salvage. And now I’ll put her alongside, Sammie, and we’ll try your
dory-taykle scheme.”
When Crump had his tackles rigged he called out: “I’ll hoist the men up
and let ’em drop aboard. Only you run an end of a halyard from the bark,
Sammie, to haul ’em well inboard.”
“And tell ’em what I said about not missing, Skipper.”
“I’ll give ’em written instructions,” said Crump to that.
“Just like putting fish out on the dock, ain’t it?” hallooed the first
man, while he was still in the air. Down he came--plump! and his teeth
rattled when he hit the upheaving deck.
“Hurry up, a few more of you, and help to put out the fire here--this no
place for jokes.”
When he had seven men, Sam waved an arm to Crump. “No more, no more,
Skipper.”
“But me, Skipper, me!” appealed every individual one of those left
behind.
“No.”
Despite that, “Just me!” a half dozen men with uplifted arms implored
the Skipper. “Just me, Skipper, just me!” Most persistent of all was
young Gillis. “Just me, and make a good prize crew. That’ll be eight men
and myself--nine men all told. Luck in odd numbers. Besides, I’m Sam’s
watch-mate, and Sam said he never had a watch-mate like me.”
“H’m-- I cal’late that’s right. Just you, then, but hurry.”
Gillis hurried, so much so that instead of dropping aboard the bark he
fell into the sea between the bark and the schooner.
He came spluttering to the top. “Heave me a line, somebody!” A dozen
lines were hove at him and two draw buckets; one, hitting him on the
head, all but drove him under again.
“Lord, don’t kill me!”
“There’s a fine waste of draw buckets,” commented one of the prize crew
ere they had him safe on the bark.
“Oh, but that fire feels good!” chattered Gillis, and took station by
the main hatch, where he might heave buckets of water on the fire
without removing too far from the heat of it.
It took them the better part of two hours to master the fire. “To the
pumps!” said Sam then, and, double-manned by fresh vigorous men, the
pumps soon began to lessen the deluge in the hold.
“And now make sail, Sam,” called Crump from the _Buccaneer_.
“Aye. Who’s ever been square-riggin’?” asked Sam of his prize crew then.
Two men answered to that.
“You’ll be captain of one watch, and you of the other. That’s for
knowin’ about a square-rigger. And now let’s make sail.”
They could not make sail very well, however, because there was not sail
enough to make--that is, to set sail as it should be set on a
square-rigger. But there was enough for half-sails, and they made
half-sails for her accordingly.
“Now she’s a fore-and-after, isn’t she?” commented Sam. “All right,
now--we can do somethin’ with her now--hah, what?”
“Yes, and we won’t need any captains of watches in her, will we, Sam?”
queried Gillis, thereby betraying a slight jealousy of the superior
ranks.
“That’s so--we won’t, will we? You two square-riggers, you Charlie and
you Dinnie, you’ll be just ordinary hands again.”
“Well, well, ordinary hands ain’t bad--there’ll be good prize money out
of this, Sam.”
“If we keep her afloat there’ll be.”
“Oh, we’ll keep her afloat, Sam.”
“It’s good you think so. But to the wheel now. Who’s first watch?”
“O Sam”-- Gillis was peering into the binnacle--“her compass is busted!”
Sam ran aft to see for himself. “So it is. Man, but they’ve had crazy
doin’s aboard this one.”
“Aye, and her rudder’s been pounded off,” came from another.
“No compass and no rudder, hah? Wouldn’t that jolt you, though? Well--”
Sam looked around. “O Skipper,” he hailed to his vessel, “you’ll have to
come under our stern and make the _Buccaneer_ act as a rudder for this
one.”
“It’s easy done,” said Crump, and passed up the lines to hold the
_Buccaneer_ in proper fashion to the bark.
With everything fast and taut and the bark beginning to show signs of
life, the _Ice King_ ranged alongside the _Buccaneer_.
Dixey’s head was poked out the pilot-house. “I say, Captain,” he called,
“you’ll never be able to beat home with her. What d’y’ say if you take
our line and we tow you both to Boston--or Gloucester? It’s out of the
question you gettin’ her home under sail. You keep your gang aboard to
keep her pumped out, and I’ll tow her and we’ll split the salvage. What
d’y’ say? You’ll never see home and you hang on to her.”
“And you the man wouldn’t lend us your old boat?” called back Crump.
“That’s all right, Captain. Business is business. Better take my line.
You’ll never see home and you hang on to her that way.”
Sam had to put in a word here. “Don’t you take any old line from him,
Skipper. Fine days when steamboat men c’n tell us our business!”
“No fear of me, Sam. Sheer off, you,” and Crump waved the tug
contemptuously away.
With a final word from the pilot-house, “Well, don’t blame me if you
lose your prize and your men both,” the big sea tug moved toward the
northwest, where soon she was lost in the haze.
VI
With the bark under weigh, Sam Leary organized his crew. Four men to the
pumps and four men to chop ice, and himself everywhere--alow and aloft,
pumping water, chopping ice, and back to the stern to advise with Crump
Taylor as to the course.
“How’s she doin’?” Sam would call.
“Fine! fine! Go on--all right. I think she’s liftin’ a mite.”
“Think so?” and Sam, much cheered, would dash around deck again.
The ice was a toilsome proposition. It made about as fast as they could
clear it. “I see them harvesting ice on the Kennebec one winter,” said
young Gillis, by way of drawing an extra breath--“horses and
ice-cutters--and that’s what we ought to have here.”
“I suppose so,” retorted Sam, “and wagons to carry it off, and ice-boats
sailin’ around with cushions and young ladies in furs in ’em, and a
little automobile engine to work the pumps, so all you’d have to do
would be to stand watch once in a while and go below and mug up whenever
you felt like it.”
“There,” exclaimed Gillis, “I knew there was something I forgot! What we
goin’ to do about eatin’? There’s no grub aboard this one.”
“None at all? How d’y’ know?”
“Oh, I been below.”
“Trust you. At eatin’ or watchin’ out for seas you’re a certificated
master. ‘Here’s one I _think_ is comin’ aboard,’ he says the other day,
and she high as Mount Shasta ’most, and comin’ like a railroad train.
And so no grub, eh? Well, the Skipper’ll have to manage some way to
heave some aboard. But quit your conversational chattin’ now and keep
pumpin’--and you others go to choppin’. Slack up, and the first thing
you know this one’ll go down--plumb! like a rock--and then where’ll we
be?”
“And our salvage, Sam--where’d that be, too, hah?”
“That’s so, our salvage. And ’tisn’t only salvage, but we want to show
that tug-boat crowd, and those bark people that cast her off, that we
c’n get her home. But how’s the pumps? Three thousand strokes yet? Isn’t
that the devil, though? And ice enough aboard yet to make a winter’s
crop for one of them Boston companies with the fleet of yellow wagons,
yes. But keep to it, fellows, and by’n’by we’ll see about grub.”
Later, Sam paid out a long line, which Crump took aboard the
_Buccaneer_ and attached to a great hunk of beef, wrapped in four
thicknesses of oilskins, and a can of hot coffee, tightly stoppered. The
beef reached the bark somewhat cooled, but in bulk entire. As to the
can, the stopper was buffeted out of that, and only salt water was there
when Sam hauled it in.
“Now what d’y’ think of that, Skipper?”
“That’s the devil, ain’t it? But better luck next time.”
“Lord, I hope so!”
All that night the prize crew labored. The sails needed but small
attention. Hauling in or paying out occasionally sufficed for them, she
being on the one tack all night; but the hull of the bark setting so low
made the trouble. The seas broke almost continuously over her, and added
to that were the icy decks, with footing so uncertain that at any moment
a man was likely to be picked up and hurled into the roaring black void.
When two or three men had been hove into the lee scuppers, and from
there miraculously rescued, Sam saw to it that thereafter every man
worked with a life-line about him.
Sam himself was fettered by no lashings. His work called for too
extensive an activity. He had to be not only aft, but forward, and aloft
as well as below. They could hear him moving in the blackness, grabbing
sheets or halyards, fife-rail or rigging, as he stumbled from one place
to another. Regularly did he disperse words of cheer. “We’ll get home
yet, fellows, and fool ’em all--and then! For you home-bound craft, you
that got families, there’s the wife who’ll have new dresses and the
children copper-toed boots, and a carriage for the baby, with springs in
it. Man, but the time you’ll all have! And the time _we’ll_ have, we
privateers--hah, Gillis?”
“M-m!” murmured Gillis from the region of the port pump-brake, and
forced new energy into arms that long ago he had thought were beyond
revival.
Morning came, and with it an increase of wind and cold. Crump, from the
end of the _Buccaneer’s_ bowsprit, where he managed to hang by the aid
of the jib-stay, hailed Sam and offered to put on fresh men.
“No,” said Sam, “we’ll stick it out a while longer.”
“But by’n’by it’ll be too rough, Sammie, and we won’t be able to take
you off.”
“Oh, well then, no harm--we’ll stick it out some way.”
“All right, have your way,” and Crump went back to the deck of his
vessel.
That afternoon it began to look bad for the bark and the men aboard
her. It was her captain, refreshed from a twenty-four hours’ sleep
below, who thoughtlessly passed his opinion when he, the first of his
crew to revive, poked his head above the companion-way and was
astonished by the sight of the ship that he thought he had scuttled.
“What--she on top of the water yet!” From the bark his eyes roved to the
derailed ice-covered deck of the little _Buccaneer_, then up to Sam and
his toiling gang again. “Well, they are damn fools, ain’t they, to think
they’ll ever get her home?”
He said that to Crump, who answered softly: “Now, Captain, I don’t want
to jar your feelings any, but if you don’t do one of two things--go
below and stay there, or draw the hatch over your face if you stay up
here--then I’m afeared I’ll have to pick you up and tuck you away under
the run or somewhere else where you can’t be heard for a while. Damn
fools, eh?” snorted Crump, and in sheer derision of some people’s
judgment spat several fathoms to leeward.
It turned out as Crump had predicted in the morning--still heavier
weather for that afternoon and night. Just when Sam was demonstrating
with a long pole that there was at least a foot less water in her hold,
the wind and sea began to make. Crump offered to attempt to put fresh
men aboard, but Sam waved him off. “No use, Skipper, runnin’ extra risk
for the gang--you’d lose some of ’em. We’ll stick it out--we’ll make out
some way.”
Throughout that night the men on the bark toiled terribly. Chop ice and
man pumps it was, with not even time to crack a joke or indulge in
occasional cheering reminiscence. There was not time during most of the
night even to carry to the rail and throw to leeward the chopped ice. So
they cut it into large blocks and piled them up two or three tiers high
and there allowed them to stay until by and by, the bark heaving down
sufficiently, away they went in a grand slide overboard. “Everybody
sashay,” Sam would cry then, and waft them overboard with graceful arms.
And yet, exhausting as was the ice-chopping, the pumping was even more
so. It was so terribly monotonous to men accustomed to lively action. No
variety to pumping water out of a ship’s hold; never a chance to put in
a fancy stroke or shift hands, as in ice-chopping. Up and down--always
that--up and down; and when a ship is making as fast as she is
lightened, never an inch of encouragement from the sounding pole. Sam
had to cut down the spells from an hour to half an hour, and finally to
fifteen minutes, so terribly wearing did the grind become to the
exhausted men.
Sam himself had no exuberant vitality after that second night; but the
unobtrusive will was inflexible as ever, and he had ever an eye for
those on the _Buccaneer_. “Skipper, ain’t she been strainin’ through the
night?”
“A little bit, Sammie, a little bit.”
“More than a little, Skipper--there’s been too much pumpin’ aboard you,
too, for a _little_ strainin’. How many strokes?”
“Oh, maybe two thousand through the night.”
“I thought about that. And now let me tell you something, Skipper--that
kind of work won’t do your vessel any partic’lar good. It’s a terrible
strain. I know, I know--you can’t tell me a little vessel like the
_Buccaneer_ can be a rudder to a big logey rolling ship of this one’s
size and not show signs of it. I misdoubt you’ll be able to hang on much
longer.”
“Much longer? Let me tell you, boy, we’ll hang on till you or me goes
under.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Why won’t we? Who’ll stop?”
“I will. See here.” Sam, balanced on the taffrail of the bark, poised a
sharp-edged axe above the lines that held the _Buccaneer_ astern. “One
slash here, and one slash there, and you’re adrift.”
“You just try it--just let me see you try it, Sam Leary!” Crump in his
wrath shook his fist at Sam, and followed that by furious orders to the
_Buccaneer’s_ crew. But that fit over, he shook his head. “I misdoubt
that bark’ll live the night out. Blast her, blast her, I wish we’d never
set eyes on her! What’s millions, let alone a few thousand dollars, to
men’s lives--and men that’s sailed with you, and summer breeze or winter
blow was always there when you wanted ’em? Damn you, Sam Leary, for an
obstinate mule, but if ever I see you aboard this vessel of mine again
you won’t leave it in a hurry again to go aboard any old sinkin’ hulk
for prize money!”
And still the wind and sea increased; and just before dark Sam appeared
at the stern of the bark with the sharp axe in his hand. “O Skipper,
Skipper!” he called.
“Aye, Sammie.”
“Time to part company.”
“No, no, Sammie--not yet awhile.”
“Yes, now’s the time. There’s nine of us here and twenty-seven of you
there. You lay tied to this one, and if we go down suddenly in the
night, down you go, too.”
“No, no, Sammie. I’ll have two men with axes to the lines. I’ll cut, if
I see you goin’--as sure as God’s above me, I’ll cut.”
“‘Twon’t do, Skipper. We could roll under in
[Illustration: “You just try it--just let me see you try it, Sam
Leary.”]
the dark afore you’d know it and you’d get whirled in----”
“And even so, Sammie--do you believe she’d draw us under?”
“Wouldn’t she? If you didn’t cut quick enough, say. And if she didn’t,
you’d be caught aback, and in this breeze you’d capsize in a wink. No,
’twon’t do, Skipper. If we’ve got to go, we got to go, and you goin’
with us won’t help. And there’s nine of us and twenty-seven of you.” He
looked all about him then--ahead, abeam, aloft, and once more astern at
Crump. “So long, fellows, if we’re not here in the mornin’.” Two sharp
slashes and the line parted; wide apart fell the big bark and the little
schooner.
Crump, immediately he felt himself free, laid the _Buccaneer_ alongside
as near the bark as he dared, and he could dare a great deal.
“Keep off!” called Sam.
“No more than she is now, Sam. And if ever she should go down, tell the
fellows to lash themselves to something or other that’ll float high, and
we’ll be right there and maybe pick some of you up----”
Sam waved, the last time they were able to see so much as a hand waved
ere black night rolled down on them.
From the little schooner all hands watched the night out for that spot
in the darkness where they conceived the bark to be--that is, those that
had time to spare from their work. Occasionally they could catch from
her deck a call that they knew to be the voice of Sam with his word of
cheer. They saw the attempts to light torches on her, the flash and
flare, and then the almost immediate dousing when the sea washed aboard.
But fortune attends the brave. She was there in the morning, rolling
worse than ever and lower in the water, but still afloat.
“Now, ain’t that amazin’?” demanded Crump of one after another of his
crew. “Ain’t it amazin’?” he demanded of the captain of the bark.
That intriguing party could only shake his head at the miracle of it.
“Still afloat! And when I left her I give her about an hour. I set her
afire myself with my own hand,” he explained, “so nobody’d be misled
into tryin’ to save her. ‘No salvage on _her_,’ I said. ‘Another hour
and she’ll be burned to the water’s edge, and then she’ll sink and
trouble nobody no more,’ I said. And a good job I thought it was, she
was that dangerous-lookin’. And if I’d never set a match to her, she was
leakin’ that bad, and that low in the water! And there she is still
afloat! Well, that’s past me.”
That afternoon, the weather moderating, Crump sailed close up and once
more offered to try to take off the worn-out gang of the now wildly
sailing bark and put his own fresher men aboard.
“What!” exclaimed Sam--“leave her, and after we got her this far? Why
we’re gettin’ to love the old hulk. Let’s finish the job, Skipper, so
long’s we started it. Another day and we’ll be home.”
“Sam Leary, am I skipper, or you?”
“Why, of course you’re skipper, and if you order it--_order_ it,
Skipper--we got to obey.”
“Well, come aboard here.”
“How?”
“Rig up that taykle--the same that hoisted your gang aboard.”
“That taykle parted last night, Skipper, and it can’t be rigged.” If one
can imagine an impudent, unshaven, hollow-eyed man in iced-up boots,
beard, and oilskins, then it is possible to picture Sam Leary as he
leaned against the mizzen-rigging of the wallowing derelict and smiled
sweetly at his skipper. And imagine Sam Leary’s skipper, after a lot of
spluttering, smiling back, and even at last admitting himself beaten.
“All right, go ahead. There’s no gettin’ past you, Sam Leary. Finish
your cruise in her.”
And Sam Leary did finish his cruise in her. Three days later, such
weary, weary men-- But let that pass. Three days later--and in broad
daylight it happened, so that their friends at home might share in the
full glory of their achievement--they sailed, the bark leading and the
little fisherman by way of a rudder astern, into the harbor of
Gloucester, where they fancy they know a seaman when they see one.
VII
Of the sequence of events that threw that valuable prize into their
hands the crew of the _Buccaneer_ were not told at that time; but,
later, young Gillis, having journeyed to Boston--there in emulation of
more noted fishermen the more splendidly to disburse his
prize-money--had come back minus his roll, but fat with information.
“And there I was, Skipper, spending my money like a--like a----”
“--a drunken fisherman.”
“No, that’s not how I was goin’ to put it, Skipper. But, anyway, there I
was dispensin’ refreshment like a gentleman to a few friends I’d met,
when along comes the skipper of the tugboat that wanted us to take his
line and we wouldn’t, you mind. And he looks at me hard, and at last
asks me was I _really_ one of that gang o’ fishermen that brought the
mahogany bark back to port. And I says, ‘Why ain’t I, _really_?’ ‘Well,’
he says, ‘you look so diff’rent dressed up.’ And I said that naturally a
man that’d been bangin’ around on the Banks for five or six weeks would
look handsome in oilskins and a gale of wind. That kind o’ struck him
amidships, I guess, for he said he didn’t mean anything by that, and
goes on to tell me how he figured it cost him twelve hundred dollars
chasin’ up that bark--in tows he missed that week; and his friend
here--he introduced the other steamboat man--’d got a thousand dollars
just for doin’ nothin’ but layin’ under the lee of the Cape for three
days while it blew, and then for joggin’ around two days off the cape
after it moderated. ‘Yes, and the man that paid me is down the wharf
now,’ goes on the second steamboat man, ‘and I think he’d like to meet
some of your crowd.’ And down the dock we went, and there he was. I
forget what he looked like in the face, but he had the swellest fur
coat, big enough to ’most make a mains’l for the _Buccaneer_ and fur
nigh long enough for reef-points on that same mains’l, and he shakes
hands with me and says he didn’t know whether to be sore or not. And
just then Sam come bowlin’ along, and he says, ‘This must be one of your
crowd, too?’ ‘_One!_’ I says--‘one! Why, he had charge!’ and just then
the first steamboat man he grabs Sam and says, ‘Well, I’ll be
damned--why, you’re the fellow made the main-boom leap!’ ‘What!’ says
fur coat, and has a good look at Sam. ‘Sure enough,’ he goes on, ‘you’re
the kind of men I ought to have hired to salve the bark.’ ‘Hired? what
d’y’ mean?’ says Sam. ‘Oh, nothing,’ says fur coat to that; ‘but I’m
done with the salvage business. Let’s have a drink,’ and then they came
so fast, reg’lar ring-a-ring-a-rounder fashion, that----”
“That the next thing you knowed you had an awful headache, and not
enough money to pay for your ticket back to Gloucester.”
“Didn’t I, though! Trust me--me, Wise Aleck, goin’ to Boston ’thout a
return ticket. But Sam didn’t.”
“No, trust Sam to go the whole hog. How much does he want?”
“Twenty, or twenty-five, he thought would do.”
“Only twenty-five, hah? Mod’rate, ain’t he? Well, give me his address
and I’ll telegraph it to him. And how much do you want for yourself?”
“Oh, about fifteen cents for a drink’ll do me, unless----”
“Unless what?”
“‘Less you’d lend me ten on the next trip.”
“No, I won’t lend you ten on the next trip. I’ll _give_ you ten dollars,
if that’ll do you.”
“And why not lend me the ten on the next trip, Skipper?”
“Because there ain’t goin’ to be no next trip this winter. I’m
cal’latin’ to stay ashore a while. This salvage business is good enough
for me this winter. A couple of months ashore won’t hurt any of us. And
then there’s the _Buccaneer_ needs calkin’ where steerin’ that bark
racked her, and new rail, and a few things around deck. And that’ll give
that streak of hard luck a chance to run itself out. So here y’are. I
s’pose you’ll go and blow that now as fast as you can?”
“I guess that’s right, too, Skipper,” and up the street rolled Gillis,
blithely singing.
Crump gazed after him. “There’s a man oughter be glad he’s alive to-day.
But no, he must try and keep up with men like Sam Leary that gets fat on
excitement. Where’s that card o’ Sam’s he give me? H’m-m--Élite Hotel,
Canal Street. And twenty-five dollars, eh? He must be cal’latin’ to come
home in a automobile. Well, after all, I dunno but he’s entitled to
automobiles at that.”
On Georges Shoals
Oh, but Dannie Keating was the happy man that night! Under the light of
the winter stars he drew her to him, and, with her head all but resting
on his shoulder and his arm about her waist, they came down the shady
side of the street together, and cared no more for the whistling wind
than for whatever curious eyes might, from behind drawn blinds, be
peeping. “If anybody’s rubbering, they’re all sore,” said Dannie when
she protested, and again broke the night air with--he simply couldn’t
help it--
“O sweetheart mine, I love thee,
And in all the sky above--see!
No heart like thine, no love like mine--
O sweetheart, but I love thee!”
Oh, but the blood was running riot within him. “Don’t I love you, Katie?
Don’t I? And don’t you? And don’t we both?” and in the shadow of the
steps of her home he drew her yet closer to him and kissed her--kissed
her--a thousand times he kissed her before she could draw a free breath
again.
“And in the morning, Katie, I’ll be putting out. You won’t see me, it’ll
be so early. And it’ll be the last trip in that old packet, though maybe
I oughtn’t say that of her that’s earned a good bit of money for
me--earned enough to pay for the new one, Katie--the new one that’ll be
ready for me the next trip in. And then, Katie dear, we’ll see--as good
as anything of her length and beam out the port. And have you picked a
name for her yet? Yes? The _Dannie Keating_, indeed! No, no, I’ve a ten
times better one--and you’d never guess, I’ll bet. And she’ll be a
vessel! Every cent that you saved for me, dear, went into her.”
“You saved it yourself, Dannie.”