Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

“Well, he jumped at last. And the bowsprit rose full as high and gave him full as good a chance as I’d got. But even so he fell a little short. His feet only caught the edge of the shelf. He staggered, and seeing how it was, I braced my feet well as I could and hauled. He came in, sagged away, I bracing my feet--they were slipping. In a crack in the rock of the ledge I dug the fingers of one hand, the other hand to the line, and hung on. We were gaining; he was fairly on his feet, and I felt the strain easing, when a sea that swept up the side of the cliff like a tidal wave took him clear of everything. It would have swept me, too, but I gripped where I could get a hold, with the fingers of my one loose hand in the crack in the rocks, and hung on there--one hand to the crack and the other to the line--hung on so, supporting the weight of myself and the Skipper, until I felt my muscles getting hot and heavy and my breath coming fast. He was floundering somewhere on the edge of the cliff. I hollered to him, though feeling almost certain he was battered to pieces by then--‘How is it with you, George--how is it, man?’ but there was no answer. Again I hollered, and again no answer. And then, when I was satisfied that it was only the last ounce of strength I had left, I called out, ‘Help yourself, George--why don’t you help yourself?’ No answer. Once more I called, and once more getting no answer, I knew then he must’ve been beaten to death against the rocks, and that ’twas his dead weight was hanging to me. And yet I called once more to make sure. But still getting no answer, ‘The Lord have mercy on your soul, George Hoodley,’ I said, and let slip the line.”

* * * * *

Toward the end of Martin’s story it had become very quiet in the forec’s’le. Nobody said anything, neither broke in with a question nor offered any comment, until after a long silence, and then not until after Martin himself had repeated absently, as if to himself, and after a long indrawn breath, “And then I let slip the line.” Only then did he look around and seem to realize that he was not on the ledge off Whitehead.

“And after you cast off the line, what then, Martin?”

“Well,” resumed Martin, “the weight being gone made a great difference to me, but it was quite a while before I could stand on my feet. Even then I didn’t have the courage to look down right away, but climbing to one side to the very top of the cliff, I laid flat on my stomach and looked over the edge. ’Twas good light then, and I could see the body of George Hoodley below--tossing about like an eggshell, as if ’twas no more than sea-weed in a sea-way. And that was the end of it. Even if he warn’t dead at the time--even if he warn’t dead when I let go the line and it had to be me or him, it ought to’ve been him. If it was a friend, now--if it was Dan, say-- I don’t know what I would do. I hope I’d have the strength not to cast loose the line.”

It was very quiet again. The boot-heels of the new watch on deck, the rasping of the booms as the vessel jibed, the whistle of the rising gale, the slap of the sea outside them, the Skipper’s voice on deck, the atmosphere, stirred Martin again. “’Twas a night like this we swung the _Cromwell_ off to the west’ard. I shouldn’t wonder but what he’d be takin’ the mains’l off her soon, won’t he?”--this to the old watch, who had just come down the companion-way and was wringing his mitts out by the stove.

“The mains’l, Martin?” repeated the watch in surprise. “Why, the mains’l’s been off her for hours--she’s under a trys’l and jumbo.”

“The mains’l, Martin,” explained one, “was taken off her just after you and Johnnie were taken aboard. You were pretty tired and didn’t notice, maybe, at the time.”

“Lord, I must’ve been tired--not to know it when the mains’l’s taken off a vessel I’m in. There was never a minute the night the _Cromwell_ was lost that I was tired as that. No, sir, not even when I laid on the cliff in the morning and looked down for George Hoodley’s body.”

“Speakin’ of that, Martin, didn’t some of the bodies come ashore?” This from the cook, who incidentally, feeling a little less hurried, was putting a few shovels of coal into the stove before he should turn in for the night.

“There were two bodies came ashore,” resumed Martin. “And that was a sad thing, too. I was going up to see if I couldn’t get some clothes to hide my nakedness, and maybe a pair of boots and a bite to eat and a bit of fire to warm up by somewhere, when I met a man. ’Twas good light by then. He was coming down a bit of beach behind the cliff. I told him my vessel had been wrecked, and I was all that was left of the crew. And he fixed me up as well as he could and came back with me to the beach, and there’s where the sad part came in. One of the _Cromwell’s_ crew, Angus MacPherson, had been fishing out of Gloucester twelve years, and every fall he said he was going home to see the old people. I knew that as well as I knew that he’d been sending money home regularly to the old people. If it hadn’t been for Angus they’d’ve had a hard time of it, I cal’late, those twelve years. Well, he never went home, as he said; but here was the very place Angus came from, and this was the way he came home at last. That same afternoon I helped to bury him and to carry his old mother away from the grave when she couldn’t carry herself. God help us, but there’s hard spots in life, ain’t there?

“The other body that came up was the Skipper’s. And him I went to Gloucester with. And maybe there’d be no more to that, but getting into the Gloucester station, just as the train hauled up, who should happen to be at the station but the Skipper’s wife--his widow, then, of course. She knew well enough what had happened--everybody in Gloucester knew--the papers full of it the day before; but she didn’t know that I, the one man saved from the wreck, was on the train. Nobody knew. I didn’t send any word ahead. It was only three days since the vessel was lost, but was she crying her eyes out? Was she?--the--the-- But I won’t say it.

“I goes up to her. ‘Mrs. Hoodley,’ says I, ‘I’ve brought home your husband’s body for burial.’

“D’y’ think she thanked me? Indeed, I saw by her face I’d made a mistake not to bury him with Angus down Whitehead way. And then she makes eyes at me-- God’s truth--makes eyes at me, while the box that her husband’s corpse was in--and I knew what a battered, bloody corpse it was--was being lifted out of the baggage-car and put into a wagon. She gave orders then and there to have it taken straight to the graveyard; and when it was buried, mind you, she warn’t there--not even for decency’s sake. But going from the station while her husband’s body was being carried away, she held her head up and took note of who was looking at her. That’s what she liked--people to notice her. And looking at her I cursed George Hoodley for a fool that didn’t drown her if he was bound to drown somebody, instead of the man that he thought had wronged him. So there you have it--the truth of the _Oliver Cromwell_--the part that didn’t get into the papers.”

“What was it the papers did say about it, Martin?”

“Oh, what they said was pretty near right so far as it went, but they didn’t know the whole truth, and don’t yet. They said a word or two ’bout his leaving a wife. No great harm done in that, I s’pose. As for himself, they said he was thrifty, and hard-working, and careful--gen’rally careful, they might’ve said--and successful. And so he was, I s’pose. But I think I’ll be turning in, for after all there’s nothing like a good sleep, is there? Where’s Johnnie? Still asleep? Well, he’s the wise lad to be getting his good sleep ’stead of listening to my long-winded stories. Maybe if we all turn in there’ll be more of us good and strong to haul a trawl again to-morrow.” He picked up his pipe. It was cold. “And now there’s something. The man that’d invent something to keep a pipe going when you lay it down without smokin’ itself all up’d make a lot of money, wouldn’t he? And yet maybe it’s just as well for some of us. I cal’late I’ve smoked enough, anyway.”

“But, Martin, before you turn in, what’s become of Hoodley’s widow?”

“Oh, her? She and Dan Powell got married since, and they’re both getting all that’s coming to them. He’ll go out and get lost some day too, maybe, to get away from her. I wouldn’t be surprised, anyway, if he did. Only before he goes, being a different kind of a man from George Hoodley and knowing women of her kind better, he won’t worry so much about the man as about her. He’ll see that she’s put out of the way before he sails--or at least that’s my idea of it; or maybe it’s only that I half hope he will. But I think I’ll be turning in.”

He tucked his pipe away under his mattress, slipped out of his slip-shods, slacked away his suspenders, and laid his length in his bunk. He was about to draw the curtain, but his eye catching the eye of the watch, who was then hauling off his wet boots, he had to ask, “What’s it look like for the morning, Stevie--what’d the Skipper say?”

“He says that unless it moderates a bit more than it looks as if ’twill now, we’ll stay aboard in the morning.”

“Well, here’s one that ain’t sorry to hear that. I don’t mind sayin’, now that it’s all over, that hanging on to the bottom of that dory warn’t any joke to-day. I’m good and tired. ’Twas a night like this we headed the _Cromwell_ to the west’ard. ‘Hell or Gloucester,’ says he, and hell it was for him. Good-night.”

Strategy and Seamanship