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Harbor of Doubt, The

<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> <h3>IN THE FOG BANK</h3> “SQUID ho! Squid ho! Tumble up, all hands!” Rod Kent, the old salt who had for the past hour been experimenting over the side, leaned down the main cabin hatch and woke the port watch. Behind him on the deck a queer marine creature squirmed in a pool of water and sought vainly to disentangle itself from the apparatus that had caught it. The shout brought all hands on deck, stupid with sleep, but eager to join in the sport. The squid is a very small edition of the giant devilfish or octopus. It has ten tentacles, a tapered body about ten inches long, and is armed with the usual defensive ink-sac, by means of which it squirts a cloud of black fluid at a pursuing enemy, escaping in the general murk. “How’d ye ketch him?” cried all hands, for the advent of squid was the most welcome news the men on the Charming Lass had had since leaving home four days before. It meant that this favorite and 96 succulent bait of the roaming cod had arrived on the Banks, and that the catches would be good. “Jigged him,” replied Kent laconically. He disengaged the struggling squid from the apparatus and examined the latter carefully. It was made of a single cork, through the lower edge of which pins had been thrust and bent back like the flukes of an anchor. To it was fastened a small shred of red flannel, the whole being attached to a line with a sinker. In five minutes Code had unearthed from an old shoe-box in his cabin enough jigs to supply all hands, and presently both rails were lined with men hauling up the bait as fast as it was lured to close proximity by the color of the red flannel. Once the creatures had wrapped themselves around the cork a sharp jerk impaled them on the pins, and up they came. But not without resistance. Just as they left the water they discharged their ink-sacs at their captors, and the men on the decks of the Lass were kept busy weaving their heads from side to side, to avoid the assault. It was near evening of the second day after the mysterious schooner had hailed them and sailed away. Since that time they had forged steadily northeast, along the coast of Nova Scotia. At last they had left Cape Breton at the tip of Cape Breton Island behind them and approached the southern 97 shores of Newfoundland and that wonderful stretch of shoals called the Grand Banks. Southeast for three hundred miles from Newfoundland extends this under-sea flooring of rocky shelves, that run from ninety to five fathoms, being most shallow at Virgin Rocks. In reality this is a great submarine mountain chain that is believed at one time to have belonged to the continent of North America. The outside edge of it is in the welter of the shoreless Atlantic, and from this edge there is a sheer drop into almost unsounded depths. These depths have got the name of the Whale Hole, and many a fishing skipper has dropped his anchor into this abyss and earned the laughter of his crew when he could find no ground. Along the top and sides of this mountain range grow vegetable substances and small animalcules that provide excellent feeding for the vast hosts of cod that yearly swim across it. For four hundred years the cod have visited these feeding grounds and been the prey of man, yet their numbers show no falling off. To them is due the wealth of Newfoundland, the Miquelon Islands, Nova Scotia, Labrador, and Prince Edward Island. The first manifestation of the annual visit is the arrival of enormous schools of caplin, a little silvery fish some seven inches long that invades the bays and 98 the open sea. Close upon them follow the cod, feeding as they come. The caplin last six weeks and disappear, to be superseded in August by the squid, of which the cod are very fond. Up until fifty years ago mackerel were caught on the Banks, and large quantities of halibut, but the mackerel disappeared suddenly, never to return, and the halibut became constantly more rare, until at last only the cod remained. Aboard the Charming Lass the squid “jigging” went on for a couple of hours. Then suddenly the school passed and the sport ended abruptly. But the deck of the schooner was a mass of the bait, and the tubs of salt clams brought from Freekirk Head could be saved until later. Rockwell, who had been looking out forward, suddenly called Code’s attention to a flock of sea-pigeons floating on the water a mile ahead. As the skipper looked he saw the fowl busily diving and “upending,” and he knew they had struck the edge of the Banks; for water-fowl will always dive in shoal water, and a skipper sailing to the Banks from a distance always looks for this sign. An hour later, when the cook had sent out his call for the first half, Code made Ellinwood stay on deck and bring the schooner to an anchorage after sounding. The sounding lead is a long slug, something like a 99 window-weight, at the bottom of which is a saucer-shaped hollow. The leadsman, a young fellow from Freekirk Head, took his place on the schooner’s rail outside the forerigging. The lead was attached to a line and, as the schooner forged slowly ahead, close-hauled, the youth swung the lead in ever-widening semicircles. “Let your pigeon fly!” cried Pete, and the lead swung far ahead and fell with a sullen plop into the dark blue water. The line ran out until it suddenly slackened just under the leadsman. He fingered a mark. “Forty fathoms!” he called. Five minutes later another sounding was taken and proved that the water was gradually shoaling. At thirty fathoms Pete ordered the anchor let go and a last sounding taken. Before the lead flew he rubbed a little tallow into the saucer, and this, when it came up, was full of sand, mud, and shells, telling the sort of bottom under the schooner. Pete called Code, and together they read it like a book––favorable fishing ground, though not the best. While the second half ate, the first half took in all canvas and reefed it with the exception of the mainsail. This was unbent entirely and stowed away. In its place was bent on a riding sail, for until 100 their salt was all wet there would be very little occasion for any sort of sailing, their only progress being as they ambled leisurely from berth to berth. “Dories overside!” sung out Code. “Starboard first.” A rope made fast to a mainstay and furnished with a hook at its end was slipped into a loop of rope at one end of the dory. A similar device caught a similar loop at the other end. One strong pull and the dory rose out of the nest of four others that lay just aft of the mainmast. A hand swung her outboard and she was lowered away until she danced on the water. Jimmie Thomas leaped into her, received a tub of briny squid, a dinner-horn, and a beaker of water, besides his rectangular reels with their heavy cord, leads, and two hooks. “Overside port dory!” came the command, and Kent was sent on his way. Thus one after another the men departed until on board the Lass there remained only the cook and a boy helper. Code, as well as Ellinwood, had gone out, for they wished to test the fishing. These dories were entirely different propositions from the heavy motor-boats that the men used almost entirely near the island. They were light, compact, and properly big enough for only one man, although they easily accommodated two. <div>101</div> The motor dories of Thomas and Code were on board, nested forward, but they were of little use here, where only short distances are covered, and those by rowing. The nine dories drew away from the schooner, each in a different direction, until they were a mile or more apart. Code threw over his little three-fluked anchor. Then he baited his two hooks with bits of tentacle and threw them overboard. With the big rectangular reel in his left hand, he unwound as the leads drew down until they fetched bottom and the line sagged. Unreeling a couple more fathoms of line, he cast the reel aside. Then he hauled his leads up until he judged them to be some six feet off the bottom and waited. Almost instantly there was a sharp jerk, and Code, with the skill of the trained fisherman, instantly responded to it with a savage pull on the line and a rapid hand-over-hand as he looped it into the dory. The fish had struck on. The tough cord sung against the gunnel, and at times it was all the skipper could do to bring up his prize, for the great cod darted here and there, dove, rushed, and struggled to avert the end. Thirty fathoms is a hundred and eighty feet, and, with a huge and desperate fish disputing every inch of the way, it becomes a seemingly endless labor. 102 But at last Code, straining his eyes over the side, caught a glimpse of quick circles of white in the green and reached for the maul that was stuck under a thwart. Two more heaves and the cod, open-mouthed, thrashed on the surface. A smart rap on the head with the maul and he came into the dory quietly. There were little pink crabs sticking to him and he did not seem as fat as he should, although he topped the fifty-pound mark. “Lousy!” said Code. “Lousy and hungry! It’s good fishing.” With a short, stout stick at hand he wrenched the hook out of the cod’s mouth, baited up, and cast again. The descending bait was rushed and seized. This time both hooks bore victims. When there were no speckled cod on the hooks there were silvery hake, velvety black pollock, beautiful scarlet sea-perch that look like little old men, and an occasional ugly dogfish with his Chinese jade eyes. When the dogfish came the men pulled up their anchors and rowed a mile or so away, for where the dogfish pursues all others fly. He has the shape and traits of his merciless giant brother, the tiger-shark, with the added menace of a horn full of poison in the middle of his back instead of a dorsal fin; an evil, 103 curved horn, the thrust of which can be nearly fatal to a man. The bottom of the dory became covered with a flooring of liquid silver bodies that twined together and rolled with the roll of the dory. At five o’clock Code wound his line on the reel (he usually used two at a time, but one had been plenty with such fishing), and started to pull for the distant Charming Lass. He was now fully five miles from her, and his nearest neighbor was Bill Kent, three miles away. All hands were drawing in toward her, for they knew they must take a quick mug-up and then dress down until the last cod lay in his shroud of salt. The schooner lay to the northeast of Schofield, and as he bent to his work he did not see a strange, level mass of gray that advanced slowly toward him. From a distance to the lay observer this mass would have looked like an ordinary cloud-bank, but the experienced eyes of a fisherman would have discerned its ghastly gray hue and its flat contour. All the afternoon there had been a freshening breeze, and now Schofield found himself rowing against a head sea that occasionally slapped over the high bow of the dory and ran aft over the half ton of fish that lay under his feet. He had not pulled for fifteen minutes when the 104 whole world about him was suddenly obscured by the thick, woolly fog that swirled past on the wind. It was as though an impenetrable wall had been suddenly built up on all sides, a wall that offered no resistance to his progress and yet no egress. He immediately stopped rowing and rested his oars, listening. No sound came to him except the slap of the increasing waves and the occasional flap of a wet fish in its last struggles. He carried no pocket compass, and the light gave no hint of the direction of the sun. In the five minutes that he sat there the head of his dory swung around and, even had he known the exact compass direction of the Charming Lass before the fog, he would have been unable to find it. The situation did not alarm him in the least, for he had experienced it often before. Reaching into the bow, he drew out the dinner-horn that was part of the equipment of the dory and sent an ear-splitting blast out into the fog. It seemed as though the opaque walls about him held in the sound as heavy curtains might in a large room; it fell dead on his own ears without any of the reverberant power that sound has in traveling across water. Once more he listened. He knew that the schooner, being at anchor, would be ringing her bell; but he hardly hoped to catch a sound of that. Instead, 105 he listened for the answering peal of a horn in one of the other dories. Straining his ears, he thought he caught a faint toot ahead of him and to starboard. He seized his oars and rowed hard for several minutes in the direction of the sound. Then he stopped, and, rising to his feet, sent another great blast brawling forth into the fog. Once more he listened, and again it seemed as though an answering horn sounded in the distance. But it was fainter this time. A gust of wind, rougher than the others, swirled the fog about him in great ghostly sheets, turning and twisting it like the clouds of greasy smoke from a fire of wet leaves. The dory rolled heavily, and Code, losing his balance, sprawled forward on the fish, the horn flying from his hand overboard as he tried to save himself. For a moment only it floated; and then, as he was frantically swinging the dory to draw alongside, it disappeared beneath the water with a low gurgle. The situation was serious. He was unable to attract attention, and must depend for his salvation upon hearing the horns of the other dories as they approached the schooner. Rowing hard all the time, with frequent short pauses, he strained his ears for the welcome sound. Sometimes he thought he caught a faint, mellow 106 call; but he soon recognized that these were deceptions, produced in his ears by the memory of what he had heard before. Impatiently he rowed on. After a while he stopped. Since he could not get track of any one, it was foolish to continue the effort, for every stroke might take him farther and farther out of hearing. On the other hand, if he were headed in the right direction, another dory, trying to find the schooner, might cross his path or come within earshot. He was still not in the least worried by the situation. Men in much worse ones had been rescued from them without thinking anything of them. But the rising wind and sea gave him something to think of. The waves found it a very easy matter to climb aboard the heavily laden dory, and occasionally he had to bail with the can in the bows provided for the purpose. An hour passed, and at the end of that time he found that he was bailing almost constantly. There was only one thing to do under the circumstances. The gaff lay under his hand. This is a piece of broom-handle, to the end of which a stout, sharp hook is attached, and the instrument is used in landing fish which are too heavy to swing inboard on the slender fishing-line. <div class='figtag'> </div> <div class='figcenter'> <ANTIMG src='images/illus-106.jpg' alt='' title='' width-obs='622' height-obs='419' /> By this time the wind was a gale </div> <div>107</div> Code took the gaff and commenced to throw the fish over the side one at a time. He hated the waste of splendid cod, but things had now got to a pass where his own comfort and safety were at stake. Once the fish were gone, with the cleanliness of long habit, he swabbed the bottom and sides of the dory with an old rag and rinsed them with water which he afterward bailed out. The dory now rose high and dry on the waves; But Code found it increasingly difficult to row because the water tended to “crab” his oars and twist them suddenly out of his hands. To keep his head to the wind he paddled slowly, listening for any sound of a boat. Another hour passed and darkness began to come down. The pearly gray fog lost its color and became black, like smoke from a burning oil-tank. He knew the sun was below the horizon. He wondered if any of the other men had been caught. If none were gone but himself, he reasoned, the schooner would have come in search of him. So, from listening for the horn of a dory, he tried to catch the hoarse voice of a patent fog-horn that would be grinding on the forecastle head. By this time the wind was a gale, and he knew it was driving him astern, despite his rowing. The waves were no longer the little choppy seas that the Lass had encountered since leaving Freekirk Head, but hustling, slopping hills that attacked him in endless and rapid succession. His progress was a continuous 108 climb to one summit, followed by a dizzying swoop into the following depth. Each climb was punctuated at the top by a gallon or so of water slopped into the dory from the crest of the wave. These influxes became so frequent that he was obliged to bail very often. Consequently he unshipped one oar and, crawling to the stern, shipped the other in the notch of the sternboard. Here he sculled with one hand so as to keep the dory’s head to the wind, and bailed with the other. Being aft, his weight caused the water to run down to him, and he could thus perform the two operations at the same time. When pitch-blackness had come he knew that he was out of reach of the schooner’s horn. His only chance lay in the fog’s lifting or the passing of some schooner. His principal concern was for the wind. It was just the time of year for those “three-day” nor’-easters that harry the entire coast of North America. When the first excitement of his danger passed he was assailed by the fierce hunger of nervous and physical exhaustion, but there was no food aboard the dory. He had, of course, the breaker of water that was part of his regular equipment; but this was more for use during a long day of fishing than for the emergency of being lost at sea. <div>109</div> He took a hearty drink and prepared for the long watch of the night. By a wax match several hours later he found that it was midnight. His struggle with wind and sea had now become unequal. He found it impractical to remain longer in the stern attempting to scull. So very cautiously he set about his last defensive measure. Taking the two oars and the anchor, as well as the thwarts, he bound them together securely with the anchor roding. This drag he hove from the bow of the dory, and it swung the boat’s head into the wind. Schofield, with the bailer in one hand, lay flat in the bottom. With the increasing sea, water splashed steadily over the sides so that his exertions never ceased. The chill of the night penetrated his soaked garments, and this, with his exhaustion, produced a stupor. The whistle of the wind and the hiss of foaming crests became dream sounds. <hr class='toprule' /> 110 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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