Wide Courses. James B. Connolly

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СКАЧАТЬ and who's to gainsay a woman whose son lies drowned? So my boy and me we put out that night and was there next morning in our big wreckin'-tug.

      'Twas a cold day, but clear, only there was a big sea runnin', makin' it dangerous, everybody said, to be lyin' alongside her. And, I suppose because o' that, my boy wanted to do the divin', but 'twas me that went down and fastened the chains so she wouldn't slip off into the deep water; and then I came up to rest, and it was while I was up restin' that the chains slipped and she slid off and on to [pg 12] a ledge twenty fathoms down. Twenty fathoms is deep water for divin'—but one or two 'd been that deep before, and what one man has done another can do—and I'd promised the mother to bring her son home to her.

      I went down and made fast the chains again, and then I went inside her to make one job of it, though I'd told the lad I'd come up after I'd made fast the chains. I needed no pilot—I'd been on her often enough—though I did find use for the patent electric hand-light I'd carried. Down the big staircase I went, through the big saloon, and toward his quarters I felt my way—through the fine cabin and the marble bath-room and his own room—all as rich and comfortable as in his own home ashore.

      It was deep down, as I said—maybe too deep to be stayin' so long—but I'd never known what it was to give up on a job, and I kept on.

      I found him … and he wasn't alone.

      And hard enough it was on me, for never a hint had I of it. 'Twas my boy hauled me up that day. No signal o' mine, but I was gone so long he feared I'd come to harm below.

      When I found myself better I made ready to go down again, for once you've promised to do a thing there's nothin' but to do it. But just as they were about to slip my helmet on, me with my foot on [pg 13] the ladder, the chain that was holding her slipped again, and into two hundred fathoms she went—too deep for any diver in this world ever to raise her.

      I thought of his mother and I grieved for her, and it was the first job, too, that ever I'd messed.

      "Never mind," says my son. "Twas me, not you. Nobody that knows you, father, will blame you." A great lad that, and his brother, too—off their mother's model—both of 'em. Sarah said I'd never have to worry about them, and I haven't, but I wish she'd lived to have the joy of them.

      I don't remember much more of that, but when I got back to the office there was a letter from her. But I never read it. Nothing it could tell me then that I hadn't already guessed.

      'Isn't often now it comes so to me, things being' generally dim in my mind, as I say, slipping away and drawing nigh, like ships in a lifting fog-but to-day—like that day—a winter's day and sunny and cold—with the seas running like white-maned ponies before the gale in the bay below there—as it is now—always on a day like this it comes clearer to me.

      [pg 15]

LAYING THE HOSE-PIPE GHOST

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      Sometimes, for one reason or another, or perhaps without reason at all, it just happens. So, say a handful of gossiping yeomen find themselves together, and when that comes about, from some member (if the session stretches to any length at all) is sure to come a story of particular interest to the guild; and perhaps it ought to be explained that a yeoman's story is never mistaken in the Navy for a stoker's, a gunner's, a quartermaster's; never for anybody's but a yeoman's.

      One night, a pleasant-enough night topside, but an even pleasanter night below, at least in our part of the ship below. A few of us were gathered in the flag office, where Dalton, the flag yeoman, sometimes allowed us to call when his admiral was ashore. Getting on toward middle-age was Dalton, with a head of gray-flecked hair and an old-time school-master's face. A great fellow for books.

      In the flag office store-room, which to get into he had only to lift a hatch in the deck under his revolving chair and let himself drop, he had a young library, which after-hours he, used to delve into for [pg 18] anybody's or everybody's benefit. He was particularly strong on folk-lore, and could dig up a few fat volumes any time on the folk-lore of any nation we had ever heard of. He liked to lie flat on the coffer-dam to read, with a row of tin letter-files under his head for a rest, the electric bulb and its shade so adjusted as to throw all the light on the page of his book. He had done a lot of reading and writing in his time, and his eyes were getting a little watery. If he had had his way he would have been an author. In the hours of many a night-watch he had tried his hand at little sketches; but somehow or other he could not catch on, he said. Perhaps if he had tried to write as he talked, tell the things just as they popped into his mind, he would have been luckier; but that wasn't literature, he said, and so most of his written things read like one of Daniel Webster's speeches. We could listen to him talking all night long; but when he brought out one of his manuscripts, it was good-night and hammocks for all hands.

      Taps had gone this night, and so it should have been lights out and everybody below turned in; but this, as I said, was the admiral's office, and only separated from the admiral's cabin by a bulkhead; and even the busiest of Jimmy-Legs don't come prowling into the cabin country of a flagship after taps. And the flag lieutenant and the [pg 19] flag secretary were pretty savvy officers who never by any accident came bumping in on Dalton's parties at the wrong time.

      There came a knock at the door, and following the knock came the captain's yeoman. Nothing wrong with the captain's yeoman, except that his bow name was Reginald and he was rather fat for a sailor. Also he had ambitions, which was all right too, only we knew that privately he looked on the rest of us as a lot of loafers who would never rise to our opportunities. He'd been wearing his first-class rating badge a month now, and before his enlistment was out he intended to be a chief petty officer; which was why he was working after-hours. But the captain's yeoman, this particular captain's yeoman, has nothing to do with the story, except that his errand set Dalton off on a new tack.

      The captain's yeoman had come for a little advice. He always was after advice—or information. A department document had come into the office that day with seventeen endorsements on it, and it had him bluffed. We all laughed at the face he drew. "But," said Dalton, turning on us, "so would most of you be bluffed if one of those winged-out documents came at you for the first time. But you're foolish, son Reginald, to be worrying over any little thing like that. Seventeen endorsements! [pg 20] What's seventeen endorsements? I wonder what you'd think if you'd—Sit down there and listen to me, and perhaps it'll be time well spent. If you don't learn enough from it to get that C.P.O. you're after, then—Well, I won't call you any names here now. Listen."

      Now this story of Dalton's is a classic among yeoman, and only a yeoman should tell it; but not even a yeoman, no matter how gifted he may be with letter file or typewriter, has a rating to tell a story—no, no more than anybody else aboard ship. Some of us had heard the story before, and it had always been mangled in the telling, through the teller not knowing all the facts, or having perhaps never met any of the principal characters in it. But Dalton not only knew the tale from beginning to end; he was, though he would never admit it in a crowd, himself concerned in it. And now when he began to relate the history of the famous length of hose-pipe, we knew that he would have it right.

      "I was in—well, call her the cruiser Savannah—this time—"

      "Were you a yeoman, Dallie?"

      "Yes, a yeoman, bright Reggie boy; what else d' y' think I'd be—a signal-girl? A good old ship, the Savannah, and were tied up to the dock at the Navy Yard."

      [pg 21]

      "Boston СКАЧАТЬ