Part 17 (1/2)

Speculation was rife concerning them, but nothing could be learned of their duties, the impression being, even among Navy Department officials, that they were installing a system of coast-signals in New England.

Ward, it appears, disguised himself as an Englishman, and went straight into the heart of the enemy's country, making his headquarters at Cadiz, the princ.i.p.al Spanish naval station, and from there sending the Navy Department continuous and accurate reports of the fighting strength and actual movements of the Spanish fleet.

He was under suspicion, but watched his time, and succeeded in getting away to Porto Rico. There he was arrested as a suspicious character and spy. He managed, it is supposed through the British representatives, to obtain his release, and, escaping from San Juan, cabled the department a full account of the state of defences there and the movements of Cervera's fleet. While Ward was in Porto Rico, Buck was following Camara's fleet in the Mediterranean, keeping watch on its movements, and sending daily reports of its condition, armament, and plans.

We do not know what is in the hearts of men. We do not know whether the men who did the creditable things during the war did them in spite of themselves, or whether in the glory of action and adventure they took their lives into their hands gladly, fearlessly, for their country. We do know that there were hundreds ready and willing to court danger and death for a useful end who for lack of opportunity could not.

HEROES OF THE DEEP

All the long winter the ”Polly J.” had slept snugly in Gloucester Harbor, rigging unrove and everything snug aloft that the wind could freeze or the ice could chafe. Careful eyes had watched her as she swung at her moorings, and rugged hands had gripped the familiar gear as the skipper or some of the men had made their periodical visits. But however gray and desolate she loomed, with her topmasts housed and the black lines of ratline and stay across the brightening sky, nothing could hide the saucy cut-under of the bow and the long, free sweep of the rail.

The afternoon sun of March melted the snow on the south slopes of the fish-sheds, and great gray-and-green patches came out here and there against the endless white.

A brisk breeze, with a touch of the spring, blew up from the south, and the ”Polly,” heedless of the tide, turned her head to it, sniffing and breathing it, bobbing and jerking nervously at her anchor, impatient to be dressed in her cloud of canvas, and away where the wind blows free and the curl dashes high under the forefoot.

WHEN THE SNOW MELTS

Ash.o.r.e in Gloucester town there are signs a-plenty of the work to come.

The sleepy village throws off her white mantle and rises from the lethargy of the winter past. The spring is in the air, and the docks and wharves, white and ice-trussed during the long, bleak winter, are trod by groups of men, rubber-coated and ”sou' westered,” moving briskly from one shed to another.

In the town they gather like the stray birds of spring that flutter under the eaves of the store-houses. By twos and threes they appear. On street corners they meet, pipe-smoking, reminiscent, gloomily hopeful for the future, and grateful that they have helped themselves over ”March Hill”

without a loan from owner or buyer. And as they lounge from post-office to store, from store to shed, and back again, their talk is of dealings with owners and skippers, of vessels and luck.

For luck is their fortune. It means larger profits by shares, new dresses for the wife and little ones, and perhaps an easy time of it in the winter to follow. It means that there will be no long, hard winter of it at the haddock-fisheries at ”George's,” where trawls are to be set in weather which makes frozen hands and feet, and perhaps a grave in an icy sea, where thousands have gone before.

The skipper of the ”Polly,” even before he gets his men, has broken out his gear and reckoned up his necessities for the run up to the Banks. If he s.h.i.+ps the same crew he had the year before, they work in well together.

The ”Polly's” topmasts are run up with a hearty will and a rush. There is a cheerful clatter of block and tackle, and the joyous ”Yeo-ho” echoes from one schooner to another as sail and rigging are fitted and run into place.

The snow yet lingers in little patches on the moors when some of the vessels warp down to an anchorage. Dories are broken from their nests and skim lightly across the harbor, now alive with a fleet in miniature.

Jests and greetings fill the air, as old s.h.i.+pmates and dory-mates meet again,--Gloucester men some of them, but more often Swedes, Portuguese, and men from the South.

For to-day the fleet is not owned in the villages, and Gloucester, once the centre of the fis.h.i.+ng aristocracy, the capital of the nation of the Banks, is now but a trading- and meeting-place for half the sea-people who come from the North and East.

The skipper of the ”Polly J.,” himself perhaps the scion of three generations of fis.h.i.+ng captains, may wag his head regretfully, for fishers cannot be choosers; but he knows that his fis.h.i.+ng has to be done, and, after all, a ”Portygee” is as good a sailor-man and dory-mate as another,--better sometimes,--if he keeps sober.

So long as the s.h.i.+p-owner makes his credit good at the store for the people at home, the fisherman takes life as joyfully as a man may who looks at death with every turn of the gla.s.s. If he takes his pleasures seriously, it is because he lives face to face with his Maker. Nature, in the awful moods he knows her, makes trivial the little ills that flesh is heir to.

So when the crews are aboard, and the stores and salt are being hoisted in, there is a hurry to be among the first away. Chains and windla.s.ses creak and clang, nimble feet fly aloft, hoa.r.s.e voices ring across the rippling water, and many a cheerful song echoes from s.h.i.+p to sh.o.r.e and back again.

Willing hands, strangers for months to hemp and tar, lay on to the tackle, as spar and boom are run into place. The fish-bins below are cleaned and scrubbed to the very quick. Bright-work, if there be any, is polished, and sail-patching and dory-painting and caulking are the order of the day, and most of the night. The black cook, below in the mysterious blackness of the galley, potters with saucepan and kettle, and when the provisions are aboard serves the first meal. There is coffee, steaming hot in the early hours of the morning, and biscuit and meat,--plenty of it. There is not much variety, but, with the work to be done above and below decks, a full-blooded appet.i.te leaves no chance for grumbling.

At last the bag and baggage of the crew are tossed aboard,--packs of tobacco innumerable, new rubber clothes, all yellow and s.h.i.+ny in the morning dampness, boots and woollens to keep out the cold of spring on the Bank Sea,--all bought on credit at the store, to be charged against ”settling-day.”

WAVING G.o.dSPEED TO THE FISHER-FOLK