by Darrell Duke
It is impossible for the crew to look at the majestic walls of rock and tremendous surf along the Cape Shore without mentioning the Virgin Rocks farther up the coast, near Barasway.
“Uncle Watt often talks ’bout the 1887 August Gale an’ the ship Ocean Friend. Cracked right off on the Virgins, she did, takin’ all of the crew down with her,” Pad says.
The men aboard the Annie know all about the Virgins and are glad they’re nowhere handy to them.
“’Twasn’t uncommon to see boats big and small, Uncle Watt says, impaled on the Virgins where they stay till beat to bejaysus by the water,” Pad adds.
Pad looks down at the off-coloured stitch in his sweater where the burn hole had been. He misses his family, closes his eyes and gives thanks for Liz. And her patience. How he’d love to have Uncle Watt here poking fun at everyone and everything on board, and doing his fair share of the work in the meantime. Pad admires his uncle for being such a grand sport after all he’s been through: the hard life on The Rams, loving one woman, marrying her, losing her to childbirth along with the child, and never again looking at another woman, let alone remarrying and having children like so many do. Watt’s willingness to stay with Pad’s family while he’s away is immeasurable in Pad’s mind and, although the real work of this trip hasn’t really begun, he wishes himself home in the kitchen already, carrying on with Watt, and watching Ellen and Johnny grow up so fast, the way they all seem to these days. And Liz keeping it all together, the way only a good woman can. He can’t imagine life without Liz, the way Uncle Watt manages to carry on without Mary. The calm night conjures images of Uncle Watt rowing gracefully out the harbour in his dory—the one he made himself when he was a young man—with no compass, just the light of the moon and his big nose for smelling the wind to guide him back to The Rams for a visit. While there he’d see his old friends, share a bottle of moonshine, a walk to the graveyard, and a lifetime of memories before parting ways again. Pad wonders if he ever lost Liz would he move back to The Rams to forget her? Not that he could ever forget her, the way Uncle Watt moved to Fox Harbour after losing Mary. When someone asked Watt where he lived, he’d never say one place or the other. He lived where he was, one moment to the next. Pad wonders if he could ever be half the man his old uncle is.
It’s an hour before midnight. Jack thinks of Lize and Bernadette, home by themselves, long since gone to bed, after blowing out the lantern to save oil, with the drop of cold tea from the pot used to dout the fire in the stove.
With the Annie Healy hove to, all hands turn in on their bunks for a nap. The sound of the sea rolling beneath the boat is just enough to help them drift to sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
August 25, 1927
Thursday’s Storm
The fog has been bad for the past week. Most mornings the men do nothing, only stay aboard the schooner, drink tea, and nibble on the bits of grub left in their sea boxes. And wait for the fog to lift, move on, or burn away enough to create visibility to find their floats and trawls. When the fog burns off or blows away, it’s time to set the dories back in the water, bait the trawls, wait, and haul them in again. When they do get to their trawls, fish are plentiful.
The wing walls of the schooner’s hull are packed solid with heavily salted cod of all sizes. Once this day ends the Healys will have no need to gripe about a bad trip the way they did the last time.
“We’ll take everything up ’round ha’ past two t’day, an’ we’ll be well under sail for home no later than four o’clock,” Captain Mullins says of the fishing gear in the water. “No need of overloadin’ the boat. There’s always next week.”
The captain is still vexed after Michael and Jim took off in their dory earlier and got lost in the fog, leaving no choice but to use the Annie’s engine to creep around looking for them. The risk of hitting another boat was one thing, and the possibility of killing innocent men in their dories was another. But using precious engine fuel always put the captain in a bad way. The few dollars worth of gas and oil will be taken from the entire crew’s share.
“No need!” the captain mutters. “No need, an’ we with plenty of fish. Ye knows better than that, b’ys. Ye should have more sense.”
Mike Murphy, a young man fishing from a Dunville schooner, is not long gone from the Annie Healy in his dory. He was welcomed aboard earlier for a chit-chat and drop of tea, waiting for the fog to lift before returning to his boat not far away.
The smell of fried rashers drifting up from the Big Annie’s galley is enough to torment the men. The fog left earlier than usual and there’s precious time to use up eating bread soaked in fat and the remaining handfuls of tea. Jack picks a few raisins and dough from his tea bun, shoves them in his mouth, and stuffs his last bun crumbling into the pocket of his oilcoat. He dreads the thought of wet rope and twine tearing through the cuts and cracks of his hands, not to mention the cold salt water necessary to wash the blood and fish slime away. He’d sooner perish, he says to Charlie, than have to haul another big, ugly sea sculpin with thorns for a head off a hook caught deep in its belly. He prays to the heavens for no sign of a dogfish to have to club to death with the moll or, worse again, a wolfish like the one that bit through his boot and almost through his foot yesterday.
“’Tis bad enough,” he grumbles, “t’ have t’ spend another day wit’ one foot soakin’ wet an’, thanks be to God, ’tis the last day for this trip.”
He jokes he’s liable to be a week with his foot up on the oven door to thaw out, with Lize bawling at him, wishing he would get out of her way.
Despite their tired, aching bones, and water-soaked, wrinkled flesh, the early morning air and the absence of fog like pea soup bring smiles to the men’s dried and cracked lips. Golden Bay is a wondrous sight, they agree, even Jack with his wet, sore foot. Dozens of schooners and a hundred or more dories are revealed when the blanket of fog is pulled back.
“Not like ’twas one time,” Jack says, remembering years ago, before people started going away to the States to live. “No trouble to walk along the schooners here then, b’y, they all tied up together.”
“Yes, Jack, but there were more fish long ago, too,” Charlie reminds his friend.
“Yes, b’y, I s’pose, Charlie. I shouldn’t complain, I know.”
The rising sun reveals speckled fingers of sand laced with bits of kelp and sea urchins clawing at crevasses in the steep incline of black and grey rock. Crouching tuckamore crawling along the meadows above cling to overhanging rocks. They make fine resting places for busy birds. The face of the land watching over the lengthy crescent of beach stands like a fortress protecting the endless miles of wilderness at its back.
Around eight o’clock all hands aboard the Annie Healy finish their tea, having stowed away the fish from their first haul of the morning. It’s time to head back to work.
With enough bait cut up and put in their dory, John and Pad are the first to row away from the schooner. Charlie and Jack untie their dory at each end, slinging the lines in over the rail, and shove off from the schooner with their ten-foot gaffs.
The voices of other men singing in their dories fade quickly, and the air is swiftly replaced by the screeching of gulls and gannets swarming in clouds overhead.
“Lard Jaysus, Kelly, will ya stop makin’ such a racket,” Pad sings out, making fun of John, who hardly ever opens his mouth.
“’Tis a queer thing,” Jack says, “the birds gettin’ on like that and no one splittin’ fish on our deck.”
Beneath the bright sun the shadows of the birds are cast upon the Big Annie and then on the men in their dories. The birds race toward the walls of rock above the beach, directly in from the schooner. Jim King curses and swears on the bird shit raining down, covering the boat, dripping from the ropes and booms, making the deck slippery in places.
More seabirds in the hundreds make like mad
for the shore. Some fly to the Annie’s mastheads, but only long enough to land, let out a few squawks, and they’re gone again. They join the rest bolting in over the water to the harsh layers of cliff wearing a soft cap of sunshine.
Closer to the land the gulls keep pace with the kittiwakes, murr, and terns while smaller birds fumble through the air. Some are struck and maimed by bigger, faster birds, and they fall into the water, easy prey for schools of dogfish never far from fishing boats on the water.
“I never see the like,” Charlie says, standing up, holding his hands above his eyes to get a better look.
“Sit down out of it, b’y!” Jack says, looking over his shoulder to the Annie Healy.
“I never see the like,” Charlie says again, settling into his oars. “What a Jaysus racket that was, Jack! P’raps their mothers are callin’ ’em home for a bite t’ eat,” Charlie says dryly.
Jack sees Captain Mullins running to the rails on the opposite side of the schooner. Jim and Michael follow him. They seem to have no intentions of getting into their dory.
A strange drone is heard, and it’s getting louder by the second. The sky is clear and blue, but raindrops of all sizes start pelting the men sideways. Quick gusts of wind take the knitted caps from their heads and send them skidding across the water.
“’Tis salt water, Jack!” Charlie says, wiping his mouth with the cotton cuff of his oilcoat. “’Tisn’t rain at all.”
The words are no sooner out of Charlie’s mouth when a living gale comes barrelling from the southwest. Jack and Charlie topple over backwards into the twine, hooks, and bait in the bottom of their dory.
The sea is in a fit of rage. It throws large crests of water over the Annie, knocking Michael and Jim to the deck. Michael is carried along the rails of the schooner by a surge of salt water until he brings up solid on the handle of the windlass. He lets out a roar from the pain in his chest, and quickly scrambles back to his feet, clinging to the rope of the foresail masthead. He barely has his breath back when another surge picks him up, rips him from the masthead, and sends him head first over the bow. Blood spurts from his forehead. He wraps both arms around the bowsprit to keep from falling into the sea. The schooner tips forward and dips into the water. Michael disappears. He manages to keep hold of the bowsprit until the Annie rises upright again. When the water retreats from beneath his lower body, he crawls backwards to the bow, finds his legs, and turns. He lunges at the foresail. But one of his rubber boots is half-off and he buckles on one leg. He’s taken a third time by the next rush of water, but he grabs hold of the foresail mast and is secured long enough to get the boot back on. Then, he’s picked up and thrashed off the windlass again.
The captain’s body lifts on the same wave that just threw his son face first into the windlass. John Mullins is picked up and dropped over the wheel. One of his legs falls between two of the wheel’s spokes, his body left twisting. His head and arms bash off the deck until the wheel turns enough to allow him room to manipulate his leg from the iron spokes. The boot from the caught leg is lodged between the spokes. He tries to stand but can’t, and drags his body backwards with his arms. The boat is out of control as another surge rolls him to the stern. He manages to stand on his good leg and hops back to the wheel to retrieve his boot. He screams as he forces the hurt leg to bend while trying to keep an impossible sense of balance.
Jim is on his hands and knees, spinning around the deck in a couple of feet of water until it runs out through the scuppers. When he hits the rail, he grabs hold, looking straight into the sea. He’s sure the schooner will roll over. The Annie rises up and evens out again. Jim tears a piece of kelp from across his face and sees Jack and Charlie rowing toward him. He ties a coil of three-inch rope to the rail and casts it toward the dory half-full of water. Charlie’s hands are bloody from the hooks. He grabs the rope and twists it around his big arms and begins hauling while Jack keeps hard on the oars. There’s no time to bail, and the dory is just about full when they smack into the Annie. Jim braces his legs under the schooner’s rails and hangs out over the boiling sea to reach both men. He hauls them aboard and watches their dory, still tied to the schooner’s rail, vanish beneath the surface. Charlie and Jack are exhausted and collapse. Jim yells there’s no time for that. The Annie is doing circles around her anchor while the three men look for a sign of Pad and John.
“Over there!” Jim roars.
About sixty feet from the schooner, Pad and John are leaning back on their oars. The next thing the men on the schooner see is the dory’s keel. She hovers momentarily above the water, then tips back altogether, sitting on her stern before turning bottom-up.
“We got to get to ’em!” Jim screams, still holding on to the coil of rope.
“Where’s me father?” Michael yells.
Michael staggers, hauling himself along the rail. Blood is oozing from his head.
“Take this!” Jim says to Charlie, handing him the rope.
Jim and Michael struggle along the railing toward the stern of the schooner. They find Captain Mullins lying against the base of the wheel with a knife between his teeth, tying a piece of sailcloth around one of his legs.
Another wall of water nails the three men to the deck, scattering them in different directions. Charlie and Jack’s dory is thrown over the rail and across the deck. Michael is on his back and puts both legs up, preparing to be crushed by the dory. Another wave comes over Michael’s head and washes the dory a few feet away. The schooner levels off again. Michael heads back to the ship’s stern.
“Father!” Michael screams, taking the knife from the captain’s mouth and shoving it into the leather case on his side.
“The leg is broke off at the knee, b’ys,” Captain Mullins yells, wincing from the pain. “Get me up and tie me to the wheel right fast.”
As Jim and Michael go to pick up Captain Mullins, the ship is lifted out of the water for a second and dropped. All three men are swept about the deck again. When the water on the deck subsides, the captain screams and curses louder. He panics, as Jim and Michael are nowhere to be seen. Then they both come crawling up the deck, lifting themselves up by holding the jumbo spar. They hang on until the next wave passes. Captain Mullins is hanging onto the wheel. Michael makes it to the wheel and does as he’s been ordered—ties his father to the wheel.
When the captain is lashed to the wheel, the Annie rolls on her side and almost doesn’t upright. Michael and Jim are sent flying face first into the rail, and it is five or ten seconds before they regain their senses. Both men have bloody faces now. The captain regains footing on his good leg and does his best to steady the ship.
Jack raises the jib and staysail to give the captain enough canvas to safely turn the vessel, and staggers back to the helm. They look in every direction for John and Pad, but there’s no sign of them or their dory.
The Annie bucks like a wild horse, rising over one big wave and crashing headlong into another. Her nose is buried in a mass of white froth and water, sending more waves crashing and rolling around the deck.
The cold water washes over the shoulders of the men. They cling to whatever’s closest. Jack’s spine is numb, right to the top of his head, and he’s sure he’s paralyzed and soon to be drowned. Captain Mullins shakes his head like a dog to rid his face of water and seaweed while he tries to navigate the schooner toward where the men agree John and Pad might be.
Other schooners, with masts cracked off and lying across their decks, limp close to the Annie Healy, and Captain Mullins is just able to keep clear of them. Jack and Jim are portside, yelling John and Pad’s names. Michael and Charlie are at the starboard doing the same.
“They’re liable to be run down by a boat,” Jack sings out, his voice trembling. The remaining crew is helpless and they know it. Jack’s talk with Pad last week flashes through his mind; they’d been walking up along the road to Jim Spurvey�
��s skiff. Pad listened, and how good Jack felt afterwards. He’s guilt-ridden, knowing if Pad were here, he’d have the good dory over the side and out looking for someone missing, but Captain Mullins has already forbade Jim and Michael from doing that. All of Jack’s wishing his son was alongside him returns and, for the first time, he’s glad Gus is where he is.
Pad and John’s dory appears alongside the schooner. It’s upright and full of water. There’s no sign of the men. Jim unties a grapnel from the deck, near the masthead, and flings it with both arms into the centre of the submerged dory. He hooks it on the first try and Michael helps haul it to the Annie’s rail. The sea lifts it up as both men are pulling hard, and they’re barely able to get out of the way when it comes crashing onto the deck. Jack, holding onto the swinging mainmast spar, stares at the dory full of water.
“Jack!” the captain roars.
Jack doesn’t respond.
“Go down below an’ check on the stove; make sure the place is not on fire,” Captain Mullins orders. “And stay down there in yer bunk and hold on. Won’t do your back any good being up here.”
“Mind, now!” Jack says, but he knows the captain is right and does what he’s told.
“Ya all right, Charlie?” the captain asks.
“Yeah!”
“All right, b’ys, check over the hatches, make sure they’re battened good! Swing ’er off,” he shouts, and the men give the schooner the double-reef foresail.
“The b’ys! Jaysus Christ, John! We can’t leave ’em!” Jim screeches.
“They’re gone,” the captain roars, and continues screaming orders.
The weight of the wind on the foresail alone swings the schooner to port, dragging the anchor chain screeching across the bow. Michael holds a rag to his head, stopping the blood. He and Jim fight their way to the bow and grab hold of the windlass. They pump up and down until the anchor chain snaps under the strain. The gale continues to pound the schooner, shoving salt water up the noses and down the throats of the men.
