The Deep Sea's Toll. James B. Connolly
cut until the wreckage of the spars was clear of the vessel.
Then they took a further look. Dories were gone, booby hatches were gone, the rail was gone. Only the stanchions sticking up above the deck showed where the rail had been. But the wonderful thing was yet to appear. Going forward, the Skipper noticed a turn of chain around the vessel’s bow. He looked again—and again. When he had satisfied himself he thoughtfully combed his beard.
“Forty winters I’ve been comin’ to Georges, and this is the first time ever I see that. There’ll be people that’ll say it never happened—that it couldn’t have happened. But there’s the cable around her bows, a full turn, to prove she went clean over—down one side and up the other. We’re blessed lucky to be alive, that’s what I say.”
“That’s what we are,” affirmed Jerry, and had another look for himself. And they all had another look for themselves. “Blessed lucky,” they all agreed. “And what’ll we do now, Skipper?”
“Do?” He looked around and saw only the stumps of masts projecting above her deck—no sails, no rigging, nothing. The bowsprit, even, was gone and their chain parted—and the north shoal of Georges bearing twenty miles to leeward. “Give her the other anchor, and whilst we’re layin’ to that we’ll see what we can do.”
That night they hung grimly on to the other anchor. In the morning the Skipper chewed it over. “We can’t lay here forever—that’s certain. We must try and get her out. I don’t like that shoal to looard. With this one there’s no tellin’ what she’ll take it into her head to do—to go adrift maybe, and then it’s all swallowed up we’ll be in short order.”
So they prepared to work her out. For masts they could do no better than take the pen-boards out of the hold, split them up and fish them together. They were of two-inch stock, and when they had used them all up they made but sorry-looking spars. For sails they shook the bedding out of their mattresses, took the ticking and their blankets and sewed them together with pieces of oilskins by way of patchings. There was some record-breaking sewing aboard the Celestine that morning, for all were thinking of the shoal under their lee.
They set up the pen-boards by way of masts, laced the bedding and blankets to them for sails, and then they had it—a medley of colors! Blue and white striped ticks, green and gold and red blankets—the masterpieces of fond wives ashore—and two crazy-quilts. One particular crazy-quilt the Skipper eyed with regret. “I mind the night the wife won that at the church fair. A hundred and fourteen chances she took—at ten cents a chance—me payin’ for them. Nine hundred and ninety-nine pieces in it. ‘There’ll be the fine ornament for your bunk, Colie,’ says she to me. ‘And warm, too,’ she says, ‘on a winter’s day.’ ’Tis tears she’d be sheddin’ could she see it this winter’s day, usin’ it by way of a cloth to a fores’l up where the single reef cringle should be.”
They spread them all at last, brought her head to and warped in the anchor. “And now, you slippery-elm divil, sail! Sail, you black, fatherless, left-handed, double left-handed divil, sail!”
She did sail, after a fashion. She did not go along like the saucy vessel that had put out from T Dock less than a week before, not quite like a greased plank on edge or a girl sliding on ice, but she made headway. It was heart-breaking headway that promised to make a long voyage of the something like two hundred miles to Boston, but the crew had hopes—if the wind stayed to the east’ard.
But the wind did not stay to the east’ard. After two days it hauled to the north-west, and they had to tack. They tacked to the north and they tacked to the south, always with a respectful eye to her weak side; but it was slow work. More, it was cold, and the seas that came aboard iced her up. And, having no rails to her, the crew had to be painfully careful or they would slide overboard.
“And yet no great danger bein’ lost, for even with oilskins a man could swim as fast as this one’s sailin’. But it’s so blessed cold!” said Jerry.
They were sighted several times and other vessels bore down, but the Skipper waved them off. “If they think because we’re short on sails and spars they’re goin’ to get salvage out of this one, we’ll fool ’em,” and onward he sailed with a dory, which they had picked up, lashed amidships.
They ran out of grub and fuel. They had fitted out for market fishing, with ten days or two weeks as the probable length of the trip. They were now four weeks out, with Cape Cod not yet weathered. Something had to be done. Four times they had got all but abreast of the cape—four times the no’-wester had beaten them back. Under their rig they had to take whatever came. They could not force her around when around she would not go.
Nobody murmured. They were enjoying themselves. For one thing they learned how Gerald made out with the bear, and Jerry read in his round voice of Gerald’s further adventures; and they would not have minded it much, though, to be sure, there was not much money in it for their families—but that was the luck of fishing—only they were cold and hungry.
It was then that for the first time the Skipper hailed a vessel. She was one of the big liners, a fourteen-thousand tonner, bound out from Boston to Liverpool. Beside her huge hulk the little Celestine, with her ridiculous jury-rig, looked like a burlesque toy. But Coleman wasn’t apologizing for looks.
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