The Sea-Story Megapack: 30 Classic Nautical Works

by Jack Williamson

  “Skipper Nicholas,” says Tom Bull, in an anxious whisper, “I’m tied up t’ Judby’s wharf, bound out at dawn, if the wind holds. I ’low you is in trouble, lad, along o’ them jools. An’ if you wants t’ cut an’ run—”

  In the pause my uncle scowled.

  —“The little Good Omen,” says Tom Bull, under his breath, “is your’n t’ command!”

  ’Twas kind of intention, no doubt, but done in folly—in stupid (if not befuddled) misconception of the old man’s mettle. My uncle sat quite still, frowning into his glass; the purple color crept into the long, crescent scar of his scalp, his unkempt beard bristled like a boar’s back, the flesh of his cheeks, in composure of a ruddy hue, turned a spotty crimson and white, with the web of veins swelling ominously. All the storm signals I had, with the acumen of the child who suffers unerring discipline, mastered to that hour were at the mast-head, prognosticating a rare explosion of rage. But there was no stirring on my uncle’s part; he continued to stare into his glass, with his hairy brows drawn quite over his eyes.

  The blundering fellow leaned close to my uncle’s ear. “If ’tis turn-tail or chokee for you, along o’ them jools,” says he, “I’ll put you across—”

  My uncle’s eyes shifted to his staff.

  —“T’ the Frenchmen—”

  My uncle’s great right hand was softly approaching his staff.

  —“Well,” says the blundering Tom Bull, “give the old girl a wind with some slap to it, I’ll put you across in—”

  My uncle fetched him a smart crack on the pate, so that the man leaped away, in indignation, and vigorously rubbed his head, but durst not swear (for he was a Methodist), and, being thus desperately situated, could say nothing at all, but could only petulantly whimper and stamp his foot, which I thought a mean thing for a man to do in such circumstances. “A poor way,” says he, at last, “t’ treat an old shipmate!” I thought it marvellously weak; my uncle would have had some real and searching thing to say—some slashing words (and, may be, a blow). “An you isn’t a thief,” cries Tom Bull, in anger, “you looks it, anyhow. An’ the rig o’ that lad bears me out. Where’d you come by them jools? Eh?” he demanded. “Where’d you come by them di’monds and pearls? Where’d you come by them rubies an’ watches? You—Nick Top: Twist Tickle hook-an’-line man! Buyin’ di’monds for a pauper,” he snorted, “an’ drinkin’ Cheap an’ Nasty! Them things don’t mix, Nick Top. Go be hanged! The police ’ll cotch ye yet.”

  “No,” says my uncle, gently; “not yet.”

  Tom Bull stamped out in a rage.

  “No,” my uncle repeated, wiping the sweat from his brow, “Tom Bull forgotten; the police ’ll not cotch me. Oh no, Dannie!” he sighed. “They’ll not cotch me—not yet!”

  * * * *

  Then out of the black night came late company like a squall o’ wind: Cap’n Jack Large, no less! Newly in from Cadiz, in salt, with a spanking passage to make water-side folk stare at him (the Last Hope was the scandal of her owners). He turned the tap-room into an uproar; and no man would believe his tale. ’Twas beyond belief, with Longway’s trim, new, two-hundred-ton Flying Fish, of the same sailing, not yet reported! And sighting Nicholas Top and me, Cap’n Jack Large cast off the cronies he had gathered in the tap-room progress of the night, and came to our stall, as I expected when he bore in from the rain, and sent my uncle’s bottle of Cheap and Nasty off with contempt, and called for a bottle of Long Tom (the best, as I knew, the Anchor and Chain afforded), which must be broached under his eye, and said he would drink with us until we were turned out or dawn came. Lord, how I loved that man, as a child, in those days: his jollity and bigness and courage and sea-clear eyes! ’Twas grand to feel, aside from the comfort of him, that he had put grown folk away to fondle the child on his knee—a mystery, to be sure, but yet a grateful thing. Indeed, ’twas marvellously comfortable to sit close to him. But I never saw him again: for the Last Hope went down, with a cargo of mean fish, in the fall of the next year, in the sea between St. John’s and the West Indies.

  But that night—

  “Cap’n Jack,” says I, “you quit that basket.”

  He laughed.

  “You quit her,” I pleaded. “But ecod, man!” says I, “please quit her. An you don’t I’ll never see you more.”

  “An’ you’ll never care,” cries he. “Not you, Master Callaway!”

  “Do you quit her, man!”

  “I isn’t able,” says he, drawing me to his knee; “for, Dannie,” says he, his blue eyes alight, “they isn’t ar another man in Newf’un’land would take that basket t’ sea!”

  I sighed.

  “Come, Dannie,” says he, “what’ll ye take t’ drink?”

  “A nip o’ ginger-ale,” says I, dolefully.

  Cap’n Jack put his arm around the bar-maid. “Fetch Dannie,” says he, “the brand that comes from over-seas.”

  Off she went.

  “Lord love us!” groans my uncle; “that’s two.”

  “’Twill do un no harm, Nick,” says Cap’n Jack. “You just dose un well when you gets un back t’ the Tickle.”

  “I will,” says my uncle.

  He did.…

  * * * *

  And we made a jovial night of it. Cap’n Jack would not let me off his knee. Not he! He held me close and kindly; and while he yarned of the passage to my uncle, and interjected strange wishes for a wife, he whispered many things in my ear to delight me, and promised me, upon his word, a sailing from St. John’s to Spanish ports, when I was grown old enough, if only I would come in that basket of a Lost Hope, which I maintained I never would do. ’Twas what my uncle was used to calling a lovely time; and, as for me, I wish I were a child again, and Cap’n Jack were come in from the rain, and my uncle tipping the bottle of Long Tom (though ’twere a scandal). Ay, indeed I do! That I were a child again, used to tap-room bottles, and that big Cap’n Jack had come in from the gale to tell me I was a brave lad in whom he found a comfort neither of the solid land nor of water-side companionship. But I did not think of Cap’n Jack that night, when my uncle had stowed me away in my bed at the hotel; but, rather, in the long, wakeful hours, through which I lay alone, I thought of Tom Bull’s question, “Where’d ye get them jools?”

  I had never before been troubled—not once; always I had worn the glittering stones without question.

  “Where’d ye get them jools?”

  I could not fall asleep: I repeated the twenty-third psalm, according to my teaching; but still I could not fall asleep.…

  III

  THE CATECHISM AT TWIST TICKLE

  Of an evening at Twist Tickle Nicholas Top would sit unstrung and wistful in his great chair by the west window, with the curtains drawn wide, there waiting, in deepening gloom and fear, for the last light to leave the world. With his head fallen upon his breast and his eyes grown fixed and tragical with far-off gazing, he would look out upon the appalling sweep of sea and rock and sky, where the sombre wonder of the dusk was working more terribly than with thunder: clouds in embers, cliffs and mist and tumbling water turning to shadows, vanishing, as though they were not. In the place of a shining world, spread familiar and open, from its paths to the golden haze of its uttermost parts, there would come the cloud and mystery and straying noises of the night, wherein lurk and peer and restlessly move whatsoever may see in the dark.

  Thus would he sit oppressed while night covered the world he knew by day. And there would come up from the sea its voice; and the sea has no voice, but mysteriously touches the strings within the soul of a man, so that the soul speaks in its own way, each soul lifting its peculiar message. For me ’twas sweet to watch the tender shadows creep upon the western fire, to see the great gray rocks dissolve, to hear the sea’s melodious whispering; but to him (it seemed) the sea spoke harshly and the night came with foreboding. In the silence and failing light of the hour, looking upon the stupendous works of the Lord, he would repeat the words of the prophet of the Lord:

&nb
sp; “For behold the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire.” And again, with his hand upon his forehead and his brows fallen hopelessly, “With his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire.” Still repeating the awful words, his voice broken to a terrified whisper, “His rebuke with the flames of fire!” And in particular moods, when the prophets, however sonorous, were inadequate to his need, my uncle would have recourse to his own pithy vocabulary for terms with which to anathematize himself; but these, of course, may not be written in a book.

  * * * *

  When the dusk was come my uncle would turn blithely from this melancholy contemplation and call for a lamp and his bottle. While I was about this business (our maid-servant would not handle the bottle lest she be damned for it), my uncle would stump the floor, making gallant efforts to whistle and trill: by this exhorting himself to a cheerful mood, so that when I had moved his great chair to the table, with the lamp near and turned high, and had placed a stool for his wooden leg, and had set his bottle and glass and little brown jug of cold water conveniently at hand, his face would be pleasantly rippling and his eyes all a-twinkle.

  “Up with un, Dannie!” says he.

  ’Twas his fancy that he had gout in the tip of his wooden leg. I must lift the ailing bit of timber to the stool with caution.

  “Ouch!” groans he. “Easy, lad!”

  ’Twas now in place.

  “All ship-shape an’ cheerful,” says he. “Pass the bottle.”

  He would then stand me up for catechism; and to this task I would come with alacrity, and my heels would come together, and my shoulders square, and my hands go behind my back, as in the line at school. ’Twas a solemn game, whatever the form it took, whether dealing with my possessions, hopes, deportment, or what-not; and however grotesque an appearance the thing may wear, ’twas done in earnest by us both and with some real pains (when I was stupid or sleepy) to me. ’Twas the way he had, too, of teaching me that which he would have me conceive him to be—of fashioning in my heart and mind the character he would there wear. A clumsy, forecastle method, and most pathetically engaging, to be sure! But in effect unapproached: for to this day, when I know him as he was, the man he would appear to be sticks in my heart and will not be supplanted. Nor would I willingly yield the wistful old dog’s place to a gentleman of more brilliant parts.

  “Dannie, lad,” he would begin, in the manner of a visiting trustee, but yet with a little twitch and flush of embarrassment, which must be wiped away with his great bandanna handkerchief—“Dannie, lad,” he would begin, “is ol’ Nicholas Top a well-knowed figger in Newf’un’land?”

  “He’s knowed,” was the response I had been taught, “from Cape Race t’ Chidley.”

  “What for?”

  “Standin’ by.”

  So far so good; my uncle would beam upon me, as though the compliment were of my own devising, until ’twas necessary once more to wipe the smile and blush from his great wet countenance.

  “Is it righteous,” says he, “t’ stand by?”

  “’Tis that.”

  He would now lean close with his poser: “Does it say so in the Bible? Ah ha, lad! Does it say so there?”

  “’Twas left out,” says I, having to this been scandalously taught, “by mistake!”

  ’Twas my uncle’s sad habit thus to solve his ethical difficulties. To a gigantic, thumb-worn Bible he would turn, the which, having sought with unsuccess until his temper was hot, he would fling back to its place, growling: “Them ol’ prophets was dunderheads, anyhow; they left out more’n they put in. Why, Dannie,” in vast disgust, “you don’t find the mention of barratry from jib-boom t’ taffrail! An’ you mean t’ set there an’ tell me them prophets didn’t make no mistake? No, sir! I ’low they was well rope’s-ended for neglect o’ dooty when the Skipper cotched un in the other Harbor.” But if by chance, in his impatient haste, he stumbled upon some confirmation of his own philosophy, he would crow: “There you got it, Dannie! Right under the thumb o’ me! Them ol’ bullies was wise as owls.” ’Twas largely a matter of words, no doubt (my uncle being self-taught in all things); and ’tis possible that the virtue of standing by, indirectly commended, to be sure, is not specifically and in terms enjoined upon the righteous. However—

  “Come, now!” says my uncle; “would you say that ol’ Nicholas Top was famous for standin’ by?”

  ’Twas hard to remember the long response. “Well,” I must begin, in a doubtful drawl, every word and changing inflection his own, as I had been taught, “I wouldn’t go quite t’ the length o’ that. Ol’ Nicholas Top wouldn’t claim it hisself. Ol’ Nicholas Top on’y claims that he’s good at standin’ by. His cronies do ’low that he can’t be beat at it by ar a man in Newf’un’land; but Nicholas wouldn’t go t’ the length o’ sayin’ so hisself. ‘Ol’ Nick,’ says they, ‘would stand by if the ship was skippered by the devil and inbound on a fiery wind t’ the tickle t’ hell. Whatever Nick says he’ll do,’ says they, ‘is all the same as did; an’ if he says he’ll stand by, he’ll stick, blow high or blow low, fog, ice, or reefs. “Be jiggered t’ port an’ weather!” says he.’14 But sure,” I must conclude, “ol’ Nicholas wouldn’t say so hisself. An’ so I wouldn’t go t’ the length o’ holdin’ that he was famous for standin’ by. Take it by an’ all, if I was wantin’ sea room, I’d stick t’ well knowed an’ be done with it.”

  “Co’-rect!” says my uncle, with a smack of satisfaction. “You got that long one right, Dannie. An’ now, lad,” says he, his voice turning soft and genuine in feeling, “what’s the ol’ sailorman tryin’ t’ make out o’ you?”

  “A gentleman.”

  “An’ why?”

  Then this disquieting response:

  “’Tis none o’ my business.”

  ’Twould have been logical had he asked me: “An’, Dannie, lad, what’s a gentleman?” But this he never did; and I think, regarding the thing from this distance, that he was himself unable to frame the definition, so that, of course, I never could be taught it. But he was diligent in pursuit of this knowledge; he sat with open ears in those exclusive tap-rooms where “the big bugs t’ St. John’s” (as he called them) congregated; indeed, the little gold watch by which Skipper Tom Bull’s suspicion had been excited at the Anchor and Chain came to me immediately after the Commissioner of This had remarked to the Commissioner of That, within my uncle’s hearing—this at the Gold Bullet over a bottle of Long Tom—that a watch of modest proportions was the watch for a gentleman to wear (my other watches had been chosen with an opposite idea). And my uncle, too (of which anon), held in high regard that somewhat questionable light of morality and deportment whom he was used to calling ol’ Skipper Chesterfield. But “What is a gentleman?” was omitted from my catechism.

  “An’ is this ol’ Nicholas Top a liar?” says my uncle.

  “No, sir.”

  “Is he a thief?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Smuggler?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Have he ever been mixed up in burglary, murder, arson, barratry, piracy, fish stealin’, or speckalation?”

  “No, sir.”

  To indicate his utter detachment from personal interest in the question to follow, my uncle would wave his dilapidated hand, as though leaving me free to answer as I would, which by no means was I.

  “An’ of how much,” says he, “would he rob his neighbor that he might prosper?”

  ’Twas now time for me to turn loud and indignant, as I had been taught. Thus: my head must shoot out in truculent fashion, my brows bend, my lips curl away from my teeth like a snarling dog’s, my eyes glare; and I must let my small body shake with explosive rage, in imitation of my uncle, while I brought the table a thwack with all my force, shouting:

  “Not a damn copper!”

  “Good!” says my uncle, placidly. “You done that v
ery well, Dannie, for a lad. You fetched out the damn quite noisy an’ agreeable. Now,” says he, “is Nicholas Top a rascal?”

  ’Twas here we had trouble; in the beginning, when this learning was undertaken, I must be whipped to answer as he would have me. Ay, and many a night have I gone sore to bed for my perversity, for in respect to obedience his severity was unmitigated, as with all seafaring men. But I might stand obstinate for a moment—a moment of grace. And upon the wall behind his chair, hanging in the dimmer light, was a colored print portraying a blue sea, spread with rank upon rank of accurately measured waves, each with its tiny cap of foam, stretching without diminution to the horizon, upon which was perched a full-rigged ship, a geometrical triumph; and from this vessel came by small-boat to the strand a company of accurately moulded, accurately featured, accurately tailored fellows, pulling with perfect accuracy in every respect. I shall never forget the geometrical gentleman upon that geometrically tempestuous sea, for as I stood sullen before my uncle they provided the only distraction at hand.

  “Come, Daniel!” says he, in a little flare of wrath; “is he a rascal?”

  “Well,” says I, defiantly, “I’ve heard un lied about.”

  “Wrong!” roars my uncle. “Try again, sir! Is ol’ Nicholas Top a rascal?”

  There was no help for it. I must say the unkind words or be thrashed for an obstinate whelp.

  “A damned rascal, sir!” says I.

  “Co’-rect!” cries my uncle, delighted.15

  And now, presently, my uncle would drawl, “Well, Dannie, lad, you might ’s well measure out the other,” and when I had with care poured his last dram would send me off to bed. Sometimes he would have me say my prayers at his knee—not often—most when high winds, without rain, shook our windows and sang mournfully past the cottage, and he was unnerved by the night. “The wind’s high the night,” says he, with an anxious frown; “an’ Dannie,” says he, laying a hand upon my head, “you might ’s well overhaul that there