CAPTAIN SAULSBY’S WATCH
For full half a minute Billy was quite certain that he was drowned and
did not like it at all. The wet ropes and the heavy canvas clung to him,
apparently determined that once he went down he should never come up
again. For a gasping moment he managed to get his head above water, had
a sharp, clear vision of the wide sea, the cloudy sky and Appledore
Island with its green slopes and wooded hills: then he went down again.
His next attempt was more fortunate, however, for he came up clear of
the wreckage and not far from the boat, which was still afloat, bottom
upwards. He swam to her in a few strokes and, after one or two efforts,
managed to clamber up her slippery hull. What was his joy and relief, on
scrambling high enough to peer over the centreboard, to see Captain
Saulsby slowly and laboriously crawling up the other side.
“Give us a hand up, boy,” he said a little breathless, but speaking in
the calmest and cheeriest of tones. “I’m not so spry as I used to be,
but I’ll make it all right—er—ouch, but those barnacles are sharp. I
should never have let the boat get such a foul bottom. Now,” as he came
up beside Billy, “there we are as fine as you please. We’ll just have to
wait a couple of hours, and some one will be sure to pick us up. There’s
nothing to worry about in a little spill like this. See, the squall’s
gone by and the clouds are clearing away already.”
Billy looked about him and was not so sure. To be perched upon the keel
of a capsized boat, rocking precariously with every wave, to have miles
of empty ocean on every side is a little disturbing the first time you
try it. So at least he concluded as he watched the sun drop slowly
toward the horizon.
The war game had drifted away to the north, so that, for the first time
in days, there was not a vessel of any kind in sight. Above them the
clouds were assuredly blowing away, but over in the west another bank of
them, thick and grey and threatening, was rising very slowly to meet the
sun. There could also be little doubt that the wind was steadily
freshening and the waves splashing higher and higher along the sides of
their little boat. All these things Captain Saulsby seemed cheerfully
determined to ignore, so Billy decided that it was best for him to say
nothing.
“I’ve had a lot of little adventures like this in my day,” the old
sailor went on. “It makes me feel quite young again to be in just one
more. Why, the first time was when a sampan capsized when we were
landing from the _Josephine_ in the harbor of Hongkong. I’ll never
forget how I laughed out loud with the queer, warm tickle of the water,
when I’d thought for sure it was going to be icy cold. I couldn’t have
been much bigger than that.”
He tried to hold up a hand to show Billy the exact height he had been,
but so nearly lost his balance in the process that he was obliged to
clutch hastily at the slippery support again.
“Did you really go to sea when you were so little?” Billy asked. “I
wonder your people let you.”
“They weren’t any too willing,” returned the Captain; “in fact, they
weren’t willing at all. My folks were like yours, though you wouldn’t
think it; they were people with book-learning, doctors and lawyers and
the like. They wanted me to be the same, and when I wouldn’t, but was
all for going to sea, they said very well, a sailor I could be, but
first I must go to school, for sailors must have learning too. But I
couldn’t wait; the wish for the blue water was in my very blood, so I
slipped away and shipped for China before they knew it. That was a hard
voyage in some ways, but a wonder of a one in others, and when I came
home I would listen to nothing they said, but was off and away again
before I had been in port much more than a week.”
“And you’ve sailed and sailed and sailed ever since?” Billy asked. A
sharp dip of the boat nearly upset him but he managed to speak calmly.
He thought it a good plan to keep the old man talking that he might not
notice the rising clouds behind him.
“Yes, sometimes on sailing ships and sometimes on steamers, in every
trade and bound for every port on earth. I drifted into the Navy at
last, and was a bluejacket on just such a battleship as we saw go by
today, and it was in that service that I first began to see what a
mistake I had made. There were, among the young officers, boys not half
my age, but knowing four times more than I ever would. I had to salute
when they spoke to me, and I was glad to do it, for it is the like of
them and not the like of me that makes the big ships go. I vowed then
that I would turn to and learn something, that I would study navigation
yet and have a ship of my own some day. But I didn’t stick to it. I
drifted here and drifted there, lost or spent my money the day after I
got to port, and had to ship again in any berth I could.
“When I was here in New England I was always longing for a sight of palm
trees, and the hot sandy beaches, and the brown people and their
queer-built houses round the harbours at Singapore or Bangkok or Bombay.
But when I was there I was somehow always thinking of how our great,
cool, grey rocks looked along this coast with the surf tumbling below
and the pine covered hills behind them. I would remember the smell of
bayberry and sweetbriar and mayflowers and think it would be the breath
of life to me. So it was always, drifting first in one direction and
then in another, until I came to port at last with less than I had when
I put to sea. When I started out in life I was bound I would be a
sea-captain before I was twenty: now that I am nearly four times that it
hurts me still to think that the chance is gone forever. It’s a nice end
for a man who once thought the sea was all his very own!”
“Was it hard to make up your mind to stay ashore?” asked Billy. He was
watching the bank of clouds that had spread across the western sky and
praying the Captain would keep on talking. The sun had begun to dip into
the mass of heavy grey, and was sending up long shafts of red-gold
light.
“It wasn’t so bad the day the doctor told me that I could never go out
of port again,” Captain Saulsby said; “the hard life had done for me and
the sharp sea winds had bitten so deep into my bones that I knew, long
before he said so, that my usefulness was done. No, the end really came
a year before when I found, all of a sudden, that the sailor I thought I
was, the Ned Saulsby who could face any hardship, do any duty without
faltering and without tiring, that he was gone as completely as though
he had died.
“It was on the schooner _Mary Jameson_, bound out of Portland with
lumber and coal. We had had fearful weather for three days out, blowing
so hard that there was no peace or rest for any one. We were all
dog-tired and could have slept where we stood, but the wind was still up
and it wasn’t easy going yet. It was my watch and I was dropping with
sleepiness and weariness, but so I had been many times before and it was
part of being a good sailor to be able to keep awake. I stood peering
and peering into the dark, my eyes trying to go shut, but my whole will
set to keep them open. All of a sudden, as I stood there looking, I saw
a full-rigged ship dead ahead of us, every sail spread out to the wind,
her bow-wave slanting sharp out on each side from her cut-water, her
wake showing clear in a white line of foam. She was so near I could see
the men moving on her decks, could see her open hatchways and the flag
flying from her main truck. We were right in line to ram her amidships;
it seemed we couldn’t miss her except by a miracle. I roared to the man
at the wheel, ‘Port your helm, port your helm, put her hard over,’ and
the schooner came about with a rush that almost capsized her. The
captain ran up on deck, the men turned out of their bunks and came
swarming up from below, all wanting to know what the matter was. I told
them about the ship and turned to point her out—but she wasn’t there!
The clouds parted just then and the moon came out, just to show that the
sea was empty for miles on every side, and that old Ned Saulsby had been
sleeping on watch. Of course if I had thought two seconds I would have
known that never a ship on earth would have all sail set in such a wind
as that, but I had not stopped to think.”
“Why,” gasped Billy, “it must have been the _Flying Dutchman_.”
[Illustration: “Why,” gasped Billy, “it must have been the _Flying
Dutchman_.”]
“Some of the men whispered around that it might have been just that
ship, but the captain knew better and so did I. It was only a dream and
I had been asleep when I had no business to be, and if I had done it
once I would do it again. If I had been young it would have been
different, when lads aren’t used to standing watch such a thing may
happen and we know they’ll learn better, but when an old sailor does it
he can be sure of just one thing: his days at sea are near their end. I
left the _Mary Jameson_ at the next port, before the captain could turn
me off. I knocked about for nearly a year, trying one berth and then
another, falling lower and lower, and knowing I was failing in my duty
whatever I tried to do. So at last I came limping into the harbour of
Appledore Island and I knew, when I stepped ashore, that I would never
set sail again.”
Captain Saulsby finished his story and shifted warily in his place. He
glanced over his shoulder at the rising bank of clouds, but betrayed no
surprise.
“I knew by the feel of the wind that some such thing was coming,” he
said calmly. “If somebody’s going to pick us up in time they’ll have to
hurry a bit.”
He made one or two efforts to talk further, but the pauses between his
sentences became longer and longer. Billy suddenly realized that each
had been trying to keep the other interested so that the ominous bank of
clouds might go as long as possible unnoticed. He observed that the old
sailor seemed very weary, that more than once his hands slipped from
their hold and had to take a fresh grip. He tried to whistle to keep up
the spirits of both of them, but the tune sounded high and queer and
cracked, and he gave it up. At last Captain Saulsby broke silence
suddenly.
“No one seems to be finding us,” he said, “and we can’t hold on forever.
There’s something I must tell you, in case you should be able to last
longer than I. That land of mine, you know, that Jarreth and the other
fellow are trying to buy, well, they are not to have it. You will see to
that, won’t you?”
“You don’t want to part with it?” asked Billy, not quite understanding.
“I don’t want him to have it,” the Captain repeated, “whether I—I get
back to it or not. He doesn’t want it for a good purpose. I’ve suspected
that always, though I have never been sure enough to make an open
report. I was a coward, I suppose, and was afraid of being laughed at.
People won’t believe there is a war within a thousand years of us, but
I’m not taking any chances. There are no Germans going to settle down
here, getting ready to help the Kaiser, the way they did for years
across the water. They’ll find their time wasted on the Island of
Appledore. It’s foggy a lot off this coast, the island is far out,
there’s a sheltered, hidden harbour, there where the mill stream comes
out; they couldn’t find a better place, they think, and so they’re
trying to buy it. Smugglers and even pirates, they say, used to make it
their landing place, but it’s worse rascals than either that want to use
it now. Ned Saulsby has stood them off so far, but he may have to leave
the work to some one else.”
His voice shook with a sudden earnestness that was startling.
“Promise me, Billy Wentworth,” he said, “promise me that if you’re the
only one that comes to shore after this cruise, you’ll see that land is
safe whatever happens.”
“I promise,” Billy assured him, trembling with excitement at the rush of
new, strange ideas that suddenly came tumbling into his mind; “but,
Captain Saulsby, of course we’re—we’re going to come ashore together.”
“You can’t always tell, boy,” the other answered, his very voice
showing the weakness that was gradually overcoming his iron
determination. “I’m not so young as sailormen sometimes are,
and—even—the—young—ones—don’t—always—hold—on—forever.”
He collapsed sideways even as he spoke and would have pitched into the
water had not Billy caught him. The wrench almost destroyed his own
balance, but he managed somehow to cling to the centreboard and keep
them both still upon the overturned boat.
It grew darker and darker, and the wide stretch of sea turned from blue
to shadowy grey as the twilight fell. Billy and the Captain talked no
more, for every last ounce of strength was being put into the effort of
clinging to the boat. The seas rose higher and snatched at them as they
hung against the side, more than once it seemed that their hold must be
torn loose. It became plain to the boy, as he clung determinedly, with
one arm around the old man and one flung over the ridge of the keel,
that the boat was growing heavier and more water-logged with every wave
to which she rose, that their one support was slowly settling beneath
them.
Captain Saulsby muttered something in his ear, but it was a moment
before he could quite understand the half-whispered words.
“She’s an old craft, and I’m her captain,” he said, “it’s the right way
for a boat and her old skipper to go down. But you’re young; it’s a
shame for you, Billy. You would have made a good sailor; that’s the best
I can say for any man.”
He did not speak again, nor even try to move, he seemed to have lapsed
practically into unconsciousness. Billy still clung to him and to the
boat while his arms ached, then pricked and burned and finally became
numb.
He felt so utterly exhausted that he thought he must give up, must drift
off into quiet sleep and put an end to such hopeless effort. To rouse
himself he began counting the stars overhead, the navigation stars whose
names Captain Saulsby had taught him. There was Polaris, and there was
Vega nearly overhead, and Altair, and there was Arcturus dipping toward
the western horizon. While he watched, the orange gold of Arcturus was
obscured by the rising clouds, then Altair was blotted out, now Vega,
now the North Star and the shining Dipper. The boat began to plunge and
roll, she could not last much longer now. He was too weary to care much
whether she did or not.
He, too, must have fallen into unconsciousness for there was certainly
an interval of which he knew nothing. Then a cold dash of water slapped
in his face and roused him. He saw, almost above him, a black silhouette
against the grey sky, the outline of a torpedo-boat making directly for
them.
He felt only a lukewarm interest in the sudden vision, and wondered
vaguely,
“Do they see us, or are they going to run us down?”