Title: To the lights
Author: Norton, Roy
Language: English
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                           To the Lights

                           by Roy Norton


      A story of gallant men and angry seas, by the author
      of “The Unknown Mr. Kent,” “Captains Three” and many
      other notable stories.

“As chairman of one of the largest of the Billingsgate wholesale
fish-dealing companies, I can assure your correspondent that the
cause for the current high prices does not rest with the dealers.
Your correspondent, who is evidently ignorant of basic facts,
asserts that although it is the fishermen themselves who actually
catch the fish, they--the fishermen--do not receive a commensurate
share of the price which the people ultimately pay for a staple
article of food. I must therefore correct him, and _insist that they
do_.

“Contrary to your correspondent’s mere surmise, I may say that the
hardships of a trawlerman’s life are enormously exaggerated. It must
be borne in mind that these men are brought up from childhood to
regard their ships as their homes, that there they are most
comfortable and in their element, that they are bountifully fed,
that they are in a measure independent because all work without
wage, but share on a well-adjusted proportion of the price which the
fish command at auction (and I may add that our buyers on the spot
are invariably and sometimes uncomfortably liberal in their bids),
and that they do neither toil immoderately nor run any very serious
risks.

“It stands to reason that these men when in fear of storms can
always run to shelter, and that they do. There is no serious
hardship or stress in the lives of the trawlermen. If your
correspondent were to suggest such a thing to a fisherman, he would
be laughed at. No, they get much for little, and it is we men of
business who, by the investment of capital and brains, fluctuations
in price, etc., run all the risk.”

(Extract from a letter in the _London Daily Market Scrutineer_.)


Captain Joshua Fairley was pulling on the thick woolen stockings
that would protect his ordinary socks and his trousers-legs from the
harshness and oiliness of his great sea-boots. He sat on the edge of
his bed in his cottage on Brixham hillside and stared out of the
window thoughtfully at the sea whose surface was nearly two hundred
feet below. He felt all of his seventy-five years, as if each had
hammered him and battered him, and contemplated the hard truth that
after a bitter venture that had failed, he was about to start life
over again.

He pulled on his short “jack boots” absent-mindedly, and then
disgusted with his own mistake, jerked them off, stood them in the
corner and picked up and drew on the huge and hulking ones. He
crossed one leg over the other and inspected a new half-sole and
muttered: “Old Gamble be the best cobbler in Brixham yet! Still
doing his work. And he bean’t growlin’ at it, or at Providence, or
anything else. When I went to get the boot, he was whistlin’ like
one of them skylarks. So--I’ll whistle too.”

He puckered his lips beneath the white beard and mustache and tried,
“Abide with Me,” which to his mind was second only to “Rock of
Ages,” and reached for his faded blue jersey and pulled it over his
head, still bravely trying to be melodious and cheerful.

“Father, be anything the matter witfc ’ee?” a voice hailed him as he
cleared his head and touseled white hair from the clinging embrace
of the knitted folds.

He appreciated, then, that for many months he had not attempted to
whistle a melody, and that the mere fact that he had made such
attempt was proof to other ears that he was endeavoring to put a
cheerful face upon some trying predicament.

“Not a thing in the world, lass,” he declared, turning to meet the
troubled eyes of his widowed daughter.

“You’re worrited,” she said, coming swiftly across to him and
putting work-hardened hands on his broad, bent shoulders.

“Not too much,” he said, still making gallant pretense. “Us has
still got the _I’ll Try_. Come here and look at her.” He pulled her
over to the window set into the deep cob-walls built more than a
hundred years before, and with a gnarled finger pointed through the
leaded panes at the outer harbor below. “There she be. Look at her.
I was a fool, Nettie, an old fool! I tried to get rich by puttin’ in
they petrol motors, and hangin’ screw astarn. I thought they
newfangled boats were the thing; but--it cost so much to run ’em
they didn’t pay. So us has sold they engines, and had ’em hauled
out, and--the _I’ll Try_ be just the same as she was when I built
her, livin’ by her sails and the winds of the Lord Almighty. Just as
she was! No, not quite, because she’s got a wheel instead of the big
clumsy tiller, and--I was a fool. All I should have done to her was
to put in a boiler and a steam winch to handle the trawl. That was a
mistake. But--there her be, waitin’ for us, all our own, and mebbe
her’ll be glad to have they dirty engines out of her again.
Everything considerin’,” he announced, almost triumphantly, “us be
doin’ right well. Us owns this house. Us owns the _I’ll Try_. Us
don’t owe a farthing, and us has more than nine and twenty pound in
the bank to--” his voice halted, lowered a trifle, and then
finished--“to start over again. Us’ll use the wind, hereafter, and
make money so that when I have to quit the sea, our two nippers’ll
have a fine start. A proper good start!”


She fathomed his anxieties as well as his brave dissimulation, and
shook her head sadly, and stared up at him affectionately.

“Listen, lass,” he said, knowing that his pretense had failed.
“After all, naught matters but the harbor lights. I doan’t mean they
lights out there on Berry Head, and at the end of the breakwater, or
the pier. I mean the lights that should shine for all of us when we
come home from sea after all v’yages be done. Them’s the lights that
count. The ones that finally brings us home. So--nothin’ else
matters much to us, because us has done our best. Bean’t it so?
You’m been a good darter to me! And us has got all this, and I be
good for ten years more, and--” Again he stopped, scratched his
white head with his fingers, seemed distracted, and worried, and
ended with: “And so what the hell’s there to bother about? Tell me
that!”

She was not shocked by his abrupt reversion to seaman’s speech. The
turbid exclamations of his everyday life had nothing in common with
his sincere convictions. As she had once warned a meddlesome but
well-intentioned and well-shocked visiting curate, there was an
unrecognized line of division between Captain Joshua’s faith,
reverence and devoutness, and his use of words when in mental or
physical action.

“His grandsons, my boys,” she stoutly asserted, “says bad things
sometimes. Their gran-f’ur may be careless in front of them
sometimes; but he have put great arms over they two lads shoulders
at night when they all knelt, and taught them proper respect for God
Almighty. That be enough! Thou could’st do no more by they lads than
he--Captain Joshua! I think it’s better that ’ee go, now,
and--please don’t ’ee ever come back, lest the good Lord knows thou
wastest time! Such men as Captain Joshua be a lot better, I do
reckon, than be you.”

That the well-meaning curate came no more did not perturb her. They
say he never did.


Captain Joshua trudged down the steep and devious ways of the
Overgang, with a bundle under his arm. To him the quaint roofs, the
narrow street, the occasional stretches of gray stone wall were of
no interest. He rolled past a wandering artist who, with easel and
paints, was enraptured with a view, and under his breath grunted a
derisive: “Humph! Loafin’ lout! If I could get him aboard the _I’ll
Try_ for a month, I’d make a useful man out of nothing. Playing with
pretty things, he be. No use!”

He could not resist the temptation to stand in front of a
ship-chandler’s show-window and stare therein at a compact steam
winch scarcely larger than a sewing machine, and the brass-bound
boiler beside it.

“Wish to the Lord I’d a bought you instead of that blamed
motor-engine,” he thought. “The _I’ll Try_Q be one of the last ships
left that has to hoist trawls by hand-winch and--great dollops, it
do be hard work!”

A long, troubled sigh slipped out before he could check it, and he
had turned to hasten away lest the sin of envy creep through his
mind, when the voice of the chandler stopped him.

“Morning, Captain Josh. See you looking at that winch. I had
expected you’d be in to buy that lot for the _I’ll Try_. You should
have it. It does more work than two men aboard. Wouldn’t you like
it?”

“I’d like it, all right, John,” said the skipper, “but what with bad
catches and bad markets, and that fool experiment with motors, I
haven’t the money, and--”

The ship-chandler laughed as if immensely amused.

“Since when has any man in Brixham town asked anything more than the
word of Captain Josh? Why, you can have my shop on your word!”

“Nope,” said the veteran. “I’ll never buy anything more I can’t pay
for. I’m too old now to take any chance on debts. When my time
comes, those up there on the hill--you know,”--and he jerked a heavy
thumb over his shoulder in the direction of his home,--“they’ll have
no debts of mine to meet. Not one! Not a damned farthing!”

“I’ll risk your living to be a hundred, unless, of course, the sea
gets you,” insisted the dealer; but the old mariner smiled and shook
his head.

“Of course, John, it aint got me yet; but I dare say that some time
it and me’ll have a tussle when I’ll come off second best. But I’ll
not have the steam winch till I can pay cash for it.”

“All right! Go it, you stubborn old shell-back!” laughed the
chandler; and then as Captain Josh continued his rolling, clumping
way down the narrow street, smiled at his obstinacy, and discovering
that his new assistant, who had but recently arrived from Bristol,
was at his side said garrulously: “There he goes, white of head and
clean of heart. Unbending! And I can remember, as a boy, when he was
six feet two tall, and the broadest-shouldered man in all the port.
Admiral of the fleet, for more than twenty years. As good a
sailorman as ever cleared from Brixham. Fight as well as he can
pray. One time, about twenty years ago, when he was nigh on to
fifty-five, there was a free-for-all ruction down on the quay. He
tried to be a peacemaker and quoted the Bible at ’em; but when that
didn’t work, he sailed in; and Lord, love me, boy! He gave ’em more
fight than they’d ever seen in all their lives! He made ’em sick of
fightin’ in about three minutes. When he got through, they was
layin’ about like dog-fish, gaspin’ and wrigglin’ like mad. All the
fight was gone out of ’em; but they do say that the language he used
while things was hot indicated that for the time being he’d
forgotten all the scripture ever he knew. You’re from Bristol, young
fellow, but take a look at that old feller, so’s you’ll know him
again, because, I tell you, you’re lookin’ at a man!”

And the new assistant, to please his employer, looked,
and--smothered a derisive grin!


The ships in the harbor rocked and swayed, lifted and fell in the
rhythmic upheave and downfall of the swell that pushed in and out of
Torbay. They seemed a part of that splendid beauty of gray or red
cliffs that reared themselves about it, a part of the sea that in
lazy mood merely rippled its shores, or in sou’easterly tempests
tore in fury inward as if to rip the red and gray cliffs from their
foundations and obliterate the encircling earth. But the red and
gray cliffs invariably won.

The ships in the harbor, ketch-rigged, red-sailed, able to live in
seas where huge liners perished, were eager to be liberated from
their moorings Their crews, clumsy, awkward, inept on land, but
dexterous, apt and graceful on sea-washed decks, breathed deeply,
freely, once they stepped aboard the dinghies that they must row
from the placidity of the inner harbor out into the surge. The
battered, ugly hands, torn perpetually by the gash of rope and
trawl, tarred to blackness, thick-fingered, huge-knuckled, that
ashore swung aimlessly and ungainly, seemed now to be endowed with
power, decision and skill. The feet that, incased in the high
leather boots, stumbled over the cobbles of the village streets, now
deftly adapted themselves to the roll of the sea.

The land was not their element. It was foreign. It was sometimes
distasteful. It was too hard. It did not yield and sway and give. It
had no life in itself. It was a dead thing that never moved and
never met their tread, and when it lay inert beneath them, they
sustained a subconscious distrust of its solidity. To these men who
throughout all their years had been habituated to the great,
comforting roll of the sea, or the petulant unrest of it when like
an angry child it had stormed as if at restraint, the land was
stagnant, uncomfortable, unnatural, a sullen thing without soul or
spirit of its own.

The dinghies rocked and rolled and tossed when they left the pier;
but in each one man sat and pulled at a heavy oar that was of
feather’s weight in his time-trained hands, while another stood,
faced the bow and pushed, ever keeping an eye on destination. And
ever he balanced as delicately and as surely as a Circus-rider on
the bare back of a horse, yielding, taking, but adroitly maintaining
his mastery. The men in the boats passed comments that might sound
strange to the ears of the land-accustomed. They shouted their
comments. And always the interchanges were relative to the sea, for
to them it was paramount.

As if each boat had mastered a puzzle of action, each came
eventually to the side of a ship, and its men climbed aboard.
Always, when they felt the familiar deck beneath their feet, they
glanced around, their eyes sweeping over the homely objects in
scrutiny of which most of their lives were passed--here the winch,
there the end of the warp, here the trawl-beam with its iron heads,
there the rigging that swept upward in a maze of tarred ropes and
shrouds to stay the high and swaying masts. And always the final
look was at the vane, that tiny thing at the peak of the mainmast,
from forty to sixty feet overhead, where fluttered the gay emblem
showing whether the wind was fair or foul. That was invariably the
immediate solicitude, for it told the tale of toil--whether they
must beat against head-winds, handling and hauling sail, straining
muscles to gain way, or lounging in luxurious idleness and content
when, with a fair breeze, the ship put out to sea.


Captain Joshua stood longest of all, thinking of the change. He
sniffed the air, and thought he still detected the smell of
gasoline.

“I can smell that damn’d stuff yet, Bill,” he growled to his mate or
“second hand,” who was nearly as white-headed and sea-scarred as
himself.

“It hangs on worsen gin to an old woman’s breath,” growled that
worthy, who was a vociferous teetotaler and never lost an
opportunity for comparison. “They aint nothin’ smells wuss’n that
peetrul, unless it’s one o’ they polecats what lives around with
farmers because they don’t know no better. I tell ’ee, Skipper, the
Lord gives us the wind, and it bean’t natural for either men or
ships to try to run on alcohol.”

“Alkerhol? Hell! They bean’t no alkerhol in that peetrol,” insisted
Bob Noon, the only member of the crew who ever imbibed, and was the
constant source of solicitude for the mate, who strove persistently
to reform him. “It looks like gin, and it smells strong, but it aint
the same at all. I knows. I tried it.”

“Course you would! You be an unreginerate soul! Oh, I know all about
you,” roared the mate. “Di’n’t I hear tell how when you was at say
in them windjammers what went Hawaiian-wise, you’m got drunk on
cologne-water? And aint I told ’ee, scores an scores o’ times, that
you’m a--”

“S’pose us stows the gab and gets to sea,” Captain Joshua
interrupted, as he had done hundreds of times before when argument
threatened.

The _I’ll Try_ cast loose her mooring. Her big mains’l crawled up,
traveler hoops a-creak, block and tackle singing a shrill song. She
took on way and edged out into Torbay like a maiden pretending shy
modesty. Her running bowsprit was loosened, slid outward, and from
it sprouted more red sails. Her mizzen spread red canvas, and above
it climbed another sheet. Her trim, sharp bow lifted and fell,
carelessly ripping and imperiously dividing the rash waves. But the
waves joined again, and were undismayed. They chuckled when they
reunited at the stern, and fell together in the boiling wake. They
conspired mischievously; for in that Channel, the greatest maritime
artery on the whole globe, are perhaps the moodiest of waters.
Fickle as the affections of a jungle-bred lioness, playful as a
lioness can be and--dangerous and savage as the lioness when
crossed. On that Channel a single hour of time may change the sea
from the placidity of a lake to the ferocity of a tempest.


But two days had passed since the _I’ll Try_ sailed from Brixham in
the sunshine, with the Channel all aglow with turquoise lights, and
over waves that seemed playfully dancing with gladness and good
will; but now she lay beaten and distracted under the shortest
possible canvas, cringing as if from oft-repeated blows upon her
oaken ribs. On her wet, slippery and heavily rolling and bounding
deck, with tarpaulins and sou’westers dripping with driven rain and
spray, every man of her crew, from skipper to cabin-boy, fought
doggedly, desperately at the hand-winch. For seven hours thev had
labored thus, unceasingly, until now they were too wearied and spent
for speech. They laid breasts, hands or shoulders to the long bars,
bent their backs, planted their feet, lowered their heads like bulls
in a charge and tried again to make the weary treadmill round in the
hope of hoisting the trawl. The great net, held open by a forty-foot
beam and towed along the bottom of the sea floor upon “trawl-heads”
that were like huge steel sled-runners, had caught what the men of
the _I’ll Try_ surmised must be a sunken wreck. A trawl, one of the
most expensive pieces of gear known to the craft, could not be
abandoned until all hope was gone. Time and again had the thick warp
been worked in and out, by sheer stubbornness of toil and strength;
time and again as the ship swung off and lurched, the tired men
hopefully thought they had felt the trawl, scores of fathoms down,
yield; but time and again that hope had proved fallacious. And
always, as they worked, they blinked the sweat from their eyes and
lifted their anxious regard to the steadily increasing storm. A
heavier blast smote the ship until she lay so far over that her lea
bulwark met the water, and waves swept the length of her scuppers.

“’Vast heaving!” rumbled Captain Josh, holding an end of a long
winch-bar in his hand, and the others fell heavily over the ones
upon which they had been exerting themselves, to catch breath. “It’s
no use,” panted the beaten old skipper. “Storm’s got so high it’s
dangerous to hold on any longer. Us must bend a line on the warp,
rig a buoy, cut loose, and hope to find our gear another day.”

“Aye! And they be one chance in a million for that,” growled
Scruggs, the “ancient” of the ship, who having never married, having
no kinfolk, living forever alone, was regarded by his fellows as a
pitiable old pessimist.

“It do be the devil’s own luck!” asserted the second hand.

“Aye! And if us had to--” The third member of the crew started a
sentence that he was never to finish. The unexpected, unusual, rare
accident was upon them. It came with the swiftness of a stroke of
forked lightning. The winch-dogs, which worked against cogs, snapped
with the vicious sharpness of a high explosive. The whole weight of
the warp, the surging ship and the storm was instantly released. The
long bars of the winch spun like a huge, malevolent top. The _I’ll
Try_ seemed to slip sidewise for a few fathoms and then again to lay
over so far that she was in danger of going on her beam ends. She
righted herself partially, jerking madly, as if in terror. For a
moment there was no sound but the shrilling of the winds through her
rigging and the hammering of the billows.


Captain Josh, stunned, dazed, confused, lifted himself from the heap
into which he had been thrown against the weather bulwarks, wondered
why a red blanket blurred his vision, tried to wipe it away with his
left hand and could not for a moment understand why that numbed arm
would not respond. It hung limp and broken by his side. His right
hand came up and swept away the blood that trickled warmly downward
over his eyes and face. And then his senses returned, swift as light
through clouds. Horror came with sight.

“My God! My God!” A whimpering voice caught his ears, and he saw the
cabin-boy crawling up the slope of the deck toward the companionway,
clutching with outspread fingers at the wet planks, while one leg
dragged helplessly behind him. Down in the scuppers, with the waters
submerging them as they swept the ship’s length, lay two sodden
shapes.

But the fighting spirit, the unquenchable bravery of the broken man
by the weather bulwarks, tore upward to action. Instantly he caught
the rail with his big, uninjured arm, lifted himself to his feet,
and lurched and slithered downward to the nearest man, the mate of
the _I’ll Try_, who lay unconscious and half-drowned. He seized the
inert form and dragged it back until he could rest it against a
hatch from where it could not again roll downward into the wash and
make death certain by drowning.

“Stand by, lad! Stand by! Hang on to something for a moment. Us has
got to be men now!” he cried to the whimpering boy, and slipped and
sprawled downward to seize the body of the ancient one, and
laboriously drag it to safety.

“Bob! Get Bob!” screamed the boy. “He went over the port side! I saw
hjm go! Thrown, he was--all in the air-- thrown like a dead fish--by
they winchbars!”

Captain Josh lunged to the port side, clung to the rail and stared
outward, releasing his hold only to brush away the trickle of blood
that again troublesomely obscured his vision. He could see nothing.
He seized the nearest shrouds and dragged himself upward until he
perched on the rail; where he stood swaying and peering; but even
from that vantage of height he could discern nothing living--only
the tearing uplift of the sea, the spume-thrown crests of waves, the
murderous swing of the waters. No man could live in that for many
minutes, be he sound and strong rather than broken and inert. To
seek was useless. And--there was no time to pause if those aboard
the _I’ll Try_, and the ship herself, were to survive. The boy was
still wailing and screaming. Captain Josh dropped heavily to the
deck, and as he lunged past the boy, shouted: “No use, lad. Poor
Bob’s gone. God rest him! Steady now! Steady! Us must be steady if
us would live.” And hurriedly he sought an ax.


He returned and with his uninjured and still powerful arm fell to
hacking the warp whose drag threatened momentarily to end the _I’ll
Try_. The severed ends whipped like giant lashes into the air, and
he narrowly escaped a second blow as the ship-end whistled through
the air. The wind from its tarred and spraying strands lashed within
an inch of his eyes as he instinctively jerked his head backward.
The _I’ll Try_ leaped upward, leaned over, sprang free and seemed to
fly outward like a tortured wild bird released from captivity. The
water on her decks swept in a torrent across to the other side in
great sheets. It carried with it loosened objects, and rope-ends
that trailed as if eager to follow. The heavy ax with which Captain
Josh had cut the imperiling warp was lifted, despite its weight, and
vanished overboard in a smother of green. An iron handspike seemed
to bound toward freedom, and brought up against the bulwark. The
_I’ll Try_ lay far over now, and disregarding the wheel that swung
idly to and fro, swept aimlessly before the storm. And even as she
disregarded the wheel, Captain Josh disregarded her struggles. He
jerked a sodden handkerchief from beneath his sodden jersey, tried
to tie it about his bare head with one hand, realized that it was
impossible, and hurried to the cabin boy. “Lad,” he said, more
quietly and in a voice pitched barely high enough to surmount the
tempest’s roar, “’ee have two hands. Help me to bind this up and
belay it to my head. I can’t see with all they blood in my eye.
Come, be brave, lad. Bind it fast and hard.”

The boy forgot his pain under the influence of that steady old
voice, and obeyed. His young fingers trembled at their task;
struggled with a simple knot.

“Now,” said Captain Josh, “us must work fast if us are to make port
again. I know it’s hard, for ’ee has a hurt foot, I take it; but if
us can make port, it’ll heal. Brace up, for if ’ee doan’t, us’ll
never again see they harbor lights. All right now?”

“Aye, sir,” the boy asserted with a bravery that his voice belied.

“Then get down the companion and do best ’ee can when I lower away
they other two. Hang on with one hand to they steps at the bottom
and try to ease they down. You see us cain’t leave they on deck,
lest they drown. Can do it?”

“Aye, sir, I can try,” the boy asserted, striving valiantly to meet
such brave example.

“Then down ’ee goes. Here, I'll give a hand,” said Captain Josh, and
did his best to assist the boy down the narrow opening and the steep
steps. “Now stand by to help,” he called as he disappeared from the
boy’s uplifted and encouraged eyes.


Captain Josh seized the ancient by the folds of tarpaulin and
jersey, thrusting heavy, horny fingers next to the unconscious skin,
and dragged his burden across the deck. The toes of the worn
sea-boots dragged listlessly. The inert hands dragged with equal
helplessness. But this was no time for anything but action. Captain
Josh almost pitched headfirst into the companionway under the roll
and swing of the sea as he lowered his burden downward. Under its
weight the cabin-boy rocked and swung, standing upon one foot,
imbued by the indomitable spirit above, and at least lessening the
shock of the ancient’s fall.

“Cans’t drag him inside, lad? Good! A good lad! Then stand by for
Bill. It’ll be hard on ’ee, because Bill be heavier than the old
’un,” he cautioned; and now with one hand, a bleeding head, but with
an unconquered soul and resolute intent, he lowered through the
narrow space the last stricken survivor of his crew.

The boy standing upon one foot was not equal to the burden. The
weight fell heavily. It thumped upon the boards.

“What the hell do ’ee mean by--” began Captain Josh, inspired by
habitual exercise of discipline; and then, remembering, changed it
to: “Sorry, lad. Bill be mighty heavy for your arms. Doan’t ’ee
worry. You’m be doin’ the best ’ee can. He aint hurt no worse than
was by the fall. I be comin’ down now.”

He stood for a moment, inspecting with swift regard the skies, the
waves, the aimless drift of the struggling ship, and then muttered,
“She’ll ride! She must! It’s our only chance,” and then painfully
dropped below.

At the foot of the companion stairs he found one of his men. Through
the doorway in the cabin he caught sight of the cabin-boy struggling
on one foot and despite pain to get the other off the floor and up
to the bench or the bunk. He crowded inward, and the task was
accomplished. The other man was also brought in, lifted upward, and
laid supine. Shutting his teeth against his own anguish, and probing
with one hand, the skipper fumbled an examination.

“Bill,” he said sagely, “has got, I think, some broken ribs. One
side. Can’t see what’s wrong with the old ’un. But they both be
sleepin’ and so aint hurted, now. Cut the boot off ’ee, lad, and
fall to. Heed what I tell ’ee, because ’ee must stay here by
them--stay to the last, lad, no matter what may happen, for I be
goin’ on deck to bring the _I’ll Try_ home.”


And then, quickly, knowing that at any moment death might interrupt,
Captain Josh gave all the instructions he could, and while he
talked, fashioned for his broken arm a sling. He squatted down on
the floor in front of the boy so that the lad’s hands could tie the
knots. Once he admonished him.

“Tighter, lad! Tighter! Make ’em fast so they can’t slip loose.”

He climbed laboriously up the companion steps, bent over and called
reassuringly: “I be goin’ to shut ’ee in, so if mayhap more rough
weather comes, the wash wont drown ’ee out. So doan’t be afraid.
I'll be at the wheel and--we’ll go home, lad, somehow.”

But when alone he looked at the skies, at the sea and at the sails,
and shook his head.

“Lord God of all the seas,” he cried, lifting his head and
reverently closing his fatigued and pain-stricken eyes, “for the
sake of all they below, help thy unworthy servant, who is so old, so
broken, so tired, to take the _I’ll Try_ home. But if it be Thy will
that we are to see no harbor lights again but those by Thy
everlasting gates, pray let use see them shine clear to bring us to
Thy port.”

He rolled aft to the wheel that swayed helplessly to and fro, and
using alternately his hand and knee against the spokes, brought the
staggering ship up to her work. She seemed grateful for the
attention, and eager to respond. Her mere rags of red sails filled,
and she was ready to fight the storm.

“Good old girl! Good old girl!” Captain Josh muttered approvingly.
“That’s it! Take hold of the wind. Hang on to it!”

For an hour she half fought, half fled with that nearly motionless
figure steering her, and yet the storm showed no signs of abatement.
The dusk came early, filled with flying clouds, with wind-torn spray
and the unceasing charge of great waves. Captain Josh shifted
anxious eyes skyward, seeking some hope of a break. In all his sixty
years at sea he had never been more troubled and perplexed.

“If only there’d come a lull at sunset,” he muttered aloud after the
long stillness, and was slightly startled by the sound of his own
voice. He considered for a moment whether it was better to think
aloud, for the companionship of that sound, or to keep his lips
shut. For the time being he chose the former method and went on: “I
can’t make or douse sail with one hand, and I be so damned tired now
that it hurts. It’s mighty risky to let her fall off; but--us must
have lights! I’ve just got to take the chance and let her come
round. There’s nothing else to be done.”


He crouched against the wheel, waiting to seize one of the momentary
lulls when the gale paused to catch breath for another blast.

“Now!” he cried at last, as if addressing his full crew. “Around she
goes!” and with hand and knee, he deftly worked the wheel until the
canvas flapped and fluttered, and then under way of impetus and
storm the _I’ll Try_ hesitated, paid off, leaned over so far that
her lee rail was awash, was in danger of coming to beam ends if the
storm sent a quick gust of wind, struggled, recovered, threw water
from her deck, and fell away. She was not an instant too soon in
setting her keel, for the blast of wind came, as if angered by the
skill of ship and man that had robbed it of its prey. It snapped the
wet canvas. It shrilled through rigging. It screamed across the
spume. Again she drifted as helplessly as a wreck, buffeted by wind
and wave, lurching drunkenly, moving aimlessly, shuddering
spasmodically, and with her wheel free.

Across her decks, slipping, sliding in his big and clumsy sea-boots,
struggled her skipper, wondering meanwhile if she could possibly
ride and survive, and hoping only to reach the lanterns that had
fortunately, if carelessly, been stowed in a stationary fish-box. He
reached them at last and was vastly concerned by the fear that they
might have been so drenched that they would not light. He sat flat
upon the wet and streaming deck in the tiny lee of the companionway,
caught a lantern in his knees and after many attempts succeeded in
lighting it. To hoist it with one hand was another trying task. He
accomplished it, after a time, by first using his few and worn
teeth, and when they failed, by clutching the rope between his
knees. He spat a broken tooth out between his bleeding lips, and
belayed the line to the mainmast.

“Bad and not proper it be, but--mayhap it’ll keep some of they big
smoke boats from ridin’ us down,” he remarked, hopefully, as he saw
the swaying, tossing gleam aloft. “Now for the starn lights!” But
despite his patient efforts, he could light none. He swore with
inconsequent oaths when one slid from the grasp of his knees and
rolled swiftly outward, bounding and bumping across the deck, found
an opening and plunged overboard. He used more expletives when he
discovered that another had a broken globe, and was useless. Night
was advancing, black and chill, and he sat for a moment more, flat
on the deck, and questioning whether he dared risk the great venture
of going below to see how the stricken remnant of his crew fared.
The wind defiantly answered him. The ship was straining too hard
under the stress of storm.

“Nope. I can’t do anything to help ’em, or myself,” he growled. “I
must get back to the wheel and bring her back to course again,
before it’s too black. If I could have but a cup of tay and a bit of
biscuit! Damn it, why didn’t I think to put some of they biscuit in
my pocket before I came back on deck!”

He stumbled aft again, and again seized the idle and aimlessly
revolving wheel. Again he watched like a cat, waiting to pounce, and
seize the momentary advantage of a lull. Again he brought the ship
back to a course. Whether it was a true one, he could not be
certain. He was depending now upon his sense of direction alone.
There was nothing to guide him, not even a solitary star shining
through the murk. He made mental calculations, reasoning that in the
beginning the _I’ll Try_ must have been so many miles sou’west off
the reef-bordered Prawl Point, that the wind had come from due west,
and that therefore it must be safe to run.

“If it weren’t for they below,” he soliloquized, “I’d lay her to. If
I were alone, I’d not risk the carrying on, and--mayhap--could make
it. But--they be badly hurt. So--I must get somewhere. If Prawl
Point be sixty mile away, and--”


Endlessly he debated the menacing dangers, and dared them. In the
blackness of the night he fought against an almost unconquerable
drowsiness; for by now he had been alert for more than forty hours.
His broken arm throbbed with an ever poignant and increasing
anguish, but even pain may be dulled by time and endurance, inasmuch
as there is a climax where kindly nature brings either partial or
complete unconsciousness. Sometimes in the long hours he felt
himself swooning, and then he clung harder to the spokes and begged
that God, in Whom he had such unlimited, unquenchable trust, might
enable him to keep awake, that he might still sprawl across the
wheel.

Dawn had come, and the sea was sobbing and spent; Captain Joshua was
surrendering to the tiredness of long effort; endeavoring to recover
kindliness after tempestouos outburst, before he reached the
ultimate end of endurance. He was no longer aware of change. He was
still fighting, ruggedly and unrelinquishing to the last. His dimmed
eyes could no longer see. The world rocked and swayed. That off on
the horizon lay still; pale cliffs, meant nothing to him. All that
he could concentrate upon was holding the battered ship up to the
wind. That the wind was dying meant nothing. He thought it still
a-rage. His uninjured hand seemed paralyzed. He could no longer hold
a spoke and strove to steer with an elbow, and bony knees.

Mute but fighting to the end, Captain Joshua finally let go the
wheel, made a last effort, crawled to reach the loose end of a
halyard, crawled back to the wheel, pulled the _I’ll Try_ up again,
seated himself upon the wet deck and with one hand and broken teeth
lashed himself clumsily to the wheel, his back against it, his dying
legs and feet outsprawled, inert in their heavy and sodden
sea-boots; and then his weary hand fell listlessly by his side.

A thousand confused conjectures, fears, hopes, and solicitudes
flashed through Joshua’s brain. He tried to ask the Lord of all the
seas, whom he had so long followed and loved, to take charge of the
ship and bring her home. Her destination was no longer of moment to
him, whether it were the gateways of earthly ports or the harbor
lights of that haven and heaven to which he had so long aspired. And
so, clumsily lashed with his back to the wheel, unyielding to the
last, still fighting when the fight was done, the faint balance of
sanity swung across to peace as had the sea after the storm, and
dreaming that he was in his Brixham chapel on the hill, he fell to
singing in a wavering voice: “Abide with Me.”

Some recess of his brain contained the words he had so many times
sung, so long loved. Cracked and broken they issued between cracked
and broken lips, quavering aimlessly into the air his fealty to a
faith--that hymn written in the old, old port of Brixham town from
which he and his forbears had sprung; and as a prelude he cried:
“God, O God! Help me, for I can do no more. ‘Abide with me, fast
falls the eventide.... And I am far from home.’”


The steam trawler _Williwaw_, after twenty days at sea, rimed by the
storm, black, and with a heavy plume of smoke wallowing out of her
funnel, was laying her course for Brixham Port. Captain Moran was
staring at the streaks of rust and appeared anything but pleased by
his inspection. His honest, sea-tanned face took on the look of
preoccupation of one who is engaged in mental calculations as to the
cost of paint. He was even disturbed when his mate Long, grave-eyed,
came across the steel deck to him and said: “Looks to me, sir, as if
there’s something wrong with a ship off there to sta’b’d. Her don’t
act natural at all, sir.”

Captain Moran turned and trudged past the complex litter of
mechanism and gear to have a look. After but a moment he shouted
back to his mate: “You’re right about that, Mr. Long. Run down to
em.”

The wheel in the pilot house of the _Williwaw_ whirled, and she
turned her nose inquisitively on the new course.

“Somethin’ wrong? Aye? There be,” declared one of the crew to others
who came leisurely up to the starboard rail. “Her be in trouble,
sure! Look at they sails, what’s left of ‘em, and her be yawin’ this
way and that as if her had no hellum.”

They heard Captain Moran shout to the pilot: “Turn her loose. Put on
full speed. No use in wasting time.” And from the engine-room
sounded the clang of shovel and slice-bar; the funnel plume
blackened, and the _Williwaw_ began to “foam at the mouth” as she
closed down on the ketch. When her engine was rung down, a peculiar
silence enveloped her that was broken by Moran’s hail:

“Ahoy there! _I’ll Try_! Ahoy! What’s wrong with you men?”

But he evoked no answer. Under silent way the _Williwaw_ bore
closer, and now there became faintly audible a cracked old voice
monotonously droning:

  “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.
  The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
  When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
  Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.”

The voice that came quavering across the sullen waves, as if
blanketed by the leaden skies, held the men of the _Williwaw_ in its
spell. They clung to the rail, staring with perplexed eyes and
parted lips until aroused to action by Moran’s shout: “Stand by to
lower away a boat there, you men. Mr. Long, go over and learn what’s
up.”


The boat splashed into the water, and down the steel side of the
_Williwaw_ went the men to man it. Her screw thrust the sea again to
hold her off at a safe distance, for the swells still surged and
lifted forward; but the voice still carried on:

  “I fear no woe, with Thee at hand to bless;
  Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
  Where is Death’s sting; where, grave, thy victory?
  I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.”

Sturdily pulled, as if eager to reach the black and battered hull of
the half-wrecked _I’ll Try_, the boat bobbed upward and downward as
it was rowed across the intervening space. It came alongside, where,
standing, swaying, some of its rowers clutched at hand-holds, and
Long, young, powerful, leaped for strake and rail. He threw a heavy
boot over inboard and landed on both feet. For an instant he paused,
bending forward as if doubting sight. He saw a man with white hair,
stained red here and there, and with a reddened handkerchief bound
awry over his head and falling over one eye. Streaks of red ran down
over the disordered white beard. He saw the rope with which the man
had bound himself to the wheel, and the halyard-end that had at last
worked free and lay idly upon his lap. He saw the bandaged arm, the
sprawling feet in sea-boots, the free wheel, and constantly he heard
that same droning song of faith.


Long rushed over and laid his hand on the broad, bent shoulder, and
said:

“Josh! Captain Josh! Skipper! Don’t you know me--Long--of the
_Williwaw_?” But the closed eye did not open or look up, and the
monotonous reiteration of song went on.

The mate ran to the side and shouted: “Come aboard here, you men.
This looks bad. I’m going to need help, I think.”

And then, as they clambered inward, he ran to the closed
companionway, lifted the hatch, recoiled from the foul air, and
disregarding the steep steps, dropped nimbly below. A whimpering
sound, as it issued from the lips of a pain-exhausted, terrified boy
stabbed his ears, and with it mingled a babbling noise that could
come from nothing else than human delirium.

For an instant his eyes probed the gloom until they accustomed
themselves to the change from broad daylight. In one of the bunks
lay a figure that was still and quiet. In another lay the man who
moaned and babbled. In another lay the boy who now lifted himself to
an elbow and said: “I couldn’t help it, sir. Skipper, he told me to
stay here and do my best. I did, sir, and--and--the old un has never
spoke a word, and the second hand has taken to talkin’ like that all
the time; and my foot, sir, my foot--oh, it do hurt something awful,
and I can’t walk no more, I can’t! I tried, sir, I did, and--”

Then the voice broke in a long wail of boyish grief. The strain had
been too much for even that obdurate, steadfast youthful bravery.

“Steady, lad! Steady!” the mate’s voice quieted him. “You’re all
right now. Be a sailorman. Don’t give up.”

The boy started to tell the tale of tragedy, but the mate of the
Williwaw was gone and hurrying upward. On deck he shouted his
discoveries to Captain Moran of the Williwaw, which now lay close
by. No time was wasted in this urgent plight. A heavy line was
brought across, a half-dozen men put aboard, and within a few
minutes the _I’ll Try_ was being towed through the sea. The funnel
of the _Williwaw_ now belched smoke as if she were steaming a race
against time on the reach to Brixham Town. Around the breakwater’s
end she swung in a flashing sweep to the outer and up to the very
gates of the inner harbor before she stopped. Surmising tragedy,
boats put off to meet them, and fishermen swarmed about the _I’ll
Try_ to assist. Broken men were tenderly carried away. The
harbor-master’s telephone urged a surgeon to haste. The men on the
landing-pier thrust and jostled, all eager to serve.

The survivors of the _I’ll Try’s_ crew had come to port at last.

“The lad will pull through,” the surgeon announced to those who
waited outside the harbor-master’s office, which had been turned
into a temporary hospital. The second hand may, though his ribs are
caved in. The old man you call Scruggs the Ancient, must have died
very lately because his body is still warm. And Captain
Joshua--well--they say that when they found him, he tried to tell
them something about the Harbor Lights.” The surgeon paused, looked
away from the staring eyes, and then added softly: “He has found
them.”


When, taken from her iced bunkers by hand, sorted, pulled ashore to
the great flagged spaces of the fishmarket, carefully laid thereon
and brought to the “liberal” buyers’ attention by the sonorous clang
of the auctioneer’s bell and voice, the catch of the _I’ll Try_
brought six pounds, fourteen shillings and sixpence--nearly
twenty-six dollars, to be divided amongst the sole survivors of the
hapless crew. Captain Joshua’s share as owner and skipper came to
nearly four pounds, or sixteen dollars! The undertaker charged
fifteen pounds--about sixty dollars--for the coffin; the cemetery
company charged five pounds, about twenty-five dollars, for the
six-by-three feet of space which he might forever own as his last
allotment of earth; and there were certain minor claims for flowers
in that land where flowers run wild upon great cliffs, but must be
paid for when laid upon a grave. All that was left thereafter,
Captain Joshua’s grandsons and widowed daughter might have to live
upon.

Up on the Brixham hills that night rain fell. Somehow it seemed to
freshen the handful of flowers that some one had thrown on the grave
of the lone and ancient mariner, as if he, who after all his
sea-toil had come to land-rest, merited that humble recognition.
Perhaps some one loved him, as well as Skipper Joshua. Perhaps God
in His majestic but kindly pity would send other wild-flowers to
climb across their graves, blanketing them in the radiance of that
only One who marks the sparrow’s fall!


[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the April 1922 issue
of Blue Book magazine.]



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