NEAR THE REEFS
The sound of voices calling cheerily over the water and the creaking of
blocks awoke the boys a little after four o’clock the next morning. Henry
Burns dragged himself drowsily to one of the cabin ports and looked out.
It was a picturesque sight, for a small fleet of fishing-craft, of all
sorts and shapes and sizes, was passing out of the thoroughfare, on its
way to the fishing-grounds, with a light morning breeze that just filled
the sails.
Back of the harbour the land went up gradually for a way, dotted here and
there with the snug, tidy homes of the fishermen, until it rose in the
centre of the island, forming hills of some considerable height—the first
landfall for ships coming in from sea at that point. Now the tops of the
hills glinted with the rays of the morning sun, which soon streamed down
the slopes and made the whole island glow with warmth and brightness.
The pleasing landscape had at that moment, however, no particular
attraction for Henry Burns. He gave a groan of self-commiseration,
tumbled back into his warm blanket, and remarked:
“Oh, but these fishermen do begin the day early! Say, we don’t have to,
do we, Jack? I vote for another hour’s sleep.”
“Make it four,” said Bob, who had been eying Henry Burns with
apprehension.
Harvey and Tom muttered an assent that was not distinguishable.
By five o’clock, however, the sounds of men and boats had them awake
again; and by another half-hour they were breakfasting on their way out
of the harbour, beating against a light southerly.
“Do you know the fishing-grounds, Jack?” inquired Henry Burns.
“Only in a general way,” replied Harvey. “But we’ll follow the others,
and get in somewhere near them.”
They stood out of the harbour and headed down the coast of the island,
which extended seaward thus for some four miles. Harvey, at the wheel,
was studying carefully a chart of the waters; Henry Burns and Tom and
Bob, arrayed in oilskins, were busily engaged in “shucking” clams into
some wooden buckets.
Presently an unexpected hail came across the water to them from a
sailboat they had overhauled.
“Why, hello,” called Harvey, and added to his companions, “Here’s luck.
It’s Will Hackett, Jeff’s brother. You know Jeff, who carries the mails
in his packet.”
“What are you chaps doing way down here? Aren’t you lost?” asked the
other, a stalwart, red-faced youth, who, with a crew composed of one
small boy, was navigating a rough-looking sloop that looked as though it
had seen a score of hard summers.
Harvey explained.
“Well, you won’t get rich,” said Will Hackett, bringing his craft in to
head along with them. “But I’ll show you where to fish. The depth of
water makes all the difference around here. They call me lucky, but
there’s something in knowing where to drop a line. I’m down only for the
day, but you follow me around and you’ll know where to go next time.”
When they had told him of the adventure of the night before, Will Hackett
slapped a heavy fist down upon his knee.
“Good for you!” he cried. “So you’ve run foul of old Jim Martel, have
you? Why, I offered to thrash him and his two boys only three weeks ago,
for hanging around after dark where I had a trawl set. They come from
over eastward, and quarrel with everybody; and I wouldn’t trust one of
them with a rotten rope. You’d better keep away from them, though. He’s
got a hot temper, has Jim Martel.”
They were in the swell from the open sea now, and the _Viking_ and its
companion, the _Gracie_, were lifting and dipping amid the long, rolling
waves. About them, and ahead here and there, clouds of spray, cast like
chaff into the air, told of reefs; sometimes marked with a spindle, or a
cask set on the top of a pole, if it lay near the course; sometimes with
a thin point of the ledge rising a few feet above water.
Some three miles down the coast of Loon Island a reef of several rods in
length broke the force of the waves from seaward; and as these dashed in
upon it they crashed into a thousand particles, which gleamed transiently
with the colours of the rainbow as the sun shone upon the drops. Close
under the lee of this reef went Will Hackett, and cast anchor a few rods
away, not far from another boat, already at anchor. The _Viking_
followed, and likewise anchored at a little distance, and sails were
furled.
Quickly the heavy cod-lines, equipped with two hooks each, and bulky
sinker, were dropped overboard; and the boys waited expectantly, their
baits close to bottom.
“A prize to the one that gets the first cod,” said Harvey.
“What’s the prize?” asked Bob.
“Why, he can keep the cod’s head,” said Henry Burns. “Hello!” he
exclaimed a moment later. “I’ve hooked on bottom, I guess. No, it must be
seaweed.”
Henry Burns began hauling in with considerable effort.
“Why, it’s a fish!” he exclaimed the next moment. “There’s something
moving on the end of the line. But he doesn’t fight any. Comes up like so
much lead.”
“That’s the way they act,” said Harvey. “They don’t make any fuss. But
you’ve got a big one.”
Henry Burns, hauling with all his might, hand over hand, presently
brought to the surface an enormous cod.
“There’s a whole dinner for a hotel in that fellow,” said he. And,
indeed, the fish would weigh fully twenty pounds.
“Not quite so lively sport as catching mackerel, is it?” he remarked,
looking at his hands, which were reddened with the chafing of the hard
line.
“No, this is more like work,” said Harvey. “But they won’t all run
anywhere near as big as that. You’ve caught one of the old settlers.”
The fish were biting in earnest now, and the boys were bringing them in
over the rail almost as fast as they could bait and cast overboard. By
noon they had two great baskets full, stowed away in the cabin out of the
sun, and were glad enough to take a long hour for rest, feasting on one
of the smallest of their catch, rolled in meal and fried to a tempting
crispness.
Then near sundown they were among the first to weigh anchor and run for
harbour, tired but elated over their first day’s rough work.
Will Hackett had advised them how to dispose of their catch. A trader at
the head of the harbour bought for salting down all that the fishermen
did not sell alive to the schooners that carried them in huge wells, deep
in their holds, to the Portland or Boston markets.
So they ran in with the other craft, and took their catch in to his dock
in their dory.
The trader, a small, wiry, bright-eyed Yankee, scrutinized Henry Burns
and Jack Harvey sharply, as they entered the little den which bore the
imposing word “_Office_” over its door.
“So you’re fishermen, eh?” he remarked. “Rather a fine craft you’ve
brought down for the work. Guess you might manage to keep alive somehow
if you didn’t fish for a living.”
He was interested, though, when they told him their circumstances.
“Good!” he exclaimed. “Well, I’m paying a dollar a hundredweight for cod
caught on hand-lines, and less for trawl-caught. But you don’t calculate
to do trawl-fishing, I reckon.”
“Not just yet,” answered Harvey.
They hitched the tackle at the end of the pier on to the baskets of fish,
and the cod were hoisted up to the scales.
“Three hundred and sixty pounds, I make it,” said the trader. “That’s
three dollars and sixty cents.”
The boys went away, clinking three big silver dollars, a fifty-cent
piece, and a dime, and passing the money from hand to hand, admiringly.
“That never seemed like very much money to me before,” said Harvey,
thoughtfully. “It makes a difference whether you earn it or not—and how,
doesn’t it?”
“It’s all right for the first day,” said Henry Burns. “We’ll do better as
we get the hang of it. And then later, if we get a catch of mackerel on
the first run of the fish, why, we’ve got the boat to make a fast trip
over to Stoneland, and sell them to the hotel. There’ll be money in
that.”
The next morning, beating out of the harbour early, they had an
unpleasant experience.
They had anchored off the dock at the head of the harbour, and had just
begun to work their way out through the channel, which was there quite
narrow, against a light southwest breeze. Henry Burns had the wheel, with
Harvey tending sheet, and Tom and Bob working the single jib that they
had set. A little way ahead of them a boat was coming in, running free.
“There’s our friend,” remarked Henry Burns, noting the pinkey’s sharp,
queer stern. “It’s old Martel coming in from under-running his
hake-trawls. We’ll try to keep clear of him.”
But it seemed this was not wholly possible.
The _Viking_ was standing up to clear a buoy a short distance ahead,
which marked the channel, and would just barely fetch by it if she was
not headed off any. It became apparent soon, however, that the skipper of
the pinkey was heading so that, if one or the other did not give way,
there would be a collision.
“Better give him the horn,” suggested Tom, as the boys watched the
oncoming boat.
“No, I don’t think we need to,” said Henry Burns. “They see us. Look,
there they are pointing. Old Martel knows what he is doing. It’s just a
case of bullying. We’ve got the right of way over a boat running free,
and he knows it.”
“That’s right, Henry,” exclaimed Harvey. “We might as well show him we
know our rights. Keep her on her course, and don’t give way an inch.”
There was plenty of water on the pinkey’s starboard hand, and the course
was free there; but for the _Viking_ to head off the wind meant failure
to clear the buoy, and another tack, with loss of time. It was all a mere
trifle, of course, but they knew the skipper of the pinkey was trying to
crowd them; and they were bound to stand on their rights.
The pinkey came up perilously close; then, just barely in time, sheered
off so that its boom almost came aboard the _Viking_. Henry Burns,
unmoved, had held the _Viking_ close into the wind, without giving way an
inch even when it had looked as though the two boats must come together.
“We might as well fight it out right now with old Martel,” he said,
quietly. “Perhaps he will let us alone if he finds we’re not afraid of
him.”
Captain Jim Martel’s anger at being outmanœuvred was not lessened by the
figure of Jack Harvey standing up astern and grinning at him derisively.
He glared back angrily at the young yachtsmen.
But Harvey’s blood was up, too.
“Why don’t you learn to sail that old tub of yours?” he called out,
sneeringly.
Martel’s answer was to put his helm hard down, bring his boat about, and
stand up on the track of the _Viking_.
“Come on, we’ll give you a tow out to sea again,” cried Harvey.
“Go easy, Jack,” said Henry Burns. “He’s the pepperiest skipper I’ve seen
in all Samoset Bay. Better let him alone. He’s angry enough already.”
“Yes, but he’s to blame,” said Harvey. “When anybody hits me, I hit
back.” And forthwith he made gestures toward the other boat, as of urging
it to hurry, by beckoning; and he coiled a bit of the free end of the
main-sheet and threw it back over the stern, indicating that it was for
the other craft to pick up, so as to be towed by the _Viking_.
The effect on Skipper Martel was, indeed, amusing. He sprang up from his
seat, handed the tiller to one of his boys and rushed forward, where he
stood, shaking a fist at the crew of the _Viking_ and calling out
angrily.
He made a comical figure, with his black, shaggy head wagging, and with
his angry sputtering and his pretence of pursuit, whereas the _Viking_
was leaving the pinkey rapidly astern. Henry Burns joined in the
laughter, but he repeated his warning: “Better let him alone, Jack.”
Which warning, now that the skipper of the pinkey strode aft again, Jack
Harvey finally heeded.
“Funny how that fellow gets furious over nothing,” he said. “We’ll have
to have some fun with him.”
“You like an exciting sort of fun, don’t you, Jack?” said Henry Burns,
smiling. But it was plain he took it more seriously.
They fished for four days more with varying success, and with a Sunday
intervening. They were getting toughened to the work; their hands growing
calloused with the hard cod-lines; their knowledge of working their boat
in rough water and heavy weather increasing daily; their muscles
strengthened with the exercise; and their appetites so keen that young
Joe might have envied them.
One day it rained, but they went out just the same, equipped for it in
oilskins, rubber boots, and tarpaulins, and made a good haul.
“Well, here’s our last day for a week or so,” said Henry Burns, as they
stood out one morning for the fishing-grounds. “It’s back to Southport
to-morrow. We mustn’t get too rich all at once.”
It was a day of uncertain flaws of wind, puffy and squally, after a day
of heavy clouds. They were sailing under reefed mainsail, for at one
moment the squalls would descend sharp and treacherous, though there
would succeed intervals when there was hardly wind enough to fill the
sails. They worked down to the fishing-grounds and tried several places,
but with no great success. Some of the boats put back to harbour early in
the afternoon, dissatisfied with the conditions, as it was evidently an
off day for cod. Others, including the _Viking_, held on, hoping for
better luck.
Then, of a sudden, the wind fell away completely two hours before sunset,
and the sea was calm, save for the ground-swell, which heaved up into
waves that did not break, but in which the _Viking_ rolled and pitched
and tugged at anchor.
“Perhaps we will get a sunset breeze and be able to run back,” said
Harvey.
But evidently the fishermen, more weather-wise, knew better; for some of
the lighter, open boats furled their sails snug, got out their sweeps,
and prepared to row laboriously back the three long miles. Others of the
big boats made ready to lie out for the night.
“Well, we’ve got a good anchor and a new line,” said Harvey. “There’s
nothing rotten about the _Viking’s_ gear. We’ll lie as snug out here as
in the harbour.”
They tripped the anchor just off bottom, got out the sweeps, and worked
the _Viking_ back a dozen rods or so from the shallow water about the
reef. Then they dropped anchor again, with plenty of slack to the rope,
to let the yacht ride easy with less strain on the anchorage. There were
a half-dozen boats within hailing distance, similarly anchored, including
Skipper Martel and his pinkey.
“We’re in good company,” said Henry Burns, laughing. “But I’m glad Jack
isn’t near enough to stir him up.”
Evening came on, and the little fleet resembled a village afloat, with
the tiny wreaths of smoke curling up from the cabin-funnels. The night
was clear overhead and the hills of Loon Island shone purple in the
waning sunlight, streaked here and there with broad patches of black
shadow. The ground-swell broke upon the reef heavily, sending up a shower
of spray high in air, weird and grimly beautiful in the twilight.
“That’s good music to sleep by,” said Bob, as the booming from the reef
came to their ears while they sat at supper.
“Yes, it’s all right on a night like this,” assented Harvey. “You’ll
sleep as sound as in the tent.”
It grew dark, and the little fleet set its lanterns, though it was mere
conformance to custom in this case, since no craft ever made a
thoroughfare where they lay.
“What do you think?” asked Henry Burns two hours later, as he and Harvey
stood outside, taking a survey of the sea and sky, and making sure once
more that their anchor-rope was clear and well hitched—“What do you
think, Jack, do we need to keep watch?”
He had quite a bump of caution for a youth who did not hesitate at times
to do things that others considered reckless.
“Oh, it’s still as a mill-pond,” replied Harvey. “We’ve had the
clearing-off blow, and there are the clouds banking up off to southward,
where the breeze will come from in the morning. See, there isn’t a man
out on any of the other boats. No, we’ll just turn in and sleep like
kittens in a basket.”
So they went below.
The roaring of the reef was, in truth, a not all unpleasant sound to
those who felt safe and snug in its lee, securely anchored. To be sure,
there was a grim suggestion in the crashing of the swell against its
hollows and angles at first, but the steady repetition of this became in
time almost monotonous. There was the heavy, roaring, thudding sound, as
the swell surged in against its firm base. Then this blended into a crisp
rushing, as the waters raced along its sides; and then a crash as of
shattered glass as the mass thrown up broke in mid-air and fell back in
countless fragments of white, frothing water upon the cold rocks.
The boys went off to sleep with this ceaseless play of the waters in
their ears.
The hours of the night passed one by one. And if any boy aboard the
_Viking_ roused up through their passing and heard the surf-play upon the
reef, there was no more menace in it than before. Just the same steady
hammering of water upon rock.
Yet Harvey’s prophecy of sound sleep was not wholly borne out—at least,
in the case of Henry Burns. He was a good sleeper under ordinary
conditions, but he roused up several times and listened to the wash of
the seas.
“It may be grand music,” he muttered once, drowsily, “but I can’t say I
like it quite so near.”
Something awoke him again an hour later. His perception of it as he
half-sat up was that it sounded like something grating against the side
of the _Viking_.
He sat still for a moment and listened. The sound was not repeated.
“I thought I heard something alongside,” he said aloud, but talking to
himself. “Did you hear anything, Jack?” he inquired in a louder tone, as
Harvey stirred uneasily.
There was no reply. Harvey had not wakened.
“Hm! guess I’ve got what my aunt calls the fidgets,” muttered Henry
Burns, rolling up in his blanket once more. “It’s that confounded reef.
No, it’s no use. I don’t like the sound of it at night. Pshaw! I’ll go to
sleep, though, and forget it.”
Something just alongside the _Viking_ that looked surprisingly like a
dory, with some sort of a figure crouched down in it,—and which may or
may not have caused the sound that had awakened Henry Burns,—lay quiet
there for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes,—a good half-hour in all. Then it
moved away from the side of the boat, passed on ahead for a moment, and
stole softly away over the waves.
The booming of the seas upon the reefs! How the hollow roar of it sounded
far over the waters. How the thin wisps of spray, like so much smoke,
shot up through the darkness, white and ghostlike!
A strange phenomenon! But if by chance there had been some shipwrecked
man clinging to that reef, he might have fancied that the rocks to which
he clung were drifting in the sea—strangely shifting ground and drawing
up closer to a yacht at anchor.
Or was it something different? Was the yacht really no longer lying
anchor-bound? And was it drifting, drifting slowly down upon the rocks,
soon to be lifted high upon a crest of the ground-swell—and then to be
dropped down heavily upon one of the streaming, foam-covered points of
ledge?
Crash and crash again! Was it louder and heavier than before?
Henry Burns’s eyes opened wearily.
The sound of the sea seemed stunning. What was it about the noise that
seemed more fearful, more terrifying, more dreadful than before?
He sprang up now. Yes, there could be no doubt. Something was wrong. The
sea rising, perhaps. The wind blowing up. There it came, again and again.
It was louder—and louder still. A mind works slowly brought quickly from
sleep; but Henry Burns was wide awake now.
The boys had turned in half-undressed, to be ready for an early start in
the morning. Henry Burns slipped on his trousers, scrambling about in the
darkness.
“Jack, get up!” he cried, seizing his sleeping comrade and shaking him
roughly. “Wake up, fellows—quick! Something’s the matter.”
He burst open the cabin doors and rushed out on deck.
No, there was no delusion here. The reef lay close aboard. The din of the
beating, crashing waters seemed deafening. The _Viking_, dipping and
falling with the long swells, was going slowly but surely down upon it.
Henry Burns reached for a short sheath-knife that he carried when aboard
the yacht, moved quickly along from the stern to the foot of the mast,
and cut the stops with which the sail had been furled. Then he dashed to
the bulkhead, and, without stopping to cast off the turns from the
cleats, seized the throat and peak halyards and began hauling
desperately.
The next moment, Tom and Bob had tumbled forward and caught hold with
him; while Harvey, emerging half-awake from the companionway, seized the
wheel.
Three athletic pairs of arms had the mainsail up quicker than it had ever
been set before.
“Quick now with the jib!” cried Harvey. “That will head us off, if
there’s any breeze to save us. Jump it for dear life, boys.”
They needed no urging. It was set almost before Harvey had finished
speaking. Tom, holding it off as far as he could reach to windward, stood
on the weather-bow, shivering in the cool night air and glaring fearfully
at the rocks close ahead. The white spray, writhing up half as high as
the mast, seemed to be coming nearer and nearer.
Henry Burns, having seen the mainsail and jib set, and realizing there
was nothing left to do only to hope that there was wind enough stirring
to fill the sails, dashed down into the cabin. He brought up the spare
anchor, which he proceeded to bend on to a coil of rope. But the danger
had passed before he had it ready to cast astern.
The yacht, like a living thing, seeming to feel its own peril, had caught
just the faintest of the wandering night airs in its great white sail.
The tide, ebbing, was urging it down to destruction. Then, as the wind
caught the sail, the boat responded slightly, but began to head up,
pointing fair at the black rocks. Harvey let the sheet run off. The jib,
held far out to windward, caught another faint puff of air and headed the
yacht slowly but surely off the wind.
The yacht had saved itself. Gliding ever so slowly, it skirted along the
edge of the reef for a moment, till Harvey had brought it around fairly
before the wind. Then there was one final contest between breeze and
tide. The yacht hung upon the waves sluggishly, so close in upon the
reefs that the spray, dashing over, wetted the boys aboard.
Then it moved slowly up against the tide, rising and falling heavily upon
the seas, but gaining a little, and then more.
It was enough. The spare anchor went overboard, the yacht brought up and
held. They dropped the sails once more, unharmed, with the black, hungry
reef stretching out its white arms of foam and spray, vainly, balked of
their prey.
“O-oh!” said Harvey, sinking down on a seat. “That was a close shave. But
what could have made that rope part? That’s what I can’t understand. It
was a brand-new one.”
They found out a half-hour later, after they had gone below and put on
their jackets and warmed themselves and had returned on deck. They drew
the end of the line aboard and examined it by a lantern in the cabin.
It was not broken. The end was clean, without a frayed strand in it. It
had been severed with a single sweep of a fisherman’s knife, sharp as a
razor-blade.
“Ah!” ejaculated Harvey. “We might have guessed. It’s old Martel’s work.
We’ll have the law on him for this.”
But when they peered across the water with the coming daylight there was
no pink-stern sloop to be seen, because it had gone out with the tide
long before, just as they went adrift, and was out upon the sea now,
standing off to the eastward.
“Well, we have learned two lessons,” said Henry Burns. “One is to have
the spare anchor where it can be got at quicker when it’s needed. I’d
have gone for that first if I hadn’t remembered that we had it buried
under that lot of stuff forward.”
“And what’s the other lesson?” asked Bob.
“It’s to be never without a knife when you are sailing a boat,” answered
Henry Burns. “I heard a fisherman say that once, and so I bought one to
wear in a belt aboard here. But I never thought just what it would mean
to be without one when every second counts.”
“I wish young Joe were here,” remarked Tom.
“Why’s that?” asked Harvey.
“He would have the coffee on by this time,” replied Tom. “That night air
sent the shivers through me.”
“Something else sent the shivers through me,” remarked Henry Burns. “I’ll
go and start the fire.”