The Voyage of the Norman D. (continued 3)

For long I have read and heard about that magic sound; but I was beginning to think that it was just part of the poet’s imagination, and that he really meant the dashing of the foam or other sea noises. But no, it is quite true: the wind seeps out between the threads of the sailcloth and sings and sings, and the sound grows louder and more magical as the wind rises. This was sailing, as I had always dreamed of it.

Early in the morning we passed the loveliest small schooner I have ever seen, a small fisherman. She could not have been more than half our size, but in every detail she was as perfect as we. She carried foresail, mainsail, staysail, jib, and flying jib, and those long, pointed sails stretched out in front, full of wind, looked like the white wings of sea gulls. Keeled over on the port tack, she passed close under our stern. We could see the white bone she had in her small white teeth, and we could see that beautiful roundness of full sails. A sea gull⁠—a white albatross sailing by⁠—or, simply, a whitecap upon the waves!

We were off Cape Sable, the most southerly point of Nova Scotia. All day long the breeze rose, keeling us over more and more. The sails were watched as a cat watches a bird, in case a sudden squall should necessitate letting them out, or even reefing them. How I wished that we might have to reef!

Table Racks

The sea rose and rose in all its foaming greenness, until it had reached the point where it had been on the first day; but it did not stop there. It kept on coming up until, to me, it began to look actually raging. When night shut down, the sea was in a tumult; and the effect of the darkness on that raging water seemed to me to intensify its anger. When, for the first time, we ate with table racks, it was marvellously exciting. On previous days there had been enough roll to slop the tea about considerably; but the cook seemed to think that this long, steady, deep cant needed the racks more than a crazy rolling.

Bill thought the worst wasn’t over yet; and since the seas were still becoming angrier and angrier, I believed him, and hoped that it was true. That night I went to sleep in a crazily tilted bunk. I slept as soundly as ever, and had to have another waking in the morning.

I consider that fifth day, the first of wind, as the beginning of the second half of the trip. Somehow, things changed on that day, and we began to see everything in a brighter, even a more piratical light.

I forgot to say that on that day we had seen our first blackfish. Bob was at the wheel, and his keen sailor’s eyes had made out the fountain which, like whales, they blow up. This fish was near the schooner, and playing leisurely about, always blowing. Every now and then we would see its black, shiny back looming up out of the sea like a dark boulder, or the forked, Y-shaped tail. The water which it spouted was so like a whitecap, or a wave throwing up foam, that I didn’t see it nearly so many times as the trained eyes of Bob.

In the way of weather, the next day was without doubt the most exciting of the whole glorious trip. There was not so much talk with the crew, but the weather quite made up for that, and it, after all, was the greatest thing. When I woke up I had a sudden fancy that the ship had turned over, and was sailing upside down. Indeed, when I put my feet on the floor, it slid out from under me, as it were, and I had to be thoroughly awake before I could stand up, even dizzily. The leeward rail was almost buried, and later I discovered the sea spraying in through the scuppers.

The “Gale-o’-Wind”

When I thrust my head out of the cabin door, I was immediately blinded by the force of the wind, and I couldn’t hear my own thoughts for the howling and rushing. A marvellous summer gale, dead from the northeast. Then I thought of Bill. It was just as he had said. I would never doubt or make light of his prophecies again. The sea was a raging wild whirlpool. The great green waves burst up and up, crested with roaring foam, breaking and breaking against the side of the ship, throwing their foam on to the deck. To me it seemed a typhoon. To them it was a summer gale.

I cannot describe the awesome howling and raging of it. The sea swirled wildly, dark green, foaming. The sky was overcast, and that made everything seem more sinister. The sails were close-hauled, but not yet reefed; we were on the starboard tack, and making ten knots⁠—a very satisfactory speed. And I heard again that singing sound aloft in the sails, still more loud and unearthly than the day before.

The sea was nothing but a mad rush of flying foam. Everything seemed one with it⁠—even the wind, even the Norman D. herself. Two storm petrels⁠—Mother Carey’s chickens⁠—were blown like clots of dark foam across the sea; they had long, slender, dark wings, and they held them motionless and were scudded across. How I should have loved to see an albatross! Or a whale!

I could barely turn my face to the wind, and this fact helped to create my awed impression of it. When I wanted to walk forward I had to lower my head and hand myself step by step along the deckhouse, staggering even then. I saw some of the crew floundering. But the cook⁠—not he! He walked in a straight, sure, steady line from the galley aft, with his heavy basket of food. When I asked Mate Bill whether this was a breeze, or a wind, or a gale, he said that it was “blowin’ real hard. Yes, it sure is. Any more than this would be uncomfortable⁠—we might have to reef.” And the captain didn’t scorn this either. At breakfast-time, when the table racks were up, the table set, and the bell rung, he came down into the cabin, his white hair blown with the wind, his cheeks fresh and rosy, and said: “Say, folks, it’s blowin’ quite a few up there!” It was. The only one who scorned that wind was⁠—you couldn’t guess. No, not with a hundred guesses! It was Richardson. Richardson! I asked him, just to compare a sailor’s notion of this with a landsman’s, whether he thought it was breeze, wind, or gale. And Richardson said: “Oh, I’d call this a little breeze.” And it was not a joke! He was in dead earnest. He just wanted terribly to impress me.

When again I stuck my head out into that howling, again I was awed speechless. The schooner now had her cutwater buried in foam. The roaring mountains of it which we piled up left her traces for miles upon the sea. I wish we could have seen her from farther off, as she leaned there, like a sea gull flying, or a wisp of foam. Now the sails were no longer so gently, evenly full of wind: they were stretched and puffed out furiously, distorted by the strain into unnatural shapes. I could see, looking at the canvas, how they were tugging at every squall.

Wild Weather

The only place I could think of to sit down on was the canted leeward side of the deckhouse. I sat on the very edge of it, with my feet braced firmly against the taffrail. If that part of the rail had gone, I should have gone with it. But the old man came along, found me sitting there, and decided that I shouldn’t be allowed to do that any longer. He told me that it was dangerous, and that I must get down. Down I got. Then I decided that I would go up on the fo’c’sle deck, and I asked Bill if that were all right. Bill replied that I oughtn’t to do that, because the jib sheets were rather old and frayed, and with that strain on them might give way at any moment, sending the blocks banging about. He told me that he knew a man who had gone forrard on a job in the middle of a gale, and a jib sheet had given way, and he had been killed by a blow of the loose block. So I promised I wouldn’t go there. Then all I could think of to keep myself warm was to run back and forth on deck, and since I couldn’t do that aft, I went cautiously down the poop deck steps and started tearing like a race horse back and forth between the poop and the fo’c’sle, every now and then looking out the scupper holes or over the bulwarks at the foam. The waves were no longer great green hills crowned with their ivory castles: they were furious volcanoes. The sea was hurling aloft thousands of mountains, carving deep and terrifying valleys, and then ruthlessly destroying them again.

It was a curious and difficult experience to run upon the deck. Besides the deep cant to leeward, the ship was rolling head-on, not on the waves of the gale, but simply on the tidal swell; and this roll seemed so much part of the cant that you didn’t notice it until you began to have trouble managing your feet. It seemed as though the schooner were steady and firm. Yet, when you ran to the fo’c’sle, you were running first up a very steep hill which tired your legs dreadfully, then down so steep a hill that you almost fell on your face. Sometimes when I would put my foot down, the deck had slid out from beneath me and was ’way down at the bottom of the sea somewhere, and at the next step the deck was there long before I was, so that I would stumble over it, as it were.

When the cook saw me dashing so madly up and down the deck, he was amused, and shouted from the galley door: “What you doin’? Practisin’ for a relay team?”

“Oh, just keeping warm,” I replied.

“What do you think of the breeze?”

“Breeze!” said I. “I should rather call it a gale.”

“Oh, yes,” said he, “it’s a pretty little wind for this time o’ year. I didn’t expect nothin’ like this.”

Beating to Windward

Again I was so awed by the sinister look of it that I could not speak. It was that way with me every time I looked at the overcast, gloomy sky, the raging sea, the strangely gleaming foam, the howling wind, the singing sails, the mountains of foam which we pushed up in great billows.

How the day went, I never did know; it went like the wind. Most of the time I was either running up and down the deck or standing on the poop deck, just gazing and gazing out to sea; or else I was watching the tactics of the Norman D. Of course, since the wind was coming from northeast, we had to tack. It was just as I had hoped, for I had always rather wanted to see how the schooner would tack in a good gale. I was disappointed, however, in the way she didn’t lie close to the wind. She would run no nearer it than four points. The captain said that this was partly because she was light. “She’s light-headed,” he explained; “that means she won’t tack. She lay within three p’ints coming down, loaded.”

We would sail for some two hours on one tack; then the old man would take the wheel, in order to have all hands free for the sails. He would steer “by the wind”⁠—that is, not taking any particular compass-line, but keeping an eye on the sails and sailing as near the wind as possible⁠—and when everything was ready forward, he would roar out in his croaking, harsh old voice; “Ha‑a‑a‑ard a‑lee‑e‑e‑ee!” And then the mate, usually on the fo’c’sle deck, would answer out in his more hearty voice: “Hard alee, sir!” And then you would be sure to hear the bo’s’n, from some nook or cranny of the vessel, echoing: “Hard alee, sir!” The ship would swing over until she lay on the other side of the wind⁠—though it always seemed as if the wind, not she, had changed. They tacked neatly, though a little frantically. But the cook disdained their performance, and spent a long time telling me how lazy and slow and ignorant they were, and how much more complicated it was to tack a square-rigged ship, when there were more than ten times as many sails and ropes, each one to be adjusted.

Darkness

As I said, the day went very fast. There was nothing but the gale, the foam, the waves⁠—now and then penetrated by one of the skipper’s terrible whoops. (His voice seemed always on the point of cracking in two; he used to yell out that “Hard alee!” so loudly that his voice would vanish entirely into the air.) I shall never forget the strange, wild, melancholy feeling which that overcast and howling day gave me. I would sit for hours on the corner of the deckhouse, and watch it, and face up into it, and yield to it, and cower before it. It was even more sinister than mountain-tops with the wind droning about them; more so even than the night in which Daddy and I were on the top of Moosilauke⁠—that night of the great gale, with the biting mist and the stinging sleet. We went out together that night, wrapped in blankets, braving it. I remember the mountain feeling which spellbound us, and the loneliness of it⁠—and the way it glowered at us out of the fog. This was like it. Every trace of that gay, piratical feeling left me. There was nothing but the gale. And, though it was all piratical and sailor-like, it crowded all feelings out of you except the feeling of its awesome self.

But the darkness, when it began to shut down, was the most overwhelming of all. To see the storm growing dark, and the foam still gleaming ghostlike, and to feel the wind howling in a way which it has at night⁠—we almost trembled. The sailors didn’t like it so well as we. They wished that it weren’t from the northeast; anywhere but northeast! said they. The captain was heard to say something about anchoring, and the mate to say something about sailing a hundred miles that day without making an inch of progress to the northeast. While everything was vague rumor, and no one seemed to know much about anything, Bill came aft and was heard to say to the old man: “Are you going to anchor, sir?”

“Yes, I’m goin’ t’ get that mudhook down, Bill, if I can,” said he. We made our way in pretty close to land somewhere off Cape Sable. Down with the sails, and down with the mudhook. And then, through the midst of the gale, with the howling above us all night, and the tossing of the ship, and the noise and confusion down in the cabin, we slept and rolled.

Here I must say a little something about the captain’s curious method of sleeping. We took two bunks aft, of course, and one of them had been the captain’s. The skipper himself slept in the chartroom on an old couch, and he was always so sleepy when he went to bed for a snooze that he would tumble asleep with everything in the world piled on top of him. The afternoon of the first day, taking advantage of a chance to sleep a bit, he tumbled on to that couch, where we, innocently enough, had put a great deal of our luggage. We saw him sleeping there with bags of oranges, suitcases, and everything you ever heard of piled on top of him, as well as a tangle of blankets. Since then he had complained more or less about that couch, and how difficult it was to sleep on. It seemed to account for part of his decided nonchalance towards his passengers.

The Square-rigged Cook

Our crude meals were getting to be terribly awkward now. There was a decided withdrawal from the captain, shared by everybody. The meals had their amusing aspects, though, and sometimes I would come near laughing aloud. The captain immediately started talking in his long-winded way about something which he didn’t know the first thing about. The cook stood there, arms folded, glowering with solemn dignity, and the mate and I sat silently, now and then winking at each other. The only trouble was that we couldn’t laugh aloud as we always wanted to.

Then there was the cook’s feeling of superiority to the crew, in addition to his hatred of the skipper. There was a little sliding door which opened from the galley into the fo’c’sle⁠—a door which the cook would open for a few seconds while he passed the crew’s food through. He would pass the food through scornfully, as if throwing it to dogs. And then the way he would slam that little sliding door! a slam of pure disgust. Once, when a dish of mixed grub was sent through, our friend Richardson ventured to say mockingly: “What’s that?” But it wouldn’t pass with the cook; no indeed! He said, with a mild oath: “You’d better shut your jaw, or you won’t get no more”; and slam! went the sliding door.

The cook showed in many ways what a real sailor he had been, and in what real sailing days he had lived. Sometimes, when three or four of the crew were struggling with some difficult job, clewing a topsail, close-hauling a sail in a breeze, or unfurling the topsails, he would come out, with his apron tucked up before him in a business-likeHaul away! Now, boys! All together! Well, then! Heave away! Heave ’n’ raise the dead!” It really did encourage them, too. I used to feel that he would break into a chantey, next.

Fo’c’sle Entertainment

For two or three days I was mightily teased by the crew. They had discovered, much to my relief, that I wasn’t seasick, and in all probability shouldn’t be. So they had let up on that subject. But there was another possibility, which they noticed in a flash. It was the thought that I might be irritated if they accused me of being homesick. In vain I turned upon them. Even the mate, even the cook himself, shared the fun. If I were discovered looking down into the water, or up at the constantly swinging reef points; even if I sat on the saddle of the spanker boom and looked out over the sea, one of them would come along and tap me meaningly on the shoulder, saying: “Well, Barbara, gettin’ homesick?” Once the cook made me almost furious. I was sitting on his galley doorstep, silent for a moment, and suddenly he launched this remark at me: “Ye’re gettin’ terrible homesick, ain’t you?” I had discovered the futility of trying to prevent these taunts. I simply said: “I never get homesick, and I’m not now.” But when, after a little talk, I started to walk aft, the cook said: “You don’t need t’ go away mad!” “Mad?” said I. “What under the sun should I be mad about?” And then: “It’s just a saying,” said he.

It was the same if I expressed a desire for a little more wind, like what we had had before. Then I was accused of “wantin’ to get there too quick.” And even when, as we approached the entrance to the harbor a few days afterwards, I said something about how beautiful it was, they immediately asserted that I was eager “to be gettin’ ashore.” But I refused to be more than secretly irritated at the teasing of the crew I had so longed to sail with.

Roy had a harmonica. There was a great deal of merrymaking in the fo’c’sle with it. Oftentimes the bo’s’n, whose place is aft, and who is not supposed to join in with the crew too freely, would go into the fo’c’sle and ask Roy to play this tune or that. I used to ask Roy what were some of the things which he played⁠—such things as “Oh, Katherina!” “’Twas three o’clockharmonica very well, using a cup for a sounding-post. Sometimes Richardson played it; he was even more brilliant, but not so careful. Oftentimes Roy would play it out on deck, sitting on the covers of the hatchways; or he would play it from within the fo’c’sle.

Once when I was in the galley with the cook I heard music from the fo’c’sle, and on opening the little sliding door I beheld Roy, with his harmonica, playing a brisk waltz and waltzing gaily around the fo’c’sle to his own music[2]⁠—

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all in a space about the size of an ordinary dining-table. He was turning round and round, taking tiny steps. This was one of the most amusing things I saw among the crew.

Dismal Weather

He grinned rather sheepishly when he saw that I was watching him, and there followed quite a parley about dancing of one kind and another. This led to a gathering of the crew, and everyone got to talking about it. I happened, though somewhat in jest, to ask Bill if he could dance a sailor’s hornpipe. But Bill rather sadly shook his head, and Bob struck in scornfully, and said: “Oh, him! He couldn’t dance a cow’s hornpipe.”

“No,” said Bill, “none o’ the family are much good as dancers!”

“Dick’s a good dancer.”

“Yes, and a good waltzer, too.”

The difference between a dancer and a waltzer I never did find out. But I have always wished that Bill could dance the sailor’s hornpipe.

The next day (the seventh out) the breeze was dying down. There was none of the whitecapped fierceness of the day before; nothing but a gentle, easy wash⁠—a pretty good sailing breeze if only it had been from a different direction. But it was holding to northeast like grim death. It was a dull, sad day. Early, there was a curtain, a thick veil, of white sea fog over the coast, so that we couldn’t see it and didn’t know how near it was. This rather disturbed the old man, and he was afraid to pick up anchor. It was slightly warmer than the day before, because there was so much less wind. Later, the fog lifted, and we saw the long, low, very black and dismal shore line of Cape Sable, farther off than we had suspected, lying under the fog. There were large islands about, and the captain was kept at work for some time with his charts, finding out exactly where we were. He finally discovered that we were in what is called Pubnico Harbor. I didn’t feel that it was much of a harbor: we were exposed to the full force of nearly all weathers.

Dinner that day started out to be as awkward and uncomfortable as ever, what with the cook’s hatred and the mate’s and my embarrassment. The ship was still at anchor; indeed, the captain had definitely agreed with the mate that we should not get under way without the wind’s changing. But the captain seemed to be blissfully unconscious of all the awkwardness, and he sat there smiling away and rattling on endlessly. He was just saying: “When I came back from Florida⁠—” and then he suddenly decided that he should like a cigarette to go with his strong black tea. He left us abruptly to get one. While he was gone, the cook had an opportunity of which he was not slow to take advantage. He leaned ’way over toward us from his sentinel’s post and said in a hoarse whisper: “Come back from Floridy, did he? Hm! It’s a wonder the turkey buzzards didn’t get him.” He said this in such a deep, ominous voice that I felt myself almost shivering. What a piratical little old man!

“But I Gest it will be Talk”

That was not the last of it. The captain returned, and we fell to talking about wolves. I don’t know what he knew about them, but he seemed to find plenty to say about anything at all, and a lot left over. The meal was shortly over, and again the cook bent down and whispered to us: “Hm! I guess the wolves wouldn’t want him much⁠—nothin’ there but bones.” Mutiny!

I’m sure that a mutiny would really have risen if we had had a crew of any spirit at all. I can readily imagine the cook standing up on top of a keg of rum, addressing the crew as ringleader, and I can imagine his carrying them with him⁠—oh, how he would carry them!⁠—and I can see them all drawing their cutlasses, flashing them aloft, and crying out: “All hail to the steward!” But it was a dull crew⁠—a gloomy, sad, dejected, rather too good-natured crew, usually. Such things would not go with them. They were quite content to talk about the old man, to criticize him in every way that they could think of.

I had a good talk with the mate that afternoon⁠—or, rather, a good listening to the mate. The bo’s’n had been painting up the engine-room; he had painted the machinery red, black, and green. Very gay it looked, and he was rather proud of his work, and took me in to see it. I told him it was a fine job, and we had a minute of conversation, Bob telling me something about the machinery, with a sprinkling of talk concerning the old man. Then I went to see Bill, who was off duty at that moment. I asked him if he didn’t think Bob had done a good job in the engine-room. And this was his reply:

“Oh, yes, pretty good for Bob. But it’s nothin’ compared to the job I done once, when I was bo’s’n on a four-masted schooner. I allus did have a craze for neatness, everythin’ in order. Well, that engine-room o’ theirs was a mess when they enlisted me as bo’s’n. I niver seen a worse mess. ’N’ I went right to work, ’n’ I scraped the floor, ’n’ the walls, ’n’ the ceiling, ’n’ I painted all the wheels and the engine all over agin, ’n’ I varnished the floor, ’n’ I scrubbed it all up spick and span as could be. Well, the skipper knowed that I was forrard, workin’ there, ’n’ one day he come forrard to see about it. Well, I had that place so clean that you could go in there in a clean white shirt ’n’ run the engine ’n’ niver get a speck of dirt or grease on it. Well, the skipper was awful pleased, ’n’ he said: ‘Bo’s’n, I’m proud o’ that job⁠—I niver had a engine-room lookin’ so good as that.’ Well, I was a young man then, and I was proud, I tell you!”

A Fantasy in Fog

That day proved, except for the wonderful remarks of the cook, to be quite monotonous. If we had been sailing, with the mudhook lifted, it really wouldn’t have made much difference, in that gloom and fog. The sea was very mysterious. The wild gale had vanished, but there was quite a swash left over. We stayed there all day, and rolled.

And we rolled in our bunks all night, to a jingling of bottles in the medicine-cabinet, the banging of doors, and the yelling of Bill as he strove to wake up Bob every four hours. The next day, waking up to find the schooner still rolling crazily about, we went out on deck, very curious to find out what the weather was doing. It gave us a cold, cold reception. The first thing I saw was the crazy motion of the deck, and next I saw the sea where the sky ought to be, and then the sky where the sea ought to be. The fog had gathered around us thickly and menacingly, saturating the air with brine, dismal and wet to breathe. It curled around us in weird and fantastic shapes, like mountain mist, but not so white and beautiful.

We could just see the bow of the vessel from where we were, aft, and we could clearly see that thick fog wafting across through the jibs, above the bowsprit. The schooner was in a mysterious little world of her own⁠—a world of about a hundred feet on all sides; beyond it, blankness and silence. It was tangible space; you could see nothing⁠—the nothingness⁠—so clearly. The ghostly ocean had turned to a silver-gray, and it slipped away beneath us and fell back, then rose and rose again, slidingly, mingling with the sky. We could not distinguish between the swells even so much as when it was clear. I would be looking steadfastly at what used to be the sky: then, suddenly, I would see nothing but those shifting waters there, and then they would fall back, and down, and again there was a wheeling sky of fog.

While I was still down in the cabin, early that morning, a strange sound had startled me⁠—a roaring drone, very sinister and terrible. At first, alarmed, I had wondered in vain what it was. But when I went on deck and saw that fog I knew immediately: the ship’s foghorn. Do you know what I thought of when I first recognized it? I thought of Billy Bones, who used to blow through his nose “like a foghorn.” I was curious to see how it was worked, but there wasn’t time before breakfast. I went down with a hearty appetite, encouraged by that strong briny smell.

The Skipper’s Pet Month

I don’t know when I had been amused by the old captain so much as I was just after the meal, when, as we all started to go out on deck together, he began to explain. We went up the steep, small steps before him, but he followed us. He began down in the cabin to ejaculate: “Well, folks, this is a mull! A regular mull. It’s a June mull! A regular June mull.” And then, following us out on to the deck, he kept on in a low monotone: “Yes, folks, it certainly is a mull⁠—a regular mull⁠—a June mull⁠—a regular June mull! We have these regular mulls every June. Yes, folks, it’s just what I expected. A mull! That’s what it is! A regular June mull!” (When I got home, after adventures yet to be reported, I immediately went to my dictionary to look up the word “mull.” It seems to have all meanings except that of a spell of foggy weather. And I don’t at all know what was meant, if not that. Possibly it was Captain Avery’s own invention⁠—that word; and possibly that was why he enjoyed saying it so much.)

Captain Avery had about ten thousand calendars in that after cabin; calendars, apparently, from all parts of the world. They lined the walls of every bunk compartment. (Actually, I think there were about nineteen, or some odd number like that.) Of them all, there were a very few of 1927, from which they reached back as far as 1922. I went exploring among them, on the suggestion of my shipmate, to see in what months they left off. And, strange to relate, I found only three which got as far as December. A few left off in April, May, July; a large majority stopped short in various Junes.

“I believe the old man’s been keeping count of June mulls!” said my shipmate.

“It certainly looks so,” said I.

This was about the wettest day we had; certainly the wettest so far. The sheets were dripping, and when, later, we got under way we found them cold, stiff, and very hard to handle. As for the sails, it was quite impossible to sit under or near them: they kept shedding icy drops of concentrated sea fog down the back of one’s neck.

Two or three times we went into the galley to get warm. Its stove was always roaring during this cold weather, and the door was kept shut, seemingly to keep the gravy smell in as well as the heat. Always our visits were made exciting by piratical remarks. Once I was sitting on the galley doorstep with my head out in the fog; my shipmate was farther back inside; and the cook was standing by the cupboards, making dough. The remark was not intended for my ears, but I overheard it. He had begun by saying, in all probability, profane things about Captain Avery, crowning his talk with this: “’F you folks wasn’t aboard, I’d be tempted to p’ison the food!” I was so stunned by this that I couldn’t believe I had heard aright, and I turned upon the steward, saying: “What was that, cook?” Then he felt abashed, I think; anyway, he said: “Hm! I guess it’s as well you didn’t hear.”

Up with the Mudhook

The old man sat still at anchor for a great part of the day. Then he had an idea the wind was shifting slightly to the south. Really it was just a little whim of the breeze, but the old man was evidently eager to arrive at Bridgewater, and, without any yoho-ing from that gloomy crew, the engine was started, and the mudhook came up through the intense fog, looking more than ever like a ghostly skeleton.

Shortly after that the mate and I had a marvellous talk behind the fo’c’sle, sitting side by side on the roof of it. The mate began by saying what a blankety-blank fool he thought the old man was:

“Here we was, sitting comfortable at anchor, knowin’ where we was, in Pubnico Harbor. Now here the breeze swings off a quarter point to sou’. Well, the old man takes that too serious, specially when there ain’t no wind nohow. So up with the mudhook, and up with the sails into the fog, and off we starts. Now look at us! There are the sails flappin’ and flappin’, and here is we rollin’ and beatin’ around. The fool! He’ll lose his reck’nin’, sure. I know he will! Well, if I had anything to say about it, I wouldn’t ’a’ tried it!

“Well, Barbara, how you feeling now?”

“Oh, I’m first-rate, mate!”

“Well, you’ve done fine. I thought sure you’d be sick.”

“Yes, and you acted kind of as though it would have been a grand joke if I had been, too.”

“Oh, but I was just teasin’ you. I niver had a young sister to play with, and now one comes along quite handy, and I can’t help it.”

“Yes, you were teasing, all right! But as for the cook, I think he’d have been awfully glad if I had been moderately sick.”

“The steward? Sure, he’d ’a’ been glad enough to see you sick. But as for me, I hoped you wouldn’t be⁠—’cos, I’ll tell it to you before your face or behind your back, you’re the smartest li’l girl I ever seen aboard of a vessel yit. Ye’re not afraid t’ ask questions, an’ ye’re not afraid t’ work, neither.”

“Well, mate, I’ve always wanted to go sailing, and now that I’m doing it I might as well chip in and help, and learn.”

“Sure! Well, not everyone would.”

And then, after that gallant remark, the mate fell to telling me about the state of affairs at home.

Bill in Private Life

“You know, Barbara, when I got married, I was married on a Monday, and I went off t’ sea agin Tuesday. I didn’t come back home fer six months. ’n’ then I stayed home all day Monday, ’n’ went off t’ sea agin Tuesday. Well, it did seem kind of tough at the time, but now I’m glad I don’t see m’ wife very often. Y’ see, it keeps us from gettin’ tired of each other. Now, when I go home, we have more fun! We’re just like a couple o’ kids. We sit together and bicker and bicker all th’ time.

“Well, my wife does a great deal in the line of fancy ’mbroidery. She can do all kinds of work of that kind, and she does love to do it. So she sits at one end of the table, evenings, with some work of that kind, and I sit at the other end, whittlin’ or carving with wood, and we do have a good time.”

“Do you do much whittling and wood-carving, mate?”

“Yes, I do quite a bit. And I have a lot of fun doing it, too. I like nothin’ better than to take a block of good wood, and a good knife (only I never have one), and sit by the fire in the stove, to carve something. I did a full-rigged ship model once⁠—oh! I wish you could ’a’ seen her, Barbara; she was a beauty! It took me about two weeks around Christmas-time to make her. Well, a friend of mine, a sea captain, came t’ see me, ’n’ he asked if he could have her. ‘What’ll you give for her?’ I says. ‘Well, shipmate, what do you ask?’ ‘Oh, you can have her fer five dollars,’ I says. So he give me five dollars fer her. Then, later, he told me that he had been offered sixty dollars for that ship of mine, ’n’ that he had refused to sell her fer that!

“Yes, I seem to be gifted in that line. I did a violin once, from a model of an old one that a friend o’ mine had. I worked on it all summer, ’n’ another friend played on it fer a long time. I had a lot of fun making it. But the hardest part was making the holes fer the pegs. Y’ see, they are so much narrower on the inside than on the outside that it’s very hard to get at them. Well, I strung her up, ’n’ she made a good little violin.

“’N’ I do quite a little in the painting line, too. I used t’ do water-color sketches of full-rigged ships, with the sky ’n’ the sea all painted in, and painted good, too. I used t’ sell ’em fer a dollar apiece. Yes, I had considerable thought of bein’ an artist. But there wasn’t enough money, ’n’ I had t’ get out and earn, so I went t’ sea. ’N’ at sea I stayed, ’n’ I guess I always will. Y’ see, I can carve, and I can paint, but here I am wasting my life with Cap’n Avery⁠—sixty per month. It seems hard. I think I’ll resign at Bridgewater. But, ye see, I don’t want t’ do the old man any harm. I wouldn’t harm him fer worlds; not me. ’N’ if I did resign, then the hull crew would. Didn’t ye hear what Richardson said about me holdin’ the crew together? Well, that’s a fact.”

“How many are there in your family?”

Souvenir

“Well, there was twenty births in the family, but there are only eight now. Some o’ them died in the war, some o’ them died of sickness. I have one little brother that I haven’t seen since he was five months old. An’ when Mother died, there I was, th’ oldest of the family, with a little sister ten years old, and another one only eight⁠—an’ I tell you, I felt powerful lonely. Well, I went right off to sea, and left the young children with an aunt. Now they’s almost all married, and has children of their own. As fer myself, I have three children⁠—two sons and a daughter.”

He picked up a little sliver from a board which was left over from the lumber cargo, opened his knife, and carved away at it. (It is funny about Bill’s knives. He told me he had about four around on the schooner somewhere, and that they kept cropping up here and there and then disappearing, and that Bob had two or three of them. Almost every one is broken. It seems that Bill isn’t wealthy enough to buy real knives, so he buys a thousand cheap tin affairs which last about five minutes. I told him, partly in joke, that I should certainly buy him a jackknife the first thing when I got back to New Haven, and send it up to Bridgewater before the schooner sailed.) He carved that sliver, with amazing speed, into a delightful little rowboat with a very accurate keel and lovely lines along the gunwales. He tossed it over to me immediately. I have that little boat now⁠—just about my only tangible remembrance of Mate Bill and the Norman D.

It was Bill’s watch above, but he didn’t seem to have anything in particular to do, and he was evidently glad to have someone to talk to. The silence and gloom, with blasts from the foghorn every now and then, struck home upon everyone’s senses. I began to ask Bill the names of various things aboard. I learned, on that day, a lot of ropes and blocks; he answered every question carefully and clearly. He was probably glad to air his knowledge a little.

“By the way, mate,” said I, “I thought that when the booms and sails are to starboard, then you’re on the port tack, and that when the booms and sails are to port, then you’re on the starboard tack. Is that so?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, when I asked the cook this morning about the foghorn, he said that there is one blast when you’re on the port tack, two when you’re on the starboard tack, and three when you’re running. We’re on the port tack now, according to you, but they are giving the horn two blasts.”

“No, the steward’s got you all twisted round. It’s one on the starboard tack, two on the port, and three running.”

“Well, I wondered who was wrong.”

Deep Sea Clay

“Now, I don’t like that at all,” said Bill. “That’s just like the steward, to fool you that way. Now, I like to answer questions that are asked me, as well as I know how. But him! No, you can never tell with him. And, you see, he makes you disbelieve me, and then I get in wrong there.”

“No, I didn’t disbelieve you, mate. I thought that, ten to one, the cook was wrong.”

“Yes, he’s wrong. That is, I was always learned the way I told you. That may not be right, but it’s the way I was learned.”

So we sat there in that ghostly fog, and discussed multitudinous little subjects⁠—about sailing vessels, mostly⁠—and I began to think that I had never known anyone more entertaining than Mate Bill. He was my idea of a real sailor.

When we dropped anchor during that wild night, it had evidently been over a clayey bottom; the anchor had three or four good-sized lumps of sticky gray clay on it. I fell to scraping it off, and Bill scraped some off, too. I started molding it in my hands until I had got it to the right texture; then I showed Bill how I had been taught to make pottery out of it, first making a smooth round of clay for the bottom, then rolling out long slender coils of it, and coiling it on to that bottom round, coil after coil, and in that way building up a jar or bowl. I loved that clay, because it was full of little shells and pebbles which had become stuck into it; I found some delightful ones. Then I started making two blocks, absolutely smooth, and with sharp corners. I put them down on the bulwarks beside the cathead to dry. It was a secret between Bill and me that they were to heave at the old man, when they dried and became hard, if he came forward interfering in what was none of his business.

High Hopes

Bill and I must have been talking and playing there on the fo’c’sle well over an hour, when suddenly there came a whoop from aft. Immediately everyone was excited. It was that infernal “Here, boys! Here, boys! Here, boys!” Since it was the mate’s watch, or supposed to be, and since it was probably growing upon Bill’s conscience that he had been idling for longer than he should have, he left me with a bound, crossed the rolling deck in three more leaps, and was beside the skipper. As for me, I was eager to find out what the disturbance was, and I started to climb down from the roof of the fo’c’sle to see for myself. But I was unable to cross the deck with the speed and agility of the mate; I walked slowly, though steadily, and climbed with some difficulty up the poop deck stairs. I beheld a very amazing sight. The captain had a boat hook down over the port side of the schooner, with something hooked on to the end of it⁠—a crate or box of some kind, as it looked. Evidently, when he had once got it hooked, it had been too heavy for him, and he had been unable to hold it, but, unwilling to let go, on the chance that it might be something worth having, he had started whooping for help. Now the whole crew had gathered there, and they all had boat hooks down, and were hauling it up. It was a large, heavy, mysterious box, and it rattled meaningly from within. What could it be? Was it gold? Mightn’t it be treasure? Supposing it were! Oh, how marvellously piratical! My imagination reigned supreme over my common sense then.

But things were becoming confused now. There were so many of the crew there, and so many boat hooks all struggling for a grasp on that one box, that everyone was getting in everyone else’s way, and the captain, as was his custom, was becoming terribly excited. The red spot was glowing on his cheek, and his eyes were flustered and wild. The mate was trying desperately to shove him out of the way, but he held on to his boat hook stubbornly, and held the boat hook around the rope with which the thing was tied, and, in resistance to the mate, he was yelling out in a horrible voice: “Let go! Let go! Let go! Let me go! Let go!”⁠—followed by a furious cascade of oaths. But the mate gently ushered the old man out of the way, where he sank back upon the deckhouse, exhausted, still grasping the boat hook.

That helped a lot; there was much less confusion. And, although the captain still gurgled out delicious oaths now and then, the crew kept their heads pretty well, and brought the great box slowly over the taffrail. What was within? I could hardly contain myself. By the wicked glint in the old man’s eyes⁠—a glint like that of an eagle’s or a hawk’s⁠—I knew that he had some avaricious hopes that it was a box of gold.

The crew slid off the rope, and opened the crate. Was it gold? What was it? Everyone peered over everyone else’s shoulders. Was it gold⁠—gleaming gold? It was⁠—

It was⁠—

I can hardly bear to say. Not that it was disappointing to me particularly, because my sense had begun to come back and take revenge on my piratical imagination. Of course, thought I, in this modern time it couldn’t be gold; if this had happened in the days of Blackbeard or John Flint, it might have been. Besides, a box of gold would sink, not float serenely past. It was⁠—No shrinking, now; I have got to tell. One more effort!

Questionable Spoil

It was⁠—a box of clams! hundreds and hundreds of clams. At first we thought that they were good, and this rather tickled the cook, who, as usual when anything was going on, had come out of the galley, his apron strings flopping behind him. But after they had broken open five or six and tasted them⁠—

The old man had pretty well recovered by this time, and in exasperated tones he ordered the bo’s’n to heave the box overboard. But they had already dumped about half of the clams out upon the deck in sorting them over, and there was an oily mess there. The bo’s’n picked up the box, staggered under it, and almost had it over the taffrail, when the weight overwhelmed him, and again he staggered backwards under it, spilling out most of the clams. A mighty oath followed from the enraged bo’s’n; then he shouted out to the mate: “Here, give a hand with the cursed thing!” Together they got it over; whereupon the bo’s’n fetched a shovel and scooped the rest of the mess over.

That was done, and it certainly did leave the crew in a sullen, mutinous condition. “The idea,” they cursed “⁠—to put us to that trouble over an old box of rotten clams!” The skipper, his greediness disappointed, was shamefacedly pacing the deck, while the cook retired into the galley, muttering: “Oh, Lordy! Lordy!”

The sea still heaved and pulsated strangely, rose and slid back into its own deep hollows. All day the fog scudded across, with its briny smell. It seemed to be clutching you in its cold, wet arms, and it saturated you. All you could breathe was that damp, salt wetness. There were times when we could barely see the tip of the flying jibboom from aft, and there were other times when the sun tried its best to shine through, and we could see up there the feeble yellow splotch of it. And it was bitter cold⁠—a wet, miserable cold, not the fresh cold of the former breeze.

A Buoy in Fog

There is nothing more uncanny than passing a bell buoy or a whistling buoy in such weather. All sense of direction is lost. To tell which way we were heading, or from which way the wind was coming, I saw even the crew go up aft to look at the compass. Everything was a moving space, swirling slowly around and around us. Approaching a buoy, you hear first a loud whistling and droning somewhere far off in the future; and, because you can’t see it, it makes you shudder. Sometimes you think it’s to starboard, and sometimes you are sure it’s to port, and then you have the strangest feeling that it’s dead astern. But how can it be astern, you ask yourself, when you haven’t yet passed it? You can’t definitely tell where it is until you come within sight of it, or unless you have sea ears trained for such things. You become haunted with the strange music of that whistler, and you listen and listen for it, to find out where it is. But it mocks you, and dodges you, and plays hide and seek with you, knowing itself quite safe beneath the curtain of fog.

Yes, you feel that it is a mournful and mocking sound, that calling. And then, perhaps the fog breaks for an instant, and you see the thing which has been playing with you. You see it looming vaguely, strangely, from sea and fog all mixed together⁠—a great red monster lifting up its head to howl, a haunted brick-red castle, rocking there amid the swell. And then it roars or tolls its bell again, and you feel that it has lifted its voice in despair at being discovered.

Watching a buoy, we could see very clearly how slowly the ship was making headway, and how fast she was making leeway. We felt, seeing a thing like that looming at us from the depths of the sea, more alone and queer, more desolate than ever. Again that sense of solitude overwhelmed us.

This happened once or twice that day. But the captain had lost his reckoning⁠—absolutely lost it! His instruments depended upon the sun, and there was none of that. Dead reckoning was of no use, because of the leeway, and the no wind, and the swell. When we passed a buoy which the captain didn’t understand, he and the mate got together on the cabin floor, on their knees and elbows, over the chart, one on each side of it, to work out the position. Neither could come to a definite solution of that buoy, and the captain appeared nervous and worried. He would come on deck, saying: “If there’s anything I hate, it’s these June mulls!” And then the mate would say, very confidentially, to me: “It’s his own fault, the withered old fool. If he’d done what he oughter have done, stayed right there where he knew where he was, we wouldn’t have got into this trouble. Sometimes I think the old fellow’s got no more sense than a baby.”

There was nothing much to be done; at least, if there were anything the captain certainly showed his ignorance of it. Some of the crew thought that he ought to drop anchor now, before they got into a hole somewhere alongshore. But the old man kept a-going, and we beat about, blowing that infernal horn, all day. What with the gloom, the silence, the fog, the wetness and coldness, and that horn at regular intervals, we were pretty tired by evening, and ready enough to drop into our bunks. I had tried pumping the horn a little, and found that I enjoyed the sound somewhat more when I helped to make it.

Impudence from the Foghorn

There is one amusing detail connected with that horn which I mustn’t forget. It was a rather rickety old affair, and if you pumped it too furiously it would stop its long, steady drone and go off into croaking falsetto whoops. It was a commonly agreed fact among the crew that, when it did this, it was exactly like the old man’s voice. When the old man pumped his voice too hard, it, too, would go off into the same sort of croaking whoops. And the crew⁠—especially, of course, Bob, who, when it was his trick at the horn, always, after pumping it correctly for a few seconds, let it go off into those whoops⁠—thought it a great joke to make the horn echo the old man’s excitement. It all disgusted the old cook very much. He would sit in the galley door, with a roaring fire in the galley stove (to which we would come in at frequent intervals for a warming-up), muttering his favorite mutter of “Oh, Lordy! Lordy!” and saying that it was all nonsense, that business. But it seemed rather to tickle the mate, who, with his customary malicious chuckles, would pretend to be rather disgusted, but whose eyes would twinkle in that piratical way which made me think that he really enjoyed the joke.

We beat about, hard-aleeing, all the afternoon. That awful “Hard alee!” whoop of the skipper sounded inexpressibly dismal, echoing through the fog, and echoed by the foghorn. After a diverting yarn from the steward, which I shall soon repeat, we slept in the midst of the roll, and were grateful for the privilege.

The cook, returning after supper from the cabin with his basket of food and dirty dishes, saw the two of us promenading the decks in the fog, apparently doing just about nothing, and he decided that it was a bully good chance for talking. He stood there securely, holding his basket, and rattled on and on and on until I felt pretty sure there would be no finish, ever. I missed, unfortunately, the beginning of the tale; not realizing what we were in for, I had started walking forward, looking over the bulwarks. When I returned, the yarn was in medias res. The cook, it seemed, was in a three-masted schooner which was going to race a four-masted schooner from somewhere to somewhere else, to find out which was the better vessel. As I missed the beginning, I don’t know any more about it. The cook was just saying, with the most dramatic gesticulation I had ever seen:

A Sporting Event

“⁠—Well, it was a fine day, that day we was goin’ to race; good sailin’ breeze, everythin’ just dandy. But luck seemed to be agin us. We manned the capstan at the same time as the crew of t’ other vessel, an’ we was workin’ away good and brisk, but it didn’t seem t’ work right. Well, we had t’ stop heavin’ and see what was the matter. It took a good long time t’ get it fixed, ’n’ then ’twarn’t fixed right, so we had a bully hard time gettin’ the anchor up. By this time, the four-master was out o’ the harbor, gettin’ a good breeze, ’n’ a’most out o’ sight. Then we started t’ get our centerboard down. But that didn’t work right, neither, and try as we might, we couldn’t get her down. We got grease ’n’ poured it down, and I brought soap from the galley, ’n’ we worked away ’n’ worked away at it. Well, finally we got her down, ’n’ then we got our sails up ’n’ were off.

“I thought we was niver goin’ out o’ that harbor. There wasn’t much wind there, ’n’ we went so slow! Well, we got a good breeze after a time, ’n’ then we did tear along. But the Edward Coles was ’way out o’ sight, ’n’ we was pretty sure we was niver goin’ to catch up with her. The next mornin’ there was quite a argyment in the after cabin as t’ where she was. Some held she was t’ windward of us, some held to leeward, and some says she was straight astern. The cap’n said she was t’ windward. But I knowed better. Says I: ‘No, sir, she ain’t t’ windward, she’s astern of us,’ ‘Oh, Si, it’s impossible. I know she’s t’ windward.’ ‘I’ll wager with you she’s astern,’ says I. ‘I won’t wager with you, Si, ’cause you’ll on’y lose yer money. She’s t’ windward.’ ‘what do you think, mate?’ says I t’ the chief mate. ‘Oh, I think she’s t’ windward.’ ‘Sir,’ says I, ‘I ’nsist I’ll wager with you. Now I’ll put up ten dollars agin your ten cents, ’n’ we’ll see ’bout it.’ ‘No, Si,’ says he, ‘I won’t make a wager like that.’ ‘Oh, sir,’ says I, ’y’ ain’t got no sportin’ blood in you. Come on, now, wager ten cents aginst my ten dollars! We’ll see who’s right this time!’

“‘Now, Si,’ says he, ‘y’ must know where th’ schooner is, t’ make a wager like that. Otherwise ye’d niver put up ten dollars aginst ten cents.’ ‘Oh, go on, sir, wager with me!’ says I. ‘Well, Si, but you must know something t’ make a wager like that.’ Well, I coaxed, ’n’ I coaxed, ’n’ I coaxed, but fer the life of me I couldn’t make him put up ten cents. Then says I: ‘Sir, y’ ain’t got no sportin’ blood in you, ’n’ I’m goin’ t’ tell you what I know. You go up halfway in th’ mizzen riggin’, ’n’ you’ll see the Edward Coles astern of us.’ Well, the skipper banged his fist down on th’ cabin table, ’n’ jumped up ’n’ ran on deck. He went right up halfway into the mizzen rigging, ’n’ then he slapped his leg ’n’ hollers out: ‘By Godfrey almighty, there’s the Edward Coles! You’re right, Si, there she be.’ How’d I know? Well, o’ course I’d a been up in the mizzen riggin’ early that mornin’, ’n’ I seen her astern of us.

“Well, we won that race by a good long shot, I’ll say, now!”

And then I saw the apron strings dangling, as the old man walked sedately back into the galley with his basket of dishes, leaving us alone in the cold, wet fog.

Ghostly Weather

The fog swept about the little ship all night. The first thing I saw when I thrust myself out of the cabin was Richardson, at the helm. He was bunched up in a massive overcoat, and his shoulders were shrugged up the way they always were in cold weather. He was dripping wet, and standing in the center of a cloud of fog, which swept around him menacingly, like the white, floating shroud of a ghost. However, it was not so thick, and the sun made on it a kind of shimmering rainbow, which the crew called a “fog eater.” It was very mysterious and lovely to see that path of faint iridescence, glimmering in a ghostly way through the monotonous whiteness. There was no more wind than the day before, perhaps not even so much, and I think there was more of a roll than I had known on any of the previous days. I had a great deal of fun practising walking about on the decks. If there had been much more of a roll, the crew said, she would have been rolling water on her decks. As it was, I saw none of that.

Of course the sails, the booms, the rigging, the tackle were all making their infernal racket⁠—a racket which wears on your sense even more than the silence of the fog. Here the mate gave me a very quaint descriptive sentence. Said he: “I hate to sit here and listen to her flap her wings and shake her feathers.” How like flapping wings and shaking feathers it sounded!

We went in pretty close to some land or other, but as the captain had not yet got his bearings, we didn’t know what it was. We had an idea that we were somewhere near the mouth of the Lahave River, where we wanted to go. There was nothing much to be done except drive on until the weather cleared off. The captain said that there was no earthly use in trying to keep a-going without any wind. “We’ve got t’ have a breeze t’ sail, ’n’ that’s all there is to it.” So he decided to drop anchor, before we should be carried ashore by our leeway. “Get down the outer jib, boys!” he bellowed out, “flyin’ jib, ’n’ jib!” Then the mate, on the fo’c’sle deck: “Get down the outer jib, sir!” Then the bo’s’n, from the jib halyards: “Get down the outer jib, sir!” in his usual mocking voice. But then, just as they were about to get down the forestaysail also, the captain’s voice rang out again: “Hold on the forestaysail a minute!” And the mate: “Hold on the forestaysail a minute, sir!” And the bo’s’n: “Hold on the forestaysail a minute, sir!” The captain had noticed a tiny breath of air rising, and now he commanded the jibs to be hauled up again. Once more we set sail⁠—or set jibs, rather⁠—and started off. We were going a little bit faster, but still the schooner was flapping her wings and shaking her feathers.

Lost Bearings

I went forrard to have a small talk with the mate. “Quite a little trouble to no purpose, wasn’t it?” said I.

“Well, ’s long ’s it pleases him, all right,” replied Mate Bill.

“Well, mate, are we still off Cape Sable?” (This was a great joke among the crew, because of waking up so many mornings in succession to be told that we were off Cape Sable.)

“Hanged if I know where we are! The old man doesn’t know, neither, ’n’ we can’t find out ’ntil this pesky fog clears away. But I wish th’ skipper would get some sense in ’s head ’n’ let us stay at anchor, afore we gets into any worse scrape ’n this. We’ll be aground, next.”

Indeed, the old man did appear to be extremely nervous. “If there’s anything I hate, it’s these June mulls!” he would say, over and over. He always appeared to be shivering and shaking, and he had acquired a terrific cold in his head. When he came down for meals, I noticed that he could barely eat and drink, his hands were quivering and shaking so. Yes, the old man was certainly alarmed over something⁠—over losing his bearings, and being shut in by fog. But he didn’t anchor. While there was a breath of air stirring, he kept the schooner to her course, and we went sailing very, very slowly up the coast of Nova Scotia.

About the only happening that afternoon that was in the least piratical occurred when I went forward to have a chin with the crew, and found no one there. The galley and the fo’c’sle were both quite deserted. The captain strode by once as I was talking to Bob at the wheel, and said: “Don’t talk to the helmsman, Barbara⁠—it distracts him.” So I hadn’t talked again with anyone at the wheel. Yes, the helmsman was at his trick, the lookout was at the foghorn, and⁠—there was no one else in evidence. How strange! I went exploring. I happened to look into the engine-room⁠—and, lo! there they all were. The cook was there, leaning against the wall with one elbow, the other hand on his hip, his legs crossed, looking very important. The mate was there, and his dark, piratical eyes were full of the light of mutiny. The bo’s’n was there, with his customary careless, fresh look. Irish Bill was there, and his rather wicked Irish eyes were gleaming. What were they doing? I asked myself.

“What’s going on?” said I. “You look as mischievous as though you were concocting a mutiny. Are you?”

“Oh, we’re just talkin’,” explained Bill.

“’N’ plannin’ some deviltry,” said the cook.

Brewings of Mutiny

“I see,” said I.

I really had an idea that they weren’t so innocent as they pretended. They probably wouldn’t have let me into their secrets anyhow. But I knew the man to go to⁠—a special friend of the cook’s, to whom the cook confided everything in fullest detail: my shipmate.

From him I discovered startling things. I didn’t inquire too closely, but I imagine they came from the cook. It seems that the crew had gathered in the engine-room for the purpose of a conference on writing a letter of complaint against Captain Avery. They were agreeing to stand by each other in this mutiny like brothers⁠—and to sign their names to this letter! I’d wager all the pirate treasure ever buried that it was the cook who suggested it.

“I guess the cook would sign his name, all right!” said I.

“Oh, he’d sign his name all over the letter,” said my shipmate.

That set me thinking, I tell you. I really wished that the cook or Mate Bill would confide in me enough to tell me the story. But evidently they would go up to a certain point with me, such as jesting about the old man, but not far enough to reveal to me such deep and dangerous secrets. They didn’t need to worry: for the world I wouldn’t have betrayed them!

As usual, we turned in early. That night I was so unfortunate as to sleep soundly through a happening which I was very sorry to miss. Perhaps it was owing to the fact that Mate Bill had been having a long conference with the two of us that night. We had been sitting on the after hatchway, all in a row, and Mate Bill was showing us how to tie different knots. I really believe there isn’t a knot in the world that he couldn’t tie. He went on and on, showing us more and more complicated ones, even splicing. Every now and then he would say assuringly: “There! now you’ll know how to tie that when you go home.” But I confess that I was so dazzled with the multitude of twists and turns that I couldn’t remember any of them until, later, I looked them all up in my dictionary. Perhaps it was with all these knots dancing in my head that I went to sleep so early and slept so soundly. Or perhaps it was because my hard, uncomfortable bunk was very snug and warm compared with the sea and the fog.

Professors of Knots

Or perhaps it was the delight of a certain thing which happened just before we turned in. It was this way: At first, during this knot-tying lesson, Mate Bill and I had been sitting there alone, but presently my shipmate emerged from the cabin doorway and joined us. Then the bo’s’n, too, came strolling along from the direction of the fo’c’sle and began to contend against Mate Bill, wagering that Bill couldn’t tie this knot or that, and Bill wagering that he could. Bob was very clever, too. Bill’s challenging assertion that he couldn’t braid nine strands he answered by promptly selecting the nine from a pile of old frayed rope, tying them to a backstay, and braiding them up. We had quite a little joke about the common square knot. After Bill had asked me many times if I could tie this, or if I could tie that, I replied by saying that the only good knot I could tie was the square knot. But Bob spoke up sneeringly and said that I couldn’t tie a square knot. I said that I could, and was just about to select a strand and tie it, when Bill interposed and said: “Oh! I know what you mean, Bob. Your square knot ain’t no good. ’Tain’t a reg’lar square knot.”

“Bet you can’t tie it,” said Bob.

“Well, what good is it when you have it tied?”

Bob now went to work and invented a very pretty, but useless, knot which, as Bill said, was the start for a square braid. But, after all, I was really right, and I had Bill to back me, and I selected my strand and tied my square knot. Bill took it and examined it very carefully; then he said that it was all right, and passed it on to Bob. Bob, too, looked at it, said in his turn that it was all right, and tossed it back to me. I doubt if there was ever such a fuss over a simple square knot.

As I said before, my shipmate had now come out from the warm depths of the cabin; and he was watching all this, standing over us on the poop deck. Now he called me, saying: “Come up here a minute, and see what you see!” And he went down and took my place beside Mate Bill. I looked down at the two of them; and truly it was a marvellous sight. It had now grown almost pitch dark, and I could just see the silhouettes of two forms, sitting there, their heads together, very still⁠—still except for Mate Bill’s fingers, which were busily at work in the tangles of some new knot. Behind them was the pile of old rope, like sacks of spoil in a heap⁠—and they looked, those hunched figures, like two whispering spooks, sitting out there in the rain, “plannin’ deviltry,” as the cook would have said, and counting over their coins.

Squalls at Sea

And I mustn’t forget a rather piratical incident which happened just before we turned in. We had gone below, and were sitting together, talking about June mulls, when suddenly Mate Bill came down and went in to his bunk. It had started raining, and it was very dark. He had come down, in his wet-weather costume, to get a lantern. I didn’t see him when he came down, but as soon as he had gone in to his bunk my shipmate nudged my arm and said in a whisper: “Watch the mate, now, when he comes out with the lantern. See if he doesn’t look piratical!” I kept an eye on the small room of the mate, and presently we saw him come out, in his oilskins, sou’wester, and sea boots, all dripping wet, and lighted uncannily by the light of the lantern. Piratical! Never, in all the time before, had I seen him look so much so. He nodded good-night and clomped up the steps again, in his heavy boots.

Perhaps, as I said, all this had made my mind swirl with tangles of ropes and imaginings of pirates. Whatever the cause, I slept through the worst racket of the whole trip. The rest is hearsay⁠—what I was told the next morning by the crew and my shipmate, who were amazed that I hadn’t waked up.

The mate had told me on several occasions that in the month of June we were likely to have “squalls.” At first I had got the idea that squalls were simply the cat’s-paws which we see on inland lakes, only more violent. Later I decided, from what Bill said, that it only meant wind coming in spurts and then dying down. But at last I understood that squalls were raging thunderstorms which pass over the sea quickly, quickly, and are gone. Bill told me of several times, during his sailor career, when they had seen squalls coming from far off, sweeping wildly across the sea, blackening the sky, and had barely time to take the sails down before they were swamped in it. Squalls were very dangerous, the mate said, and whenever they were at all violent the sails would have to come down.

Well, we had one in the middle of that night. There were thunder, lightning, rain by the bucketful, and much stronger wind than any we had had. They described how the whole crew⁠—even the cook, roused up out of his bunk⁠—had scurried back and forth right over my head, to get down the sails at full speed. They wondered how on earth I could possibly have slept through that, let alone the howling of the wind, the rolling of the thunder, the brilliance of the lightning, and the tossing and plunging of the schooner. They crowned it by describing how the spanker gaff had been let down, one man at the peak halyards, the other at the throat halyards, and how the gaff had been let go in the tumult and come rattling down with a terrific crash on the deck house right over me. The old man, at this little mishap, had jumped with terror, and shrieked out a curse in so loud a voice that they wondered why that alone hadn’t waked me.

Blue and Gold

The cook, of course, had his little word on this episode. He took me aside to the galley and told me in scornful terms how the old man had got excited and hectic, after his custom, and what a ridiculous crew we had, who didn’t know how to do anything right, and did nothing but rush frantically around from here to there and back again, and how such foolishness wouldn’t have been allowed in his day, when sailors were sailors, not landlubbers! Also, I was told how Bob, who, during all this, had been at the foghorn, had seen a good-sized steamer near by, and, very much afraid of running into her, had blown the foghorn so long, loud, and furiously that at length Mate Bill had to go forward and stop him. We had evidently been on the starboard tack, because Bob had intended to blow the horn once; but he had made it one such prodigiously long blast (the Mate said he must have blown it for a full ten minutes) that Bill was afraid the steamer wouldn’t understand what on earth we were trying to do.

When I first went on deck the next morning, I had a suspicion that all this might be a joke, or, at least, greatly exaggerated. But when I saw how every last wisp of the fog had blown away, leaving the air crystal clear, though still almost calm, I knew that it must have taken some violence to banish it all so quickly and completely. What a heavenly blue the sky was! It was one of those deep, quivering blues which I have so often seen at Sunapee. The sails shone sparklingly white, instead of their usual gray; the trucks of the masts were shining and clear-cut against that sky. We were quite near the shore, sailing before a steady breeze⁠—just enough to keep the sails rounded, and to make the schooner yield and cant a little, yet not enough to make more than a delicate dash of foam along our sides.

During the whole trip I had not seen a lovelier shore. Even the shore of New Haven as we had left it on that memorable first day, with West Rock jutting up strangely; and the long green line of Martha’s Vineyard as we had passed it; and the coast line of Rhode Island, on the afternoon of the first day⁠—none of these was nearly so lovely as what now confronted us. It was a shore of low green hills, brighter than emerald in the sunlight and against the sky. They were high hills, yet with so gradual a slope that they presented an aspect of luxuriance and verdure, like a very mossy forest. Somber shadows were constantly passing over them like dark ghosts, reminding me of how the valleys had looked down at the foot of Moosilauke, with the shadows of slowly moving clouds on the radiance of the autumn trees. My first real glimpse of Nova Scotia! A beautiful land.

Gibes at the Lubber

But the captain was no better off as to his bearings. He was sailing on with a rather doubtful air, looking again and again at his charts. It was the cook’s opinion that he had passed Lahave River and was now on his way up to Lunenberg; but he added: “’Tain’t up t’ me t’ say anything.” All of us were much relieved to find the fog cleared away, and everyone was much happier. Richardson, however, incurred two gibes that day from the mate. He had been set to work scrubbing off the deckhouse, while Mate Bill and I sat together discussing knots and watching him. Richardson, as was his custom, was doing the job very feebly and slowly, as though bored to death with it. At last the mate raised his head and said, with that wicked twinkle in his black eyes that I have described so many times: “Oh, hurry up, Dick, do! You’re slower ’n an old woman with her washin’.” Later in the day almost the same thing happened, when Richardson was scrubbing the highest part of the starboard fo’c’sle wall. “Don’t be all day over it, Dick,” said the mate. “Put some elbow-grease into it!” Whereat Richardson smiled feebly and tried to scrub a trifle harder.

As for me, the forbidden rigging looked more and more enticing now that the sails gleamed so white, and I was determined to have a climb. I had, to be sure, climbed about a little on one of the foggy days, when it had broken for a moment on our port bow, revealing a dark mass of land. The mate had gone up into the rigging to see if he could identify anything, and I had gone with him. But, though it was impressive to have seen the land lying over there like a mass of black fog, it wasn’t really fun, and I had longed for a good day. Now, accordingly, I went aft and asked Captain Avery if I might run up to the crosstrees. “Oh, sure,” he replied, “go ahead up, ’n’ hold hard.” So I started for the port mizzen rigging. But that was our leeward side, and the captain called me: “Don’t go up on that side, Barbara. Allus go on the wind’ard.”

“Why, Captain?”

“Well, y’ see, when the schooner” (he always pronounced this skewner) “is heelin’ over to loo’ard, the loo’ard riggin’ gets slack, ’n’ the wind’ard riggin’ is taut all the while. ’N’ then, too, the loo’ard riggin’ ’s much straighter, ’n’ harder t’ climb. That don’t make no partic’lar difference to a sailor, ’coz ’f anything lets go, he kin always stop hisself, but with a greenhorn ’t’s different.”

’Twixt Sea and Sky

It was quite insulting to the pride of my sailor career to be called a greenhorn, but then, it was all right with me whatever they called me. I went to the starboard mizzen rigging, and up I climbed, with the same delightful sensations which I always had. But today there were other sensations, too. The schooner was rolling quite a little, and I had now, in the rigging, the same curious feelings that I had had running about the deck in our big gale. First the rigging seemed to slide away beneath my feet, and then it would be there before me. All the time I held very “hard” with my hands and went up steadily, though somewhat more slowly than usual. The mate called out to me to hold the shrouds, not the ratlines: because then, if a ratline happened to let go, I should still have something to hold to. I followed this advice, and very carefully kept one hand upon the rigging while I was low down, and both when I was high enough so that the ratlines were comfortably short and the shrouds near enough together. Still, the sway was very puzzling, and it increased as I mounted. I stuck to it, and when finally I sat down, rather breathless, on the crosstrees, I felt more as if I were on a seesaw than I have ever felt, even on a real seesaw. The crosstrees made graceful swoops and slow half circles through the air, and I saw the sea beneath me, first on one side, then on the other. It was very beautiful, but very alarming, too; and I felt more than ever like a sailor. That breath-taking instant when one gets from the crosstrees on to the ratlines and hangs for a moment over the sea was more breath-taking than ever. I thought of this, one of the sailor chanteys in Iron Men and Wooden Ships:

For that instant I certainly felt the danger of joking with Davy. But the moment of peril was passed without mishap, and, after looking again at those beautiful hills, of which from up here I could see much more, I came down.

Phantasmal

Now a speck was descried by the hawk’s eyes of the old man, on the starboard horizon (or, as he always pronounced it, orison with an h in front). Nearer and nearer it came, and finally it turned out to be just what I had hoped: a sail. Eagerly we watched, and as it skimmed slowly down along the skyline toward us we saw that it was another lofty four-masted schooner. But how insignificant it was away off there, how like a child’s toy ship! We could see her masts, like matches, and her tiny gaffs and booms. The jibs were no more than slivers of silver thread, pointing away into the sky like fingers of moonlight; the topsails were four little snow-capped peaks along the edge of the sky. But as she drew nearer, she looked more and more like a crowned princess of the seas. No ship could have seemed more proud, except one of those square-riggers which used to go flying like white clouds across the ocean. She passed us so near on our starboard beam that she loomed almost over us, and we gazed silently up into her sails. At almost the same time we tacked, swung across the wind, and fell away to port. And now she showed us her stern, and we could see how her sails were set. They were “wing and wing” or, as the mate used to say, “wung out”: that is, with the spanker to starboard, mainsail to port, and foresail and jibs hardly drawing, because of being cut off from the wind by the other sails. Even our own sails, when we had had them set that way, had not seemed so much like wings. She reminded me of a gull spreading out its wings to fly up from the water. The very lines and curves of the sails interlaced with each other, and the farther away she sailed, the more like some huge sea bird she became.

The sun made a vast stretch of gold. Soon after she had passed us, she dipped into that burning sea. First her sails grew bright with the sunlight, and then, as she sailed farther and farther into the heart of the blaze, they melted away into the sun. When we looked, there seemed to be not a vestige of sail upon her. Her handsome hull we could see perfectly, black in the mirror of gold. Even her masts were clearly outlined, her very crosstrees. But she was stripped of canvas; the sun had stolen it. She was no more than a skeleton, a weird phantom ship.

As we watched, we saw her draw out of that enchanted part of the sea. Slowly she became real again; slowly her sails appeared. First they were bright gold with reflected light, then only flushed with it; and then they were snowy once more. By this time she was tiny in the distance. At last she disappeared⁠—into Lunenberg, the skipper thought.

This was the most perfect weather of the whole trip. The alluring hills grew brighter as the sun mounted, until they were like precious jewels in a setting of incredibly blue sky. The sea sparkled with the sun, and it, too, was bluer than on any day before. Again I was dazzled by the hugeness and the wideness of the sun-path here on the sea. The brilliant splotch of gold seems to spread out boundlessly. It is much brighter, too, than I have ever seen it on an inland lake, as though each tiny salt-crystal were reflecting the rays a thousand times. Millions, millions of sparks, leaping up from that blueness, breaking into showers of fire!

Nearing the Lahave

Where the sky was clear, it was a very deep blue. There were banks of massive white clouds on the horizon, although the zenith was entirely free of them. These cast down deep shadows which cooled the green fire of the hills here and there, gliding over them slowly. We were running nearer and nearer now. The skipper had located us and determined where Lahave was. We had passed it, as the cook had said, and were wheeling about to find it; running back the way we had come, but much nearer to the coast than before, so that it seemed different, and much more beautiful. All the time, though we were running down the coast, we were drawing closer and closer to it, and the hills looked more and more verdurous. What a contrast to the vacancy of boundless ocean which we had had before us a few days back!

There seemed to be a great many small fishermen hereabout. We didn’t actually pass any close, but we counted seven or eight off on the horizon. We would be looking at one sail, a tiny peak fretting the skyline, when someone would catch sight of another. But they were all so far away and so hard to see that our eyes went crazy after a while, so that all we could see was miniature sails.

There was hardly time for staring at them, for we were now nearing Lahave. We could see a deep, narrow indentation in the shore line, bounded on each side by hills sloping down into the sea⁠—no more than two arms of green land, clasping the bay within. It looked like a very narrow opening for a schooner of our size to sail through, and I wondered what could be done, supposing there were an adverse wind. I climbed up in the rigging two or three times more before we reached the opening, feeling extremely glad, deep down, to have retrieved that privilege. The hills and the stretch of blue harbor within looked, of course, lovelier than ever from so high, and I stayed up at the crosstrees, watching our progress toward it, for quite a long time. Although we seemed to be so near, we were as yet easily two miles away, the mate said. Suddenly we heard the booming of surf on a small rock-bound islet to the starboard of the entrance. We could see the great white crests rise up and up, toweringly, like foam-castles, then dash furiously up the bar a way, then subside into themselves with a crash and a dull roar. And all this two miles away!

The mate and I fell to talking. We leaned over the starboard bulwarks watching the surf, and talked mainly about swimming. The mate said: “Well, kin you swim, Barbara?”

“Oh yes, mate,” said I, “I swim a lot. I believe I could swim from here over to that island.”

“Two miles?” He looked at me incredulously.

“Well, perhaps not quite,” I yielded. “But almost. How are you on swimming?”

“I can’t swim a stroke,” said Bill. “Y’ see, I hain’t never had no chance.”

“But it strikes me,” said I, “that anyone who’s a sailor ought to be able to.”

Another Professor of Knots

“Well, ye’re right, I reckon,” said he. “But I never been shipwrecked yit. ’N’ I’m goin’ t’ resign afore long, too!” And his eyes sparkled, as usual, at his joke.

He began telling about his working abilities. “You know, I do twice as much work ’s any other man aboard here. They all act ’s though they was skeered to death t’ get their hands dirty. Why, ’f I didn’t work with ’em⁠—’f I didn’t sooge the deck ’n’ paint the bulwarks⁠—there’d not be a stroke o’ work done here. There’s a thousand little jobs that no one’ll ever do ’ceptin’ myself. Remember that day when you come down t’ the schooner ’n’ I was sewin’ that outer jib? Well, the boys got the afternoon off, and I could ’ave, too, if I’d ast; but w’at did I do? I stayed aboard, like a blinkin’ fool, and worked all afternoon on that jib. Well, ’t would have never got done ’f I hadn’t done it.”

Evidently the mate’s head was still running strong on knots, for, after a little, he got himself a strand of rope, and fell to tying it up in all the ways he could think of. I asked him how Richardson was at tying knots. Bill replied about as I expected: “Oh, Dick! he can’t tie two half-hitches and git ’em right.”

I was eager to show him something about string that he didn’t know, but I felt that this was impossible. At last I had an idea: “Do you know cat’s-cradle, mate?” “Cat’s-cradle? No.” I ran down into the cabin and hunted up a bit of string. For as much as a half-hour we were taking it off each other’s hands. I succeeded in amusing the mate by it; and to me it seemed a more interesting game than ever before. It is perfect to play on shipboard, between watches.

Then we fell to talking about boats⁠—small ones, such as canoes and rowboats. Said he: “Well, I tell you, I niver was very strong on canoes. I’m skeered of ’em. Too tipsy for me! I tell you, I wouldn’t go out in one in rough weather ’f you paid me.” And I told him what fun Daddy and I used to have on Sunapee and Ossipee, battling in the white canoe the strongest gales that came.

“But, of course,” said I, “there you never have any weather that’s dangerous. You never have weather anything like what we had a few days ago.”

A Jewelled Seascape

The talk somewhat broke up as we neared the harbor. Mate Bill had never been to Bridgewater, and it struck him, no less than me, as very lovely country. The bright green of the hills rose up, dominating everything, and reaching down those two almost human arms to clasp the blue waters of the bay. I shall never, never forget the loveliness of the entrance to that river as we came directly outside it and began to swing in. The breeze seemed to reach quite a distance up into the bay, and we sailed easily before it, the sails full and steady. At every inch of our progress the landscape changed. Now we would look up the river, where it disappeared around a bend; then back out at the sea, where there seemed to be two horizons⁠—first the edge of our own bay, clasped with those hill-arms, then the horizon of the sea itself, stretching away outside, blue and boundless.

Perhaps you have seen pictures of the Mediterranean Sea, or of harbors in Italy, and wondered at the incredible greenness of the hills, the blueness of the water. Here it was the same: the hills were so gorgeously bright, and shone in such crystal contrast to the brilliant sea and bay, that you just couldn’t believe it was real. Such color could not exist! Green and blue flames, mingling together, yet sharply outlined and distinguished. Those hills were like an emerald crown for the sea. At one place where we looked back at the sea which we were leaving so fast, that boundless mass of color shone bravely between two islands⁠—small islands, just out at the edge of the bay. Being shadowed by higher hills, they looked dark, almost as though spruce-forested. In contrast, that glowing stretch of sea looked brighter, bluer, than ever.

There was quite a breeze in here; there were even whitecaps glistening now and then. The skipper was in high hopes that the breeze would reach clear up the river to the anchoring ground, so that we shouldn’t have to be towed. He wanted to progress as far up the river that night as possible. But when we hailed some men who were working on an anchored three-master, they said that the wind didn’t reach up far, and that the tide was running out “agin” us. The skipper decided to stick to it as long as he could. I went up in the rigging again. I looked down upon a sea of billowing green hills, inset with the sapphires of the various pools which formed parts of the great bay; also, upon more wind and waves than I had realized there were. Then I saw a little power boat, looking like no more than a very large canoe with an engine and a great dark red sail, scudding rapidly out toward us. The man who was running it hailed the skipper, who had been looking down over the starboard bulwarks, ever and again taking the wheel himself. “Want a pilot up the river?” “No, I guess not,” shouted our skipper in return. As for me, I felt more than ever elated in my high station on the crosstrees, especially since I was looking down over nothing but beautiful country. The little power boat with its dark red sail looked so much like a child’s toy from up there that I couldn’t resist waving to the man in its stern. But either he didn’t see me or else he had his hands full running the boat, for I got no return.