“Happy birds that sing and fly
Round thine altars, O Most High!”
“Come with me. Come below!” said Penn, as though he had a right to give orders. Their eyes met and fought for a quarter of a minute.
“I dunno who you be, but I’ll come,” said Jason submissively. “Mebbe I’ll get back some o’ the — some o’ the-nine thousand dollars.” Penn led him into the cabin and slid the door behind.
“That ain’t Penn,” cried Uncle Salters. “It’s Jacob Boiler, an’ — he’s remembered Johnstown! I never seed such eyes in any livin’ man’s head. What’s to do naow? What’ll I do naow?”
They could hear Penn’s voice and Jason’s together. Then Penn’s went on alone, and Salters slipped off his hat, for Penn was praying. Presently the little man came up the steps, huge drops of sweat on his face, and looked at the crew. Dan was still sobbing by the wheel.
“He don’t know us,” Salters groaned. “It’s all to do over again, checkers and everything — an’ what’ll he say to me?”
Penn spoke; they could hear that it was to strangers. “I have prayed,” said he. “Our people believe in prayer. I have prayed for the life of this man’s son. Mine were drowned before my eyes — she and my eldest and — the others. Shall a man be more wise than his Maker? I prayed never for their lives, but I have prayed for this man’s son, and he will surely be sent him.”
Salters looked pleadingly at Penn to see if he remembered.
“How long have I been mad?” Penn asked suddenly. His mouth was twitching.
“Pshaw, Penn! You weren’t never mad,” Salters began “Only a little distracted like.”
“I saw the houses strike the bridge before the fires broke out. I do not remember any more. How long ago is that?”
“I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it!” cried Dan, and Harvey whimpered in sympathy.
“Abaout five year,” said Disko, in a shaking voice.
“Then I have been a charge on some one for every day of that time. Who was the man?”
Disko pointed to Salters.
“Ye hain’t — ye hain’t!” cried the sea-farmer, twisting his hands together. “Ye’ve more’n earned your keep twice-told; an’ there’s money owin’ you, Penn, besides ha’af o’ my quarter-share in the boat, which is yours fer value received.”
“You are good men. I can see that in your faces. But — ”
“Mother av Mercy,” whispered Long Jack, “an’ he’s been wid us all these trips! He’s clean bewitched.”
A schooner’s bell struck up alongside, and a voice hailed through the fog: “O Disko! ‘Heard abaout the Jennie Cushman?”
“They have found his son,” cried Penn. “Stand you still and see the salvation of the Lord!”
“Got Jason aboard here,” Disko answered, but his voice quavered. “There — warn’t any one else?”
“We’ve fund one, though. ‘Run acrost him snarled up in a mess o’ lumber thet might ha’ bin a foc’sle. His head’s cut some.”
“Who is he?”
The We’re Here’s heart-beats answered one another.
“Guess it’s young Olley,” the voice drawled.
Penn raised his hands and said something in German. Harvey could have sworn that a bright sun was shining upon his lifted face; but the drawl went on: “Sa-ay! You fellers guyed us consid’rable t’other night.”
“We don’t feel like guyin’ any now,” said Disko.
“I know it; but to tell the honest truth we was kinder — kinder driftin’ when we run agin young Olley.”
It was the irrepressible Carrie Pitman, and a roar of unsteady laughter went up from the deck of the We’re Here.
“Hedn’t you ‘baout’s well send the old man aboard? We’re runnin’ in fer more bait an’ graound-tackle. Guess you won’t want him, anyway, an’ this blame windlass work makes us short-handed. We’ll take care of him. He married my woman’s aunt.”
“I’ll give you anything in the boat,” said Troop.
“Don’t want nothin’, ‘less, mebbe, an anchor that’ll hold. Say! Young Olley’s gittin’ kinder baulky an’ excited. Send the old man along.”
Penn waked him from his stupor of despair, and Tom Platt rowed him over. He went away without a word of thanks, not knowing what was to come; and the fog closed over all.
“And now,” said Penn, drawing a deep breath as though about to preach. “And now” — the erect body sank like a sword driven home into the scabbard; the light faded from the overbright eyes; the voice returned to its usual pitiful little titter — ”and now,” said Pennsylvania Pratt, “do you think it’s too early for a little game of checkers, Mr. Salters?”
“The very thing — the very thing I was goin’ to say myself,” cried Salters promptly. “It beats all, Penn, how ye git on to what’s in a man’s mind.”
The little fellow blushed and meekly followed Salters forward.
“Up anchor! Hurry! Let’s quit these crazy waters,” shouted Disko, and never was he more swiftly obeyed.
“Now what in creation d’ye suppose is the meanin’ o’ that all?” said Long Jack, when they were working through the fog once more, damp, dripping, and bewildered.
“The way I sense it,” said Disko, at the wheel, “is this: The Jennie Cushman business comin’ on an empty stummick — ”
“H-he saw one of them go by,” sobbed Harvey.
“An’ that, o’ course, kinder hove him outer water, julluk runnin’ a craft ashore; hove him right aout, I take it, to rememberin’ Johnstown an’ Jacob Boiler an’ such-like reminiscences. Well, consolin’ Jason there held him up a piece, same’s shorin’ up a boat. Then, bein’ weak, them props slipped an’ slipped, an’ he slided down the ways, an’ naow he’s water-borne agin. That’s haow I sense it.”
They decided that Disko was entirely correct.
“‘Twould ha’ bruk Salters all up,” said Long Jack, “if Penn had stayed Jacob Boilerin’. Did ye see his face when Penn asked who he’d been charged on all these years? How is ut, Salters?”
“Asleep — dead asleep. Turned in like a child,” Salters replied, tiptoeing aft. “There won’t be no grub till he wakes, natural. Did ye ever see sech a gift in prayer? He everlastin’ly hiked young Olley outer the ocean. Thet’s my belief. Jason was tur’ble praoud of his boy, an’ I mistrusted all along ‘twas a jedgment on worshippin’ vain idols.”
“There’s others jes as sot,” said Disko.
“That’s difrunt,” Salters retorted quickly. “Penn’s not all caulked, an’ I ain’t only but doin’ my duty by him.”
They waited, those hungry men, three hours, till Penn reappeared with a smooth face and a blank mind. He said he believed that he had been dreaming. Then he wanted to know why they were so silent, and they could not tell him.
Disko worked all hands mercilessly for the next three or four days; and when they could not go out, turned them into the hold to stack the ship’s stores into smaller compass, to make more room for the fish. The packed mass ran from the cabin partition to the sliding door behind the foc’sle stove; and Disko showed how there is great art in stowing cargo so as to bring a schooner to her best draft. The crew were thus kept lively till they recovered their spirits; and Harvey was tickled with a rope’s end by Long Jack for being, as the Galway man said, “sorrowful as a sick cat over fwhat couldn’t be helped.” He did a great deal of thinking in those weary days, and told Dan what he thought, and Dan agreed with him — even to the extent of asking for fried pies instead of hooking them.
But a week later the two nearly upset the Hattie S. in a wild attempt to stab a shark with an old bayonet tied to a stick. The grim brute rubbed alongside the dory begging for small fish, and between the three of them it was a mercy they all got off alive.
At last, after playing blindman’s-buff in the fog, there came a morning when Disko shouted down the foc’sle: “Hurry, boys! We’re in taown!”
CHAPTER VIII
To the end of his days, Har
vey will never forget that sight. The sun was just clear of the horizon they had not seen for nearly a week, and his low red light struck into the riding-sails of three fleets of anchored schooners — one to the north, one to the westward, and one to the south. There must have been nearly a hundred of them, of every possible make and build, with, far away, a square-rigged Frenchman, all bowing and courtesying one to the other. From every boat dories were dropping away like bees from a crowded hive, and the clamour of voices, the rattling of ropes and blocks, and the splash of the oars carried for miles across the heaving water. The sails turned all colours, black, pearly-gray, and white, as the sun mounted; and more boats swung up through the mists to the southward.
The dories gathered in clusters, separated, reformed, and broke again, all heading one way; while men hailed and whistled and cat-called and sang, and the water was speckled with rubbish thrown overboard.
“It’s a town,” said Harvey. “Disko was right. It IS a town!”
“I’ve seen smaller,” said Disko. “There’s about a thousand men here; an’ yonder’s the Virgin.” He pointed to a vacant space of greenish sea, where there were no dories.
The We’re Here skirted round the northern squadron, Disko waving his hand to friend after friend, and anchored as nearly as a racing yacht at the end of the season. The Bank fleet pass good seamanship in silence; but a bungler is jeered all along the line.
“Jest in time fer the caplin,” cried the Mary Chilton.
“‘Salt ‘most wet?” asked the King Philip.
“Hey, Tom Platt! Come t’ supper to-night?” said the Henry Clay; and so questions and answers flew back and forth. Men had met one another before, dory-fishing in the fog, and there is no place for gossip like the Bank fleet. They all seemed to know about Harvey’s rescue, and asked if he were worth his salt yet. The young bloods jested with Dan, who had a lively tongue of his own, and inquired after their health by the town-nicknames they least liked. Manuel’s countrymen jabbered at him in their own language; and even the silent cook was seen riding the jib-boom and shouting Gaelic to a friend as black as himself. After they had buoyed the cable — all around the Virgin is rocky bottom, and carelessness means chafed ground-tackle and danger from drifting — after they had buoyed the cable, their dories went forth to join the mob of boats anchored about a mile away. The schooners rocked and dipped at a safe distance, like mother ducks watching their brood, while the dories behaved like mannerless ducklings.
As they drove into the confusion, boat banging boat, Harvey’s ears tingled at the comments on his rowing. Every dialect from Labrador to Long Island, with Portuguese, Neapolitan, Lingua Franca, French, and Gaelic, with songs and shoutings and new oaths, rattled round him, and he seemed to be the butt of it all. For the first time in his life he felt shy — perhaps that came from living so long with only the We’re Heres — among the scores of wild faces that rose and fell with the reeling small craft. A gentle, breathing swell, three furlongs from trough to barrel, would quietly shoulder up a string of variously painted dories. They hung for an instant, a wonderful frieze against the sky-line, and their men pointed and hailed. Next moment the open mouths, waving arms, and bare chests disappeared, while on another swell came up an entirely new line of characters like paper figures in a toy theatre. So Harvey stared. “Watch out!” said Dan, flourishing a dip-net “When I tell you dip, you dip. The caplin’ll school any time from naow on. Where’ll we lay, Tom Platt?”
Pushing, shoving, and hauling, greeting old friends here and warning old enemies there, Commodore Tom Platt led his little fleet well to leeward of the general crowd, and immediately three or four men began to haul on their anchors with intent to lee-bow the We’re Heres. But a yell of laughter went up as a dory shot from her station with exceeding speed, its occupant pulling madly on the roding.
“Give her slack!” roared twenty voices. “Let him shake it out.”
“What’s the matter?” said Harvey, as the boat flashed away to the southward. “He’s anchored, isn’t he?”
“Anchored, sure enough, but his graound-tackle’s kinder shifty,” said Dan, laughing. “Whale’s fouled it. . . . Dip Harve! Here they come!”
The sea round them clouded and darkened, and then frizzed up in showers of tiny silver fish, and over a space of five or six acres the cod began to leap like trout in May; while behind the cod three or four broad gray-backs broke the water into boils.
Then everybody shouted and tried to haul up his anchor to get among the school, and fouled his neighbour’s line and said what was in his heart, and dipped furiously with his dip-net, and shrieked cautions and advice to his companions, while the deep fizzed like freshly opened soda-water, and cod, men, and whales together flung in upon the luckless bait. Harvey was nearly knocked overboard by the handle of Dan’s net. But in all the wild tumult he noticed, and never forgot, the wicked, set little eye — something like a circus elephant’s eye — of a whale that drove along almost level with the water, and, so he said, winked at him. Three boats found their rodings fouled by these reckless mid-sea hunters, and were towed half a mile ere their horses shook the line free.
Then the caplin moved off, and five minutes later there was no sound except the splash of the sinkers overside, the flapping of the cod, and the whack of the muckles as the men stunned them. It was wonderful fishing. Harvey could see the glimmering cod below, swimming slowly in droves, biting as steadily as they swam. Bank law strictly forbids more than one hook on one line when the dories are on the Virgin or the Eastern Shoals; but so close lay the boats that even single hooks snarled, and Harvey found himself in hot argument with a gentle, hairy Newfoundlander on one side and a howling Portuguese on the other.
Worse than any tangle of fishing-lines was the confusion of the dory-rodings below water. Each man had anchored where it seemed good to him, drifting and rowing round his fixed point. As the fish struck on less quickly, each man wanted to haul up and get to better ground; but every third man found himself intimately connected with some four or five neighbours. To cut another’s roding is crime unspeakable on the Banks; yet it was done, and done without detection, three or four times that day. Tom Platt caught a Maine man in the black act and knocked him over the gunwale with an oar, and Manuel served a fellow-countryman in the same way. But Harvey’s anchor-line was cut, and so was Penn’s, and they were turned into relief-boats to carry fish to the We’re Here as the dories filled. The caplin schooled once more at twilight, when the mad clamour was repeated; and at dusk they rowed back to dress down by the light of kerosene-lamps on the edge of the pen.
It was a huge pile, and they went to sleep while they were dressing. Next day several boats fished right above the cap of the Virgin; and Harvey, with them, looked down on the very weed of that lonely rock, which rises to within twenty feet of the surface. The cod were there in legions, marching solemnly over the leathery kelp. When they bit, they bit all together; and so when they stopped. There was a slack time at noon, and the dories began to search for amusement. It was Dan who sighted the Hope Of Prague just coming up, and as her boats joined the company they were greeted with the question: “Who’s the meanest man in the Fleet?”
Three hundred voices answered cheerily: “Nick Bra-ady.” It sounded like an organ chant.
“Who stole the lampwicks?” That was Dan’s contribution.
“Nick Bra-ady,” sang the boats.
“Who biled the salt bait fer soup?” This was an unknown backbiter a quarter of a mile away.
Again the joyful chorus. Now, Brady was not especially mean, but he had that reputation, and the Fleet made the most of it. Then they discovered a man from a Truro boat who, six years before, had been convicted of using a tackle with five or six hooks — a “scrowger,” they call it — in the Shoals. Naturally, he had been christened “Scrowger Jim”; and though he had hidden himself on the Georges ever since, he found his honours waiting for him full blown. They took it up in a sort of firecracker chorus: “Jim! O Jim! Jim! O J
im! Sssscrowger Jim!” That pleased everybody. And when a poetical Beverly man — he had been making it up all day, and talked about it for weeks — sang, “The Carrie Pitman’s anchor doesn’t hold her for a cent” the dories felt that they were indeed fortunate. Then they had to ask that Beverly man how he was off for beans, because even poets must not have things all their own way. Every schooner and nearly every man got it in turn. Was there a careless or dirty cook anywhere? The dories sang about him and his food. Was a schooner badly found? The Fleet was told at full length. Had a man hooked tobacco from a mess-mate? He was named in meeting; the name tossed from roller to roller. Disko’s infallible judgments, Long Jack’s market-boat that he had sold years ago, Dan’s sweetheart (oh, but Dan was an angry boy!), Penn’s bad luck with dory-anchors, Salter’s views on manure, Manuel’s little slips from virtue ashore, and Harvey’s ladylike handling of the oar — all were laid before the public; and as the fog fell around them in silvery sheets beneath the sun, the voices sounded like a bench of invisible judges pronouncing sentence.
The dories roved and fished and squabbled till a swell underran the sea. Then they drew more apart to save their sides, and some one called that if the swell continued the Virgin would break. A reckless Galway man with his nephew denied this, hauled up anchor, and rowed over the very rock itself. Many voices called them to come away, while others dared them to hold on. As the smooth-backed rollers passed to the southward, they hove the dory high and high into the mist, and dropped her in ugly, sucking, dimpled water, where she spun round her anchor, within a foot or two of the hidden rock. It was playing with death for mere bravado; and the boats looked on in uneasy silence till Long Jack rowed up behind his countrymen and quietly cut their roding.
“Can’t ye hear ut knockin’?” he cried. “Pull for you miserable lives! Pull!”
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 58