circumstances he does not know any more than I do. But the impossible
was accomplished, and somehow he was clinging at last like a limpet to
the very end of the gaff, his legs already dangling over the fatal
edge, and with nothing to keep him from the clutch of death beyond it
but his grip of the floating spar. To this he must cling until the
mocking boat should again come taut on the line and possibly run
within his reach. The next second out of the darkness what seemed to
the man in the sail a mountain of blackness rushed hissing at him from
the chaos beyond, actually swept across him into the belly of the
sail, and tore him from his rapidly weakening hold of the spar. With
the energy of despair his hands went up and caught something, probably
a bight in the now slackened painter. In a trice he was gripping the
rail, and a second later he was safely inside the boat, and standing
shaking himself like some great Newfoundland dog.
Even now a seemingly insuperable difficulty loomed ahead. He had no
knife and was unable to let go the rope. Would he be able to take his
comrades aboard, and would the schooner keep afloat and form a
breastwork against the sea, or would it sink and, after all his
battle, drag the boat and him down with it to perdition?
Philosophizing is no help at such a time. He would try for the other
men. To leave them was unthinkable. Once more fortune was on his side.
The oars were still in the boat, lashed firmly to the thwarts--a plan
upon which he had always insisted. Watching his chance, and skilfully
manoeuvring, he succeeded in approaching the schooner stern first,
when the cable just allowed him to touch the perpendicular deck. His
shouts to the others had now quite a different ring. His words were
commands, leaving no initiative to them. They realized also that their
one and only chance for life lay in that boat; and returning hope lent
them the courage which they had hitherto lacked. After a delay which
seemed hours to the anxious captain at such a time, with skilful
handling he had got all three aboard.
Once more he was face to face with the problem of the relentless rope,
but again fortune proved to be on his side. It was the passenger, the
useless, burdensome passenger, who now held the key to the situation.
He had sensed the danger in a moment, and instantly handed the skipper
a large clasp-knife. With it to free the boat from the wreck was but
the work of a moment.
True, their position in a small open "rodney" in the middle of a dark,
rough night in the North Atlantic was not exactly enviable, especially
as the biting winter wind was freezing their clothing solid, and
steadily sapping their small stock of remaining vitality.
Yet these men felt that they had crossed a gulf almost as wide as that
between Dives and Lazarus. If they could live, they knew that the boat
could, for the ice would not clog her enough to sink her before
daylight, and as for the sea--well, as with the schooner, it was only
a matter of handling their craft till the light came.
Meanwhile, though they did not then know it, they had drifted a very
considerable way towards their own homes, so that, rowing in turn and
constantly bailing out their boat they at length made the shore at the
little village of Wild Bight, only a few miles away from their own.
The good folk at once kindled fires, and bathed and chafed the
half-frozen limbs and chilled bodies of the exhausted crew.
Now the one anxiety of all hands was to get home as quickly as
possible for fear that some rumor of the disaster in the form of
wreckage from the schooner might carry to their loved ones news of the
accident, and lead them to be terrified over their apparent deaths. As
soon as possible after dawn of day, the skipper started for home,
having borrowed a small rodney, and the wind still keeping in the same
quarter. To his intense surprise a large trap-boat manned by several
men, seeing his little boat, hailed him loudly, and when on drawing
near it was discovered who they were, proceeded to congratulate him
heartily on his escape. Already the very thing that he had dreaded
might happen must surely have occurred.
"How on earth did you know so soon?" he enquired, annoyed.
"As we came along before t' wind we saw what us took to be a dead
whale. But her turned out to be a schooner upside down. We made out
she were t' Leading Light, and feared you must all have been drowned,
as there was no sign of any one on her upturned keel. So we were
hurrying to your house to find out t' truth."
"Don't say a word about it, boys," said the skipper. "One of you take
this skiff and row her back to Wild Bight, while I go with the others
and try and tow in the wreck before the wind shifts. But be sure not
to say anything about the business at home."
The wind still held fair, and by the aid of a stout line they were
able, after again finding the vessel, to tow her into their own
harbour and away to the very bottom of the Bight, where they stranded
her at high water on the tiny beach under the high crags which
shoulder out the ocean. By a clever system of pulleys and blocks from
the trunks of trees in the clefts of the cliff she was hauled upright,
and held while the water fell. Then the Leading Light was pumped out
and refloated on the following tide. On examination, she was
pronounced uninjured by her untimely adventure.
I owe it to John Bourne to say that the messenger forbidden to tell of
the terrible experience told it to his own wife, and she told
it--well, anyhow, the skipper's wife had heard of it before the
Leading Light once more lay at anchor at her owner's wharf. Courage in
a moment of danger, or to preserve life, is one thing. The courage
that faces odds when the circumstances are prosaic and the decision
deferred is a rarer quality. It was a real piece of courage which gave
the little schooner another chance that fall to retrieve her
reputation. She was permitted to deliver the goods against all odds,
and what is more the captain's wife kissed him good-bye with a brave
face when once again he let the foresail draw, and the Leading Light
stood out to sea on her second and successful venture.
There is no doubt that when she went to bed in the ice that winter,
she carried with her the good wishes and grateful thanks of many poor
and lonely souls; and some have said that when they were walking round
the head of the cove in which it was the habit of the little craft to
hibernate, strange sounds like that of a purring cat were ofttimes
wafted shoreward. "It is only the wind in her rigging," the skeptical
explained; but a suspicion still lurks in some of our minds that the
Eskimo are not so far from the truth in conceding souls to inanimate
objects.
THE RED ISLAND SHOALS
The house was fairly shaking in the gale, and any one but Uncle Rube,
who had lived in it since he put it there forty years before, would
have been expecting things to happen. But the old man sat dozing in
his chair beside the crackling stove, and the circling rings of smoke
rising over his snow-white head were the only signs of life about him.
The only other occupant of the house was a little girl whom Uncle Rube
had taken for "company," the year that his wife left him. The coast
knew that his only lad had been lost aboard some sealer many years
ago. The little girl was lying stretched out on the wooden settle
close beside him. Twice already in the dim light of the tiny window,
now well covered with snow outside and frost within, I had mistaken
her towsly golden curls for a hearth-brush, she lay so still.
At length, as the cottage gave a more violent lurch than usual, even
my book failed to keep my mind at rest.
"Aren't you afraid the house is going to blow away, Uncle Rube? You
remember that our church blew into the harbor, pews and floor as well
as walls and roof. You could see the pews at low water till the ice
took them away."
Crack! Crack! Crack!
"No fear of she, Doctor. She's held on this forty years, and I reckon
she won't bring her anchors home till I does myself."
"Never to go again till the old man died," I hummed.
Something, however, seemed to have roused up Uncle Rube. For,
carefully laying his pipe in its place on the shelf, he went to the
door, opening it enough to allow him to peer out through the crack.
Unfortunately another eddying gust struck the house at that very
moment, tore the door from his grasp, and by sweeping in and taking
the fortress from within, very nearly gave it its _coup de grace_. In
the momentary lull that followed we managed to shut the door, and to
barricade it from inside.
The child was astir before we got back to the genial warmth of the
stove. Crack! Crack! Crack! went the little dwelling again, as a more
than usually fierce blast of the hurricane, strengthened by the
furiously driving snow, hit it like another hammer of Thor. Crack!
Crack! The house seemed to swing like a pendulum before it came to
rest again. I could see that the old man was uneasy.
"What is it, Uncle Rube? What is it?" the little girl cried out
petulantly.
"Why, nothing, little one, nothing. Only 'tis as well to take a peek
out on times. There's no knowing when there might be some one astray
through this kind of weather. 'Tis no hurt to make sure, is it?"
She was a pale-faced little thing, with the lustrous eyes and delicate
skin that often so pathetically array the prospective victims of the
White Man's Curse. She had been a tiny, unwanted item in a large
family of twelve with which "Providence had blessed" a struggling
friend and neighbor. The arrival of the last had robbed him of his
only help. "Daddy gived me to Uncle Rube," was her only explanation of
her being there.
"'T is cold, though," she answered. "It made me dream that you were on
the old island again, and I was with you, and then the house shook so
that it woke me up."
For answer he went to an old and well-worn seaman's chest which served
ordinarily for an additional seat. The reverent care with which he
turned over the contents would have honored a priest before the
sanctuary. But eventually he returned with a really beautiful shawl
which he tenderly wrapped around the child, and sitting down laid her
head upon his shoulder. In this position she was almost immediately
asleep again, and, fearing to wake her, I had forborne to break the
silence. Indeed, I was far enough away from ice and snow and blizzards
for the moment--the Indian shawl having carried me home to England,
and the old camphor trunk which my own mother, herself born in India,
had taught us boys to reverence as the old man did his, filled as
ours was with specimens of weird patterns and exquisite workmanship.
Uncle Rube had been watching my eyes fixed on the rich mantle that
contrasted so strangely with every other surrounding.
"I brought it from India when I used to go overseas. I keeps it
because my Mary loved it so, though she 'lowed it was too rich for t'
likes o' her to wear it much. But I guess it'll last now. 'T is t'
last bit o' finery left," he smiled, "and 't is most time to be
hauling that down. For I reckons Nellie won't last out to need it
long. Eh, Doctor?" And for a moment a tear sparkled in his merry old
eyes, as he peered from under his heavy white eyebrows.
"You can always trust me to find a good home for Nellie, Uncle Rube,"
I answered. "I've forty like her now, and one more won't sink the
ship. But you know that better than I can tell you." And suddenly it
flashed over me that Uncle Rube's unexpected visit to our Children's
Home must had have some relation to the curly head on his shoulder.
The tear fell on his tanned cheek, and he looked away and coughed. But
he said nothing.
"What was the old island that Nellie was talking about?" I broke in to
relieve the situation. "It sounded as if you had been playing Robinson
Crusoe some time," I added, "and have spun her yarns that you won't
tell me." For the hope that here might be something which would fill
in the time during which it was plain that Jack Frost intended to keep
me prisoner in this bookless cabin, suddenly dawned upon me.
"Island?" he smiled, after a brief pause. "Island? Oh! that was forty
years ago, when us lost t' old Manxman on t' Red Island Shoals." And
the _wanderlust_ of Uncle Rube's British blood, stirred by this leap
back over the passing years, made him once more a bouncing,
devil-may-care sailor lad. The sign of tears had vanished from his
cheeks as he rose, and, gently laying the little figure in her old
corner on the settle, leisurely lit his pipe. Like that of Nathaniel
Hawthorne's Feather-top it seemed to send renewed youth through his
veins with every puff he drew. Knowing that he was trying to think,
and fearing to distract his mind, I again kept a discreet silence. At
last, just as if he saw the scene again, his eyes closed and his
splendid shock of long white hair was once more thrown back into its
accustomed place in the rocking-chair.
"It wasn't a fair deal, Doctor. Not a fair deal. We was sailors in
those days, just as much as them is in they old tin kettles that
rattles up and down t' Straits now, for all they big size and they
gold braid. T' Manxman wouldn't have come by her end as she did if
stout arms and good seamen could 'a' saved her. Murdered she was,
Doctor, murdered by this same Jack Frost what's trying to blow us out
o' house and home right now. But don't you have no uneasiness, Doctor,
I've got him beat this time, and she'll not drag. No, sir, not till I
do"--and a fierce spirit gleamed out through his eyes.
We had often wondered why Uncle Rube, the genial, gentle, hospitable
old man that the coast knew him to be, had come to put down his
anchors in this wild and almost desolate gorge. Here was a possible
explanation. The loss of his only lad must have been from this very
Manxman, and by some strange twist of mentality the father had
determined to plant himself just as near the scene and circumstance as
human strength permitted, end there, single-handed if need be, fight
out the battle of life, with the daily sense of flaunting the enemy
that had robbed him of his joy in life--his one and only child. For
with Chestertonian paradox this lonely man's passion was children.
"No. No, he can't move her, Doctor," he repeated, as if he were
reading my thoughts, as I truly believe that he was. For our minds in
the North are not crusted like tender feet with horny coverings from
the chafe of boots, or as are minds beset with telephones, special
deliveries, and editions of the yellow press.
"No, Uncle Rube, you don't think I'd sit here if I wasn't certain of
it. You've got him beaten to a frazzle this time."
I was right then, for Uncle Rube "slacked away" as he put it, and took
up the thread of his story again without further comment, but not
before apologizing for any undue familiarity into which the
excitement, of which he was well aware, might have betrayed him.
"Us found t' seals early that year, and panned a voyage of as fine
young fat as ever a 'swiler' wished for, but t' weather was dirty from
t' day us struck t' patch, as if Jack Frost was determined us
shouldn't have 'em. Anyhow, afore we could pick up more'n half what
us'd killed, a dozen o' our lads got adrift on t' floe, and though
they got aboard another vessel, us thought 'em was lost. While us
sailed about looking for 'em, us lost most o' t' pans. So round t'
beginning of April t' skipper, in company with a score of other
schooners, put her for the Norrard, in hopes of cutting off some of t'
old seals in t' swatches. T' slob being very heavy outside, us lay for
inside Belle Isle, and carried open water most across t' Straits.
Well, sir, t' wind veered round all of a sudden, just as us was abeam
of t' Devil's Table, and t' Gulf ice came out of t' Straits fair
roaring"--and Uncle Rube took another contemplative puff at his pipe.
"It would have been all right if only t' big field had gone off t'
same time before t' wind. But somehow there were a big block held up
by t' Islands, and t' western ice just came and hit it clip! It must
have been all up with us right there but for t' northeast current, and
that took our vessel like a nutshell and whisked her away in t' heavy
slob as if to carry her along the Labrador coast. But it proved us was
not far enough off t' land, for just about midday t' Red Islands come
up like dark specks out o' t' ice--right ahead t' way we was being
driven. T' other schooners was caught in t' jam too and drifting with
us, little black dots scattered over t' surface of t' ice field like
t' currants in slices of sweet white loaf.
"I believe our skipper knowed it were no good, just as soon as t'
watch called him to see for hisself. But he made out as if there was
nothing to it, and ordered all hands to be ready to take t' ice, as
though 't was a patch o' swiles instead of rocks ahead. But when he
started getting up grub, and canvas, and all sorts of things, and had
us put 'em in t' boats, us knew it were no old harps he was thinking
of.
"Well, sir, it seemed as if it had to be. The old Manxman went as fair
for them reefs as if she was being hauled there with a capstan. It was
fair uncanny, and I believes there be more in some one driving her
there than most people 'lows. Anyhow, tied up as us was in t' heavy
jam, right fair towards 'em she had to go, and then on to 'em, and up
over t' reef as if us 'd laid t' course express for 'em, while every
other vessel round us went clear. T' reef's about five feet out o'
water at high springs, and about ten feet over surface on t' neaps.
Springs it was that day, t' moon being nearly full, and t' first crack
ripped t' bottom clean out o' t' old ship. Us all hustled out on to t'
ice, taking with us all us could carry, working as quick as ever us
could, for t' pressure o' wind was rafting t' pans on to t' rocks, and
almost before us knew it, what remained of her above t' ice had gone
right on over t' shoals; and long before dusk, I reckons, had gone
down through it. At any rate, us saw no more of her. Us tried to make
a bit of shelter for t' night out o' some of t' canvas, but t' wind
never slacked a peck, and t' rafting ice soon carried away even t' few
things us had saved.
"Had us known in time us had better have stuck to t' boats, for they
might have given us a chance. But t' wind being offshore, and t' ice
running out to sea, made it seem safer to keep to t' rocks. For t' Red
Island Shoal is only three or four miles from t' land, and there be
liveyers, as us knew, almost opposite. If t' wind had held in t' same
direction even then us might have escaped, but it dropped suddenly
about day dawn, and there were huge swatches o' water between us and
t' mainland before it came light enough to try and get across. Then
just as suddenly t' wind clipped round, and t' sea began to make, and
t' water started breaking right over them rocks.
"Us had managed to build a fire out o' some of t' wreckage saved, and
had thrown in bits o' canvas and some tarry oakum to make smoke. They
had seen it too on t' land, and had lit three smoke fires in a line to
let us know that they would send help if they could. But the veering
of the wind had made that impossible, for they could only launch small
skiffs, and they would not have lived more'n a few minutes for t' ice
making on 'em.
"T' breaking seas and driving spray soon wet all our men through.
There were forty of us all told. But by night several were either dead
or beyond help. T' ice had taken our boats, and now t' seas took all
that was left. T' fire went out just before midday, and our bit o'
grub got wet and frozen. Next morning t' sea was higher than ever, and
t' bodies of t' men mostly washed away as they died. All that day t'
rest of us just held on, some twenty or so; but it was a bare six of
us that were living t' second night. There was no sleep, and not even
any lying down if you wanted to live. None of them that slept ever
woke again. I might have nodded standing up. Guess I must have. But
t' third morning I was t' only man moving; and though it was as fine a
shining morning as ever broke, and t' hot sun from t' ice soon put a
little life in me, I never expected to see another night. Then I must
have forgotten everything, even t' people on t' shore. For I never saw
any boat coming, or any one land. Everything had been washed away but
myself. I had been alone, I reckon, many hours. It seemed ages since I
'd heard a human voice; but I still remembers some one putting his
hand on my shoulder. They had been calling, so they told me, but
somehow I heard nothing. They kept me a good many days before I knowed
anything--doing for me like a mother would for her boy. But more'n a
week had gone by before I could tell 'em who I was.
"And then it all came back to me--t' cruel suffering of my shipmates,
and most of all of Willy, t' only chick or child I ever had. He had my
coat over his oil frock, and he were so brave, so young, and so
strong. And he lived till morning--long after great strong men had
perished--and me able to do nothing. Then his poor frozen body was
washed to and fro in that terrible surf, as if my boy wouldn't leave
me even if he was dead. Why I lived on, and why it pleased God to
spare my poor life I never knowed, or shall know, Doctor, till he
tells me himself."
He was sitting bolt upright now, looking me straight in the face. But
the fire died suddenly from Uncle Rube's eyes, and, exhausted by the
effort and the memories the story brought back to him, he fell back in
the chair as if he had been struck by some knock-out blow. The thud of
the fall once more woke the child, and, seeing me jump to the old
man's help, she began to sob piteously. It was only for a moment,
however. The splendid vitality of the man, toughened by his hard life
and simple fare, soon made him master of himself again, and,
apologizing for giving me trouble, he took up the child, crooning over
her to get her quiet.
"Forty years I've been living here, Doctor," he went on. "Forty
years--and t' last ten I've been all alone. Not a living soul have I
had t' chance to save all these long years, though God knows I've kept
as good a lookout as one watch could. Then Neighbor Blake lost his
helpmate like I had mine, and he let me share up with him, and have
Nellie. He wanted his boys to help him get food and things for t'
rest, so a girl was what he gave me. And I couldn't have had a boy,
Doctor, anyhow. Willy's place will never be filled for me, till he
comes himself and fills it, and that won't be long now either." He
looked at his pipe, which had gone out, and then continued: "No, I'm
not one o' them as can take a new wife almost as soon as t' first
one's gone"--and then suddenly: "But it's time to boil t' kettle.
You'se getting hungry, I 'lows, and me chattering like a fool, and not
thinking of anything beyond my own troubles. I'm forgetting you must
be worriting over being kept so long in this bit of a tilt, but you'll
not get away till morning, so just make yourself as miserable as you
can!"
As he bustled around filling the kettle with ice for water, and
struggling to heat up a small molasses barrel in order to let out
some "sweetness" for our tea, I had made a bird, a boat, and a couple
of darts out of paper, as overtures to the lady of the house. Before
the humble meal was spread she had the room ringing with her laughter,
as she darted now here, now there, and at last succeeded in hitting
the old man himself almost in the eye. Many times that meal has come
back to my memory. The rough bare boards of the walls, naked but for
one old picture of a horse cut from a magazine, carefully pasted
upside down, and probably designed chiefly to cover some defective
spot that was admitting too much coldness; the crazy table shaking
with every gust and causing a tiny kerosene lamp to flare up and
menace the dim religious darkness by depositing even more lamp-black
than was its wont on its already negrine globe; the meagre board of
dark bread, "oleo," and molasses; the weird minstrelsy of the
hurricane--the whole a harmony of poverty and war. Yet the memory
brings deeper pleasure to my mind than that of many costly
banquets--and even I have eaten from plates of silver with implements
of gold. For in the flickering light of the crackling logs I can still
see the joy of the old man's kindly face over the boisterous happiness
of his quaint ward, the dance in the eyes of the merry child as some
colored candies placed in my nonny-bag by my wife fell somehow from
the sky right on to the table before her. The telling of his story,
never before mentioned to any one but his wife and foster child, but
kept like some vendetta wrong waiting for revenge in his rebellious
heart these many years, seemed to have renewed his youth. A merrier,
happier party it has never been my lot to share in; and now that I
know the pathos of the last chapter written in this strange life, I
rejoice more than ever that for that night, anyhow, the enemy that
haunted him overreached, and the very blizzard proved the key for one
evening at least of freedom from his obsession.