The Deep Sea's Toll

It was a howling gale outside, but howling gales were common things to Peter, and he did not see why this one need hinder his taking a little stroll along the docks. Something in the appearance of the vessel just rounding the Point helped to give new life to the idea he had been entertaining for some minutes now--that a little trip along the harbor front wouldn’t be a half bad notion.

Exactly what that something was Peter could not say. Queer inner workings were not to be argued as if they were Trust or Tariff questions; but this vessel--and she certainly was an able vessel--and the vessel just before her was an able vessel too--both these vessels, he might say, tearing around the Point, rails buried and booms dragging, did suggest in some way Peter couldn’t quite reason out, that his intended little voyage was a good idea.

It had been ever so with Peter. Never one of his favorites came swinging in before a breeze that he did not begin to get nervous. So, having made a note of the Colleen Bawn, Tom O’Donnell master, under a note of the Nannie O, Tommie Ohlsen master, and seeing nothing further to hinder he just the same as conferred a decoration on the most meritorious of his volunteer staff by giving him full charge of the tower while he should be gone. Then, with conscience clear, he climbed down the winding back stairs and out onto the street.

In and about among the wharves did Peter jog under easy sail until he felt somewhat more rested. He was, indeed, about to return to Crow’s Nest, but happening to glance down Duncan’s Dock, he made out Dexter Warren painting dories under the lee of the long shed. “Miracles!” murmured Peter, “Dexter’s workin’.” Picking his course over the planks of the dock, tacking in and out among the fish flakes, empty hogsheads and old broken spars, Peter noticed Dexter step away from his dories, raise his hands to his eyes, take a squint across the harbor, shake his head sadly, come back and resume his dory-painting.

But resumed it leisurely, for Dexter, as everybody in Gloucester that knew him knew, was not the man to do things in a bull-headed way. That some men painted portraits with less care than Dexter painted bankers’ dories was readily believed by anyone who had ever seen Dexter painting dories. Dexter would have told you that the dories were the more useful. He was now putting in the discriminating touches that distinguish the type of man who works for something other than the money there is in it. It was the precise little dab of the brush here and a deft little flirt of the wrist there, and the holding of the head first to one side and then the other, that caught the eye of Peter when he rounded to under Dexter’s quarter and hailed.

“Hulloh, Dexter-boy, and what’s it you’re paintin’?”

“Miniachoors--miniachoors on iv’ry,” responded Dexter, with brush suspended at arm’s length, and himself swinging slowly around. He had some more little repartee on the tip of his tongue, but seeing who it was he forgot it, and “Hulloh, Peter,” he said instead, “and what ever druv you out this mornin’?”

“I dunno. The confinement, maybe.”

“Ah, that’s bad--too much confinement.”

“That’s what I was thinkin’ myself. For who are the dories?”

“Captain O’Donnell.”

“For the Colleen Bawn? A man’d think’d be a new vessel and not new dories he’d be gettin’--the old one’s that wracked apart. Red bottoms, yeller sides, and green gunnels--m’m--but they’ll be swell-lookin’ dories when you get ’em done, won’t they?”

“They’ll be the prettiest dories that was ever put aboard a trawler out of Gloucester,” said Dexter, appreciatively.

“I’ll bet. And he’ll be pleased with ’em, I know--’specially the green gunnels--and he ought t’ be along soon.”

“Who along soon?--not the Colleen Bawn?”

“Sure. She was comin’ around the Point just as I left Crow’s Nest.”

“No! Well, I’m glad,” breathed Dexter. “I’m glad he’s home again. And so’ll his wife be, too. There was that gale just after she left. His wife, I’ll bet, ain’t slept a wink since.”

Peter straddled the sheer of a broken topmast. “Whose wife, Dexter?--not meanin’ to be inquisitive.”

“Why, Jimmie Johnson’s. He’s on the Colleen this trip.”

“Him? The little fellow lumps around here sometimes? Why, we used to scare him ’most to death up in Crow’s Nest tellin’-- How came it he got it into his head to go fishin’?”

“Oh, it was what the papers’d call a little matrimonial difference. I expect that him and his wife ain’t got real well acquainted with each other yet. He’s pretty young yet, and she don’t know too much about the world. I know, because she’s my first cousin. Young married couples, I s’pose, got to have ’bout so many arguments before they find each other out. I ain’t married myself, but ain’t it about that way, Peter?”

“Well, gen’rally, Dexter, though not always.” Peter jabbed the point of his knife-blade into his spar. “You see, Dexter, it’s a good deal like vessels. You don’t always know how to take them at first. There’s some sails best down by the head, and some by the stern. There’s some’ll come about in the wildest gale under headsail alone, and others you have to drive around with the trys’l or a bit of the mains’l and that, too, when a minute too late means the vessel gone up on the rocks. Some you c’n find all about how they trim the first trip, and some you c’n never find out about; and some fine day they rolls over or goes under, and the whole gang’s lost. But about Jimmie, Dexter--how’d Tom O’Donnell ever come to ship him?”

“Lord, I dunno. I only know I came down on the dock that mornin’, and he was standin’ right where I am now, just goin’ to begin on a new set of dories for the Scarrabee that was fittin’ out to go halibutin’. When I came along I was wonderin’ where I could get about a week’s work. I didn’t want more’n a week, because I’d been promised a job in the glue factory the first of the month, and I never did see the use of wearin’ yourself out beforehand when you’re goin’ to start in soon on a steady job, would you, Peter?”

“Well,”-- Peter made a few more thoughtful jabs into the topmast--“well, no, maybe not--more especially if ’t was a glue factory job.”

“That’s what I say. Well, I notices something was wrong, and I asks what the matter was. ‘Tired of work?’ I says, thinkin’ to cheer him up.”

“‘Tired of everything,’ says Jimmie, and I see he was ’most ready to cry. Well, you know the kind he is, Peter. He ain’t one of them fellows that’ll go out and have a few drinks for himself and forget it. No; he thinks over things that don’t amount to nothin’ till he’s near crazy--you’ve met them kind? Yes? Well, Jimmie was that way this mornin’. I drew it out of him that he’d had a scrap up home. He told me, knowin’ I wouldn’t tell it all over the place, and----”

“And he wound up by shippin’ with Tom O’Donnell? How’d Jimmie ever get a chance with that gang? They’re an able crew.”

“Lord, I dunno. I went away, and warn’t gone more than an hour when the boy from the office came huntin’ for me and says that Jimmie Johnson’d gone a haddockin’ trip in the Colleen Bawn and did I want his job? And I came back and went to work thinkin’ I had a week ahead of me or so, and here it’s the fourteenth day--not countin’ Sundays--and I’m glad he’s back, and I hope he hurries ashore as soon’s they come to anchor. Fourteen days now paintin’ dories and lumpin’ around this dock, and----”

“And that poor boy out in the Colleen Bawn in that last blow! Well, maybe it’ll do him good. Your cousin, you say, Dexter? I think I’ve seen her--and a nice little woman, too--though I expect there was a little to blame on both sides. There gen’rally is. But I must be gettin’ back. I left a lad in charge of Crow’s Nest that I’m afeard ain’t able to pick out a Georgesman from an Eyetalian barque loaded with salt till they’re under his nose, and maybe he won’t be reportin’ one or two to the office till after they know it themselves, and then somebody’ll ketch the devil--me, most likely. So, so long, Dexter.”

Regretfully relinquishing his old topmast, and leaving Dexter and his dories in his wake, Peter gradually gathered steerage-way, and headed up the dock, from where, in time, he managed to work into the street, and then, with Duncan’s office to port and a good beam wind, he bore away for Crow’s Nest. He had it in mind to go by way of the Anchorage, and laying his course therefor--no’west by nothe--he hauled up for the Anchorage corner.

Luffing the least bit to clear the brass railings outside the Anchorage windows, and having in mind all the while how fine it would be once he was around with a fair wind at his back, and bending his head at the same time to the breeze, Peter ran plump into somebody coming the other way.

“I say, matey, but could you swing her off a half-point or so?” sung out the other cheerfully.

“Swing off? Why, of course, but gen’rally a vessel close-hauled is s’posed to have right of way where I come from.”

“Close-hauled are you? Well, so’m I--or I thought I was.”

“And so maybe y’are, if you’re so round-bowed and flat-bottomed a craft you can’t sail closer than seven or eight points. Anyway, I’m starb’d tack.”

“Well, who in--” The other peered up. “Why, hello-o, Peter!”

“What! Well, well, Tommie Clancy! the Colleen Bawn in already?”

“To anchor in the stream not two minutes ago. I hurried ashore on an errand for her.”

“And what kind of a trip did y’ have?”

“Oh, nothing extra so far as the fish went, but good and lively every other way. Stayed out in that breeze week before last and left Georges last night with that latest spoon-bow model and I guess she’s still a-comin’. Some wind last night comin’ home, Peter.”