Part 22 (1/2)

”I want all hands all night,” said Weeks; ”and there's a couple of pounds for him as first see the bogey-man.”

”Meaning the Danish gun-boat,” explained Deakin.

The trawl was down before nine. The skipper stood by his lead. Upton took the wheel, and all night they trawled in the shallows, b.u.mping on the grounds, with a sharp eye for the Danish gun-boat. They hauled in at twelve and again at three and again at six, and they had just got their last catch on deck when Duncan saw by the first grey of the morning a dun-coloured trail of smoke hanging over a projecting knoll.

”There she is!” he cried.

”Yes, that's the gun-boat,” answered Weeks. ”We can laugh at her with this wind.”

He put his smack about, and before the gun-boat puffed round the headland, three miles away, was reaching northwards with his sails free. He rejoined the fleet that afternoon. ”Fifty-two boxes of soles!” said Weeks. ”And every one of them worth two-pound-ten in Billingsgate Market. This smack's mine!” and he stamped on the deck in all the pride of owners.h.i.+p. ”We'll take a reef in,” he added. ”There's a no'th-easterly gale blowin' up and I don't know anything worse in the No'th Sea. The sea piles in upon you from Newfoundland, piles in till it strikes the banks. Then it breaks. You were right, Upton; we'll be lying hove-to in the morning.”

They were lying hove-to before the morning. Duncan, tossing about in his canvas cot, heard the skipper stamping overhead, and in an interval of the wind caught a s.n.a.t.c.h of song bawled out in a high voice. The song was not rea.s.suring, for the two lines which Duncan caught ran as follows--

You never can tell when your death-bells are ringing, Your never can know when you're going to die.

Duncan tumbled on to the floor, fell about the cabin as he pulled on his sea-boots and climbed up the companion. He clung to the mizzen-runners in a night of extraordinary blackness. To port and to starboard the lights of the smacks rose on the crests and sank in the troughs, with such violence they had the air of being tossed up into the sky and then extinguished in the water; while all round him there flashed little points of white which suddenly lengthened out into a horizontal line. There was one quite close to the quarter of the _Willing Mind_. It stretched about the height of the gaff in a line of white. The line suddenly descended towards him and became a sheet; and then a voice bawled, ”Water! Jump! Down the companion! Jump!”

There was a scamper of heavy boots, and a roar of water plunging over the bulwarks, as though so many loads of wood had been dropped on the deck. Duncan jumped for the cabin. Weeks and the mate jumped the next second and the water sluiced down after them, put out the fire, and washed them, choking and wrestling, about on the cabin floor. Weeks was the first to disentangle himself, and he turned fiercely on Duncan.

”What were you doing on deck? Upton and I keep the watch to-night. You stay below, and, by G.o.d, I'll see you do it! I have fifty-two boxes of soles to put aboard the fish-cutter in the morning, and I'm not going to lose lives before I do that! This smack's mine!”

Captain Weeks was transformed into a savage animal fighting for his own. All night he and the mate stood on the deck and plunged down the open companion with a torrent of water to hurry them. All night Duncan lay in his bunk listening to the bellowing of the wind, the great thuds of solid green wave on the deck, the horrid rush and roaring of the seas as they broke loose to leeward from under the smack's keel.

And he listened to something more--the whimpering of the baker's a.s.sistant in the next bunk. ”Three inches of deck! What's the use of it! Lord ha' mercy on me, what's the use of it? No more than an eggsh.e.l.l! We'll be broken in afore morning, broken in like a man's skull under a bludgeon.... I'm no sailor, I'm not; I'm a baker. It isn't right I should die at sea!”

Duncan stopped his ears, and thought of the journey some one would have to make to the fish-cutter in the morning. There were fifty-two boxes of soles to be put aboard.

He remembered the waves and the swirl of foam upon their crests and the wind. Two men would be needed to row the boat, and the boat must make three trips. The skipper and the first hand had been on deck all night. There remained four, or rather three, for the baker's a.s.sistant had ceased to count--Willie Weeks, Deakin, and himself, not a great number to choose from. He felt that he was within an ace of a panic, and not so far, after all, from that whimperer his neighbour. Two men to row the boat--two men! His hands clutched at the iron bar of his hammock; he closed his eyes tight; but the words were thundered out at him overhead, in the whistle of the wind, and slashed at him by the water against the planks at his side. He found that his lips were framing excuses.

Duncan was on deck when the morning broke. It broke extraordinarily slowly, a n.i.g.g.ardly filtering of grey, sad light from the under edge of the sea. The bare topmasts of the smacks showed one after the other. Duncan watched each boat as it came into view with a keen suspense. This was a ketch, and that, and that other, for there was the peak of its reefed mainsail just visible, like a bird's wing, and at last he saw it--the fish-cutter--lurching and rolling in the very middle of the fleet, whither she had crept up in the night. He stared at it; his belly was pinched with fear as a starveling's with hunger; and yet he was conscious that, in a way, he would have been disappointed if it had not been there.

”No other smack is s.h.i.+pping its fish,” quavered a voice at his elbow.

It was the voice of the baker's a.s.sistant.

”But this smack is,” replied Weeks, and he set his mouth hard. ”And, what's more, my Willie is taking it aboard. Now, who'll go with Willie?”

”I will.”

Weeks swung round on Duncan and stared at him. Then he stared out to sea. Then he stared again at Duncan.

”You?”

”When I s.h.i.+pped as a hand on the _Willing Mind_, I took all a hand's risks.”

”And brought the willing mind,” said Weeks with a smile, ”Go, then!

Some one must go. Get the boat tackle ready, forward. Here, Willie, put your life-belt on. You, too, Duncan, though G.o.d knows life-belts won't be of no manner of use; but they'll save your insurance. Steady with the punt there! If it slips inboard off the rail there will be a broken back! And, Willie, don't get under the cutter's counter. She'll come atop of you and smash you like an egg. I'll drop you as close as I can to windward, and pick you up as close as I can to leeward.”

The boat was dropped into the water and loaded up with fish-boxes.

Duncan and Willie Weeks took their places, and the boat slid away into a furrow. Duncan sat in the boat and rowed. Willie Weeks stood in the stern, facing him, and rowed and steered.