it was fine summer weather, and john asked me how about a swordfishing trip for a change. i said all right, and we got a chance in the henriette, and went down that same morning to duncan's wharf to go aboard.
the henriette lay ready to go to sea, and john and i stood on the string-piece and looked down on her deck and up at her mastheads. a lumper hanging around duncan's was standing near us.
i never knew a dock lumper that couldn't tell you all about everything. "she is weak-built and pretty deep—i don't like to see them so deep," said this lumper. "and down by the head, too."
"maybe you'd be deep if you were on'y thirteen tons net register an' thirty tons of ice in you," said john.
and a proper answer. a man should always have a good word—even if he don't more than half believe it himself—for the craft he's going to sea in. at the same time i was thinking that i was having an eye to a new, able fresh-halibuter—a big ninety-ton vessel—across the slip.
i like the big fellows to go to sea in. i said so to john.
"a big, able brute—yes, boy. but that big brute—lard gard, she'd look sweet, wouldn't she, chasin' swordfish in the shoal water south o' georges. she's a good little boat, the henriette—and a pretty name," said john.
it was a fresh southwesterly, and a day to make a man over, as we passed on by eastern point. just to look at the young blue seas was life, and the soft salt air was a cure for whatever blue feeling a man might have had hooked into himself ashore.
a great morning. we passed two big salt fishermen bound in. from the western banks they were, or from flemish cap, half across the ocean, maybe; and the brown rocks of cape ann must have looked to them like mother's johnny-cake on the kitchen table that sunny morning. swinging by like a pair of twins they went, flying both topsails the pair of them, but neither of them much more than flushing their scuppers to the fine fresh breeze. whoo-o-sh! fifteen hundred miles we've come from the east'ard! in the name o' heaven—we could almost hear them saying it—don't stop us!
the sea was more than swishing through the little henriette's scuppers. our rail was good and wet as we belted across the bay, and rounding cape cod we rolled down till the solid water began to fill her lee gangway; rolled lower and lower, 'till it was solid between her lee rail and house; and those of us on her wind'ard quarter had our feet braced so we wouldn't take a slide down her high-slanting deck and overboard.
our skipper was a driver. by and by we were rolling low enough for a buoy keg to go floating off our house and overboard astern. a fine half-barrel of a buoy keg it was—black and white painted, smooth and tight as a drum; a beauty of a buoy which by and by, at the end of a fifty-fathom warp, ought by rights to be towing after a fat swordfish; and so the skipper said. but now she was dancing atop of the swirling seas astern, and the skipper, looking astern after it and then at us, also said: "to hell with it now! buy a new one out your share—and next time some o' you'll learn to lash 'em, maybe!"
it was a day to see pictures. from astern of us came bowling up one of the biggest and stiffest knockabouts sailing out o' gloucester. she had a bow like a bulldog's jaw; and she sent that bow smashing through the white-collared seas as if she had come out for no more than to give her ugly face a wash. stiff? she was a church on a rock.
"there's the able lady!" said shorty. "no water sloshin' solid through her lee gangway an' washin' buoy kegs off her house—hah, john?"
john was a newfoundlander. he told me that the earliest thing he remembered was helping bait his father's trawls on a grand banks fisherman.
with his arms folded over the corner of the house, his chin resting on his arms, and his eyes like two razor-edges peering out between his eyelids, there wasn't much happening up to wind'ard—or leeward either—that john wasn't seeing. and it was a great day to see things; for it was a gale o' wind blowing, the sky was still clear blue, and the air was the kind to make a man over.
a quick-acting, quick-talking, wiry little fellow was john. big bill couldn't keep up with him at all. bill's right name was not bill. nobody knew what it was; nor cared. bill was probably a better name, anyway. one peek at him as the big fellow hove himself aboard was enough for john. "will ye look at big bill!" cried john; after that no other name would fit him. "lard, lard," said john, "but i be wantin' to see the look o' that bulk of a man when he jams hisself into a bosun's chair to the masthead!"
bill never could see anything funny in john's line of talk, and said so across the supper-table that same afternoon. breakfast was at four o'clock, dinner at half-past nine, and supper at three o'clock on the henriette. "somebody'll come along and set on you right hard some day," said bill. to which john said: "so long's 'tisn't some one o' your tonnage does the settin', i callate i c'n stand it," and then, reaching over and scooping to himself another wedge of blueberry pie: "you cert'nly do make great blueberry pie, cook."
"not so ferry bad," said the cook.
he was a good cook, who had followed the sea since he was fifteen. the big ports of the world—he knew them all, and when he wasn't too busy he would talk about them; though what he most liked to talk about was his blueberry patch in stoneport, where he owned a nice little white house with a simment cellar—up on the hill next the isinglass factory. he had a dog at home, a part of him skitch and the other part of him sin bernard. gardner, the milkman, owned the bernard. who owned the collie he didn't know. nobody knowed. and when those smart alecks of stoneport kids came along and tried to bemboozle those blueberry-bushes where they was hangin' in bunches as on a grapewine, why that dog— well, he was the cleffer dog, that was all.
he had brought a few of the blueberries aboard, he said; which we very well knew—two bushels of them charged to the ship's stores at current market rates. his blueberry pies were all right; but the blueberry stews! with dumplings! there was a cook sailed out of homburg on a barque when our cook was a cabin-boy on her, and that dumpling receipt was got out of him one night in yokohama when the old fellow had a couple of bowls of saki into him. saki and rice, yes. which was how it came about that thirty-four years later we were getting dumplings noon and night with our blueberry stew aboard the henriette. john, after maybe five hours to the masthead, would come sliding cheerily down to deck at dinner call. at the head of the forec's'le companionway he would haul up and have half a peek below. and then a sniff. a long sniff, and then a full peek. "lard gard, dumplin's!" john would say, and look sadly around and up at sea and sky.
but so as not to hurt the cook's feelings, john, when he sat down, would take the big fork and go sounding in the blueberry stew, and soon, bright blue and beautiful, he would gaff a half-dozen of them onto his plate. and the cook, noticing it, would smile and say: "you like tem tumplings, chon?" and john would say: "this side o' fortune bay i never saw nothin' to ekal 'em." and when the cook would turn his back, john would slip them into his pocket.
after dinner john would take the dumplings aloft, and, when big bill would take the skipper's place out at the end of the bowsprit, john would heave the dumplings at him from the masthead. sometimes he would heave a few astern at whoever happened to have the wheel. generally it was oliver at the wheel, because his eyesight was not so sharp as the others of us for seeing fish from aloft.
oliver was the first spectacled fisherman that john had ever seen; and one day when oliver laid his glasses down, john took them up, and set them on his own nose and picked up a newspaper. and quickly removed them. "lard, lard, a swordfish she'd look like a whale in them and his sword as long's a vessel's bowsprit!"
when oliver was not to the wheel, steve would be there. steve was a tall fellow. to give an idea of how tall he was, john would run down the deck, leap into the air and give a grab at the sky. "where me hand touched would maybe reach to his waist," john would say. steve, when he turned in, had to let his feet hang over his bunkboard and onto the locker; and when he did that john came and sat on them. steve slept in the cabin under the overhang. big bill slept under the overhang, too, in the opposite bunk. one of our pleasures was to watch bill kick his way into his bunk under the low overhang, then to tell him the skipper wanted to see him on deck, and watch him wiggle his way out. feet first he had to come. steve could do it all right, but bill—he weighed three hundred.
on foggy nights bill turned in on the locker, with one arm and leg stretched out to keep him from rolling onto the floor. he had once been in a steamer collision, and he warn't of any notion to be sent to the bottom by no steamer collision—leastways not if he saw her comin'. and he callated to see her comin'. his last word to the next on watch on a foggy night was always: "call me soon's you see any steamer lights. an' don't wait to diskiver if it be a pote or stabbid light." on watch in a fog bill never got farther away from the fog-horn than he could make in two leaps; and he was no olympic leaper.
with bill and steve in the cabin slept oliver and the skipper. most sword-fishermen carry an auxiliary engine to hustle after the fish in calm summer weather. the rest of us bunked in the forec's'le. she was a little creature, the henriette, and it was pretty close sleeping for'ard on a hot night. to abate the heat nights, we rigged up a wind-sail which came down the air-port forward of the foremast; which was all right till the vessel tacked. when she did, her jumbo-boom would sweep across the deck and swipe our wind-sail over the rail. when we fellows bunking forward talked of how hot it was for'ard, the cabin gang would only say: "hot? you want to come aft and soak in the gas off the engine for a few nights!"
we cruised four days off block island without seeing a sword-fin. plenty of big sharks were loafing under the surface there, but sharks don't bring anything on the market. we stood easterly. off nantucket light-ship we picked up bob johnson of nantucket and bill jackson of maine, bill rice and tom o'brien of gloucester, the master and the norma also of gloucester, a boston schooner, the alarm, and a big, black brute of a sloop which nobody could name. tom haile was there, too—in the esther ray.
no fish in sight that afternoon; but even so the skipper took his station in the pulpit. john, shorty, and i went aloft. john was topmost, and swung in his chair just under the truck. shorty and i were just under john. when we got tired of swinging in our chairs we could stand up, one cross-line in the small of our backs, another against our chests, and balance ourselves. when the vessel dove we could wrap our arms around the topmast and hang on. there was a swell on this morning—no crested seas, but a long, smooth, black swell, enough to send the vessel's bowsprit under every little while; and sometimes to send the pulpit atop of the bowsprit under, too.
"but this skipper—he don't mind gettin' wet," explained shorty. "i've seen him go divin' till it was over his head in the pulpit an' he still hangin' on waitin' for fish."
bill did not stand watch at the masthead. his eyesight was good enough, but bill's three hundred pounds climbing up the rigging four or five times a day to the masthead—the skipper said he guessed he'd take pity on the rigging. so bill stayed on deck to go in the dory, when a fish would be ironed. also he took the pulpit when the skipper came inboard to eat. the first time john saw bill go into the pulpit, he let a yell of mock terror out of him from aloft. "skipper, skipper, he's puttin' her down by the head, and lard knows she was down by the head enough before. let she go into a good head sea, she'll never come up an' we'll be lost, all hands!" which made bill turn and glare up at john; and when he did that, john hove one of the cook's bright-blue dumplings down at bill.
that afternoon we sighted our first fish. the skipper was in the pulpit, with the pole half hitched across the pulpit rail. bill was resting his chest across the gunnel of the top dory and with half-closed eyes studying the sea to wind'ard. oliver was sitting on the wheel-box, motionless except when he moved an arm or a hand to roll a spoke or two up and down. aloft, we had not seen a sign of fish, near or far, for an hour or more.
john let out a sharp little cry: "fish-o!" the skipper stood up and balanced his long pole. oliver straightened up at the wheel-box. bill came out of his trance, looked to us aloft and shifted his gaze to leeward. the bright, bald head of the cook shone up the forec's'le ladder. he cast a peek aloft, said "fish-h?" inquiringly, and stepped onto the deck, smoking his pipe.
"fair abeam to looard!" john called, and oliver put the wheel up. soon they could see the curved three-cornered fin from the deck. a shark's fin is three-cornered, too, but straight-edged, not curved. and a swordfish's tail moves almost without motion through the water.
the skipper balanced his pole, but without looking down at it. his eyes were for the fish only. "hard up!" called john, and oliver sent our bow swinging into line.
"stea-a-dy!" called john.
the skipper was swaying from the waist. a big-boned, rangy man the skipper, more than six feet high and wide-shouldered, with a great reach and a strong-looking back. he hefted his pole—more than a week since he had ironed a swordfish—and he looked to see that the line running from his pole to a tub in the waist of the vessel was all clear. to look after that was the cook's business, and now, meeting the skipper's look: "all clear!" he sang out, and stowed his pipe in his stern pocket.
we were within half the vessel's length of our fish when, he dived. "port!" called john. "stea-a-dy! stea-a-dy! lard, man, stea-a-dy-y!" they could not see the fish from the deck, but we at the masthead could follow his course under water.
the fin and tail showed again. we swung around to head him off in his course. the skipper, to loosen up his waist and back muscles, was swaying from his hips.
we were almost on the big fish. he was cruising lazily. the skipper drew back his right arm and shoulder, but fin and tail took a sudden shoot. john was in command at the masthead. "luff—luff!" called john. the vessel shot up, the skipper leaned far over the pulpit rail. fin and tail were gone from his sight, but from aloft we could follow the blue-black shadow of the body under water. suddenly the shadow turned and shot diagonally back under our bowsprit. john called a warning. the skipper rose on his toes—with that long right arm raised above and behind his head, he looked seven feet tall—and waited. we feared he was waiting too long, when whing!—a backward swoop of the arm, a downward thrust of the pole, and "gottim!" said the cook, and tossed the bight of the warp over the rail and calmly bent on a new warp for the skipper's pole. the skipper took a backward look at the flying fish; then quickly, but with never a hurry, rigged a fresh iron and line to his pole. after a man has ironed a few thousand swordfish it is probably hard to get excited over one more.
the big fish was gone, deep down, and after him the warp was whirling out of the tub in the ship's waist. in no time the whole fifty-fathom line was gone, and atop of the sea the black-and-white-painted barrel was going a good clip. and then under it went, but not for long. up it came, and around in a quarter-circle and then straight away again with a grand little wake after it. by this time bill had been dropped into a dory and was rowing after the buoy.
the buoy ran round another big circle before bill caught up with it. when he did he took the buoy into the dory and began to warp in the fish, and had him alongside and was about to lance him in the head, when whir-h-h! tail and sword beat the sea white, and bill cast him loose.
now, if john, or oliver, or shorty had ever got that fish snubbed up under the dory gunnel like that, they would have finished him. if he was as long and big around as a dory, be sure they would, or try to; but getting on to middle age was bill, and he probably had in mind a clear picture of every doryman that was ever killed swordfishing.
bill was going after them in his own way. he'd get 'em just the same. just let that fish play hisself out. which he did after an hour or so, and then bill hauled him under the dory's quarter, and reached over and a dozen times or so drove the long lance into his head. the fish flurried around and churned white water, but the deep lance thrusts did for him at last. and then bill hitched him around the tail and waited for the vessel; and oliver, who had been having a windward eye to the dory all the time, put over to him, and the dory tackle was hooked under the tail-knot and the fish hauled in.
a swordfish is a handsome creature when fresh caught. plump and tapering in body, with pointed head and big eyes, and his skin a lovely dripping blue-black, which had not faded hours later when he was lowered into the hold after being dressed. the cook had a fine large round of beef on top of the ice in the hold, but it had to come out on deck to make room for that first fish—which is how deep the henriette was loaded.
he weighed perhaps three hundred pounds. a good-sized fellow. "jist the size to be lively," said bill. "and to fight—i don't take no chances with them kind."
the iron had gone diagonally through his body amidships. it was now hanging out with six inches of the line on the under side of him. a great stroke, passing through almost two feet of solid meat and just grazing the back-bone on the way. the cook explained that he had seen the skipper drive his iron clean through the backbone and then clear through the body of bigger ones than that.
by dark we had four good fish in, and all hands were pleased. the cook, before he turned in for the night, told us more about his blueberry patch. the skipper came below and broke in on the cook to talk about the weather. "a sea the same's if there was gasolene poured over it," said the skipper. "a clear sky, but a swell and near the horizon at sunset clouds piled up with gashes of green and purple and a hundred other shades. wind there—plenty of it—we'll see to-morrow."
to-morrow came, but no breeze. the skipper felt put out. "i'd 'a' bet it," he said.
that night came an ugly sunset. no oily sea this time, but a gray tossing and murmuring, and showing behind among the clouds, long deep-red streaks paralleling the horizon, and the horizon lifting up and down like it had something the matter with it, too.
next morning nothing, or no more than what shorty said when he came down from his watch at eight o'clock. "just a good liver shaker aloft," said shorty.
just before ten o'clock came a stirring out of the sea; but nothing much. another stirring and the skipper took a good look around, and then came in from the pulpit. he called out to us to come from the masthead. we came, and took sail off her—all but her foresail. no word was given to hurry, but there was no loafing over it. oliver, a great fellow to keep looking clean, said he guessed he'd take a chance to shave himself; and then he took another look around at sea and sky, and then he said he guessed he'd wait awhile.
while a man would be drawing on a pair of rubber-boots it came—oh, whistling! and four hours of it followed. wind to blow a man's ears off. and rain! oh, rain! not rain in sheets—nothing so soft and easy as that; but rain which came driving in like a billion bullets at once. we could pick out where every one hit us. the wind blew maybe eighty miles an hour for four hours. and then the real thing came. for an hour or so more wind really blew. how many miles? lord knows. john said a good hundred miles. bill snorted: "a hunderd? take on'y what's above a hunderd an' you'd git a gale by itself!"
with all the wind there was a high-running sea; and wind and sea together were driving us into shoal water. and the shoal water of georges is bad—no worse anywhere. we sounded and got ten fathoms. bad. there was nothing but to make a little more sail and get out. put jumbo and trysail to her, was the word; as we started to do that a forepeak block came away, and the halyards and block got fouled with the jib-stay aloft. the skipper sent john and me aloft to clear it.
we went; and were lying out to get it, when we saw this sea come at us. it was a white yeast all around the vessel, but this one was a solid white, solid as marble almost. it came roaring like a mad bull at us. i took one peek at it and "hang on, john!" i yelled. i did my best to leave the print of my fingers on the steel stay with the way i hung on myself—we were both of us to the masthead and that sea was just high enough to roll over our heads. i could just see a light-green color over my head as it passed.
as we stuck our heads through and looked at each other, john was saying something. there was a ringing in my ears. i asked him: "what? what did you say, john?"
"you told me to hang on," said john. "to hang on! lard gard, boy, did y' think i was goin' to dive into it?"
on deck when they saw it coming they had all jumped below and pulled the hatches after them. they began to come out now, and the skipper called for us to come down. nothing was washed from her deck. of course, everything before that had been double-lashed—dories and barrels of gasolene—before that. the skipper now ordered the bung pulled from a full barrel of gasolene. we stove one in and let the oil run out; and the seas calmed to leeward and we threw a dory to the lee rail, after lashing an empty gasolene barrel to each side of her.
"whoever's handiest jump in!" yelled the skipper.
big bill was handy to the dory, but he never would have made it if john hadn't stopped to push him over the gunnel from behind. shorty and oliver leaped over the other gunnel. i waited for john; but the skipper had called "more oil and another dory!" and john had turned back.
we four—bill, shorty, oliver, and myself—were hardly in when a sea came over the vessel's deck and swept our dory away—wh-f-f! like that. she all but filled to the gunnels before we were fair away from the vessel's side, but the two empty barrels kept her from sinking. and before another sea could get a fair chance at her oliver and bill were busy bailing her, and shorty and i keeping her head to the sea with an oar astern. we looked back to the vessel, and could see them rigging up another dory and breaking out another barrel of oil.
we kept going in our dory—none of us could say how long, whether it was one hour or four, we were all so busy—big bill and oliver with their heads down bailing her out with their sou'-westers, and shorty and i with an oar keeping her head to windward. bill and oliver had to bail pretty fast. bill kept getting out of wind and oliver's eye-glasses kept getting wet with salt water so he couldn't see out of them.
"what d'y' want to see out of 'em for?" asks shorty. "we're here in the stern to do the seein' an' the steerin'. might's well heave your specks overboard."
oliver hove them overboard.
so far as our seeing went we never saw the vessel which picked us up until after she saw us. she was the esther ray and she was under a jumbo and storm trysail, working off from the shoal water and having trouble enough; but they saw us, and stood down and hailed. we made out what they said, more by their signs than by what words we heard.
"i'll tack and come by close to looard of you!" called tom haile, her skipper; "and when i do, take your chance and come board. you'll maybe have to jump!"
he had to watch his chance to tack. he waited maybe five minutes, both hands on the spokes, waiting and watching. and then he gave her the wheel; and when he did, it was something to look at. between seas and sky she hung for i don't know how long—maybe five seconds, maybe ten, maybe thirty seconds—between heaven and hell she hung, before she came over. and, man, when she did, she wouldn't have started a pack thread. judgment there, boy! then falling and rising, and falling again, she came down onto us. a sea lifted our dory straight for her; up we went and down—straight for her windward rail. we watched. we jumped—all but bill. he was hove aboard. the dory under us was smashed on her rail as we jumped, but we could spare the dory—we were safe aboard the esther.
once we were aboard they gave the esther a little more sheet, and off she went on her ear till we made twenty-five fathoms of water; and there we brought her to. and while we lay there hove to the wind moderated to fifty miles or so, and as the wind came down the seas went up. higher and higher they kept mounting. just to look at the height of them would make your back ache. and then the wind backed into the northwest, and the seas came two ways together. no dodging them at all now, and the little esther ray—stripped to her last little white shift, a corner of a storm trysail—lay to a drogue and took it.
i'd been fishing mostly in big vessels before this trip, and for the first time in my life i saw a little boat stand up and take a beating. she was a few tons bigger than the henriette, but still little enough—the esther. little and deep-laden, she lay there and took it.
little and deep-laden, yes; but, man, a stout one, too. when she was building it was tom haile himself who drove every bolt—every trenail—into her. he had seen to it that her timbers were heavy enough for a vessel four times her tonnage. believe him, a vessel the esther! a solid block of oak, yes! and like a solid block of oak she lay there, and "come on, damn you, come on and get me!" we could almost hear her saying to the big seas.
of course, she could not do it all herself. after all, she was no five-hundred-foot steamer, that no matter how it came all you had to do was to let her lay and no harm come to her. there were the moments when it was up to the skipper and her crew. but a capable skipper on her quarter and a quick-moving, handy crew in her waist—when your vessel is well-found leave the rest of it to them! they were all there, and there on the jump when wanted. no talk, no questioning—when the word was passed the word was carried out. by seven o'clock that night the little esther had ridden out the gale in glory. to be sure, it was a thunderer of a night that followed, with seas pounding her solid little head, and perhaps the man in the peak bunk did not have a word to say about that in the morning! but with the morning—glory be!—'twas a silver sunrise and a little schooner smiling and bowing like to the baffled ocean.
but not all the swordfishing fleet were there in the morning. bill jackson was there, and the big, ugly sloop, and we thought we could make out bill rice and tom o'brien on the horizon. but where was the norma? and the master? and bob johnson? and the alarm of boston? and our own little henriette?
we made sail, and after a time the big sloop with the ugly bow also made sail. and we jogged back to where we had left the good fishing, and, the sea having moderated sufficiently, lookouts went aloft and the esther's skipper to the pulpit. vessels and men may be lost, but men and vessels have to keep on with the fishing just the same.
but there were no fish to be seen. the storm had scattered them. the skipper wanted to know what somebody else thought of the storm. he ran down to speak to bill jackson.
bill was sitting on the wheel-box whittling a piece of red cedar when we drew alongside. bill's half-bared chest seemed to be trying to burst through his undershirt, and above the shirt his seamed neck rose ruggedly. neck, arms, and chest were burned red. his beard, red in the shadows and gold in the sun, was ten days old at least. fifteen centuries ago it must have been men of bill jackson's style that left the marshes of the elbe and, sailing westward across the north sea, looted the shores of wherever they happened to beach their keels.
"how'd you make out yesterday, bill?" asked tom.
"rolled our sheer-poles under," said bill, "not once in a while, but reg'lar. an' not a stitch o' canvas on her to the time, nuther. an' washed over everything that warn't bolted. when i see it warn't lettin' up, i ran her under bare poles. logged eight and a half knots under bare poles. goin' some? i call it so. glad not to be lost, we were."
"same here. i'm worried about some o' the fleet, bill."
"some of 'em's gone, all right. i don't want to see another day like yesterday in a hurry, tom."
"nor me, bill. a good breeze o' wind i call it, bill."
"a damn good breeze o' wind i call it," said bill.
"i guess by this time there's no argument 'bout it bein' a pretty good little blow," said shorty.
we left bill jackson. the middle of the morning it was, a fine day, and, still hoping for fish, the esther's lookouts were aloft. one called out something—not fish-o!—and pointed. we looked. it was part of a drifting mast, the lower part, broken off raggedly from a foot or two above the saddle. it drifted on by.
"a white-painted saddle," said tom haile, looking at shorty and me.
"the henriette's saddles was painted white," said shorty. "but she ain't the only vessel with white-painted saddles."
"that's right," said the esther's crew, "she ain't."
a few minutes later a floating gasolene barrel drifted by, and soon another. tom haile reached out with a boat-hook and gaffed in that second barrel. there was a hole in the head of it—made by an axe. that didn't mean anything—it could have washed off the henriette's deck, off anybody's deck. the surprise would be in a barrel staying on her deck in the shoal water she was in when we left her. yes, that could be, agreed the esther's crew.
from the masthead then they saw a dory—bottom up.
"a yellow dory?" shorty and i asked.
the lookout scanned the water. "a yellow dory, yes."
the skipper put off for the yellow dory, and when he towed it back, there was the name:
henriette
on her bow planks.
"that's her other dory, all right," said shorty. "but they still have the vessel under them." nobody said anything to that.
next we picked up a hatch-cover. and the hatch-cover, when we got it aboard, had a star carved on it.
"yes, the main hatch-cover o' the henriette had a star carved on it," said shorty. "but there's plenty o' chances for her yet."
what looked like a watermelon came drifting up.
shorty looked to see better. "if it's a watermelon, i give up—she's gone," said shorty. "they's nobody heaves a watermelon overboard to lighten a vessel."
it was a watermelon; and we all gave up. everybody knew that the henriette's cook was a great fellow to ship a watermelon and keep it down among the ice for the passage home. as shorty said, there was no reason ever for a watermelon being hove overboard. and it couldn't have floated out of her hold unless the vessel had broken up. the mast, the gasolene-barrel, the dory, the hatch-cover, and now the melon.
shorty made a flying leap into the yellow dory towing astern, and, leaning far enough out to lay the dory over on her side, he spread wide his arms and the melon floated right in over the gunnel and into his arms, and he took it to his bosom.
big bill hurried to take the melon when shorty passed it up over the rail. "poor little henriette an' the good fellers in yer—where are yer now, i wonder?" said bill, looking down on the melon. and then he tested it for soundness. "only one soft spot where she bumped into somethin'," announced bill. he called for a knife and cut it up, and tasted a piece.
"not a touch o' salt," he said, and passed slices of it around.
a good-tasting melon, everybody said; and eating it on the esther's quarter we said all the good things we knew of the henriette and her skipper and crew.
two days later the esther put into newport. we came past point judith in a night of black vapor—a bad night for big bill. he saw steamer lights all sides of him, and never went to sleep at all.
we stood up narragansett bay in the dawn, and the cook of the esther, smoking his pipe on the deck, was the boy could tell all about the big summer houses on the bluffs. there is that about cooks—they always seem to hold more gossip than anybody else aboard a vessel. names of who owned the cottages, how many millions—and how they made the millions—was what the cook could tell us, with a few bits of flaming gossip added on.
some big schooner-yachts from new york were anchored in newport harbor. one of them, as large again as any fresh halibutter that ever was launched—a great black-enamelled cruising schooner with a high free-board, perhaps fifteen times the tonnage of the henriette—held the eyes of all. "if we'd only had her out there the other day!" was what most of us were thinking.
"she'd be the girl to walk us out o' shoal water in that breeze!" put in shorty. "we'd had her 'nd we'd 'a' washed her face for her!"
"and mebbe a few o' them fancy skylights and brass rails off her deck, too," said big bill.
"maybe. but i'd like to had her tried out, just the same."
tied up to the other side of long wharf when we got in was tom o'brien's vessel. big bill, like a good gossip, waddled over to get the news, and soon came galloping back.
"she's gone!" he called out, and showed us a boston paper with the report of how four men's bodies with a life-preserver marked henriette had been picked up off nantucket the day before. there was also the story in a new york paper of how a big ocean liner had been in the storm. she was six hundred foot long and bound for new york. there was a bishop aboard, and when it got too rough for the passengers, some of them wrote notes to the bishop asking him to hold a prayer-meeting in the saloon. he started to hold the prayer-meeting but it grew too rough. they had to quit.
"and they in good deep water where they were! i wonder what they'd 'a' thought if they'd been in this little one and where she was?" said tom haile.
"maybe they'd held the prayer-meetin' anyway, then," said shorty.
we had come away from the henriette in only our oilskins and trousers and undershirts. tom haile and tom o'brien and a couple of fish-buyers on long wharf started a collection to get us some clothes. we took the money up thames street to some clothing dealer who was a brother moccasin to tom haile and o'brien. but belonging to the same order didn't make any difference. the clothing dealer wouldn't take a cent off.
"not even for shipwrecked seamen?" asked o'brien.
"being shipwrecked seamen don't make the clothes cost any less to me," said the dealer.
"a hell of a fine brother moccasin you are!" said o'brien.
"a fine brother moccasin yourself!" said the clothing dealer, "wantin' me to lose money on a sale."
so we went to another place, and he happened to be a jew and not a moccasin. not that he wouldn't like to be a member of that noble order; which made o'brien and haile warm up to him, so that they forgot to argue about the price at all.
they had to saw a foot off shorty's new pants to make them fit, and the coat came pretty low down on him; but no harm in that bill and oliver and i said. we got pretty good fits.
they bought tickets for us and we took the train to gloucester, and then i went down to tony webber's to get a shave, and there was a young fellow in the chair next to me said to tony: "yer sh'd have been out in the breeze!"
"what vessel?" i asked.
"the thunderbolt," he says.
"and what shape is she in?"
"go down to the halibut company's wharf and see," he says.
i did go down later. she'd lost both masts to near her deck, and her bowsprit was broken off short at the knightheads—not a thing left on her except her last coat of paint and a few twisted yarns of her lower shrouds. but, thank the lord, no men lost. they had all stayed aboard.
"they were luckier than the hiawatha. heard about the hiawatha?" asked a man in the chair.
"no; what about her?"
"i had a brother on her," said this man. "she was hove down and her whole crew washed over—hove flat down and the whole crew of eight men in the water at once. six of 'em got back—first one and then another, the first of those back aboard heavin' lines to the others still overboard. two men never came back, though—pretty rough it was."
on his own vessel, the thunderbolt, it was pretty rough sailing, and in the middle of it there was one of the crew—he'd never been off-shore fishing in his life before this—he came on deck with a life-preserver around him. "seas to our masthead," said the man off the thunderbolt, "and he comes on deck with a life-preserver. he must 'a' thought he was bein' wrecked in some swimmin'-pool in some turkish bath 'stead of old south shoal in a gale. if ever he'd got two feet from the deck of that vessel, he'd lasted 'bout two seconds—him and his life-preserver!"
tony, the barber, was so interested in the man with the life-preserver that he gave me a fine cut on my right cheek.
john and the skipper and steve and the cook were buried that same day in gloucester, and we all went to the funeral; and coming away from the funeral: "you goin' back fishin'?" said shorty to me.
"no more fishin' for me," i said. and shorty and oliver, they both said never again for them, either.
that was day before yesterday. this morning the master of the antoinette came along with shorty and oliver and asked me didn't i want to make just one more swordfishing trip while the season was on.
i looked at shorty. he was wearing a smile and had a rose on his coat some girl had given him. "i thought you said you were through fishing, shorty?"
"so i did," said shorty, "but a man says a lot o' things in his careless hours. i've had a couple o' good nights' sleep since."
"and you, oliver?" i said.
"me? well, there's a wife and an old mother up to my house, and i never read anywhere the gover'ment was paying out money to the families of fishermen who didn't want to fish any more, did you?" said oliver.
so i said all right i'd go along, too. "what's the use—we're sea-birds," i said. "it's our home and our living—where else should we go but to sea, at the last? but have you seen big bill?"
yes, shorty had seen big bill. he had hopes to get a job at the car-barn. "he's had two warnings, he says," said shorty, "and not to wait for a third would be foolish. he's up on main street right now with people buying drinks for him, while he tells 'em how he managed to save himself off the henriette."
well, big bill's all right; but he's alive to-day because a better man—the same being john—shoved him into a dory when he might have gone himself instead. and big bill thinks of john only as an irresponsible young fellow who liked to play jokes with blueberry dumplings.
the best men don't always come back from sea. four good men stayed aboard the henriette, and two of them—the skipper and john—were certainly quicker and braver than any of the others of us. the skipper could have come away first, but he didn't.
nor john. six years i was shipmates with john and he was one good shipmate. good shipmates—they make a long cruise short, a rough sea smooth. good shipmates! you don't mind going with good shipmates alongside.
and the antoinette, she's a sister ship to the henriette—thirteen tons net and thirty tons of ice in the hold. and that same dock lumper who never left a vessel leave duncan's without he sees her off—he says she's down by the head, too.
a fine joy-killer, that lad.
we're putting out in an hour. so fair wind, boy—i'm off.
