Fly with us now, good reader, once more out among the breeze-ruffled billows of the North Sea.
It was blowing a fine, fresh, frosty fishing breeze from the nor’-west on a certain afternoon in December. The Admiral—Manx Bradley—was guiding his fleet over that part of the German Ocean which is described on the deep-sea fisherman’s chart as the Swarte, or Black Bank. The trawls were down, and the men were taking it easy—at least, as easy as was compatible with slush-covered decks, a bitter blast, and a rolling sea. If we had the power of extending and intensifying your vision, reader, so as to enable you to take the whole fleet in at one stupendous glance, and penetrate planks as if they were plate glass, we might, perhaps, convince you that in this multitude of deep-sea homes there was carried on that night a wonderful amount of vigorous action, good and bad—largely, if not chiefly bad—under very peculiar circumstances, and that there was room for improvement everywhere.
Strong and bulky and wiry men were gambling and drinking, and singing and swearing; story-telling and fighting, and skylarking and sleeping. The last may be classed appropriately under the head of action, if we take into account the sonorous doings of throats and noses. As if to render the round of human procedure complete, there was at least one man—perhaps more—praying.
Yes, Manx Bradley, the admiral, was praying. And his prayer was remarkably brief, as well as earnest. Its request was that God would send help to the souls of the men whose home was the North Sea. For upwards of thirty years Manx and a few like-minded men had persistently put up that petition. During the last few years of that time they had mingled thanksgiving with the prayer, for a gracious answer was being given. God had put it into the heart of the present Director of the Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen to inaugurate a system of evangelisation among the heretofore neglected thousands of men and boys who toil upon the North Sea from January to December. Mission or Gospel smacks were purchased, manned by Christian skippers and crews, and sent out to the various fleets, to fish with them during the week, and supply them with medicine for body and soul, with lending libraries of wholesome Christian literature, and with other elevating influences, not least among which was a floating church or meeting-house on Sundays.
But up to the time we write of, Manx Bradley had only been able to rejoice in the blessing as sent to others. It had not yet reached his own fleet, the twelve or thirteen hundred men and boys of which were still left in their original condition of semi-savagery, and exposure to the baleful influences of that pest of the North Sea—the coper.
“You see, Jacob Jones,” said the admiral to the only one of his “hands” who sympathised with him in regard to religion, “if it warn’t for the baccy, them accursed copers wouldn’t be able to keep sich a hold of us. Why, bless you, there’s many a young feller in this fleet as don’t want no grog—especially the vile, fiery stuff the copers sell ’em; but when the Dutchmen offers the baccy so cheap as 1 shilling 6 pence a pound, the boys are only too glad to go aboard and git it. Then the Dutchmen, being uncommon sly dogs, gives ’em a glass o’ their vile brandy for good-fellowship by way of, an’ that flies to their heads, an’ makes ’em want more—d’ee see? An’ so they go on till many of ’em becomes regular topers—that’s where it is, Jacob.”
“Why don’t the mission smacks sell baccy too?” asked Jacob, stamping his feet on the slushy deck to warm them, and beating his right hand on the tiller for the same purpose.
“You’re a knowing fellow,” returned the admiral, with a short laugh; “why, that’s just what they’ve bin considerin’ about at the Head Office—leastwise, so I’m told; an’ if they manage to supply the fleets wi’ baccy at 1 shilling a pound, which is 6 pence less than the Dutchmen do, they’ll soon knock the copers off the North Sea altogether. But the worst of it is that we won’t git no benefit o’ that move till a mission smack is sent to our own fleet, an’ to the half-dozen other fleets that have got none.”
At this point the state of the weather claiming his attention, the admiral went forward, and left Jacob Jones, who was a new hand in the fleet, to his meditations.
One of the smacks which drew her trawl that night over the Swarte Bank not far from the admiral was the Lively Poll—repaired, and rendered as fit for service as ever. Not far from her sailed the Cherub, and the Cormorant, and that inappropriately named Fairy, the “ironclad.”
In the little box of the Lively Poll—which out of courtesy we shall style the cabin—Jim Freeman and David Duffy were playing cards, and Stephen Lockley was smoking. Joe Stubby was drinking, smoking, and grumbling at the weather; Hawkson, a new hand shipped in place of Fred Martin, was looking on. The rest were on deck.
“What’s the use o’ grumblin’, Stub?” said Hawkson, lifting a live coal with his fingers to light his pipe.
“Don’t ‘Stub’ me,” said Stubley in an angry tone.
“Would you rather like me to stab you?” asked Hawkson, with a good-humoured glance, as he puffed at his pipe.
“I’d rather you clapped a stopper on your jaw.”
“Ah—so’s you might have all the jawin’ to yourself?” retorted Hawkson.
Whatever reply Joe Stubley meant to make was interrupted by Jim Freeman exclaiming with an oath that he had lost again, and would play no more. He flung down the cards recklessly, and David Duffy gathered them up, with the twinkling smile of a good-natured victor.
“Come, let’s have a yarn,” cried Freeman, filling his pipe, with the intention of soothing his vanquished spirit.
“Who’ll spin it?” asked Duffy, sitting down, and preparing to add to the fumes of the place. “Come, Stub, you tape it off; it’ll be better occupation than growlin’ at the poor weather, what’s never done you no harm yet though there’s no sayin’ what it may do if you go on as you’ve bin doin’, growlin’ an’ aggravatin’ it.”
“I never spin yarns,” said Stubley.
“But you tell stories sometimes, don’t you?” asked Hawkson.
“No, never.”
“Oh! that’s a story anyhow,” cried Freeman.
“Come, I’ll spin ye one,” said the skipper, in that hearty tone which had an irresistible tendency to put hearers in good humour, and sometimes even raised the growling spirit of Joe Stubley into something like amiability.
“What sort o’ yarn d’ee want, boys?” he asked, stirring the fire in the small stove that warmed the little cabin; “shall it be comical or sentimental?”
“Let’s have a true ghost story,” cried Puffy.
“No, no,” said Freeman, “a hanecdote—that’s what I’m fondest of—suthin’ short an’ sweet, as the little boy said to the stick o’ liquorice.”
“Tell us,” said Stubley, “how it was you come to be saved the night the Saucy Jane went down.”
“Ah! lads,” said Lockley, with a look and a tone of gravity, “there’s no fun in that story. It was too terrible and only by a miracle, or rather—as poor Fred Martin said at the time—by God’s mercy, I was saved.”
“Was Fred there at the time!” asked Duffy.
“Ay, an’ very near lost he was too. I thought he would never get over it.”
“Poor chap!” said Freeman; “he don’t seem to be likely to git over this arm. It’s been a long time bad now.”
“Oh, he’ll get over that,” returned Lockley; “in fact, it’s a’most quite well now, I’m told, an’ he’s pretty strong again—though the fever did pull him down a bit. It’s not that, it’s money, that’s keepin’ him from goin’ afloat again.”
“How’s that?” asked Puffy.
“This is how it was. He got a letter which axed him to call on a lawyer in Lun’on, who told him an old friend of his father had made a lot o’ tin out in Austeralia, an’ he died, an’ left some hundreds o’ pounds—I don’t know how many—to his mother.”
“Humph! that’s just like him, the hypercrit,” growled Joe Stubley; “no sooner comes a breeze o’ good luck than off he goes, too big and mighty for his old business. He was always preachin’ that money was the root of all evil, an’ now he’s found it out for a fact.”
“No, Fred never said that ‘money was the root of all evil,’ you thick-head,” returned Duffy; “he said it was the love of money. Put that in your pipe and smoke it—or rather, in your glass an’ drink it, for that’s the way to get it clearer in your fuddled brain.”
“Hold on, boys; you’re forgettin’ my yarn,” interposed Lockley at this point, for he saw that Stubley was beginning to lose temper. “Well, you must know it was about six years ago—I was little more than a big lad at the time, on board the Saucy Jane, Black Thomson bein’ the skipper. You’ve heard o’ Black Thomson, that used to be so cruel to the boys when he was in liquor, which was pretty nigh always, for it would be hard to say when he wasn’t in liquor? He tried it on wi’ me when I first went aboard, but I was too—well, well, poor fellow, I’ll say nothin’ against him, for he’s gone now.”
“Fred Martin was there at the time, an’ it was wonderful what a hold Fred had over that old sinner. None of us could understand it, for Fred never tried to curry favour with him, an’ once or twice I heard him when he thought nobody was near, givin’ advice to Black Thomson about drink, in his quiet earnest way, that made me expect to see the skipper knock him down. But he didn’t. He took it well—only he didn’t take his advice, but kep’ on drinkin’ harder than ever. Whenever a coper came in sight at that time Thomson was sure to have the boat over the side an’ pay him a visit.
“Well, about this time o’ the year there came one night a most tremendous gale, wi’ thick snow, from the nor’ard. It was all we could do to make out anything twenty fathom ahead of us. The skipper he was lyin’ drunk down below. We was close reefed and laying to with the foresail a-weather, lookin’ out anxiously, for, the fleet bein’ all round and the snow thick, our chances o’ runnin’ foul o’ suthin’ was considerable. When we took in the last reef we could hardly stand to do it, the wind was so strong—an’ wasn’t it freezin’, too! Sharp enough a’most to freeze the nose off your face.
“About midnight the wind began to shift about and came in squalls so hard that we could scarcely stand, so we took in the jib and mizzen, and lay to under the foresail. Of course the hatchways was battened down and tarpaulined, for the seas that came aboard was fearful. When I was standin’ there, expectin’ every moment that we should founder, a sea came and swept Fred Martin overboard. Of course we could do nothing for him—we could only hold on for our lives; but the very next sea washed him right on deck again. He never gave a cry, but I heard him say ‘Praise the Lord!’ in his own quiet way when he laid hold o’ the starboard shrouds beside me.
“Just then another sea came aboard an’ a’most knocked the senses out o’ me. At the same moment I heard a tremendous crash, an’ saw the mast go by the board. What happened after that I never could rightly understand. I grabbed at something—it felt like a bit of plank—and held on tight, you may be sure, for the cold had by that time got such a hold o’ me that I knew if I let go I would go down like a stone. I had scarce got hold of it when I was seized round the neck by something behind me an’ a’most choked.
“I couldn’t look round to see what it was, but I could see a great black object coming straight at me. I knew well it was a smack, an’ gave a roar that might have done credit to a young walrus. The smack seemed to sheer off a bit, an’ I heard a voice shout, ‘Starboard hard! I’ve got him,’ an’ I got a blow on my cocoanut that well-nigh cracked it. At the same time a boat-hook caught my coat collar an’ held on. In a few seconds more I was hauled on board of the Cherub by Manx Bradley, an’ the feller that was clingin’ to my neck like a young lobster was Fred Martin. The Saucy Jane went to the bottom that night.”
“An’ Black Thomson—did he go down with her?” asked Duffy.
“Ay, that was the end of him and all the rest of the crew. The fleet lost five smacks that night.”
“Admiral’s a-signallin’, sir,” said one of the watch on deck, putting his head down the hatch at that moment.
Lockley went on deck at once. Another moment, and the shout came down—“Haul! Haul all!”
Instantly the sleepers turned out all through the fleet. Oiled frocks, sou’-westers, and long boots were drawn on, and the men hurried on the decks to face the sleet-laden blast and man the capstan bars, with the prospect before them of many hours of hard toil—heaving and hauling and fish-cleaning and packing with benumbed fingers—before the dreary winter night should give place to the grey light of a scarcely less dreary day.
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