It was two in the morning, and McKenzie, keeping a watch by standing inside the cabin gang-way with his head and shoulders above the slide, noticed that the foresail was too much for the vessel in the hurricane squalls then blowing. To Wesley Sanders, standing on the cabin house hanging on to the main-boom, he bawled, “Go’n call the boys. We’ll have to reef that fores’l!”

Sanders clawed his way forward in the darkness and Donald waited for the men to muster aft. As they peered at the huge seas rushing to loo’ard and felt the terrific force of the wind, they realized that it was time to clip the Alameda’s wings, for if they didn’t reef the sail, either mast or sail would go and they would be in a nasty mess. Never, in his years at sea, had he ever seen such a gale, nor had old Archie or any of the others. It was an awe-inspiring sight—something to put fear in the heart of the boldest, and McKenzie admitted to himself that he was nervous, but not afraid. He was constrained to marvel at the Providence which kept them comparatively safe up to the present in this tremendous broil of wind-thrashed water—this war of elemental Titans in the midst of whom the schooner was tossed like a chip. As he waited for the men to report aft, he thought of some verses about the Gloucester fishermen in the big gale of 1879.

He thought it must have been a night just like this one, but the vessels in those days were not the able, well-ballasted craft of his time. It had been blowing like the devil for some hours now and a hell’s own sea was running, but so secure did the crowd feel that those off duty could sleep peacefully in their rocking bunks with implicit trust in the seaworthiness of the vessel and the skill of him who commanded her.

Moving figures in the gloom for’ard showed that the four men from the forecastle were coming aft with Sanders, and Donald scrambled out of the cabin gang-way and hauled the slide shut. As he leaped out on top of the cabin house, a violent blast of wind struck the schooner and he grasped the gaff-bridles to save himself from being hurled overboard as the vessel rolled down. The squall kept her pressed lee-rail under for fully a minute, during which time McKenzie and the others could do nothing but hang on to the main-boom and the gear around the mast until its fury was expended.

Slowly, very slowly, the vessel came up as the sail eased off, and the water poured over the lee rail. Then Saunders gave a frightened shout, “Watch aout!” McKenzie peered quickly under his arm to windward in time to see a huge wall of water piling up with a roaring crest, livid in the blackness of the night. It was a “boarder”—he saw that—and he swung himself on the lashed gaff and scrambled up the peak halliards as fast as he could go. He was climbing when the sea struck, and the shock of its onslaught hove the Alameda down until her masts were level with the water. McKenzie was almost hurled from the halliards he was climbing, and when the schooner rolled down he found his feet trailing in the sea and his body at right angles to the masts—outlined in the gloom by the frozen sleet adhering to them.

Clutching desperately at the halliards, he waited for the vessel to come up and wondering how the others fared, and if the hull was damaged. She lifted a little, but would come up no further. This time she was hove-down on her beam ends. “Cargo’s shifted!” muttered McKenzie, and he scrambled down to the gaff again with half his body dragging through seething sea. Crawling over the boom with fingers numb and frozen and the chill sleet melting and running down his neck, he made the weather side of the house and clawed his way along to the main-mast, where men were standing hanging on to the gear and working at something. In the darkness it was impossible to discern anything distinctly, save by the film of frozen sleet which outlined objects. Also, nothing could be heard above the thunder of wind and sea. As McKenzie slid down the slanting decks to the mast to see if all hands were safe and the condition of the foresail, Surrette bawled in his ear, “Main-boom’s out of the saddle, Skipper, an’ Wesley’s jammed in it—!”

With a grim foreboding in his heart, Donald felt and stared around the after-side of the mast until he made out the oilskinned figure of Sanders lying head down to leeward. He was writhing and twisting and crying out, and his right leg was jammed against the mast by the jaws of the unshipped main-boom. At every roll of the beam-ended schooner in the sea-way, the man’s head and shoulders were submerged and he was screaming, “For th’ love o’ Christ set me free! Get my leg clear! Oh, God! It’s killin’ me!” His cries could be heard above the noises of the gale.

“Let’s have a pump-handle!” bawled McKenzie quickly—horror-struck at the man’s plight. “Get a fluke-bar—anything.... God’s sake don’t let him suffer like that! Get down and hold his head clear of the water, you Archie!”

With four of them tugging and straining on a pump-brake, they failed to lever the boom-jaws clear. When the vessel rolled, the great sixty-five foot spar swayed and ground against the captive limb and Wesley screamed with the frightful agony of it. “Oh, God!” he shrieked, and his shouts would be stifled by the seas which washed over them from time to time. “Cut my leg away! Cut it away! Holy Mother! I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it!”

Surrette was hanging to loo’ard with one arm around the fife-rail and the other supporting Sanders to keep his head clear of the water. He was trying to soothe the agonized man. “Hold a minute, Wesley-boy, we’ll git ye adrift in a minute! Keep cool, my son, ye’ll soon be alright!” But, eventually, Nature did what Surrette couldn’t do, and Sanders mercifully fainted.

Every grind of the boom-jaws against the man’s leg wrung Donald’s sensitive heart. He saw that all efforts to budge the heavy boom by levering it away were of no avail. “Get me an ax!” he yelled, panting and perspiring and with the blood running cold within him at the terror of it all. When the axe was handed to him, Joak whimpered, “Ye’re no goin’ tae cut his leg aff, are ye, Donal’?”

“Leg? Hell!” snapped the skipper. “Stand clear! I’m going to chop through the boom!” And he swung the keen blade into the wood until he had severed the jaws and Wesley was released.

“God’s truth, that was awful!” he panted. “Get him down in the cabin and place him in a lee bunk. His leg must be crushed to a pulp.” Staggering along the deck with the groaning man and deluged with spray and solid water, they reached the gangway and managed to get Sanders into the cabin. They placed him tenderly in a bunk in the darkness and scrambled on deck again for still more strenuous work.

The Alameda was lying on her beam-ends in the trough of the sea and the waves were making a complete breach over her. “Slack away the fore-sheet!” shouted McKenzie calmly. “And if that don’t lift her, we’ll try and haul the sail off her!” A half an hour’s desperate work on the part of the five men failed to bring the schooner up, and Donald realized there was only one other thing to do. “Get me your axe again, Joak,” he shouted, and when it was brought to him he slid down into the water to leeward and hacked the lanyards of the main-shrouds. Crawling up to windward, he bawled to Surrette, “Cast off your main-sheet and crotch-tackles! I’m going to cut away the main-mast!” And when this was done, he waited a moment when the vessel rolled to leeward and swung his axe into the taut weather lanyards. With a twang of the spring-stay as it parted, the big spar went by the board and into the sea.

Relieved of the main-mast and with the foresail down, the schooner slowly came up from her beam-end position, but wallowed in the trough with her decks listed to port. The foremast, with nothing to stay it aft, was reeling precariously in the step and threatened to topple over the side until McKenzie and Surrette clawed their way aloft and stayed it with two lengths of three-inch halliard which they carried to the gypsy-winch and hove taut.

When this work was done, they double reefed the foresail and set it, and Donald sent Ainslie Williams to the wheel. “We’ll jibe her over on the other tack and get to work on that salt which has shifted up inside her port top-sides. It’ll shift back some when we put her over.... Lash yourself to the box, then let her run off for a spell and watch for a lull and a smooth before you put the helm up on her!” And he and the three others stood by a jibing tackle which they rigged to ease the fore-boom over.

Under sail again, the schooner ran before the wind and sea, and then Ainslie shouted and put the wheel over. Bang! The foreboom whipped from port to starboard with a jarring shock which caused the stout halliard backstays to stretch and McKenzie to glance anxiously at the mast.

“She’s alright,” he ejaculated grimly, and he was about to make a leap for the fore-rigging as the schooner came up, when another big sea piled over the stern and, catching him in its terrific onrush, drove him with sickening force into the fore pin-rail. For almost half a minute he was under water, and when he emerged dazed, sputtering and gasping, it was to find Surrette washing about in the water, which seemed to fill her decks from stem to stern.

Hauling the old fisherman to his feet, McKenzie found him unconscious from a blow on the head, but, sensing from the slatting of the foresail, that the wheel was deserted, he propped the man against a splintered dory and ran aft to find nobody at the spokes. Before he could swing the wheel down, the foresail jibed, and the sail split from head to foot and was soon a rectangle of slatting rags.

Joak and Jim from out of the darkness appeared aft. “Where’s Ainslie?” bawled Donald. “God Almighty, but this is one hell of a night! Go for’ad, you fellows, and get Surrette into the cabin. He’s lying stunned against a dory!” And he slipped the wheel into the becket lashed hard down, and searched the lee quarter for the missing Ainslie with a chill dread gripping his heart. When the other two brought Surrette aft, Donald met them. “Ainslie’s gone!” he said huskily. “God be good to him!”

With the schooner lying broad in the sea, they went below, and McKenzie lit the lamps and went over to examine Wesley, who was lying where they had left him. Cutting the clothing away from the injured limb, Donald found the leg fearfully bruised and swollen. Fixing it up as best he could, he made the injured man comfortable by shoring him with pillows and blankets, and he turned to Surrette. The old man had been hove against the bulwarks and had received a nasty cut on the head, but when a spoonful of rum had been forced between his teeth, he became conscious. After bathing and dressing the wound, Donald left him in a bunk, and scanned the barometer.

“Rising!” he grunted wearily, and to the other two he said, “We’ll get a bite of something and cut our way into the hold and trim that salt. Then when it eases off, we’ll get some sail on her and get her in.” The others nodded gloomily, and they all went forward to the forecastle and ate like starving men.

When Joak brought Donald a cup of coffee, he found him with his head on the table, crying silently. “What’s th’ maitter, Donal’?” he asked, patting his old chum on the shoulder. “Are ye thinkin’ aboot Ainslie?”

The other nodded and looked up with the tears streaming from his tired eyes. “I wonder—if I shouldn’t have taken—the wheel—myself—that time?” he said brokenly.

Jim answered, “No, no, Skipper! It wasn’t any fault of yours. I h’ard ye tell him to lash hisself an’ he couldn’t ha’ done it. It was his fate. Poor lad! I hope he died quick an’ easy. That’s th’ best a feller kin wish. God rest his soul, for he was a good lad!”

McKenzie was only a boy after all and he felt Ainslie’s loss keenly. It was awful to go like that—to be swept into eternity in the twinkling of an eye—and it un-nerved him. He had put in a frightful night and he was feeling the strain, and it wasn’t over yet. The other two—older men and unhampered with responsibility—cheered him up, and when he went on deck again, he felt better and ready to tackle the problems before him.

Breaking into the hold, they trimmed the cargo of salt, and came on deck again when the grey dawn was breaking. The wind had eased off to a moderate gale, but the sea was still running high and the schooner, on an even keel once more, looked a sorry sight in the growing light. Ice filmed rigging and the bulwarks, and everything moveable was gone from the deck—dories, stays’l box and cable box, and the chain was scattered around. The starboard anchor was hove off the rail and inboard, and a splintered stump showed where the main-mast had been, while a gap in the port bulwarks marked the place where it crashed overboard. The foremast stood denuded of sail, with gaff and boom swinging idly and festoons of canvas flapping from them. The halliards were trailing overside, and gleaming ice covered everything.

“She’s rim-racked for sure, Skipper,” grinned Jim, “but she’s still tight. Ain’t no more’n ordinary water when I tried th’ pumps ... good hull to stand th’ bangin’ she’s had this time.”

Donald surveyed the schooner and he said hoarsely, “We’ll work her in. We’ll hoist the riding sail on the foremast, and with that and the jumbo, we’ll get her along. Let’s get busy.”

With the easing off of the gale, McKenzie got the schooner underway again, and after figuring out his position by dead reckoning, he shaped a course for Eastville, and found, even without after-canvas that she would lay it. Eastville Harbor was their nearest port, and he was anxious to get Sanders ashore and into a doctor’s hands.

But progress under such scanty canvas was slow, and when a fishing vessel hove in sight during the afternoon, McKenzie hoisted the ensign, union down, and, when the other craft hove-to, he hailed her. “Send a dory over. I have an injured man I want to send to hospital!” They came and took Sanders away, and within a few minutes the other vessel swung off hot-foot for Eastville.

“I’ll work her in alright,” Donald told her Skipper. “Tell them we’re coming, and that we lost a man—Ainslie Williams—overboard in that blow.”

Two days later, in fine smooth weather, they arrived off Eastville Capes, and a tug plucked them through the headlands and into the harbor. McKenzie steered—as he had steered for two nights and two days—and he looked utterly played out. His face was unshaven and red and swollen by continuous exposure to cold and wind; his shoulders drooped through sheer bodily fatique, and his brown eyes peered, blood-shot, through half-closed lids, heavy for lack of sleep. The skipper of the tug-boat, making fast alongside to shove the schooner into the wharf, stared at the smashed decks and at the weary McKenzie, and he remarked to a deck-hand, “That lad has sure had one hell of a time an’ he’s done well—mighty well—for a kid.”

There was a crowd of people on the wharf when they came alongside, and, thinking of Ainslie Williams, Donald avoided their eyes. They looked down on the schooner’s decks in silence, and the half-masted flag told its own story of death ... outside. He got up on the wharf, still in his sea-boots and oil-clothes, and staggered on the stringpiece as though a deck were still heaving beneath his feet. People spoke to him—kindly voices—but he was tired, too tired to talk. When a man has been three days and three nights on his feet under severe mental and physical strain, he craves but one thing—to throw himself down and sleep, sleep, sleep.

Caleb Heneker, the Alameda’s owner, laid a kindly hand on his shoulder. “You did well, son, to bring her through that breeze. It was a terror—a real bad one, and an awful lot of vessels and lives lost. Run along, Cap’en, and git a rest. Your mother’s at the head of the wharf, and I cal’late she’ll be mighty glad to see ye.” He seemed to rouse at the mention of “mother,” and with a vague recollection of hearing Heneker say that “Sanders was alright, but they had to take his leg off,” he found himself with her arms around his neck and her voice in his ears, sobbing, “Oh, Donald, I’m so glad you’re back home and safe!”

Arm in arm with her, he walked up to his house, and the people strolling down to the wharf to view the schooner, stepped courteously to one side to let them pass. “Young Skipper looks broken up,” they said, sympathetically. “Must have had an awful time.” And they stared after the stooping, oilskinned figure staggering up the road with the mother leading him by the arm, and shook their heads understandingly. It was not the first time they had seen such sights, and oftentimes it would be a silent figure on a plank, and covered with a blanket, which would be carried up from the wharf—a staved and broken human—aftermath of gales.

At home he flopped down into a bedroom chair and the mother took his boots and oilskins off—soothing him with cheerful “There now’s” as she removed his clothing. Leading him to bed, she helped him in, arranged the pillow under his head and covered him with the blanket and quilt just as she used to do when he was a bit of a little lad. Then with a soft kiss, she pulled down the window blind and left him to a slumber which lasted for a full twelve hours.

Youth does not take long to recuperate both mentally and physically, and McKenzie was no exception. When he awoke, he sloughed off the despondency and depression of spirits induced by fatigue and anxiety, and went down to the vessel. They were unloading the salt out of her, and carpenters were already at work on her decks repairing the damages. Archie Surrette, tending a salt tub, hailed him cheerfully, “How’re ye feelin’, Skipper? Catch up on sleep?” His head was bandaged, but he looked none the worse.

“They’re givin’ ye a great name, Cap, for gettin’ this hooker in,” he continued. “’Twas an awful breeze, they say. A power o’ vessels lost an’ bust up. Th’ whole o’ Novy Scotia’s beaches are piled wi’ lobster-traps, stove dories and fishin’ boats, an’ nary a fish house has a roof on it ’twixt here and Cape Sable. It blowed vessels away from the wharves—bust their moorin’ lines, an’ even blowed sails out o’ the stops and tore ’em to rags. It wuz th’ big breeze all right.”

McKenzie nodded. “What—what do they think of—of poor Williams—going?” he ventured hesitatingly.

The old man bit off a chew. “It was too bad, Skip, that he went, but it wuz his own fault. He niver lashed hisself to the wheel-box after you warned him. He sh’d ha’ known better—he’s bin at sea a long while and he knowed what was liable to happen. Ef he’d have taken a turn with a bit o’ line around his waist, he’d have bin here to-day ’stead of over the side. Don’t you worry, Skip,” and he patted him on the shoulder, “it ain’t your fault, and nobody’s sayin’ it is. Good thing he was a single man. Now, poor Sanders ... that’s bad. They had to take his leg off to save his life. He’ll pull ’raound, but he’s got six of a family to keep, an’ I cal’late he won’t want to go to sea any more after what he went through. And I don’t blame him!”

Feeling himself again, Donald went into Heneker’s office to discuss the chance of getting command of the Alameda for the spring fishery.

“I’d like to give her to ye, son,” said the old man, “but Tommy Himmelman’ll be goin’ back in her.” He noticed the disappointment in McKenzie’s eyes, and he added encouragingly, “I’m plannin’ to build another vessel this summer which Himmelman’ll take next year, an’ by that time, I can promise you first chance on the Alameda. Y’know, son, you’re young yet. Put in another season in the dory and learn all ye can. It’ll be good training.” He turned and picked up a letter from his desk. “Here’s a letter from the insurance company what has the policy on the Alameda. They’re sending you a gold watch for bringin’ her in, and well they might, for it’s saved them a good four thousand dollars anyway.”

When he left the office, Donald muttered grimly, “A gold watch? Very nice, but a gold watch will not help poor Williams or Sanders. I’d give a thousand gold watches to see them as they were!”

For a couple of days he remained at home helping his mother and cutting wood for her summer firing, then Mr. Nickerson sent for him to get Judson’s schooner ready for the spring fishery. He spent a week working on her when Judson himself arrived from Halifax.

“By gorry, Don,” remarked the skipper after the greetings were over, “but that was one devil of a session you had after you left me. A dirty easterly! We get one every winter, but that one was a terror. Awful sea, they tell me, running everyways and piling aboard. That’s what does the damage, and no vessel can avoid them. So Caleb Heneker can’t give you the Alameda this season? Oh, well, you’re young yet, and another summer in the dory won’t hurt you.”

“I suppose you saw Helena in Halifax,” observed Donald. “And Ruth? How are they?”

The other made a gesture. “By Jingo, I nearly forgot my message. I’ve to tell you they’re both tickled to death to hear of your escape, but Ruth wants to know why you did not write her since you came in. She thinks you are most unfriendly.”

McKenzie smiled. “I’ll write to-night,” he said simply; glad that she resented his neglect. He had not felt like writing after his disastrous trip, and the piece of convent-made lace which he had purchased for her in Calle O’Reilly, Havana, had been ruined by salt water and was no longer presentable.

When mid-March came around, the Spring fleet were swinging off for the Banks again and Nickerson’s schooner, the Windrush was about ready for sea, with an eight-dory gang. Donald was going dory-mates with old Archie Surrette.

“Let’s take a shoot up to Halifax for a day,” suggested Judson, and when McKenzie gave him a quizzical stare, he reddened under his tan. “If I don’t,” he added in excuse, “Helena will be getting hitched to one of those Willy-boys that’s forever flappin’ araound her. Get into your glad rags and come along.” And the two men ran for their respective homes, changed, and caught the packet steamer a half-minute before she pulled out.