"A big, able brute--yes, boy. But that big brute--Lard Gard, she'd
look sweet, wouldn't she, chasin' swordfish in the shoal water south o'
Georges. She's a good little boat, the _Henriette_--and a pretty
name," said John.
It was a fresh southwesterly, and a day to make a man over, as we
passed on by Eastern Point. Just to look at the young blue seas was
life, and the soft salt air was a cure for whatever blue feeling a man
might have had hooked into himself ashore.
A great morning. We passed two big salt fishermen bound in. From the
Western Banks they were, or from Flemish Cap, half across the ocean,
maybe; and the brown rocks of Cape Ann must have looked to them like
mother's johnny-cake on the kitchen table that sunny morning. Swinging
by like a pair of twins they went, flying both topsails the pair of
them, but neither of them much more than flushing their scuppers to the
fine fresh breeze. Whoo-o-sh! fifteen hundred miles we've come from
the east'ard! In the name o' heaven--we could almost hear them saying
it--don't stop us!
The sea was more than swishing through the little _Henriette's_
scuppers. Our rail was good and wet as we belted across the bay, and
rounding Cape Cod we rolled down till the solid water began to fill her
lee gangway; rolled lower and lower, 'till it was solid between her lee
rail and house; and those of us on her wind'ard quarter had our feet
braced so we wouldn't take a slide down her high-slanting deck and
overboard.
Our skipper was a driver. By and by we were rolling low enough for a
buoy keg to go floating off our house and overboard astern. A fine
half-barrel of a buoy keg it was--black and white painted, smooth and
tight as a drum; a beauty of a buoy which by and by, at the end of a
fifty-fathom warp, ought by rights to be towing after a fat swordfish;
and so the skipper said. But now she was dancing atop of the swirling
seas astern, and the skipper, looking astern after it and then at us,
also said: "To hell with it now! Buy a new one out your share--and
next time some o' you'll learn to lash 'em, maybe!"
It was a day to see pictures. From astern of us came bowling up one of
the biggest and stiffest knockabouts sailing out o' Gloucester. She
had a bow like a bulldog's jaw; and she sent that bow smashing through
the white-collared seas as if she had come out for no more than to give
her ugly face a wash. Stiff? She was a church on a rock.
"There's the able lady!" said Shorty. "No water sloshin' solid through
her lee gangway an' washin' buoy kegs off her house--hah, John?"
John was a Newfoundlander. He told me that the earliest thing he
remembered was helping bait his father's trawls on a Grand Banks
fisherman.
With his arms folded over the corner of the house, his chin resting on
his arms, and his eyes like two razor-edges peering out between his
eyelids, there wasn't much happening up to wind'ard--or leeward
either--that John wasn't seeing. And it was a great day to see things;
for it was a gale o' wind blowing, the sky was still clear blue, and
the air was the kind to make a man over.
A quick-acting, quick-talking, wiry little fellow was John. Big Bill
couldn't keep up with him at all. Bill's right name was not Bill.
Nobody knew what it was; nor cared. Bill was probably a better name,
anyway. One peek at him as the big fellow hove himself aboard was
enough for John. "Will ye look at Big Bill!" cried John; after that no
other name would fit him. "Lard, Lard," said John, "but I be wantin'
to see the look o' that bulk of a man when he jams hisself into a
bosun's chair to the masthead!"
Bill never could see anything funny in John's line of talk, and said so
across the supper-table that same afternoon. Breakfast was at four
o'clock, dinner at half-past nine, and supper at three o'clock on the
_Henriette_. "Somebody'll come along and set on you right hard some
day," said Bill. To which John said: "So long's 'tisn't some one o'
your tonnage does the settin', I callate I c'n stand it," and then,
reaching over and scooping to himself another wedge of blueberry pie:
"You cert'nly do make great blueberry pie, cook."
"Not so ferry bad," said the cook.
He was a good cook, who had followed the sea since he was fifteen. The
big ports of the world--he knew them all, and when he wasn't too busy
he would talk about them; though what he most liked to talk about was
his blueberry patch in Stoneport, where he owned a nice little white
house with a simment cellar--up on the hill next the isinglass factory.
He had a dog at home, a part of him Skitch and the other part of him
Sin Bernard. Gardner, the milkman, owned the Bernard. Who owned the
collie he didn't know. Nobody knowed. And when those smart Alecks of
Stoneport kids came along and tried to bemboozle those blueberry-bushes
where they was hangin' in bunches as on a grapewine, why that dog--
Well, he was the cleffer dog, that was all.
He had brought a few of the blueberries aboard, he said; which we very
well knew--two bushels of them charged to the ship's stores at current
market rates. His blueberry pies were all right; but the blueberry
stews! With dumplings! There was a cook sailed out of Homburg on a
barque when our cook was a cabin-boy on her, and that dumpling receipt
was got out of him one night in Yokohama when the old fellow had a
couple of bowls of saki into him. Saki and rice, yes. Which was how
it came about that thirty-four years later we were getting dumplings
noon and night with our blueberry stew aboard the _Henriette_. John,
after maybe five hours to the masthead, would come sliding cheerily
down to deck at dinner call. At the head of the forec's'le
companionway he would haul up and have half a peek below. And then a
sniff. A long sniff, and then a full peek. "Lard Gard, dumplin's!"
John would say, and look sadly around and up at sea and sky.
But so as not to hurt the cook's feelings, John, when he sat down,
would take the big fork and go sounding in the blueberry stew, and
soon, bright blue and beautiful, he would gaff a half-dozen of them
onto his plate. And the cook, noticing it, would smile and say: "You
like tem tumplings, Chon?" And John would say: "This side o' Fortune
Bay I never saw nothin' to ekal 'em." And when the cook would turn his
back, John would slip them into his pocket.
After dinner John would take the dumplings aloft, and, when Big Bill
would take the skipper's place out at the end of the bowsprit, John
would heave the dumplings at him from the masthead. Sometimes he would
heave a few astern at whoever happened to have the wheel. Generally it
was Oliver at the wheel, because his eyesight was not so sharp as the
others of us for seeing fish from aloft.
Oliver was the first spectacled fisherman that John had ever seen; and
one day when Oliver laid his glasses down, John took them up, and set
them on his own nose and picked up a newspaper. And quickly removed
them. "Lard, Lard, a swordfish she'd look like a whale in them and his
sword as long's a vessel's bowsprit!"
When Oliver was not to the wheel, Steve would be there. Steve was a
tall fellow. To give an idea of how tall he was, John would run down
the deck, leap into the air and give a grab at the sky. "Where me hand
touched would maybe reach to his waist," John would say. Steve, when
he turned in, had to let his feet hang over his bunkboard and onto the
locker; and when he did that John came and sat on them. Steve slept in
the cabin under the overhang. Big Bill slept under the overhang, too,
in the opposite bunk. One of our pleasures was to watch Bill kick his
way into his bunk under the low overhang, then to tell him the skipper
wanted to see him on deck, and watch him wiggle his way out. Feet
first he had to come. Steve could do it all right, but Bill--he
weighed three hundred.
On foggy nights Bill turned in on the locker, with one arm and leg
stretched out to keep him from rolling onto the floor. He had once
been in a steamer collision, and he warn't of any notion to be sent to
the bottom by no steamer collision--leastways not if he saw her comin'.
And he callated to see her comin'. His last word to the next on watch
on a foggy night was always: "Call me soon's you see any steamer
lights. An' don't wait to diskiver if it be a pote or stabbid light."
On watch in a fog Bill never got farther away from the fog-horn than he
could make in two leaps; and he was no Olympic leaper.
With Bill and Steve in the cabin slept Oliver and the skipper. Most
sword-fishermen carry an auxiliary engine to hustle after the fish in
calm summer weather. The rest of us bunked in the forec's'le. She was
a little creature, the _Henriette_, and it was pretty close sleeping
for'ard on a hot night. To abate the heat nights, we rigged up a
wind-sail which came down the air-port forward of the foremast; which
was all right till the vessel tacked. When she did, her jumbo-boom
would sweep across the deck and swipe our wind-sail over the rail.
When we fellows bunking forward talked of how hot it was for'ard, the
cabin gang would only say: "Hot? You want to come aft and soak in the
gas off the engine for a few nights!"
We cruised four days off Block Island without seeing a sword-fin.
Plenty of big sharks were loafing under the surface there, but sharks
don't bring anything on the market. We stood easterly. Off Nantucket
light-ship we picked up Bob Johnson of Nantucket and Bill Jackson of
Maine, Bill Rice and Tom O'Brien of Gloucester, the _Master_ and the
_Norma_ also of Gloucester, a Boston schooner, the _Alarm_, and a big,
black brute of a sloop which nobody could name. Tom Haile was there,
too--in the _Esther Ray_.
No fish in sight that afternoon; but even so the skipper took his
station in the pulpit. John, Shorty, and I went aloft. John was
topmost, and swung in his chair just under the truck. Shorty and I
were just under John. When we got tired of swinging in our chairs we
could stand up, one cross-line in the small of our backs, another
against our chests, and balance ourselves. When the vessel dove we
could wrap our arms around the topmast and hang on. There was a swell
on this morning--no crested seas, but a long, smooth, black swell,
enough to send the vessel's bowsprit under every little while; and
sometimes to send the pulpit atop of the bowsprit under, too.
"But this skipper--he don't mind gettin' wet," explained Shorty. "I've
seen him go divin' till it was over his head in the pulpit an' he still
hangin' on waitin' for fish."
Bill did not stand watch at the masthead. His eyesight was good
enough, but Bill's three hundred pounds climbing up the rigging four or
five times a day to the masthead--the skipper said he guessed he'd take
pity on the rigging. So Bill stayed on deck to go in the dory, when a
fish would be ironed. Also he took the pulpit when the skipper came
inboard to eat. The first time John saw Bill go into the pulpit, he
let a yell of mock terror out of him from aloft. "Skipper, skipper,
he's puttin' her down by the head, and Lard knows she was down by the
head enough before. Let she go into a good head sea, she'll never come
up an' we'll be lost, all hands!" Which made Bill turn and glare up at
John; and when he did that, John hove one of the cook's bright-blue
dumplings down at Bill.
That afternoon we sighted our first fish. The skipper was in the
pulpit, with the pole half hitched across the pulpit rail. Bill was
resting his chest across the gunnel of the top dory and with
half-closed eyes studying the sea to wind'ard. Oliver was sitting on
the wheel-box, motionless except when he moved an arm or a hand to roll
a spoke or two up and down. Aloft, we had not seen a sign of fish,
near or far, for an hour or more.
John let out a sharp little cry: "Fish-O!" The skipper stood up and
balanced his long pole. Oliver straightened up at the wheel-box. Bill
came out of his trance, looked to us aloft and shifted his gaze to
leeward. The bright, bald head of the cook shone up the forec's'le
ladder. He cast a peek aloft, said "Fish-h?" inquiringly, and stepped
onto the deck, smoking his pipe.
"Fair abeam to looard!" John called, and Oliver put the wheel up. Soon
they could see the curved three-cornered fin from the deck. A shark's
fin is three-cornered, too, but straight-edged, not curved. And a
swordfish's tail moves almost without motion through the water.
The skipper balanced his pole, but without looking down at it. His
eyes were for the fish only. "Hard up!" called John, and Oliver sent
our bow swinging into line.
"Stea-a-dy!" called John.
The skipper was swaying from the waist. A big-boned, rangy man the
skipper, more than six feet high and wide-shouldered, with a great
reach and a strong-looking back. He hefted his pole--more than a week
since he had ironed a swordfish--and he looked to see that the line
running from his pole to a tub in the waist of the vessel was all
clear. To look after that was the cook's business, and now, meeting
the skipper's look: "All clear!" he sang out, and stowed his pipe in
his stern pocket.
We were within half the vessel's length of our fish when, he dived.
"Port!" called John. "Stea-a-dy! stea-a-dy! Lard, man, stea-a-dy-y!"
They could not see the fish from the deck, but we at the masthead could
follow his course under water.
The fin and tail showed again. We swung around to head him off in his
course. The skipper, to loosen up his waist and back muscles, was
swaying from his hips.
We were almost on the big fish. He was cruising lazily. The skipper
drew back his right arm and shoulder, but fin and tail took a sudden
shoot. John was in command at the masthead. "Luff--luff!" called
John. The vessel shot up, the skipper leaned far over the pulpit rail.
Fin and tail were gone from his sight, but from aloft we could follow
the blue-black shadow of the body under water. Suddenly the shadow
turned and shot diagonally back under our bowsprit. John called a
warning. The skipper rose on his toes--with that long right arm raised
above and behind his head, he looked seven feet tall--and waited. We
feared he was waiting too long, when whing!--a backward swoop of the
arm, a downward thrust of the pole, and "Gottim!" said the cook, and
tossed the bight of the warp over the rail and calmly bent on a new
warp for the skipper's pole. The skipper took a backward look at the
flying fish; then quickly, but with never a hurry, rigged a fresh iron
and line to his pole. After a man has ironed a few thousand swordfish
it is probably hard to get excited over one more.
The big fish was gone, deep down, and after him the warp was whirling
out of the tub in the ship's waist. In no time the whole fifty-fathom
line was gone, and atop of the sea the black-and-white-painted barrel
was going a good clip. And then under it went, but not for long. Up
it came, and around in a quarter-circle and then straight away again
with a grand little wake after it. By this time Bill had been dropped
into a dory and was rowing after the buoy.
The buoy ran round another big circle before Bill caught up with it.
When he did he took the buoy into the dory and began to warp in the
fish, and had him alongside and was about to lance him in the head,
when whir-h-h! tail and sword beat the sea white, and Bill cast him
loose.
Now, if John, or Oliver, or Shorty had ever got that fish snubbed up
under the dory gunnel like that, they would have finished him. If he
was as long and big around as a dory, be sure they would, or try to;
but getting on to middle age was Bill, and he probably had in mind a
clear picture of every doryman that was ever killed swordfishing.
Bill was going after them in his own way. He'd get 'em just the same.
Just let that fish play hisself out. Which he did after an hour or so,
and then Bill hauled him under the dory's quarter, and reached over and
a dozen times or so drove the long lance into his head. The fish
flurried around and churned white water, but the deep lance thrusts did
for him at last. And then Bill hitched him around the tail and waited
for the vessel; and Oliver, who had been having a windward eye to the
dory all the time, put over to him, and the dory tackle was hooked
under the tail-knot and the fish hauled in.
A swordfish is a handsome creature when fresh caught. Plump and
tapering in body, with pointed head and big eyes, and his skin a lovely
dripping blue-black, which had not faded hours later when he was
lowered into the hold after being dressed. The cook had a fine large
round of beef on top of the ice in the hold, but it had to come out on
deck to make room for that first fish--which is how deep the
_Henriette_ was loaded.
He weighed perhaps three hundred pounds. A good-sized fellow. "Jist
the size to be lively," said Bill. "And to fight--I don't take no
chances with them kind."
The iron had gone diagonally through his body amidships. It was now
hanging out with six inches of the line on the under side of him. A
great stroke, passing through almost two feet of solid meat and just
grazing the back-bone on the way. The cook explained that he had seen
the skipper drive his iron clean through the backbone and then clear
through the body of bigger ones than that.
By dark we had four good fish in, and all hands were pleased. The
cook, before he turned in for the night, told us more about his
blueberry patch. The skipper came below and broke in on the cook to
talk about the weather. "A sea the same's if there was gasolene poured
over it," said the skipper. "A clear sky, but a swell and near the
horizon at sunset clouds piled up with gashes of green and purple and a
hundred other shades. Wind there--plenty of it--we'll see to-morrow."
To-morrow came, but no breeze. The skipper felt put out. "I'd 'a' bet
it," he said.
That night came an ugly sunset. No oily sea this time, but a gray
tossing and murmuring, and showing behind among the clouds, long
deep-red streaks paralleling the horizon, and the horizon lifting up
and down like it had something the matter with it, too.
Next morning nothing, or no more than what Shorty said when he came
down from his watch at eight o'clock. "Just a good liver shaker
aloft," said Shorty.
Just before ten o'clock came a stirring out of the sea; but nothing
much. Another stirring and the skipper took a good look around, and
then came in from the pulpit. He called out to us to come from the
masthead. We came, and took sail off her--all but her foresail. No
word was given to hurry, but there was no loafing over it. Oliver, a
great fellow to keep looking clean, said he guessed he'd take a chance
to shave himself; and then he took another look around at sea and sky,
and then he said he guessed he'd wait awhile.
While a man would be drawing on a pair of rubber-boots it came--oh,
whistling! And four hours of it followed. Wind to blow a man's ears
off. And rain! Oh, rain! Not rain in sheets--nothing so soft and
easy as that; but rain which came driving in like a billion bullets at
once. We could pick out where every one hit us. The wind blew maybe
eighty miles an hour for four hours. And then the real thing came.
For an hour or so more wind really blew. How many miles? Lord knows.
John said a good hundred miles. Bill snorted: "A hunderd? Take on'y
what's above a hunderd an' you'd git a gale by itself!"
With all the wind there was a high-running sea; and wind and sea
together were driving us into shoal water. And the shoal water of
Georges is bad--no worse anywhere. We sounded and got ten fathoms.
Bad. There was nothing but to make a little more sail and get out.
Put jumbo and trysail to her, was the word; as we started to do that a
forepeak block came away, and the halyards and block got fouled with
the jib-stay aloft. The skipper sent John and me aloft to clear it.
We went; and were lying out to get it, when we saw this sea come at us.
It was a white yeast all around the vessel, but this one was a solid
white, solid as marble almost. It came roaring like a mad bull at us.
I took one peek at it and "Hang on, John!" I yelled. I did my best to
leave the print of my fingers on the steel stay with the way I hung on
myself--we were both of us to the masthead and that sea was just high
enough to roll over our heads. I could just see a light-green color
over my head as it passed.
As we stuck our heads through and looked at each other, John was saying
something. There was a ringing in my ears. I asked him: "What? What
did you say, John?"
"You told me to hang on," said John. "To hang on! Lard Gard, boy, did
y' think I was goin' to dive into it?"
On deck when they saw it coming they had all jumped below and pulled
the hatches after them. They began to come out now, and the skipper
called for us to come down. Nothing was washed from her deck. Of
course, everything before that had been double-lashed--dories and
barrels of gasolene--before that. The skipper now ordered the bung
pulled from a full barrel of gasolene. We stove one in and let the oil
run out; and the seas calmed to leeward and we threw a dory to the lee
rail, after lashing an empty gasolene barrel to each side of her.
"Whoever's handiest jump in!" yelled the skipper.
Big Bill was handy to the dory, but he never would have made it if John
hadn't stopped to push him over the gunnel from behind. Shorty and
Oliver leaped over the other gunnel. I waited for John; but the
skipper had called "More oil and another dory!" and John had turned
back.
We four--Bill, Shorty, Oliver, and myself--were hardly in when a sea
came over the vessel's deck and swept our dory away--wh-f-f! like that.
She all but filled to the gunnels before we were fair away from the
vessel's side, but the two empty barrels kept her from sinking. And
before another sea could get a fair chance at her Oliver and Bill were
busy bailing her, and Shorty and I keeping her head to the sea with an
oar astern. We looked back to the vessel, and could see them rigging
up another dory and breaking out another barrel of oil.
We kept going in our dory--none of us could say how long, whether it
was one hour or four, we were all so busy--Big Bill and Oliver with
their heads down bailing her out with their sou'-westers, and Shorty
and I with an oar keeping her head to windward. Bill and Oliver had to
bail pretty fast. Bill kept getting out of wind and Oliver's
eye-glasses kept getting wet with salt water so he couldn't see out of
them.
"What d'y' want to see out of 'em for?" asks Shorty. "We're here in
the stern to do the seein' an' the steerin'. Might's well heave your
specks overboard."
Oliver hove them overboard.
So far as our seeing went we never saw the vessel which picked us up
until after she saw us. She was the _Esther Ray_ and she was under a
jumbo and storm trysail, working off from the shoal water and having
trouble enough; but they saw us, and stood down and hailed. We made
out what they said, more by their signs than by what words we heard.
"I'll tack and come by close to looard of you!" called Tom Haile, her
skipper; "and when I do, take your chance and come board. You'll maybe
have to jump!"
He had to watch his chance to tack. He waited maybe five minutes, both
hands on the spokes, waiting and watching. And then he gave her the
wheel; and when he did, it was something to look at. Between seas and
sky she hung for I don't know how long--maybe five seconds, maybe ten,
maybe thirty seconds--between heaven and hell she hung, before she came
over. And, man, when she did, she wouldn't have started a pack thread.
Judgment there, boy! Then falling and rising, and falling again, she
came down onto us. A sea lifted our dory straight for her; up we went
and down--straight for her windward rail. We watched. We jumped--all
but Bill. He was hove aboard. The dory under us was smashed on her
rail as we jumped, but we could spare the dory--we were safe aboard the
_Esther_.
Once we were aboard they gave the _Esther_ a little more sheet, and off
she went on her ear till we made twenty-five fathoms of water; and
there we brought her to. And while we lay there hove to the wind
moderated to fifty miles or so, and as the wind came down the seas went
up. Higher and higher they kept mounting. Just to look at the height
of them would make your back ache. And then the wind backed into the
northwest, and the seas came two ways together. No dodging them at all
now, and the little _Esther Ray_--stripped to her last little white
shift, a corner of a storm trysail--lay to a drogue and took it.
I'd been fishing mostly in big vessels before this trip, and for the
first time in my life I saw a little boat stand up and take a beating.
She was a few tons bigger than the _Henriette_, but still little
enough--the _Esther_. Little and deep-laden, she lay there and took it.
Little and deep-laden, yes; but, man, a stout one, too. When she was
building it was Tom Haile himself who drove every bolt--every
trenail--into her. He had seen to it that her timbers were heavy
enough for a vessel four times her tonnage. Believe him, a vessel the
_Esther_! A solid block of oak, yes! And like a solid block of oak
she lay there, and "Come on, damn you, come on and get me!" we could
almost hear her saying to the big seas.
Of course, she could not do it all herself. After all, she was no
five-hundred-foot steamer, that no matter how it came all you had to do
was to let her lay and no harm come to her. There were the moments
when it was up to the skipper and her crew. But a capable skipper on
her quarter and a quick-moving, handy crew in her waist--when your
vessel is well-found leave the rest of it to them! They were all
there, and there on the jump when wanted. No talk, no
questioning--when the word was passed the word was carried out. By
seven o'clock that night the little _Esther_ had ridden out the gale in
glory. To be sure, it was a thunderer of a night that followed, with
seas pounding her solid little head, and perhaps the man in the peak
bunk did not have a word to say about that in the morning! But with
the morning--Glory be!--'twas a silver sunrise and a little schooner
smiling and bowing like to the baffled ocean.
But not all the swordfishing fleet were there in the morning. Bill
Jackson was there, and the big, ugly sloop, and we thought we could
make out Bill Rice and Tom O'Brien on the horizon. But where was the
_Norma_? And the _Master_? And Bob Johnson? And the _Alarm_ of
Boston? And our own little _Henriette_?
We made sail, and after a time the big sloop with the ugly bow also
made sail. And we jogged back to where we had left the good fishing,
and, the sea having moderated sufficiently, lookouts went aloft and the
_Esther's_ skipper to the pulpit. Vessels and men may be lost, but men
and vessels have to keep on with the fishing just the same.
But there were no fish to be seen. The storm had scattered them. The
skipper wanted to know what somebody else thought of the storm. He ran
down to speak to Bill Jackson.
Bill was sitting on the wheel-box whittling a piece of red cedar when
we drew alongside. Bill's half-bared chest seemed to be trying to
burst through his undershirt, and above the shirt his seamed neck rose
ruggedly. Neck, arms, and chest were burned red. His beard, red in
the shadows and gold in the sun, was ten days old at least. Fifteen
centuries ago it must have been men of Bill Jackson's style that left
the marshes of the Elbe and, sailing westward across the North Sea,
looted the shores of wherever they happened to beach their keels.
"How'd you make out yesterday, Bill?" asked Tom.
"Rolled our sheer-poles under," said Bill, "not once in a while, but
reg'lar. An' not a stitch o' canvas on her to the time, nuther. An'
washed over everything that warn't bolted. When I see it warn't
lettin' up, I ran her under bare poles. Logged eight and a half knots
under bare poles. Goin' some? I call it so. Glad not to be lost, we
were."
"Same here. I'm worried about some o' the fleet, Bill."
"Some of 'em's gone, all right. I don't want to see another day like
yesterday in a hurry, Tom."
"Nor me, Bill. A good breeze o' wind I call it, Bill."
"A _damn_ good breeze o' wind I call it," said Bill.
"I guess by this time there's no argument 'bout it bein' a pretty good
little blow," said Shorty.
We left Bill Jackson. The middle of the morning it was, a fine day,
and, still hoping for fish, the Esther's lookouts were aloft. One
called out something--not Fish-O!--and pointed. We looked. It was
part of a drifting mast, the lower part, broken off raggedly from a
foot or two above the saddle. It drifted on by.
"A white-painted saddle," said Tom Haile, looking at Shorty and me.
"The _Henriette's_ saddles was painted white," said Shorty. "But she
ain't the only vessel with white-painted saddles."
"That's right," said the _Esther's_ crew, "she ain't."
A few minutes later a floating gasolene barrel drifted by, and soon
another. Tom Haile reached out with a boat-hook and gaffed in that
second barrel. There was a hole in the head of it--made by an axe.
That didn't mean anything--it could have washed off the _Henriette's_
deck, off anybody's deck. The surprise would be in a barrel staying on
her deck in the shoal water she was in when we left her. Yes, that
could be, agreed the _Esther's_ crew.
From the masthead then they saw a dory--bottom up.
"A yellow dory?" Shorty and I asked.