When I first saw Jack, he had left his vessel at Barking Creek, and he
was enjoying a very vigorous spree; but he never lost temper or became
stupefied, and his loud merriment was rather pleasant than otherwise.
Jack did not look by any means like a rough, for his face had a kind of
girlish beauty. His dark cheeks were richly flushed, his throat was
round and white, and his blue eyes twinkled with fun. He stood about six
feet in height, and he would have made a fine guardsman, for he looked
as if he had been carefully drilled all his life long. Men who
habitually exercise every muscle and tendon acquire that graceful
carriage which belongs to the military gymnast. This fine young fellow
was full of high spirits and bodily power; courage was so natural to him
that I do not think such a word as "brave" ever entered his vocabulary.
He had never been afraid of anything in his life, and it did not occur
to him to think of danger. When Jack was a little child he was taken out
to sea in his father's vessel, and henceforth a ship was his only home
from year's end to year's end. The boy was so daring that he made some
of the old hands nervous very often, and there were many doleful
prophecies made regarding the ultimate fate of his carcase. On one blowy
day when the ships were pitching freely, it happened that Jack's father
went with fish to the steam cutter, leaving the urchin on deck. As the
old man drew back within a quarter-mile of his smack, he saw a black
figure clambering along the gaff, and he knew that it was Jack. Young
Hopeful crawled from the throat of the gaff to the very end of the spar,
and then proceeded to swarm up the gaff halyards--a most perilous
proceeding. The father was aghast; he whispered hurriedly, "Pull, for
God's sake; she'll roll him overboard before we get up." But the young
monkey did not part with his hold so easily, and he came down by the
rings of the mainsail without so much as grazing his shins.
In every vessel the men must have a plaything, and Jack served his
bigger comrades admirably in that capacity. Had not his father been on
board, the lad might have been ill-used in the horrible way so common in
the old days; but the stern skipper allowed no rough play, and the boy
was merely set on to perform harmless tricks. Once the men dared him to
climb down the bobstay, and he instantly tried; but he gave the crew a
scare, for he could not climb back after the vessel had dipped him a few
times, and, last of all, the boat was towered to rescue him. In hard
weather and amid hard work, Jack grew steadily in strength and skill. I
have seen him at work and he made me shudder, although the sight of his
amazing agility might have given anybody confidence. On wet nights when
the deck was like a rink, he would make a rush as the boat pitched; then
he would pick up his rope unerringly in the dark and, in another second,
you would see him over the side with one foot on the trawl-beam in an
attitude risky enough to make you want to close your eyes.
It was nothing much to see him take a flying spring on to the main boom
in the dark, and hang there reefing while the vessel jerked so that you
might have fancied she must send his ribs through the skin. I say it was
nothing, because he performed this feat nearly every winter night, after
the midnight haul, and the spectacle grew common. I never knew him
bungle over a rope or make a bad slip, and it was simply a pleasure to
see him steer. He never threw away an inch, and his way of stealing foot
by foot was worthy of any jockey. Sometimes when I was at the wheel and
running a little to leeward of another vessel, he would say, "I reckon I
can weather him, sir, if you let me have her a bit;" and then, with
delicate touches and catlike watching of every puff and every send of
the sea, he would edge his way up, and pass his opponent neatly.
Most wonderful of all it was to see Jack handling the small boat in
heavy weather. While the wee cockle-shell was rolling and bungling under
our quarter, he would jump on the rail, measure his distance perfectly,
spring on to the boat's gunwale and fend her off before she made the
return roll. A marvellous performance that was, and the marvel only
increased when you saw the young fellow pitching heavy boxes of fish on
to the deck of the great steam cutter.
With a roar, and a savage sweep the big seas came; on their mountainous
sides the shrill eddies of wind played, and the lines of foam twined in
wavering mazes. Hill on hill gathered, and the seas looked like swelling
Downs piled heap on heap, while the sonorous crests roared on hoarsely,
and sometimes the face of the wild water was obscured in the white smoke
plucked off by the gusts.
Jack did not mind weather; the steamer hurled herself up on the bulge of
a sea, and then you could get a glimpse of a tall, lithe figure,
straining in the small boat alongside the rearing iron hulk. That
splendid, lithe young lad performed prodigies of strength and courage;
the hulk and the little boat sank down,--down until the steamer's
mast-head disappeared; then with a rush the wave slid away, and the
craft came toppling down the hither side of the mountain, and still that
lithe figure was there, toiling fiercely and cleverly. Soon with a bound
and a loud laugh, he was on board of us again, and no one could tell
from one tremor of his merry, tawny face that he had been, of a truth,
looking into the very jaws of death.
This splendid man was innocent as a child of all worldly affairs
unconnected with the sea. He once told me, "I can make a shift to get
along with an easy book; but if I come to a hard word, I cry
'Wheelbarrows,' and skip him." On his own topics he was very sensible,
and no owner could have found fault with him had he not been just a
little racketty on shore. In my refined days I remember reading in one
of Thackeray's books about a young lord who was much loved by one Henry
Esmond: My friend Jack was very like that young man, and you could not
get vexed with him,--or, at any rate, you could not keep vexed very
long.
We soon made friends in The Chequers, and before midnight we were
confidential. On my expressing wonder at seeing a Barking lad among us,
Jack winked with profound meaning, and said, "I ain't Barking at all,
only for this trip. My gal's a Lowestoft gal, and she've come up here,
so I'm ready for her Sunday out to-morrow. See?"
Our second interview took place next day, and I saw the sweetheart. She
was an ordinary pretty servant-girl, such as most of the fishermen pick
up when they marry out of their own class; but I could see that she was
likely to make some difference in John's rather convivial habits. She
spoke like an ignorant woman with strong natural sense, and when Jack
proposed having some beer, she said, "Ay, so! That's the way you fare to
go. I've seen them, as soon as ever they leaves the pay-office, turning
into the public-house. And a master lot o' good that do, doan't it now?
Men workin' like beasts for two months, and then dropping all their
money into the till in a week, and then off to sea short of clothes,
besides very likely getting into trouble. Nay! Have yow a glass of ale
if yow care, but no good never come on it, what I know. Leastways, not
for men that goes to the sea."
So Jack and I deferred to Sally's opinion--until nine o'clock in the
evening, and then we made up for lost time. It was amusing to see the
cool way in which the handsome lad parted from his sweetheart. They had
not met for two months, and yet I do not believe that they exchanged
kisses either at meeting or parting.
These folk are strangely undemonstrative. They are fond of each other,
and most faithful, but they show nothing. On a grim morning after a
gale, when the vessels are towing up with flags half-mast high, the
women will gather on the tow-path and by the quays; you see white, drawn
faces, but rarely a tear. The bleak, perilous life of the men seems to
be known intimately to the women, and they accept the worst fortune with
a dry pathos that is heartbreaking. Jack and his sweetheart were in the
flush of youth--nay, of physical beauty; they were passionately fond of
each other; and they parted like casual strangers. When Jack went again
below to the filthy, frowsy cabin of the smack, and thought over the
months of cold, toil, drenching weather, and hard fare, I have no doubt
but that he thought of the pretty girl, but he said very little, and
larked on as usual as soon as he got over his parting carouse.
For several trips after this, my handsome fellow was wild and careless;
his splendid constitution enabled him to drink with impunity the
abominable stuff sold by the Copers, and he was merely merry when older
soakers were delirious. His father and he parted, and the old man
stayed at home as ship's husband to a firm of smack owners, and the lad
had his head free. He was as desperately brave as ever, for the subtle
poison was long in attacking his nerve; but many of his ways were queer,
and the men who went home in the returning smacks carried unpleasant
reports about him. At times, like Robert Burns, George Morland, and men
of that kidney, he would give way to a passionate burst of repentance;
but in his case the repentance always departed with the return of health
and buoyancy.
One night he stayed on board a coper until a breeze came away; he then
insisted on straddling across the bow of the boat on the return journey,
and he lost his grip for once in his life and went overboard. A dip of
that sort, with heavy sea-boots on, is rather dangerous, and Master Jack
felt as though all the water in the North Sea was dragging at his legs;
but he was hauled in at last. Even that experience only cured him for a
week, and then his resorts to the brandy-bottle began again.
At last, when he was putting fish aboard the carrier, a letter was
handed to him; he looked at it with rough tenderness, and crammed it,
all greasy and gruesome, under his jumper. On getting aboard, he went to
a quiet corner where the men could not tease, and he read,
"Dear John,--I write these few lines hoping you are quite well as this
leaves me at present, but i don't think as you can be well if all is
trew as we hear you are very wild and you ont have no money to come home
if you doant watshe it. You must either stop the beer or stop goin with
me and then my heart would be broak, every girl I see which married a
drinking man has supped sorrow for sertain, and the man the same, and
you will be just the same. Pray, my dear, do take the right tirning, or
I must keap my word. So no more at present from your loveing SARAH
KERRISON."
Jack cursed once, and then muttered "Werra well, let her. Let her go and
take on some one better;" but he was amazingly unhappy despite his
defiance, and his unhappiness drove him to frantic excesses. He used to
scare his companions by saying, "If God takes my girl, they can talk
about Him as they like, but He shan't take my soul, not if I damn for
it." Then when the shuddering men said, "For mercy's sake, shut up.
It's enough to sink the wessel," he would make answer, "Werra good, let
her sink; and the sooner the better."
The days wore away, and the time came for Jack to run home. The smack
was well clear of the fleets and spinning along nicely to southward on a
dark night, and Jack was at the wheel. His nerve was just a little
touched, and he muttered, "This is a devil of a night. I wish we were
well home."
It was indeed a weird night; the wind thrummed on the cordage; the gaff
whistled with tremulous sounds, as though some frightened soul were
shivering at the mast-head; and when the inky waves rolled out of the
gloom, they showed no definite shape--only a sliding dark cloud fringed
with white flame. There is always a steady roar from the sails, and one
hears it better at night; Jack had often heard the roar rise to a howl,
but no noise that ever he knew had such effect on him as the rushing
moan from the sails that night.
There are only two men in a watch on board a smack, and it often happens
that one will go below to fetch some of the tea which the seamen drink
so insatiably. Jack's mate was below, but the helmsman had no fear, as
all was clear. He mused on, always peering sharply round for a few
minutes when suddenly, over the haze which was rising, he saw a white
light, and then the loom of a green. "All right; well clear," he
muttered. "Glad the fog's no higher. Why doesn't he use his whistle?"
Then, with the suddenness of lightning, he found the red light opened on
him, and, with a chill at his heart, he discovered that he could not get
his own vessel out of the road. Once he sang out, and then came the
looming of a black mountain over him. Until the monster's stem took him
on the quarter and the smack hurled over--hustled into the sea by the
impetus of the steamer--Jack never left go of his wheel; he had a few
seconds, and, with his nimble spring, he rushed to the mizen rigging,
nicked the strings of one lifebuoy; lifted another from forward of the
companion, and then made his rush for the forehatch.
"All out. No time for the boats!"
One man sprang up panting and Jack said, "Here you are, Harry. Shove
that on, and jump. Jump to windward." The smack reared up; there was a
long crashing rush of the swift water; then Jack saw the liquid darkness
over him, and he was just beginning to hear that awful buzzing in the
ears when, with a roar, he felt the upper air swoop round him.
He could just see a coil of foam on the blackness to mark where the
smack had gone down, and, as he cleared his eyes, he saw the cloudy
shape of the steamer far away. "Harry, boy!" he sang out, but Harry must
have been hit by a spar, and Jack Brown was left alone on that bleak,
black waste of wandering water.
"A lingering death," he murmured, as he felt the spray cut round his
head; but he struggled resolutely to keep his face front the set of the
sea, and the buoy supported him bravely. His thoughts ran on things
past; he had spoken unkindly of Sally, behind her back; he had been
tipsy--Ah! how often! Then he thought, "Shall I pray and repent?" All
the dare-devil in the deluded lad's soul arose at this question, and he
snarled "No. Blowed if I snivel just yet, only because I'm in a bad
way." Oh, Jack, Jack! And the deep grave weltering below you, and only a
ring of cork and oilskin to keep you out of that cold home. Was there
never a shudder as you thought of the crowding fishes? Their merciless
cold eyes! Their grey, slimy skin! But Jack was at that day a reckless
fellow, and he lived to be passionately sorry for his splenetic madness.
The cold grew worse and worse, and it seemed to creep toward Jack's
heart. He gave one cry, and instantly he heard a faint answer. Could it
be the scream of a gull? Nay, they rest at night. He called again, and
the voice of his agony was answered by a loud hail; then a flare was
lit, and Jack knew that the steamer's boat had been searching for him.
"Easy. Shove the painter under his arms, and then two of you haul."
So Jack was plumped into the boat, and lay limp and sick. In an hour he
was warm asleep in his berth on board the steamer, and, I am afraid to
say that he begged hard for a pipe before he dozed over.
The steamer took him home, and he was received in a matter-of-fact way
by his people. He had had a dousing! Yes, but it was all in the day's
work. That is the way in which the good folk talk.
Jack was never the same again, and some of the old men said "he looked
as if he had seen something." Yes, he had seen something, and he said to
Sally, "All right about that letter of yours. Let it stick to the wall."
The man was very grave and kind, and he spoke freely to those of his
cronies who were on shore; but he would not go near his old haunts, and
some people thought he must have got religious. Perhaps he had. At any
rate something that happened not long afterwards made the supposition
probable. Jack was on the Ter Schelling bank when his turn came to go
home again, and he was moodily wondering whether any such ordeal would
ever be put on him as that which he endured when the steamer sank his
vessel.
The weather looked ugly; the glass went fast down, and a wild and
leprous-looking moon shone lividly through a shifting mask of troubled
clouds. A sullen calm fell, and the smack rolled with clashing blocks
and groaning spars, making night hideous. In the morning a gale broke
and soon came a blinding fall of snow. It was impossible to see many
yards through the rushing drift of murky yellow, but Jack took in all
four reefs, and ran on with a rag of sail and a three-cloth jib.
It was not a sea that came away; it was a mere enormous cataract that
poured on irresistibly. Jack knew that so long as he could keep the boat
moving, he might escape having his decks stove in, so he determined to
try it--neck or nothing. No man on board knew when the sea might come
which would heave her down, and they watched grimly as the gallant craft
tore on. Some wanted to heave-to, but the skipper knew that he would
stand a good chance of being smothered that way, and he resolved to get
as near home as possible, in case the hurricane grew worse. After boring
for ten hours in the worst of the tremendous sea, he saw a vessel to
leeward of him, flying signals of distress. She was sinking, and her
boat was smashed. The mate said, "That poor chap on't see land." Jack
thought a little, and then he said, "I'm going to try. Out with your
boat." Discipline on board the smacks is not very strict, and the men
were inclined to question the wisdom of Jack's proposal; but Englishmen
always lean to humanity, and with a little persuasion, all hands
volunteered. Jack took one unmarried man, and then coolly proceeded to
make his wild attempt. It was a forlorn kind of chance for everybody,
but as Jack said, "I was saved once, and I know what them poor bloods
feel like."
The little boat had first of all to run down on the sinking smack, and
then, at the risk of capsizing, Jack's vessel ran to leeward and came
round, sending everything shaking as she came up. Only desperately brave
and supremely kindly people would have dared such a thing, and even the
skipper of the foundering vessel said, "Well, chaps, I thought no one
but a mad one would a-tried it on; but Gord bless you all the same."
After that, Jack was obliged to let go his anchor within sound of
breakers, and his fight with death lasted all night. The lifeboats could
not get out to him, and he could only pray that the snow-curtain might
lift. In the morning a slant of wind came which enabled him to get away
from the gnashing breakers, and he got in with the loss of his gaff.
Sally was home for Christmas-time, and she was mighty proud when no less
a person than the Mayor presented Jack with a town's subscription, which
was quite enough to fit up a house.
Jack is my favourite of all the loose fish I have known, and if ever I
take up my place again--alas!--I shall have him with me, and make him
live ashore.
SWIFT & Co., Printers, 2, Newton Street, High Holborn, W.C.