The Sea-Story Megapack

by Jack Williamson

  “Now, John, I wants just the plainest kind o’ truth,” the captain began, for, shorn of his exaggerated dignity, he was a fair, honest-hearted man. “I’ve been friends with Cap’n Hand ever since we was young, an’ I’ve liked him every hour o’ that time, an’ I’ve believed in him every minute; so I’m in no humour t’ have a fallin’ out with him. It’ll go hard with the man who wrongfully leads me into that. Come, now, what’s the truth o’ all this?”

  “The truth, sir,” Johnny replied, slowly, “is this: We left twenty-two tows on the ice last night, every one with a Bryan & Company flag flyin’ over it, an’ we found but sixteen this mornin’. That’s all I knows about it.”

  “Did you make the count alone?”

  “No, sir. They was three others, which,” most importantly, “I can pro-dooce any minute.”

  “All right, Johnny,” said the captain, striking the table with his fist. “I believe you. You won’t find Cap’n Black go back on his crew. I’ll have that fat, if I have t’ fight for it!”

  While this was passing, Captain Hand had summoned Bill o’ Burnt Bay, Ebenezer Bowsprit and two or three other trustworthy men to his cabin, and requested Archie Armstrong (the good captain seemed to consider the lad in some measure a representative of the firm) to hear the interview. One and all, for themselves and for the crew, they earnestly denied knowledge of any trickery. They regretted, they said, that the incident had occurred; but they believed that the seals were the property of the ship, and they hoped that the captain would not “see them robbed.”

  “But, Bill,” said the captain, hopelessly, “you didn’t count the tows?”

  “No, sir,” Bill answered, promptly, “I’m bound t’ say I didn’t. After your two recall guns, sir, we was in a hurry t’ get aboard. ’Twas a fault, I knows, sir, but it can’t be helped now. I don’t know that anybody changed the flags. I hasn’t any reason t’ think so. So I believe that the fat’s ours.”

  “Well, men,” the captain concluded, “that’s just my position. I knows nothin’ t’ the contrary; so I got t’ believe that the fat’s ours. You’ll tell the crew that I’ll stand by them. We’ll take that fat, whatever they tries t’ do, an’ we’ll let the courts decide afterwards. That’s all.”

  There was fret and uncertainty for the captain after the men trooped out. He was an honest man, seeking the right, but not sure that he was right. It seemed to him that, whatever the outcome, his reputation and that of the firm would be tarnished. In a trial at law, the crew of the Lucky Star and the firm of Alexander Bryan & Company would appear as the aggrieved parties. Men would say—yes, men would even publicly take oath to it—that Captain Hand was a thief, and that the firm of Armstrong & Son abused its power and wealth in sustaining him. Not everybody would believe that, of course; but many would—and the odium of the charge would never disappear, let the verdict of the jury be what it might.

  “B’y,” he said to Archie, in great distress, “’tis a tryin’ place t’ be in. I wants t’ wrong nobody. ’Twould wound me sore t’ wrong Cap’n Black, who’s always been my friend. But I got t’ have that fat. A sealin’ skipper that goes back on his crew is not fit for command. I must stand by the men. If I had an enemy, b’y,” he added, “an’ that enemy wanted t’ ruin me, he couldn’t choose a better—”

  Captain Hand stopped dead and stared at the table—stared, and gaped, until his appearance was altogether out of the common.

  “What’s the matter, cap’n?” asked Archie, alarmed.

  At that moment, however, there was a knock at the door. Billy Topsail came in, pale and wide-eyed; but the sight of Archie seemed to compose him.

  “I got t’ tell you about Tim Tuttle,” he began, hurriedly. “I hears there’s goin’ t’ be a fight, an’—an’—I got t’ tell you that I seed him change the flags on the tows.”

  “What!” shouted the captain, jumping out of his chair.

  And so it all came out. At the end of the talk, Billy Topsail was assured by the smiling captain that he need not fear Tim Tuttle after a word or two had been spoken with him. Bill o’ Burnt Bay was summoned, and corroborated Billy’s statement that Tuttle was the last man to leave the tows. And Tuttle was the captain’s enemy! Everybody knew it. The difficulties were thus all brushed away. The crew would accept the explanation and be content. Tuttle would be ridiculed until he was well punished for the trick that had so nearly succeeded. It was a good ending to the affair—a far better outcome than any man aboard had dared hope for.

  “Bill,” said the captain, with an odd little smile, “send Tim Tuttle t’ Cap’n Black, with my compliments; an’ will Cap’n Black be so kind as t’ accept my apology, and have a friendly cup o’ tea with me immediate?”

  Later, when Tuttle left the captain’s cabin, after the “word or two” had been spoken, he was not grateful for the generous treatment he had received. He meditated further mischief; but before the second opportunity offered, there happened something which put animosity out of the hearts of all the crew.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  It Appears That the Courage and Strength of the Son of a Colonial Knight are to be Tried. The Hunters are Caught in a Great Storm

  The Lucky Star and the Dictator parted company the next day—the former bound for the Labrador coast, the latter in a southerly direction to White Bay. For several days, the Dictator ran here and there among the great floes, attacking small herds; and at the end of a week she had ten thousand seals in her hold. But that cargo did not by any means content Captain Hand. Indeed, he began to fear the voyage would be little better than a failure. Nothing less than twenty thousands pelts would be a profitable “haul” for a vessel of the Dictator’s tonnage to carry back to St. John’s.

  For that reason, perhaps, both the captain and the men were willing to take some risk, when, late one morning, a large herd was sighted on a floe near the coast in the southwest. The danger lay in the weather: it was an unpromising day—cold and dull, and threatening snow and storm. For a time the captain hesitated; but, at last, he determined to land his men in three parties, caution them to be watchful and quick, and himself try to keep the Dictator within easy reach of them all. It really did not appear to be necessary to waste the day merely because the sky was dark over the coast.

  Bill o’ Burnt Bay’s party was landed first. Billy Topsail and Tim Tuttle were members of it; and, as usual, Archie Armstrong attached himself to it. As the Dictator steamed away to land the second crew, and, thence, still further away to land the third, Bill led his men on a trot for the pack, which lay about a mile from the water’s edge.

  “’Tis a queer day, this,” Bill observed to the boys, who trotted in his wake.

  “Sure, why?” asked Billy.

  “Is it t’ snow, or is it not? Can you answer me that? Sure, I most always can tell that little thing, but t’-day I can’t.”

  “’Tis like snow,” Billy replied, puzzled, “an’ again ’tisn’t. ’Tis queer, that!”

  “I hopes the captain keeps the ship at hand,” said Bill. “’Tis not t’ my taste t’ spend a night on the floe in a storm.”

  To be lost in a blizzard is a dreaded danger, and not at all an uncommon experience. Many crews, lost from the ship in a blinding storm, have been carried out to sea with the floe, and never heard of afterwards. Bill o’ Burnt Bay lost his own father in that way, and himself had had two narrow escapes from the same fate. So he scanned the sky anxiously, not only as he ran along at the head of his sixty men, but from time to time through the day, until the excitement of the hunt put all else out of his head.

  It was a profitable hunt. The men laboured diligently and rapidly. So intent on the work in hand were they that none observed the darkening sky and the gusts of wind that broke from behind the rocky coast. Thus, towards evening, when the work was over save the sculping and lashing, dusk caught them unaware. Bill o’ Burnt Bay looked up to find that the snow was flying, that it was black as ink in the northeast, and that the wind was blowing in long, a
ngry gusts.

  “Men,” he cried, “did you ever see a sky like that?”

  The men watched the heavy clouds in the northeast rise and swiftly spread.

  “Sure, it looks bad,” muttered one.

  “Make haste with the sculpin’,” Bill ordered. “They’s wonderful heavy weather comin’ up. I mind me a time when a blizzard come out of a sky like that.”

  The dusk grew deeper, the snow fell thicker, the wind rose; and all this Bill observed while he worked. Groups of men lashed their tows and started off for the edge of the floe where the steamer was to return for them.

  “Lash your tows, b’ys,” shouted Bill, to the rest of the men. “Leave the rest go. ’Tis too late t’ sculp any more.”

  There was some complaint; but Bill silenced the growlers with a sharp word or two. The whole party set off in a straggling line, dragging their tows; it was Bill who brought up the rear, for he wanted to make sure that his company would come entire to the landing-place. Strong, stinging blasts of wind were then sweeping out of the northeast, and the snow was fast narrowing the view.

  “Faster, b’ys!” cried Bill. “The storm’s comin’ wonderful quick.”

  The storm came faster than, with all his experience, Bill o’ Burnt Bay had before believed possible. When he had given the order to abandon the unskinned seals, he thought that there was time and to spare; but, now, with less than half the distance to the landing-place covered, the men were already staggering, the wind was blowing a gale, and the blinding snow almost hid the flags at the water’s edge. When he realized this, and that the ship was not yet in sight, “Drop everything, an’ run for it!” was the order he sent up the line.

  “Archie, b’y,” he then shouted, catching the lad by the arm and drawing him nearer, “we got t’ run for the landing-place. Stick close t’ me. When you’re done out, I’ll carry you. Is you afraid, b’y?”

  Archie looked up, but did not deign to reply to the humiliating question.

  “All right, lad,” said Bill, understanding. “Is you ready?”

  Archie knew that his strength and courage were to be tried. He was tired, and cold, and almost hopeless; but, then and there, he resolved to prove his blood and breeding—to prove to these men, who had been unfailingly kind to him, but yet had naturally looked with good-natured contempt upon his fine clothes and white hands, that fortitude was not incompatible with a neat cravat and nice manners. Beyond all that, however, it was his aim to prove that Sir Archibald Armstrong’s son was the son of his own father.

  “Lead on, Bill,” he said.

  “Good lad!” Bill muttered.

  Archie bent to the blast.

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  In Which the Men are Lost, the Dictator is Nipped and Captain Hand Sobs, “Poor Sir Archibald!”

  When the last party of hunters had been landed from the Dictator, the ship was taken off the ice field; and there she hung, in idleness, awaiting the end of the hunt. It was then long past noon. The darkening sky in the northeast promised storm and an early night more surely than ever. It fretted the captain. He was accountable to the women and children of Green Bay for the lives of the men; so he kept to the deck, with an eye on the weather: and while the gloom deepened and spread, a storm of anxiety gathered in his heart—and, at last, broke in action.

  “Call the watch, Mr. Ackell!” he cried, sharply. “We’ll wait no longer.”

  He ran to the bridge, signalled “Stand by!” to the engine-room, and ordered the firing of the recall gun. The men of the last party were within ear of the report. It brought all work on the ice to a close. The men waited only to pile the dead seals in heaps and mark possession with flags.

  “Again, mate!” shouted the captain. “They’re long about comin’, it seems t’ me.”

  A second discharge brought the men on a run to the edge of the ice. It was evident that some danger threatened. They ran at full speed, crowded aboard the waiting boats, and were embarked as quickly as might be. Then the ship steamed off to the second field, five miles distant, to pick up the second party. When she came within hearing distance, three signal guns were fired, with the result that, when she came to, the men were waiting for the boats.

  It was a run of six miles to the field upon which the first party had been landed—part of the way in and out among the pans. The storm had now taken form and was advancing swiftly, and the fields in the northeast were hidden in a spreading darkness. The wind had risen to half a gale, and it was beginning to snow. A run of six miles! The captain’s heart sank. When he looked at the black clouds rising from behind the coast, he doubted that the Dictator could do it in time. An appalling fortune seemed to be descending on the men on the ice.

  “But we may make it, mate,” said the captain, “if—”

  “Ay, sir?”

  “If they’s no ice comin’ with the gale.”

  The ship had been riding the open sea, skirting the floe. Now she came to the mouth of a broad lane, which wound through the fields. It was the course; along that lane, at all hazards, she must thread her way. The danger was extreme. The wind, blowing a gale, might force the great fields together. Or, if ice came with the wind, the lanes might be choked up. In either event, what chance would there be for the men? In the first event, which was almost inevitable, what chance would there be for the Dictator herself?

  “Cap’n Hand, sir,” the mate began, nervously, “is you goin’—”

  The captain looked up in amazement when the mate stammered and stopped. “Well, sir?” he said.

  “Is you goin’ inside the ice, sir?”

  “Is I goin’ what?” roared the captain, turning upon him. “Is I goin’ what, sir?”

  It was sufficient. The captain was going among the fields. The mate needed no plainer answer to his question.

  “Beg pardon, sir,” he muttered meekly. “I thought you was.”

  “Huh!” growled the captain.

  When the ship passed into the lane, the storm burst overhead. The scunner in the foretop was near blinded by the driven snow. His voice was swept hither and thither by the wind. Directions came to the bridge in broken sentences. The captain dared not longer drive the vessel at full speed.

  “Half speed!” he signalled.

  The ship crept along. For half an hour, while the night drew on, not a word was spoken, save the captain’s quiet “Port!” and “Starboard!” into the wheelhouse tube. Then the mate heard the old man mutter:

  “Poor b’y! Poor Sir Archibald!”

  No other reference was made to the boy. In the captain’s mind, thereafter, for all the mate knew, young Archibald Armstrong, the owner’s son, was merely one of a crew of sixty men, lost on the floe.

  “Ice ahead!” screamed the lookout in the bow.

  The ship was brought to a stop. The lane she had been following had closed before her. The mate went forward.

  “Heavy ice, sir,” he reported.

  Broken ice, then, had come down with the wind. It had been carried into the channels, choking them.

  “Does you see water beyond, b’y?” the captain shouted.

  “’Tis too thick t’ tell, sir.”

  The captain signalled “Go ahead!” The chance must be taken. To be caught between two fields in a great storm was a fearful situation. So the ship pushed into the ice, moving at a snail’s pace, labouring hard, and complaining of the pressure upon her ribs. Soon she made no progress whatever. The screw was turning noisily; the vessel throbbed with the labour of the engines; but she was at a standstill.

  “Stuck, sir!” exclaimed the mate.

  “Ay, mate,” the captain said, blankly, “stuck.”

  The ship struggled bravely to force her way on; but the ice, wedged all about her, was too heavy.

  “God help the men!” said the captain, as he signalled for the stopping of the engines. “We’re stuck!”

  “An’ God help us,” the mate added, in the same spirit, “if the fields come together!”

  Conceive the
situation of the Dictator. She lay between two of many vast, shifting fields, all of immeasurable mass. The captain had deliberately subjected her to the chances in an effort to rescue the men for whom he was accountable to the women and children of Green Bay. She was caught; and if the wind should drive the fields together, her case would be desperate, indeed. The slow, mighty pressure exerted by such masses is irresistible. The ship would either be crushed to splinters, or—a slender chance—she would be lifted out of danger for the time.

  Had there been no broken ice about her, destruction would have been inevitable. Her hope now lay in that ice; for, with the narrowing of the space in which it floated, it would in part be forced deep into the water, and in part be crowded out of it. If it should get under the ship’s bottom, it would exert an increasing upward pressure; and that pressure might be strong enough to lift the vessel clear of the fields. The captain had known of such cases; but now he smiled when he called them to mind.

  “Take a week’s rations an’ four boats t’ the ice, mate,” he directed, “an’ be quick about it. We’ll sure have t’ leave the ship.”

  While the mate went about this work, the captain paced the bridge, regardless of the cold and storm. It was dark, the wind was bitter and strong, the snow was driving past; but still he paced the bridge, now and then turning towards the darkness of that place, far off on the floe, where his men, and the young charge he had been given, were lost. The women of Green Bay would not forgive him for lives lost thus; of that he was sure. And the lad—that tender lad—

  “Poor little b’y!” he thought. “Poor Sir Archibald!”

  For relief from this torturing thought, he went among the men. He found most of them gathered in groups, gravely discussing the situation of the ship. In the forecastle, some were holding a “prayer-meeting”; the skipper paused to listen to the singing and to the solemn words that followed it. Here and there, as he went along, he spoke an encouraging word; here and there dropped a word of advice, as, “Timothy, b’y, you got too much on your back; ’tis not wise t’ load yourself down when you takes t’ the ice,” and the like; here and there, in a smile or a glance, he found the comforting assurance that the men knew he had tried to do his duty.