Читать книгу The Seiners - James B. Connolly - Страница 13

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“What’ll I do with this?” asked Johnnie, in the middle of the cleaning up, holding up a pan of sweepings.

“Oh, that”––Clancy naturally took charge––“heave it overboard. Ebb tide’ll carry it away. Heave it into the slip. Wait––maybe you’ll have to hoist the hatches. ’Tisn’t raining much now, anyway, and it will soon stop altogether. Might as well go aloft and make a good job of the hatches, hadn’t he, Peter?”

“Wait a minute.” Peter was squinting through the porthole. “I shouldn’t wonder but this is one of our fellows coming in. I know she’s a banker. The Enchantress, I think. Look, Tommie, and see what you make of her.”

Clancy looked. “That’s who it is, Peter. Hi, Johnnie, here’ll be a chance for you to hoist the flag. Hurry aloft and tend to the hatches, as Peter says, and you can hoist the flag for the Enchantress home from the Banks.”

In bad weather, like it was that day, the little 36 balcony of Crow’s Nest was shut in by little hatches, arranged so that they could be run up and down, the same as hatches are slid over the companionway of a fisherman’s cabin or forec’s’le. Johnnie was a pretty active boy, and he was up the rope ladder and onto the roof in a few seconds. We could hear him walking above, and soon the hatches slid away and we all could look freely out to sea again.

“All right below?” called out Johnnie.

“Not yet,” answered Peter. He was standing by the rail of the balcony and untwisting the halyards that served to hoist the signal-flags to the mast-head. Peter seemed slow at it, and Clancy called out again, “Wait a bit, and we’ll overhaul the halyards.” Then, looking up and noticing that Johnnie was standing on the edge of the roof, he added, “And be careful and not slip on those wet planks.”

“Aye, aye!” Johnnie was in high glee. “And then I can run up the flag for the Enchantress?”

“Sure, you’ve been such a good boy to-day.”

“M-m––but that’ll be fine. I can catch the halyards from here if you’ll swing them in a little.”

“All right––be careful. Here you go now.”

“Let ’em come––I got–––”

The first thing we knew of what had happened was when we saw Johnnie’s body come pitching 37 down. He struck old Peter first, staggering him, and from there he shot down out of sight.

Clancy jumped to the rail in time to save Peter from toppling over it and just in time, as he said afterward, to see the boy splash in the slip below. He yanked Peter to his feet, and then, without turning around, he called out, “A couple of you run to the head of the dock––there’ll be a dory there somewhere––row ’round to the slip with it. He’ll be carried under the south side––look for him there if I’m not there before you. Drive her now!”

“Here, Joe, wake up!” Clancy had untied the ends of the halyards after whirling them through the block above, and now had the whole line piled up on the balcony. He took a couple of turns around his waist, took another turn around a cleat under the balcony rail, passed the bight of the line to me, and said, “Here, Joe, lower me. Take hold you, too, Peter. Pay out and not too careful. Oh, faster, man! If he ain’t dead he’ll drown, maybe––if he gets sucked in and caught under those piles it’s all off.”

He was sliding over the rail, the line tautening to his weight in no time, and he talking all the time. “Lower away––lower, lower! Faster––faster than that––he’s rising again––second time––and drifting under the wharf, sure’s fate! 38 Faster––faster––what’s wrong?––what’s caught there?––let her run!”

The halyards had become fouled, and Peter was trying to clear them, calling to Clancy to wait.

“Fouled?” roared Clancy. “Cast it off altogether. Let go altogether and let me drop.”

“We can’t––the bight of it’s caught around Peter’s legs!” I called to him.

“Oh, hell! take a couple of half-hitches around the cleat then––look out now!” He gripped the halyards high above his head with both hands, gave a jumping pull, and let himself drop. The line parted and down he shot.

He must have been shaken by the shock of his fall, but I guess he had his senses with him when he came up again, for in no time he was striking toward where Johnnie had come up last. Then I ran downstairs, down to the dock, and was just in time to see Parsons and Moore rowing a dory desperately up the slip, and Clancy with Johnnie chest-up, and a hand under his neck, kicking from under the stringers, and calling out, “This way with the dory––drive her, fellows, drive her!”

I did not wait for any more––I knew Johnnie was safe with Clancy––but ran to the office of the Duncans and told them that Johnnie had fallen into the dock and got wet, and that it might be well to telephone for a doctor. His grandfather 39 knew it was serious without my saying any more, and rang up at once.

That had hardly been done when Clancy came in the door with Johnnie in his arms. The boy was limp and unconscious and water was dripping from him. Old Mr. Duncan was worried enough, but composed in his manner for all that. He met Clancy at the door. “This way, Captain; lay him on this couch. The doctor will be here in a very few minutes now. Perhaps we can do something while he is on the way. Just how did it happen? and we’ll know better what to do, perhaps.”

Clancy told his story in forty words. “He’s probably shook up and his lungs must be full of water. But he may come out all right––his eyelids quivered coming up the dock. Better strip his shirt and waist off. He’s got a lot of water in him––roll him over and we’ll get some of it out.”

He worked away on Johnnie, and had the water pretty well out of him by the time the uncle and the doctor came. It was hard work for a time, but it came at last to when the doctor stood up, rested his arms for a breath, said, “Ah––he’s all right now,” and went on again. It was not so very long after that that Johnnie opened his eyes––for about a second. But pretty soon he opened them to stay. His first look was for his grandfather, 40 but his first word was for Clancy. “I could see you when you jumped, Captain Clancy––it was great.”

Then they bundled Johnnie into a carriage and his uncle took him home.

“Lord, but I thought he was gone, Joe. But let’s get out of this,” said Clancy, and we were making for the door, with Clancy’s clothes still wringing wet, when we were stopped by the elder Mr. Duncan, who shook hands with both of us and then went on to speak to Clancy.

“Captain Clancy–––”

“Captain once, but–––”

“I know, I know, but not from lack of ability, at any rate. Let me thank you. His mother will thank you herself later, and make you feel, I know, her sense of what she owes to you. And his cousin Alice––she thinks the world of him. There, I know you don’t want to hear any more, but you shall––maybe later––though it may come up in another way. But tell me––wait, come inside a minute. Come in you, too, Joe,” he said, turning to me, but I said I’d rather wait outside. I wanted to have a smoke to get my nerves steady again, I guess.

So Clancy and Mr. Duncan went inside, and through the window, whenever I looked up, I could see them. As their talk went on I could see 41 that they were getting very much interested about something or other. Clancy particularly was laying down the law with a clenched fist and an arm that swung through the air like a jibing boom. Somebody, I knew, was getting it.

When they came out Mr. Duncan stopped at the door, and said, as if by way of a parting word, “And so you think that’s the cause of Withrow’s picking a quarrel with Maurice? Well, I never thought of that before, but maybe you’re right. And now, what do you say to a vessel for yourself?”

“Me take a vessel? No, sir––not for me. But when you’ve got vessels to hand around, Mr. Duncan, bear Maurice in mind––he’s a fisherman.”

We left Mr. Duncan then, he making ready to telephone to learn how Johnnie was getting along. Clancy said his clothes were beginning to feel so dry that he did not know as he would go to his boarding-house. “I think we’d better go up to the Anchorage and have a little touch. But I forgot––you don’t drink, Joe? No? So I thought, but don’t you care––you’re young yet. Come along, anyway, and have a smoke.”

And so we went along to the Anchorage, and while we were there, I smoking one of those barroom cigars and Clancy nursing the after-taste of his drink and declaring that a touch of good liquor 42 was equal to a warm stove for drying wet clothes, I told him what I would have told him in Crow’s Nest if there had not been so many around––about Minnie Arkell calling Maurice back into her grandmother’s house, and then Sam Hollis coming along and going in after him.

“What!” and stopped dead. Suddenly he brought his fist through the air. “I’ll”––and as suddenly stopped it midway. “No, I won’t, either. But I’ll put Maurice wise to them. What should he know at his age and with his up-bringing of what’s in the heads of people like them. And if I don’t have something further to say to old Mr. Duncan! But now let’s go back to Arkell’s––come on, Joe.”

But I didn’t go back with him. I didn’t think that I could do Maurice any good then, and I might be in the way if Clancy wanted to speak his mind out to anybody. I went home instead, where I expected to have troubles of my own, for I knew that my mother wouldn’t like the idea of my going seining.

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