The Deep Sea's Toll. James B. Connolly
my life!’ sputters the light-house lad. ‘My boat was right there when I fell. Why, it ain’t your vessel’s length away now under the light’—the Colleen was beginnin’ to slide away again—‘and I want you to know I c’n swim like a fish.’
“‘Then swim, ye divil ye, swim!’ says the Skipper quick’s a wink, and picks him up and heaves him over the rail. ‘Yes,’ says big Jerry, ‘swim, you lobster, swim!’ and he pushes him along with an oar he’d grabbed out the top dory. And he did swim, too.
“And then the Skipper comes aft. ‘Who the divil,’ says he, ‘was to the wheel?’ and spots the little man, who was lookin’ more surprised than the light-keeper in the water. ‘And where’d you ever steer a vessel before?’ says the Skipper.
“‘I dunno’s I did so very bad,’ answers the little man. ‘I used to be quartermaster on a harbor steamer once, and I kept her off the rocks.’
“The Skipper looked at him like he was a new kind of fish. ‘Indeed, was you now? And you kept her off the rocks? And did you ship for a fisherman or what?’ And the Skipper looks at him a little more, then laughs and takes the wheel himself. ‘Maybe,’ says he, ‘the insurance company would like it better if I took her the rest of the way out of the harbor myself. And I don’t want to lose her myself. She’s too good a vessel—the fastest and the ablest out o’ Gloucester. But go below now, boy, and have your supper.’
“Well, that passed by all right, but outside the harbor, off Minot’s, we ran foul of the Superba—that’s the new one, the latest spoon-bow model. He sees her comin’ and sways up, but she comes on and goes on by—goes on by nice and easy. ‘And she used to be a good vessel once,’ says Dick Mason, her skipper, to some of his gang standing aft. We could hear him—he meant us to hear him—‘of course, a good vessel once, the Colleen Bawn, but she’s been wracked so she can’t carry sail no longer.’
“Imagine Tom O’Donnell, Peter, havin’ to stand on the quarter of his own vessel and take that from Dick Mason—imagine it, Peter, and from Dick Mason that, standing on deck and wide-awake, couldn’t sail a vessel like Tom O’Donnell could from his bunk below and half asleep. The Skipper looked after her, then he turns us to, and it was sway up and no end to the trimmin’ of sheets. But no use. The Superba kept goin’ on away, and the Skipper couldn’t make it out. He stood with one foot on the house, his chin in his hand, and his elbow on his knee, and tried to figure it out as he looked after her. It was by the wind, and plenty of it—the rail nice and wet—couldn’t been better for our vessel. ‘There’s something wrong,’ says he. And there was something wrong. We found it after awhile. It was one of the iron bands that was holdin’ her together—the one for’ard was loose and draggin’ under her bottom. The Skipper was tickled to death when he found what it was. ‘Troth, and I knew there was something wrong with her,’ he says; and puts into Provincetown and has it bolted on again. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘she’ll be nice and tight again when we wants to drive her. And if we runs foul of that spoon-bow again, we’ll see.’ We warn’t out the harbor hardly before the wind gettin’ at her, she begins to leak for’ard, but the Skipper pretended he didn’t see it, puts around the Cape and off for Georges, where we got to just about in time to ketch that no’west gale that was riotin’ out there the week before last. We were blowed off, but banged her back, blowed off and banged her back again, tryin’ to hang on to shoal water so’s to be handy to good fishin’ when it moderated. But it was a week before it did moderate, and by that time the Colleen was pretty well shook up, with the water sizzlin’ through her like she was a lobster-pot for’ard, and the gang makin’ guesses on how long before she’d come apart altogether. The Skipper, he didn’t seem to mind. ‘She’s a little loose,’ says he, ‘but don’t let it worry ye. Keep your rubber boots on, and don’t mind. So long as the iron bands hangs to her planks, she’s all right.’
“Well, as I said, it moderated, and we got a chance to fish a little on and off for another week, and the troubles of Jerry with his dory-mate would fill a book that week. ‘It’s two men’s work you have now, Jerry,’ I says to him. ‘’Tisn’t two but three,’ says Jerry. ‘It’s my own work and his work and another man’s work to see he don’t get tangled up in the trawls or capsize the dory or fall over himself and get lost.’ However, fishin’ on and off brought us to yesterday, when, with the wind makin’ all the time, it got too rough toward the evenin’ to put the dories out, and we used the time up till along toward dark in dressin’ what fish we had on deck and cuttin’ fresh bait for next day—to-day that’d be. We’d done all that, and was gettin’ ready to make ourselves comfortable for the night with the Skipper sayin’: ‘Ten thousand more, and I’d swing her off for Gloucester, I would. But another set, and, with any kind of luck, we’ll get that, and then we’ll swing her off.’ He’d only just said that—he was havin’ a mug-up for’ard at the time—when whoever was on watch sticks his head down the gangway, and calls out: ‘Captain, here’s the Superba, and she’s goin’ home, I think.’
“‘What!’ says he, and gulps his coffee and leaps for the gangway, and we knew that our notions about a comfortable night might’s well be forgotten. He takes a look at the vessel comin’. ‘That’s Dickie Mason, sure enough. Shake the reef out the mains’l, and we’ll put after her.’
“‘Mason’s under a trys’l, Skipper,’ says big Jerry.
“‘And so would I be in that cigar-box,’ says the Skipper.
“We drives up and shoots under her stern. ‘Hi-i, Captain Mason!’ sings out our Skipper.
“‘Hi-i, Captain O’Donnell,’ hollers Mason.
“‘Know me?’
“‘I sure do.’
“‘And this vessel?’
“‘That old wrack?—I’d know her in a million.’
“‘Would you now? Then swing on your heel and follow her home.’ And then he turns to us, ‘Boom her out now, boys—boom her out—no’west by west and never a slack.’ And off he goes straight for the shoals, with a livin’ south-easterly gale and the black night on us.
“‘Twarn’t more than an hour, or maybe two, runnin’ like that, when we couldn’t make out the Superba’s lights any more. The Skipper himself went to the masthead and looked. ‘She’s put to the nothe’ard, I think,’ he said, comin’ down. ‘But then again maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s put them out. Anyway, we’ll keep on and make a holy show of her—the fine Superba, indeed! that don’t dare to follow the Colleen Bawn, all wracked as they say she is! Maybe he’ll get his courage up and come after us later, but whatever she does we’ll keep this one as she is.’
“We were fair into the shoal water then with the Skipper keepin’ the lead goin’ himself. ‘Billie Simms in the Henry Parker showed me in the Lucy Foster the short course over these shoals,’ he says—‘and it cost me twelve hundred and odd dollars, and I haven’t forgotten the road.’ He warn’t tellin’ anybody what water he was gettin’. It was pretty shoal though, man, it was. Once or twice, I swear, we were real worried. But he’s the lucky man, is Tom O’Donnell. The wind hauled and he swung her fore-boom over and tried to spread a balloon. It carried away her foretopm’st, which maybe was just as well. And all night long he kept her goin’——”
“Lord, but you must’ve had it, Tommie. And Jimmie Johnson—how was he makin’ out?”
“Jimmie Johnson? Ho, ho! the little lumper. Let me tell you. In the middle of the night, thinkin’ the worst of it was over, with the shoals behind us, the gang went below and turned in, all but me. I gets my pipe from my bunk and was havin’ a smoke, and thinkin’ of turnin’ in too, when this Jimmie Johnson came down, lookin’ pretty well worried.
“‘Ain’t it awful?’ he says.
“‘Ain’t what