# The Lottery of the Sea

    Getting one fish was much like getting another, except that some fought harder than the first one, and a few were larger, though most of them were smaller; but there were no dories pierced, as is so often the case—three on the previous trip of the Henriette, for instance—and nobody nearly killed. But we had our excitement later....
The Lottery of the Sea
BY JAMES B. CONNOLLY
THE little Henriette lay ready to go to sea. To the north side of Cameron's Wharf she was tied, and the crew had to let themselves fall horizontally out from the string-piece to grasp the rigging and swing themselves aboard. Sometimes there is no fun boarding a vessel in that fashion. Gloucester is full of anecdotes of men who had to reach out like that, and fell short, and spoiled fine new suits of clothes, and, maybe, patent-leather shoes; and your straw hat floating around for Lord knows how long under the piles before some long-sparred shipmate could reach over the side and gaff it for you, and you meanwhile drifting around among a fleet of piles all covered with barnacles and green gurry; or, it might be, a westerly wind 'd blown all the water out of the harbor and left the tide dead low, and you went chock to your ears in the soft mud. A fine mess that! And if it was night—Lord, Lord!
But this was day, Louis Vinot, who was once a fisherman but was now a rigger, and Colin MacPherson, once a fisherman but now a carpenter, were standing on the string-piece and looking down on the little Henriette.
"She iss pretty deep," said Colin.
"She is," said Louis.
"I don't like to see them so deep. And down by the head."
"And maybe you'd be deep if you'd thirty tons of ice in you."
"I suppose so," admitted Colin. "But"—his eye singled out a new, able fresh-halibuter across the ship—"I likes them big fellers to go to sea in myself."
" 'N' me," assented Louis. "But that big brute 'd look sweet, wouldn't she, chasin' swordfish?—'nd if 'twas flat ca'm and no ingine. She's a good little boat, the Henriette—and a pretty name."
"Sure, a pretty name an' a great little boat, but deep—an' down by the head."
And then the skipper came along with John Cameron, and while Louis was casting off the stern line he added the last little word to the swordfishing tale for Mr. Cameron's and the passenger's benefit.
Now the master of the Henriette was an all-around fisherman, and particularly a killer among swordfishermen. The record share among swordfishermen had been made by him in this same little Henriette, and naturally what he had to say about swordfish was worth listening to. "That fish—and he weighed all of four hundred pounds—was laying just under the water and me in the pulpit ready to iron him, when what did I see him doing? He was washing out his stomach. Yes, sir. There he was—he'd drawn his stomach up out the inside of him and was washing it."
Mr. Cameron had been a fishing-master himself, and so successful a one that he was now an owner, and everybody waited to see what he had to say to that, but he didn't say anything; he only looked steadily at the Henriette's skipper.
"If you don't believe that"—the Henriette's master looked hard at Mr. Cameron—"then can you tell me what becomes of the bones he eats? A swordfish comes along and cuts into a school o' fish, and he slashes right and left with his sword, and when he's cut enough for a good, square meal he stops and eats 'em—swallows 'em bone and all. And what becomes of the bones, tell me, if he couldn't wash his stomach out afterward?"
"I never went swordfishing," commented Mr. Cameron, and now he was looking at the roof of the marine paint-factory across the harbor. "Only haddocking and halibuting and seining mackerel, for twenty-odd year."
"—And he's the greatest coward ever was."
"Ha-a! A swordfish!" ejaculated Colin, "that drives their sword through dories, and right straight through the three-inch oak plankin' of a vessel!"
"Yes, and kills men sometimes. But I've seen 'em, two of 'em, meet each other head on in the water, and whir-h!—off they scuttle as far apart 's the points of the compass 'll let 'em, and they won't either of 'em stop going while you c'n see 'em from the masthead. Now what do you know about that?"
Nobody knew anything about that; but after a pause, so that surely no offense could be taken, the passenger said, "Too bad, Captain, you didn't get a snapshot of him washing his stomach out."
"Yes, that would be something for one of your magazines," added Mr. Cameron, with a benevolent stare at the passenger. "And did you put the iron into him, Captain?"
"I did," answered the skipper, "and got him."
"And how much did you say he weighed?"
"Four hundred and—wait now. Yes, four hundred and twenty pounds."
"A big fellow, wasn't he? And what price did you get for him?"
"What did we get for him? Oh yes—sure—nine and three-quarter."
"Man, man!—forty dollars for him alone! And did he have any kind of a sword, George?"
"He did. A whale of a sword!"
"It must have been. Lucky he didn't drive it through the vessel. Wonderful creatures, aren't they, some kinds of fish? Dan Quinn was telling about a big halibut he saw one time on the Western Bank. He saw him take his eye out one day and polish it. Halibut-skin, they say, is the finest thing in the world for polishing eyes. Dan was so interested watching him he forgot to gaff him. He was never so sorry about anything in his life, he says. He wanted to see if it was a glass eye or a real eye. Now, was you—"
"Oh, go to the devil! Cast off that bow line, will you, Colie? You people who never saw a swordfish except when he's lying stretched out stiff on the dock, of course you know all about them." The skipper swung himself aboard, the passenger followed, Colin and Charlie cast off the bow line, and the little Henriette, swordfisherman, was off to sea.
A fresh southwesterly was astir as we passed out by Eastern Point. With our little auxiliary engine helping us for three miles an hour, and the Henriette a fair little sailer on her own account, we figured we had a chance to overhaul the big fellow; but so long as we could see him he stayed right there, and by and by in the haze we lost him. Whether he canted off to the eastward, or whether, sailing also our course for Cape Cod, he caught an increasing breeze of wind while hid in the mists and ran straight away from us, we could not say; but whoever he was, he could sail, and even when they beat you, a fast-sailing vessel is worth noting.
It was a day to make a man over as we left Eastern Point astern. Just to look at the young blue seas was life, and if you did not care for that, the soft salt air was a nerve-cure. And a morning to see pictures, when by and by the haze dissolved before us. Two home-bound salt-fishermen, both flying topsails to the strong breeze, but neither one much more than flushing her scuppers, went swinging by like a pair of twins. From the Western Banks they were, or possibly from Flemish Cap, which is half across the ocean, and the brown rocks of Cape Ann on that sunny morning must have looked to them like mother's johnny-cake on the kitchen-table. Whoo-o-sh! the sea squished through their rolling scuppers. Whoo-o-sh!—fifteen hundred miles we've come from the eastward; in the name o' Heaven—we could almost hear them saying it—don't stop us!
The sea was more than squishing through our scuppers. Our rail was good and wet as we belted across the bay, and we were rounding Cape Cod to an increasing breeze. And the little Henriette rolled down, and the solid water began to come aboard; and by and by a buoy-keg went floating off her house and overboard. A fine half-barrel of a buoy-keg it was, too, neatly black and white painted, smooth and tight as a drum; a beauty of a buoy, which later, on the end of a fifty-fathom warp, ought rightly to be towing after a fat swordfish; but now she was dancing to no purpose whatever atop of the swirling seas astern. We thought the skipper would put back after it, but not so. "To the devil with it! Buy a new one—and next time you'll learn to lash it."
We may have been doing nine and a quarter knots when we floated off the buoy, and now the fresh morning south-wester had become an afternoon gale, and already anchored in a sociable sort of way under the lee of the cape were two haddockers and a seiner, and so around came the little Henriette; and the peace of an anchorage with the Highlands to windward was undeniable in that blow.
A quick-thinking, 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 one, anyway. The first peek of him as he came down the dock started John, and the eye-filling curves of him as he swung himself aboard caught the crew. After that no other name could fit him. The first time he jammed himself into the boatswain chair in the pulpit—which is where the striker takes his station to harpoon fish—the skipper went down into the cabin and tore the passenger away from the table to take a snapshot of him. "If your camera is big enough across," warned the skipper.
John used to pretend that when Bill was in the pulpit there was no seeing a good part of the forward horizon. "Shuts off all of a ha'f-p'int on each bow," John estimated. Bill couldn't see anything funny in John's talk, and put it very plainly across the supper-table one afternoon. Supper was at three o'clock, dinner at half-past nine, and breakfast at five o'clock on the Henriette—wholesome hours. "Somebody 'll set on you right hard some day," said Bill. "All right," retorted John, "so 'tisn't you does the settin' on," and reaches over and scoops to himself another quarter-section of apple-pie.
There was another thing—John's appetite. "There was men could pick him up an' set him on their shoulder an' didn't eat no more'n he did. Nor haff," muttered Bill. "Lard, Lard, but is it you or Fred's doin' the cookin'?" asked John, at which Fred, who was over by the stove making a handle for another sword, looks up and bristles. "Ha-a-a! what iss oud mit der cooking?"
The cook, who was a good cook, had followed the sea since he was fifteen. He was now about fifty. The big ports of the world, he knew them all, and when he wasn't busy planing or sandpapering or squinting along the edge of another handle for another sword for some friend in Gloucester or Stoneport, he would talk about them; but what he really liked to talk about was his blueberry-patch in Stoneport, where he "owned a nice little white house with a new cimment cellar, up on the hill next the isinglass factory."
Norman was the first spectacled fisherman John had ever seen; and one day when Norman laid the glasses down, John picked them up: sure enough, truly glass. And then John sat them on his nose and picked up a newspaper. And quickly removed the glasses. "Lard, Lard, they'd sp'ile a man's eyes in no time, them. A swordfish, she'd look like a whale in them, and his sword 'd be long's a vessel's bowsprit."
Norman was a tall fellow. To give an idea to some people before we sailed of how tall Norman was, John took a run down the dock and leaped into the air and made a grab at the sky. "Where me hand touched would maybe reach to his waist," explained John. Norman wasn't quite as tall as that, but he was pretty tall. He used to let his feet hang over his bunk-board and on to the locker for comfort when he turned in; and when he did that, John and some more sometimes came and sat down on them. He slept in the cabin under the overhang. Big Bill slept under the overhang, too, in the opposite bunk. One of the recreations of the crew was to see Bill kick his way into his bunk. And it took him just as long to wiggle his way out. Feet-first he used to come, and he was no Salome. On foggy nights he turned in on the locker, and that was a feat of balancing with one arm and one leg on the cabin floor. But Bill could sleep that way—until the watch put the vessel on the other tack. Every time the vessel tacked, Bill had to tack. Sometimes he would not wake in time.
Bill stayed clear of his bunk on foggy nights because he had long ago made up his mind that he "wasn't goin' to be sent to the bottom by no steamer collision. Leastways not if he saw her comin', and he cal'lated to see her comin'!" His last word to the next on watch at night was always: "Call me soon's you see any steamer lights. An' don't wait to diskiver if it be a po't or a sta'b'd light." When on watch on a foggy day Bill never, got farther away from the fog-horn box than he could make in two leaps; and Bill was no Olympic leaper. At night Bill would take the box, which was no larger than one of those boxes a woman's big hat comes in, and carry it around deck under his arm.
Whenever the passenger stood watch with Bill he could, if he wished, have the job of working the fog-horn; that is, after he got acquainted with Bill he could. It was only after two days of side-looks at the passenger that Bill spoke to the passenger at all. And his first question was, "And what might your business be?" And the passenger replied that he supposed he would be called a newspaperman; whereupon Bill said: "Newspaperman? Meanin' to sell papers?"
"No—to sort of write for them."
"Oh, a repo'ter? M-m—police co't?"
"Police courts sometimes." Whereupon, between two blasts from the fog-horn, Bill said, "I know a man's got a nevvy a police-co't repo'ter, but he never warn't dern fool enough to take a vacation to sea in a craft this size."
"And speakin' o' police co'ts"—between blasts from the fog-horn—the same ground out by the passenger under Bill's sleepless direction—flowed a dissertation on the world's misfortunes. Who was to the bottom of three parts of our miseries? Who? Who? Did he have to name it to make hisself understandable? Well, then, wimmin! And of wimmin Bill talked profoundly, but, alas! scandalously. He submitted a hundred concrete illustrations, to two-thirds of which he was an eye-witness, or at least a listener. (The long woo-oh-h of the fog-horn came like mournful periods to Bill's pessimistic sentences.) A most understandable and contemptious sect. Not one of 'em ever he'd trust as far as he could see a steamer light in a black fog, and any of us knew how far that be.
On that first afternoon out, we lay to anchor under the lee of the high land on Cape Cod while the southwest gale blew itself flat. At two next morning we weighed anchor. The weather had moderated. It was too moderate. We had to depend on the motor; but it was a fine chance over the shoals. We were bound to the southward and eastward of No Man's Land, which is a little island out by itself south of Nantucket. We arrived there next morning, and that fore-noon we cruised thereabout, but saw no signs of sword fish nor of the fleet. Schools of big loafers of sharks lying idle under the surface there were, but sharks bring nothing in the market.
We stood on to the eastward until we spotted the fleet. Bob Jackson, of Nantucket, and Jill Johnson, of Maine; John Pettipaw and Bill Rice, of Gloucester; the Motor and the Yankee, also of Gloucester; a Provincetown schooner, the Warren, and a big black brute of a sloop; and another stranger which nobody could name. Tom Haile was there, too—in the Esther Ray. We spoke Bill Rice, him of the Mahomet, a sixty-ton schooner, which on our skipper's rating was as smart a vessel as anything her tonnage on the coast; that is, before she put her engine in she was.
Bill Rice had been out nine days and had forty-five fish in. He "wasn't feeling over-encouraged. Looked like poor pickin's far as he could see." We hailed Bill Johnson in passing. Bill had a few, but not many. But John Pettipaw, of the Nokomis, had ninety fish and was thinking of running to market; but if they were only fetching four and three-quarters when the Henriette left home, then he guessed he'd wait awhile. And Captain Pettipaw waved his hand, and the Nokonis wore off. A soft-spoken, easy-going man was John Pettipaw, and a well-modeled boat the Nokomis, perhaps a ton or two larger than we were, with bright-yellow dories.
No fish in sight that afternoon; but even so the skipper took his station in the pulpit. The pulpit on a sword-fisherman consists of a small wooden platform surrounded by a steel guard-rail high enough to support a tall man at about his hips, and a boatswain's chair swung from the rear. The idea is to give the striker a stand sufficiently elevated to hold him clear of all but the heavy seas, and a railing sufficiently high to hold him safe when he throws his harpoon, and yet not high enough to restrict the motions of his arms or to bind his body in any way above the waist.
As the skipper went into the pulpit the lookouts, John, Ezra, and Bennie, went aloft. The entire topmast of the Henriette was rigged from stay to stay with stout cross-ropes and boatswain's chairs, and up there the three men perched. John was topmost, and swung in his chair just under the truck. Ezra and Bennie were just beneath him. When they grew tired of swinging in their chairs they could stand up, one cross-line in the small of their backs, another against their chests, their arms, if the vessel was driving into a sea, wrapped around the topmast. And they clung there in many a seaway. Moderately rough water does not preclude swordfishing. So long as a fin will show, these men will go after them. Our skipper was in the Henriette's pulpit one day when the bowsprit plunged into a head sea as he drove home his iron. That head sea rose straight up and forced his south-wester up and off his head. For the rest of that day he had Norman swing the vessel off before the seas; not for fear of the seas so much as the fear of missing his fish.
John was noted among his mates for his eyesight. The skipper could tell you of incredible distances at which John could see a fin, and even pick out a swordfish's from a shark's. There is a difference, of course. A shark's fin is largely triangular, and his tail is always moving. There is a graceful wave to a shark's tail when he is cruising. A swordfish's fin is also three-cornered, but the edges of it are curved, and the tail as it slips through the water is almost without motion. When there was a slight breeze and the sea's surface was broken into a million little wavelets, every one looking like a fin, that was when John performed miracles to the masthead.
On the afternoon of that morning which saw us among the fleet we sighted fish. A cry came from aloft. The skipper stood up and unslipped his long pole. Norman's back stiffened on the wheel-box. Bill came out of his trance, looked aloft, and shifted his gaze to leeward. The bright, bald head of the cook shone up the forecastle-hatch, and then up came himself, smoking tranquilly. He cast a peek aloft, said Fish-h! and stepped on to the deck.
"Fair abeam to loo'ard!" John called, and Norman, with eyes on the compass, put the wheel up. The passenger was looking hard, but as yet could see nothing—nothing but the corners of a million little wavelets, which might have been fish, but which he knew were not. The skipper, erect now, was balancing his pole, but without looking at it. His eyes were for fish only.
"Hard up!" came John's voice, and we all could see it swooping through the water, the curved fin and the tail moving steadily after it, and, judging by the distance between tail and fin, a fair-sized fellow. Our bow was swinging into line with him. Norman, at the wheel, could see nothing. "Steady!" called John. The swordfish was yet some distance ahead.
The skipper was swaying waist. A big-boned, rangy skipper, more than six feet wide-shouldered, with a good reach and a muscular back. He hefted his pole—a week now since he had ironed a swordfish—and looked back to see that all was clear behind him. From his iron fifty fathoms of line ran back to a tub in the waist of the vessel. To the end of that line was a black-and-white-painted buoy. Looking after line and buoy was the cook's business; and now the cook, interpreting the skipper's look, sang out, "All clear!" and stowing his pipe in his stern pocket, stood by the tub.
We were within half the vessel's length of our fish when he disappeared. "Port!" called John, and port it was promptly. "Steady—ste-a-dy—Lard, man, steady!" We could not see the fish from the deck, but they from the masthead could follow his course under water.
The fin and tail showed again. We were headed for him, or rather headed to intercept him on his course. The skipper swayed forward and back, by way of loosening up his waist and back muscles.
We were almost on the prize now. He was cruising lazily. The skipper's right arm and shoulder were drawn back. On deck we were anticipating the stroke, but fin and tail took a sudden shoot. "Luff! luff!" yelled John. The vessel shot up, the skipper leaned far over the pulpit-rail. We, watching him, thought he was waiting too long; but looking at the surface of the water, we saw that fin and tail were in action again, the body just under the water. From the bow-rail we could now follow the blue-black shadow, and the shadow had turned suddenly and jumped ahead; and suddenly again he was shooting diagonally across our bow. And while still wondering if the skipper would get him, after all, the passenger saw the tall man rise on his toes—and he looked nine feet tall with that long right arm raised above and behind his head—and then, whing!—a semi-circular swoop of the arm, a backward and downward thrust of the pole.
"Gottim," said the cook, in his casual voice, and tossed the bight of the warp over the rail, and impassively bent on a new warp for the skipper's pole; and the skipper, after a backward glance at the stricken fish, quickly but unhurriedly rigged a fresh iron and line to his pole. Doubtless after you have ironed a few thousand swordfish you cease to get excited over one more.
During the supreme moment of that stroke the passenger, studying the skipper, thought he would like to see him a contender in the Olympic games. The sweep and drive of arm and back as he drove the iron home—there certainly was the making of a champion javelin-thrower in the skipper.
The blue-black shadow passed back under the bilge of the vessel, and then he reappeared, but only for a moment. He was gone, deep down, and the warp was whirling out of the tub. And in no time the entire line was gone, and the buoy too. And dancing on the little wavelets went the black-and-white-painted keg at 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. And during this time the dory had been dropped over the side, and Bill had dropped into the dory, and was now headed for the buoy.
Fishermen tell you wonderful stories of the endurance of a harpooned swordfish; our skipper told of one that towed a buoy five miles after he had been ironed through the heart. This one, we knew, had been ironed deep, and yet he took that buoy at a lively pace, and even after Bill had caught up with the buoy and taken the warp inboard he had to let it go; and again that happened. But Bill had him at last, or so it looked to us from the vessel—buoy in, warp in, the fish alongside—and was about to put the final touch to him, to lance him in the head, when, whir-h-h! tail and sword beat the sea fiercely, and we saw Bill cast him loose.
Now if John, or Norman, or Ezra, or Bennie had that fish snubbed up under the gunwale like that, they would have finished him. If he was as long and big around as a dory, be sure they would, or would try to; but getting on to middle age was Bill, and fishing to him was a living, not an adventure. Bill probably had in mind a clear picture of every doryman that was ever killed swordfishing, and he 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 lanced him furiously. A dozen times he drove the long blade into the head. The fish flurried around, of course, and churned white water, but a dozen deep lance-thrusts did for him. And then Bill hitched him around the tail and waited for the vessel; and Norman, who had a windward eye on the dory all the time, put over to him, and the dory-tackle was lowered and hooked under the tail-knot, and the fish hauled in. For a few seconds he hung there, tail up and head down, inside the main rigging, and then he was lowered to the deck.
A handsome fish, as are all swordfish when fresh caught, plump and tapering in body, with pointed head and large, protruding eyes, his skin a lovely, dripping blue-black, a blue-black which had not faded hours later when he was lowered into the hold to be placed on ice. And to give an idea how deep-loaded these swordfishers are sometimes with ice: in the Henriette the cook had a fine, large round of beef on top of the ice in the hold; but to make room for that first swordfish the cook's round of beef had to come out on deck.
But before the fish saw the hold he had to be dressed, and Bill had to do the dressing; for from the moment the others saw the fish safely ironed they had gone about their work, which was to sight and chase and iron more fish. Bill's first stroke was to cut off the sword—a moderately good sword about three feet long. And presently (he had been a handsome creature alive) the fish was become an attractive food-product, which would bring anywhere from three to fifteen cents a pound on the dock.
He weighed, possibly, two hundred and fifty pounds—a good big fellow. "And don't go to believin' he warn't lively, 'cause he was," announced Bill. "Jist the size to fight—I don't take no chances with them kind." And then—Bill was at that moment slicing off a fin—the passenger and the cook went looking for the mark of the iron. They had to roll him over before they could draw out the iron, which had gone diagonally through his body at its thickest part, and was now hanging out with six inches of the line on the under side of him. A superb stroke that; the cook explained that he had seen the skipper drive his iron clean through the back-bone and then on through the skin. And Norman, who was listening, added, "And 'tain't often he misses, either," from the wheel-box.
That was our first swordfish; and getting one fish was much like getting another, except that some fought harder than the first one, and a few were larger, though most of them were smaller; but there were no dories pierced, as is so often the case—three on the previous trip of the Henriette, for instance—and nobody nearly killed. But we had our excitement later.
One evening the skipper called the passenger on deck to view a sunset, and the passenger detached himself from the cook and his monologue on blueberries and went up, to discover that the skipper had an eye for color. It was the sea. More colors there than a man could name, coming and going on a surface that was lifting and falling to the most gentle swell, and smooth as oiled silk. And for sky: clear as could be overhead, but near the horizon pillared clouds with gashes of green and purple and a hundred delicate tints.
"Wind there, an easterly, and plenty of it, you'll see," prophesied the skipper.
"Soon?"
"Ought to be here to-morrow."
To-morrow came, but no breeze. The skipper felt put out. "I'd 'a' bet on it," he said. That night came an ugly sunset. No translucent sea of color this time, but a gray tossing and murmuring, and, showing behind among the clouds, long, deep-red streaks paralleling the restless horizon.
The day after that it came. In the morning nothing, or at least not enough to prevent a hope of fish. "Just a good liver-shaker aloft," was what Ezra termed it; but pleasant enough on deck until ten o'clock.
From out of the sea came a stirring, but nothing to be noticed, except for what it might presage. Another stirring, and the skipper came unhurriedly in from the pulpit, and the lookout slid easily down from the masthead. They took sail off her, all but her foresail. No orders were given to hurry over it. It came off as it had a hundred other times, quietly, quickly. The skipper looked her over, walked the quarter awhile, and then said, "I guess we'd better reef that fores'l." And the foresail was reefed, and everybody stood around for a while. And Norman, a great fellow to keep looking clean, said he guessed he'd take a chance to shave himself, and then he took another look and said he guessed he wouldn't.
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! And seas! But nothing to worry over, except that John felt put out because the rain would not let him look to windward. Not rain in sheets, nothing so pleasant as that; but in drops which drove home like bullets. Following that the real thing came. For an hour or so the wind really blew. During that first four hours it may have been blowing seventy or eighty miles an hour, but now it was truly blowing. Nobody wanted to look to windward now. Nobody wanted to look any place unless he had to; and the quality of the seas was beginning to measure up to the wind. Man is a puissant being sometimes; but at other times!— We just waited and let it blow, let it roar; for there are times when the Unseen holds you as the wind holds any one of those billion trillion little drops of rain.
That wind moderated to fifty miles or so, but the seas mounted even higher. Seas to make your back ache just to look up at them. And the wind backed into the northwest and the seas came two ways together. No dodging them at all now, and the little Henriette, stripped to her last little white shift—a corner of a storm trysail—lay to a drogue and took it.
Now when your capable fishing-master gets down to a drogue it is bad weather. For the first time in thirty-five years in seafaring our cook saw a small vessel stand up and take a real beating. Long before this the cook had got into oilskins. And when our cook got into oilskins in the forecastle, and forgot to cook a blueberry stew, be sure it was bad weather. The little Henriette, the deep-laden Henriette—thirteen tons net register, and thirty tons of ice in her hold—she lay there and took it.
The little Henriette, yes; but the stout Henriette also. When she was building, it was the skipper himself who drove every bolt into her, and he saw to it that her timbers were heavy enough for a vessel twice her tonnage. Believe him, a vessel, the Henriette!—a solid block of oak. She lay there, and "Come on, damn you, and get me!" John could hear her saying plain as could be.
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 came to her. There were the moments when it was up to the skipper and her crew; but a capable master-mariner of Gloucester on her quarter, and a quick-moving, intelligent crew in her waist—when your vessel is well-found, leave the rest of it to them. Even Bill, for whom no immortal hope flamed, stood there and looked the worst of it in the eye, and, except during that bad hour, bit off his chaws of tobacco evenly. They were all there, and there on the jump, when wanted. No talk, no hesitancy—the word was passed and the word was carried out. And by seven o'clock that night the cook had shed his oil-skins. The little Henriette had ridden out the gale in glory. To be sure, it was a thunderer of a night which followed, with seas pounding her solid little head, but the morning showed a silver sunrise and a little schooner bowing humorous-like to the puzzled ocean.
Not all the other little swordfishermen were there. Bill Johnson was there, and the big, ugly sloop, and we fancied we could see Bill Bice and another on the horizon. But where was the Nokomis? And the Meteor? And Bob Jackson? And the Warren, of Provincetown? 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, the lookout went aloft and the skipper resumed his station in the pulpit.
But the storm had scattered the fish. There was not even the usual lot of hammer-headed sharks loafing just under the surface. So, with a notion of exchanging views, the skipper ran down to speak Bill Johnson, but as we drew near he decided to take a dory and go aboard and have a good talk.
Bill himself took our painter and passed it on to one of his crew. "No," he said to our skipper's first question—"no sign o' fish to-day. Guess that breeze druv 'em off. If they don't show up by to-night ag'in, I'm goin' to the east'ard and see what's there. Come below."
The famous Bill sat on a locker, and, picking up a piece of red cedar, began to whittle it. Bill's half-bared chest seemed to be trying to burst through his undershirt, and above his 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.
Our skipper selected one of Bill's cedar shavings, and putting an exquisite point to it, began to pick his teeth. "Do you know, Bill, but I'm worried about some of the fleet."
"Me too—after yestiddy." And this one and that one was mentioned. Particularly were fears expressed for the safety of the Provincetown schooner, and there was a word of Bob Jackson.
"I guess Bob 'd know, if anybody would, 'bout the surf on this coast; but if 'twas me, I wouldn't make no mistake 'bout the count, would you? Well, I hope he is all right, but I'm worrit about him, too. How'd you make out in it, George?"
"Oh, it didn't hurt us any."
"Nor us. But come nigh to it. Rolled our sheer-poles under."
"Get out!"
"Yes, sir."
"You mean once in a while?"
"Once in a while? Hell, no!—reg'lar. Canvas? Not a stitch of canvas on her to the time. Didn't leave anything loose on her deck, nuther. Washed over everything that wasn't bolted. I never see that afore—not no vessel ever I was in—not with no sail to her. And it warn't lettin' up, so I ran her off under bare poles."
"Bare poles? Go 'way!"
"I sure did. And glad not to be lost. I don't want to see another day like yestiddy. No, sir, not 's long as I live. You lose anything, George?"
"Not a thing, Bill. Never saw anything like the way she rode it. She's the greatest thing of her tonnage, that little vessel, sailin' out o' Gloucester to-day, I do believe. Had three buoy-kegs on her break, and only lashed with a little harpoon warp, and they never stirred. Dry as an oven, warn't she?" the skipper appealed to the passenger, and the passenger, recalling the time he had inadvertently stepped off the main-hatch and into enough swash in her waist to fill his boots with solid water before he could hop back; and that other time when John, happening to take a glance over his shoulder, broke a most humorous observation midway to get a quick toehold and scramble up the trysail-hoops—the passenger, recalling these and a dozen other diverting but unordered incidents about the Henriette, but also remembering that the skipper was talking about his own vessel, and also trying not to be hypnotized by Bill Johnson's expanding smile, answered, "Well, there was one time, Skipper, I thought I saw a couple of spoonfuls dribble over her rail."
And the strong, even, tobacco-stained teeth of Bill Johnson broke wide apart, and Bill fetched up a most sea-going roar. "Oh, I guess there was a couple o' spoonfuls. I guess you had your worriments. too, George, and I'm afeard there's some of 'em had more than worriment. I'd like it a heap to hear they was all safe, for 'twas a bad day yestiddy."
"That's what it was, Bill. A good breeze o' wind I call it."
"A damn good breeze o' wind, I call it."
It was a good breeze of wind. We picked up other proof of it next day. Bill Johnson had slapped sail to his Fannie and gone to the eastward, and the skipper had decided to run for Newport, and so we were on our way. The middle of the morning it was, a fine day, and as we were still hoping for fish, the lookouts were aloft. Ezra called out something and pointed, and we all looked. It was part of a drifting mast, the lower part broken off raggedly from a foot or two above the saddle to the step, which sets into the keelson.
We let it drift on by, but a few minutes later Ezra pointed out a floating gasolene-barrel; and by and by another. The skipper put off in a dory and got that second barrel. A floating gasolene-barrel may mean nothing—it could have been washed off her deck, off anybody's deck. But there was a hole in the head of this one—made by an ax. And only fishermen frequented the shoal water hereabouts, and fishermen don't pour oil to smooth a sea unless they are in a bad way. And then we saw a dory bottom up. "A yellow dory," somebody said. "A yellow dory," somebody else said, "and 'twas a white-painted saddle to that mast a while ago." Everybody repeated that, and then suddenly nobody seemed to be saying any more about it.
The skipper also put off to get the dory. It was some little trouble to right the capsized dory from our dory gunwale, but we did it after a while. A part of a sword had been driven through her bottom, which happens often and meant nothing; but there was the name on her bow—Nokomis. We took the dory aboard our vessel and went on. The six inches of a sword sticking through her bottom could be drawn out and the gash calked, and she yet be made to do good service.
A dory, too, could be washed off the deck of a fishing-vessel, so that didn't prove anything; but the lower end of the mast, and the oil-barrel with the hole in the head—altogether it didn't look good. And then we picked up part of a booby-hatch and, close by, two hatch-covers. And then Bill identified them as from off the Nokomis. He had been a trip on her that spring. Her masts were painted white from saddle to deck, and that drifting spar was about the size of a mainmast for a vessel of the Nokomis's tonnage.
"She's broke up. Good-by, Nokomis," said our skipper, and Big Bill went on to tell about John Pettipaw. "Easy-goin', nothin' worrit him. The finest kind of a chap," said Bill. "Mebbe he didn't worry enough."
And then we picked up the watermelon. Everybody knew that Pettipaw's cook, Bill said, was a great fellow to ship a few watermelons, and always kept a couple to cut on the passage home. And men don't throw watermelons overboard. This one must have floated out of her hold, which meant she had broken up: the mast, the booby-hatch, the hatch-covers, and now the melon. It was John who spied the melon from aloft, but we would have missed it only for Ezra. He made a flying leap into the dory towing astern, and, leaning far enough out to lay the dory on her side, he spread wide his hands, and the melon just naturally floated right over the gunwale and into his arms, and Ezra hugged it to his bosom.
Bill took the melon when it was passed up over the rail and tested it for soundness. "Only one little soft spot," he announced, and without any foolish delay got his dressing-knife and cut it up. "Poor old Nokomis, I wonder where ye be now," observed Bill, and cautiously tasted the melon. "Not a touch o' salt," he declared, and cut into it more deeply. "Poor old Nokomis, I'm sorry for yer," and handed himself a fat slice. Three melancholy bites of that and he threw the rind over the side; and he had another slice, and studied that rind, too, as it slowly sank under our quarter. Well, his old shipmates were gone, that was sure. With his tongue he worked the juicy shreds from the far corners of his mouth. He was staring outboard. Why be downcast? He faced inboard, and cast a side-look at the watermelon. He contemplated what was left of that, by now a hollow shell. At last he spoke: "Poor Nokomis! But a damn good-tastin' melon, warn't she?"
We raised Point Judith Light after a night of plugging and watching through a black fog, with Bill standing by the fog-horn and seeing steamer lights on all sides of him; but now we were in Newport Harbor in the reassuring dawn.
Tied up on the side of Long Wharf when we got in was the Esther Ray, Captain Tom Haile, whom we had not seen since before the breeze. Bill, like a good gossip, waddled over to get the news, and soon came galloping back. "The Nokomis is gone." Well, we expected that. "But what d'y' know—four of 'em saved! Tom Haile he picked 'em up, yes. No, Pettipaw ain't among 'em. Tom he picked 'em up in a dory. They was adrift."
"In a dory? In the breeze?"
"In part of it."
"Well, what d'y' know about that!"
"They had buoy-kegs to their risin's."
"That's what saved 'em, maybe, but even with the kegs, how'd they live through it?"
"I dunno. They don't know theirselves—not yet. It's too soon. But here they're comin' back in tow o' Charlie Cross. Charlie an' Tom Haile an' some of the fish-buyers here chipped in an' took 'em up the street to rig 'em out."
Charlie Cross began to sputter forty feet away. "That three-stranded, left-handed, double-twisted robber of a clothin'-dealer, what d'y' think of him? Told 'm the story, but d'y' think he'd take a cent off? Not an ossified cent, the cross-eyed old rat! But there was a Jew we got the shoes of, and he gave 'em for what they cost. The Jew was all right. He lakes a look at Shorty there. 'Gan id be possible such a leedle fellow go through such terrible habbenings?' he said. What d'y' think of Shorty's new rig, anyway? Show 'em, Shorty."
Shorty stood forth, and Cross revolved him for inspection. "We had to saw a foot off the pants for him—see?" explained Charlie, "and the coat comes kind o' low down; but not so bad, heh, for ten bucks?"
"I suppose you'll be right back again, Shorty?" somebody asked.
"Where? Inside old South Shoal? Not me, boy." He threw both hands high. "Never again!"
Three days later the passenger was standing on Cameron's Wharf in Gloucester with Colin MacPherson, Louis Vinot, and Mr. Cameron.
The Nokomis, the Warren, and the stranger were known to be lost. Three of that little fleet of eleven were gone, and Bob Jackson not heard from. The stories were crossing one another in the air. Across the slip lay the Meteor with both masts and her bowsprit broken off short; not a thing left on her deck except a few twisted yarns of her shrouds; and the Yankee, with her flag at half-mast, was in after a hard experience.
And down to Cameron's Wharf came Shorty, and he told how he felt when the sea washed over him while he was at the masthead of the Nokomis, just before she started to break up in the shoal water.
"And what were you thinking of that time, Shorty?"
"Thinkin'? I wasn't thinkin'. I was just hangin' on. But I could just see a light-green color over my head when it was passin'."
"Some wet, Shorty?"
"Wet? Wet! I looks myself over after it passed and I says to myself: 'If somebody was to come along now and give you a cigar and a match, where would you light your match? Not on the seat o' your pants. Shorty, that's sure.' And we had a hundred and seven fish in our hold and was goin' home next day!"
"A hundred and seven fish?" Mr. Cameron stroked his beard and did some lightning figuring. "The way the market is to-day, Shorty, you'd share a hundred and fifty dollars. Hard luck."
And then Colin MacPherson butted in. "Did the Henriette take any seas over her bow?" he demanded of the passenger.
"She was taking them over both bows one time."
"Hah!" squealed Colin, and pointed one lean forefinger, curved like a fish-hook, at Louis Vinot. "Didn't I say she wass down by the head going out? Didn't I? 'She hass thirty tons of ice in her, and she iss down by the head,' I said."
"You said?"
"Yess, I said."
And then along came Shorty's chum, Pat Ryan, with a suit-case; and possibly a good thing, too, for Colin and Louis could by now be heard up on Main Street.
"Where you going, Pat?"
"I got a chance on the Henriette—going to squeeze in one more trip swordfishing before the season's over."
"I thought you were done with swordfishing down South Shoal way?"
"I thought so, too, but I haven't heard the gover'ment's paying any pensions to wrecked fishermen, have you? I've a wife and two children at home."
"And you, too, Shorty?"
"Sure."
"I thought it was never again for you?"
"Aw-w!" Shorty took one voluptuous drag from his fat five-cent cigar and whoofed the smoke out toward the harbor. "I've had a couple o' nights' good sleep since then."
"What d'y' think of 'em, Colin?"
"Crazy," said Colin. "But a man hass to make a leeving some way, I s'pose. Look at me, hass to put in ten hours a day ship-carpenterin'."
"How about me?" demanded Louis.
Two hours later, with his long forefinger Colin indicated to Louis a little schooner warping out of the slip. "There iss that one going again, and she hass thirty tons of ice in her, and down by the head again."
"That one" was the little Heniette, swordfisherman. and Shorty and Pat were hoisting her jibs, and the others of the old crew, except Bill and Bennie, were waving cheerful so-longs from her waist and quarter.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1957, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 66 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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