Chain Locker

by Bob Chaulk

  “I would like to tell her I’m sorry,” he said shyly to Emily.

  “I think that’s a very good idea,” she concurred.

  “How would I say that in a telegram?”

  “What would you say if you were talking to her in person?”

  “It’s been a while since I said it but I’d probably just say, ‘Mom, I’m sorry.”’

  “I think that will do nicely. I’m sure it will mean a lot to your mother.”

  Entirely happy with how this was working out, he turned to the postmaster and said, “So, it will say, ‘Safe in Twillingate Mom I’m sorry John.’ Seven words; that’s pretty good.” He grinned and looked at Emily.

  “Why don’t we add one more and make it an even eight words?” she suggested.

  “Can we afford it?”

  “Oh, I think so.”

  “All right. What word?”

  “Why don’t you say, ‘Love John’?”

  He blushed and shuffled his feet, “Sure. Okay.”

  chapter forty-six

  Emily arrived home from the hospital hungry and exhausted, just as Basil was beginning the evening service. At the table, wearing dungarees held up by suspenders over his long underwear, and heavy wool socks on his feet, sat her unassuming, unshaven, uncombed father, the hero of the day, wearily sipping a cup of tea.

  “Toutons!” she cried, looking wide-eyed at the cakes of fried dough swimming in molasses on Jim’s plate. “Don’t tell me Mama made bread on Sunday. The earth is going to open up and swallow us all!”

  “Hah! No, she made some last night to keep herself busy. You should know your mother better than that. Want one?”

  “Before I do anything, Daddy, I have a big kiss for you.”

  “I heard that bit of sarcasm by the way,” Ada’s voice sounded from the pantry.

  “Sarcasm? It was just me worried for my life. I mean, when the earth opens up exactly how deep will the hole be? Does it depend on the number of loaves you made?” She gave her mother a hug, nearly knocking the teapot out of her hand.

  “Did you get the telegram sent okay?”

  “We did. Thank you, Mama.”

  “I can’t imagine how his poor mother is going to feel when she gets it. My gosh, I couldn’t stop crying when Wints dropped by with the news,” said Ada. “I said to your father when he come in the door, ’Tis a miracle is what it is.’”

  Ada poured Emily a cup and one for herself, and brought a fruitcake to the table.

  “When did you make that?”

  “It was a long night last night with you two out of the house. Since I was up with the fire in, I thought I should do something useful.”

  Emily cut a huge piece and picked it up with both hands. “Ooh, dark fruit cake. My favourite. Any rum in it?” she asked with an impish smile.

  “Stop gettin’ on with your foolishness.”

  “The day she lets rum in this house,” Jim laughed, “the earth will open up for sure.”

  Ada looked lovingly at her daughter, who was chattering away, waving her arms as she acted out the events that had led to the rescue. Joy and life had returned to the house.

  “My, I wish Billy was here now,” Ada said longingly. “’Twould be so nice for us all to be together again.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to get him down here this summer. Maybe if he hears there’s going to be a wedding, then he’ll make the effort.”

  Emily could have sworn her mother’s ears twitched. “Whose wedding?” “We’ll see,” she teased.

  Under the dim lamp in her room she unrolled the little ball of paper the doctor had given her at the hospital and smoothed it out on her desk. He told her privately that he had had to pry Henry’s hand open to get it from his grasp. She read it slowly, not unlike the way Henry had first read it under a lamp in a cold room three weeks earlier. She thought of all the unhappiness she had put him through. She wanted to blame Basil but she knew it was her doing and hers only; she vowed to make it up to Henry.

  On Monday morning, as he drifted into consciousness, Henry’s mind was racing with thoughts of how to ensure he and Jackie survived the day. The last thing he expected to hear was women’s voices, and when his eyes opened to see two nurses smiling down at him, he thought he must be dreaming.

  “Well, good morning, my son, how are you feeling?” the senior of the two said cheerily.

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re in Twillingate hospital.”

  It took him a moment to respond. “What, am I ashore?” he asked guardedly.

  “You’re ashore and you’re definitely alive, so don’t be telling me you think we’re two angels sent to greet you,” said the younger one.

  “There was a young fellow with me on the ice. Tall, talked like he was from St. John’s.” He looked up, entreating them for the answer he desperately wanted to hear.

  “He made it ashore a couple of days ago—staying with a local family.”

  “With an answer like that, how can you not be angels?” he smiled.

  “It’s good to see a bit of colour back in your cheeks,” the senior one added. “You were in one awful state when you came in here yesterday.”

  Turning to her partner as though Henry was not present, she said, “You should have seen him when they brought him in yesterday. Straight from the sealin’ grounds, with the same clothes on, I suppose, that he left with maybe a month before, covered in dried-up blood and greasy from the blubber. What a state he was in! Sure, ’twas all over his face, in his hair and even into his ears, although they look clean enough now.” She leaned down with a critical eye focused on his left ear.

  “So, you’re feeling all right this morning, are you?”

  “Pretty sore and stiff, but glad to be in out of it—and glad to be alive, I may add. What’s the story on my leg?”

  “You’ll be in a cast for several weeks, but it’ll get better.”

  “Broke, I guess, is it?”

  “Yes. You rest now and we’ll have some food sent in to you the once.”

  When Emily arrived at the hospital and saw Henry literally shining after the nurses had scrubbed and shaved him, she was so overwhelmed with emotion that she was unable to speak. His eyes were closed, as he lay with his leg in a cast and propped on a couple of pillows. How could she have been so blind as to think that Basil could ever take his place? She slowly placed her big leather school bag on the floor, leaned down, and tenderly kissed his lips.

  His arms came up around her and almost crushed her. “Emily! I was having a dream that I was dying and you were kissing me goodbye and—”

  “Henry, I’m so sorry. I was so foolish and self-centred, and—”

  “Shh,” he interrupted softly. “No sadness. No tears. There’s been enough of that.” He held her face in his two hands and rubbed her tears away with his thumbs. “You’re here! You have no idea how much I’ve longed to look into those big, brown eyes again.” She smiled happily. He gazed at her long eyelashes as he drew her face to his and they kissed again.

  As she rested in Henry’s arms, she asked tentatively, “Is your proposal still open?” Then, she rushed to add, “If it’s not, I’ll understand.”

  “It’s open for a lifetime…”

  A few minutes after Emily had left for school, Jackie was standing shyly at the foot of Henry’s bed, not sure what to expect. He felt like running over and throwing his arms around Henry’s neck and thanking him for being so patient and resourceful and putting up with him through so many trials.

  Henry’s eyes were closed. Should he wake him up? Maybe he should come back later; that would give him time to think of something to say. He shuffled his feet absently.

  Henry’s eyes popped open. “Jack, b’y! I’m some glad to see you! Come over, come over and sit on the bed here. You just missed Emily, the teacher I was telling you about. But I guess you met her, right?”

  Jackie nodded and was quiet for a few moments, feeling a little awkward.

  “I hear you had
quite the walk, eh,” Henry continued. “Where did they pick you up?”

  “I almost made it all the way in. It was getting light and I could see houses but I got caught on one piece of ice and couldn’t get any further. I started paddling but it seemed like the more I paddled the further I ended up from shore.”

  “Sounds like you were caught in the tide. I never realized the currents were so contrary out there.”

  “Well, after a while I was so tired I just couldn’t keep it up. I got down on my knees to have a spell. I was soppin’ wet from the rain and felt like a chunk of ice. I can’t remember much else after that until two guys were puttin’ me into a boat.”

  “And then you came out and found me? I haven’t quite got the whole story yet.”

  “No, it’s a long one…” and he related the story of the rescue, ending with a long description of Wints and the bear.

  Henry threw his head back with a loud laugh. “He’s a hard ticket, that Wints. It’s a good thing I wasn’t awake or I would have had a bone to pick with him. I allow I would’ve been doin’ some squirmin’ with buddy there breathing down on me and me with only one good leg—and I don’t suppose his breath was all that good either! But I won’t be sayin’ anything about it to Wints, considering all that he did to get me in. But the one I really got to thank is you.”

  Jackie blushed. “Yeah, well, I had to make up for bein’ so cranky somehow, I guess.”

  “Emily told me you got them fired up to keep searching when the weather wasn’t lookin’ too good.”

  He shrugged. “So she must be the same teacher who knows about the birds, is she?”

  “The same one…and she knows a lot of other stuff, too.”

  That evening at Ada’s dinner table Jackie held everybody captive with his narration of the week’s events. As he answered question after question Emily, Ada, Dorcas and Sadie were spellbound at how calm he was.

  “So many close calls, Jackie. You must have been scared to death,” said Ada.

  “I guess,” he replied in a monotone, shrugging.

  “Oh, come on, now!” said Emily, goading him. “Don’t give us that. Especially when you were copying your way ashore; surely you wondered if you would ever make it. And what about when you were in the chain locker?”

  “I have a question on a different matter, John,” said Dorcas. “Did you have your father and mother’s permission to go away on that sealing ship?”

  He hesitated. “No, ma’am. I didn’t.”

  “Uh-huh. And how do you feel about that, now that you’re back? Have you been thinking about them?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied without hesitation. “I been thinking a lot about them, especially my mother.”

  “And what about getting in touch with them? Do they know you’re safe and sound?”

  Emily came to his defense. “Jackie sent a very nice telegram to his mother yesterday.”

  “Yes, I told her I was sorry.”

  “Well, now, I’m glad to hear that,” Dorcas replied and sat back, satisfied.

  That was it? He had been bracing himself for a thorough dressing-down. As if to compensate, he continued, “I guess I never really saw my parents as people with feelings and stuff like that. When the ship burned and Henry and me ended up separated from the others, yeah, I was pretty scared. That first night I thought for sure that I was goin’ to die, that I wouldn’t see my parents or sisters or Wilf—he’s my dog—again, and they wouldn’t even know what had became of me. It made me realize that runnin’ away like I did was pretty mean.

  “And you’re right, Miss Osmond. I was good and scared comin’ ashore on my own. But I couldn’t let Henry down after all he did to help me; sure, he could have saved himself but he stayed with me ’cause I couldn’t swim. If it wasn’t for Henry I would be dead for sure now. When he killed that first seal and cut out the heart and handed it to me to eat, all drippin’ with blood, I thought he was some kind of crazy man, but he knew exactly what to do to keep us alive.”

  The four women screwed up their faces in unison like a quartet of mimes.

  “Warm hearts right from the seal; nothing wrong with that,” Jim nodded approvingly as he pushed out from the table and walked over to the daybed to get the Sun.

  “Oh, yuck,” said Emily, as her mother shuddered.

  “The next time you come back from sealing you better not come lookin’ for a kiss offa me, without you wash out your mouth with lye soap first,” Ada declared, to a chorus of guffaws.

  “Henry always tried to cheer me up,” said Jackie. “He never had a cross word, even when I fell asleep on the watch. I sure was cranky to him a lot of times. He never gave up, though, always thinking and planning and he seemed to be able to figure out where we were practically all the time, by lookin’ at the stars, watchin’ the sun, feelin’ the wind. I couldn’t get over how smart he was. He knows how to navigate, you know.”

  “Oh, yes, I know.” Dorcas was completely won over by this spontaneous outpouring of affection for her son.

  “I started off the trip in that horrible old chain locker,” said Jackie, “and when Simeon told me I could stay aboard the ship and wouldn’t be put ashore, I though I had ‘er made and the hard part was over. Little did I know what was ahead.”

  He took a long, deep breath. “But leaving Henry there on the ice—that was the worse part of all.”

  chapter forty-seven

  Early Tuesday morning, Basil awoke with an unexpected feeling of liberation. He had decided that he must do the unthinkable. It had struck him while reading the Sermon on the Mount. Though he had read and even spoken on it dozens of times, he had never heard its uncompromising tenets like he heard them in the middle of last night. He had to seek Henry’s forgiveness for hating him and cursing him and plotting against him. If he was going to live like the One he claimed to follow, he needed that humbling experience. He had to accept—even love—Henry, to visit him at the hospital as was his duty, and to tell him the truth. He had wallowed in his misery long enough. It was time to do what he preached that others must do.

  He marched up the hill to the hospital, where the receptionist met him at the door with a pleasant, “Good day to you, Reverend. Who would you like to see first today?”

  “Hello, Dorothy,” he replied. “Today I would like to, um, visit…uh…Mr….”

  “Yes, Reverend?”

  He hesitated.

  “Who did you wish to see, Reverend?”

  “Miss Day!” he blurted out.

  “Certainly.”

  epilogue

  In New York, shortly after the disaster, Dr. Lewis Frissell got the news that his only remaining son, Varick Frissell, was missing. His other son, Monty, had been killed in a climbing accident when he was eighteen. Dr. Frissell, fearing that the loss of her second son would be too much for his wife, chartered an airplane to do a search of the area in the hope that something might turn up. As the Sagona approached St. John’s, the aircraft was beginning its search of the outer part of Notre Dame Bay, covering in less than an hour the distance it had taken Henry and Jackie nearly a week to travel. They found nothing. Twenty-six men had disappeared without a trace. Of the three Americans aboard, Harry Sargent had been picked up in good condition with Clayton King, the wireless operator, and Captain Kennedy, the navigator; but cinematographer A.E. Penrod and Varick Frissell, the movie producer, were never seen again, nor were their bodies recovered. After his rescue, Sargent sent a message to the Minister of Marine and Fisheries stating that he had been sitting across the table from Frissell and Penrod when the explosion occurred but that he had not seen them since. The cabin in which they all sat was directly above the explosion. Other survivors reported that at the moment the explosion occurred, Frissell, at the request of the bosun, was in the middle of creating a sign to be placed at the entrance to the powder magazine.

  Clayton King was alive but barely. He had the fight of his life ahead of him, having contracted gangrene in his frozen legs, both of w
hich subsequently had to be amputated. Captain Kennedy, the young navigator who had shared the piece of wreckage for two nights with King and Sargent, had clung to life only to succumb to pneumonia just hours before the rescue ship arrived at St. John’s.

  Three days after the explosion, newspapers reported that Penrod’s wife was on the verge of collapse after three days of uncertainty about her husband’s fate. Mrs. Penrod had often accompanied her husband when he travelled, but was prevented from sailing on the Viking because of a sealers’ superstition that a woman would jinx the ship.

  The efforts of the people of the Horse Islands received little recognition from the government or the sealing company. All the attention fell on the survivors, the loss of the ship and the loss of twenty-eight men: the original twenty-six, Captain Kennedy, and the man whose body the Eagle had recovered—presumed to be that of P. Bartlett because of a document found in a pocket.

  The report of the inquiry into the disaster was unable to arrive at a categorical conclusion as to the cause of the explosion, other than to say that it was not a boiler explosion, but the detonation of the approximately thirty-five kegs of blasting powder that the Viking carried. It highlighted testimony pointing to an additional nine cans of powder, an unspecified number of which were leaking. It said simply that somehow the powder must have come in contact with the small amount of combustion necessary to set it off.

  The inquiry also made recommendations for basic regulations on how to store and handle powder aboard the sealing ships, the implication being that during all the decades that sealing ships had carried powder, no such regulations had existed.

  This was the last of the big disasters that had accompanied the seal hunt since its inception nearly two centuries before. They had become more frequent as the steamers aged but received only the bare minimum of maintenance. Ten years after the Viking’s spectacular demise, there were only four of the fabled wooden walls left. Three sank without loss of life. The Ranger, which had brought in more than a million pelts under seventeen captains, finally went down in 1942 while engaged in her sixty-ninth year at the ice. The Terra Nova—already famous from taking explorers like Robert Falcon Scott on expeditions to the Antarctic during the first two decades of the twentieth century—and the Neptune both sank the next year.