Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

And now, when, after a beat up Atlantic Avenue to the saloon that is nearest the south side of the wharf, Coleman found himself leaning against the bar and looking at the barkeeper, that suave party, without further orders, set before him a small glass of water and a small glass empty and the same old bottle with the horse and rider on the outside.

Raising his filled glass, and absent-mindedly looking about him by the way, Captain Joyce observed that it was a wistful crowd which was watching him. It was always a wistful crowd. He nodded amiably to four or five, but gazed vacantly at the others. All told, there must have been twenty loafers in the place, and everyone undeniably thirsty, with a thirst that was immeasurably intensified by the sight of this successful skipper preparing to take a drink.

Coleman, regarding them again, pulled out an old wallet and from it took a five-dollar bill. Every pair of expectant eyes in the place saw the V on the bill. Plainly, too, he was not trying to hide it. A symphony of short, hacking coughs foretold clogged throats clearing for action-- Captain Joyce always was free with his money. Following the bill, but only after a lot of digging about with his fingers, Captain Joyce extricated a silver coin--a quarter of a dollar, they saw. Coleman held it up to his eyes that he might the better see it. Nobody, looking at those eyes of his, would ever suspect that they were weak. He put back the bill, restrapped the wallet, replaced it in his pocket, laid the quarter on the bar, and took his drink, first the whiskey, then the water, and both rapidly, as a man of action should.

Smacking his lips and regarding the change on the bar--a dime and a nickel--at the same time casting a sly glance at the barkeeper, he beckoned with his hand over his shoulder, but without looking around. “Let ye all come up,” he said, and bolted for the door to escape the rush.

Outside the door of the saloon he was hailed by a shore-going friend, once a fisherman, but now a grocer, whose chief income arose from provisioning fishing vessels, and so one who kept up with all the gossip of the fleet. “Hello, Captain Joyce! What’s this they’re telling me about you having a new vessel--a new style model, too.”

“It’s the truth.”

“And given up the _Maggie_--that was built for you--that I heard you say a hundred times was not a bad sailer at all and the ablest vessel of her tonnage that ever sailed past Boston Light?”

“Yes, or past any other light. She’s that and more. But Lord bless you, she can’t sail with some of the new ones, and I’m tired to my soul of havin’ every blessed model of a fisherman that was ever launched comin’ up on my quarter and goin’ by like I was an old sander. This last time who was it, d’y’ think? You’d never guess. Name every vessel that ever sailed out of T Dock and she’d be the last you or any other man’d name. Who but the _Bonita_--yes. The black-whiskered divil, Portugee Joe, yes--with the rings in his ears. Faith, an’ had I hold of him when he said it, ’tis in his nose he’d be wearin’ them. ‘Captain Joyce,’ he hails, and the bloody Dago he can’t talk United States yet--‘Captain Joyce, what you carry, hah?--breeks or gran-eet or what?’ Gran-eet, mind ye, with the Western Islands brogue of him! Yes, and goes on by the same’s if the _Maggie_ was r’ally loaded with granite. ‘By the Lord,’ I calls out after him, ‘but the next time you and me try tacks I’ll make a wake for you to steer by or I’ll know why.’ And I’ve got a vessel now, b’y, a vessel that can sail or I don’t know fast lines when I see them. And the Portugee he’s just gone down the harbor--he’ll be waitin’ for me outside the lightship, he says. So I’m off.”

Captain Joyce journeyed on and, standing on the cap-log at the end of the wharf, he looked down on his new vessel and his eyes shone with joy in the sheer beauty of her. “Purty, purty, purty,” he murmured; “just like she was whittled out of a block.” And, turning to a man who was taking his bag ashore, the last man of the old gang to leave her, he inquired, “She can sail, they tell me, this one?”

“Oh, she can sail all right.”

“And how does she handle?”

“Handle? She’s that quick in stays that you want to watch her.”

“Watch her, eh? And stiff is she?”

“I don’t know about that. One day we used to think she was a house, but again she’d roll down in a twelve-knot breeze, and in a way to make your hair curl.”

“Man alive! But whisper, was that why Jimmie Eliot gave her up?”

“I don’t know about that. He wouldn’t say, the Skipper wouldn’t.”

“And that’s queer, too, come to think.”

“It do look queer, but maybe he thought it wouldn’t be fair to the owners.”

“’Tis the divil and all of a mystery. And where is he now?”

“Went to Gloucester last night.”

“That’s too bad. When another man’s been in a vessel I gen’rally likes to get his notions of her myself. You can’t tell a vessel by just lookin’ at her--you have to be in her a while. Well, whatever she is, we’ll put out in her now. Let ye hoist the mains’l, b’ys, and we’ll go. Portugee Joe is waitin’ for us below.”

Captain Joyce and his able crew put out from the dock and a great crowd lined the cap-log to see her off. Down the harbor she went, creeping before the light westerly as if she had a propeller hidden somewhere below.

Captain Joyce and his old friend Jerry Connors looked her up and looked her down.

“I say, Jerry, but did ever y’ see annything scoot like her--hardly a breath and she goin’ along like she is. It’s not right, Jerry--hardly a ripple in her wake.”

“Oh, you’ve been so long in the old _Maggie_, Skipper----”

“The _old Maggie_, is it? She’s not too old--ten year.”

“I know. Ten year is nothing in a good vessel, but they been improving them so fast. Last fall, the trip you didn’t wait for me, you know, I went in the _Jennie and Katie_. Y’oughter seen her skipper. Handle? Like a little naphtha launch to pick up dories. And sail? Man, but she could sail!”

“That so? And how’d she behave in heavy weather?”

“Well, we didn’t have any heavy weather that trip.”

“No breeze at all?”

“Well, one day it did breeze up. We had her under a balanced reef mains’l. She did slap around a bit. ’Twas the devil and all to stay in your bunk, but she did pretty well. But you mustn’t get ’em out of trim. The first two doryloads of fish that came aboard that trip was pitched into her after-pens and, man, she reared right up in the air--right straight up on her hind legs and began to claw out with her fore feet like she was trying to climb up a wall----”

“You’d think ’twas a horse you were talkin’ about, Jerry. But she could sail, you say?”

“Sail? Like a plank on edge--and greased.”

“Well, this one can sail, too. Look at her. Not a blessed hop out of her--just smoochin’ along like a girl slidin’ on ice ashore, isn’t she?”

Off the lightship they found the _Bonita_. “There he is,” announced Coleman, “with his rings in his ears. Keep her as she is till the pair of us come together. Trip afore last he sailed a couple of rings around the _Maggie_ by way of amusin’ himself, but I’ll amuse him now or I’ll tear the sail off this one.”

In a freshening breeze and both vessels soon swinging all they had, it was a good chance for a try-out. Four hours of that and the victory went to the handsome _Celestine_, for off Cape Cod, after a run of fifty miles, Coleman had the _Bonita_ two miles to leeward.

For an hour after that Coleman could hardly be coaxed down to eat. Standing on the _Celestine’s_ quarter, he chuckled, and chuckled, and chuckled. Even after taking his place at the table, he had to climb up the companionway to have one more look at the beaten _Bonita_. “A good vessel for rip-fishin’ the Portugee’s got--she drifts well,” he said, “and maybe ’tis me won’t tell him next time we meet.”

And yet in the middle of the meal he suddenly set down his mug of coffee and leaned across the table. “Don’t it strike you, Jerry, that for a vessel of her model this one is the divil for stiffness?”

“We were saying among ourselves a little while ago, Skipper, that we never before saw a vessel that barely wet her scuppers in a breeze like this.”

“That’s it-- I don’t know what it is. But she’s a queer divil altogether. Sometimes when she luffs she fetches up in a way to shake every tooth in your head. And there was what one of the men that was in her last trip said of her.”

“And what did he say, Skipper?”

“He said--but come to think, he didn’t say anything, and that’s the divil of it. One or two little outs in a vessel, if you know what they are, aren’t always a great harm. But when you don’t know how to take her!”

The crew agreed with their Skipper that there was something queer about this new vessel of theirs, but no illuminating discussion came of it until next morning when, having cleared the north shoal of Georges, it became necessary to head southward.

Heading to the east’ard in a southerly breeze, she had been on the starboard tack up to that time. Now her helmsman shot her head across the wind, her sails shook, shivered, her booms began to swing, and over on the port tack went the _Celestine_. Everybody looked to see her roll down some, but in that breeze--they hadn’t even taken their stays’l in--nobody looked to see her do what she did. Least of all her Skipper, who, standing carelessly by the starboard rail, would have gone overboard and been lost probably, but for Jerry Connors.

“Wheel down! wheel down!” roared Jerry, and hauled the Skipper back aboard.

“Down it is!”

“Cripes!” said the Skipper when he found his breath--“cripes, but she’s left-handed.”

“Left-handed?”

“Yes, and double left-handed, the cross-eyed whelp! Just barely put her scuppers under on one tack and down to her hatches on the other. Man alive, but if we have to put her on the wrong tack makin’ a passage, what’ll we ever do with her? Put her back, put her back--back on the other tack with her and keep her there till we get some sail off her. Man, man, but when we have to put a vessel under her four lowers in a little breeze like this----”

They kept her so until next morning, when they hove her to--they had to heave her to--with Georges north shoal bearing twenty-three miles west by north and a howling gale in prospect. With the glass showing a scant 29 and the sea coming to them in a long swell, they all foresaw a good lay-off with a chance to catch up on sleep or read up, or overhaul their gear.

The storm hit in hard that night. A northeaster it was, with a thick snow in its wake and a whistle that made a bunk feel most comfortable. The snow passed, and after two days the worst of the breeze also; but after it came the tremendous seas that make such a terrible place of the northerly edge of Georges shoals in the wrong kind of winter weather.

Nobody aboard the _Celestine_ worried particularly. They had been having that sort of thing all their lives. After a while it would pass. Only when it lasted for too long a time it _did_ make slow fishing. They put her under jumbo and riding sail and let go their chain anchor. Next day they took sail off her altogether and made ready their hawser and big anchor. Under both anchors, if it came to that, she certainly would be safe.

This gale was some time in passing. And now it was coming on evening of the fourth day--two days of a heavy breeze and two days of the great seas. All the men, excepting the watch, were below, about half for’ard and half aft, those for’ard mugging-up or overhauling trawls, those aft listening to Jerry Connors, a great reader, who was now reeling off a most interesting story with dramatic emphasis. It was the “Cloister and the Hearth,” and Gerald was up in the tree with the bear after him--the _Celestine_ dancing like a lead-ballasted cork figure all the while. In the middle of it all the watch hailed something from deck. The Skipper, trying to keep from sliding off the locker and, at the same time, above the howling of the wind get what Jerry was reading, grew wrathy at the interruption.

“What’s that ballyhooin’ on deck--whose watch?”

One had risen, and now from the companion steps, his head above the slide, passed on the word. “It’s John’s.”

“Oh, John is it? Don’t mind John--the least thing worries John. But what was he sayin’?”

“He says there’s some big seas coming, and getting bigger all the time; and true enough, they are.”

“Big seas, is it? Cripes, a man don’t need to stand watch on deck or stick his head out of the hatch, like a turkey in a crate, to find that out.”

“Big seas coming aboard, he says, and hadn’t we better make ready to put out the big anchor, she being on her weak tack?”

“Her weak side! That’s so--maybe we had. Tell him yes and call the gang for’ard. Now go on, Jerry, whilst we’re waitin’. What did that divil of a bear do then?” The Skipper leaned forward from the locker. “What did he do? Hurry on, Jerry-boy.”

“And then he--” recommenced Jerry, but got no further. A scurry of boots was heard on deck, a quick slamming back of the slide, and down the companionway came John. Feet first he came flying and hauled the slide after him. “Here’s one big as a church and----”

That was all he got out when the sea struck. Over went the _Celestine_--over, over--the Skipper was shot from the locker through the open door of his stateroom across the cabin. Jerry, who had been sitting by the stove, was shot into that same room ahead of the Skipper. Another, lying comfortably in his bunk to windward, was thrown clear across the cabin and into the opposite bunk on the lee side, and his bedding followed him and covered him up. Another of the crew, doubled up in the after windward bunk, was sent past the lazarette and in on top of his neighbor, who had a moment before been comfortably lying in his bunk to leeward, passing the time of day with a pleasant word and a pipe in his mouth. The bedding also followed that man. Everything loose went from the windward bunks to the lee bunks--from the whole windward side to the lee side.

The vessel poised so for perhaps ten seconds, while men called one to another. “What’s it?” “Are you hurted, Joe?” “God help us--what in the divil’s this?” “What in the devil’s name--” “Man, let me up--’tis smothered I am!” Cries of surprise and cries of consternation, while through it all the _Celestine_ seemed balanced between going down for good and never coming up at all. The wall-lamp flared and then started to blaze. It looked like a possible fire to add to the rest of it, but the Skipper, like a flash, threw a smothering wet oil-jacket over it. The binnacle lamp then started, but only for a moment--suddenly went out, and then for the first time they heard the rush of the sea coming on them in the dark.

“Did you think to draw the slide tight, John?” bellowed the Skipper.

“Tight? ’Tis tighter than the lid of hell.”

“Then somebody must’ve left the binnacle slide open--there’s men without sense to be found wherever you go--you can’t dodge them.”

A short space of that, and she rolled part way back. “Up she comes,” said the Skipper--“’tisn’t in nature she won’t come--she’s got to come up soon or go down entirely.” And it did seem as if she was coming up, but the next big sea hit her--bigger than the one that had hove her down. Down inside the _Celestine_ they never quite agreed on what happened. They knew that for a moment or two they were standing on the roof of the cabin, that the red-hot cover fell off the stove and hit that same roof, that the hot coals fell out of the stove and began to sizzle among the loose bedding. They knew, too, that in the middle of it all John’s voice was heard exclaiming, “Oh, my poor wife!” and again, “O God, O God, we’re lost!” and that the Skipper said, “Hush up your caterwauling--we’re a long way from bein’ lost yet,” even while the loose bedding began to take fire and blaze up.

Then all at once she righted, and so suddenly that they were thrown one against the other, across the floor and back again. And Jerry Connors became entangled in a tub of trawls that somebody had been overhauling. Six hundred hooks, every hook attached to three feet of ganging, and the whole hanging to two thousand feet of line--it was an awful mess to get mixed up with at a time like that. Twenty hooks at least were sticking in him here and there, and Jerry swore prodigiously.

They smothered the fire with blankets and old clothes and lit the lamp again. That done, they noted that the print of the red-hot stove cover had been left on the roof of the cabin, showing that the vessel had been keel up. “D’y’ s’pose she went clean over and over, or did she go half-way and back again, Jerry?” was the first inquiry of the Skipper when the lamp was lit.

“In God’s name, wait till I get some of these hooks out of me--they’re into me gizzards, some of them.”

Up on deck they met the gang coming out of the forec’s’le, the cook in the lead.

“How was it for’ard?” asked the Skipper.

‘I was lying in my bunk to looard,” began the cook, “and Jack was in his bunk to wind’ard just opposite. Jack was playing with the cat. Well, sir, when she went over I forgot the cat, but through the air came this great black thing with forty claws and fourteen green and yellow eyes and got me by the hair, and Jack with his two hundred pound weight on top of him again. And the cat gets his claws in among me whiskers----”

“Shut up!” roared the Skipper--“you and the cat and your whiskers. Is anybody gone? Who was on watch with you, John?”

“Mattie.”

“Is he here now?”

“Here, Skipper,” responded Mattie for himself. “When John dove for the cabin I dove for the forec’s’le. I didn’t lose no time.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t, if you came down red-jacks first the way John Houlihan did. Well, that’s all right, then. Let’s see what’s left on deck. Get up a few torches--and have a care some of you aren’t washed overboard.”

Nothing was left on deck. The spars had been torn out when she went over and were now lying alongside threatening to punch holes in her side as they lifted and dropped to every big sea. The Skipper took the big axe and the cook his hatchet, and others got out their bait knives, and all began to chop and hack and 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.

--See p. 67.]

“I know ye’ll be carryin’ the mail and in the divil’s own hurry, but we’re a little short of grub,” he explained when the steamer had come to a stop. “Our head steward doubts there’ll be oysters and ontrees enough for our seven o’clock dinner to-night, and if ye’ll stay hove-to for a half hour I’ll come under your lee and go aboard.”

“All right. But how will you carry the stuff?”

“Carry it, is it? Why, in the dory, to be sure.”

“What? Put a dory over to-day?”

“And why not?”

“She’ll swamp.”

“The divil she will.” They put the dory over. Coleman and Jerry got in it, rowed alongside, and climbed up the sea-ladder. Half-way up the Skipper looked back--there was a good bit of water in the dory. “Jerry, you’ll have to go down again and bail her out.” Which Jerry did, while the Skipper kept on to the steamer’s deck to negotiate.

“And what can I help you to?”

“Well, we’ll need a little coal.”

“All right. How much?”

“Oh, maybe half or three-quarters of a ton.”

“Three-quarters of a ton? And where’ll you carry It?”

“In the dory.”

“In this sea?”

“I’ve carried twenty-five hundred of fish in a dory in more sea than this.”

“All right--in it goes. What else?”

“Oh, some wood.”

“Wood all gone, too?”

“We burned the last of our bunk-boards this morning.”

“Gracious! How much wood?”

“Oh, two or three barrels.”

“All right. But won’t it overbalance your dory?”

“L’ave that to me. And have you some vegetables, say a barrel of potatoes----”

“Sure. And where’ll you put _them_?”

“In the dory. And a barrel of odds and ends--turnips and cabbage and----”

“And that in the dory, too?”

“In the dory--where else? And a tub of butter, and a case or two of canned beef, and a bit of fresh beef, and some coffee and tea, and a box of hard bread----”

“And all in the----”

“In the dory, yes.”

“All right. Stand by and over they go.”

And the Skipper and Jerry stood by and took them as they came down and piled them all in the dory, to the wonder of all who saw. “And send the bill to the man I told you--he’s the owner. And ’twould be servin’ him no more than right if you charged him good and high, for a man that would ask men to go to sea in a circus vessel like this--sure he deserves no better.”

As they were about to push off, the steamer captain lowered down another case. “Of bouillon,” he said, “for yourself, Captain--for the nerve of you. And here’s for the boys to have a drink,” and tossed down a quart of whiskey.

“Thank ye kindly,” said Coleman, and he and Jerry pulled off.

From the steamer they watched them anxiously, expecting to see them swamped and lost. But not so. There is an art in managing a loaded dory in a heavy sea.

Their shipmates greeted them affectionately. “And I’ll begin with the bully soup, Skipper,” said the cook. “’Twill be the quickest made.”

And the cook did that, putting the twenty-four quarts into one immense boiler, and they finished it in the first rush. Then the Skipper drew the cork out of the bottle of whiskey.

“A nice man, that steamer captain,” said Coleman, “but not much judgment. ‘Tell the boys to have a drink on me,’ he says, and that same was good of him. But one quart among twenty-two men! Oh, Lord!”

“Lord forgive him,” said Jerry, “’tisn’t enough for an aggravation.”

After that, and a good warming-up and drying out of wet clothes, they went on deck and turned to as if it was canoeing on the Charles River they were. They coaxed the _Celestine_ along, always with an eye to her weak side. And the wind came fair, and the first thing they knew--no more than a couple of days more of careful night and day work it was--they found themselves abreast of Boston lightship. And here a tug bore down and hailed them.

“You’re lookin’ in bad shape. Will I heave a line aboard?”

“Will you? I don’t know. How much to the wharf?”

“Oh, about five hundred dollars, I guess.”

“You guess, do you? Well, I’ll make a guess you won’t.”

“Well, what d’y’ say to two fifty?”

“No, nor one fifty--nor a single fifty, nor the half of fifty. We’ve beat two hundred and odd mile this way, and I cal’late we can make ten mile more to the dock.”

“Come two hundred miles in that rig?”

“Yes, sir--from Georges--and could come it again.”

“From Georges--in the weather we’ve had? Angel Gabriel! I’ll take you up for nothing.”

“No, no, you won’t. We’ll give you what’s due you--ten dollars.”

“All right--ten dollars.”

And so the _Celestine_ came back to T Dock. And an appreciative aggregation of connoisseurs in seamanship were there to greet her. But the crew of the _Celestine_: It did not take them long to hustle ashore after she was tied up--and they all had their bags with them. No more of her for them, thank you.

And Coleman? After a look over to Eastern Packet Pier to see that his own _Maggie_ was still there, Coleman hurried up the dock and headed for the bar of the saloon that is nearest the south side of T Dock, there to consummate the second of the rites without which he could conceive no trip to be lucky.

The bartender set down the glass of water and the glass empty and the bottle with the horse and rider on the outside. Coleman raised the bottle. But looking about him before he drank and observing the wistful crowd, he set his filled glass down again and drew his old wallet from his pocket, and from there dug out a bill. It was a five-dollar bill--they all saw it, with the V in plain sight. That, Coleman laid down on the bar, and motioning back over his shoulder, said heartily, “Let ye all come up--and have a drink on the _Maggie Joyce_--the _Maggie_ for me from this out.”

“And how about that new one, Captain?” said one when the rush was over and a dozen throats had been properly sluiced.

“That one, is it? That one! The wicked-- I won’t say it, but if ever I set foot on her deck again may-- That one--why, ’tis bad as pickin’ up a painted drab on the street and your own decent wife to home. Let ye drink again--d’y’ hear me?” And not a man of them but heard.

The Truth of the Oliver Cromwell

Martin Carr did a fine thing that afternoon. Martin and John Marsh were hauling trawls, when a sea capsized their dory. The same sea washed them both clear of the dory. John Marsh could not swim. It looked as if he had hauled his last trawl, and so beyond all question he had, but for Martin, who seized one of their buoy-kegs, which happened to bob up near by, and pushed it into John’s despairing arms. “Hang on for your life, John!” said Martin, and himself struck out for the dory, knowing that the buoy could not support two. It was perhaps forty feet to the bottom of the dory--not a great swim, that; but this was a winter’s day on the Grand Banks, and a man beaten back by a rough sea and borne down by the weight of heavy clothing, oilskins, and big jack-boots. When he had fought his way to the dory he had to wait a while before he dared try to climb up on it, he was that tired; and after he got there he found no strap to the plug, and so nothing to hang on to. He remembered then that he and John had often spoken of fixing up a strap for the plug, but had never fixed it.

“My own neglect,” muttered Martin, “and now I’m paying for it.”

Clinging to the smooth planking on the bottom of the dory was hard work that day, and becoming harder every minute, for the sea was making. And there was John to keep an eye on. “How’re you making out, Johnnie-boy?” he called.

“It’s heavy dragging, but I’m all right so far,” John answered.

“And how is it with you now, Johnnie-boy?” he called in a little while again.

“I can hang on a while yet, Martin.”

“Good for you!” said Martin to that.

“Can you see the vessel?” asked John after another space.

“He’s giving out, and I see no vessel,” thought Martin, but answered cheerily, “Aye, I see her.”

“And how far away is she, and what’s she doing?”

Aloud Martin said, “Five or six miles, maybe, up to wind’ard; and she’s taking aboard all but the last dory, and there’s men gone aloft to look for us.” But under his breath, “And God forgive me if I go to my death with that lie on my lips; but ’tis no deeper than my lips--no deeper.”

Then they waited and waited, until John said, “Martin, I’ll have to go soon-- I can’t hang on much longer.”

“Bide a while, Johnnie-boy--bide a while. Dory-mates we’ve been for many a trip--bide a while with me now, Johnnie.”

But Martin knew that it would be for but a little while for John--for them both, if help did not come soon. Scanning the sea for whatever hope the sea might give, he saw the trawl-line floating on the water. That was the line that ran from their anchor somewhere on the bottom to the buoy-keg to which John was clinging. If he could but get hold of that line he could draw John to the dory, with a better chance to talk to him--to put heart into him, for Johnnie was but a lad, no more than five and twenty.

To get the line, he would have to swim; and to swim any distance in that rising and already bad sea he would have to cast off most of his clothing. And with most of his clothing gone he would not last too long. Certainly if the vessel did not get them by dark, he would never live through the night. He would freeze to death--that he knew well. But could he live through the night, anyway? And even if he could-- But what was the good of thinking all night over it? He pulled off his boots, untied his oilskins, hauled off his heavy outer woollens.

“Johnnie-boy, can you hang on a while longer?”

“I dunno, Martin-- I dunno. Where’s the vessel?”

“She’s bearing down, John.” And with the thought of that second lie on his lips Martin scooped off for the buoy-line, which, after a battle, he grabbed and towed back to the dory. It was a hard fight, and he would have liked well to rest a while; but there was Johnnie. So in he hauled many a long fathom of slack ground-line, with gangings and hooks, and after that the buoy-line. He sorrowfully regarded the fine fat fish that he passed along; every hook seemed to have a fish on it. “Man, man, but ’twas only last night I baited up for ye in the cold hold of the vessel--baited with the cold frozen squid, and my fingers nigh frost-bitten.” But every hook was bringing him nearer to his dory-mate.

He felt the line tauten at last. “Have a care now, Johnnie, while I draw you to me,” and hauled in till Johnnie was alongside.

But “Good-by,” said Johnnie ere yet Martin had him safe.

“Not yet, Johnnie-boy,” said Martin, and reached for him and held him up and lashed him to the buoy. “You can rest your arms now, lad,” he said, and Johnnie gratefully let go.

“’Tis made of iron a man should be that goes winter trawling,” said Martin, and up on the bottom of the dory he climbed again, this time with infinite difficulty.

They had had the leeward berth and now were farthest from the vessel, and by this time it was dark. But Martin knew the Skipper would not give them up in a hurry, as he explained to John. And by and by they saw the torches flare up.

“Wait you, John,” said Martin then, “and save your strength. I’ll hail when I think they’re near enough to hear.” Which he did, in a voice that obeyed the iron will and carried far across the waters.

Then the vessel saw them and bore down, the Skipper to the wheel and the men lining the rail.

“Be easy with John,” said Martin to the man who first stretched his arms out and remarked, “I’m thinking he’s nigh gone.”

“_Nigh_ gone? He _is_ gone,” as they lifted John aboard.

“But all right with him now,” they said as they passed him along the deck. “And how is it with yourself, Martin?” they asked him as he was about to step over the rail.

“Fine and daisy,” said Martin. “How is it yourself, boy?” stepping jauntily up, and then, unable longer to stand, falling flat on the deck.

Seeing how it had been with him, they made him go below also, which he, with shipmates helping, did; and also, later, put on the dry shift of clothes they made ready. In the middle of it all he asked, “Where’s Johnnie?”

“In his bunk--and full of hot coffee--where you’ll be in a minute.”

“The hell I will! there’s my dory yet to be hoisted in.”

“Your dory, Martin? Why, she’s in, drained dry and griped long ago.”

“What! and me below? And dory in already? What was it? Did I fall asleep, or what? Lord! but it’s an old man I must be getting. I wouldn’t’ve believed it. In all my time to sea, that’s the first time ever I warn’t able to lift hand to tayckles and my own dory hoisting in.” He made for the companion-way, but so weak was he that he fell back down the companion-way when he tried to make the deck.

But a really strong man recuperates rapidly. An hour later Martin was enjoying a fine hot supper, while the crew sat around and hove questions at him. They asked for details, and he gave them, or at least such of them as had become impressed on his mind; particularly did he condemn, in crisp phrases, the botheration of boots that leaked and the need of a second plug-strap on the bottom of a dory. “There ought to be a new law about plug-straps,” said Martin.

“Did ever a man yet come off the bottom of a dory and not speak about the plug-straps?” commented one.

“And leaky boots is the devil,” affirmed another--a notorious talker this one, who bunked up in the peak, where he could be dimly seen now, his head out of his bunk that his voice might carry the better. “I bought a pair of boots in Boston once--a Jew up on Atlantic Avenue----”

“In Heaven’s name, will you shut up, you and your Atlantic Avenue boots? We’ll never hear the end of those boots.”

The man in the peak subsided, and he who had quelled him, near to the stove and smoking a pipe, went on for himself: “And what were you thinkin’ of, Martin, when you thought you were goin’?”

“Or did you think any time that you was goin’?” asked somebody else.

“Indeed and I did, and a dozen times I thought it--and that ’twas a blessed cold kind of a day for a man to be soaking his feet in the ocean.”

“And yet”--the lad in the peak was in commission again--“and yet warn’t it some professor said in that book that somebody was reading out of the other day--warn’t it him said that salt water ain’t nigh so cold as fresh. Is it, Martin?”

“As to that,” answered Martin, “I dunno. But I wish ’twas that professor’s feet, not mine, was astraddle the bottom of that dory--not to wish him any harm. But winter’s day and the wind no’therly, I found it cold enough.”

“I went into a Turkish bath parlor in New York one time,” came the conversational voice from the peak, “and hot? My Lord----”

“The man,” said the next on watch, taking his mitts from the line above the stove--“the man that’d talk about hot Turkish baths on a night like this to sea-- Turkish baths, and, Lord in heaven, two good long hours up there----” He halted to take a sniff up the companion-way. “Two hours--what ought to be done with the like o’ him?”

The man by the stove, who a while before had vanquished the lad in the peak, took his pipe long enough from his mouth to observe, “And for four years now, to my knowledge, he’s been tryin’ to tell how hot ’twas in that Turkish bath.”

“Hit him with a gob-stick,” suggested the cook--“or this rolling-pin.” He was flattening out pie-crust.

“A gob-stick or a rolling-pin,” said the next on watch, “is too good for him. Here, take this,” and passed the cook’s hatchet along the lockers.

The opening and closing of the hatch after the watch had gone on deck admitted a blast of air that made the man in the bunk nearest the steps draw up his legs. The flame in the lamp flared, whereat the original inquirer got up to set the lamp chimney more firmly over the base of the burner, and before he sat down put the question again. How did Martin feel when he thought he was sure enough going. “The last fifteen or twenty minutes or so I bet you did some thinkin’--didn’t you, Martin?”

“A little,” admitted Martin, and with a long arm gaffed another potato. “Toward the end of it the sea did begin to take on a gray look that I know now was grayer than any mortal sea ever could’ve been.”

“And what were you thinkin’ of then, Martin?”

“What was I thinking of? What-- Lord, but these apple dumplings are great stuff, aren’t they? You don’t want to let any of those dumplings get past you, Johnnie. Never mind how used-up you feel, come out of your bunk and try ’em. Five or six good plump dumplings inside of you and you’ll forget you ever saw a dory.”

“He’s asleep, Martin.”

“Is he? Well, maybe ’tis just as well. ’Twas a hard drag for poor John to-day. What was I thinking of? you asked me. Well, I’ll tell you what I was thinking of. You know what store I set by a good razor. I’d go a hundred mile for a good razor--a _good_ razor--any time. You all know that, don’t you?”

“Yes--yes----”

“Well, this last time out I brought aboard as fine a looking razor as ever a man laid against his face. Oh, I saw you all eying it the last time I took it out. Don’t pretend-- I know you. It’s right there in my diddy-box, and before I turn in to-night it’s a good scrape I’m going to give myself with it--yes. Well, when Johnnie’d said ‘Good-by, Martin’--said it for the second time--‘Good-by, Martin, don’t mind me any more, look out for yourself’--said that, and I’d said, ‘Hold on a little longer’ to him for about the tenth time--well, about that time, when I did begin to think we were sure enough going--with it coming on dark and no sign of the vessel in sight--then it was I couldn’t help wondering who in hell aboard the vessel was going to get that razor.”

When everybody had done laughing, and after two or three had told how they felt when they were on the bottom of a dory, the persistent one asked again, “Martin, but you must’ve had some close calls in your time?”

“My share--no more.” He was taking a look around the table as he spoke--a lingering, regretful look--and then he gave up any further thought of it. “Ah-h,” he sighed, “but I cert’nly took the good out of that meal,” and leaning against the nearest bunk-board--his own--drew out his pipe from beneath the mattress. “My share and no more,” he repeated, and reached across to the shelf in his bunk and drew forth a plug of tobacco. He cut off the proper quantity and rolled it around between his palms the proper length of time before he spoke again. With the pipe between his teeth he had to speak more slowly. “Any man that’s been thirty years trawling will nat’rally have a few things happen to him. To-day makes the third time I’ve been on the bottom of a dory, and cold weather each time--just my blessed luck--cold weather each time”--three times he blew through the stem of his pipe--“and I don’t want to be there the fourth. Eddie-boy, hand me a wisp out of the broom at your elbow.”

While Martin was cleaning out his pipe somebody put the question generally. Would they rather be on the bottom of a dory out to sea, or on a vessel piled up on the rocky shore somewhere?

“On the rocks for me.”

“And for me.”

“Yes, a chance to get ashore from a wreck, but the bottom of a dory with the sea breaking over you, and it cold maybe--cert’nly it’s never any too warm--wr-r-h!”

There seemed to be no doubt of what they would take for their choice. “And yet,” commented Martin when the last word had been said, “I dunno but the closest call ever I had was when the _Oliver Cromwell_ went ashore and was lost off Whitehead.”

“Cripes, but I’m glad I warn’t on her. A bad business that--a bad business. Hand me that plate, will you, Martin”--this from the cook.

“Sure, boy--here y’are--an armful of plates. Cook on a fisherman’s the last job I’d want--you’re never done. And you’re right it was a bad business, cook. When you’ve seen nineteen men washed over one after the other, every man--every man but one, that is--putting up the divil’s own fight for his life before he went-- I dunno but what it must be worse than going down at sea altogether, all hands in one second, with no chance at all--though that must be hard enough, too.”

Silence for a while, and then Martin continued: “If I had it to do over again”--two long puffs--“to do it over and be lost instead of saved, I dunno but what I’d rather founder at sea myself. Nineteen men lost--eighteen good men-- Lord, but ’twas cruel!”

Martin, with his head back, was gazing thoughtfully up at the deck-beams. A gentle leading question, and he resumed.

“We left Gloucester that trip with the Skipper’s-- But to tell that story right a man ought to begin away back. But will you give me a match, somebody?”

He lit up again, and then settled himself snugly between the edge of the table and his bunk-board, after the manner of a man who is in for a long sitting-out. Once he really started there were but few interruptions. The loss of the _Cromwell_ was a serious affair, and nobody broke in thoughtlessly; and only when Martin would stop to refill his pipe, or to light up again when he found he had let it go out, did he make any halt himself.

* * * * *

“What the Hoodleys of Cape Ann were, and are still,” began Martin, “of course all of you, or most all of you, anyway, know. Or maybe some of you don’t know. Well, they were a hard crowd--but didn’t know it--the kind of people that whenever they got to talking about their own kind, never had any tales to prove maybe that there was even the lightest bit of wit or grace or beauty among them; no, none of that for the Hoodleys of Cape Ann. But to show you what thrifty, hard-headed fore-people they had, they could spin off, any of ’em, a hundred little yarns, almost any day, as if anybody on earth that knew those of them that were alive would ever doubt what the dead-and-gone ones must’ve been. Hard they were--even neighbors that didn’t take life as a dream of poetry said that much of them. Hard they were--man, yes--the kind that little children never toddled up to and climbed on to their knees, nor a man in hard luck by any mistake ever asked the loan of a dollar of--the kind that never a man walked across the street to shake hands with. That’s the kind they were. Take ’em all in all, I guess that the Hoodleys were about as hard a tribe as you’d find in all Essex County--surely ’tisn’t possible there were any harder. And yet you couldn’t pick a flaw in ’em before the law. They were honest. Everybody had to say that for them--paying their debts, their just debts--as they put it themselves--and collecting their own dues, don’t fear, and a great respect for the letter of the law--for the letter of it. And I mind they used to boast that for generations their people had kept clear of the poorhouses, and that all had been church-members in good standing. Well, not exactly all; for, to be exact and truthful--they themselves used to put it that way--there was one here and there that had broken away. But such had been rare, as one of them--a strong church-member--used to put it, and the devil is ever active; and speaking of the devil, this particular member’d go on, there is always the blistering pit for the unrighteous. That last I s’pose he thought he ought to put in, because everybody knew that of all the people that fell from grace, the wickedest, the most blasphemous, the most evil of all evil livers had been those of the Hoodleys that had back-slided. Once they went to the bad they cert’nly went beyond all hope; and nobody did they curse out more furiously than their own people every time they did start in.