Toward this same hazardous and uncharted route, he now set his course, exclaiming:
“We’re shavin’ corners, but I ken a way that’ll see us through.”
From for’ard Louis was still keeping the lead going.
“Twelve,” he yelled.
“What’s comin’ next, Skip?” inquired Allan MacEacheren.
“Ten fathom.”
Almost immediately Louis called: “Ten.”
At this moment, Murdie Chisholm, subdued, yet fearful, emerged from below. The sight that greeted him was awe inspiring and sublime. The full moon was flooding the sea floor with its silver light, while soaring breakers filled the night with the deep diapason of their roar.
At the grim visage of death that stalked before, Murdie again lost all control.
“Ye can’t go through,” he screamed. “I looked at the chart. Ye have only ten fathoms now, then it’ll be eight, then six.”
“Ye looked at the chart, did ye?” taunted Jock. “Well, ye’re sailin’ wi’ a Skipper that kens more about these waters than any government chart that ever yet was drafted.”
Murdie found a momentary reassurance in this answer, and then the hail from for’ard raised another panic.
“Six.”
There was something appalling in this hail. Six fathoms, shoaling every minute, and driving straight into it, toward the most dreaded bar in all the North Atlantic. Ahead, astern, on every hand nothing could be seen but mountains of breaking water. But over all, in fleeting glimpses, Cap’n Jock caught a flash of the revolving light, by which he made his reckoning.
While Murdie Chisholm was well paralyzed with fear, while even the boldest were beginning to tremble, Louis suddenly called back: “Eight!”
At the same minute, in the midst of broken water, our racing schooner found the looked-for channel.
Following the trend of the current, marked out by the smoother surface, Jock threaded his way amidst what to seaward appeared like a mammoth cauldron of death and disaster.
Murdie Chisholm had declared, “No ship can live there.”
But in spite of his prophecy, the Airlie raced safely past shoals and destruction, that stalked on every hand.
When we were almost across, there came a scream from the lookout:
“Gybe! Gybe! Breakers ahead !”
At the wheel, I saw Allan MacEacheren, straining to obey, but the Skipper merely grunted:
“Hold her steady.”
“You’ll crash her right plumb into that bar.”
“We’ll crash her right clean over.”
“But, my God, Skipper, that’ll be the end o’ us.”
“Be the end, if we don’t take a chance.”
Still cringing, Allan temporized, but the Skipper beside him was adamant
“Into it wi’her.”
“It can’t be done.”
“It’s got to be done. We’ll go over, or we’ll go under.”
A sea buried both bows.
“Punish her,” growled out the Skipper.
Another sea submerged everything up to the foremast.
Still he held her to it, squinting brine-blurred eyes, muttering between clenched teeth:
“Punish her! Punish her!”
“She’s got to do it.”
Another range of breakers loomed before, higher and whiter than ever, steep-to as a mighty cliff. For an instant, that impending
wall seemed to hang there in suspense, then down it came with overwhelming force.
This time, everything vanished clean to the break. But to my amazement, the Airlie still tossed her spoon bows skyward, and like a cork up rode that mountain wall.
There was a momentary exultation as we soared aloft, then everything went tumbling sheer into a bottomless abyss.
“Slap! Bang! Slap!”
This was the end, I told myself, and even as I waited, the amazing little craft had been picked up again by a rising wave, and coy as ever, was hurdling another of those white- capped ranges.
So far under were we that my lungs were bursting. There was an agony of apprehension. At the wheel, Allan MacEacheren began to rave:
“I can’t stand this strain no longer, Skip.”
“Ye don’t need to,” was the laconic answer. “Why?”
“Because we’re over.”
Two hours later, after a long thrash to windward, the Dundee leading the rest of the racing schooners, arrived at the prearranged rendezvous of the fleet.
Black Dan Campbell was prepared to see the flash of the Nor’ East Light, but he was not prepared for the riding lantern of the Airlie clubbed down to her mooring hawser.
As his astonished crew ranged past, they sang out:
“How in the world did you chaps get here?”
“Jumped the bar,” was the devastating answer.
CHAPTER XXVI
Blessed Mary’s Treasury
The Airlie on a Sabbath morning. Who would have dreamed that this was the same wild-driving schooner that early that season broke all records to the Western Ground!
Hushed and still in the calm of the early dawn, we lay with our jib fast to windward, helm hard down, coming up and falling off in the long and lazy roll of the Atlantic.
Through the haze, other schooners began to appear, jogging back and forth, stringing out their dories for the first catch. But no lines would be baited, no trawls under-run by our crowd on the Sabbath morning.
Coming on deck, I dropped a bucket over side, and after washing in the cold salt water, came aft to where Uncle Jock was leaning against the wheel.
“Well, laddie, it’s a braw mornin’.”
“It’s great to be alive on such a day,” I answered, breathing deep of the zesty, briny air.
“I see Black Dan and the rest o’ them are out makin’ their sets.”
“Aye, come day, come Sunday, it’s all the same to them. But it’s different wi’ our Hielan’- men from Judique. We must remember, as Father Donald says, that the sea is the Blessed Mary’s Treasury. For six days we get the good gifts, why then should we not have one day for thanks?”
“But sometimes I wonder if it pays,” I objected. “After a long run of bad luck we’re right plumb on to a swarmin’ school of fish, we might make big money on this very Sabbath.”
My Uncle shook his head in disagreement.
“Nay, lad, there are other things to think of beside the money. Dinna forget that after Cul- loden, the English offered thirty thousand pounds for Bonnie Prince Charlie. Even though the clans were starvin’ in the glens, there was none to betray our Prince. We may be poor, Johnnie Angus, but there are things in the heart of a true Hielan’man that silver cannot buy.”
That morning, many flippant and contemptuous remarks were aimed at us by passing vessels.
“Why don’t ye get after it while the goin’s good?”
“High-line Sunday or High-line Monday, it’s all the same when the fish is runnin’.”
“I ain’t runnin’ no hospital out here,” the Skipper exclaimed
“Hi, Jock, you don’t know a good chance when it comes.”
Such were the remarks aimed at our inexplicable Skipper, but aboard the Airlie, with a loyalty unlearned and an honor untaught, he struck his sails in devotion to things unseen.
In the afternoon, some of us went to visit one of the MacLehose vessels lying close by.
With Louis for a dory-mate, I set out like the rest. Rowing back, toward twilight, I was in pensive mood. It always affected me that way in a tiny boat right down on the breathing bosom of the deep. Finally, we ceased from rowing. It is surely a fine view that one gets from a wee dory all alone in the lap of the waves.
Like a cradled bird we rocked gently on the calm and s
leeping ocean. Before us in the pathway of the setting sun, a flood of running silver, of shimmering molten gold, while all about were sparkling gems, and wealth untold.
“Eh, Louis, d’ye see the riches?”
“Aye, well I see ‘em, Johnnie Angus. Riches did ye say? Sure it’s the whole jewel-box o’ the Blessed Mary that She’s pourin’ out fer ye to-day.”
Our gently tossing dory was in the place of vision. We ceased to speak. Words could not express the fullness of one’s heart. The limpid gold, the running silver, the shining gems, all these treasures poured out upon the immaculate ocean by the Immaculate Mary.
It’s all mine, I thought. Why should I ever long for any other kind of wealth?
Then the eye caught those low-lying clouds, upon the rim of the far horizon, which denoted land. Under that cloud bank was a world of cities and of men, It seemed to me as though Louis and I were some far-off gods, dwelling in another realm separate and remote from the discontented folk on shore. Ours was the peace of the sea; what more could we desire?
From these meditative moments I was aroused by another dory bearing down upon us, and the sound of a Highland boat song stealing over the silent sea. It was Little Rory pouring out his lyric soul.
“What tho’ a lowly dwelling On barren rock I own, My kingdom is the blue wave, My boatie is my throne.”
His approach meant the end of day-dreams. Quickly picking up our oars, Louis and I, keeping time to the refrain, joined lustily in the chorus:
“Ho, thou bonnie boatie, Thou bonnie boatie mine, So trim and tight a boatie Was never launched in brine.”
At the evening meal, a buzz of strange conversation sounded around pur foc’sle table.
Though unschooled, in the truest: sense our Highlanders were educated men. They had few books and magazines, but their minds were stored with a wealth of legendary lore. There in the gathering gloom of the Airlie’s foc’sle there flowed a feast of old songs and old tradition with beautiful legends of Iona and Oronsay, in keeping with the spirit of the day.
As the talk flowed on, no one noticed that the darkness of the night had fallen. When the moon came out, stealing with its softened ray through port and scuttle, our dim group below were dwelling in another world. The watch on deck hung by the companion, while the very sea’s refrain seemed to tune itself to the enchanted setting.
”I’ll tell ye,” said Little Rory, “never a horn of the best whusky distilled in a Hielan’ glen where the foot o’ a gauger to me heart like the spell o’ like this.”
The hour, the mood and the night had started us willing voyagers to the dim shore of ghosts and fairies.
The spirit land in a steam-heated apartment is one thing, in a darkened foc’sle surrounded by leagues of sea and night, it is quite another story.
From ghosts and kelpies the talk shifted to spirits of the earth, and air, and water, and the deeds of Fionn and his warrior boat.
None of us in that foc’sle wanted to remember that we were moving among shadows.
“Thomas the Rhymer,” “The Fairy Whistle,” “The King’s Daughter,” “The Golden Boat with the Silver Oars Following the Path of the Setting Sun to the Land of Youth”—these were more real than the hard portion of wresting a living from a Northern Ocean.
When the shadowy foc’sle with the spirit of the whispering wind gave way to slumber, the last sound was a voice crooning the old night blessing of the Isles:
“King of the elements,
Our guide across the sea, Grant us now soft sleep, Beneath Thy guardian lee.”
CHAPTER XXVII
Setting The Trawls
Long before sunup the following morning, Cap’n Jock bellowed through the fore scuttle:
“Come on, tumble out from below there; we’re goin to make a berth.”
It was pitch dark and biting cold. We came on deck stamping and shivering from that chill which is bitterest at the hour when vitality is lowest.
“The worst o’ this here goin’ to sea is tum- blin’ out in the mornin’ early.”
“Wish I was in the barn milkin’ the cow.”
“Why’d we ever think o’ leavin’ the farm, anyway?”
There followed the inevitable remarks on the attractiveness of agriculture. Farms never look more alluring than they do when viewed from the wallowing deck of a Banker in the midst of a grim ocean at some unearthly hour before the dawn.
Aft at the wheel the Skipper swung the vessel up into the wind, calling out as he did so:
“Give us a cast o’ the lead, there.”
Louis took charge of the sounding; after running considerable line, he called back:
“One hundred fathom out an’ no bottom, Skipper.”
“All right.”
Later, the sounding lead was cast again:
“Seventy-five fathom, and hard bottom.”
“A bit deep, we’ll stand on a bit yet. But the rest o’ ye git yer lines over the side an’ see what’s stirrin’l”
Having baited up and cast over, there followed a spell of waiting. By and by someone began hauling.
“What ye got there?”
“Nothin’ but a wee snapper.”
“Small stuff,” grunted Jock, “no use makin’ a berth here. Perhaps we’ll strike it better to the eastward.”
Day creeping on apace revealed the crests of the breaking seas extending farther and farther into the gloom. With the sun at last peeping over the kindling skyline, the cook shoved his head up and hollered:
“Breakfus! Breakfus!”
All hands, with the exception of the Skipper and deck watch, vanished below with an alacrity eloquent of what the tang of the briny can do for appetites.
Around the foc’sle table the talk was mostly
the season’s fishing, which was nearly ending,
I was objecting on account of the school which we had missed the previous Sabbath, but Little Rory cut in: “Dinna ye fear, ye can leave it to the Skip to find ‘em now. He’s got the high-line scent to his nose at last. I was watchin’ him just before we come below, standin’ there by the wheel like a man in a trance. When he’s like that he’s after fish all right, just asj if he was a-smellin’ o’ their tails.”
“How does he know where to find them?” I inquired.
This question drew a contemptuous grunt from Little Rory!
“He knows how to find them because it’s born in him. Ye can’t make a great fish-killer by teachin’. That’s something that’s got to come natural. Either a man’s got it or he ain’t.”
Jock was certainly thoroughly abstracted, as we came up from the morning meal. He saw no one; heard no one.
As Little Rory put it, he was “after the fish with all his soul.”
Each man returned to his handline over the side, while the schooner jogged on at a fair clip.
I was the first to feel a bite; as a mighty tug was apparent at the end of my line, I sang out:
“Here’s a real one at last.”
Soon several of the others were also hauling away with might and main.
“Guess we’re on to ‘em now,” said the Skipper. “Give us another go with the lead.”
“Sixty,” came back the hail.
“Sixty fathom, an’ by the looks o’ what ye lads are now pullin’ in, there’s somethin’ better than sardines this time. Bear a hand for’ard and drop the anchor before she drifts away from it.”
Forward on the port side there lay coiled up a huge pile of manila cable, a half a mile in length, used as a riding hawser; this now went over the side after the anchor.
“Give her enough to let her ride easy,” was the order.
For the next hour, after the vessel was “clubbed down” there was a tattoo of knives all along the quarter, cutting up chunks of herrin
g, and baiting trawl hooks.
The trawls consisted of tarred cotton lines, fifty fathoms for a tub. Each dory set six tubs, so that a set formed a long string when extended in one direction. The hooks were placed a fathom apart. As to the trawl itself, each end was attached to a buoy line, to connect it with the surface.
Most of the fishing in our fleet was done in dories with a crew of two men each. The Airlie carried ten dories, and twenty dory-mates. When each crew had his complement of six tubs of trawls baited up, the Skipper ordered:
“Get ready your dories.”
This set the MacEacherens on the one side, and Louis and myself on the other, jumping to it. The two top dories were hoisted over the rail, on port and starboard, and were left to hang there until the next were ready, when they were lowered into the water.
Between the dories, as between the parent vessels of the fleet, a spirit of keenest rivalry existed, which meant that the minute a dory touched the water it was drive her like fury in order to make the largest catch in the shortest order. Top dories held the place of honor by dint of ceaseless striving.
Dropping aft on the quarter, Louis jumped aboard, while I handed him our trawl tubs and gear; then joining him the pair of us started away to windward.
As the others were ready, they followed on the course assigned, and the work of setting the trawls commenced. Each dory took a different direction. The vessel thus formed the hub from which the trawls radiated like the spokes of a mammoth wheel.
After rowing out to the place where we were to commence operations, I pitched over the buoy, with buoy-line attached. Before the buoy-line was all out, a tub of trawl was lifted on the after thwart and secured to it with the anchor, which was also thrown overboard.
While Louis rowed away, I let the trawl run out, hook after hook, throwing each one clear so that they could not become fouled. When one skate went, another was bent to it, and the performance carried on until all the trawls were disposed of. When the end was reached, the second anchor and buoy were let go. This left over a mile of baited line anchored on the bottom, each end marked out on the surface by floating buoys.
With this tack completed, Louis and I rowed back to the vessel to await for a sufficient time to give the fish a chance to bite.
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