Crested Seas

by Arthur Hunt Chute

  “D’ye think ye could take my place to the wheel?”

  “Sure I could do that.”

  “All right, then, I’ll go out wi’ your dory- mate.”

  Without further ado, the Skipper hauled in on our painter, vaulted aboard, and paid our dory astern, while others began to string out behind us.

  Taking his place at the wheel, Louis started down the line, dropping the dories as he went.

  We were at the extreme end of the line, and the final dory to be cast loose. Just before letting go, the Skipper sang out:

  “Watch the weather sharp now, Louis, and if ye see her breezin’ up, hoist the ensign to the peak as the signal to come in, then start right down the line. We’ll be at the end, so ye can pick us up last”

  “Aye, aye,” he answered, as the vessel ranged away, and in the next instant, standing up in the bows, Cap’n Jock grabbed our highflyer and commenced hauling in our gear.

  This was the first time that I had ever seen Uncle in a dory and I noted with satisfaction that he was quite as able at handling a trawl as he was at handling a schooner. There was a touch of genius in the way he swung to the mighty weight of hempen line coming inboard over the bow, while I quickly stowed it into tubs amidships.

  At first, the Skipper said nothing, maintaining his usual dour silence, but as the fish were coming in aplenty his spirits began to rise, while he opened up on some of the fine points in the art of trawling.

  “Ye want to get the rhythm, Johnnie Angus; there’s a kind o’ lilt an’ swing about this game. Get the music o’ it, an’ the job is twice as easy. . . . Here comes a big one,” he called, as a giant halibut hove in sight.

  I whipped out the gaff and was just about to swing him in, when the Skipper called: “Club him first.”

  He was a beauty, weighing well over a hundred pounds, and I finally got him aboard senseless. But soon a flopping told me that there was more kick left in him, whereat Uncle Jock called: “Tie his tail to the risings o’ the dory.”

  When we had all but the last skate of trawl aboard, the Skipper paused to rest, exclaiming:

  “All right, young feller, I guess you can spell me for a while here now.”

  At that, we changed places and I began to address myself to the last skate of trawl.

  Standing thus, I had an opportunity to see that the calm was over. The wind was blowing in long gusty squalls, while in the southeast an ominous blackness was rising rapidly, as though the night in an untimely rage had started to swallow up the dawn.

  “Don’t like the look o’ that sky to win’ard,” I muttered.

  “No good talkin’ about that now, get after yer trawl, smart as ye can.”

  “But there’s the ensign on the schooner, Uncle Jock.”

  “Aye, Louis’s startin’ to pick ‘em up.”

  “That’s goin’ to be a bad one when it hits!”

  I could already feel the first rush of wind upon my cheek, while the sudden liveliness told how fast the sea was making. There was something appalling at that moment, standing up there in the bow of a tiny dory facing the wrath of that rising giant.

  Never in my life did I feel so pitifully weak and ineffective.

  “Shall I cut the trawl?”

  “No, hang on to it fer your life.”

  “Why hang on?”

  “Only way ye got o’ keepin’ her head to the seas. Besides, if ye let go, vessel can’t pick us up.”

  With the mad straining and plunging of the

  dory, the task of hanging on was becoming increasingly difficult.

  “Take a turn wi’ the trawl around the gurdy,” sang out Uncle Jock.

  After this, relieved of the strain, I straightened up to gaze into the teeth of the oncoming fury.

  With fascination, I watched the schooner racing down in our direction. She had picked up one after another of the scattered dories and now had them all, except ourselves, on the extreme end of the line. We were the last remaining dory. Watching the Airlie bearing grandly down upon us, it seemed as though she were racing against some sinister fate.

  “This is goin’ to be an old whistler when it comes,” grunted Uncle Jock, who sat with oar in readiness.

  In the same instant, I saw the schooner vanish like a candle snuffed in darkness.

  “They won’t get us.”

  “Look out!”

  My Uncle’s warning came too late.

  Driven before the bitter urge of the wind came a wall of water, foam crested, white, and roaring. Standing erect by the trawl line in the bows, I was caught unexpectedly, and, with a sudden rearing of our tiny craft, was Sent plunging headlong into the depths.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  The Old Enemy

  At the first shock of icy water, I felt my pulse-beat flutter. There was something appalling in the black, cold, engulfing monster that opened up beneath and swallowed me into its insatiable maw.

  Down, down, down I went while heavy boots and oilskins carried with them a weight of doom. Outraged lungs were ready to burst at the increasing pressure, but I set my teeth like iron refusing to fill my lungs with brine.

  It seemed as though an overwhelming monster was gripping at my throat, declaring, “Now I’ve got ye! Now I’ve got ye!”

  But even in that desperate strait something within me kept flinging back, “Not yet! Not yet l”

  At length, after endless struggling, I was conscious that I was coming up, and then my head bumped against the bottom of the dory.

  There was a stifling stench of weed and fish, not to be endured, and yet, try as I might, I could not escape from under. My ears were full of roarings, my eyes were blurred and sightless, my lungs were bursting, but no matter how hopeless the outlook, the will to live was strong within me. Urged by this one purpose, I finally tore myself clear and came bobbing up for a gasp of brine-soaked air.

  My head was above the surface only for an instant, and with something clutching at me from beneath, I was again borne under.

  Down, down I went, while a wave of helplessness began to throttle effort. No matter how invincible one’s spirit there is a limit to the endurance of flesh and blood. Strive as I might there was always a mysterious force striving against me. There was an uncanny feeling that here Was something more than the sea.

  What was clutching at me? What power; wrapped me insidiously in its meshes?

  While I fought madly there was a sense of continual defeat. Indeed, resistance was about ended, when in black, unseeing depths, I became aware of endless tentacles that clung to me, and swayed with the movement of the tide.

  The thought of sea serpents and other unspeakable creatures came with horror. All about me was this entwining influence. What could it be? Then the meaning of it dawned upon my dazed senses. The cause of all this blind terror was the trawl line which floated outward from the dory. This was the intangible something that had threatened so insidiously. And yet, in its very clutches was the promise of life.

  Resolutely, and with renewed purpose, I started to come up hand over hand along the trawl. As luck would have it, the two turns which I made in the gurdy wench before the squall, held fast, while the tide swept me as I struggled slowly to windward and toward the surface.

  I was making good progress, when one of the stout hooks on the trawl suddenly caught in my forefinger. There was a rush of pain, but in that extremity it passed almost unheeded. To get a fish hook in one’s finger seems like a trivial thing, but it was almost as good as a death warrant for me far under water in that distressing and exhausted moment.

  With the quick pain of the piercing hook, my body was as good as done, but the blind, subconscious will to live still carried on.

  Reaching my other hand up the trawl, as far as I could, with a desperate pull I tore the hook completely through my finger,
making an ugly gaping wound, and was thus enabled to proceed, coming at last to the surface, close by the dory.

  I called out weakly for aid, but the roaring of the seas drowned my voice. Realizing that I could not be heard, I started to work along the trawl toward the dory, while something of the old devil lurking in me, caused me to cry out against the sea in fierce resentment.

  As though to mock that last mad outburst, while my hand was already clutching the gunnel of the dory, a second hook caught in the leg of my trousers. With the meshes of that barbed trawl entwining themselves around me like some Laocoon, I opened my mouth and screamed.

  Before my scream could carry above the roarings of the squall, I had drunk my fill of brine, and fell back helpless in the grip of that seemingly unescapable power.

  For me, this trawl was no longer a hempen line of snoods and hooks. It was no longer an inanimate object. It was rather the personification of an overwhelming monster bent on the sole purpose of encompassing my destruction.

  In that underwater struggle with the demon of a trawl, I plumbed the depths of fear and horror. It seemed as though the weight of mountains rested on my feet. My body appeared to sweat a grease as I sank downward and ever downward.

  With the last flutter of resistance being blindly stifled in me, I was aware of a sudden strong, steady, upward pull.

  At first I thought that it was merely the fancy of a fevered brain, but as the upward surge continued there was no doubt that deliverance was at hand.

  As I bobbed to the surface, I was dimly aware that my Uncle Jock was grabbing me by the collar. And then, as though I were a great halibut, he lifted me skillfully inboard, to fall swooning in the bottom of the dory.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  Strongheart

  When I came to, I found myself sprawled out in the bottom of the dory in the midst of a pile of dead fish, while Uncle Jock was keeping us head to the foaming seas.

  From the wild leaping and pounding of our craft it was surprising that we had not foundered long since. Indeed if it had not been for the buoys, which had been lashed to the risings of the dory to port and starboard, we would certainly have succumbed in short order. As it was, Uncle Jock had his hands full keeping her bows up to meet the breaking seas.

  As soon as I gave signs of stirring, he sang but:

  “Feelin’ better, Johnnie Angus?”

  “Aye,” I replied, sitting up groggily.

  “All right, then, get on to the bailin’, and attend to it sharp, or we’ll be swamped before we know it. Look out, here’s a bad one!”

  Before one had time for questioning, another squall was upon us, blowing the tops clean off the seas, stinging our faces like hail, howling and seething before the terrific urge of the wind.

  In that moment there came to me an appalling sense of the hate and might of the sea, such as could come only in a tiny dory. As we rode up and down upon the gigantic undulations above that fifty fathom bank we were mere chips at the mercy of the elements. Never before had a mere man seemed to me to be so puny, so ineffectual.

  After having once started at the bailing, I needed no further urging to keep at it. I knew that our lives depended on our effort.

  At first the squalls were coming about every quarter of an hour, but they kept coming faster and faster, until the breaks between were of such short duration that the wind seemed to be sounding overhead with one unbroken howl.

  When I came to I thought that our preservation was due to the trawl buoys; then I came to see that, above all else, it was because of Captain Jock, seated astern with a sculling oar, facing the seas with a master hand. A moment too late, or a moment too early would have meant our undoing, but always he was just in the nick of time.

  Although hard-pressed, with his back to the wall, he sat there handling that oar as calmly as though he were sculling through the safety of the inner harbor.

  When our dory rode aloft we scaled the mountains. When we plunged downward, the bottom of the world had gone. At one moment it seemed as though we must be pitchpoled from a curling crest. In the next instant we wallowed in a valley where the heights were crashing in upon us.

  Deep down underneath in my youthful heart there had always lurked a sort of supernatural fear of the deep. Now after all the punishment meted out from this old enemy, I was like a fighter who had had enough, who was crying out for quarter. But who can ask for quarter from the mighty sea? Mere man could not come up bare-fisted against this naked ocean without a crumpling of the spine.

  There in the bottom of the dory I began to feel a greater terror than I had experienced in all my awful struggles with the trawl. Perhaps it was a reaction from the frightful shock. In a sudden impotency, I ceased from the bailing, for just a moment, but in that same moment, like some wary foe, the sea hit us a resounding smack, while half a ton of water plumped in for’ard.

  Crack! At the impact the fore thwart was smashed like matchwood. With our gunnel almost level with the water, the dory started wallowing into the trough of a down-tumbling mountain.

  “Bail fer yer lifer

  Suiting the action to the word, Cap’n Jock went to it like mad, pitching the water out with an empty trawl tub.

  For myself, I was done, feeling sure that our time had come. I had chucked up the sponge, I was asking only for the finishing blow to be sharp and swift, and then, wallowing there abjectly, I was suddenly aware of a decisive kick applied with meaning eloquence. Came a pause, as Cap’n Jock bent to the sweep to guide us up the sheer side of a rising grayback, and then two more vigorous kicks followed.

  “Git after the bailin’, I tell ye.”

  “What’s the good?” I answered listlessly.

  Not deigning to enter into further parley he dealt me another lift with his boot, and at the irresistible urge I found myself again going to it with might and main.

  In the breathless moments between the bailing, I glanced back at my Uncle hanging on to the mighty sweep with invincible determination, his face crimsoned from the lashing spray, his sou’wester hauled far down, his jaw beneath set like some grim Gibraltar.

  Looking at him made me forget myself. The mere outward imperturbability of this man was somehow strangely reassuring to one who was with him in a crisis.

  All through the forenoon we continued our unequal conflict The mere fact of our survival hour after hour in the teeth of such threatenings filled me with an increasing sense of awe of Cap’n Jock.

  It is wonderful how the casualties of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them.

  I had never before rightly appraised my Uncle. I never dreamed of the fighting prowess that was in him, until I beheld him up against this greatest testing in a lost dory, flung as it were into a conflict of naked fists against a naked ocean.

  Catching me watching him in one of the moments of respite, he chided:

  “None o’ yer gawkin’, Johnnie Angus; watch the seas, not me.”

  “I’d a sworn we were done a good many times,” I panted.

  “Bah, a man ain’t never done so long as there’s another kick left in him.”

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  Dory-Mates

  By the following morning the storm had blown itself out. Nothing but the deep- troughed rollers told of the terrific ordeal through which we had passed.

  With the coming of dawn we scanned the horizon with hungry eye, but wherever we turned there was nothing to be seen but the heaving waste of gray immensity.

  “No sign of a sail anywhere?”

  “No, and not even the lift of a steamer’s smoke.”

  “Ought to pick up somebody hereabouts, shouldn’t we?”

  “Can’t be too sure. Might run right plumb into a dozen vessels in an hour. And then again we might go for days without a sight of anyone.”

  “What do you think that w
e had better do?”

  “Only one thing, and that is to head straight for the mainland.”

  “And how in the world are we going to get there?”

  ‘How do ye suppose?” grunted Cap’n Jock, as he started to rig up the dory sail, and then put our tiny craft upon her course as though a mere mile or two intervened instead of a hundred between us and the mainland.

  The prospect was cheerless and foreboding. Dark masses of snow-laden cloud were driven to leeward, while the seas were lashed into broken crests. Tearing and pounding into the rollers the dory went like mad, now plunging headlong, now lurching in the hollow, now fighting up again undaunted.

  All through the rest of the day we held our course, heading N.N.E. toward the nearest headland.

  It was piercing cold, but we kept ourselves comparatively warm by the ceaseless exertion at the bailing. By nightfall the wind had hauled into an offshore quarter, and the biting north began to show its teeth in the veering blast.

  “We’re up against it now; we can’t go any further,” I exclaimed, at last.

  Without a word, Cap’n Jock philosophically accepted what came, and proceeded to unstep the mast. Then without more ado he took up the oars and grunted:

  “Let’s row.”

  With the increasing pangs of cold and exhaustion I was beginning to feel the lack of food.

  “Wish we’d brought a couple o’ biscuits.”

  “Wishin’ won’t do no good,” answered the Skipper.

  During the night, out of sheer exhaustion, I slept at the rowing. When I awakened, the sun was an hour up on the horizon.

  In front of me I saw the broad back of my Uncle, bending rhythmically at long steady pulls.

  Hearing me stir, he called back:

  “D’ye feel better fer your nap?”

  “Feel like a new person.”

  After he had passed me the water bottle for a drink, I started with renewed vigor to take my part again at the oars.

  Noticing that he did not help himself, but corked the bottle after my turn, I inquired: