NEWS FROM THE NAUTILUS.
When the fleet to which the Nautilus belonged reached the Banks,
everything seemed exceptionally propitious. The weather was fine and
tranquil for March, and the fish fairly asking to be taken. In fact, it
was all "too lucky," as old Captain Sennett of the Nautilus growled
occasionally, he being, like all sailors, superstitious to the core, and
"fond of his blow," as the crew put it.
They made a "big haul," with which they put into port, and after
disposing of it started out again, only to make a trip as disastrous as
the former had been fortunate. There was a week of the "dirtiest" kind
of weather,--head-winds, fogs, and treacherous "breezes," which strained
every timber in the old tub of a Nautilus, as she rolled clumsily about
in the turbulent waves.
At length there came a night (it was one of those in which Sara had
watched with baby during the measles) when the sea, as if scorning all
previous performances, seemed lashing itself into a very climax of rage.
Smutty rags of clouds flew across the ominous horizon, and spiteful
gusts, apparently from every direction of the compass, caught the old
Nautilus in wild arms, and tossed her about like a foot-ball.
She had sprung a slight leak also, nothing dangerous in a stanch vessel,
but an added straw, which might prove the last in this straining wrestle
with wind and sea, and she did not answer her rudder as her steersman
could have wished.
"Will she stan' it, cap'n, think ee?" asked Reuben anxiously, as a
momentary pause in the pounding and smashing found them together.
"God A'mighty knows!" was the solemn answer. "If her rudder"--
The rest was drowned in a new shriek of the blast, and Reuben threw
himself flat and clung for dear life to the winch, as a wave washed over
the deck, smashing everything breakable into kindling-wood, and almost
drowning the two, whom instinct and long practice helped to cling, in
spite of the fact that the very breath was beaten out of their bodies.
But this, bad as it seemed, was only the beginning of troubles. There
were hours of just such experiences; and Reuben's strength, robust as it
was, began to fail him beneath the strain.
In such storms there is no rest for the sailor. Something is needed of
him every moment, especially upon these fishing smacks and schooners,
which carry such small crews; and often forty or more hours will pass
with literally no rest at all.
They labored on until evening set in once more, and all hands had just
been ordered aft to secure a broken spar, when Nick the boy uttered a
fearful cry, which gave every man a start. They followed the direction
of his horrified gaze, and saw a danger which paralyzed the stoutest
nerve. Just ahead was a "gray-back,"--sailor parlance for a wave which
is to all other waves as a mountain to a hillock,--and Reuben felt their
doom was sealed, for the old Nautilus, disabled as she was already,
could never stand that terrific onslaught.
With one short, desperate prayer he closed his eyes and clung with the
grip of the dying to the shattered spar.
It was all over in a moment. A roar like a thousand thunders, a stunning
blow impossible to imagine, and then--a broad, wreck-strewn expanse,
amid which those few poor atoms of humanity showed but as black dots for
a moment, soon to be sucked beneath the seething waves.
By dawn of the next day the storm was over, for that gray-back had been
one of those climaxes in which nature seems to delight; and, having done
its worst, the winds hushed their fury, and wailed away into a chill,
sullen, but clearing morning.
The remainder of the fleet, scattered in every direction by the storm,
did not discover the absence of the Nautilus till mid-forenoon, when
bits of wreckage, into which they sailed, soon told the pitiful story.
Towards noon two bodies were found, that of the captain and steersman,
afloat in the pilot-house, but no more; the fate of Reuben, the boy, and
the three other hands could only be conjectured.
The next day the drowned men were given honorable burial; and many of
the remaining vessels, having been almost disabled by the fury of the
elements, had to make for the nearest port for repairs.
Then came a fair and "lucky" run, in which not a hand could be spared to
carry the news home, for these fishermen learn to look almost with
contempt upon death and disaster. Many a poor fellow with a broken limb
must go days, even weeks, before he can reach a physician; and the
friends on shore are left as long in ignorance of their fate.
Nearly a month had passed, then, since that awful night, when Jasper
Norris, dreading his task as he had never dreaded any physical danger in
his life, walked down the village street toward Sara and Morton in the
cottage doorway.
The former watched him with a growing feeling of suffocation and
tightness about her throat and heart, for the droop of his figure was
ominous.
Had there been good news he would have given a sailors' hurrah at sight
of them, and bounded on, waving his cap in welcome. But, still in dead
silence, he turned into the little broken gate, and walked up the path
to the door.
Sara, quite white now, and leaning for support against the jamb, kept
her piercing eyes on his face, though his would not meet their gaze;
while Morton rolled great frightened orbs from one to the other, as from
within came unconscious Molly's gleeful babble, and the baby's sweet
little trills of laughter.
"Jasper!" gasped Sara in desperation, "why--why don't you speak?"
He looked up, and made a hopeless gesture with his hands.
"Don't, Sairay," he said huskily, "don't give way, but--but I've bad
news."
A great trembling now shook her limbs, and she lifted her hands as if to
ward off a blow, but her agonized eyes seemed dragging the words out of
him.
"Your father, Sairay, he's--he's--the Nautilus went to pieces, like the
tub she wor, and he's"--
"_Drowned!_" screamed Morton, putting his hands to his ears.
"Who's drowned?" cried Molly, running to them. "Why, Jap, that you?
Where's pa?"
Sara, who had not spoken, at this dropped to the doorstep, and, doubling
up in a forlorn little heap, buried her face in her hands. Morton burst
out crying; and Molly, with a puzzled look around, joined in promptly,
thinking it the proper thing to do, though she had not yet an idea of
what had really happened.
But why prolong the heart-rending scene, as little by little Jasper
stammered out all the story he had to tell, and the poor children began
to realize how doubly orphaned they were? This was a grief before which
the loss of their. stepmother seemed as nothing. They had loved their
big, kind, good-natured father as a companion, far more than a parent;
and the thought of never meeting him again, of never hearing his well-
known greeting after his absences,--
"Waal, waal, younkers, come and kiss your old dad! Did you miss him
much, eh?"--seemed intolerable.
Sara, under this new blow, for a time lost all self-control, and broke
into such a passion of grief, that Jasper, much frightened, ran for the
nearest neighbor, Mrs. Updyke.
She soon appeared,--a gaunt woman, with a wrinkled visage, and a
constant sniff.
"Land sakes!" she cried, upon hearing Jasper's ill news, "Yeouw don't
say! Well, well, it's a disposition o' Providence, to be sure!" by which
she doubtless meant a dispensation, though it did not much matter, for
no one paid the slightest attention to her moral axioms just then.
By this time the news had spread, and the neighbors were flocking to the
afflicted cottages; for all the drowned men had lived in Killamet, and
were well known, while each had left a wife, mother, or some weeping
female relative, to mourn his loss.
But all agreed that the Olmstead case was hardest, or, if they did not,
Mrs. Updyke took pains to impress that idea upon them with a decisive
sniff; for, being a next-door neighbor, she naturally desired that the
affliction close by should outrank all other distress in the village.
But, finding Sara oblivious just now to everything but her grief, she
left her to pace back and forth, wringing her hands and moaning like
some caged creature, contenting herself with telling the children "they
could mourn for their poor pa jest as well with less noise," while she
prepared to receive the sympathetic callers with an intense satisfaction,
which the solemnity of the occasion could not quench.
"Yes, it's a awful visitation," she sniffed, as the curious, friendly
women flocked in; "I don't know's I ever hearn tell of a harrowin'er!
Four orphans, with no pa nor ma!" (Sniff, sniff.) "Molly, when that
babby squirms so, is it pins or worms?"
"He wants Sara," sobbed the poor child, whose laughter and dimples were
now all drowned in tears.
But Sara, unheeding of everybody, still kept up that wild walk back and
forth, back and forth, every groan seeming wrenched from her very soul;
and poor baby had to squirm,--and stand it.
Ah! that is a lesson that comes almost with our first breath!
"Poor child!" said one little dumpling of a woman. "Let me take him
home: he'll be amused with my Johnnie, I know. Come baby!" and, managing
at length to coax him away, she took him to more cheerful surroundings,
where he was soon quite as happy sucking a peppermint lozenge, and
watching Johnnie with his toys, as if no father lay buried under the
cruel, restless sea.
Meanwhile, awed by Sara's intense grief, the women stood about, quite
powerless, and gazed at her.
"Cain't we do nothin'?" asked Betty Pulcher, who could never endure
inaction. "What is there to _do?_" "Nothin'," sniffed Mrs. Updyke
solemnly, "least-wise, not now. Ye see, thar won't be no funeral to make
ready fur, an' the sermon won't be till a Sunday. I've gin the house a
hasty tech to red it up; an' ef the Armatts an' the Simcotes (them o'
his fust wife's kin, an' his own, ye know) should come over from
Norcross, we'll hev to divide 'em up. I kin sleep two on 'em, an' eat
four, I guess, ef the rest on ye'll do as much."
Each one agreed to do their best, this cannibal-sounding proposition
meaning nothing worse than true fishwives' hospitality; and the group
had gathered in a knot to discuss in low tones the children's
"prospec's" for the future, when Mrs. Norris and Miss Plunkett came in.
They were cousins, and something alike in face and manner, though the
spirituality in Miss Prue's visage became a sort of shrewd good-humor in
that of Mrs. Norris; and now each proceeded in a characteristic way to
her duty.
Miss Prue went straight to Sara, and took the poor, unstrung little
bundle of nerves into her arms, her very touch, both firm and gentle,
bringing comfort to the half-crazed girl. She did not say much of
anything, only kissed her and wept with her; but soon the violence of
Sara's grief was subdued, and her heart-rending moans sank into long,
sobbing breaths.
Mrs. Norris, after one pitying look, turned to the women.
"Don't you think, friends, it is possible that seeing so many makes her
worse? We all want to do something, I know. Mrs. Deering, you're so good
with children, why not take the twins home with you for to-day? Perhaps
your own bairnies will help to comfort them! And, Betty Pulcher, their
clothes will need some fixing, no doubt, for Sunday. You're just the one
to manage that; and get Mandy Marsh and Zeba Osterhaus to help you:
they'll be glad to, I know. And you, Mrs. Updyke, and Mrs. Shooter,--
were you going to look after the cooking, and so on? There'll likely be
a crowd over for the sermon."
As each one was given just the work she preferred, and as there seemed
little more chance of excitement here, they soon separated, not
realizing they had been sent home, however; and a blissful quiet
reigned.
When Mrs. Norris stepped outside to close the gate after the last one, a
voice arrested her.
"Mother! mother!"
She turned.
"Why, Jap, what are you doing there?" as her son came around one of the
rear corners of the little building.
"I'm just--waiting. Say, mother," tremulously, "will it--kill her?"
"Kill her? Who, Sairay? No, indeed. She's lots better now. Gracious! you
look sick yourself, child!"
"I'll never do such a thing again, mother,--never! I felt as if I'd
stabbed her to the heart. Do--do you s'pose it'll make her--turn agin
me?"
"Gracious! No; what an idee! Why, you've worked yourself into a regular
chill, I declare. Go home, and tell Hannah to fix you up a good stiff
dose of Jamaica ginger right away. Well, I never!"
"Then you think she's coming out of it all right?"
"I think she's enough sight better'n you'll be, if you don't go and do
what I tell you this minute; now hustle!" and Jasper, knowing his
mother's decisive ways, walked away without more ado.
But not home; not to Hannah's ministering care and the Jamaica ginger,
but to a little cove by the sea where, with his body thrown flat on the
rocks, and his face buried in his hands, he wept like a child himself,
for pure sympathy with that orphaned girl who was so dear to him.