The Sea-Story Megapack

by Jack Williamson

  The sun had now gotten much higher, and through all the gaps of the hills it cast long bars of gold across that white ocean. An eagle, or some other very great bird of the mountain, came wheeling over the nearer pinetops, and hung, poised and something sideways, as if to look abroad on that unwonted desolation, spying, perhaps with terror, for the eyries of her comrades. Then, with a long cry, she disappeared again toward Lake County and the clearer air. At length it seemed to me as if the flood were beginning to subside. The old landmarks, by whose disappearance I had measured its advance, here a crag, there a brave pine tree, now began, in the inverse order, to make their reappearance into daylight. I judged all danger of the fog was over. This was not Noah’s flood; it was but a morning spring, and would now drift out seaward whence it came. So, mightily relieved, and a good deal exhilarated by the sight, I went into the house to light the fire.

  I suppose it was nearly seven when I once more mounted the platform to look abroad. The fog ocean had swelled up enormously since last I saw it; and a few hundred feet below me, in the deep gap where the Toll House stands and the road runs through into Lake County, it had already topped the slope, and was pouring over and down the other side like driving smoke. The wind had climbed along with it; and though I was still in calm air, I could see the trees tossing below me, and their long, strident sighing mounted to me where I stood.

  Half an hour later, the fog had surmounted all the ridge on the opposite side of the gap, though a shoulder of the mountain still warded it out of our canyon. Napa Valley and its bounding hills were now utterly blotted out. The fog, sunny white in the sunshine, was pouring over into Lake County in a huge, ragged cataract, tossing treetops appearing and disappearing in the spray. The air struck with a little chill, and set me coughing. It smelt strong of the fog, like the smell of a washing-house, but with a shrewd tang of the sea-salt.

  Had it not been for two things—the sheltering spur which answered as a dyke, and the great valley on the other side which rapidly engulfed whatever mounted—our own little platform in the canyon must have been already buried a hundred feet in salt and poisonous air. As it was, the interest of the scene entirely occupied our minds. We were set just out of the wind, and but just above the fog; we could listen to the voice of the one as to music on the stage; we could plunge our eyes down into the other, as into some flowing stream from over the parapet of a bridge; thus we looked on upon a strange, impetuous, silent, shifting exhibition of the powers of nature, and saw the familiar landscape changing from moment to moment like figures in a dream.

  The imagination loves to trifle with what is not. Had this been indeed the deluge, I should have felt more strongly, but the emotion would have been similar in kind. I played with the idea as the child flees in delighted terror from the creations of his fancy. The look of the thing helped me. And when at last I began to flee up the mountain, it was indeed partly to escape from the raw air that kept me coughing, but it was also part in play.

  As I ascended the mountainside, I came once more to overlook the upper surface of the fog; but it wore a different appearance from what I had beheld at daybreak. For, first, the sun now fell on it from high overhead, and its surface shone and undulated like a great nor’land moor country, sheeted with untrodden morning snow. And, next, the new level must have been a thousand or fifteen hundred feet higher than the old, so that only five or six points of all the broken country below me still stood out. Napa Valley was now one with Sonoma on the west. On the hither side, only a thin scattered fringe of bluffs was unsubmerged; and through all the gaps the fog was pouring over, like an ocean into the blue clear sunny country on the east. There it was soon lost; for it fell instantly into the bottom of the valleys, following the watershed; and the hilltops in that quarter were still clear cut upon the eastern sky.

  Through the Toll House gap and over the near ridges on the other side, the deluge was immense. A spray of thin vapour was thrown high above it, rising and falling, and blown into fantastic shapes. The speed of its course was like a mountain torrent. Here and there a few treetops were discovered and then whelmed again; and for one second, the bough of a dead pine beckoned out of the spray like the arm of a drowning man. But still the imagination was dissatisfied, still the ear waited for something more. Had this indeed been water (as it seemed so, to the eye), with what a plunge of reverberating thunder would it have rolled upon its course, disembowelling mountains and deracinating pines And yet water it was and sea-water at that—true Pacific billows, only somewhat rarefied, rolling in mid-air among the hilltops.

  I climbed still higher, among the red rattling gravel and dwarf underwood of Mount Saint Helena, until I could look right down upon Silverado, and admire the favoured nook in which it lay. The sunny plain of fog was several hundred feet higher; behind the protecting spur a gigantic accumulation of cottony vapour threatened, with every second to blow over and submerge our homestead; but the vortex setting past the Toll House was too strong; and there lay our little platform, in the arms of the deluge, but still enjoying its unbroken sunshine. About eleven, however, thin spray came flying over the friendly buttress, and I began to think the fog had hunted out its Jonah after all. But it was the last effort. The wind veered while we were at dinner, and began to blow squally from the mountain summit and by half-past one all that world of sea fogs was utterly routed and flying here and there into the south in little rags of cloud. And instead of a lone sea-beach, we found ourselves once more inhabiting a high mountainside, with the clear green country far below us, and the light smoke of Calistoga blowing in the air.

  This was the great Russian campaign for that season. Now and then, in the early morning, a little white lakelet of fog would be seen far down in Napa Valley but the heights were not again assailed, nor was the surrounding world again shut off from Silverado.

  THE DOLLAR, by Morgan Robertson

  IS name was Angus Macpherson—pronounced MacPhairson—but he was so intensely Scotch that in every ship he had sailed in men called him Scotty. He had a face like a harvest-moon, with a sorrowful expression of the eyes, a frame like a gladiator’s, a brogue modified from its original consistency to an understandable dialect, and the soul of a Scotchman—which means that he was possessed by two dominant and conflicting passions, love of God and love of Mammon. Add to these attributes a masterful knowledge of seamanship and an acquaintance with navigation, and you have a rough sketch of him as he stood at the wheel of a tow-barge just out of New York.

  Her name was the Anita, and she was the second barge in a tow of two. Ahead of her, at the end of a ninety-fathom steel towline, was the sister barge Champion, and at an equal distance farther ahead was the steamer Proserpine. Each barge carried stump spars and mutton-leg canvas—which was why Scotty, weary of the endless work in the deep-water windjammers, had gone “tow-barging”—and the three craft belonged to one owner.

  The skipper, a young man with a humorous face and democratic manner, as became a lowly barge skipper, appeared before the Scotsman, jingling in his hand a number of bright silver dollars. Scotty eyed them hungrily.

  “Fine, aren’t they, Scotty?” he said. “How many of these plunkers does the devil need to buy your soul?”

  “More than you can count, Cappen Bolt,” answered Scotty, gravely. “My soul no belongs to me, but to my Maker.”

  “Nonsense,” laughed the captain. “A Scot loves the siller first, his Maker next. Why, a Jew can’t make a living in your country, Scotty.”

  “Possibly not, cappen; but it’s no because Scotchmen are dishonest. The Lord has given us wits—that’s all.”

  “Dead broke, Scotty?” asked Captain Bolt, idly.

  “I banked the most o’ my pay, sir. Ay, I’m what you might call broke.”

  “Too bad! Ought to have held some out. There’ll be no money at Philadelphia. Owner’s kickin’. Wants to save the interest, and he won’t pay off till we get back.”

  Scotty’s face assumed a rueful expression, and Captain Bolt watch
ed it from the tail of his eye; then, before Scotty could speak, the prolonged clatter of the steward’s dinner-bell began, and the captain moved towards the companion, pocketing the coins as he went. One fell on the deck, the noise of the bell preventing its fall being heard, and the captain did not see it. But Scotty did, and he watched it roll back towards the taffrail, assume a spiral motion, and lie down just aft of the quarter-bitt. The captain was now down in the cabin, but Scotty picked up the coin to hold for him until he came up. He should have let it lie.

  For it was bright and beautiful to look at, hard and slippery to the touch as he held it in his trousers pocket, a pleasing contrast to the coming emptiness of that pocket in Philadelphia. Scotty’s soul went through the usual conflict in such cases, and when Captain Bolt came up, rubbing his mouth, love of Mammon had won over love of God, and he said nothing about it. Shortly after, he was relieved, and he went forward. On the way a revulsion set in, and he turned back, resolved to hand it over, as though he had forgotten; but the captain had stepped below again, and with the memory of his boasted honesty and the certainty of the captain’s skepticism and ridicule in his mind, he turned again and went to the forecastle. When he had eaten his dinner, and slept four hours, he found on waking that his inclination to return it was stronger than at noon; but the certainty of being disbelieved had gained equally in strength, and the dollar remained in his pocket—a source of guilty joy and expectant misgiving. He longed for the day when it would be spent and off his mind, and calculated the days and hours before the tow would reach Philadelphia.

  But Scotty did not reach Philadelphia; he fell overboard just within the Delaware capes and though he bawled lustily as the black side of the barge slipped by him in the darkness, and was answered in kind by his watchmates above, the noise did not reach the relentless power eleven hundred feet away, and he was left behind. But one had thrown him a lifebuoy, and on this he floated until daylight, when an outbound tug picked him up. The tug was bound to Boston.

  “I’ll e’en make the best o’ it,” said Scotty, as he wrung out his wet clothing in the tug’s small forecastle. “And I’ll regard the dollar as a special deespensation of an all-wise Providence; for what would I do in Boston wi’oot a bit o’ money in my clothes?”

  But he did not reach Boston. The tug had a full crew, scant accommodations, and a hard-hearted captain, who decreed that Scotty should be put aboard the first craft that would take him. This happened to be a three-skysail-yard American ship—the Baltimore—two days out from New York for Shanghai, whose skipper backed his yard in answer to the tug-captain’s offer to give him a sailor, and whose third-mate received Scotty—not with open arms, but clinched fists, as he dropped, swearing, to the deck in a bosun’s chair.

  “You ought to be glad you’re alive,” said her skipper, harshly, when Scotty had, later, come aft to protest against his abduction. “He pulled you out of a lifebuoy, where you’d ha’ drowned ’fore the next craft came along, and puts you aboard a big, safe ship where you couldn’t fall overboard if you tried. Get forward, now, and stop this talk.”

  “And am I to be put on the articles?” demanded Scotty. “I expect to wark where’er I be; but do I get pay, I’m askin’?”

  “No. My articles are full. You’ll wark your passage.”

  “Four months’ sleevery in a hell-ship,” growled Scotty, as he went forward. “This comes o’ back-sleedin’. Lord forgi’ me for it, but the punishment is hard. Howe’er, I’ll just hang on to the dollar. I’ll ha’ earned it long this side o’ the cape.”

  He did, and continued to earn it until the ship had neared the Yangtse-Kiang. Marked for the officers’ attentions by his initial profane and irreverent comment on his transferral by the tug-captain, he was assaulted on the slightest provocation by the mates—no bigger than he or more skillful of fist, but justified by the law—and, though easily the best sailorman of the mixed crew, was put at distasteful tasks while inferior men worked at sailorly work on ropes and rigging.

  There was nothing of this in the watch below, for Scotty could thrash the best two men forward, and led them all in forecastle discourse; but as it was a mixed crew, none too honest, in his opinion, he made a monk-bag—a leather pocket—for his dollar, and hung it around his neck; and, to further protect the precious coin, forswore his religion, called himself a Catholic and the monk-bag a phylactery, with a saint’s relic within. This brought him to the notice of a gentle-souled Portuguese of the crew, a true believer, who made friends with the Scot and earned his confidence before he learned of the shamness of the phylactery. Scotty, on lookout one night, told him this in a burst of confidence that also included a confession of his peculation. His friend, horrified, not at the theft, but at the sacrilegious fraud, informed him that the coin was accursed, that his soul was accursed, and that the only salvation for him in this life and the next was, first, that he return the stolen dollar by hand to its rightful owner, next that he become a real believer in the only true church instead of an impostor.

  “If you do not,” he said, “you have alla time badda luck till you die, then purgatory and the flame.”

  Perhaps the flames of Sheol could not have turned Scotty from his faith; but he was certainly impressed with the first clause of the obligation.

  “Ye maun be right, Manuel,” he said; “for, though I thought it a deespensation, I find that all my hard luck came after it. I’ll gie it back when I may.”

  “Who’s on lookout here?” demanded the burly third mate as he climbed the forecastle steps. “Hey, who’s on lookout?”

  “I am, sir,” answered Scotty, as Manuel drew out of the way.

  “Get down on the main-deck, you dago son of a thief,” bellowed the officer, aiming a kick at the retreating Portuguese. “D’ ye see that light?” he said to Scotty. “With a man to help you keep lookout, d’ ye see it?”

  Scotty, derelict in his duty, did not see it for some moments—in fact, not until the third mate was through with him. Then he looked through closing eyes to where the third mate pointed—dead ahead, where a white light shone faintly in the darkness.

  “Ay, ay, sir,” he said, thickly. “I see it; and I’ll e’en remember this night when I meet ye on shore, Mr. Smart. I’m no shipped in the craft, and it’s a matter for the underwriters to know—puttin’ me on lookout. As it is, I doot I’d meet trouble should I pull yer head off the noo. I’m no a shipped man, d’ ye hear?”

  The last was like the roar of an angry bull, and the officer backed away from the enraged Scotchman. Then he descended the steps, and in a minute a man came up and relieved him.

  The light did not move, and, the wind being gentle, the day broke before the ship had come up to it. Then they saw a black tramp steamer, rolling easily in the trough, with a string of small flags flying from aloft and the English ensign from the flagstaff at the taffrail. There was an exchange of signals between the two crafts until eight bells struck, and then Scotty, just about to sit down to his breakfast, was called aft and told to get his belongings ready for another trans-shipment. Scotty’s belongings, the few rags he had collected by various methods from his shipmates, were hardly worth taking; but he regretted his breakfast, though glad to quit the ship. As he slid down the davit-tackle he surmised the meaning of the change by the expression on the third mate’s face as he peered over the rail, and some words uttered by the captain, among which he only made out one—“underwriters.”

  “I’m told,” said the semi-uniformed captain of the tramp, “that you are a castaway, picked up on the American coast, and are discontented with the ship.”

  “I dinna ken what the sleeve-drivers telt ye, cappen,” answered Scotty, his brogue a little thicker from his emotions, “but I agree that I’m discontented.”

  “What’s wrong with your face?”

  “Ran foul o’ the third mate’s fist for no seem’ your light. I were no one o’ the crew, yet they put me on lookout. And I strongly suspect, cappen, that I’m bundled off mair on account o�
� that than because of my discontent.”

  “Possibly; but I’m a man short, and will sign you at Shanghai wages—three pounds a month. You will not be struck here, and will be well treated while you do your work. We’re bound for Boston, and will go on when the engine is mended.”

  “I’m obleeged to ye, sir,” said Scotty, radiantly. “And Boston’s the port for me, sir. I’ve strong reasons for strikin’ that coast.”

  He still had his dollar secure in its leather casing, hung to his neck, but in this ship he said nothing about it.

  Nothing unpleasant happened to him on this passage homeward; and he fondly believed that his sincere intent to return the dollar to Captain Bolt had changed his luck—that his painful friction with Mr. Smart’s fist was a providential happening; but Providence had ordered otherwise, and in this manner: The steamer captain, ahead of his reckoning while approaching the coast in thick fog, ran his ship at full speed onto the sands of Cape Cod. He was unable to back off; a rising wind and sea threw the steamer broadside to the beach, and here she churned a hole for herself from which a wrecking tug could hardly pull her.

  But a wrecking tug was sent for, by signals to the shore when the fog lifted, and in time one arrived, with a lifeboat in tow—which was a lucky forethought of some one, for the rising wind and sea had developed into a storm that was breaking the ship in pieces. Anchored well out, and steaming with full power into the teeth of the gale, the tug slacked down the lifeboat, and one by one the crew sprang into the sea and was pulled in. Six trips in and out completed the rescue, and Scotty came out on the last, with the frantic captain, who never ceased his bitter self-reproach.

  But Scotty, irresponsible, had troubles of his own; he was wet and cold—for it was midwinter—and once aboard the wrecking tug, he fled the captain’s inward objurgations, and sought the warmth of the firehold. Here he burrowed far along beside the boilers, and being utterly exhausted as well as chilled and drenched, and far from the captain’s voice, fell into a sleep which lasted until the tug had tied up at Boston; then he came out, to find his shipmates gone ashore.