A Dream of the North Sea Part 5

In the middle of the bright, sharp morning the whole of our pa.s.sengers gathered in a clump aft, and desultory chat went on. Said Blair, "I notice that the professor's been rather reticent since we mariners rescued him."

"I am not quite a hero, and that last night on the _Haughty Belle_ isn't the kind of thing that makes a man talkative. Then that poor silly soul down below gave me a good deal to think about. He must have suffered enough to make the rack seem gentle, and yet the good blockhead only thought of telling us to leave him alone in case the vessel went. Did you ever know, Miss Dearsley, of a man doing such a thing before? And you see he hasn't said anything since he came aboard, except that he never knowed what a real bed was afore. These things take me. We spend hundreds of thousands on the merest wastrels in the slums, and the finest cla.s.s that we've got are left neglected. I would rather see every racecourse loafer from Whitechapel and Southwark blotted out of the world than I would lose ten men like that fellow Withers."

Marion Dearsley said, "I don't think the neglect is really blameworthy.

For instance, I'm sure that my uncle knows nothing about what we have seen in the last few days. He is charitable on system, and he weighs and balances things so much that we tease him. He never gives a sixpence unless he knows all the facts of the case, and I'm sure when I tell him he'll be willing to a.s.sist Mr. Fullerton. Then I'm as ignorant as my uncle. I can guess a great deal, of course, but really I've only seen about half a dozen men, after all. It's terrible to watch the ships in bad weather, but for our purpose--I mean Mr. Fullerton's purpose--we might as well have been looking at Stanfield's pictures." "Never mind.

You fahscinate your uncle, Miss Dearsley, and we'll show you what we can do. What do you think, Miss Ranken?"

Miss Lena Ranken, Mr. Blair's niece, creased her brow in pert little wrinkles: "I'm not sure that I know anything; Marion there studies questions of all sorts, but an ordinary girl has to do without knowledge. I know that when auntie and I were wishing you would drop us over into the water, I thought of the men who use the same damp bed for two months instead of having changes and all that."

"What is your idea now, Ferrier, about the business? I'm not asking you for a gratis lecture, but I want to see how far you would go."

"Well, frankly, at present I think that Fullerton's the best guide for all of us. I should be a mock-modest puppy if I pretended not to know a good deal about books, because books are my stock-in-trade; but I've just seen a new corner of life, and I've learned how little I really know. Head is all well in its way; a good head may administer, but great thoughts spring from the heart."

"Very good, Professor. Oh, bee-yootiful! Great thoughts spring from the heart."

Fullerton broke in with dreamy distinctness, "I think the doctor will agree with me that you must never frame a theory from a small number of instances. I never even ventured to hint what I should like to any of our friends until I had been at sea here for a long time. I'm convinced now that there is much misery all over the fishing banks, and I have a conviction that I shall help to remove it. I am called to make the effort, but I never listen to sentiment without also hearing what common sense has to say. Perhaps we should all see the everyday life of the men, and see a good deal of it before we begin theorizing. Look at that smack away on our port bow. I'll be bound one or two are hurt in some way there. That's one of 120 sail that we saw; multiply 120 by 20, and then you have the number of vessels that we must attend under this crackbrained scheme of ours. All the ledger and daybook men say we are crackbrained. Now, if we can go on doing just a little with our ordinary dispensaries, is it wise to risk playing at magnificence? You see I am taking the side of Mr. Commonsense against my own ideas."

"I certainly think you may succeed," said Miss Dearsley.

"So do I; and now you see my point. We want to persuade other people as quickly as possible to think as we do. To persuade, we must back all our talkee-talkee by facts, and to get facts we must work and endure in patience. You see what an amazingly clear political economist I am. Wait till we run into the fleet; we shall be sure to catch them before the trawls go down for the night, and, unless I'm mistaken, some of us will be astonished. I never go into a new fleet without seeing what a little weir we have at present to check a Niagara of affliction."

Mrs. Walton had much to do with many philanthropic movements, and men were always glad to hear her judgments--mainly because she was not a platform woman. She turned an amused look on Fullerton, and said, "Of course a woman can't deal with logic and common sense and all those dreadful things, and I know what a terribly rigid logician Mr. Fullerton is. I think, even without seeing any more misery and broken bones and things, that we have no very great difficulty before us. The case is as simple as can be--to a woman. There is an enormous fund set aside by the public for charity, and everybody wants to see a fair distribution. If a slater comes off a roof and breaks a limb, there is a hospital for him within half an hour's drive in most towns. If one of our men here breaks his arm, there is no hospital within less than two days' steam. We don't want the public to think the fisher is a more deserving man than the slater; we want both men to have a fair chance. Charitable men can see the slater, so they help him; they can't see the fisher without running the chance of being bruised and drenched, so they don't help him--at present. They don't want good feeling; they want eyes, and we must act as eyes for them. Women can only be useful on sh.o.r.e; you gentlemen must do everything that is needed out here. I'm very glad I've seen the North Sea in a fury, but I should not care to be a mere coddled amateur, nor would any one else that I work with."

"Quite right, madam," said the professor, nodding his head with the gravity of all Cambridge; "and I should like to see women taking part in the management of our sea hospitals if the scheme is ever to be any more than a dream. The talking women are like the talking men: they squabble, they recriminate, they screech and air their vanity, and they mess up every business they touch. But if you have committee work to do, and want economy and expedition, then give me one or two lady members to a.s.sist."

Then Blair called, "Come along, skipper; she's going easy. Bring up one or two of the men and we'll have some singing."

Now the ordinary sailor sings songs with the merriest or most blackguard words to the most dirge-like tunes; but our fishermen sing religious words to the liveliest tunes they can learn. I notice they are fonder of waltz rhythms than of any others. The merchant sailor will drawl the blackguard "I'll go no more a-roving" to an air like a prolonged wail; the fisherman sings "Home, beautiful home" as a lovely waltz. Blair always encouraged the men to sing a great deal, and therein he showed the same discretion as good merchant mates.

I cannot describe Freeman's ecstasies, and I wish I could only give an idea of the helmsman's musical method. This latter worthy had easy steering to do, so he joined in; he was fond of variety, and he sang some lines in a high falsetto which sounded like the whistling of the gaff (with perhaps a touch of razor-grinding added); then just when you expected him to soar off at a tangent to Patti's topmost A, he let his voice fall to his boots, and emitted a most bloodcurdling ba.s.s growl, which carried horrid suggestions of midnight fiends and ghouls and the silent tomb. Still, his mates thought he was a musical prodigy; he was entranced with the sweetness and power of his own performance, and the pa.s.sengers were more than amused, so every one was satisfied.

The gentlemen who vary my slumbers by howling "The Rollicking Rams" in eight different keys at four in the morning would call the ship's company of that schooner soft. There are opinions and opinions. At any rate the hours pa.s.sed softly away until the yacht ran clean into the thick of the fleet, and the merry, eldritch exchange of salutes began.

The second breeze had been worse than the first, and many men had gone; but the smacksmen, by a special mercy, have no time for morbid brooding.

They will risk their lives with the most incredible dauntlessness to save a comrade. The Albert Medal is, I make bold to say, deserved by a score of men in the North Sea every year. The fellows will talk with grave pity about Jim or Jack, who were lost twenty years ago; they remember all his ways, his last words, his very relatives; but, when a breeze is over, they make no moan over the lost ones until they gather in prayer-meetings.

"Watch now, and you'll soon see something," said Blair to Ferrier.

The boats began to flit round on the quiet sea, and the lines of them converged towards the schooner or towards a certain smart smack, which Fullerton eyed with a queer sort of paternal and proprietary interest.

The men knew that the yacht was free to them as a dispensary, and the care they took to avoid doing unnecessary damage was touching. When you are wearing a pair of boots weighing jointly about three stone, you cannot tread like a fairy. Blair knew this, and, though his boat was scrupulously clean, he did not care for the lady's boudoir and oak floor business.

Lewis had his hands full--so full that the ladies went below. The great scholar's mind was almost paralyzed by the phenomena before him. Could it be possible that, in wealthy, Christian England there ever was a time when no man knew or cared about this saddening condition of affairs? The light failed soon, and the boats durst not hang about after the fleet began to sail; but, until the last minute, one long, slow, drizzle of misery seemed to fall like a dreary litany on the surgeon's nerves. The smashed fingers alone were painful to see, but there were other accidents much worse. Every man in the fleet had been compelled to fight desperately for life, and you cannot go through such a battle without risks. There were no malingerers; the bald, brutal facts of crushed bones, or flayed scalp, or broken leg, or poisoned hand were there in evidence, and the men used no extra words after they had modestly described the time and circ.u.mstances under which they met with their trouble. Ferrier worked as long as he could, and then joined the others at tea--that most pleasant of all meetings on the sombre North Sea. The young man was glum in face, and he could not shake off his abstraction. At last he burst out, in answer to Fullerton, "I feel like a criminal. I haven't seen fifty per cent of the men who came, and I've sent back at least half a dozen who have no more right to be working than they have to be in penal servitude. It is ghastly, and yet what can we do? I have no mawkish sentiment, but I could have cried over one fellow. His finger was broken, and then blood-poisoning set in. Up to the collar-bone his arm is discoloured, and the glands are blackish-blue here and there. He smiled as he put out his hand, and he said, 'He du hurt, sir. I've had hardly an hour's sleep since the first breeze, and, when I du get over, I fare to feel as if cats and dogs and fish and things was bitin'.' Then I asked him if he had stuck to work. Yes; he had helped to haul as late as this last midnight. Now he's gone back, and I must see him, at any price, to-morrow, or I cannot save that arm.

I couldn't hurry like a butcher, and so there will be many a man in pain this night."

Marion Dearsley was deeply stirred. "I wish I could go round with you to-morrow and search out any bad cases."

"I must tell you that, so far as I can see, almost every conceivable kind of accident happens during a violent gale--everything, from death to a black eye. But, all the same, I wish you _could_ come with me."

Blair burst into his jolly laugh; he was such a droll dog was Blair, and he _would_ have his joke, and he _would_ set up sometimes, as a sly rascal, don't you know--though he was the tenderest and kindest of beings.

"This is what your fine scheme has come to, is it? Oh! I see a grand chance for the novel-writers."

Oh, Blair was indeed a knowing customer. He made Ferrier look a little foolish; but the ladies knew him, Tom Lennard adored him, and the grand, calm Marion smiled gently on him. In the case of any other man it would have seemed like sacrilege to talk of a sentimental flirtation before that young woman; but then she sometimes called him Uncle John and sometimes Mr. Blair, according to the company they were in; so what would you have?

After tea came the men's time for smoking; the bitter night was thick with stars; the rime lay on the bulwarks, and, when the moon came out, the vessel was like a ghostly fabric. Ferrier took charge of the two girls, and Tom entertained the elder ladies with voluminous oratory.

The surgeon was uneasy; the sudden splendour of the moon was lost on him, and he only thought of her as he might of a street lamp.

"I'm glad the moon has come, Miss Dearsley. If there is no chance of her clouding over, I shall ask the skipper to slip us into the thick of the fleet, and I'll take the boat."

"You are very good to take the risk after that dreadful time."

"I'm afraid I only follow a professional instinct. One thing is certain, I shall stay out here for the winter and do what I can."

Girls are tied by conventions; they cannot even express admiration in fitting language; they may giggle or cackle so that every ripple of laughter and every turn of a phrase sounds nauseously insincere. Marion Dearsley durst not talk frankly with this fine fellow, but she said enough.

"I'm not sure that you will not be better here than spending time in society--that is, if you have no pressing ambition, as most men have. I mean ambition for personal success and praise, and position. My brother always spoke of Parliament, and I suppose you would aim at the Royal Society. Girls have little scope, but I should imagine you must suffer."

"Maisie, you're the dearest old preacher in the world. Why don't you persuade Mr. Ferrier to be a great man on sh.o.r.e instead of coming out here to be bruised, and drowned, and sent home, and all that kind of thing?"

Then Miss Lena thoughtfully added, as in soliloquy--

"But he might come to be like old Professor Blabbs who makes a noise with his soup, or Sir James Brennan with the ounce of snuff round his studs. No. Perhaps Maisie's right." "I have plenty of ambition--I am burning with it, and I have an intuition that this is one of the widest and finest fields in the world--for impersonal ambition, that is, ambition above money, and so forth."

Then Ferrier, with a touch of pride quite unusual in him, said--

"I'm not persuaded that I've done so badly in the ambitious way up to now. This should be a fair change."

Then they stopped and watched the shadowy vessels stealing away into the luminous gloom. I hope they loved the sight; the thought of it makes all Beethoven sing over my nerves. The water was lightly crisped, and every large sigh of the low wind seemed to blow a sheet of diamonds over the quivering path of the moon; the light clouds were fleeting, fleeting; the shadows were fleeting, fleeting; and, ah me! the hours of youth were fleeting, fleeting to the gulf. The girls never spoke; but Ferrier thought of one of them that her fateful silence was more full of eloquence than any spoken words could be. She seemed to draw solemn music from every nerve of his body. Oh, droll John Blair! Did those placid, good blue eyes see anything? The deep contralto note of Marion Dearsley's voice broke the entranced silence.

"It seems a waste of one's chances to leave this, but we must go. Lena and I must trouble you to help us, though I'm sure I don't know why. I shall never forget that sight."

"Nor I," thought Ferrier; but he was not an accomplished lady's man, so he did not speak his thought.

Then Lewis and Mr. Blair fell into one of their desultory conversations, with Tom as explanatory chorus, and Fullerton brooding alongside in profound reverie. The breeze was enough to send the schooner past the trawlers, but her foresail had been put against her so that she kept line. An hour before the trawls were hauled Ferrier suggested that the yacht should be allowed to sail, just to see if a case could be picked up. Said the enthusiast Tom--

"I'll go with you. I can step into the boat now, but when you have sixteen stone to drop on the top of a tholepin, I a.s.sure you it makes you cautious. In my wild days I should have used terms, sir--oh, distressing! oh, harrowing! To-night I'm ready for a thingumbob on 'the blue, the fresh, the ever free.' Ah! entrancing! Oh-h-h! bewitching!"

Freeman sailed his craft and threaded the lines of the dragging trawlers with stealthy speed. A hail came at last.

"Yacht ahoy! Have you still got the doctor aboard?"

The weird answer rang amid the shrill treble of the gaffs.

"Then come aboard of us if you can. It's bad."

Two men were down in the boat in a moment, and the yacht edged her way toward the smack. When Lewis and Tom went down below, the burly comedian's true character soon became apparent. A handsome young fellow was twisting and gasping on the floor in pain cruel to see.