Chapter VII

Next day they fell in with more sails, all circling slowly from the east northerly towards the west. But just when they expected to make the shoals by the Virgin the fog shut down, and they anchored, surrounded by the tinklings of invisible bells. There was not much fishing, but occasionally dory met dory in the fog and exchanged news.

That night, a little before dawn, Dan and Harvey, who had been sleeping most of the day, tumbled out to “hook” fried pies. There was no reason why they should not have taken them openly; but they tasted better so, and it made the cook angry. The heat and smell below drove them on deck with their plunder, and they found Disko at the bell, which he handed over to Harvey.

“Keep her goin’,” said he. “I mistrust I hear somethin’. Ef it’s anything, I’m best where I am so’s to get at things.”

It was a forlorn little jingle; the thick air seemed to pinch it off; and in the pauses Harvey heard the muffled shriek of a liner’s siren, and he knew enough of the Banks to know what that meant. It came to him, with horrible distinctness, how a boy in a cherry-coloured jersey--he despised fancy blazers now with all a fisherman’s contempt--how an ignorant, rowdy boy had once said it would be “great” if a steamer ran down a fishing-boat. That boy had a state-room with a hot and cold bath, and spent ten minutes each morning picking over a gilt-edged bill of fare. And that same boy--no, his very much older brother--was up at four of the dim dawn in streaming, crackling oilskins, hammering, literally for the dear life, on a bell smaller than the steward’s breakfast-bell, while somewhere close at hand a thirty-foot steel stem was storming along at twenty miles an hour! The bitterest thought of all was that there were folks asleep in dry, upholstered cabins who would never learn that they had massacred a boat before breakfast. So Harvey rang the bell.

“Yes, they slow daown one turn o’ their blame propeller,” said Dan, applying himself to Manuel’s conch, “fer to keep inside the law, an’ that’s consolin’ when we’re all at the bottom. Hark to her’ She’s a humper!”

“Aoooo--whoooo--whupp!” went the siren. “Wingle--tingle--tink,” went the bell. “Graaa--ouch!” went the conch, while sea and sky were all milled up in milky fog. Then Harvey felt that he was near a moving body, and found himself looking up and up at the wet edge of a cliff-like bow, leaping, it seemed, directly over the schooner. A jaunty little feather of water curled in front of it, and as it lifted it showed a long ladder of Roman numerals--XV., XVI., XVII., XVIII., and so forth--on a salmon-coloured, gleaming side. It tilted forward and downward with a heart-stilling “Ssssooo”; the ladder disappeared; a line of brass-rimmed port-holes flashed past; a jet of Steam puffed in Harvey’s helplessly uplifted hands; a spout of hot water roared along the rail of the “We’re Here”, and the little schooner staggered and shook in a rush of screw-torn water, as a liner’s stern vanished in the fog. Harvey got ready to faint or be sick, or both, when he heard a crack like a trunk thrown on a sidewalk, and, all small in his ear, a far-away telephone voice drawling: “Heave to! You’ve sunk us!”

“Is it us?” he gasped.

“No! Boat out yonder. Ring! We’re goin’ to look,” said Dan, running out a dory.

In half a minute all except Harvey, Penn, and the cook were overside and away. Presently a schooner’s stump-foremast, snapped clean across, drifted past the bows. Then an empty green dory came by, knocking on the ‘We’re Here’s’ side, as though she wished to be taken in. Then followed something, face down, in a blue jersey, but it was not the whole of a man. Penn changed colour and caught his breath with a click. Harvey pounded despairingly at the bell, for he feared they might be sunk at any minute, and he jumped at Dan’s hail as the crew came back.

“The Jennie Cushman,” said Dan, hysterically, “cut clean in half--graound up an’ trompled on at that! Not a quarter of a mile away. Dad’s got the old man. There ain’t any one else, and--there was his son, too. Oh, Harve, Harve, I can’t stand it! I’ve seen--” He dropped his head on his arms and sobbed while the others dragged a grey-headed man aboard.

“What did you pick me up for?” the stranger groaned. “Disko, what did you pick me up for?”

Disko dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder, for the man’s eyes were wild and his lips trembled as he stared at the silent crew. Then up and spoke Pennsylvania Pratt, who was also Haskins or Rich or McVitty when Uncle Salters forgot; and his face was changed on him from the face of a fool to the countenance of an old, wise man, and he said in a strong voice: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord! I was--I am a minister of the Gospel. Leave him to me.”

“Oh, you be, be you?” said the man. “Then pray my son back to me! Pray back a nine-thousand-dollar boat an’ a thousand quintal of fish. If you’d left me alone my widow could ha’ gone on to the Provident an’ worked fer her board, an’ never known--an’ never known. Now I’ll hev to tell her.”

“There ain’t nothin’ to say,” said Disko. “Better lie down a piece, Jason Olley.”

When a man has lost his only son, his summer’s work, and his means of livelihood, in thirty counted seconds, it is hard to give consolation.

“All Gloucester men, wasn’t they,” said Tom Platt, fiddling helplessly with a dory-becket.

“Oh, that don’t make no odds,” said Jason, wringing the wet from his beard. “I’ll be rowin’ summer boarders araound East Gloucester this fall.” He rolled heavily to the rail, singing.

“Happy birds that sing and fly Round thine altars, O Most High!”

“Come with me. Come below!” said Penn, as though he had a right to give orders. Their eyes met and fought for a quarter of a minute.

“I dunno who you be, but I’ll come,” said Jason, submissively. “Mebbe I’ll get back some o’ the--some o’ the--nine thousand dollars.” Penn led him into the cabin and slid the door behind.

“That ain’t Penn,” cried Uncle Salters. “It’s Jacob Boiler, an’--he’s remembered Johnstown! I never seed such eyes in any livin’ man’s head. What’s to do naow? What’ll I do naow?”

They could hear Penn’s voice and Jason’s together. Then Penn’s went on alone, and Salters slipped off his hat, for Penn was praying. Presently the little man came up the steps, huge drops of sweat on his face, and looked at the crew. Dan was still sobbing by the wheel.

“He don’t know us,” Salters groaned. “It’s all to do over again, checkers and everything--an’ what’ll he say to me?”

Penn spoke; they could hear that it was to strangers. “I have prayed,” said he. “Our people believe in prayer. I have prayed for the life of this man’s son. Mine were drowned before my eyes--she and my eldest and--the others. Shall a man be more wise than his Maker? I prayed never for their lives, but I have prayed for this man’s son, and he will surely be sent him.”