Sonnie-Boy's People Part 19

Throughout his trick at the wheel Drislane said nothing, but every moment the compa.s.s could spare his eyes saw them roaming across to where the _Orion_, like ourselves, was plugging through the short green seas for home. When his watch was done he borrowed my gla.s.ses, climbed by painful relays to the masthead and trained them on the _Orion_. After he came down and had gone below, I went aloft and spent the rest of the morning trying to see what it was that Drislane may have seen on the deck of Oliver Sickles's vessel.

Was it a woman's head showing above the cabin companionway? or was it a man pa.s.senger Oliver Sickles had taken aboard at the last minute? If a man, he surely was no seagoer; for in the two hours that I watched he never once stepped out on deck. He leaned dejectedly, or it might be patiently, but, either way, motionless as a stanchion against the companion casing, his soft flapping hat and the shoulders of a loose coat showing just above the woodwork. Man or woman, the face was pointed steadily toward the _Sirius_.

Our captain said it was a pa.s.senger of some kind. It had to be, he said, because during the morning he had kept an eye on the _Orion's_ deck and accounted for every man of her crew, which numbered exactly the same as his own; even for the cook, who had shown himself on deck to heave a bucket of galley refuse over the rail. It could not be an extra hand shipped for the trip, because no hand would be allowed to stand on the cabin stairs.

And did he think it was a man or a woman? The shoulders in the loose coat looked wide enough to be a man's. And I looked at him and he at me.

So was Drislane's Rose big enough for a man, but we said no more of that then--Drislane had just come on deck and was making his way aft. Again he borrowed my gla.s.ses, went aloft, and trained them on the _Orion_.

From time to time he looked down to the man at the wheel, as if to hint to him to get a little nearer the _Orion_, but the man at the wheel had already got a quiet word from the captain. We were to leeward. "Keep off--keep off--off--off--!" Captain Norman was saying in a low voice to the helmsman. "Don't let her get any nearer, leastwise while he's aloft with the gla.s.ses."

It looked as if we would have to wait to get to Boston to settle the question. Meantime, if Drislane would only try to forget everything of sh.o.r.e matters, he might be getting great comfort of a run like this. If he were himself, he would by now, being half in the way of a poet and half hoping some day to be an artist, be drawing little water-colors and writing little rhymes of these two big schooners racing home together.

'Twould have been well worth his paint and paper. The _Orion_ and the _Sirius_ were two of the best in their cla.s.s and more trimly modelled than most. What the _Orion_ looked like we must have looked like, and she was something I used to spend whole watches on deck just looking at.

She carried an open rail amidships, and her white-painted stanchions, carved to hour-gla.s.s form, with the white-painted flat hand-rail atop, stood clearly, sharply, beautifully out above her black lower sides and the pale-green seas.

Not that either of us had much lower planking to show, for four thousand five hundred tons of coal had brought us pretty well down to our scuppers. Too deep-loaded for our best looks, some would say; but I don't know--with all her jibs and all whole sail to her five lower spars, we must have looked pretty good, the pair of us, plugging along together through the curling rollers. We had set no topsails or staysails, because they would not have stayed on, blowing as it was a good half-gale.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The _Orion_ proved to us that she was faster off the wind than we were by rounding Cape Cod before us.]

It could have been blowing twice a gale and nothing happened to either of us. Probably no stiffer cla.s.s of vessels sails the seas than the big coasters of our side of the North Atlantic. Give them plenty of ballast and there is no capsizing them. We surely had plenty of ballast in us now, and took cheerfully all the hard westerly had to give us, and foamed along. Foamed? We wallowed--like a couple of sailing submarines almost. In that wind and sea, with all that loose water sloshing around her deck, there was no careless standing around of course; but with rubber boots to your hips, a good oil-slicker to your back, and yourself lashed to something solid up to wind'ard, it was a great place for a man to let the wind blow away three months of coal-dust from his eyelids; and what the wind couldn't blow away the sea would surely wash out.

That loose water flopping around her deck--that was no harm. "Tarpaulin her hatches, clamp 'em down, and let her roll!"--that had been Captain Norman's word coming out of Hampton Roads. And "Batten her down and let her plug into it!" had come roaring across to us at almost the same moment from the deck of the _Orion_. And no more than into the open Atlantic than we were plugging into it. The sea came mounting up over our low lee-rails--up, up our swash-swept decks, clear across us sometimes, when for a moment a doubtful helmsman would let her ship an extra cargo. But, again, no harm in that. Let 'em slosh and let 'em roll--we were standing up, the pair of us, like two brick houses. And the rest didn't matter. And so almost forgetting Drislane's trouble in the strain of the race, we batted our way through the winter seas on which the sun was dancing--batted and slatted, plugged and slugged our way beside the _Orion_ for the New England coast.

Two vessels may be built alike and rigged alike, but that doesn't mean they will sail alike. The _Orion_, in the judgment of seafaring folk, was a shade faster reaching and running than the _Sirius_. At any rate, the _Orion_ proved to us that she was faster off the wind than we were by rounding Cape Cod before us. To there it had been a good pa.s.sage. No collier loaded to her scuppers is ever going to break any sailing records, but hard driving had brought the pair of us along at a good clip. So far, fine; but it was to be a beat to windward for the rest of the way. West-north-west is the course from Cape Cod to Boston, and west-north-west was where the wind was coming from when it hit us on the nose as we rounded the Cape.

The _Orion_ might outrun us, the _Sirius_, but to windward there was no difference except in their masters; and there we had the best of it.

Norman Sickles could get more out of a vessel than his cousin when the going was bad. Oliver used to claw around deck like a sore-headed bear, and every now and then go below and have a drink for himself when things weren't breaking right. Norman took things more quietly, and so taking them wasn't too busy to grab every little chance that bobbed up.

The _Orion_ stood off on one tack, we on the other, and by and by we lost her below the horizon; but standing in, after some hours found her again; and finding her, were pleased to see that we had made up something on her. We filled away once more, and by and by stood back to her. We were making distance fast. Had we held on we would have crossed her wake almost under her stern on that tack. On our next tack we would be crossing her bow, and it would then be on past the lightship in the lead, and the race over; for neither of us was going to tack up the channel, deep-loaded, against a tide which would soon be ebbing. Up at the harbor entrance two tugs had already seen that and were racing out to pick us up.

To more quickly get in tow of the tug nearest us, which was coming hooked up for us, our captain put the _Sirius_ about earlier than he had originally intended. As we tacked, so did the _Orion_. We stood in toward the harbor. The _Orion_ stood in toward the harbor. We were surely going to pa.s.s close to each other--very close. Altogether too close.

I didn't like the looks of things. Being a pa.s.senger, I had a mind free for other things than navigation. "In case of doubt who gives way--the _Orion_ or the _Sirius_?" I asked Captain Norman. "Why, she does," he said, surprised. "It has to be her--not us. Both of us close-hauled, but we being starboard tack have the right of way. He'll have to come about and give us the road."

"But suppose, captain, he will not give way?"

"What! not give way! That'd be foolish. He c'n go bulling his way on sh.o.r.e all he pleases, but out here he'll only get what's due him. He'll have to give way."

So Norman Sickles said, but he wasn't the man to lose his vessel or risk men's lives. The _Orion_ was holding on. She was going to force us. When Norman Sickles saw that, he motioned with his arm for the man at our wheel to keep off. But the _Sirius_ wasn't keeping off. Norman Sickles turned and yelled: "Keep her off--off--off, I say!" starting aft, at the same time, to take the wheel himself.

He was too late. They seemed drawn together. We took a shoot. The _Orion_ took a shoot. "d.a.m.ned if she didn't get away from him!" I remember hearing one of our fellows jerk out, but I remember also I was left wondering whether he meant our vessel or the _Orion_.

They rushed together and g-g-h-h! Talk of a smash! Forty-five hundred tons of coal, nine-tenths of it below the water-line, and a breeze of wind! Either one would have sunk a battle-ship. It shook the spars out of the _Orion_. Her after-mast came down, the next one came down, the others were swaying. "The boat--the boat!" her crew yelled, but taking another look up at those wabbling masts, they waited to launch no boat.

With few words but much action, they went over her side, one after the other, and began to claw out for the _Sirius_, on which--she was sinking too--our crew had a big quarter-boat ready to launch.

While the two vessels were still locked in collision I had seen Drislane come running from aft and leap into the _Orion_. I lost sight of him then, because with our captain I had jumped below into our cabin, he to save his ship's papers and I to save my firm's. We were on deck in time to get into our boat, and help pick up the crew of the _Orion_ in the water.

Looking for Drislane then, I saw him and Captain Oliver Sickles at each other's throats in the stern of the _Orion_. There wasn't much left of her above water then. And on her deck it was a mess of fallen spars, with her foremast the only stick left, and that--unsupported by backstays and the wind still pressing against the big sail--that was wabbling. Even as we looked it came down--lower and top parts--with a smash which snapped the topmast off and sent it twisting and gyrating to where, after a bound or two, it rolled down and pinned to the deck the two battling men in the stern. With it came a tangled mess of halyards and stays.

We had picked up all of the _Orion's_ crew from the water and were now hurrying to get to the two men on the _Orion_, which was fast settling, when a red-haired girl came running from the cabin companionway. Almost as if she had been waiting in ambush, she rushed over to the fallen spar, untangled the halyards from the legs of one of the furthest men, and after an effort lifted the end of the spar so that he could scramble free. She needed to be strong to do that; but she was strong. If she had held the spar up only an instant longer, the other man might have wiggled free too. But she let it drop back. The man she had freed she picked up and carried to the quarter-rail, where she waited for us in the boat. He made an effort as if to get back to the man left under the spar, but she would not let him. "Tain't no crime, Honey," I heard her say as we got to them. She went overboard as she said it, and we had to hurry to get her. "I know him a heap better than you-all, Honey--let him rest where he done fall to."

She couldn't swim, but we got them in time. She didn't mind us in the least. "He done tol' me, Honey, you was dyin' abo'd yo' ship 'n' o'

coase I goes on down to see. It sure did look like yo' own ship, Honey"--she was saying to him before we had them both fairly in the boat. It was Drislane she had, his head cuddled on her knees till the tug came and got us.

We weren't in time to get to the man she had left behind. The last we saw of him was his head sticking out like a turtle's from under the fallen spar as the _Orion_ went under.

We were all in Boston by Christmas Eve; that is, all of course but Oliver Sickles--and n.o.body gibed at his memory for that. He had his good reason.

The tug rushed the two crews up the harbor to our dock, where I left them while I went to get carriages and warm clothes and so on. When I came back Drislane and his Rose were gone and no word behind them. But the day after Christmas he came to the office early to get his semiannual check and cash it. I wasn't there, but he left word for me that he and Rose were married, and he was going to take my advice and go home to his people. The office force said that with him was a girl of glorious t.i.tian hair and super-physique, who smiled wonderfully on him.

Captain Norman married the girl he should have married in the first place. And so all the good people came happy out of it; all except our firm. Nine thousand tons at two dollars per ton--there was eighteen thousand dollars' worth of freights that we never collected.

So there's the _Orion_ and _Sirius_ thing, only, in telling it at the Sailor's Haven the other night, our old stevedore didn't say anything of Rose's part in it. He probably didn't see what that had to do with it.

However, he said enough to convince the lecturer, who was a pretty fair-minded kind, that perhaps he would have to reconstruct his views about sailors' superst.i.tions.

And perhaps there is something in it; but it's a poor case won't stand hearing both sides of the evidence. "Hoodoo ships!" It's a fascinating phrase, but--Oliver Sickles it was who held the wheel of the _Orion_, and it was Drislane to the wheel of the _Sirius_, when they came together.

[Ill.u.s.tration: It was Drislane she had, his head cuddled on her knees till the tug came and got us.]

LEARY OF THE "LIGONIER"

It was a gloomy house, set in the shadow of a rocky bluff, and made more gloomy within by the close-drawn curtains. Since the news had come of the loss of John Lowe's son, no man in all Placentia Bay could say he had seen those curtains raised; and, so ran the gossip, John Lowe being what John Lowe was, a long time again before those curtains would be raised.

John Lowe sat reading his black-typed, double-columned page by the table, and over by the stove John Lowe's second wife sat rocking herself.

John Lowe's daughter came in, removed her shawl, and took a chair on the other side of the stove. Her stepmother spoke a word; but no word of greeting did her father offer until his chapter was finished, and then he no more than half turned, while his harsh voice asked: "Has he come into the bay yet?"

"He has. Tim Lacy, that shipped wi' him out o' here, was to Shepperd's to-day--and he'll be to Shepperd's to-night, Tim says."

"Tim Lacy. Another o' his kin. And what would be bringin' him to Shepperd's to-night?"

"It will be a dance to-night."

"Oh, the dancin'! No fear but you'll know o' the dancin'. An' he'll be there, the drinkin', murderin'----"

"It's no' right, father, to be speakin' like that o' a man you never set eyes on."

"An' how come it you know him, girl? Where was it you had truck wi' him?

Where?"

"I never had truck wi' him. But I see him. Who could help seein' him--he was in an' out o' Shepperd's his last time in."