Wide Courses Part 5

To Paris! Bowen started to touch the end of a finger for every time he had been to Paris. Old Perrault could not wait for him to finish. "And the Champs elysees, Mister Bowen, you have been there?"

"The Champs elysees? If I had a dollar, M'sieu Perrault--"

"Eh?" The old man wanted to hear him say that "M'sieu" in just that way again--"if you had one dollar, Mister Bowen?"

Bowen understood. "Yes, if I had a dollar, M'sieu, for every time I sat on one of those chairs inside the sidewalk--in under the trees, you know, M'sieu--and watched the autos go by! Talk about autos!--there's the place for autos, coming down from that big Napoleon Arch. Some arch, that, isn't it? Yes, sir--down from there to the Place de la Concorde and back again, around the Arch and on to the Bois. And there's a sight for a man, too! To sit out on the Bois sidewalk, M'sieu, your chair almost under the bushes, and watch those cabs and autos in the late afternoon, coming on dark. Count them? No more than you could count fire-flies of an evening in the West Indies--like one string of light."

"Mon Dieu! Come to the inner room, if you please, sir, and tell me more.

What a good angel which has sent you here! Twenty-five years since I have seen my Paris. And the Tuileries, my friend, is it yet the same?"

"Just the same, M'sieu, a million bare-legged children with short white socks running wild, and another half a million nurses with white caps running wild after them. And the Eiffel Tower! But that's since your time, M'sieu Perrault?"

"Ah--h, but have I not heard? Continue, continue, if you please, sir.

You bring a strange joy to my heart. The Louvre, for example--you have been there, yes?"

"Been there? Yes, and 'most googoo-eyed from looking at the pictures there--miles of 'em, aren't there?"

"Oh-h! and Mona Lisa--yes!"

"That dark one with the queer kind of a smile? She must have had green eyes, that one--green eyes with lights in them. And she kept them all guessing, I'll bet a hat, when she was alive--" and Bowen ran on till every blessed breakwater man silently stole away. Bowen and old Perrault had a three o'clock session that first night; and within the year he had married Claire.

II

Having completed his work on the wireless plant at the Navy Yard, Bowen thought himself due for a lay-off. And he did want to be home for a while, but orders came to have installed before the end of the year an experimental plant on Light-ship 67, which guarded Tide Rip Shoal to the eastward.

Bowen, with his two helpers and his apparatus, took pa.s.sage with Baldwin on the wheezy little _Whist_ to where, twenty miles east by south from the end of the breakwater, lay the tossing light-ship.

Baldwin was well acquainted with old 67. Every once in a while the commandant would order Baldwin to make this trip for the accommodation of somebody or other in the yard. "But a wonder," he observed now, as he had observed a score of times before on nearing her--"a wonder they wouldn't put one of those new cla.s.s o' steam lightships out here. If I was you, Bowen, I'd have an eye to the life-boat you see hanging to her stern there."

"Why?"

"Well, if the old hooker went adrift, you might need it."

"What's her sails for?"

"I dunno. I often wondered, though. They've been tied up, just like you see 'em now--stopped snug and neat between gaffs and booms--for, oh, I dunno--twenty years now, I reckon. I know I've yet to see 'em hoisted.

But when'll I come and get you?"

"I'll send word to the yard station by wireless, to Harty or whoever's on watch there, when we get it rigged."

"All right. And say, a great thing that wireless, ain't it? Well, good luck." Baldwin gave the bell and the _Whist_ backed away. He rolled his wheel over, gave her another bell and around she came; then the jingle and ahead she went full-speed, which in smooth water was almost eight knots.

The light-ship crew, headed by her yellow-haired keeper, stood around and watched Bowen and his helpers a.s.sembling the parts of the wireless.

A momentous occasion for the light-ship crew, for n.o.body bothered them much. Once every two months the supply ship came around, and sometimes, if the weather was fine, some unhurried coaster would stand in and toss them a bundle of newspapers. But no running alongside old 67 by any big fellows. A good point of departure, Tide Rip Shoal! Sight it over your stern and lay your course by her, but otherwise give her a wide berth; for you could pile up a ten-thousand tonner on that shoal or the beach to the west and--yes, sir, high and dry, before you knew it, especially if it was thick and you were coming from the east'ard. No, the big fellows were satisfied to have a peek at Tide Rip through a long gla.s.s; and so on 67 anything at all except a spell of bad weather stirred them deeply.

In the daylight hours Bowen and his helpers worked at their wireless, and at night they sat in with the light-ship crew. Bowen usually played checkers in the cabin with the keeper, Nelson, and while they played the keeper gave him the gossip. He had been nineteen years on Tide Rip Shoal light-ship, had keeper Nelson.

"No, no things never happen. He blow and she tumble about and her chain chafe--chafe tarrible sometime. Nineteen year those chain ban chafe so.

One time he blow ten day without stop, but" (he removed his big pipe to laugh aloud)--"but ten day over and she right dere. Good ol' 67, she ban right dere. I axpect ol' 67, she be here on Yoodgment Day." Old Nelson put his pipe back, puffed three times, frowned at the checker-board, scratched his yellow head, let drop his eyelids and pondered. At about the time Bowen began to think the keeper must be taking a nap, a long arm swooped down and moved a black checker one square north-easterly.

Now, if Bowen had been riding to anchor in that one spot with old 67 for nineteen years, perhaps he, too, would have paid small attention to a gale of wind and a high sea; but he was a sh.o.r.e-going man, and he grew very, very weary of the jumping and the rolling, and of the everlasting rattling and chafing of the iron chains in the iron hawse-holes.

Two chains there were, like double-leashes to a whippet's throat. The heave of the sea would get her and up she would ride, shaking, snapping, quivering to get her head. Up, up she would go, and as she struggled up, up, Bowen, watching, would find himself crying out, "By the Lord, she's parted them." But no--Gr-r--the iron chains would go, Kr-r the iron hawse-holes would echo, and, suddenly brought to, dead she would stop, shake herself, and again shake herself to get free; but always the savage chains would be there to her throat, and down she would fall trembling; and the white slaver would scatter a cable length from her jaws as she fell.

Bowen, with an arm hooked into a weather-stay, would stand out and watch her by the hour; and "Some fine night you'll break loose," he would say over and over to himself, "and then there'll be the devil to pay around here," and on returning to the cabin he would tell Nelson about it.

"No, no," Nelson would shake his head, and after he had had time to think it over, he would smile at Bowen's fears. On nights like these, when he couldn't have his little game because he couldn't keep the checkers from hopping off the board, Nelson liked to lie in his bunk, within range of the big, square, sawdust-filled box which set just forward of the cheerful stove. With eyes mostly on the oil-clothed floor, the light-keeper would smoke and yarn unhurriedly. "No, no,"

Nelson would repeat. "For nineteen year now she ban here, yoost like you see now. No drift for ol' 67. She ban too well trained."

But the chafed-out chains gave way at last. Christmas Eve it was, the night when Bowen had hoped to be through with his work. It was also the third and worst night of the gale, and Bowen, restless, homesick, was on deck to see it. She leaped and strained as she had leaped and strained ten thousand times before--and then they writhed, those chains, like a stricken rattlesnake, for perhaps three seconds, and S-s-t!--quick as that--they went whistling into the boiling sea. Off she sprang then--Bowen could no more than have snapped his fingers ere she was off--foolishly, wildly, and then, almost as suddenly as she had leaped, she fetched up. It was as if she didn't know just what to do in her new freedom. And while she paused, the sea swept down and caught her one under the ear. Broadside she broached and aboard her foamed the ceaseless sea, and the wind took her. And whing! and bing! and Kr-r-r-k!--that was the life-boat splintered and torn loose. And sea, and wind, and tide, all working together on old 67, away she went before it.

Insh.o.r.e, they knew, the high surf was booming; and they made sail then, and for a while thought they could weather it; but when the whistling devils caught the rotten, age-eaten, untested canvas--whoosh! countless strips of dirty, rusty canvas were riding the clouded heavens like some unwashed witches.

[Ill.u.s.tration: By and by he caught an answering call]

Tide and wind were taking her toward the beach, and Bowen, everybody, even the unimaginative viking in command, could picture that beach and the surf piling up on it. High as the light above their heads it would be, and they would live just about ten seconds in it. Yes, if they were lucky, they might last that long.

Bowen was one of those workmen who like to make a good job of a thing.

He was not ready to send his first wireless message. Another morning's work and he had hoped to be ready, and that first message was to be a Christmas greeting to his wife; but now he made shift to get a message away in some fashion. With limber wrist and fingers he began to snap out his signal number. A dozen, twenty, surely a hundred times he repeated the letters, holding up every half minute or so to listen. By and by he caught an answering call. It was the Navy Yard station. Feverishly he sent:

"Light-ship 67. Tide Rip Shoal. Have parted moorings. Drifting toward beach. Send help."

He waited for an answer. None came. He repeated. No answer. Over and over he sent it. At last he caught: "OK. Been getting you. Go on."

"Drifting fast. West by south. Before morning will be in surf."

Again Bowen waited, and then the answer came: "What do you want me to do?"

"Do something to save us."

"Why don't you do something to save yourself?"

"Sails blown away. Life-boat gone."

"Haven't you got a chart of Paris?"

"Chart of what?"

"Paris? With a few M'sieus on it? Good night."

Bowen let go the key, leaned back in his chair, rubbed his eyes, took off his receiving gear and stared at the wall.

"What answer?" Nelson and his peering crew were at his shoulder.

"No answer."

"Dan we moost go up and dowse dose signal light, so no ship t'ink we ban on shoal yet," and out onto the deck the impa.s.sive Nelson led his men.