Chapter IV

Everywhere the sea, but not everywhere fish. During the five days that they had been on the grounds, a hundred land miles north of Scotland, the _Bon-Pêcheur_ had spread her nets in vain. She had cast them to right and left, she had followed up boats which were on the grounds before her, but in whatever place, at whatever depth they were stretched, they had caught nothing but the worthless white-nose herring, who travel in small companies.

It was the black noses that they were after. They are the true travellers. There are millions in a single school.

The herring often reveals his presence by his peculiar odor, by his oily trail, and by his peeping and chirping, for he makes a noise like that of rain falling on water. The _Bon-Pêcheur_ had neither seen nor heard anything.

Florimond was in despair. He kept the men putting out and taking in the nets without cessation. On a stretch many thousand feet long they would take nothing but a hundred white noses; those bony troublers of the nets who were not worth salting. The men became unreasonable, and showed their disappointment by their negligence and by their carelessness at work. They wished to go further north. Perhaps the fish were belated. It would be better to go to meet them than to wait.

Florimond would not yield. They were in the latitude where the herring showed themselves every year at this time. They would see them if they kept a sharp lookout. The men were not convinced, and the longer their search proved useless, the less hesitation had they in showing their discontent.

Elise, on the other hand, displayed great zeal in backing Florimond in this fight against bad luck. She won in this way the ill-will of the crew, who accused her, without ceasing, of flattering the skipper and encouraging him in his obstinacy. First and foremost with her was duty. She would never allow Firmin to hesitate to obey an order. Often when she found him dilatory, or kicking at the sailors’ taunts, she would coax him back to obedience and good humor, two things which a sailor should never lack.

When she had a chance, she looked after Barnabé. At first she had taken the time from sleep to watch him. When she was not free herself, when she was on duty, she sent Firmin to see if the wounded man needed drink or to have his wound dressed.

The lad, less forgetful of injuries, lent himself with a bad grace to these generous actions. Elise scolded him, and tried to punish him by a severe look, but she was quickly disarmed before his square face, which took on a comic pretence of being frightened at her reproof.

In fact, without Elise, Barnabé would have died of neglect. In his overworked life the sailor cannot take care of his fellows, since he has all he can do to find time for eating and sleeping. But as Florimond said, women know how to spin out the time, and for Elise the moments seemed to stop short, so much care did she give him and so heartily.

Barnabé knew what it cost her, for thanks to her and his strong constitution he was nearly well. He had not yet been on deck, but was about the forecastle, which he filled with his sonorous voice. When his companions came in be seized on them and called them to witness the merits of Elise. He praised her with the same violence with which he had slandered her, never failing to exclaim that she was worth the whole crew, skipper included. He had heard them tell how she had taken the helm when they were aground, and he did not hesitate to declare to every one that without her they would have been biting the sands at the bottom of the sea.

He said so much and said it so noisily, this brawling Barnabé, that Florimond became impatient of hearing it, and was offended at seeing his authority as skipper weighed in the balance against the prestige of a young girl. They would be saying next that Elise alone had saved the boat. Child as she was, would she have been able to withstand such a blow had he not softened the shock by his play of the jigger-sail, at the risk of being carried away with the canvas?

He would not acknowledge it to himself, but he was jealous at witnessing this growing reputation of a stranger on his own boat. He took care that Elise should not be on duty when there was a chance for her to show her courage or strength. He affected to consider her a weak and feeble creature, in order to belittle her in her standing as a sailor. He spoke to her in a tone of fatherly consideration.

“You do not sulk over the work, Lise, but you have not strength for it. It is not to be expected that you should. It would be unreasonable to demand as much work from you as from the others.”

“But, Cousin Florimond, do I not work hard enough? I try to let no one see a difference.”

“I do not say no, but a strong arm cannot be had by wishing. A woman has never a man’s strength.”

Elise revolted against this undeserved censure. She turned pale and the tears rushed to her eyes, but she held them back that no one might see her trouble.

“Do you think I have been a failure through lack of strength, cousin? What will become of me, if you do not stand my friend?”

Florimond was a better man than appearances made him out. He had the highest opinion of Elise, but he did not wish it to be seen by the crew, and, embarrassed at his own injustice, he broke off his talk abruptly.

“Come, Lise! Talking is not everything, we must work. The nets must be set, it is the slack of the tide.”

The quarter of an hour of rest which the sea takes at the changing of the tide comes, in that open sea, two hours after it comes on the coast. It is the best time for fishing, for there is no movement of the water, nothing to sweep the fish from the net.

The almanac announced the slack for that morning at nine o’clock. It was then six. It was high time to begin their preparations.

The soundings showed conditions that the herring fancy; forty fathoms of water over a bed of gravel. The breeze was favorable. Though very light, it had kept up fairly fresh since the last squall. The sea was not quite smooth, and yet had not enough swell to trouble the fish. It was after the full moon and, according to all signs, the fish ought to swim high.

Florimond took a sharp look at the weather and, having taken counsel of his experience, gave out his orders with the full force of his lungs.

“Come then, my lads, all on deck. Get the floats ready.”

These floats are barrels to which the net is fastened when it is set. Around the middle of each are some ten turns of rope of a fathom’s length each, and this is let out or taken up according as it is desired that the net shall lie high or low in the sea to intercept the fish. Overhauling the floats is the first thing to be done. They are brought from where they are stored, their ropes are arranged at the proper length, and they are piled up on deck to be at hand the moment they are needed.

But one would have said that the skipper had not been heard. Elise alone stepped forward. All the other hands stayed in the forecastle, silent and motionless, as if they were obeying a command.

Nevertheless the hatch was half open, and there was nothing to prevent his voice reaching those for whom it was meant. Florimond repeated his order in a rough tone. He was not more successful than before. Then he ran to the hatch, and with a blow of his foot forced it wide open. Bending over the gaping hole, and making a trumpet of his two hands, he shouted with all the strength of his lungs:

“Do you hear me, deaf ears? All on deck! Get the floats out!”

His shout resounded menacingly; the boarding of the forecastle vibrated; but the men did not move.

“Have a care! I am going for a marline-spike; I will warm your legs, if you are frozen there! Have a care! _Tonnerre!_”

Then there was a movement in the place, a noise of words rapidly interchanged in a low tone, and of steps coming from all sides. One by one, silently, mechanically, as if moved by the same thought, the men climbed the hatchway ladder and massed themselves on the deck, firm, resolute, all crying at the same time:

“There is no use in fishing here any longer. You are making us lose the season. We wish to go north.”

Florimond was not the man to allow himself to be intimidated, young as he was. He was barely twenty-five, but he overawed them all by his tall figure and his powerful bearing. He had been a sailor since his earliest youth. He had a trained eye and sound judgment on everything connected with the sea. He had the reputation of being one of the best skippers on their coast, and proud of his standing, no threats could make him flinch before a sailor. The men knew him well, and knew that he could hold his own alone against a dozen of them. He looked them over from head to foot, and said haughtily:

“You know the orders; get the floats ready. Two fathoms of rope.”

“No, we will not set the nets, unless further north.”

“_Tonnerre!_ Get the floats, or I will take you back to port. There you can explain your reasons to the Commissaire of Marines.”

The sailors looked at one another. Chrétien, the most timid, began to hesitate. The others seized him and forced him back into the ranks.

“We will duck you, if you turn traitor.”

Elise stepped toward him.

“Come, Chrétien. A sailor’s ear should hear the captain’s orders.”

He seemed bewildered. He wavered, and his glance went from his comrades to Florimond, as if demanding direction or counsel. All at once he shook his shoulders, stuck out his elbows, and throwing off the hands that tried to hold him back, ran forward to obey.

For some time Elise had been looking for Firmin. She saw him at last, sheltered behind a group of big fellows, and divined by his frowning brow and his fixed glance that he was in sympathy with the mutinous steps of his companions. With a bound she was at his side. She took him by the shoulder and drew him away with a movement of maternal authority, at the same time vigorous and wheedling. But the little man was intoxicated by the air of insubordination which was about the deck. He struggled with all the freedom of his obstinate soul, for he did not wish any one to think him a coward. When a man is one of a crew he should share with them all that comes, good and bad alike.

Elise saw his frowns. And, though he was so amusing, in his determination to mutiny, she was troubled. She picked him up in her arms, and, pressing him to her breast to prevent his striking her, stemmed his cries, as they came from his mouth, with a kiss. Then she carried him to the very stern of the boat, where Chrétien was waiting.

“Oh, the traitors!” cried the sailors.

But, disconcerted by these gaps in their ranks, they broke apart and grumblingly set to work.

Florimond instantly recovered his paternal ways.

“I know that you are more wrinkled outside than in. Your hearts are good, if your faces are bad. Down with the jib. Furl the jigger-sail.”

At a stroke, in the bows and at the stern, the sails were reefed to give room for work. The time had come to get the nets in shape.

The nets are great strips of meshes fastened together in such a way as to extend without end. A thick, strong hawser stretches their whole length, to which they are tied and by which they are lifted. Thus made fast they drop into the sea like a great partition, or rather like an open-work barrier across the way, whose meshes are large or small according to the fish they are intended to catch. They let him pass half way through, holding him at the swelling of the belly. If he tries to back out, his scales hold him fast. Try as he may to free himself, the fish in the net is a prisoner.

And this wall of netting can be stretched for a league. It is left in the sea a longer or shorter time, according to the weather. As the breeze was soft and the sea smooth, the skipper wished to take advantage of the calm to try every chance. He ordered that all the nets should be set. It was a fortune which he was trusting to the sea.

“Come, my lads,” he cried, “this time I have an idea that we shall not pull them up empty.”

The day came out warm. At this season, by this hour in the morning, the sun is already high. Its rays beat as hardly as at noon. A heavy atmosphere weighed on men and things. The work seemed particularly fatiguing to the sailors on the _Bon-Pêcheur_. Setting the nets is, besides, at all times, a long and fatiguing task, which keeps the men working breathlessly for two hours. The boat moves at the speed of a knot and a half, and the nets must be all ready to be thrown over as she goes.

A part of the crew is stationed at the stern, and each man has his special task. Three or four of them draw out the nets from where they are stored, passing them from hand to hand to untangle them, and to clear, where they occur along their length at short distances, the cords which fasten them to the hawser. Thus disentangled the nets are carried to the boatswain, who is the soul of the work.

He has no time to amuse himself--the boatswain. While the nets are drawn by him on the right, the hawser, unrolled on his left, is drawn by a cabin boy, and to this he ties the cords as fast as they appear.

He is the centre of action. But this day every one seemed lazy.

Firmin, who handled the hawser, passed it along slowly. Chrétien, who was boatswain, showed more languor than was natural. He seemed, by the slowness of his work, to wish to recover the standing which he had lost among the men, and to please his comrades he assumed their careless ways.

Florimond had at first tried to arouse their sleeping energy, but he ran against a wall of inertia, and seeing that a bad feeling was springing up, avoided any action which would bring it to a head. He had resigned himself to see the work badly done, and to say nothing.

Elise, on the other hand, was consumed with impatience. She was not one of the first set of workers, and waited on deck for the time to change shifts. Amid all this bungling it made her especially wretched to see Firmin act like the rest. In vain did she whisper in his ear encouragement, reproaches, prayers. She was depressed to find, in the lad she loved so well, such an obstinate resistance.

The hawser and the nets were payed out so much more slowly than the boat sailed, that they were dragged at the risk of tearing them. They, too, seemed impatient at the men’s slowness.

Nothing could be more painful to see than this lack of accord between the sloop and the work. Excited and nervous, Elise could not restrain herself longer. She ran to Chrétien and pushed him aside.

“Go! You have no right to set an example of a bad workman.”

Then she took his place.

“Come, Firmin, hurry, my little man. Quick, the boat will not wait.”

And setting vigorously to work, waking up the sailors, she seized the cords as they flew past, and tied them to the hawser without stopping an instant. All her figure was alive and in action, as her hands worked. And the nets now went overboard in keeping with the boat’s speed.

Then there was a _furor_ of work on the deck. Everything was forgotten, the heaviness of the atmosphere, the recent discouragement, the spirit of insubordination. All were hurrying to and fro in their enthusiasm. Florimond only had a feeling of bitterness and gloom. He saw that there was a stronger power than his on the boat. He was now no more than half skipper.