IN THE WAKE OF THE WEATHER-CLOTH

We had raised the great tower of the Hatteras lighthouse in the dim gray of the early morning. The huge spark flashed and faded as the lens swung slowly about its axis some fifteen miles to the south’ard of us. Objects now began to be more distinct, and our masthead could be made out against the leaden background above. Up there the fierce song of the gale roared dismally as the little vessel rose upon the giant Gulf sea, and swung her straining fabric to windward. Then, quartering the heave of the foam-crested hill, she would drop slowly down that dread incline and roll desperately to leeward as she started to meet the rushing hill to windward and above her.

With a bit of the gaff hoisted, and leach and luff lashed fast down, we were trying to forereach to the eastward and clear the death-trap under our lee—the fatal diamond of the Hatteras Shoals. Buck and I had been on deck all the day before, and all night, and we welcomed the growing light as only hard-pressed men at sea can welcome it. It meant a respite from the black hell about us, and the heavy snore of some giant comber would no longer make us catch our breath in the dread it might be the beginning of that white reach where no vessel that enters comes forth again.

We could see we had many miles between us and the end—miles that meant many minutes which might be utilized in the fight for life. We were heading nearly east now, and the stanch little craft was making better than south, while the gale had swung up to nor’-nor’east. She was forereaching ahead, though going fast to leeward, and it looked as if we might claw off into the wild Gulf Stream, where in spite of the sea lay safety. To leeward lay certain death, the wild death of a lost ship in the white smother that rolled with the chaotic thunder of riven hills of water.

Buck’s face was calm and white in the morning light, and his oilskins hung about him in dismal folds. White streaks of salt showed under his eyes, which were partly sheltered by his sou’wester, and the deep lines in his wet cheeks gave him a worn-out look. He must have been very tired, for as I came from behind the piece of canvas lashed on the weather quarter to serve as a weather-cloth, he left the wheel and dropped down behind the bulwarks.

“Begins to look better,” I bawled, taking off the becket from the wheel spokes, which had been hove hard down all night. “She needs a bit of nursing,” and Buck nodded and grinned as he ducked from the flying drift.

She was doing well now, and after trying to ease her a while I put the wheel back in the becket and bawled down the scuttle to our little black boy to get us some junk and ship’s bread. Our other man, John, a Swede, had turned in dead beat out an hour before, and as we four were all hands, I thought it just as well to let him sleep as long as he could. As master, I would have to stay on deck anyway.

Buck and I crouched in the lee of the bulwarks and tarpaulin, munching the junk and watching the little ship ride the sea. We could do nothing except let her head as close as we dared to the gale.

As long as the canvas held all would be well. The close-reefed mainsail would have been blown away in the rush of that fierce blast, and it would have been folly to try to drive her into that appalling sea. If anything started we were lost men. She was only a twenty-ton vessel, but she had a good nine feet of keel under her, and could hold on grimly. We had used a sea anchor for twenty-four hours, but while it held her head to the sea it caused her to drift dead to leeward, so we had at last cut it adrift and put a bit of storm staysail on her to work ahead. “I’m glad we didn’t run durin’ the night,” said Buck, “she wouldn’t ’a’ done it an’ gone clear—just look at that fellow!”

As he spoke a giant sea rose on the weather beam, a great mass of blue water capped with a white comber. The little vessel’s head dropped down the foam-streaked hollow until we were almost becalmed under the sea that followed. A dirty, dangerous sea to run in.

“I thought you might have run when we saw how bad it was—an’ trust to luck to go clear. But fight on, says I, even when you know you’re losing. If you’d started to run you’d never been able to swing her up again if we’d had to—an’ now we’ll go clear. She’ll stand it.”

Buck was an American and John a Swede. The latter had hinted at running off before the storm when we found ourselves close in. Buck cursed him in my presence in true American fashion.

“Never give up a fight because you’re beat at the start,” says I. “It’s them that fights when they have to, an’ because it’s right, that always win. We did seem dead beat last night, an’ when that light flashed out bright I was almost willing to say Amen. But I knew it ware wrong, an’ we must fight it out. A man that fights to win is no sailor. It’s him that fights when he knows he will lose—an’ then maybe he won’t lose after all.”

The sun showed a little through a break in the flying scud, and the water looked a beautiful blue, streaked with great patches of white. Buck was gazing hard to the southward and could make nothing out except the Hatteras Light. He was tired, and refused to move from a wash of foam along the deck where he sat.

“You see,” he said, wiping the spray from his face, “a man can’t tell nothin’ in this world. There’s no use tryin’ to at sea—an’ the more you risk sometimes the more you win. It isn’t always judgment. There ware old man Richards. He knew the coast, but he trusted his judgment too much—an’ I’m the bum ye see now. I don’t mean nothin’ agin your boat, Cap’n.

“You remember Richards? Had the ole Pocosin. Used to run her from Nassau to Hunter’s P’int. ’Taint much of a run, even for that kind o’ hooker, but in the winter this Cape is hell, an’ that’s a fact. You kin almost jump from wrack to wrack from the Core Bank to Bodie’s Island. I’ve seen forty vessels, big an’ small, on the beach here in one season—an’ we aint out o’ the business yet, either.”

We were drifting down fast on the outer shoal, and I could see, or fancy I could see, the Ocracoke Lighthouse. The wind had increased a little with sunrise as usual in a northeaster, but it seemed to be working a bit more to the northward and getting colder.

“It was just such a day as this. We hove the Pocosin up when she was almost in sight of the Capes and not ten hours’ run from Norfolk. But she ware ramming her nose into it harder and harder, an’ there we was. We couldn’t get no farther.

“It ware pretty bad when we started inshore, with the glass a-fallin’ an’ the sky like the inside of a lead pot. Then came the breeze and big northeast sea what stopped us.

“We couldn’t push her through that sea. It was more’n common heavy, and even with the whole mainsail on her she wouldn’t do a thing but rear up on her hind legs an’ throw herself into it so she’d go out o’ sight to her foremast. Man, she ware an’ old boat, an’ if she’d kept the racket up she’d have split in two!

“We could see Cape Henry light by dark, but it warn’t no use, so we wore around before it ware too late an’ got the foresail an’ jib stowed safe. Then we came to on the port tack, lowering down the mainsail and reefing it to balance the bit o’ staysail forrads. ’Twas a piece o’ work takin’ in that mainsail, an’ that’s the truth. You may search me if it didn’t fair blow the hair off yer head by this time. I don’t mind a bit o’ breeze, Cap’n, but when I say it ware blowin’ then, it aint more’n half the truth. It ware fair howlin’.

“We got the sail on the boom, and then that same boom took charge for twenty red-hot minutes while she threw it from port to starboard—an’ all hands hangin’ onto the mainsheet tryin’ to get it in when it slacked with the throw.

“‘Balance-reef her,’ says the old man, an’ we lashed her down, givin’ about ten feet o’ leach rope hoisted taut with the peak downhaul fast to windward. Then everything was made snug, an’ with the bit o’ staysail hauled to the mast we hung on to see what would happen next.”

Buck rose for a minute and gazed steadily to the southward as though he had seen something. Then he settled down again.

“Me? I was mate, you know. I’d been with Richards over a year. He had his wife an’ daughter aboard that trip—yessir—about as fine—she was about seventeen.”

A sea struck the vessel while Buck was looking to leeward, but he paid no attention to it as the spray filled his collar. He seemed to be so deeply occupied in some object that I began to get a bit nervous, and reached for the glasses to try and pick out a new danger. But he evidently saw nothing, for he went on slowly after a bit.

“There were six of us men and a little coon boy in the galley. It gave us three men in a watch, an’ that ware enough. I saw we were goin’ to the south’ard fast, the sea was northerly yet, but the wind was working fast to the eastward and we waren’t reaching off a little bit. She was heavy with lumber an’ goin’ sideways like a crab—not shoving her nose ahead like we are now. It was dead to leeward, and you know how that is to the north’ard of Core Bank or Lookout.

“The old man had the wheel fast hard down and was standin’ there watchin’ her take them seas. It was growing dark an’ them fellers from the Gulf looked ugly. They just wiped her clean from end to end, roarin’ over her an’ smotherin’ everything. “‘We got to fight fer it to-night,’ said I. ‘Better try the close-reefed mainsail before it’s too late. A bit o’ fore-reachin’ an’ we’ll clear.’

“‘’Twon’t stand,’ says he, ‘’twon’t stand ten minutes in this breeze. Let her go. If she won’t go clear we’ll run her fer Ocracoke. It’s high water at eight-bells to-night.’

“That may have been good judgment, but you know that entrance is a warm place at night in a roarin’ northeaster. I got a bit nervous an’ spoke up again after an hour or two.

“‘Better try her with the mainsail; we’ve got to fight her off,’ I said again.

“‘’Taint no use,’ said he. ‘Let her go. A man never dies till his time comes.’

“I’d heard that sayin’ before, but I never knew just how a feller could reckon on his time. Seemed to me somebody’s was comin’ along before daylight. Finally I kept on asking the old man an’ argufyin’—for there was the two women—an’ he gave in. Before twelve that night we had her under a single reef and shovin’ off for dear life. It ware blowin’ harder now, an’ the first thing away went that staysail. Then we tried a bit o’ jib, but she gave a couple o’ plunges and drove her head under a good fathom. When she lifted it up the jib ware gone.

“There we ware with the old hooker a-broachin’ to an’ no head sail on her. The seas ware comin’ over her like a cataract and the dull roar soundin’ louder an’ louder. There ware the two women below——

“Still the fight waren’t half over. Ther ware the new foresail to close reef. It would have held an hour or two. That would have driven us off far enough to have gone through the slue. But no. The old man had had enough.

“‘Take in the mainsail,’ he bawled, and all hands wrastled for half an hour with that sail while all the time we were goin’ fast to the south’ard. ‘Close reef foresail,’ says he; ‘we’ll try an’ run her through.’ Then he took the lashin’s off the wheel. “There ware no use sayin’ nothin’ more. We ware hardly able to speak as it was. We put the peak o’ that foresail on her an’ the old man ran the wheel hard up. It ware near daybreak now, and she paid off an’ streaked away before it through a roarin’ white sea. Just as she struck her gait we saw the flash o’ the Hatteras Light.

“The old man saw it. It ware bright enough for all hands. So bright my heart gave one big jump an’ then seemed to stop. There ware the two women below, the girl—we tore along into the night with six men an’ one little black boy holdin’ on to anything they could an’ lookin’ out over the jib-boom end——”

Buck was silent for a moment. Then he went on.

“It had to come. I saw it first. Just a great white spout o’ foam in the blackness ahead. It ware the outer edge o’ the Diamond Shoal.”

Buck’s voice died away in the roar about us and close as I was to him I could hear nothing he said, though I saw his lips move. I went to the binnacle and peered into it. The lighthouse was drawing to the westward. The roar aloft was deepening as she swung herself to windward, but she was making good weather of it and holding on like grim death.

“How did you get through?” I asked, ducking down again behind the shelter.

“We didn’t. We didn’t get through. The Pocosin’s there yet—or what’s left of her. One more hour of fightin’ off under that reefed foresail an’ we’d have got to sea—we’d have gone clear. There waren’t nothin’ happened—just a smashing crash in the night. Man, ye couldn’t hear or see nothin’. Both masts gone with the first jolt, an’ up she broaches to a sea what was breakin’ clear out in seven fathoms. I tried to get aft—good God! I tried to get to the companion——”

Buck was looking steadily to leeward and the drift was trickling out of his eyes.

When he turned he smiled and his tired face looked years older as he wiped it with the cuff of his oilskin. The gale roared and snored overhead, but breaks in the flying scud told that the storm-center was working to the northward and the cold meant it would go to stay.

“I don’t know but what’s that’s so about a feller not goin’ till his time comes, Cap’n. I came in the next day on a bit o’ the mainmast, a little more dead than alive, but I’m tellin’ you fairly, Cap’n, if it waren’t fer you an’ your little ship, I’d just as soon have gone to leeward this mornin’. A feller gets sort o’ lonesome at times—especially when he’s got no ties——”

“Haven’t you any?” I asked cheerfully.

Buck looked slowly up and his eyes met mine. They rested there for a moment. His lips moved for a little, but I heard nothing he said. Then he let his gaze droop to the deck planks and bowed his head.

A long time he sat there while I watched the lighthouse draw more and more to the westward. Suddenly he looked up. “She’s all clear now, sir, an’ if you say so I’ll go below an’ start a bit o’ fire.”

“Go ahead, and tell Arthur to come here?” I said.

I watched him as he staggered below. He was tired out, wet, and despondent. The fate of the Pocosin was too evident for me to ask questions. I respected him for not mentioning the girl again. It was evident what she had been to him. It was long ago, but the memory was fresh before him. He was passing near the grave of the one woman he had loved, and there was more than the salt drift in his eyes as he went down the companion. In a few minutes a stream of black smoke poured from the funnel in the deck and was whirled away to leeward. Soon the smell of frying bacon was swept aft, and I went below to a warm breakfast to be followed by a nap, while the plunging little vessel rode safely into the great Gulf sea. We had gone past the graveyard of the Diamond Shoals.