’twarn’t no fault of mine.
“Out went the dory, and when she hung for a second Dan swung himself
after it. He made it, and called, ‘Pay out that line!’ and dug in with
the oars. We could just see him. We were still paying out the line, we
could still hear his voice, when ‘Haul in! I broke an oar!’ he called.
“‘Haul in!’ said I; but when we went to haul in there was nothing to
haul--the line had parted.
“‘God, he’s gone!’ said somebody.
“‘That’s what he is,’ said a voice beside me--‘I was bound he would be.’
“’Twas the Skipper. From by the rail he crept up to me with a
knife-blade shining--a bait-knife it was, the same he’d had all night.
And then I knew what it meant--he had cut the line. I stood away from
him first, then I grabbed him and picked him up, and had a mind to
heave him over the rail, and then-- I don’t know why-- I didn’t. I dropped
him on the deck. ‘You’ll get yours before this night’s over,’ I said.
“‘A devil of a lot I care,’ he said.
“The rest of them, or at least those that warn’t too busy with the next
dory or trying to look out for themselves, called out to ask what was
wrong with the two of us. I didn’t answer, nor did the Skipper.
“Dan was the first to go that night. We kept trying to launch
dories--trying, but losing them--smashed to kindling-wood they were,
until the whole nine of them were gone. During that time four men were
washed over. One, with a line about him, made a desperate try, but was
hauled back dead, I mind. We laid his body on the house, and afterward,
when I went to look for it, it was gone--swept over. The seas were
wicked.
“The wind was blowing harder, the big combers were coming even higher,
and the gang began to be washed off her deck and lost one after the
other. We took to the rigging when we saw ’twarn’t any more use on deck.
And in the middle of it all, what d’y’ think the Skipper did? What d’y’
think he did, the man that was the cause of it all? Well, while his crew
were going--to heaven or hell, as it might be--washed over and lost, one
after the other--he goes below and has a mug-up for himself. Yes, sir,
goes into the forec’s’le and has a mug of coffee and a piece of pie.
Somebody that’d seen him going below called out to the rest of us. The
Lord’s truth, that. And the rest of us blasphemed to God, we were that
black with rage against him.
“Well, there was ten of us, I think, in the rigging, all hoping to be
able to last until daylight, when we thought we might be able to see
where we were. Hoping only--’twas not expecting--for ’twas getting
colder, with the spray beginning to freeze where it struck and making
hard work of holding on to the rigging. ’Twas wild--her sails still up,
with the reef points beating a devil’s tattoo where the canvas warn’t
tearing up and flying out like long-tailed, ghostly things in the
blackness. Lashed to the rigging we must’ve been for all of two hours, I
cal’late. Some began to take note of the numbness creeping over
them--one or two--the most discouraged. The warmer-blooded, or the
strongest, tried to keep up a cheering talk--tried to crack jokes and
one thing or another.
“Well, we had hope, some of us, of lasting through the night, when
crack! We knew what was coming then. I slipped the half-hitch that had
been holding me to the shrouds and climbed higher. I was ’most to the
mast-head, clear of the gaff, when over the side went her forem’st,
half a dozen men clinging to the forerigging, a-swaying and shaking; and
after it went the mainm’st, with four more, I think, in her rigging.