plenty of line to my hand, with a turn of it around the mast-head, and
with that I hauled myself back. I hung on to an arm of the cross-trees
for a while there before I started to work my way back along the mast
toward the vessel. I didn’t believe then I’d ever live to reach the
vessel. The sail, as I said, had been kept standing on her, and now it
was lying flat on the water, now sagging down with the weight of the
water over it, and now bellying into the air when a great sea would get
under it. I saw a shadow of a man--hanging on to a reef point he was--go
down with that sail once, then go up with it once, and then the sail
split under the weight of the sea, and I never saw him again. But I
heard him holler as he went. What he said I don’t know-- I had to keep on
crawling. The hoops of the sail were around the mast, of course, and I
used them and the bolt-rope of the fores’l where the sail was torn away
to pull myself along. And, mind you, I had to watch out for the forem’st
itself. It reared and tossed with one sea after another--me astride it
most of the time--like a man on horseback, though hard riding enough I
found it. The least little tap of that, and I knew where I’d be--bait
for the fishes that I’d baited for so often. Well, between the hoops and
the bolt-rope and the rigging I hauled myself along. And the way that
mast rolled! Forty times I swear I thought I was good as dead. But no.
And so I dragged myself along, watching out when I went upon the crests
and holding my breath when I was pulled down into the depths--hung on
desperately, mindful that the quietest knock of that big spar would end
me then and there, and mindful, too, that once my grip loosed I’d be
swallowed up in the roaring. Tired I was, aye, and weak, but I kept on
working toward the vessel’s hull always.
“Against the white sails and white foam I made out two others struggling
like myself. ‘That you, Bill?’ said one. ‘Yes--that you, Mike?’ I heard
from the other. I knew who they were then, and called out myself.
Between two seas one slipped from sight. The other still crept on. ‘That
you, Bill?’ I called out. ‘Bill’s gone,’ said the voice. ’Twas Mike
Cannon. ‘That’s tough,’ I said. ‘It is that,’ says Mike, ‘after the
fight he put up. But how’re you making out yourself?’ ‘Pretty good;
how’re you?’ I said. ‘Kind of tired. I doubt if I’ll hold out much
longer--something smashed inside my oilskins. My chest and a few ribs,
I think--and one arm, too. A wild night and tough going, Martin.’
“There was no more chance to talk. Two awful seas followed, and after
the second a quiet spell--the back suction. I looked around. I thought I
saw Mike, but warn’t sure. I guess now I didn’t, for another sea, the
biggest of all, tossed the whole lot of wreckage back against the hull
of the _Cromwell_. There was a grinding and a battering as the spars met
the hull. Myself up in the air, I looked down and found myself over her
deck, and then--my guardian angel it must’ve been that whispered me
then-- I let go. ‘God in heaven!’ I found myself saying, and fetched up
on her deck, the luckiest man in all the North Atlantic.
“Against what was left of the rail I found myself, close to the balance
of the forerigging. At first I warn’t sure just where I was at all, but
that’s where I found myself when my eyes were clear to see again. And
when my eyes were clear I looked around. The hull of her was heaving to
every sea, moving inshore maybe a foot at a time, with her bowsprit
pointing to a shadow of rock or cliff ahead. I looked around again, and,
so far as I could make out, everything--house, gurry-kids,
booby-hatches, everything--was gone off her. Only the two stumps of her
masts seemed to be left on deck. But, no--the forec’s’le hatch was
left. Her bow, being so much higher than her stern, saved that. I saw
that, and-- I don’t know why--toward the forec’s’le I crawled. The
hatches were closed. I slid them back. Down the steps I went, and when I
was below-- I don’t know why, either-- I thought of the razors in my bunk.
I might’s well get them couple of razors, I says to myself, and starts
for my bunk, which was in the peak--the same bunk, clear for’ard on the
starb’d side, that the Turkish-bath lad is in now. ’Twas like swimming
down there. The water by the butt of the forem’st, ’bout like where I’m
sitting here to-night, was over my waist. I couldn’t help thinking then
how deep ’twas, and getting deeper fast, with the seas pouring down the
companionway. I was thinking of that--thinking I ought to’ve closed the
hatches after me--and was looking back toward the steps, when I heard a
little noise, or thought I did, for the pounding of the seas overhead
was making an awful racket and I warn’t sure. But I heard it again, the
clinking of crockery like, and I looked around--back behind the
steps--at last, and there, behind the stove, leaning up against the
cook’s lockers-- I’d clean forgot him--was the Skipper. He was having
another mug-up for himself.
“‘God! ‘I said, ‘you here?’
“He half-turned, dropping a coffee mug he had in his hand. Then taking
a second look: ‘Man, but I thought it was the ghost of Dan Spring. But
you two look something alike. Come to think, you’re cousins, ain’t you?
Man, if you could only see yourself! Blood, blood, and bruises--and your
eyes, man--your eyes! But have a mug of coffee. Warn’t it lucky? here’s
the coffee-boiler hove up here on the lockers, and some coffee still
left in it--and hot. And there’s a pie in the grub locker--on the top
shelf. If it’d been on the bottom shelf it’d be all wet and floating
around. Ain’t that luck? And look here--a good half pint of whiskey left
yet! It’s been an awful night, ain’t it? What d’y’ say?”
“He held the bottle toward me. I took it from him and smashed it on the
stove. And then I gave him a bit of my mind. ‘And so, George Hoodley,
you’re so afraid, after all, to go to your death that you must go drunk,
hah? The soul that the Lord gave you--that soul is going from a drunken
body straight to the God that’s going to judge you. And how’ll you be
judged, d’y’ think, for this night’s work, George Hoodley? Could you
listen to what was said on deck to-night and not die of fright at what
you’ve done? Did you hear Sam Catiss? “I’m not afraid to go, if go I
must,” says Sam, “but, Lord, there’s one or two things I wish I hadn’t
done,” says Sam. You heard him--we all
[Illustration: He was having another mug-up for himself.]
heard him--and then he was swept over. And but for you, George Hoodley,
maybe he’d have had time to make his peace before he went. And up in the
rigging--you warn’t there, I know--even you, if you’d heard what Peter
Harkins said when we all knew her spars were going--when Peter heard the
first crack and knew what it meant; and knowing he was going, with his
last free breath he said things of you that if I had an enemy I wouldn’t
want him to hear--not if I hated him bad enough to want to see him in
the bottom of the deepest, hottest hold of hell----’
“‘Hell!’ he breaks in--‘there ain’t no hell--nor heaven, nor God, nor
anything.’
“‘God forgive you for that! You----’
“‘God forgive me? Martin, you talk like an old woman. I tell you, since
I was no higher than one of my jack-boots I’ve been listening to talk of
hell and heaven--mostly hell, though--and I used to believe it one time.
Nobody believed it any more than I did till when--till I began to see
that the very people that was talking it so hard warn’t governed by what
they said. What they wanted was everybody else to be governed by what
they preached. I tell you I know. I’ve seen it in my own people-- I know
them better than you do. It’s years now-- I was one of the fools, one
that never let anybody, I thought, get the best of me at anything.
You’re one--though you’re a good man in your fool way, Martin. I had no
grudge against you, not even when I tried to lose you in the dory. But I
had to get rid of your dory-mate.’
“‘Get rid of Dan? And why Dan?’
“‘Why? There again! You mean to tell me you don’t know?... I looked
around before I went out this trip. Nobody’d tell me, but I knew his
first name was Dan-- Dan something. One day, when the crew was out
hauling the trawls, I rummaged his bunk and found part of a letter in my
wife’s writing under his mattress. That was the same day I ran over Dan
and you in the dory. ’Twas for that chance I’d been pretending my ankle
warn’t better. Weak ankle, bah!’ He drove the bad foot against the stove
and crushed in the oven door. ‘Anything weak about that foot!--bah!
“Dear Dan,” the note read-- I know my wife’s handwriting, and his name’s
Dan.’
“‘Wait a bit--wait a bit. How do you know it was this Dan? Are there no
other Dans in Gloucester?’
“‘How do I know? And it in his bunk--under the mattress in his bunk.’
“‘That’s all right. And whose bunk was it before Dan Spring got it?
Another Dan’s, warn’t it-- Dan Powell’s? And didn’t he leave the
mattress behind him when he left this vessel, trip before last? Didn’t
he? And warn’t Dan Powell just the kind of a man that’d do a thing like
that, and not Dan Spring, my own cousin? And so that’s the bottom of it?
Nineteen souls gone because you thought--just thought only--that one of
them was fooling you. And for a woman that warn’t worth Dan Spring’s
little finger. That’s the truth, George Hoodley. But if you’d been
brought up different, if you’d studied to understand the good side of
people, instead of the other side, and how to get the best of them and
to make money out of them and save it, you both might’ve come safe out
of it. But you warn’t that kind. ’Twarn’t in your blood, nor in none of
your people. Wrong’s wrong-- I got nothing to say about that--but human
nature’s human nature. Why should you expect, George Hoodley, to get the
fine things in life? Why warn’t you content with money? You’d earned
that. What had you to offer a handsome young woman that liked a good
time? What had you, even supposing she was the kind you could
trust--anything that women love? Not a blessed thing. You’ve spent your
life with about one idea in your head, and that idea had nothing to do
with being pleasant or kind to others, or good to anybody but yourself.
Miles away from the kind of thing that women love were you all the time.
You come to nigh fifty year of age--you, with your hard face and hard
mouth, and eyes like-- God! like a dead fish’s eyes to-night, no
less--don’t you know that whoever was going to marry you warn’t going to
for love? You had a right to marry some lean old sour-mouthed spinster
with a little money like yourself. What made you think that beauty and
love was for you? But even in marrying you thought to make a good
bargain--and got fooled. And by the daughter of a man of your own kind,
too. D’y’ s’pose her father didn’t know? God help you, George Hoodley,
’twas him hooked you--’twas him made the good bargain, not you. Why,
before ever you married her ’twas common talk she warn’t the girl for
any man to trust. But what good is it to talk of that now? Nineteen men
gone, for I don’t count you--you’re no man. You’re a-- But I won’t say
it. Lord, but I’m tempted to choke you where you stand. Only when I
think of those fine men--and poor Dan Spring----”
“‘Dan Spring? Don’t tell me ’twarn’t Dan Spring, the----’
“‘Hold up,’ I says to that--‘hold up, or close as we both are to death
now and soon to go, I’ll choke you where you stand-- I’ll send you to
your God, or to the devil, with the print of my fingers around your
turkey gobbler’s throat, if you say aught of Dan. Dan was my own kind
and I knew him. Whatever faults he had--and maybe he had some--it warn’t
in the heart of Dan Spring to undervalue good women, or to mix with
married women of any kind, let alone the wife of a man he was to go
ship-mate with. No, sir, not if he didn’t have a wife and children of
his own--wife and children that’ll have to suffer all their lives
because of you, and never know what brought it all about. But years from
now they’ll still be without food and clothing because of you. When I
think of it, George Hoodley, I misdoubt they’d count it against me in
the other world, where we’ll both be soon with the others, if I was to
take you by the throat and wind my fingers around your windpipe, and
choke and choke and squeeze and squeeze you till your tongue came out
and your eyes popped, and your face got blue and then black, and you----’
“He drew back against the lockers and put his hands before his face.
‘Martin, Martin, don’t!’ he said; for, in truth, I all but had hold of
him in spite of myself.
“‘I’m not going to,’ I said. ‘I have enough already to account for.
There’s two or three things I wish I hadn’t done, and maybe if I sent
you to death a few minutes sooner than you’re going, I’d be sorry for
it, too, later on. I’m going on deck now. This vessel won’t last much
longer. She’s breaking as it is--and up to our chests in water here
now.’
“Well, all the time we were below the big seas never let up. Some of her
outside planks were working loose from their frames when I left him to
go on deck again. Her deck planking, too, was coming apart. I almost
fell into her hold when I was coming out of the forec’s’le. I didn’t
know what to do quite, but climbed up on toward her bow at last, hanging
on where I could, dodging seas and the loose bits of wreck they were
carrying with them. At the knight-heads I looked around and ahead.
Astern and to either side ’twas nothing but rocks and the white sea
beating over them. Ahead I could make out a wall of rock-- I guessed
where I was--to the west’ard of Canso, off Whitehead. I knew that coast,
and a bad coast it was. Up on the bowsprit, crawling out with the help
of the footropes and the stops hanging down and the wreck of the jib and
stays, I began to think I had a chance--if I could only live till the
daylight that was coming on. I climbed farther out. Hard work it was,
and I soon cast off my boots. At the end of the bowsprit I got a better
look. A dozen feet away was the ledge with a chance for a footing. If a
man could jump that--but what man could, from a vessel’s bowsprit? But
now and then, perhaps every minute or so, the bowsprit, under a more
than average big sea, lifted and sagged a little nearer the cliff. At
the right time a man might make the leap, I thought. But if he missed? I
looked down with the thought and saw nothing but rocks and a white
boiling below. ‘If you miss, Martin,’ I said to myself, ‘maybe you’ll
live five seconds, maybe ten--but more likely maybe you’d keep clear of
being mashed to jelly for just about a wink of your eye.’ And ’twas
enough to make a man wink his eyes just to look at the white boiling
hell beneath. I cast off my oilskin jacket while I was thinking of it,
and then my oil pants. After that went my jersey, flannel shirt, and
trousers. I meant to have a good try at it, anyway.
“Looking back before I should leap, who did I see but the Skipper. In
the noise of the sea I had not heard him. He, too, had cast off his
boots and was even then unbuttoning his oilskins. He must’ve known I was
watching him, for he said, ‘Don’t throw me off, Martin--don’t!’
“‘Who’s going to?’ I asked.
“‘That’s right--don’t. Give me a chance now, Martin.’
“‘Like you gave your crew?’
“‘Oh, don’t, Martin--don’t! I was crazy. All that I said about not
believing in God and hell, I didn’t mean that. I’m afraid of
it--afraid. I was always afraid of it, but never like now, Martin--never
so afraid of the burning pit as now--never, never. Help me up,
Martin-- I’m weak-- I can hardly stand. Help me, won’t you, Martin? You’re
twice the man I am--no man ever sailed with me had your strength,
Martin. Help me, won’t you, Martin?’
“I lifted him up, and the two of us clung to the end of the bowsprit. He
looked weak as water then, and I pitied him, and pitying him I pointed
out what chance we had. ‘There’s the cliff, and there’s what’s below.
It’s one chance in ten to a man that can leap well.’
“‘I never could leap well, Martin.’
“‘No, you couldn’t--nor do anything much that other boys could do--no
money in leaping, I s’pose. But there it is--and you c’n have your
choice. Will you jump first, or last?’
“‘You go first, Martin. If you make it, maybe you c’n help me--maybe
pass me a bit of line or something. See, I’ve got a bit of line I took
along. You go first, Martin--you go first. It’s an awful jump to take,
though.’
“‘There’s men of your crew took more awful jumps to-night, George
Hoodley. They jumped from this world to the other when the spars went.
Well, I’m going. Give me room to swing my arms. Now, if I miss,
good-by. If we both miss, then I s’pose we’ll be standing up and giving
account together in a few minutes. I’ve got enough on my conscience, but
I’m glad I’m not you. Stand clear of me now--when she lifts, I’m going.’
“The _Cromwell_ lifted. Her bowsprit rose up and up till the end of it
was higher than the ledge in the wall of rock before us. I waited till
the last little second--till the bowsprit swayed in toward the cliff,
and then, while it balanced there and before it started to settle again,
knowing, as you all know, the power that’s in the uplift of a sea, I
gathered myself and jumped. And ’twas a good leap. I didn’t think I
could do it, cold and numb as I’d been feeling. A good leap, yes. And
’twas the wet, slippery shelf of rock I landed on; but I went a yard
clear, and even when I slipped a little I checked myself before I
slipped back to the edge, and was safe. Well, I lay there till I felt my
nerve steady again, then stood up and called for the line from the
Skipper.
“‘Now, when you jump,’ I says, ‘I’ll get what brace I can here, so if
you slip on the edge same’s I did there’ll be a chance to save you. But
mind you, George Hoodley, if I find I can’t hold you up--if it’s to be
your life or mine--it’s you that’s got to go. Mind that. And
hurry--throw it quick, or I’ll cast off the line altogether. That
bowsprit won’t be there in a few minutes, maybe. Hurry up!’
“‘But you’ll hang on, won’t you, Martin? You’ve got the strength, if you
want to use it.’
“‘Jump, man, jump afore you lose your nerve entirely,’ I hollers.
“He threw the line to me, after taking one end of it around his waist.
The other end I took around my waist, my end half hitched so I could
slip it in a hurry. I warn’t throwing my life away for him, if I knew
it.
“Well, he jumped at last. And the bowsprit rose full as high and gave
him full as good a chance as I’d got. But even so he fell a little
short. His feet only caught the edge of the shelf. He staggered, and
seeing how it was, I braced my feet well as I could and hauled. He came
in, sagged away, I bracing my feet--they were slipping. In a crack in
the rock of the ledge I dug the fingers of one hand, the other hand to
the line, and hung on. We were gaining; he was fairly on his feet, and I
felt the strain easing, when a sea that swept up the side of the cliff
like a tidal wave took him clear of everything. It would have swept me,
too, but I gripped where I could get a hold, with the fingers of my one
loose hand in the crack in the rocks, and hung on there--one hand to
the crack and the other to the line--hung on so, supporting the weight
of myself and the Skipper, until I felt my muscles getting hot and heavy
and my breath coming fast. He was floundering somewhere on the edge of
the cliff. I hollered to him, though feeling almost certain he was
battered to pieces by then--‘How is it with you, George--how is it,
man?’ but there was no answer. Again I hollered, and again no answer.
And then, when I was satisfied that it was only the last ounce of
strength I had left, I called out, ‘Help yourself, George--why don’t you
help yourself?’ No answer. Once more I called, and once more getting no
answer, I knew then he must’ve been beaten to death against the rocks,
and that ’twas his dead weight was hanging to me. And yet I called once
more to make sure. But still getting no answer, ‘The Lord have mercy on
your soul, George Hoodley,’ I said, and let slip the line.”
* * * * *
Toward the end of Martin’s story it had become very quiet in the
forec’s’le. Nobody said anything, neither broke in with a question nor
offered any comment, until after a long silence, and then not until
after Martin himself had repeated absently, as if to himself, and after
a long indrawn breath, “And then I let slip the line.” Only then did he
look around and seem to realize that he was not on the ledge off
Whitehead.
“And after you cast off the line, what then, Martin?”
“Well,” resumed Martin, “the weight being gone made a great difference
to me, but it was quite a while before I could stand on my feet. Even
then I didn’t have the courage to look down right away, but climbing to
one side to the very top of the cliff, I laid flat on my stomach and
looked over the edge. ’Twas good light then, and I could see the body of
George Hoodley below--tossing about like an eggshell, as if ’twas no
more than sea-weed in a sea-way. And that was the end of it. Even if he
warn’t dead at the time--even if he warn’t dead when I let go the line
and it had to be me or him, it ought to’ve been him. If it was a friend,
now--if it was Dan, say-- I don’t know what I would do. I hope I’d have
the strength not to cast loose the line.”
It was very quiet again. The boot-heels of the new watch on deck, the
rasping of the booms as the vessel jibed, the whistle of the rising
gale, the slap of the sea outside them, the Skipper’s voice on deck, the
atmosphere, stirred Martin again. “’Twas a night like this we swung the
_Cromwell_ off to the west’ard. I shouldn’t wonder but what he’d be
takin’ the mains’l off her soon, won’t he?”--this to the old watch, who
had just come down the companion-way and was wringing his mitts out by
the stove.
“The mains’l, Martin?” repeated the watch in surprise. “Why, the
mains’l’s been off her for hours--she’s under a trys’l and jumbo.”
“The mains’l, Martin,” explained one, “was taken off her just after you
and Johnnie were taken aboard. You were pretty tired and didn’t notice,
maybe, at the time.”
“Lord, I must’ve been tired--not to know it when the mains’l’s taken off
a vessel I’m in. There was never a minute the night the _Cromwell_ was
lost that I was tired as that. No, sir, not even when I laid on the
cliff in the morning and looked down for George Hoodley’s body.”
“Speakin’ of that, Martin, didn’t some of the bodies come ashore?” This
from the cook, who incidentally, feeling a little less hurried, was
putting a few shovels of coal into the stove before he should turn in
for the night.
“There were two bodies came ashore,” resumed Martin. “And that was a sad
thing, too. I was going up to see if I couldn’t get some clothes to hide
my nakedness, and maybe a pair of boots and a bite to eat and a bit of
fire to warm up by somewhere, when I met a man. ’Twas good light by
then. He was coming down a bit of beach behind the cliff. I told him my
vessel had been wrecked, and I was all that was left of the crew. And he
fixed me up as well as he could and came back with me to the beach, and
there’s where the sad part came in. One of the _Cromwell’s_ crew, Angus
MacPherson, had been fishing out of Gloucester twelve years, and every
fall he said he was going home to see the old people. I knew that as
well as I knew that he’d been sending money home regularly to the old
people. If it hadn’t been for Angus they’d’ve had a hard time of it, I
cal’late, those twelve years. Well, he never went home, as he said; but
here was the very place Angus came from, and this was the way he came
home at last. That same afternoon I helped to bury him and to carry his
old mother away from the grave when she couldn’t carry herself. God help
us, but there’s hard spots in life, ain’t there?
“The other body that came up was the Skipper’s. And him I went to
Gloucester with. And maybe there’d be no more to that, but getting into
the Gloucester station, just as the train hauled up, who should happen
to be at the station but the Skipper’s wife--his widow, then, of course.
She knew well enough what had happened--everybody in Gloucester
knew--the papers full of it the day before; but she didn’t know that I,
the one man saved from the wreck, was on the train. Nobody knew. I
didn’t send any word ahead. It was only three days since the vessel was
lost, but was she crying her eyes out? Was she?--the--the-- But I won’t
say it.
“I goes up to her. ‘Mrs. Hoodley,’ says I, ‘I’ve brought home your
husband’s body for burial.’