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Page 53
"The Virgin? Fwhat are you talkin' of? 'This is Le Have on a Sunday
mornin'. Go home an' sober up."
"Go home, ye tarrapin! Go home an' tell 'em we're comin'."
Half a dozen voices together, in a most tuneful chorus, as her stern
went down with a roll and a bubble into the troughs:
"Thay-aah-she-strikes!"
"Hard up! Hard up fer your life! You're on top of her now."
"Daown! Hard daown! Let go everything!"
"All hands to the pumps!"
"Daown jib an' pole her!"
Here the skipper lost his temper and said things. Instantly fishing
was suspended to answer him, and he heard many curious facts
about his boat and her next port of call. They asked him if he were
insured; and whence he had stolen his anchor, because, they said, it
belonged to the Carrie Pitman; they called his boat a mud-scow,
and accused him of dumping garbage to frighten the fish; they
offered to tow him and charge it to his wife; and one audacious
youth slipped up almost under the counter, smacked it with his
open palm, and yelled: "Gid up, Buck!"
The cook emptied a pan of ashes on him, and he replied with
cod-heads. The bark's crew fired small coal from the galley, and
the dories threatened to come aboard and "razee" her. They would
have warned her at once had she been in real peril; but, seeing her
well clear of the Virgin, they made the most of their chances. The
fun was spoilt when the rock spoke again, a half-mile to windward,
and the tormented bark set everything that would draw and went
her ways; but the dories felt that the honours lay with them.
All that night the Virgin roared hoarsely; and next morning, over
an angry, white-headed sea, Harvey saw the Fleet with flickering
masts waiting for a lead. Not a dory was hove out till ten o'clock,
when the two Jeraulds of the Day's Eye, imagining a lull which did
not exist, set the example. In a minute half the boats were out and
bobbing in the cockly swells, but Troop kept the 'We're Heres' at
work dressing down. He saw no sense in "dares"; and as the storm
grew that evening they had the pleasure of receiving wet strangers
only too glad to make any refuge in the gale. The boys stood by the
dory-tackles with lanterns, the men ready to haul, one eye cocked
for the sweeping wave that would make them drop everything and
hold on for dear life. Out of the dark would come a yell of "Dory,
dory!" They would hook up and haul in a drenched man and a
half-sunk boat, till their decks were littered down with nests of
dories and the bunks were full. Five times in their watch did
Harvey, with Dan, jump at the foregaff where it lay lashed on the
boom, and cling with arms, legs, and teeth to rope and spar and
sodden canvas as a big wave filled the decks. One dory was
smashed to pieces, and the sea pitched the man head first on to the
decks, cutting his forehead open; and about dawn, when the racing
seas glimmered white all along their cold edges, another man, blue
and ghastly, crawled in with a broken hand, asking news of his
brother. Seven extra mouths sat down to breakfast: A Swede; a
Chatham skipper; a boy from Hancock, Maine; one Duxbury, and
three Provincetown men.
There was a general sorting out among the Fleet next day; and
though no one said anything, all ate with better appetites when
boat after boat reported full crews aboard. Only a couple of
Portuguese and an old man from Gloucester were drowned, but
many were cut or bruised; and two schooners had parted their
tackle and been blown to the southward, three days' sail. A man
died on a Frenchman--it was the same bark that had traded tobacco
with the 'We're Heres'. She slipped away quite quietly one wet,
white morning, moved to a patch of deep water, her sails all
hanging anyhow, and Harvey saw the funeral through Disko's
spy-glass. It was only an oblong bundle slid overside. They did not
seem to have any form of service, but in the night, at anchor,
Harvey heard them across the star-powdered black water, singing
something that sounded like a hymn. it went to a very slow tune.
"La brigantine
Qui va tourner,
Roule et s'incline
Pour m'entrainer.
Oh, Vierge Marie,
Pour moi priez Dieu!
Adieu, patrie;
Quebec, adieu!"
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