It requires a stout heart and a nimble hand to maneuver in white water, but Louis and I were experienced at this thrilling pastime.
Finally, we won across the bad stretch, to the calmer area, in the safe shelter of the island.
As we came up under the Airlie’s stern, a deck-hand took our painter, and after making fast, we were soon aboard.
I found my Uncle Jock seated in his cabin,
dour and glum as ever, but he almost smiled at sight of me.
“Johnnie Angus, fer sure. Did ye drop [down frae heaven?”
“We came across in a dory.”
“Does yer mother know ye’re chancin’ it on sic a day?”
“No,” I replied sheepishly.
“I’ll bet she doesn’t. Well, ye can’t keep a sea dog away from the water,” he remarked, “and now, I suppose ye’ll both be fair hungry.”
“Nearly famished.”
“All right, gang for’ard there, and help yer- selves out o’ the shack locker.”
The shack locker was a sort of pantry in the foc’sle where the men took snacks between meals. As the Gloucester boats were famous for good feeding, Louis and I lost no time in accepting my uncle’s suggestion.
It was growing dark, and certainly looked bad, as we crossed the deck to the fore scuttle.
Noticing the weather prospects, Louis remarked :
“Guess it’s going to be stiff getting back, tonight.”
For my part, I was not given to crossing a bridge till I got there; accordingly I set myself with care-free mind to the task of exploring the recesses of the shack locker.
Blueberry pie, hot coffee, and doughnuts
formed our repast, and after the vigorous exertions of the day, it tasted like a feast of kings.
Whilst we ate, “Doctor Brown,” the cook, regaled us with hair-raising yarns of the time he was lost in a dory in the slob ice.
When we finally washed down the last piece of blueberry pie, and clambered back again on deck, it was with sudden alarm.
We had been below there far longer than anticipated, and now the untimely night had fallen. It was already quite dark, the darkness lightened here and there by the phosphorescent glare of breaking seas, while over our heads, the mighty wind sounded with an unending roar.
“We can’t be gettin’ back to-night,” said Louis, with dismay.
“We’ll have to,” I averred, thinking of my Mother.
No matter what happened, I always contrived to get back home on her account, and now was determined, in spite of the black seas, not to disappoint her.
Without even the ceremony of a good-by, I turned toward our dory, paid out astern, and was just starting to haul in on the painter, when the Skipper himself emerged from the after companion, eyed me for an instant through the gloom, and then called:
“Where ye bound?”
“Back home.”
“No, ye ain’t.”
“But I’ve got to, on account of my Mother.”
“Have to disappoint her this time, sonnie; no dory’d live in the tide rips out there.”
“But we got over here all right.”
“Aye, but the wind wasn’t buckin’ the current then as it is now. Might as well make the best of it,ye’ll have to stay here till the mornin’.”
I was still undecided, and started to temporize further, but my uncle was a man of few words, and with a grunt of finality, announced :
“One o’ the men will help ye swing in yer boat.”
When our dory was finally nested; with a dozen others in the waist, Louis and I started pacing up and down the deck, peering through the driving storm rack, at the lights of the fleet.
As all the best anchoring ground had been occupied when the Airlie came in, late in the afternoon, my uncle was obliged to take a berth not far from the long sand bar which extended nearly two-thirds of the distance across the southern end, leaving a comparatively narrow outlet between there and the sandspits of the mainland.
When we came aboard, toward dusk, it was raw and breezy, with a sharp choppy sea running. About nine o’clock, the wind backed to the north-northeast and began to pipe in good earnest.
Cap’n Jock, walking his poop, sniffed the rising storm with apprehension. Finally, as the blow increased, he roared:
“Turn out, all hands, and let go the second anchor.”
All hands were called again at midnight to pay out more cable. When the watch turned in, it was intensely dark. The air was filled with snow and sleet, and the gale had increased almost to a hurricane, while the tide had risen to an unprecedented height.
“Glory be, what a night!” exclaimed the mate. “If a mon slipped his moorings here, he’d be in the belly o’ hell afore he kenned where he was.”
Hardly had this exclamation escaped, before the gang paying out the cable descried a coaster driving directly down upon us, broadside to the wind.
Shouting the alarm, the crew made every effort to sheer off from the impending menace, but were only partly successful. The coaster struck us on the port bow. Our starboard anchor, hung at the cat-head, caught the other over the port cable.
“Holy Mother, save us,” yelled Louis. “Both ships are on to our anchors. Will she hold? No! No! There she goes!”
Down the wind we went toward the bow of the Dundee, broadside on, while the coaster pounded away at the helpless Airlie, as she rose and fell with the heavy seas.
“We’ll be ground between the two of them, or all of us’ll be driven in a pile on yonder bar.”
The bar was not more than a couple of hundred fathoms to leeward, where the seas were breaking masthead high. But, fortunately, the Dundee’s anchors held, giving the middle vessel time to extricate herself.
Cap’n Jock jumped aboard the Dundee, and requested Black Dan to pay out more cable, so that he would drop aft. This done, Jock swung head to the wind and paid out his cables, dropping down between the other two and astern of them, where he held on, thinking it would be safe. But in this he was disappointed, for in a moment there came a startling cry:
“Our starboard cable’s been cut by that dog of a Campbell!”
The first thing was to rig the stock of the spare anchor. The job was just completed when the mate shrieked out in dismay:
“We’re all adrift, they’ve cut the other cable!”
Was the Airlie doomed to die right there in sight of the lights of home? The stoutest heart trembled. But not a moment could be lost, for the foaming, roaring breakers were directly to leeward.
Luckily, we fell off with our head to the eastward.
Instantly; Captain Jock determined to run out of the crowded port, through the darkness of the night, intensified by blinding snow, which rendered the attempt to pass between the Southern Bar extremely hazardous. But it was a choice between that hazard and certain death on the lee shore.
Running aft to the wheel, he shouted:
“Bear a hand on the fores’l. Lively, now, and get it on hee.”
The foresail was soon up, about as high as if single-reefed. The Skipper righted the wheel, the sail filled, and we started off, racing through the inky blackness of the crowded harbor.
“Hard up! Keep her up!” shouted the lookout
Up went the wheel, the vessel swinging quickly off until a light was dimly seen on the weather bow, and the cry, “Steady so!” assured the Skipper that we were heading right.
The next instant, we went tearing by the stern of one of the fishing fleet, just clearing her main boom.
“Some close shav—” yelled Louis.
His words were suddenly cut short by a voice of warning:
“Luff! Luff!”
The Airlie went sweeping past the last of the line, almost scraping the end of a vessel’s bowsprit wi
th her rigging.
This was the outside vessel. Having kept a mental calculation of the distance run, the Skipper judged, soon after passing her, that he was far enough to keep off and run out of the channel.
Five minutes from the time that his cables were cut by the sly fox of a Campbell, we were safe outside in the open sea.
Once outside, the mate gave vent to his feelings by consigning Black Dan and all his ilk to the lowest sub-cellar of Hades. Back at the wheel, my uncle said never a word.
When at last, the irate mate had blown off steam, he came back, inquiring:
“Which way ye headin’, Skipper?”
“Western Ground,” was the reply.
And so, through the treacherous act of Black Dan, I found myself aboard a fisherman, outward bound.
CHAPTER VIII
In The Depths
For over a week we were up against it, fighting the fiercest moods of the North Atlantic, on the western Ground off Sable Island. In the words of Little Rory, the piper, “Bad luck was with us from the start.”
We had been blown out to sea, had been caught on a dangerous lee shore, had our gear mauled in clawing off, and then, as if this were not enough, to fill the tale of woe, another howling squall smote the Airlie with devastating effect. Plunging into an ugly cross sea, under storm sail and jib, the wheelsman was caught unawares, the stormsail gybed over, tearing the crotch out of the saddle, and breaking the main boom.
After this, there seemed nothing for it but to admit defeat, and turn tail for home. For myself, this was a consummation devoutly to be wished. The trip that started out as a lark had quickly settled down to grim reality. Boy-like, I was loth to admit getting more than was bargained for.
When someone inquired, “How d’ye like this kind o’ rough-stuff, young feller?” invariably I replied, “Grand.” But, to tell the truth, after the pounding which we had received, there was a deep yearning underneath to taste again the serenity of our mountain glen.
Most of the others were also weary for sight of land, and so I was not surprised, when the dories again came in empty, to hear the Skipper order them to pick up their gear, with the words:
“It’s time to get a move on.”
Of course, I anticipated the nearest port, and my heart fell as he took the wheel, exclaiming:
“No good stickin’ round here when the fish ain’t bitin’; might as well head her fer Grand Bank.”
“Grand Bank!” someone exclaimed, aghast
“We’ll put in somewhere to refit, first,” expostulated the mate.
“We’ll put in when we get our trip o’ fish.”
“But ye canna gang five hundred miles tae Grand Bank wi’ botched up gear and a broken mainboom. Ye canna take a chance like that against the winter gales.”
“It’s tae Grand Bank we’re goin’, I told ye.”
“But, look at the condition that we’re in, Skipper.”
“I come out here fer a trip o’ fish, an’ a trig o’ fish I’m goin’ to have,” answered Jock, with a tone of finality.
If the mate could have had his way, dissent would have spread to open mutiny, but the silent gray man at the wheel was not a person to be trifled with.
We started under a twenty knot blow, under foresail only, and after four days, arrived on Grand Bank.
Here the Skipper lost no time in getting out his trawls. This accomplished, all hands returned to the schooner in a rising gale.
As the night wore on, the gale increased in fury, while, to make matters worse, the tide hawsed the vessel up till she lay almost in the trough of the waves. She acted so badly that at last we were compelled to set the riding sail, bag-reefed, to keep her more nearly headed to the seas.
Shortly after the riding sail was set, there came a succession of tremendously heavy snow squalls. The snow was so dense that in the hollow of the sea the tops could not be seen. The Airlie quivered like a stricken bird, as she strove weakly up the steep sides of the mountainous seas. Even with the small rag of a sail, lying head to the wind, she buried her lee side nearly to the hatches.
Just before dawn, a mountainous beam sea crashed inboard over the waist, smashing our
dories beneath tons and tons of white and pounding water.
At this calamity, the mate was like a man possessed:
“The dories are gone! The dories are gone!”
Well might he utter this lament, for to take the dories away from a Banks fisherman was equal to cutting off his hands. All the trawls were out, and now there was no means of going to underhaul them.
After a chapter of misfortune, this was the ) final and overwhelming stroke.
As the Skipper moved about the mess that had once been his dories, it seemed to me that the taunting sea was howling out against him: “I told ye so! I told ye so!”
What was mere man, anyway, to venture so far with such puny, frail resource?
We should have put back to refit that first night, after we were blown out to sea. This business of pressing on and on, in spite of everything, was simply foolishness.
The farther we ventured, the worse was our condition. Here was the Airlie a thousand miles from her home port of Gloucester, after a month of fruitless effort, after all kinds of rebuffs, and now, as though the sea would add to its grim irony, our dories were a mass of’ shattered wreckage.
“That’s what we get fer not havin’ sense
enough to put back at first,” exclaimed a Job’s comforter.
“It was an uncanny start, an uncanny berth on the Western Ground, and now, ochone, wi’ bur gear out an’ our dories smashed the jig’s up!”
“The jig was up before we started,” wailed the mate.
As the sea went down, Cap’n Jock walked the poop, grim and silent, gazing with burning eyes at the highflyers of his trawls, that now seemed to be there merely to taunt him in his impotence.
A nor’east blizzard could not hold him, nor torn sails,; nor a broken boom, but what could a fisherman do without dories to underhaul his gear?
Doubtless, the Skipper was thinking of the hardships for his men, a month out of Gloucester fighting the storms, and then to have to go back empty-handed; it was hard indeed.
Just then, when everyone was in the depths, who should run down and speak us but the schooner Dundee, coming grandly along with everything lugged on, showing off out there on Grand Bank, just as she had deported herself on that last occasion back in Port Hood Harbor.
In our moment of misery and dejection, the sight of this high-stepping beauty, crowing
over us in her every motion, was almost unbearable.
As she ranged past our quarter, Black Dan Campbell, who was standing to her wheel, lifted up the bight of a rope in taunting manner, calling out as he did so: “Hi, there, Jock MacPhee, d’ye want a tow?”
CHAPTER IX
The Ice Floe
Whilst the Skipper was gazing aft at the impudent wake of Black Dan, an amazing transformation suddenly came over him; his features, usually stolid, grew keen, his eyes brightened, his lower jaw shot out aggressively; a living fire seemed to have leaped up within him.
Tossing his head imperiously, He started to strut up and down upon the poop, with a resistless and uneasy motion, exclaiming, ever and anon : “Bas Diarmaid” This, and other Gaelic imprecations, made me think that my uncle had gone daft, and I said so to Little Rory, the piper, to which he replied:
“Dinna ye fool yersel’, Johnnie Angus. When the auld mon looks as if he’s clean daft, that’s when there’s something goin’ tae happen. Foul Weather Jock is nae good till he’s got his back agin the wall. When he’s up agin it, that’s when ye’ll see the bonnie fighter.”
For nearly an hour, the Skipper continued to pace the poop, like a lion at bay, breaking forth occasionally into impassioned Gaelic. Then, with an inspiration, he whipped out an order to the mate.
“Get all hands on deck an’ turn ‘em to fixin’ up them broken do
ries.”
“But ye can’t do naethin’ wi’ them, Skipper; they’re smashed to kindlin’ wood.”
With every last mother’s son aboard, helpless and thoroughly beaten, the Skipper surprised all hands by jumping into their midst, shouting out:
“Ye ain’t goin’ to let a MacPhee fall down in front o’ a Campbell, are ye?”
“Not by a jugful,” answered Little Rory, with a sudden stirring of old blood.
“All right, then, ye can’t be beaten if ye won’t be beaten, so spit on yer hands, lads, an’ take a new grip.”
There was something contagious about the way that our Skipper had of “pepping up” his crew, and soon, a chorus of hammers were ringing merrily along the deck.
Under the Skipper’s guidance, the remains of two dories were taken to repair the rest.
There were no nails suitable for the work, at which the mate again wanted to throw up his hands, but Jock was ready for every emergency. At his suggestion, this last difficulty was obviated by heating some board nails and thereby making them pliable.
Making the best of a bad job, we were able finally to get all but two of our dories more or less repaired, and then, without the slightest delay, the Skipper ordered the gang over the side to underhaul their gear.
The Airlie was in one hundred and fifty fathoms, which was then thought to be a great depth to fish in, but on our first set, after the mending of the dories, we caught about eight thousand pounds of halibut. It seemed as though at last the evil tide had turned.
Early in the afternoon, hearing rumors of our catch, other schooners began to appear on the ground, and came to anchor, among them the Dundee, which occupied a berth about a mile to weather of our vessel.
The afternoon was fine and moderate, with decreasing northeast wind, the current setting to the northwest.
Knowing full well that the first vessel arriving home would be likely to strike a high market, and of course wishing to be first, we set twenty skates of trawl—the whole string— in the evening, not dreaming that there was any ice in a southerly direction.
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