# The Black Cat (magazine)/Volume 22/Number 2/The Sculpin

​THE SCULPIN
BY LEROY KENNETH
If a man dies with his boots on, the "obit," men register a few extra sobs on their typewriters. But when a man, just out of the trenches, dies with his gloves on, he is likely to be misunderstood—with boots or without them
HE day was heavy with the promise of wind; there was a smell of frost in the air, and the big white flakes slowly sifting down were already covering their trail across the ice. Tom O'Neil, the master watch. surveyed his gang of sealers. The regular crew was overseas to the war, and the bunch of lubbers he had taken to the ice would be helpless in a blow.
"Come on, you loafers," he shouted. "We can't skin 'em now."
He jammed his pike into a cake of drift ice to pole-vault a fissure. The cake turned when he was in the air and, as his body slapped the water, his head crashed on the ice and stunned him.
The Sculpin plunged to the rescue, Scotty whipped a drag-line into the water, and the gang pulled them onto the ice.
"I wa'n't afraid," the Sculpin chuckled, pulling his wet shirt over his head.
His drawn face, and fishy eyes that seemed always staring with fright, had won him the title, "Sculpin," the most worthless fish of the sea. He was unpopular at the sealing grounds because he wore gloves. Gloves are a woman's garment; mittens the badge of a man. The Sculpin wore gloves always, eating, hunting, or sleeping. Even now, as he humped his back to the gale and stripped to the hide to wring the freezing water from his clothes, he kept on his gloves.
"We're caught," shouted O'Neil, above the moan of the wind, as the storm drove down upon them.
The Sculpin looked at the cloud of flakes waltzing among the ice-hummocks. "Better'n gas," he yelled. "I ain't afraid."
"This is hell," chattered O'Neil, as he tried to pound the ice out of his reefer.
"Nothing like," called the Sculpin, struggling back into his crusting clothes,—"just man-sized weather."
O'Neil searched the horizon of blurring white. The maze of hummocks was confusing, and the drifts over the bodies of the dead seals were constantly changing shape. He had come due north when they "walked the ship down;" but the compass was useless on the floe, for the whole mass might have turned since morning and the ship they had left at the south, might now be north, east, or west, while the bergs he had depended on to guide them back were erased from sight in the thick sheets of snow that went racing past.
"Have to hold her down 'til ​morning," he admitted at last.
The Sculpin threw back his head, took a long breath of the cold air, and laughed. The danger they faced seemed to give him pleasure.
O'Neil's clothes were wet, and they made him shiver as the stiffening ice-envelope rubbed against his body. His head was pounding and the chill of his freezing garments was eating into his blood.
The men huddled together, a helpless mob, and the wind whipped stinging particles of ice and snow into their faces.
"Blowin' harder every minute," whined Scotly in despair.
"Let it come," sang the Sculpin, a smile of delight at the prospect wreathing his ice-cemented face. "Let it come. I ain't afraid."
O'Neil knew a desire to sleep was a symptom of freezing, yet his eyes would close in spite of him, and the icicles on his lashes seemed to lock his eyes if he even winked.
"Every man for himself," he said, and slumped to the ice.
"Steady, boys." The Sculpin's voice rose above the howl of the storm. "He's down. I'll take command."
The frightened men accepted his leadership, for not one of them knew what to do. He ordered them to build a wall of frozen seal-bodies, ice, and snow. When it was done, they crouched close together in the lee of it for protection from the wind. The blow on the head had left O'Neil as spiritless as a jelly-fish, so the Sculpin got him to his feet and kept him walking.
"It's no use. We're done for."
"Without a fight," bellowed the Sculpin, angrily.
Holding O'Neil at arm's length, he deliberately struck the master-watch in the face with his gloved fist.
"Gone clean off his head," said Scotty. "I say, you—"
"Get back," barked the Sculpin, pushing Scotty into the lee of the wall. "I'm in command."
"Crazy as a stingaree," whispered Scotty to himself; but he obeyed. "Now, you slacker," the Sculpin bellowed at O'Neil. "You've got to fight."
O'Neil did not want to fight; he wanted to be left alone—to sleep. The sting of the Sculpin's blows roused him, and he attempted to ward them off. Then, in petulance, he fought back; but not much science can be shown with nearly a pound of ice and frozen woolen on each hand.
The Sculpin tripped over the body of a dead seal and fell. O'Neil, now thoroughly angry, leaped onto the fallen body and clawed for the throat; but the oil-skins were buttoned high and thick with ice, and his frozen mittens made a choking hold impossible.
"Say when," yelled the Sculpin, as they rolled over and over, a confused jumble of flying arms and legs.
The snow they kicked up in the struggle was pounced on by the wind and instantly streaked away into the dusk. The Sculpin slammed O'Neil into a drift and sat on his chest.
"Enough," panted O'Neil.
"Awake?" the Sculpin asked, and O'Neil nodded assurance. "Then listen." The Sculpin spoke slowly, and earnestly. "I've taken your place, here—on the ice. You take my place, ​over there—with the old crew."
"Where?" perplexedly.
"Overseas—in the trenches. They need men. They need us both. You wouldn't go for yourself. You will go for me. That's what I'm saving you for."
"Afraid to go yourself?" O'Neil sneered.
"Will you go?" grimly.
"Get me back alive, and I'll enlist," he agreed. "You're a nervy coward."
"You'll take my place?" The Sculpin spoke sadly, as he waved his hand to the east. "And you'll not be afraid?"
"I'll not be afraid," promised O'Neil, as the Sculpin helped Kim to his feet.
The Sculpin turned to the gang. "Bruce, Scotty, get out here and fight. Never mind why—just fight. Get mad. Hit hard—and don't be afraid."
Their only hope of fighting sleep was in fighting one another, so the gang wrestled and fought, sang and yelled, and tried to keep from thinking of their peril.
In the darkness, O'Neil wandered from the shelter of the wall. They found him in the open, fast asleep. The gang carried him to shelter and peeled off his frozen clothes, while the Sculpin gathered the drag-ropes of the gang into a pile and touched a match to the grease-soaked hemp.
In the flare of heat from the burning stack, the men rubbed O'Neil with snow, and roused him, while the Sculpin thawed and dried the clothes in the heat from the burning lines.
When the ropes were smouldering in a last red glow, the Sculpin broke up all save one of the pikes and clubs and, husbanding the precious fuel, managed to keep the fire burning through the lagging hours of the night.
As the embers faded, leaving only a charred spot on the ice to remind them of the fire, a little streak of dawn came sifting along with the snow, and with the light came the "whre-ee-e-ah I" of the ship's siren.
The wind had shifted and brought them the sound they had been tuning their ears all night to catch. It gave them the direction of the ship. With a shout, they broke from the lee of the wall and started into the teeth of the storm.
In the rush, O'Neil stepped into a snow-covered blow-hole and fell. He tried to scramble to his feet, but sank back with a broken ankle.
The Sculpin paused long enough to toss him on his shoulder and plunged on toward the sound of the whistle that came trembling through the air at ten second intervals. He caught the men at the crevass, where there was only the one pike with which to leap the open water.
He could not leap a five-year fissure with a cripple in his arms, so he ordered the men to the ship, and to send help.
He laid O'Neil in the lee of a pressure-ridge and sat down beside him to wait. "I'm tired," he admitted to himself, "but I ain't afraid."
The ice under them was groaning with the heave of the water. Across the floe raced a reverberatory crackle as the seams strained with the pulse of the sea. Down the wind came the boom of monster ice-cakes churned in the waves.
"She's breaking," whispered O'Neil, ​faintly. "We're done; we're done."
"Alive, to take my place," muttered the Sculpin, as he clambered to his feet, and wrestled O'Neil to his shoulder.
He lumbered across the ice with his burden, tripped and fell; regained his feet, and plunged forward with a dogged persistence. The crack widened; but in the shadow of a berg, it was veiled with a thin rubber-ice. Putting down the now silent body, he tested the ice with his foot. The waves coiled out in widening circles until they touched the other side. It was thin ice, very pliable, the result of the extreme cold on the sheltered salt water.
With O'Neil in his arms, he might not be able to keep on the crest of the wave their weight would make. If the wave got ahead of them, left them in the hollow, the rescue party would find only the hole, when they came.
His feet were numb with frost, but he took the crumpled form in his arms and made his big try. With a running start, he glided onto the ice and ran. He heard it snapping behind him. He knew it was broken;—that the water was in the hollow, rushing after him, licking at his heels. He felt the ice sinking beneath him and, with a supreme effort, he threw the body in a sprawling heap to the firm bank of the other side. As his feet broke through the shivering glare, he pitched forward and gripped the flipper of a dead seal, frozen to the floe. His body sank into the frigid water, but he dragged himself out.
He gathered O'Neil's body into his arms and stumbled blindly toward the faint sound of the ship's horn. The air seemed filled with siren sounds, and he staggered as he walked, staggered and fell; fought his way to his feet again, reeled in a circle, lurched on a few shambling steps, and sank to the ice. He dragged himself forward until his body shielded O'Neil from the wind—and lay still.
When the rescue party found them, the blizzard had banked the snow against the Sculpin's body; but O'Neil was still alive in the shelter of the human wind-brake.
In the Sculpin's pocket they found his commission as lieutenant in the Newfoundland first contingent for overseas duty, and a newspaper clipping:
WOUNDED IN THE HAND
Lieut. Burns, first Newfoundland, is dishonorably discharged—wounded in the left hand.
Hand wounds in war are common, and nearly all alike: through the palm of the left hand, with powder marks around the hole. The military authorities know such wounds are self-inflicted—a sign of lost nerve. In desperation, the cowards shoot themselves in the left hand in order to lie sent out of the trenches.
Lieut. Burns has branded himself for life as a craven. His protests are in vain; His Majesty's troops must not be, commanded by cowards."
They found the powder-marked hole in the Sculpin's palm and buried him with his gloves on.
The whole gang enlisted as a "pals platoon," and are now with the old crew, "somewhere in France." They know now that the Sculpin got the brand hurling a bomb from the trench. It exploded just after it left his hand. A fragment drove through the palm, and the powder finished the indictment. The wound was not serious; but the military records did not show that he was left-handed.