MARTIN CARR did a fine thing that afternoon. Martin and John Marsh were hauling trawls, when a sea capsized their dory. The same sea washed them both clear of the dory. John Marsh could not swim. It looked as if he had hauled his last trawl, and so beyond all question he had, but for Martin, who seized one of their buoy-kegs, which happened to bob up near by, and pushed it into John’s despairing arms. “Hang on for your life, John!” said Martin, and himself struck out for the dory, knowing that the buoy could not support two. It was perhaps forty feet to the bottom of the dory—not a great swim, that; but this was a winter’s day on the Grand Banks, and a man beaten back by a rough sea and borne down by the weight of heavy clothing, oilskins, and big jack-boots. When he had fought his way to the dory he had to wait a while before he dared try to climb up on it, he was that tired; and after he got there he found no strap to the plug, and so nothing to hang on to. He remembered then that he and John had often spoken of fixing up a strap for the plug, but had never fixed it.

“My own neglect,” muttered Martin, “and now I’m paying for it.”

Clinging to the smooth planking on the bottom of the dory was hard work that day, and becoming harder every minute, for the sea was making. And there was John to keep an eye on. “How’re you making out, Johnnie-boy?” he called.

“It’s heavy dragging, but I’m all right so far,” John answered.

“And how is it with you now, Johnnie-boy?” he called in a little while again.

“I can hang on a while yet, Martin.”

“Good for you!” said Martin to that.

“Can you see the vessel?” asked John after another space.

“He’s giving out, and I see no vessel,” thought Martin, but answered cheerily, “Aye, I see her.”

“And how far away is she, and what’s she doing?”

Aloud Martin said, “Five or six miles, maybe, up to wind’ard; and she’s taking aboard all but the last dory, and there’s men gone aloft to look for us.” But under his breath, “And God forgive me if I go to my death with that lie on my lips; but ’tis no deeper than my lips—no deeper.”

Then they waited and waited, until John said, “Martin, I’ll have to go soon— I can’t hang on much longer.”

“Bide a while, Johnnie-boy—bide a while. Dory-mates we’ve been for many a trip—bide a while with me now, Johnnie.”

But Martin knew that it would be for but a little while for John—for them both, if help did not come soon. Scanning the sea for whatever hope the sea might give, he saw the trawl-line floating on the water. That was the line that ran from their anchor somewhere on the bottom to the buoy-keg to which John was clinging. If he could but get hold of that line he could draw John to the dory, with a better chance to talk to him—to put heart into him, for Johnnie was but a lad, no more than five and twenty.

To get the line, he would have to swim; and to swim any distance in that rising and already bad sea he would have to cast off most of his clothing. And with most of his clothing gone he would not last too long. Certainly if the vessel did not get them by dark, he would never live through the night. He would freeze to death—that he knew well. But could he live through the night, anyway? And even if he could— But what was the good of thinking all night over it? He pulled off his boots, untied his oilskins, hauled off his heavy outer woollens.

“Johnnie-boy, can you hang on a while longer?”

“I dunno, Martin— I dunno. Where’s the vessel?”

“She’s bearing down, John.” And with the thought of that second lie on his lips Martin scooped off for the buoy-line, which, after a battle, he grabbed and towed back to the dory. It was a hard fight, and he would have liked well to rest a while; but there was Johnnie. So in he hauled many a long fathom of slack ground-line, with gangings and hooks, and after that the buoy-line. He sorrowfully regarded the fine fat fish that he passed along; every hook seemed to have a fish on it. “Man, man, but ’twas only last night I baited up for ye in the cold hold of the vessel—baited with the cold frozen squid, and my fingers nigh frost-bitten.” But every hook was bringing him nearer to his dory-mate.

He felt the line tauten at last. “Have a care now, Johnnie, while I draw you to me,” and hauled in till Johnnie was alongside.

But “Good-by,” said Johnnie ere yet Martin had him safe.

“Not yet, Johnnie-boy,” said Martin, and reached for him and held him up and lashed him to the buoy. “You can rest your arms now, lad,” he said, and Johnnie gratefully let go.

“’Tis made of iron a man should be that goes winter trawling,” said Martin, and up on the bottom of the dory he climbed again, this time with infinite difficulty.

They had had the leeward berth and now were farthest from the vessel, and by this time it was dark. But Martin knew the Skipper would not give them up in a hurry, as he explained to John. And by and by they saw the torches flare up.

“Wait you, John,” said Martin then, “and save your strength. I’ll hail when I think they’re near enough to hear.” Which he did, in a voice that obeyed the iron will and carried far across the waters.

Then the vessel saw them and bore down, the Skipper to the wheel and the men lining the rail.

“Be easy with John,” said Martin to the man who first stretched his arms out and remarked, “I’m thinking he’s nigh gone.”

“Nigh gone? He is gone,” as they lifted John aboard.

“But all right with him now,” they said as they passed him along the deck. “And how is it with yourself, Martin?” they asked him as he was about to step over the rail.

“Fine and daisy,” said Martin. “How is it yourself, boy?” stepping jauntily up, and then, unable longer to stand, falling flat on the deck.

Seeing how it had been with him, they made him go below also, which he, with shipmates helping, did; and also, later, put on the dry shift of clothes they made ready. In the middle of it all he asked, “Where’s Johnnie?”

“In his bunk—and full of hot coffee—where you’ll be in a minute.”

“The hell I will! there’s my dory yet to be hoisted in.”

“Your dory, Martin? Why, she’s in, drained dry and griped long ago.”

“What! and me below? And dory in already? What was it? Did I fall asleep, or what? Lord! but it’s an old man I must be getting. I wouldn’t’ve believed it. In all my time to sea, that’s the first time ever I warn’t able to lift hand to tayckles and my own dory hoisting in.” He made for the companion-way, but so weak was he that he fell back down the companion-way when he tried to make the deck.

But a really strong man recuperates rapidly. An hour later Martin was enjoying a fine hot supper, while the crew sat around and hove questions at him. They asked for details, and he gave them, or at least such of them as had become impressed on his mind; particularly did he condemn, in crisp phrases, the botheration of boots that leaked and the need of a second plug-strap on the bottom of a dory. “There ought to be a new law about plug-straps,” said Martin.

“Did ever a man yet come off the bottom of a dory and not speak about the plug-straps?” commented one.

“And leaky boots is the devil,” affirmed another—a notorious talker this one, who bunked up in the peak, where he could be dimly seen now, his head out of his bunk that his voice might carry the better. “I bought a pair of boots in Boston once—a Jew up on Atlantic Avenue——”

“In Heaven’s name, will you shut up, you and your Atlantic Avenue boots? We’ll never hear the end of those boots.”

The man in the peak subsided, and he who had quelled him, near to the stove and smoking a pipe, went on for himself: “And what were you thinkin’ of, Martin, when you thought you were goin’?”

“Or did you think any time that you was goin’?” asked somebody else.

“Indeed and I did, and a dozen times I thought it—and that ’twas a blessed cold kind of a day for a man to be soaking his feet in the ocean.”

“And yet”—the lad in the peak was in commission again—“and yet warn’t it some professor said in that book that somebody was reading out of the other day—warn’t it him said that salt water ain’t nigh so cold as fresh. Is it, Martin?”

“As to that,” answered Martin, “I dunno. But I wish ’twas that professor’s feet, not mine, was astraddle the bottom of that dory—not to wish him any harm. But winter’s day and the wind no’therly, I found it cold enough.”

“I went into a Turkish bath parlor in New York one time,” came the conversational voice from the peak, “and hot? My Lord——”

“The man,” said the next on watch, taking his mitts from the line above the stove—“the man that’d talk about hot Turkish baths on a night like this to sea— Turkish baths, and, Lord in heaven, two good long hours up there——” He halted to take a sniff up the companion-way. “Two hours—what ought to be done with the like o’ him?”

The man by the stove, who a while before had vanquished the lad in the peak, took his pipe long enough from his mouth to observe, “And for four years now, to my knowledge, he’s been tryin’ to tell how hot ’twas in that Turkish bath.”

“Hit him with a gob-stick,” suggested the cook—“or this rolling-pin.” He was flattening out pie-crust.

“A gob-stick or a rolling-pin,” said the next on watch, “is too good for him. Here, take this,” and passed the cook’s hatchet along the lockers.

The opening and closing of the hatch after the watch had gone on deck admitted a blast of air that made the man in the bunk nearest the steps draw up his legs. The flame in the lamp flared, whereat the original inquirer got up to set the lamp chimney more firmly over the base of the burner, and before he sat down put the question again. How did Martin feel when he thought he was sure enough going. “The last fifteen or twenty minutes or so I bet you did some thinkin’—didn’t you, Martin?”

“A little,” admitted Martin, and with a long arm gaffed another potato. “Toward the end of it the sea did begin to take on a gray look that I know now was grayer than any mortal sea ever could’ve been.”

“And what were you thinkin’ of then, Martin?”

“What was I thinking of? What— Lord, but these apple dumplings are great stuff, aren’t they? You don’t want to let any of those dumplings get past you, Johnnie. Never mind how used-up you feel, come out of your bunk and try ’em. Five or six good plump dumplings inside of you and you’ll forget you ever saw a dory.”

“He’s asleep, Martin.”

“Is he? Well, maybe ’tis just as well. ’Twas a hard drag for poor John to-day. What was I thinking of? you asked me. Well, I’ll tell you what I was thinking of. You know what store I set by a good razor. I’d go a hundred mile for a good razor—a good razor—any time. You all know that, don’t you?”

“Yes—yes——”

“Well, this last time out I brought aboard as fine a looking razor as ever a man laid against his face. Oh, I saw you all eying it the last time I took it out. Don’t pretend— I know you. It’s right there in my diddy-box, and before I turn in to-night it’s a good scrape I’m going to give myself with it—yes. Well, when Johnnie’d said ‘Good-by, Martin’—said it for the second time—‘Good-by, Martin, don’t mind me any more, look out for yourself’—said that, and I’d said, ‘Hold on a little longer’ to him for about the tenth time—well, about that time, when I did begin to think we were sure enough going—with it coming on dark and no sign of the vessel in sight—then it was I couldn’t help wondering who in hell aboard the vessel was going to get that razor.”

When everybody had done laughing, and after two or three had told how they felt when they were on the bottom of a dory, the persistent one asked again, “Martin, but you must’ve had some close calls in your time?”

“My share—no more.” He was taking a look around the table as he spoke—a lingering, regretful look—and then he gave up any further thought of it. “Ah-h,” he sighed, “but I cert’nly took the good out of that meal,” and leaning against the nearest bunk-board—his own—drew out his pipe from beneath the mattress. “My share and no more,” he repeated, and reached across to the shelf in his bunk and drew forth a plug of tobacco. He cut off the proper quantity and rolled it around between his palms the proper length of time before he spoke again. With the pipe between his teeth he had to speak more slowly. “Any man that’s been thirty years trawling will nat’rally have a few things happen to him. To-day makes the third time I’ve been on the bottom of a dory, and cold weather each time—just my blessed luck—cold weather each time”—three times he blew through the stem of his pipe—“and I don’t want to be there the fourth. Eddie-boy, hand me a wisp out of the broom at your elbow.”

While Martin was cleaning out his pipe somebody put the question generally. Would they rather be on the bottom of a dory out to sea, or on a vessel piled up on the rocky shore somewhere?

“On the rocks for me.”

“And for me.”

“Yes, a chance to get ashore from a wreck, but the bottom of a dory with the sea breaking over you, and it cold maybe—cert’nly it’s never any too warm—wr-r-h!”

There seemed to be no doubt of what they would take for their choice. “And yet,” commented Martin when the last word had been said, “I dunno but the closest call ever I had was when the Oliver Cromwell went ashore and was lost off Whitehead.”

“Cripes, but I’m glad I warn’t on her. A bad business that—a bad business. Hand me that plate, will you, Martin”—this from the cook.

“Sure, boy—here y’are—an armful of plates. Cook on a fisherman’s the last job I’d want—you’re never done. And you’re right it was a bad business, cook. When you’ve seen nineteen men washed over one after the other, every man—every man but one, that is—putting up the divil’s own fight for his life before he went— I dunno but what it must be worse than going down at sea altogether, all hands in one second, with no chance at all—though that must be hard enough, too.”

Silence for a while, and then Martin continued: “If I had it to do over again”—two long puffs—“to do it over and be lost instead of saved, I dunno but what I’d rather founder at sea myself. Nineteen men lost—eighteen good men— Lord, but ’twas cruel!”

Martin, with his head back, was gazing thoughtfully up at the deck-beams. A gentle leading question, and he resumed.

“We left Gloucester that trip with the Skipper’s— But to tell that story right a man ought to begin away back. But will you give me a match, somebody?”

He lit up again, and then settled himself snugly between the edge of the table and his bunk-board, after the manner of a man who is in for a long sitting-out. Once he really started there were but few interruptions. The loss of the Cromwell was a serious affair, and nobody broke in thoughtlessly; and only when Martin would stop to refill his pipe, or to light up again when he found he had let it go out, did he make any halt himself.

“What the Hoodleys of Cape Ann were, and are still,” began Martin, “of course all of you, or most all of you, anyway, know. Or maybe some of you don’t know. Well, they were a hard crowd—but didn’t know it—the kind of people that whenever they got to talking about their own kind, never had any tales to prove maybe that there was even the lightest bit of wit or grace or beauty among them; no, none of that for the Hoodleys of Cape Ann. But to show you what thrifty, hard-headed fore-people they had, they could spin off, any of ’em, a hundred little yarns, almost any day, as if anybody on earth that knew those of them that were alive would ever doubt what the dead-and-gone ones must’ve been. Hard they were—even neighbors that didn’t take life as a dream of poetry said that much of them. Hard they were—man, yes—the kind that little children never toddled up to and climbed on to their knees, nor a man in hard luck by any mistake ever asked the loan of a dollar of—the kind that never a man walked across the street to shake hands with. That’s the kind they were. Take ’em all in all, I guess that the Hoodleys were about as hard a tribe as you’d find in all Essex County—surely ’tisn’t possible there were any harder. And yet you couldn’t pick a flaw in ’em before the law. They were honest. Everybody had to say that for them—paying their debts, their just debts—as they put it themselves—and collecting their own dues, don’t fear, and a great respect for the letter of the law—for the letter of it. And I mind they used to boast that for generations their people had kept clear of the poorhouses, and that all had been church-members in good standing. Well, not exactly all; for, to be exact and truthful—they themselves used to put it that way—there was one here and there that had broken away. But such had been rare, as one of them—a strong church-member—used to put it, and the devil is ever active; and speaking of the devil, this particular member’d go on, there is always the blistering pit for the unrighteous. That last I s’pose he thought he ought to put in, because everybody knew that of all the people that fell from grace, the wickedest, the most blasphemous, the most evil of all evil livers had been those of the Hoodleys that had back-slided. Once they went to the bad they cert’nly went beyond all hope; and nobody did they curse out more furiously than their own people every time they did start in.

“Well, the Hoodleys weren’t a seafaring people originally. They moved over to Gloucester, y’see, at one particular time when everybody was expecting in some way to make money out of fishing. George Hoodley was a lad then—seventeen—with the hard kind of a face and the awkward body that everybody nat’rally looked for in one of his breed. And he had the kind of a mind, I cal’late, that his father would like a boy of his to have. Well, George signed right away for a boy’s wages with a prudent master—old Sol Tucker it was—that went in the Distant Shore so long. They used to say that Sol wore the same pair of jack-boots out of her that he had when he first went aboard, and there was eighteen years between his first and last trips in her. I mind the jack-boots—and they were cert’nly well patched when I saw them—though no more than twelve year old then. That’ll give you an idea of Sol. And George Hoodley put in thirteen years with Sol, and thirteen long hard drags of years they must’ve been. I misdoubt that any of us here could’ve stood those thirteen—no, sir, not for vessel’s, skipper’s, and hand’s share together. Well, George stood it, and I don’t b’lieve he ever knew he was missing anything in life. But he had something to show for it, as he’d say himself. When he left old Sol he was able to buy a half interest and go master of a good vessel. I went with him in her—the Harding—two trips—just two, no more.”

Martin halted to light up again, and somebody asked, “Warn’t it the Harding, Martin, that had the small cabin?”

“Yes, the smallest, they say, that ever was seen in a fisherman. Just about room to stand between the steps and the stove and between the stove and the bulkhead again; and not much better for’ard—a forec’s’le so small that the crew used to say they had to go on deck to haul on their oilskins. She was all hold. Well, while he was in the Harding George made a great reputation for all kinds of carefulness. Most men that went with him said he was altogether too careful for any mortal use; and maybe that was so. But his savings kept piling up, and there was plenty of other careful men to ship with him and abide by him.

“One thing that George and his people used to boast about was that he warn’t like a good many other fishermen. While a good many of them were putting in time ashore drinking, skylarking, or if it warn’t no more than to spend a quiet sociable evening with their friends or their own families—during all that George was attending to business, for business it was to him. He was talking one day of those who said fishing was a venture, or even adventure, and he’d been reading somewhere, he said, of the joy that somebody thought fine, strong men ought to get out of fishing. He almost smiled when he was telling it. The joy of fishing! If you had a good trip of fish and got a good price for it, why, yes, fishing was good fun then. But as far as he could see it was like any other kind of work. You put in about so much time at it and took good care of your money, and at the end of the year you had about so much to show for it. And as for the fun of fighting a breeze of wind that some of them talked about, seeing how long you could hang on to your canvas without losing your spars, or how far down you could let your vessel roll before she’d capsize—none of that for him. And it was all rot, their pretending they got any fun out of it. They had the same blood and nerve and senses as any other humans, and he knew that for himself he was content to stay hove-to when it blew one of the living gales they talked about, and satisfied, too, to shorten sail in time, even if he was bound home, when it blew hard enough. Gloucester would be there when he got there—it wouldn’t blow away. Cert’nly, he’d admit, the drivers’d outsail him on a passage and beat him out of the market once in a while; but in the long run his way paid best. He could name the foolish fellows that’d been lost, and the fingers of both hands wouldn’t begin to name them. Yes, and left families to starve, some of ’em. And he himself was alive and still bringing home the fish, and everybody in Gloucester knew what he had to show for it.

“Well, by that time everybody in Gloucester did know what he had to show for it, and everybody in Gloucester said it was about time he began to look around for a wife, though nobody expected George Hoodley to look around for a wife after the regular manner of fishermen, who don’t look around at all, so far as I c’n see. We ourselves, or most of us, anyway, liking the girl pretty well and she willing, gen’rally hurry up to get married ’bout as soon as we find ourselves with a couple of months’ rent ahead.

“But not that way with George Hoodley. It wasn’t until he was forty-five that he began to look around after the manner of his people for a wife. There was to be no rushing into the expenses of matrimony; but with two good vessels, and a house all clear, a man might well think of it—or leastways I imagine that’s the way he thought it out, if he wasted any time thinking of it at all.

“Now, if George Hoodley had not been like other men during all the years he was fishing, if he hadn’t joined in the talk of his mates on what was worth having in life—you know how fishermen gen’rally talk when they get going on some things—even if George Hoodley pretended to think that he thought they were a lot of blessed fools, yet it is more than likely that the opinions of the men he went to sea with had their influence with him just the same. It stands to reason they were bound to, after years of it. And then, clear back he must’ve come of flesh-and-blood people, like anybody else. For, though nobody could imagine the Hoodleys having weaknesses like other people, yet cert’nly, if you went far enough back, there must’ve been ancestors among ’em all—one or two—that enjoyed life the same as other people.

“Well, for a wife George took a very pretty girl who was young enough—some of you that know her know that well—young enough to have had grandchildren to him. Twenty or twenty-one, light-haired, pretty face, and a trim figure. I didn’t like her eyes or her mouth myself, but everybody agreed she was pretty. She had never been so far away from home that she could not be back again the same day—and that certified to her character with some people. For other things, she would come into some money when her father died. And her father didn’t object to George Hoodley. He was a thrifty man, too, and said all right—made George’s way easy, in fact.

“Now, I cal’late that George thought that he never did a wiser thing in all his life than when he married that girl. Among the men he knew there were some that’d got pretty wives, but no money; and others money, but plain-lookers. He was getting both, good looks and money, and he could laugh at them all—those who wanted her because of the money in prospect or those others who were in love with her face. And maybe he didn’t laugh at some of ’em!—the sail-carriers and others who imagined that a reputation for foolishness at sea won women’s hearts. It was a great stroke of business altogether. He would get his share of good living yet—he boasted of that. He had always taken the best care of himself—never drank and seldom smoked, and then only in the way of business—was in the prime of life, had a tough constitution, and his wife-to-be was young and pretty. He could laugh at all of them.

“Nearly everybody in Gloucester said nice things to George. ‘My, but you’re the deep one—and lucky? Oh, no, you’re not a bit lucky! But you always did have a long head—’ That’s the way most people talked to him, and he liked it. As for the few who didn’t seem pleased—the three or four who hinted, but didn’t ask outright if he thought he was doing a wise thing— George said it was easy enough to place them—they’d like to get her themselves. If he was only another kind of a man he might have been warned in time, but he was that kind that nobody felt sorry for. And that’s a hard thing, too.

“Well, they were married, and the wonderful thing of George letting his vessel go out a trip without him was on exhibition to the people of Gloucester. Yes, sir, she went to sea the day he was married. He stayed ashore that trip—that trip, but not the second.

“The truth was, they didn’t get along well together; which warn’t remarkable, maybe—she young and pretty, and he the age he was and more than looking it. Forty-seven’s a fine age for some men, but not for George’s kind. Leather-skinned he was, with lean chops of jaws, a mouth as tight as a deck beam, a turkey neck—you’ve seen turkey necks—and eyes that were cold as a dead haddock’s.

“George, I cal’late, was beginning to learn that a woman was a different proposition from a vessel, and that there were things about a woman that had to be studied out. Not that I think he tried overhard to study this one out. Listening to him as I had many a time before he got married, I knew that he figured that a woman, like everything else, had her place in the universe, and she ought to know it, or be made to know it. And now here was his wife’s case: a steady man for a husband, a good house to live in, grub and her clothes all found, or, anyway, as much clothes as he thought fit and proper for her to have. Could a woman expect more, or a man do more, than that?

“’Twarn’t long after he got married that things began to go wrong, not only at home but out to sea. There was the trip he broke his ankle. Coming home, he looked maybe for a little show of grief on the part of his wife, but, if he did, he didn’t find it. Indeed, she even said he ought to go to a hospital instead of making it hard for her at home. ’Twas common talk that she said that.

“Going out his next trip, with his leg not yet well-knit and himself having to limp out the door, he and his wife had words. Billie Shaw, passing by, heard them. ‘I don’t care if I never see you again,’ he said. ‘And if you think I’d care if I never saw you again either, you’re mistaken. I wouldn’t care if you’re lost—you and your vessel. Only I wouldn’t like to see all the crew lost.’

“That last must have set him to thinking, for he didn’t sail that day, as he said he would, but put in a day talking to people around town. I know he asked me, for one, a lot of questions. I didn’t know till later what he was driving at. ’Twas while he was questioning me that he coaxed me into shipping with him. ‘Just this trip, Martin,’ he said. ‘And your cousin Dan Spring’s thinking of coming out with me this time, to help me out. Two men left me suddenly to-day, and if you’ll come out Dan’ll surely come.’ And so out of good-nature I said I’d go with him. It’s blessed little he got out of me, though, in answer to his other questions, but he found plenty of others willing to talk.

“Well, on the passage out we all noticed he seemed an absent-minded man. We noticed, too, or thought we did, that he used to forget that his leg warn’t yet very strong, and that now and then he had to pull up when it seemed to hurt him bad.

“That trip—well, it was a queer one from the first. With myself and my cousin Dan, who were dory-mates, it warn’t nothing but accidents. There was that after the first haul of fish when we were dropping down to come alongside. It was a bit rough, that’s a fact. Some said that for so careful a man it was surprising that the Skipper had ordered the dories out at all that day. However, we were just ahead of her—under the end of her bowsprit almost—and of course Dan and myself nat’rally looked for the Skipper to look out for us. We were so near that Dan had taken in his oars and had the painter ready to heave aboard. I was at the oars. One stroke more, I thought, and we’ll be all right, when whing! the first thing we knew around came the vessel and down on us. I couldn’t do anything with the dory, she being down to her gunnels with fish. Well, Dan had time to holler to me, and I hollered to him—no more than that—when she was on us. By a miracle, you might say, we both managed to grab the bob-stay. The stem of the vessel cut the dory like it was a cracker, and then under her keel it went.

“Not knowing what to make of it all, we climbed aboard over the bow. Our faces were no more than above the knight-heads than the Skipper yelled. We ran aft and asked him what was wrong. He stared at us for a second as if he couldn’t understand.

“‘What’s it?’ I asked.

“‘Why, I thought you two were gone.’

“‘And so we were, for all of you. A man that’s been to sea as long you, George Hoodley,’ I said, ‘and put a wheel the wrong way! Nobody ever said you were the cleverest man out of Gloucester to handle a vessel, but cert’nly you know down from up.’

“‘Martin,’ he said, ‘I give you my word. Just as I grabbed the wheel that time a sea came aboard, the vessel lurched, and down on deck I went, with my weak ankle giving way under me.’

“Well, our dory was gone, but later in the trip one of the crew, Bill Thornton, was troubled with a felon on his finger. ’Twarn’t anything very bad, and Bill himself said it didn’t amount to anything, but the Skipper thought Bill’d better stay aboard, and his dory-mate with him. ‘And Martin, you and Dan take his dory,’ says the Skipper—‘you two being so used to each other it’ll be the best way.’

“Well, that was all right. We took their dory and gear and went out the next set—only two days after our own dory had been lost, mind you. Well, this time we got lost in the fog and were out overnight. It turned out a snowy night, and cold, with fog again in the morning. That morning, so we heard from the crew later, the Skipper said, after a little jogging about, ‘They must be gone; we may as well give it up.’ Well, everybody aboard thought there was a good chance for us yet, and one or two hinted at that. But he wouldn’t have it. ‘Run her westerly,’ he said, and went below. Well, to everybody’s surprise we popped up just then almost under her bow. ’Twas quite a little sea on at the time, but the man at the wheel this time didn’t have any bad ankle. He jibed her over in time and we climbed aboard. One man ran down to call the Skipper and tell him the news, but the Skipper only swore at him. ‘Do you mean to tell me that the watch shifted the course of this vessel without orders from me? I’ll talk to him.’ And he did talk to him, and in a most surprising way. We didn’t know what to make of it. He raved. ‘Discipline,’ he said—he’d always been a great hand for discipline aboard his vessel, but this warn’t any case for discipline—’twas men’s lives.

“Well, they expected to have two or three more days of fishing aboard the Cromwell after that day, but I made a kick. Never again would I haul a trawl for a skipper of his kind, I said.

“‘What?’ asked the Skipper. ‘You mean to mutinize on me?’

“‘Call it mutiny or what you please,’ said I, ‘but myself and Dan don’t leave this vessel again in a dory.’

“‘Don’t you know I can run into the nearest port, Newf’undland or Nova Scotia, and put you ashore?’

“‘I do.’

“‘Or take you both back to Gloucester and have you up before the court?’

“‘You can put us up before forty courts—the highest in the land, if you want—and maybe they’ll sentence us to ten years in jail, or to be strung up to a yard-arm somewheres. But I don’t cal’late they will— I don’t cal’late so—not after we tell our story. It’s a fine thing fishermen have come to when their own skippers try to lose ’em.’

“‘Lose you? Me try to lose you? And why, in God’s name, would I try to lose you?’

“‘Lord knows. But you do, and there’s an end of it. Dan and I don’t swing any dory over the rail of this vessel this trip again.’

“He said nothing to that. Only he looked at me, then a long look at Dan, and turned into his bunk again. Later in the day he drew out a quart bottle of whiskey and began to drink. That was a new thing to his crew that knew him so long. They’d pretty good reason to believe that he’d kept a bottle in his closet under lock and key for a little drink on the quiet when the dories were out and nobody by; but they knew he did it slyly so as not to have the name of it, or maybe so’s not to have to ask anybody to join him, and so save expense. But everybody knew that whatever liquor he took that way was not enough to hurt him. Yes, a sober man he’d always been—everybody had to say that for him. But now he was drinking with all hands looking on, taking it down in gulps, and when the first quart was gone he brought out another, drinking by himself all the time.

“However, he warn’t drunk by a good deal when in the middle of the night he ordered all hands on deck to make sail. The men thought he was crazy; but he was the skipper. If anything happened, ’twas his lookout, not theirs. So they gave her the full mains’l, and then he ordered the man at the wheel to swing her off.

“‘Yes, sir, and what course?’

“‘What course? Didn’t I say to swing her off? Put her fair before it. Jibe over your fores’l and let her run—let her run, I tell you! Whichever way she goes, let her run.’

“And we let her run all that night and all next day. She was under her winter rig—in March it was—no topm’sts; but the four lower sails alone were enough for any Gloucester fisherman that second night. I mind ’twas nine o’clock that night, and Abner Tucker’s watch. A staid, sober man was Abner. He’d been to sea for twenty years, and been with George for ten years—stayed with him because he knew him for a prudent man, I s’pose. Well, Abner took the wheel, and getting the feel of it, cried out, ‘Lord in heaven, it’s like trying to steer two vessels—she’s running wild!’ and braced himself against the wheel, but warn’t braced firm enough, or he warn’t strong enough, for he let her broach, and a sea swept her quarter, burying him and the vessel both. Over the top of the house went that sea and down into the cabin by the ton. They were floated out in the cabin and came tumbling up on deck. Josh Whitaker, a bait knife in his hand, jumped to the main peak halyards.

“The Skipper noticed him. ‘What you goin’ to do?’

“‘Cut,’ says Josh.

“‘You cut, and I’ll cut you!’ The Skipper, too, had a bait-knife, and he lunged with it for Josh. Then he stood guard by the halyards. ‘Or if anybody else thinks to cut’—and we saw the rest of it in his face—dark as it was, we saw that.

“The Skipper was still on guard there when Dan and myself came on deck for our watch. That was eleven o’clock. Dan went for’ard to look out and I took the wheel from Abner, and glad enough he was to turn the wheel over when he gave me the course. I looked in the binnacle to make sure he had it right.

“‘Still on that course?’ I asked, when I’d seen ’twas so. ‘Where’s the Skipper?’

“‘Here,’ said the Skipper himself from between the house and the weather rail, where he was still watching that nobody bothered the halyards, I s’pose. ‘What’s it?’

“‘How about the course?’ I asked.

“‘What’s wrong with the course?’

“‘No’west by west half west—is it right?’

“‘No’west by west half west, or whatever it is—yes. And why not?’

“‘Oh, nothin’, if you say it’s right.’

“‘And why isn’t it right? Why not? Why don’t you spit it out? What’s wrong, anyway?’

“‘What’s wrong?’ I said. ‘Don’t you know we warn’t much more than three hundred miles off shore on this course when we swung her off last night, and we’ve been coming along now for twenty-three hours—and the clip she’s been coming!’

“He said nothing to that for a while, and then it was, ‘And so you don’t think the course is right?’

“‘No, I don’t—not if you’re intending to make Gloucester.’

“‘That so? Not if I was intending to make Gloucester? And where in the name o’ heaven am I headin’ for if not Gloucester?’

“‘Where? where? Damned if I know,’ says I. ‘Hell, maybe.’

“‘That so? Well, Gloucester or hell, drive her you.’

“‘Oh, I’ll drive her.’ I threw it back in his teeth that way, spat to looard, took a fresh hold of the wheel, and did drive her just to let him know he couldn’t scare me. Cripes, but I gave her all she wanted!

“It was wicked, though, the way she was going. She warn’t a big sailer, the Cromwell— George Hoodley never did believe in the racing kind—but any old plug could’ve sailed that night. Along toward midnight it got thick o’ snow, I mind, and we came near running into a vessel hove-to under a fores’l. ‘A fisherman!’ Dan for’ard called out, and as we shot by her a warning hail came to us.

“‘What’s that he said?’ asked the Skipper of Dan.

“‘Something about where we’re bound for,’ answered Dan.

“‘That so? What’s it of his business?’ and went below for a spell.

“From the wheel I could see him taking another drink under the cabin light. He had got to where he wasn’t bothering to pour it into a mug, but took it straight from the bottle—long pulls, too. He came on deck again just as my watch and Dan’s was up. To Charlie Feeney, who was next man to the wheel, I said that the Skipper ought to be spoken to about hauling her up. So Charlie did.

“‘Who in the devil’s name is skipper of this vessel, anyway?’ was all the answer he got.

“Henry Carsick, who was Charlie’s dory-mate, said he didn’t know what to make of it. ‘I’m blessed if ever I knew him to carry half this sail in a breeze before, and I’ve been with him three years,’ said he to me as he went for’ard.

“Well, Dan and me hadn’t more than got off our oilskins after standing watch, when a hail came from Henry on watch for’ard. ‘Some kind of a roaring ahead of us,’ repeated Charlie from the wheel. And just then it was that, leaping like a hound, she hit something good and hard—a check, a grinding along her bottom, a rearing of her bow. But nothing small was going to stop her the clip she was going then, and whatever it was, she was clear of it. By that time the whole crew was tumbling up on deck. ‘God in heaven, what is it?’ they called out one to another. Another leap of her, and it was clear white astern and on either side. ‘A wall of rock ahead!’ said Henry Carsick, and came tumbling aft—‘a ledge of solid rock, Skipper!’

“‘Yes,’ said the Skipper, in a kind of studyin’ tone—‘and it was hell or Gloucester, warn’t it’—he turned to me. ‘I said it’d be, didn’t I?’

“‘That’s what you did,’ said I, ‘and it ain’t Gloucester. You ought to be proud of yourself—nineteen men, maybe, lost for you—nineteen men. I’m not counting yourself—you ought to be lost. Will we put a dory over?’

“‘Put it over, if you want to. Do what you please. I’m done with this vessel— I’m done with fishing.’

“‘I guess that’s right,’ says I. ‘And I guess you ain’t th’ only one that gets through with fishing to-night.’ Then I turned to the crew: ‘What d’y’ say if we try and get a dory over and see what’s around us?’

“They said all right, and we unhooked the tackles. A few heaves, and up went the dory into the air. It hung there for a second or two. We tried to push it over, but the wind took it, tore it from us and dropped it into the sea. The sea took it, tossed it up and back against the rail and on to the deck. One smash—another—another—and it was kindling-wood.

“‘Try another,’ said Dan, who was standing by the rail to his waist in water. He had a line about his waist, and that was all kept him inboard. We hoisted another dory out of the nest, and we had to fight, even as we were hoisting, for a footing on her deck, it was that steep and the great seas running clean over her. Up into the air we hoisted the second dory—up and out again. Once more the howling wind and the boiling sea took it—once more ’twas kindling-wood.

“‘There’s seven more left—try another,’ said Dan. A great man, Dan. If I go to sea for forty years I never expect to see a better— I could ’most cry when I think of how he was lost that night.

“‘One of my hands mashed to a pulp,’ said somebody.

“‘Well, we can’t stop to doctor you,’ I called to him. ‘Let somebody take your place at the tayckles. Now then, lads. I don’t know that it’ll do any good when we do get it over, but maybe we c’n take a look around—maybe find a landing-place somewheres.’

“‘I’ll go in her,’ calls out someone. ‘Give me a chance now——’

“‘My chance,’ said Dan—‘my chance, ain’t it, Martin?’

“‘Yes,’ says I to Dan, and looking back at it now I say, ‘God forgive you, Martin Carr,’ and yet ’twarn’t no fault of mine.

“Out went the dory, and when she hung for a second Dan swung himself after it. He made it, and called, ‘Pay out that line!’ and dug in with the oars. We could just see him. We were still paying out the line, we could still hear his voice, when ‘Haul in! I broke an oar!’ he called.

“‘Haul in!’ said I; but when we went to haul in there was nothing to haul—the line had parted.

“‘God, he’s gone!’ said somebody.

“‘That’s what he is,’ said a voice beside me—‘I was bound he would be.’

“’Twas the Skipper. From by the rail he crept up to me with a knife-blade shining—a bait-knife it was, the same he’d had all night. And then I knew what it meant—he had cut the line. I stood away from him first, then I grabbed him and picked him up, and had a mind to heave him over the rail, and then— I don’t know why— I didn’t. I dropped him on the deck. ‘You’ll get yours before this night’s over,’ I said.

“‘A devil of a lot I care,’ he said.

“The rest of them, or at least those that warn’t too busy with the next dory or trying to look out for themselves, called out to ask what was wrong with the two of us. I didn’t answer, nor did the Skipper.

“Dan was the first to go that night. We kept trying to launch dories—trying, but losing them—smashed to kindling-wood they were, until the whole nine of them were gone. During that time four men were washed over. One, with a line about him, made a desperate try, but was hauled back dead, I mind. We laid his body on the house, and afterward, when I went to look for it, it was gone—swept over. The seas were wicked.

“The wind was blowing harder, the big combers were coming even higher, and the gang began to be washed off her deck and lost one after the other. We took to the rigging when we saw ’twarn’t any more use on deck. And in the middle of it all, what d’y’ think the Skipper did? What d’y’ think he did, the man that was the cause of it all? Well, while his crew were going—to heaven or hell, as it might be—washed over and lost, one after the other—he goes below and has a mug-up for himself. Yes, sir, goes into the forec’s’le and has a mug of coffee and a piece of pie. Somebody that’d seen him going below called out to the rest of us. The Lord’s truth, that. And the rest of us blasphemed to God, we were that black with rage against him.

“Well, there was ten of us, I think, in the rigging, all hoping to be able to last until daylight, when we thought we might be able to see where we were. Hoping only—’twas not expecting—for ’twas getting colder, with the spray beginning to freeze where it struck and making hard work of holding on to the rigging. ’Twas wild—her sails still up, with the reef points beating a devil’s tattoo where the canvas warn’t tearing up and flying out like long-tailed, ghostly things in the blackness. Lashed to the rigging we must’ve been for all of two hours, I cal’late. Some began to take note of the numbness creeping over them—one or two—the most discouraged. The warmer-blooded, or the strongest, tried to keep up a cheering talk—tried to crack jokes and one thing or another.

“Well, we had hope, some of us, of lasting through the night, when crack! We knew what was coming then. I slipped the half-hitch that had been holding me to the shrouds and climbed higher. I was ’most to the mast-head, clear of the gaff, when over the side went her forem’st, half a dozen men clinging to the forerigging, a-swaying and shaking; and after it went the mainm’st, with four more, I think, in her rigging.

“Well, sir, when the forem’st went I was thrown into clear water. I had plenty of line to my hand, with a turn of it around the mast-head, and with that I hauled myself back. I hung on to an arm of the cross-trees for a while there before I started to work my way back along the mast toward the vessel. I didn’t believe then I’d ever live to reach the vessel. The sail, as I said, had been kept standing on her, and now it was lying flat on the water, now sagging down with the weight of the water over it, and now bellying into the air when a great sea would get under it. I saw a shadow of a man—hanging on to a reef point he was—go down with that sail once, then go up with it once, and then the sail split under the weight of the sea, and I never saw him again. But I heard him holler as he went. What he said I don’t know— I had to keep on crawling. The hoops of the sail were around the mast, of course, and I used them and the bolt-rope of the fores’l where the sail was torn away to pull myself along. And, mind you, I had to watch out for the forem’st itself. It reared and tossed with one sea after another—me astride it most of the time—like a man on horseback, though hard riding enough I found it. The least little tap of that, and I knew where I’d be—bait for the fishes that I’d baited for so often. Well, between the hoops and the bolt-rope and the rigging I hauled myself along. And the way that mast rolled! Forty times I swear I thought I was good as dead. But no. And so I dragged myself along, watching out when I went upon the crests and holding my breath when I was pulled down into the depths—hung on desperately, mindful that the quietest knock of that big spar would end me then and there, and mindful, too, that once my grip loosed I’d be swallowed up in the roaring. Tired I was, aye, and weak, but I kept on working toward the vessel’s hull always.

“Against the white sails and white foam I made out two others struggling like myself. ‘That you, Bill?’ said one. ‘Yes—that you, Mike?’ I heard from the other. I knew who they were then, and called out myself. Between two seas one slipped from sight. The other still crept on. ‘That you, Bill?’ I called out. ‘Bill’s gone,’ said the voice. ’Twas Mike Cannon. ‘That’s tough,’ I said. ‘It is that,’ says Mike, ‘after the fight he put up. But how’re you making out yourself?’ ‘Pretty good; how’re you?’ I said. ‘Kind of tired. I doubt if I’ll hold out much longer—something smashed inside my oilskins. My chest and a few ribs, I think—and one arm, too. A wild night and tough going, Martin.’

“There was no more chance to talk. Two awful seas followed, and after the second a quiet spell—the back suction. I looked around. I thought I saw Mike, but warn’t sure. I guess now I didn’t, for another sea, the biggest of all, tossed the whole lot of wreckage back against the hull of the Cromwell. There was a grinding and a battering as the spars met the hull. Myself up in the air, I looked down and found myself over her deck, and then—my guardian angel it must’ve been that whispered me then— I let go. ‘God in heaven!’ I found myself saying, and fetched up on her deck, the luckiest man in all the North Atlantic.

“Against what was left of the rail I found myself, close to the balance of the forerigging. At first I warn’t sure just where I was at all, but that’s where I found myself when my eyes were clear to see again. And when my eyes were clear I looked around. The hull of her was heaving to every sea, moving inshore maybe a foot at a time, with her bowsprit pointing to a shadow of rock or cliff ahead. I looked around again, and, so far as I could make out, everything—house, gurry-kids, booby-hatches, everything—was gone off her. Only the two stumps of her masts seemed to be left on deck. But, no—the forec’s’le hatch was left. Her bow, being so much higher than her stern, saved that. I saw that, and— I don’t know why—toward the forec’s’le I crawled. The hatches were closed. I slid them back. Down the steps I went, and when I was below— I don’t know why, either— I thought of the razors in my bunk. I might’s well get them couple of razors, I says to myself, and starts for my bunk, which was in the peak—the same bunk, clear for’ard on the starb’d side, that the Turkish-bath lad is in now. ’Twas like swimming down there. The water by the butt of the forem’st, ’bout like where I’m sitting here to-night, was over my waist. I couldn’t help thinking then how deep ’twas, and getting deeper fast, with the seas pouring down the companionway. I was thinking of that—thinking I ought to’ve closed the hatches after me—and was looking back toward the steps, when I heard a little noise, or thought I did, for the pounding of the seas overhead was making an awful racket and I warn’t sure. But I heard it again, the clinking of crockery like, and I looked around—back behind the steps—at last, and there, behind the stove, leaning up against the cook’s lockers— I’d clean forgot him—was the Skipper. He was having another mug-up for himself.

“‘God! ‘I said, ‘you here?’

“He half-turned, dropping a coffee mug he had in his hand. Then taking a second look: ‘Man, but I thought it was the ghost of Dan Spring. But you two look something alike. Come to think, you’re cousins, ain’t you? Man, if you could only see yourself! Blood, blood, and bruises—and your eyes, man—your eyes! But have a mug of coffee. Warn’t it lucky? here’s the coffee-boiler hove up here on the lockers, and some coffee still left in it—and hot. And there’s a pie in the grub locker—on the top shelf. If it’d been on the bottom shelf it’d be all wet and floating around. Ain’t that luck? And look here—a good half pint of whiskey left yet! It’s been an awful night, ain’t it? What d’y’ say?”

“He held the bottle toward me. I took it from him and smashed it on the stove. And then I gave him a bit of my mind. ‘And so, George Hoodley, you’re so afraid, after all, to go to your death that you must go drunk, hah? The soul that the Lord gave you—that soul is going from a drunken body straight to the God that’s going to judge you. And how’ll you be judged, d’y’ think, for this night’s work, George Hoodley? Could you listen to what was said on deck to-night and not die of fright at what you’ve done? Did you hear Sam Catiss? “I’m not afraid to go, if go I must,” says Sam, “but, Lord, there’s one or two things I wish I hadn’t done,” says Sam. You heard him—we all

He was having another mug-up for himself.