A Republic Without a President, and Other Stories by Herbert D. Ward (reading e books .txt) 📗

would like a penny, Scud thrashed him within a centimeter of his life. New England fishermen will take a gift as a sort of neighborly accommodation to you; but he'll starve before he will ask you for it.

"Are them fur me?" (Scud was always surprised at such a crisis.) "Thank ye, ma'am. Ain't them showy? I guess they'll skeer the mac'rel off the coast."

"I wanted you to take me out sailing this morning, Mr. Scud," I began, after a formal introduction. Scud looked somewhat gratified with the prefix to his name, and regarded me with interest. To take boarders out sailing at the rate of seventy-five cents an hour was the kind of work he would do.

"Yes, ma'am. But I'm 'fraid it'll be a little fresh to-day, if ye hain't used to sailin'." He jerked his head to the westward. "Salt is a makin' the dory fast with a new haulin'-line, ma'am. I guess we'll have a squall pretty soon."

We followed Scud's gesture and looked. A squall on a day like this? The white streamers had vanished, and above us was dark, unfathomable blue. But on the western horizon, stretching far to the south, a black bank had arisen. No cloud in the physical geography was ever sketched blacker. It had come up as stealthily as a Zulu warrior. It was the hue of unpolished iron. It had a faint reddish tint. Its outline was as clear cut as a cameo. It sent ahead here and there jagged tentacles, broad at the base and fine at the tip, that advanced, dissolved, and reappeared again with significant rapidity. The ocean had suddenly grown lethargic. It seemed unable to reflect the sun that still shone. It became like a platter of tarnished silver. As we looked, the sight rapidly grew uglier.

Now my cousin Mabel seemed hypnotized by it. She stood for a few minutes with her hands hanging at her sides; her delicate jaw dropped. Suddenly she pulled herself together, and whispered: "It is horrible! It is awful!" Then, as if seized with the full import of the scene, she cried aloud, "My children! They are out fishing in a sail-boat! My children!" She began to run towards the shore leaving us all staring after her.

My nautical sense was not as highly trained as Mabel's, but I thought the sight terrifying and fine. It was part of the Eastern culture towards the education of the Western girl. But seeing Scud look sober—I had the impression that it was for the first time in his life—I pleaded:

"Do come too, Scud. Is it so bad? Won't it blow over?"

"It's goin' to be as bad as I ever seed in these parts, miss. I'll do what I can. 'Twon't be much, I'll bet."

I ran down to the house, followed by Scud at a moderate walk. Scud never ran. Would he have run for the drowning? I doubted it.

The clouds had arisen with terrible velocity. They coursed over the bare sky like a black bull with horns down. White cirrhus clouds now darted out here and there ahead, like fluttering standards of warning. And now the sun was gored to death. The black bank advanced in one wide line. Blackness had fallen everywhere. Anxiety was visible in every form of nature—in the cries of the birds, the skulking of the dogs, the blanched faces of the boarders, the attention of the fishermen.

In the British navy, when any terrible and sudden disaster occurs on a man-of-war, such as the bursting of a gun, a collision, or striking upon the rocks, the bugler sounds, what is known as "the still." On hearing it every man aboard comes to a standstill. This momentary pause enables each to collect his nerves to meet the summons of the shock. Nature was now commanding "the still"; but the order came through the eyes. No sound was as yet heard. The sea, the air, sentient life, all souls, held their breath before the shock that must come. Men collected along the coast to meet the threatened tornado. By that subtle force which sensitive organisms will recognize, be it called telepathy or psychic power or magnetism, I knew, ignorant as I was, that nature was silently preparing for a terrific struggle.

When Scud and I joined Mabel on the rocks in front of her house we found her wringing her hands, sobbing and crying for help. It seemed that her two children, who had gone out fishing with their city guest, were in a sail-boat. This was managed by a boy about their age—none of them were over sixteen. But the lad who sailed the little boat was a fisherman's son. He was considered very expert, and had broad experience from his babyhood up. But this fact did not soothe the mother. Appalled by the color and the swiftness of the clouds, and the ominous import to the safety of the little sail-boat, we scanned the harbor and the coast; but no boat answering to the description was in sight. Scud tried to comfort the mother in his shaggy way. "The b'ys hev sailed to the inner cove, ma'am. They's ashore by this time, I'll bet."

As Scud spoke, the large fishing-schooners, leaving and entering the broad harbor shot, one after the other, as if by mutual impulse, into the direction of the clouds, into the west, and dropped sails and anchors with incredible rapidity. Far out to sea vessels were now seen to ride with bare poles; it was evident that they had anticipated a formidable blow. We stood on a bend in the shore, and the broad bay lay between us and the rising storm. The rocky coast stood forth in a long, broken outline opposite to us, far down towards Great Brabant. The open Atlantic spread before us to the south-west. And now lightnings flashed in angry sheets. The sea took to itself suddenly a peculiar greenish tinge. There were heard distant bellowings. We strained our eyes for the boys. Where were they? Where were they? Two miles out ships began to rock fearfully.

"They've cotched it!" shouted Scud. "Here it comes. Look out, leddies!"

Driven by earth's mightiest, most implacable, most invisible force, a line of foam dashed across the bay. Spray from the water twenty feet below struck us in the face simultaneously with the wind. The white squall had burst upon us. I dragged my poor cousin with me to the piazza, into the house, which shuddered through all its frame and would have fallen had it not, after the fashion of this bleak shore, been chained to the rocks.

Now Scud staid outside. It did not seem clear at first why. Pretty soon we saw him trying to pull the tender upon the float, that was clean washed by every wave.

Then came the first lull. The mother ran out into it wildly. The water was green and white. Two coasters and a large yacht were running in for shelter without a stitch of canvas. They were making straight for the inner harbor.

"Look! Come here! Look! What's that boat? See! Way out there beyond the island! My God! It's my children!"

A half-mile or more away, in the very heart of the squall, a little boat with full sail set was staggering unto death. Language cannot hint at the horror in the mother's face. She had made her summer's home for fifteen years within a shell's throw of the sea, and she knew perfectly well what this situation meant. No one could have undeceived her, and no one tried. She stood for a moment staring straight ahead, stretched out her arms, swayed, and fell. She was one of the fainting kind, and there was nothing to be done about it. We carried her in and laid her down. It was my impulse to trust her to her terrified servants. I was too terrified myself to know whether I was right or wrong. Irresistibly compelled, I rushed out of doors again, and appealed (with feminine instinct, I suppose) to the only man, within reach. Scud responded quickly enough.

"Yes; that's them!" He pitched his orotund voice upon me as if he were giving a command in a gale at sea.

Men now began to gesticulate wildly at the ill-fated boat from the rocks, as if that could help the matter.

"Drop that mains'l, you —— fools, or you'll go to ——!" The voices struck me like a volley of bullets, but they could not have penetrated ten feet to windward.

"Scud!" I cried. "Help! Save them, Scud!"

"I can't do nothing," he howled in my ear. "No one can't. You can't row in them breakers."

By this time the wind had increased its force. The sail-boat was near enough for one to see the desperate attempts the boyish skipper made to lower the sail. One of the halyards had become caught. The boy made wild rushes to the mast. Then the boat would rock and fly around. To save her the lad darted back to the helm just in time. This sickening struggle against a knot was repeated several times. On the bottom the three passengers lay inert with terror. A twenty-foot boat with full sail, when hundred-ton schooners trembled under bare poles! Even my inexperience grasped the situation.

"He's doing all-fired well, but he can't last no longer if that—He'll be druv on the rocks! They'll be druv to——!"

The rocks were now lined with men commenting in an apathetic way upon the tragedy enacting before their eyes.

"Why don't they do something?" In my ignorance of the curious stolidity which falls upon the shore in face of danger upon the sea, I stood shrieking: "Why doesn't somebody go? Why don't you men do something?"

The fishermen and the summer people looked into each other's eyes, but no man answered a word.

"Can't you help them?" I pleaded with another weather-beaten fisherman.

"Can't be done, or I'd do it."

"I came down to see them capsize, an' I guess they'll go," said a gruff voice.

But Scud gave me a long look. He stood quite silent. An expression of rare gravity was on his joyous face. He glanced apprehensively from the boat to the house.

"She can't, Scud; she's fainted. There isn't anybody but me. I've got to do something. The children have got to be saved, Scud!" The Western girl shook him by the arm. Her very ignorance gave a force to her appeal that intelligence could not have supplied. Had I understood what I asked I should not have said: "Scud, won't you go? They are drowning. See, Scud! Go!"

The doomed sail was beaten here and there in the fierce wind; the jib was blown to tatters. The boat took in water, righted, and careened with every riotous puff. A hundred times men turned their faces away and women shrieked, expecting it to go down. A hundred times repeated miracle protected the helpless boat.

Scud walked slowly down the heaving gangway that connected the rocks with the float. The man who came down to see the boat capsize followed with his hands in his pockets. He balanced himself on the railing with his elbows as the gangway jumped beneath him.

"What yer up ter, Scud?" he yelled above the tempest. "They're driftin' on yer trap. That'll fetch 'em."

Scud looked up. His feet were washed in the water that flooded the float at every surge. To strike the trap meant instant overturn. To become entangled in and driven on to the meshes of the broad, deep net meant inevitable death.

"I guess I'll go. Help me shove the dingy off." So spoke Scud, deliberately.

"You—" The rest of the expletive was lost in the gale. The breakers made sport of Scud, and spat at him with their white tongues. "Your childer! The twins! Betty!" thundered his friend.

Scud hurriedly put in the oar-locks. As he bent, the wind caught his cap and dashed it on the rocks. Scud shook his brown hair to the furies.

"Ye see!" yelled his companion significantly. "Now get in, will ye?"

"Shet up, Steve! Gimme them oars. Don't ye see I'm goin'? I wish I hed my dory."

A murmur of applause went up from the crowd as the fisherman shoved off. The light tender was twisted about and all but cast upon the cliffs before he could gain his first stroke.

And now the man of the sea set his weak mouth into petrified resolve. The wind and the water attacked his boat like assassins. They meant to kill. Scud knew this. He rowed guardedly, mistrustful of a cowardly feint, of an underhand lunge. The tender quivered beneath each dash of the waves, each onslaught of the squall, each hurried stroke of the oars. Scud rowed warily, lest he be over-turned and buried between the trough and the height of the waves. The wind howled at him. The bay showered upon him. The gale clutched him and turned him about. How now! Whence came these muscles of steel that subdued such powers arrayed against lazy