The Sea-Story Megapack

by Jack Williamson

Though they were born to lives of hardship and peril, though they had long been used to the chances of the sea, not one of the castaways had ever before fallen into a predicament so barren of hope. Flung on an iceberg, adrift on the wild North Atlantic, derelict where no ships passed, at the mercy of the capricious winds, without food or fire: there seemed to be no possibility of escape. But for a time they did not despair; and, moreover, for a time each felt it a high duty to make light of the situation, to joke of cold-storage and polar bears, that the spirits of the others might be encouraged. As dusk approached, however, the ghastly humour failed. Ruin, agony, grief, imminent death; in the moody silence, they dwelt, rather, upon these things.

  It was not yet dark when a faint shock, a hardly perceptible shiver, a crash from aloft, a subsiding rumble, apprised the castaways of a portentous change of condition.

  “What’s that, now?” growled the cook.

  It was a cruelly anxious moment. Only the event itself would determine whether or not the berg was to turn turtle. They waited.

  “She’s grounded, I ’low!” exclaimed the skipper.

  There was no further disturbance. Whatever had happened, the equilibrium of the berg had been maintained.

  “I’m thinkin’,” said the skipper, “that I’ll take a little look about.”

  The skipper’s “little look about” developed what appeared to be a saving opportunity. The berg had grounded; it had also jammed a wandering pack of drift-ice against the land. What that shore was, whether mainland or island, the skipper did not wait to ascertain; it was sufficient for him to know that the survivors of the Fish Killer might escape from a disintegrating berg to solid ground.

  He returned, breathless, with the enlivening news; and in lively fashion, which almost approached a panic, the castaways abandoned the berg. It was a hard, painful, dangerous scramble, made in the failing light, and the cook had an unwelcome bath in the icy water between two pans; but it had a successful issue. Before dark, they were all ashore—more hopeful, now, than they had been, but still staring death in the face.

  So curious was Skipper Libe that, taking advantage of the last of the light, he set out to discover the character of the refuge. He returned discouraged.

  “’Tis but a rock,” said he. “’Tis no more than a speck o’ land.”

  Then night fell. Robinson’s little daughter was by this time on the point of succumbing to the exposure. Cold, hunger and despair had reduced her to a pitiable silence. She was in the extremity of physical exhaustion. They made a deep hollow in the snow in the shelter of a declivity of rock; and there they bestowed her, gladly yielding their jackets to provide her with such comfort as they could. But this was small mitigation of the hardship. The child was still hopeless and cold. It was sadly apparent that she could not survive the night. And Robinson knew that tomorrow and tomorrow—a long stretch of days—lay before them all. There was no hope for a frail body; weakness was death. In his heart he frankly admitted that he was about to lose his child.

  He lay down beside her. “Mary, dear,” he pleaded, “don’t give up!”

  She pressed his hand.

  “Don’t give up!” he repeated.

  A wan smile came and went. “I can’t help it,” she whispered.

  Skipper Libe and his men withdrew. It was now near midnight. The fog was lifting. Stars twinkled in patches of black sky. Low towards the seaward horizon the moon was breaking through the clouds.

  Suddenly the cook sat bolt upright. “Skipper,” he demanded, “where is we?”

  “On the Devil’s Teeth.”

  “An’ what rock’s this?”

  “This?”

  “Ay—this!”

  “I’d not be s’prised,” the skipper answered, “if ’tis what they calls the Cocked Hat.”

  “Feather’s Folly!” roared the cook.

  “Which?” said the skipper, suspiciously.

  The cook was on his feet—dancing in glad excitement. “Feather’s Folly!” he shouted “Feather’s Folly!”

  “Catch un!” said the skipper, quietly. “He’ve gone mad.”

  They set upon the poor cook. Before he could escape they had him fast. He was tripped, thrown, sat upon.

  “Don’t let him up,” the skipper warned. “He’ll do hisself hurt. Poor man!” he sighed. “He’ve lost his senses.”

  “Mad!” screamed the cook. “You’re mad. Feather’s Folly! We’re saved!”

  “Hold un tight,” said the skipper.

  But the cook was not to be held. He wriggled free and bolted. Billy Topsail and all took after him, the skipper in the lead; and by the dim, changing light of that night he led them a mad chase over rock and through drifted snow. They pursued, they headed him off, they laid hold of his flying coat-tail; but he eluded them, dodged, sped, doubled. If he were mad, there was method in his madness. He was searching every square yard of that acre of uneven rock. At last, panting and perspiring, he came to a full stop and turned triumphantly upon his pursuers. He had found what he sought.

  “Mad!” he laughed. “Who’s mad, now? Eh? Who’s crazy?”

  The crew stared.

  “Who’s crazy?” the cook roared. “Look at that! What d’ye make o’ that?”

  “It looks,” the skipper admitted, “like salvation!”

  Old man Feather had indeed “seen that it wouldn’t happen again.” He had provided for castaways on the Cocked Hat. There was a tight little hut in the lee of the Bishop’s Nose; within, there were provisions and blankets and firewood and candles. Moreover, in the sprawling, misspelled welcome, tacked to the wall, there was even the heartening information that “seegars is in the kityun tabl.” The passengers and crew of the Fish Killer were soon warm and satisfied. They spent a happy night—a night so changed, so cozy, so bountiful, that they blessed old man Feather until their tongues were tired. And old man Feather, himself, who kept watch on the Cocked Hat with a spy-glass, took them off to Hulk’s Harbour in the clear weather of the next day.

  “An’ did you find the cigars, skipper?” he whispered, with a wide, proud grin.

  “Us did.”

  “An’ was they good? Hist, now!” the old fellow repeated, with a wink of mystery, “wasn’t they good?”

  “Well,” the skipper drawled, not ungraciously, you may be sure, “the cook made bad weather of it. But he double-reefed hisself an’ lived through. ’Twas the finest an’ the first cigar he ever seed.”

  The old man chuckled delightedly.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  In Which the Clerk of the Trader Tax Yarns of a Madman in the Cabin

  The trading-schooner Tax of Ruddy Cove had come down from the Labrador. She was riding at anchor in the home harbour, with her hold full of salt fish and the goods in her cabin run sadly low. Billy Topsail, safely back from Feather’s Folly, and doomed by the wreck of the Fish Killer to spend the summer in the quieter pursuits of Ruddy Cove, had gone aboard to greet the crew. There was hot tea on the forecastle table, and the crew was yarning to a jolly, brown grinning lot of Ruddy folk, who had come aboard. It was Cook, the clerk, a merry, blue-eyed little man, who told the story of the madman in the cabin.

  “We were lying in Shelter Harbour,” said he, “waiting for a fair wind to Point-o’-Bay. It was coming close to night when they saw him leaping along shore and kicking a tin kettle as though ’twas a football. I was in the cabin, putting the stock to rights after the day’s trade. I heard the hail and the skipper’s answering, ‘Ay ay! This is the trader Tax from Ruddy Cove.’ Then the skipper sung out to know if I wanted a customer. Customer? To be sure I wanted one!

  “‘If he has a gallon of oil or a pound of fish,’ said I, ‘fetch him aboard.’

  “‘He looks queer,’ said the skipper.

  “‘Queer he may look,’ said I, ‘and queer he may be, but his fish will be first cousins to the ones in the hold, and I’ll barter for them.’

  “With that the skipper put off in the punt to fetch the customer; but when he drew near s
hore he lay on his oars, something puzzled, I’m thinking, for the customer was dancing a hornpipe on a flat rock at the water’s edge, by the first light of the moon.

  “‘Have you got a fish t’ trade?’ said the skipper.

  “‘Good-evenin’, skipper, sir,’ said the queer customer, after a last kick and flourish. ‘I’ve a quintal or two an’ a cask o’ oil that I’m wantin’ bad t’ trade away.’

  “He was rational as you please; so the skipper was thrown off his guard, took him aboard, and pulled out.

  “‘You’re quite a dancer,’ said he.

  “‘Hut!’ said the man. ‘That’s nothin’ at all. When the moon’s full an’ high, sir, I dances over the waves; an’ when they’s a gale blowin’ I goes aloft t’ the clouds an’ shakes a foot up there.’

  “‘Do you, now?’ said the skipper, not knowing whether to take this in joke or earnest.

  “‘Believe me, sir,’ said the man, with the gravest of faces, ‘I’m a wonderful dancer.’

  “I was on deck when they came aboard. It was then dusk. I noticed nothing out of the ordinary in my customer’s appearance. He was a large, big-boned man, well supplied with fat and muscle, and capable, as I thought at the moment, of enduring all the toil and hardship to which the men of that coast are exposed. The skipper handed him over to me without a word of warning, and went below to the forecastle, for the wind was blowing cold and misty.”

  “Oh, well,” the skipper broke in from his place in a bunk, “how could I tell that he was mad?”

  “Whatever, Skipper Job,” the clerk resumed, with a twinkle in his eye, “I took him into the cabin, and the crew and you were snug enough in the forecastle, where no hail of mine could reach you. It was not until then,” he resumed, “when the light of the cabin lamp fell full upon him, that I had a proper appreciation of my customer’s size and strength—not until then that I marked the deathly pallour of his face and the strange light in his eyes. He was frowsy, dirty, dressed in ragged moleskin cloth; and he had a habit of looking to right and left and aloft—anywhere, it appeared, but straight in my face—so that I caught no more than a red flash from his eyes from time to time. I felt uneasy, without being able to account to myself for the feeling; so, anxious to be well rid of him, I asked, abruptly, in what I could serve him.

  “‘I’m thinkin’ you’ll not be havin’ the thing I wants,’ said he.

  “That touched me on a tender spot. ‘I’m thinking,’ said I, ‘that we’ve a little of all that you ever thought of.’

  “‘I don’t think you has,’ said he, ‘but ’twould be best for you if you had.’

  “There was a hidden meaning in that. Why should it be best for me?

  “‘And what is it?’ said I.

  “‘’Tis a spool o’ silk thread,’ said he, soberly, ‘t’ bind the fairies with—the wicked fairies that tells me t’ do the things I don’t want t’. If you’ve any o’ that, sir, I’ll take all you got aboard, for I wants it bad.’

  “‘Come, now, my man,’ said I sharply, ‘stop your joking. I’m tired, and in no humour for it. What is it you want?’

  “‘I’m not jokin’, sir,’ said he. ‘I wants a spool o’ green silk thread t’ lash the wicked fairies t’ the spruce trees.’

  “I could not doubt him longer; there was too much longing, too much hopelessness, in his voice for that. He was demented; but there are many men of that coast whom lonely toil has driven mad, but yet who live their lives through to the natural end, peaceable folk and good fishermen, and I thought that this poor fellow had as good a right to trade with me as the sanest man in Shelter Harbour.

  “‘We’ve no green silk thread, sir,’ said I, ‘that will securely lash fairies to spruce trees. But if you want anything else, and have fish to trade, I’ll take them.’

  “‘I wisht you had the thread,’ said he.

  “‘Why?’ said I.

  “‘’Twould be best for you,’ said he with a sigh. ‘If I could tie the wicked fairies up, I wouldn’t have t’—have t’—do it. But,’ he went on, ‘as you haven’t any thread, I’ll take some calico t’ make a new dress for my brother’s little maid.’

  “A certain look of cunning, which overspread his face at that moment, alarmed me. I thought I had better find out what the wicked fairies had to do with me.

  “‘Did you meet the fairies tonight?’ said I.

  “‘Ay,’ said he. ‘I met the crew o’ wicked ones on my way through the bush.’

  “‘And what did they tell you?’ said I.

  “He signed to me to be silent; then he closed the cabin door and came close to the counter, behind which I stood, with no way of escape open.

  “‘Has you got a loaded gun?’ he whispered hoarsely.

  “His face was close to mine. In his eyes, which were now steady, two live, red coals were glowing. I fell back from him, frightened; for I now knew what work the wicked fairies had assigned to him for that night. Poor fellow! Frightened though I was, I pitied him. I saw his distress, and pitied him! He was fighting manfully against the impulse; but it mastered him, at last, and I realized that my life was in grave danger. I was penned in, you know, and—they call me ‘little Cook’—I was no match for him.

  “‘No,’ said I. ‘I’ve no gun.’

  “‘Has you got a knife?’ said he.

  “‘Sorry,’ said I; ‘but I’m sold out of knives.’

  “‘Has you got a razor?’ said he.

  “It was high time to mislead him. I saw an opportunity to escape.

  “‘Is it razors you want?’ I cried. ‘Sure, I’ve some grand ones—big ones, boy, sharp ones, bright ones. I keep them in the forecastle where ’tis dry. So I’ll just run up to fetch the lot to show you.’

  “His eyes glistened when I spoke of the brightness and sharpness of those razors. With a show of confidence, I jumped on the counter and swung my legs over. But he pushed me back—so angrily, indeed, that I feared to precipitate the encounter if I persisted.

  “‘Don’t trouble, sir,’ said he. ‘I’ll find something that’ll answer. Ha!’ said he, taking an axe from the rack and ‘hefting’ it. ‘This will do.’

  “‘But I’m wanting to wash my hands, anyway,’ said I.

  “‘’Twill make no difference in the end,’ said he quietly.

  “I speak of it calmly now; but when I found myself alone in the cabin with that poor madman—found myself behind the counter, with no defensive weapon at hand, with my life in the care of my wits, which are neither sharp nor ready—I was in no condition for calm thought. To hail the skipper was out of the question; he would not hear me, and the first shout would doubtless excite the big man in the moleskin clothes beyond restraint. My hope of escape lay in distracting his attention from the matter in hand until the skipper should come aft of his own notion. But I made one effort in another direction.

  “‘Did you say green silk thread or blue?’ said I.

  “‘I said green, sir.’

  “‘Did you, now?’ I exclaimed. ‘Sure, I thought you said blue. We’ve no blue, but we’ve the green, and you’ll be able to lash the fairies to the spruce trees, after all.’

  “As a matter of fact, we had a few spools of silk thread, and one of them was green—a bad stock, as I knew to my cost, for I had long been trying to dispose of them.

  “‘’Tis too late,’ said he.

  “‘No, no!’ said I. ‘You’ll surely not be letting the fairies drive you like that. You can take the green thread and lash them all up on the way home.’

  “‘No,’ he said doggedly; ‘’tis too late. What they told me to do I must do before the clock strikes.’

  “‘Strikes what?’ said I.

  “‘Twelve,’ said he.

  “With what relief did I hear this! Twelve o’clock? It was now but eight. The skipper would come aft long before that hour.

  “‘’Tis a long time to wait,’ said I. ‘I’ll make up my bunk, and you may lie down a bit and rest.’

  “‘It
lacks but twelve minutes of the hour,’ said he. ‘They’s a clock hangin’ behind you, sir.’

  “He indicated a cheap American alarm clock. It was the last of a half dozen I had kept hanging from the roof of the cabin. I had kept them wound up, for the mere pleasure of hearing their busy ticking, but had never set them—never troubled to keep them running to the right time. When I looked up I was dismayed to find that the clock pointed to twelve minutes to twelve o’clock!

  “‘’Tis not the right time,’ I began. ‘’Tis far too—’

  “‘Hist!’ said he. ‘Don’t speak. You’ve but eleven minutes left.’

  “Thus we stood, the fisherman with his back to the door and the axe in his hand, and myself behind the counter, while the cheap American alarm clock ticked off the minutes of my life. Eleven—ten—nine! They were fast flying. I could think of no plan to dissuade him—no ruse to outwit him. Indeed, my mind was occupied more with putting the blame on that lying clock than with anything else. I had determined, of course, to make the best fight I could—to blow out the light at the moment of attack, dive under the counter, catch my man by the legs, overturn him and escape by the door or there fight it out. Nine minutes—eight—seven! At that moment I caught a long hail from the shore.

  “‘Schooner ahoy! Ahoy!’

  “I do not think the fisherman heard it. It was too faint—too far off; and he was too intent upon the thing he was to do.

  “‘Six minutes, sir,’ said he.

  “I wondered if Job had heard. The hail was repeated. Then I heard Skipper Job answer from the deck. At that the fisherman started; but his alarm passed in a moment.

  “‘Ahoy!’ shouted Skipper Job.

  “‘Has you got a strange man aboard?’ came from the shore.

  “‘Yes, sir,’ Job called.

  “‘Watch him,’ from the shore. ‘He’s mad.’

  “‘Oh, he’s all right,’ Job called. ‘He’s harmless.’

  “Then silence. My hope of relief vanished. I should have to make the fight, after all, I thought.

  “‘Five minutes, sir,’ said the madman.

  “Had Skipper Job gone below again? Or would he come aft? For two minutes not a word was said. My customer and I were waiting for the first stroke of twelve. Soon I heard voices forward; then the tramp of feet coming aft over the deck—treading softly. They paused by the house, and the whispering ceased. Was it a rescue, or was it not? I could not tell. The men above seemed to have no concern with me. But, indeed, they had.