The Sea-Story Megapack: 30 Classic Nautical Works

by Jack Williamson

  “Looks to me as if we’d have to uncouple and run on to the next siding with half the train,” the conductor replied. “But it may be the fire-box.”

  “What’s the matter with the fire-box?”

  “She has a habit of droppin’ out,” said the conductor.

  “We’ll be a day late in St. John’s,” the passenger grumbled.

  The conductor laughed. “You will,” said he, “if the trouble is with the fire-box.”

  * * * *

  While the mixed accommodation was panting on the long grade, Tom Topsail’s punt, Burnt Bay bound, was splashing through a choppy sea, humoured along by a clever hand and a heart that understood her whims. It was blowing smartly; but the wind was none too much for the tiny craft, and she was making the best of it. At this rate—with neither change nor failure of the wind—Tom Topsail would land Archie Armstrong in Burnt Bay long before the accommodation had begun to think of achieving that point in her journey across the island. There was no failure of the wind as the night spent itself; it blew true and fair until the rosy dawn came softly out of the east. The boy awoke from a long doze to find the punt overhauling the first barren islands of the long estuary at the head of which the Burnt Bay settlement is situated.

  With the most favourable weather there was a day’s sailing and more yet to be done.

  “How’s the weather?” was Archie’s first question.

  “Broodin’,” Tom Topsail drawled.

  Archie could find no menace in the dawn.

  “Jus’ broodin’,” Topsail repeated.

  Towards night it seemed that a change and a gale of wind might be hatched by the brooding day. The wind fluttered to the east and blew up a thickening fog.

  “We’ve time an’ t’ spare,” said Topsail, in the soggy dusk. “Leave us go ashore an’ rest.”

  They landed, presently, on a promising island, and made a roaring fire. The hot tea and the lobster and the hard-bread—and the tales of Topsail—and the glow and warmth of the fire—were grateful to Archie. He fell sound asleep, at last, with his greatcoat over him; and Tom Topsail was soon snoring, too. In the meantime the mixed accommodation, back in the wilderness, had surmounted the grade, had dropped three heavy cars at a way station, and was rattling on her way towards Burnt Bay with an energy and determination that surprised her weary passengers and could only mean that she was bound to make up at least some lost time or explode in the attempt.

  * * * *

  Morning came—it seemed to Archie Armstrong that it never would come—morning came in a thick fog to Tom Topsail and the lad. In a general way Tom Topsail had his bearings, but he was somewhat doubtful about trusting to them. The fog thickened with an easterly wind. It blew wet and rough and cold. The water, in so far as it could be seen from the island, was breaking in white-capped waves; and an easterly wind was none of the best on the Burnt Bay course. But Tom Topsail and Archie put confidently out. The mixed accommodation was not due at Burnt Bay until 12:33. She would doubtless be late; she was always late. There was time enough; perhaps there would be time and to spare. The wind switched a bit to the south of east, however, and became nearly adverse; and down came the fog, thick and blinding. A hundred islands, and the narrowing main-shore to port and starboard, were wiped out of sight. There were no longer landmarks.

  “Man,” Tom Topsail declared, at last, “I don’t know where I is!”

  “Drive on, Tom,” said Archie.

  The punt went forward in a smother of water.

  “Half after eleven,” Archie remarked.

  Tom Topsail hauled the sheet taut to pick up another puff of wind. An hour passed. Archie had lost the accommodation if she were on time.

  “They’s an island dead ahead,” said Tom. “I feels it. Hark!” he added. “Does you hear the breakers?”

  Archie could hear the wash of the sea.

  “Could it be Right-In-the-Way?” Tom Topsail wondered. “Or is it Mind-Your-Eye Point?”

  There was no help in Archie.

  “If ’tis Right-In-the-Way,” said Tom, “I’d have me bearin’s. ’Tis a marvellous thick fog, this,” he complained.

  Mind-Your-Eye is a point of the mainland.

  “I’m goin’ ashore t’ find out,” Tom determined.

  Landed, however, he could make nothing of it. Whether Right-In-the-Way, an island near by Burnt Bay, or Mind-Your-Eye, a long projection of the main-shore, there was no telling. The fog hid all outlines. If it were Right-In-the-Way, Tom Topsail could land Archie in Burnt Bay within half an hour; if it were Mind-Your-Eye point—well, maybe.

  “Hark!” Tom exclaimed.

  Archie could hear nothing.

  “Did you not hear it?” said Tom.

  “What, man? Hear what?”

  “That!” Tom ejaculated.

  Archie heard the distant whistle of a train.

  “I knows this place,” Tom burst out, in vast excitement. “’Tis Mind-Your-Eye. They’s a cut road from here t’ the railway. ’Tis but half a mile, lad.”

  Followed by Archie, Tom Topsail plunged into the bush. They did not need to be told that the mixed accommodation was labouring on a steep grade from Red Brook Bridge. They did not need to be told that a little fire, builded by the track before she ran past, a flaring signal in the fog, would stop her. With them it was merely a problem of getting to the track in time to start that fire.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  And Last: In Which Archie Armstrong Hangs His Head in His Father’s Office, the Pale Little Clerk Takes a Desperate Chance, Bill o’ Burnt Bay Loses His Breath, and there is a Grand Dinner in Celebration of the Final Issue, at Which the Amazement of the Crew of the “Spot Cash” is Equalled by Nothing in the World Except Their Delight

  It was the first of September. A rainy day, this, in St. John’s: the wind in the east, thick fog blowing in from the open. Sir Archibald’s grate was crackling in its accustomed cheerful way. Rain lashed the office windows at intervals; a melancholy mist curtained the harbour from view. Sir Archibald was anxious. He drummed on the desk with his finger-tips; he paced the office floor, he scowled, he pursed his lips, he dug his restless hands deep in his pockets. The expected had not happened. It was now two o’clock. Sir Archibald was used to going home at three. And it was now two o’clock—no, by Jove!—it was eight after. Sir Archibald walked impatiently to the window. It was evident that the fog was the cause of his impatience. He scowled at it. No, no (thought he); no schooner could make St. John’s harbour in a fog like that. And the winds of the week had been fair winds from the French Shore. Still the expected had not happened. Why had the expected not happened?

  A pale little clerk put his head in at the door in a very doubtful way.

  “Skipper of the Black Eagle, sir,” said he. “Clerk, too,” he added.

  “Show ’em in,” Sir Archibald growled.

  What happened need not be described. It was both melancholy and stormy without; there was a roaring tempest within. Sir Archibald was not used to giving way to aggravation; but he was now presently embarked on a rough sea of it, from which, indeed, he had difficulty in reaching quiet harbour again. It was not the first interview he had had with the skipper and clerk of the Black Eagle since that trim craft had returned from the French Shore trade. But it turned out to be the final one. The books of the Black Eagle had been examined; her stores had been appraised, her stock taken, her fish weighed. And the result had been so amazing that Sir Archibald had not only been mystified but enraged. It was for this reason that when Skipper George Rumm, with Tommy Bull, the rat-eyed little clerk, left the presence of Sir Archibald Armstrong, the prediction of the clerk had come true: there were two able-bodied seamen looking for a berth on the streets of St. John’s. First of all, however, they set about finding Tom Tulk o’ Twillingate; but this, somehow or other, the discreet Tom Tulk never would permit them to do.

  * * * *

  By Sir Archibald’s watch it was now exactly 2:47. Sir Archibald rose from the chair that was his
throne.

  “I’m sorry,” he sighed. “I had hoped—”

  Again the pale little clerk put his head in at the door. This time he was grinning shamelessly.

  “Well?” said Sir Archibald. “What is it?”

  “Master Archie, sir.”

  Archie shook hands with his father in a perfunctory way. Sir Archibald’s cheery greeting—and with what admiration and affection and happiness his heart was filled at that moment!—Sir Archibald’s cheery greeting failed in his throat. Archie was prodigiously scowling. This was no failure of affection; nor was it an evil regard towards his creditor, who would have for him, as the boy well knew, nothing but the warmest sympathy. It was shame and sheer despair. In every line of the boy’s drawn face—in his haggard eyes and trembling lips—in his dejected air—even in his dishevelled appearance (as Sir Archibald sadly thought)—failure was written. What the nature of that failure was Sir Archibald did not know. How it had come about he could not tell. But it was failure. It was failure—and there was no doubt about it. Sir Archibald’s great fatherly heart warmed towards the boy. He did not resent the brusque greeting; he understood. And Sir Archibald came at that moment nearer to putting his arms about his big son in the most sentimental fashion in the world than he had come in a good many years.

  “Father,” said Archie, abruptly, “please sit down.”

  Sir Archibald sat down.

  “I owe you a thousand dollars, sir,” Archie went on, coming close to his father’s desk and looking Sir Archibald straight in the eye. “It is due today, and I can’t pay it—now.”

  Sir Archibald would not further humiliate the boy by remitting the debt. There was no help for Archie in this crisis. Nobody knew it better than Sir Archibald.

  “I have no excuse, sir,” said Archie, with his head half-defiantly thrown back, “but I should like to explain.”

  Sir Archibald nodded.

  “I meant to be back in time to realize on—well—on those things you have given me—on the yacht and the boat and the pony,” Archie went on, finding a little difficulty with a lump of shame in his throat; “but I missed the mail-boat at Ruddy Cove, and I—”

  The pale little clerk once more put his sharp little face in at the door.

  “Judd,” said Sir Archibald, sternly, “be good enough not to interrupt me.”

  “But, sir—”

  “Judd,” Sir Archibald roared, “shut that door!”

  The pale little clerk took his life in his hands, and, turning infinitely paler, gasped:

  “Skipper of the Spot Cash to see you, sir.”

  “What!” shouted Archie.

  Judd had fled.

  “Skipper—of—the—Spot—Cash!” Archie muttered stupidly.

  Indeed, yes. The hearty, grinning, triumphant skipper of the Spot Cash! And more, too, following sheepishly in his wake: no less than the full complement of other members of the trading firm of Topsail, Armstrong, Grimm & Company, even to Donald North, who was winking with surprise, and Bagg, the cook, ex-gutter-snipe from London, who could not wink at all from sheer amazement. And then—first thing of all—Archie Armstrong and his father shook hands in quite another way. Whereupon this same Archie Armstrong (while Sir Archibald fairly bellowed with delighted laughter) fell upon Bill o’ Burnt Bay, and upon the crew of the Spot Cash, right down to Bagg (who had least to lose), and beat the very breath out of their bodies in an hilarious expression of joy.

  * * * *

  “Dickerin’,” Bill o’ Burnt Bay explained, by and by.

  “Dickering?” ejaculated Archie.

  “Jus’ simon-pure dickerin’,” Bill o’ Burnt Bay insisted, a bit indignantly.

  And then it all came out—how that the Jolly Harbour wreckers had come aboard to reason; how that Bill o’ Burnt Bay, with a gun in one hand, was disposed to reason, and did reason, and continued to reason, until the Jolly Harbour folk began to laugh, and were in the end persuaded to take a reasonable amount of merchandise from the depleted shelves (the whole of it) in return for their help in floating the schooner. It came out, too, how Billy Topsail had held the candle over the powder-keg. It came out, moreover, how the crew of the Spot Cash had set sail from Jolly Harbour with a fair wind, how the wind had providentially continued to blow fair and strong, how the Spot Cash had made the land-fall of St. John’s before night of the day before, and how the crew had with their own arms towed her into harbour and had not fifteen minutes ago moored her at Sir Archibald’s wharf. And loaded, sir—loaded, sir, with as fine a lot o’ salt-cod as ever came out o’ White Bay an’ off the French Shore! To all of which both Sir Archibald and Archie listened with wide open eyes—the eyes of the boy (it may be whispered in strictest confidence) glistening with tears of proud delight in his friends.

  There was a celebration. Of course, there was a celebration! To be sure! This occurred when the load of the Spot Cash had been weighed out, and a discharge of obligation duly handed to the firm of Topsail, Armstrong, Grimm & Company, and the balance paid over in hard cash. Skipper Bill was promptly made a member of the firm to his own great profit; and he was amazed and delighted beyond everything but a wild gasp—and so was Billy Topsail—and so was Jimmie Grimm—and so was Donald North—and so was Bagg—so were they all amazed, every one, when they were told that fish had gone to three-eighty, and each found himself the possessor, in his own right, free of all incumbrance, of one hundred and thirty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents. But this amazement was hardly equal to that which overcame them when they sat down to dinner with Archie and Sir Archibald and Lady Armstrong in the evening. Perhaps it was the shining plate—perhaps it was Lady Armstrong’s sweet beauty—perhaps it was Sir Archibald’s jokes—perhaps it was Archie Armstrong’s Eton jacket and perfectly immaculate appearance—perhaps it was the presence of his jolly tutor—perhaps it was the glitter and snowy whiteness and glorious bounty of the table spread before them—but there was nothing in the whole wide world to equal the astonishment of the crew of the Spot Cash—nothing to approach it, indeed—except their fine delight.

  8 Donald North himself told me this—told me, too, what he had thought, and what he said to his mother—N. D.

  9 The story of this voyage—the tale of the time when Archie Armstrong and Billy Topsail and Bill o’ Burnt Bay were lost in the snow on the ice-floe—with certain other happenings in which Billy Topsail was involved—is related in “The Adventures of Billy Topsail.”

  10 Billy Topsail’s reasons were no doubt connected with an encounter with a gigantic devil-fish at Birds’ Nest Islands, as related in “The Adventures of Billy Topsail.”

  11 A “tickle” is a narrow passage of water between two islands. It is also (as here used) a narrow passage leading into harbour.

  12 As related in The Adventures of Billy Topsail.

  13 As related in The Adventures of Billy Topsail.

  THE SEA-WOLF, by Jack London

  CHAPTER I

  I scarcely know where to begin, though I sometimes facetiously place the cause of it all to Charley Furuseth’s credit. He kept a summer cottage in Mill Valley, under the shadow of Mount Tamalpais, and never occupied it except when he loafed through the winter months and read Nietzsche and Schopenhauer to rest his brain. When summer came on, he elected to sweat out a hot and dusty existence in the city and to toil incessantly. Had it not been my custom to run up to see him every Saturday afternoon and to stop over till Monday morning, this particular January Monday morning would not have found me afloat on San Francisco Bay.

  Not but that I was afloat in a safe craft, for the Martinez was a new ferry-steamer, making her fourth or fifth trip on the run between Sausalito and San Francisco. The danger lay in the heavy fog which blanketed the bay, and of which, as a landsman, I had little apprehension. In fact, I remember the placid exaltation with which I took up my position on the forward upper deck, directly beneath the pilot-house, and allowed the mystery of the fog to lay hold of my imagination. A fresh breeze was blowing, and for a t
ime I was alone in the moist obscurity—yet not alone, for I was dimly conscious of the presence of the pilot, and of what I took to be the captain, in the glass house above my head.

  I remember thinking how comfortable it was, this division of labour which made it unnecessary for me to study fogs, winds, tides, and navigation, in order to visit my friend who lived across an arm of the sea. It was good that men should be specialists, I mused. The peculiar knowledge of the pilot and captain sufficed for many thousands of people who knew no more of the sea and navigation than I knew. On the other hand, instead of having to devote my energy to the learning of a multitude of things, I concentrated it upon a few particular things, such as, for instance, the analysis of Poe’s place in American literature—an essay of mine, by the way, in the current Atlantic. Coming aboard, as I passed through the cabin, I had noticed with greedy eyes a stout gentleman reading the Atlantic, which was open at my very essay. And there it was again, the division of labour, the special knowledge of the pilot and captain which permitted the stout gentleman to read my special knowledge on Poe while they carried him safely from Sausalito to San Francisco.

  A red-faced man, slamming the cabin door behind him and stumping out on the deck, interrupted my reflections, though I made a mental note of the topic for use in a projected essay which I had thought of calling “The Necessity for Freedom: A Plea for the Artist.” The red-faced man shot a glance up at the pilot-house, gazed around at the fog, stumped across the deck and back (he evidently had artificial legs), and stood still by my side, legs wide apart, and with an expression of keen enjoyment on his face. I was not wrong when I decided that his days had been spent on the sea.

  “It’s nasty weather like this here that turns heads grey before their time,” he said, with a nod toward the pilot-house.

  “I had not thought there was any particular strain,” I answered. “It seems as simple as A, B, C. They know the direction by compass, the distance, and the speed. I should not call it anything more than mathematical certainty.”