Sturdy and Strong Part 29

"Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't; it's an uncertain fish the pilchard, and it's a rough life is fishing on this coast. There aint a good harbor not this side of the Lizard; and if they're caught in a gale from the southeast it goes hard with them. With a southwester they can run back here."

"Were you ever a fisherman yourself?"

"Aye, I began life at it; I went a-fishing as a boy well-nigh fifty year back, but I got a sickener of it, and tramped to Plymouth and shipped in a frigate there, and served all my time in queen's ships."

"Did you get sick of fishing because of the hardships of the life, or from any particular circ.u.mstance?"

"I got wrecked on the Scillys. There was fifty boats lost that night, and scarce a hand was saved. I shouldn't have been saved myself if it had not been for a dream of mother's."

"That's curious," I said. "Would you mind telling me about it?"

The old sailor did not speak for a minute or two; and then, after a sharp puff at his pipe, he told me the following story, of which I have but slightly altered the wording:

I lived with mother at Tregannock. It's a bit of a village now, as it was then. My father had been washed overboard and drowned two years before. I was his only son. The boat I sailed in was mother's, and four men and myself worked her in shares. I was twenty-one, or maybe twenty-two, years old then. It was one day early in October. We had had a bad season, and times were hard. We'd agreed to start at eight o'clock in the morning. I was up at five, and went down to the boats to see as everything was ready. When I got back mother had made breakfast; and when we sat down I saw that the old woman had been crying, and looked altogether queer like.

"My boy," says she, "I want you not to go out this trip."

"Not go out!" said I; "not go out, mother! Why? What's happened? Your share and mine didn't come to three pounds last month, and it would be a talk if I didn't go out in the _Jane_. Why, what is it?"

"My boy," says she, "I've had a dream as how you was drowned."

"Drowned!" said I; "I'm not going to be drowned, mother."

But what she said made me feel creepy like, for us Cornishmen goes a good deal on dreams and tokens; and sure enough mother had dreamed father was going to be drowned before he started on that last trip of his.

"That's not all, Will," she said. "I dreamed of you in bed, and a chap was leaning over you cutting your throat."

I didn't care much for going on with my breakfast after that; but in a minute or two I plucks up and says:

"Well, mother, you're wrong, anyhow; for if I be drowned no one has no call to cut my throat."

"I didn't see you downright drowned in my dream," she said. "You was in the sea--a terribly rough sea--at night, and the waves were breaking down on you."

"I can't help going, mother," I says, after a bit. "It's a fine day, and it's our boat. All the lads and girls in the village would laugh at me if I stayed at home."

"That's just what your father said; and he went to his death."

And my mother, as she says this, puts her ap.r.o.n over her head and began to cry again. I'd more than half a mind to give way; but you know what young chaps are. The thought of what the girls of the place would say about my being afraid to go was too much for me.

At last, when mother saw I was bent on going, she got up and said:

"Well, Will, if my prayers can't keep you back, will you do something else I ask you?"

"I will, mother," said I--"anything but stay back."

She went off without a word into her bedroom, and she came back with something in her arms.

"Look here, Will, I made this for your father, and he wouldn't have it; now I ask you to take it, and put it on if a storm comes on. You see, you can put it on under your dreadnaught coat, and no one will be any the wiser."

The thing she brought in was two flat Dutch spirit-bottles, sewn between two pieces of canvas. It had got strings sewed on for tying round the body, and put on as she did to show me how, one bottle each side of the chest, it lay pretty flat.

"Now, Will, these bottles will keep you up for hours. A gentleman who was staying in the village before you was born was talking about wrecks, and he said that a couple of empty bottles, well corked, would keep up a fair swimmer for hours. So I made it; but no words could get your father to try it, though he was willing enough to say that it would probably keep him afloat. You'll try it, won't you, Will?"

I didn't much like taking it, but I thought there wasn't much chance of a storm, and that if I put it under my coat and hid it away down in the forecastle, no one would see it; and so to please her I said I'd take it, and that if a bad storm came on I would slip it on.

"I will put a winegla.s.s of brandy into one of the bottles," mother said. "It may be useful to you; who can say?"

I got the life-preserver, as you call it nowadays, on board without its being seen, and stowed it away in my locker. I felt glad now I'd got it, for mother's dream had made me feel uneasy; and on my way down old d.i.c.k Tremaine said to me:

"I don't like the look of the sky, lad."

"No!" says I; "why, it looks fine enough."

"Too fine, lad. I tell ye, boy, I don't like the look of it. I think we're going to have a bad blow."

I told the others what he had said; but they didn't heed much. Two boats had come in that morning with a fine catch, and after the bad time we'd been having it would have taken a lot to keep them in after that.

We thought no more about it after we had once started. The wind was light and puffy; but we had great luck, and were too busy to watch the weather. What wind there was, was northerly; but towards sunset it dropped suddenly, and as the sails flapped we looked round at the sky.

"I fear old d.i.c.k was right, lads," Jabez Harper, who was skipper, said, "and I wish we had taken more heed to his words. That's about as wild a sunset as may be; and look how that drift is nearing our boat."

Even I, who was the youngest of them, was old enough to read the signs of a storm--the heavy bank of dark clouds, the pale-yellow broken light, the horse-tails high up in the sky, and the small broken irregular ma.s.ses of cloud that hurried across them. Instinctively we looked round towards the coast. It was fully fifteen miles away, and we were to the east of it. The great change in the appearance of the sky had taken place in the last half-hour; previous to that time there had been nothing which would have struck any but a man grown old upon the coast like d.i.c.k Tremaine.

"Reef the mainsail," Jabez said, "and the foresail too; take in the mizzen. Like enough it will come with a squall, and we'd best be as snug as may be. What do you say? shall we throw over some of the fish?"

It was a hard thing to agree to; but every minute the sky was changing. The scud was flying thicker and faster overhead, and the land was lost in a black cloud that seemed to touch the water.

"We needn't throw 'em all out," Jabez said; "if we get rid of half she'll be about in her best trim; and she's as good a sea-boat as there is on the coast. Come, lads, don't look at it."

It was, as he said, no use looking at it, and in five minutes half our catch of the day was overboard. The _Jane_ was a half-decked boat, yawl-rigged; she wasn't built in our parts, but had been brought round from somewhere east by a gentleman as a fishing-craft. He had used her for two years, and had got tired of the sport, and my father had bought her of him. She wasn't the sort of boat generally used about here, but we all liked her, and swore by her.

"It will be a tremendous blow for the first few minutes, I reckon,"

Jabez said after a while. "Lower down her sails altogether; get her head to it with a sweep. I'll take the helm; Harry, you stand ready to hoist the foresail a few feet; and, Will, you and John stand by the hoists of the mainsail. We must show enough to keep her laying-to as long as we can. You'd best get your coats out and put 'em on, and batten down the hatch."

I let the others go down first, and when they came up I went in, tied the life-belt round me, and put on my oilskin. I fetched out a bottle of hollands from my locker, and then came out and fastened the hatch.

"Here comes the first puff," Jabez said.

I stowed away the bottle among some ropes for our future use, and took hold of the throat halyard.

"Here it comes," Jabez said, as a white line appeared under the cloud of mist and darkness ahead, and then with a roar it was upon us.

I have been at sea, man and boy, for forty years, and I never remember in these lat.i.tudes such a squall as that. For a few minutes I could scarcely see or breathe. The spray flew in sheets over us, and the wind roared so that you wouldn't have heard a sixty-eight-pounder ten yards off. At first I thought we were going down bodily. It was lucky we had taken every st.i.tch of canvas off her, for, as she spun round, the force of the wind against the masts and rigging all but capsized her. In five minutes the first burst was over, and we were running before it under our close-reefed foresail only. There was no occasion for us to stand by the halyards now, and we all gathered in the stern, and crouched down in the well. Although the sun had only gone down half an hour it was pitch-dark, except that the white foam round us gave a sort of dim light that made the sky look all the blacker. The sea got up in less time than it takes in telling, and we were soon obliged to hoist the foresail a bit higher to prevent the waves from coming in over the stern. For three hours we tore on before the gale, and then it lulled almost as suddenly as it had come on. There had scarcely been a word spoken between us during this time. I was half asleep in spite of the showers of spray. Jim Hackers, who was always smoking, puffed away steadily; Jabez was steering still, and the others were quite quiet. With the sudden lull we were all on our feet.

"Is it all over, Jabez?" I asked.

"It's only begun," he said. "I scarce remember such a gale as this since I was a boy. Pa.s.s that bottle of yours round, Will; we shall be busy again directly. One of you take the helm; I'm stiff with the wet.

We shall have it round from the south in a few minutes."