CHAPTER X
In Which the Impossible Becomes the Possible
Four hours had I floated on the tumbling sea, with the clouds above gradually breaking and with the moon finally paleing under the stronger light of the advancing sun. The blackness disappeared. A wind-driven sky arched the sea. And I lay looking up into heaven, waiting for the end.
For I was in a sort of mesmerized state toward the last, and kept myself afloat automatically. It must have been so; by no other means can I explain that I was still floating on the surface when the sun arose.
The rocking motion of the swells soothed me to a strange content that I can neither explain nor talk about sanely. I remember I babbled something or other over and over again; I was talking to the moon riding so high there among the rifted clouds.
In the night of July 14, 1886, the British ship Conqueror, fourteen days out from Liverpool, bound for the lumber and fishing ports of the Miramichi, in the Straits of Northumberland, lost overboard Robert Johnson, A. B. The fact is registered on the ship’s log. Three days after the Conqueror reached Miramichi, the Bark Adelaide, from Belfast, likewise came into port and when she was warped into her berth beside the Conqueror, the first man to step from the Adelaide to the Conqueror’s deck was Bob Johnson.
There are reasons for the sailor-men being superstitious. The crew of the Conqueror would not sail with Bob Johnson again. He was fey. But really, he had only experienced a strange and harsh adventure. The Adelaide, following the unmarked wake of the Conqueror, had picked him up after he had floated for some hours.
And there are plenty of similar incidents in the annals of those who go down to the sea in ships to match this narrative of Bob Johnson.
The men who picked me up told me that I shouted to them; but I do not remember it. They were a crew of a boat put overboard by the Seamew, and they brought me aboard and I lay in a bunk in the fo’castle all that day without knowing where I was, or how I had been snatched from an ocean grave.
About the first thing I remember clearly was that a young man stood beside my berth and looked down upon me with a rather quizzical smile. I knew him at once and thought that I must be in my old bunk aboard the Gullwing.
“I—I—. Have I been sick, Mr. Barney?” I asked, and was surprised to find my voice so weak.
He seemed surprised for a moment, too, and then I saw his face flush. He exclaimed:
“By the great hornspoon! this fellow is off the Gullwing.”
“I was off the Gullwing,” I whispered. “But I guess this is no dream? I am aboard again now.”
“No you’re not!” he declared, but he still seemed bewildered.
“This isn’t the Gullwing?”
“It’s the Seamew,” he said.
“But—but—you’re Mr. Barney?”
“I am,” he said, grimly. “But not the Mr. Barney you know, young man.”
Then the mystery broke and I understood. It was Mr. Alf Barney I was talking to, the second mate of the Seamew.
“Then—then you picked me up,” I murmured.
“And we had an idea that you were a merman,” he said, with a quick laugh. “Out here in the ocean without a stitch of clothing on you.”
I told him how I had got rid of my garments after falling overboard from the other ship. The men below gathered around to listen. They were men of about the same class as manned the Gullwing, I saw.
“You’re the luckiest fellow that ever drew breath, I believe,” said the second mate, finally. “You stay abed here till morning. Then you can go forward and talk to the captain. It’s almost unbelievable.”
And I scarce believed it myself—at least, not while I was so lightheaded and weak. But being a husky fellow my strength quickly came back to me, and the care of the kind fellows in the fo’castle set me on my pins the next day. I had a brief interview with Captain Si Somes—a long, cadaverous, hatchet-faced man who barked his words at one as though he did not like to waste either voice or words.
“So Cap’n Joe didn’t try to pick ye up?”
“I reckon he couldn’t. It was blowing pretty hard just then.”
“That’s like the old murderer,” he snapped. “Didn’t clew down his tops’ls quick enough of course. He means to beat me if he kin.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Well, he won’t. We’ll pick him up if the wind keeps this a-way.”
“No chance of my getting back to her I sp’ose?” I suggested.
“To the Gullwing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Wa-al! I ain’t goin’ to waste no time puttin’ you aboard. He’s short-handed anyway. He allus is. I’ll feed ye for the sake of keepin’ ye,” and he cackled rather unpleasantly.
I didn’t like him as well as I did Captain Bowditch. And my interest was centered in the success of the Gullwing, too. I wanted to get back to her and see her win the race.
I found the fo’castle hands of the Seamew just as much interested in the rivalry of the two ships as the Gullwing’s hands were. They believed they were on the better craft, too.
“Why, she sails a foot and a half to the Gullwing’s one in fair weather,” one man told me. “Wait till we get out of this latitude. You’ll see something like sailing, then, when the Seamew gits to going.”
I thought she was sailing pretty fast just then, and said so.
“If she ever struck another craft—or anything drifting in the sea—she’d just about cut it down with that sharp bow,” I observed.
“Ain’t much danger of running into anything down here. We ain’t seen another sail but the Gullwing—save one—for a week.”
“We hadn’t spoken a vessel on the Gullwing for a number of days,” I replied.
“No. Not many windjammers just now in these waters. And all the steamers go through the Straits,” my informant said. “But this craft we spoke three days ago was a-wallowin’ along pretty well—and she had a tow, too.”
“A steamship, then?”
“No. She was a two-stick schooner, but she had a big auxiliary engine and was under both steam and sail. The Sea Spell, she was.”
“The Sea Spell!” I cried, in surprise. “I know her. I’ve been aboard her. Cap’n Tugg, skipper and owner.”
“That’s the Yankee,” said my friend. “And ain’t he a cleaner? What do you suppose he had in tow?”
I was too amazed to answer, and the man went on:
“That’s one cute Yankee, that Adoniram Tugg. If there wasn’t but two dollars left in the world he’d have one in his pocket and a mortgage on the other.”
I had to laugh at this description of the master of the Sea Spell. And it hit off Adoniram pretty well, too.
“That Yankee has made a killing this time,” continued my informant. “He has been for weeks cruising south of here, so he yelled across to Cap’n Somes, hunting for an old whaler stranded in the ice.”
“The Firebrand. I know about her. Indeed, I’ve seen her,” I said, and told him the story of my cruise on the Gypsey Girl and how we had come across the frozen ship and I had boarded her.
“Well! don’t that beat cock-fighting!” ejaculated the seaman, who was called Job Perkins. “That old ile boiler was worth a mint of money.”
“I know it. They said she had fifty thousand dollars in oil aboard.”
“And if Adoniram Tugg makes port with her he’ll turn a pretty penny. Salvage and all,” ruminated Job.
“What do you mean?” I gasped, suddenly awakened to the fact that I was listening to a mighty queer story.
“Why, that’s what Tugg was tugging,” and Job smote his knee and laughed at his own joke.
“Why, I told you he had a ship in tow. She was a sight, she was! Her masts were just stumps; there wasn’t ten feet of her rail that hadn’t carried away, and she was battered and bruised and looked like she’d sink under the surface every time a wave struck her.
“But that cute Yankee had broached oil barrels on her deck, and she was just wallowin’ along in a pond of ile—a reg’lar slick. The waves couldn’t break over her,” declared Job, still laughing. “I reckon he’d patched up her hull in some way, and it looked to me as though he’d tow her into San Pedro, at least.”
“But, man alive!” I cried. “What was she? What was the Sea Spell towing?”
“Why, that Firebrand,” he said. “And he’ll make a mint of money out of her, as sure as you’re a foot high.”