The Wrecker

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Title:     The Wrecker
Author: James B. Connolly [More Titles by Connolly]

Sometimes the notion comes to me while I'm talkin' to people that maybe I don't make myself clear, and it's been so for some time now--the things I see in my mind fadin' away from me at times, like ships in a fog. And that's strange enough, too, if what people tell me so often is true--that it used to be so one time that the office clerks would correct their account-books by what I told 'em out of my head. But sometimes--not often--things come back to me, like to-day--maybe because 'tis a winter day and a gale o' wind drivin' the sea afore it in the bay below there. Things come to me then--like pictures--wind and sea and fog and the wrecks on a lee shore.

In my business--but of course you know--runnin' after wrecks, from Newfoundland to Cuba, I had to be days and maybe weeks away from home--which was no harm when I had no more home than a room in a sailor's boardin'-house, and no harm later with Sarah. Even if anything happened to me, I used to feel that Sarah--that's my first wife--Sarah'd still have the two lads to hearten her and keep her busy; but 'twas different with--but there, my mind's off again....

Maybe some things--comforts, refinements--I might 'a' practised myself in, got used to 'em like, but could I see in those early days that I'd ever have a grand home--me who'd been cast away at fourteen--even if I'd had time? It was to be able to do without comforts--to make a pleasure out o' hardship--that meant success almost as much as knowin' the business. And I did know my business in those days--or people lied a lot. And it always meant more to me--the name of bein' the great wrecker--than all the money I made, and in those last few years I made plenty of it--I did that. Me who once slaved for six dollars a month as boy in a Bangor coaster. And I mind how I used to look back and say--or was it somebody tellin' me?--that 'twas a great day for me and mine when the old lumber schooner wrecked herself on Peaked Hill Bar--because when she was hove down I was hove into a bigger world. Once in my pride I used to cherish praise like that--but sometimes now I'm not so sure.

And this man, an upstandin' handsome man--no one that knew him but spoke well of him, to me anyway, for I would not allow aught else after I come to know him. Since that last wreck it seems to me I've listened to other talk of him, but that's not so clear to me ... my brain, as I say, clouds up like on things that happened since.

No one ever met Her--my second wife, that is--but said she was beautiful and good--said so to me, anyway. It is true--but that came afterward, like the other talk, and it's not too clear in my mind what they did say. But he came to me and I liked him. And he liked me, too ... I think he did. He'd heard of me, he said, and would I examine his yacht--the Rameses that was--to see if any damage had been done--she'd grounded comin' in by Romer Shoal the day before. There'd be too much delay to put her in dry dock, and he wanted to sail soon's could be--if she was sound--on her regular winter West India cruise. 'Twas in January, a fine clear day, and I said, all right, I'd send my oldest boy down and look at her. My oldest boy--but you know him? Aye, a grand lad. Both grand lads. Modelled off their mother, the pair of them. If I'd only a daughter like her ... the woman she was! A wife for a seafarin' man. "Watch and watch I've stood wi' ye," she said, goin'--"watch and watch, but I'm no good to see the lights nor to grip the wheel longer. The sight's gone and the strength, Matt. Watchmate, bunkmate, and shipmate I've been to ye, but ye're in smooth water now ... and no longer ye'll need me." A daughter to stand by you she'd be. All my money I'd give for one such.

And while he was in the office She came in. "Ah-h!" he said--and then, "Your daughter, captain?" I said, "No--my wife," maybe o'er-proudly. I was not ashamed of my years, for it's not years but age--leastwise so I'd always held--that sets a man back. Those lads of twenty-five or thirty, I could wear them down like chalk whetstones. Maybe she heard--I don't know; but she didn't let on she did. My proud days those were--my office in the big building by the Battery. You remember? Aye, a grand place--the name in fine letters on the door, and on the window the picture of my big wreckin'-tug, the best-geared afloat and cost the most--a sailor's fortune just in her--yes--and I'd named it for Her. And 'twas to that same office I used often to come straight from my rough seawork. She used to come there to take me to drive. Me, who'd been a castaway sailor-boy--but I could afford all these things then. I could afford anything She wanted. And She wanted the fine office, and so it was fitted up with fine desks and clerks, though it wasn't what the clerks put in their account-books that kept my business goin'. There were those who said that I'd pay the price some day for tryin' to carry so many things in my head, but small heed I paid to them--and 'twasn't in those days my memory dimmed.

There was but little damage to the yacht's bottom--a small matter to find that out--though the skipper he carried was no master of craft. So many of them like that, too. To face the sea like men is not what they're after, not to take winter or summer as it comes, rough or smooth--no--but always the smooth water and soft winds. But he did not sail for the West Indies that day, nor that week, nor winter--something'd gone wrong with the machinery. No concern of mine that. There were those who said later--but that was when my head begun to trouble me--as it does now sometimes, as I said. There was a time, when Sarah was alive, before we had even the old ship's cabin on the end of the old dock by way of an office, when I carried my business in a wallet in my breast pocket--that is, what we didn't carry in our heads--but the mother of those two lads, she was with me then. That's long ago.

A most interestin' man he was. As I say, he made no West India cruise that winter--the machinery kept gettin' out of order--but he made a few trips with me--wreckin' trips--for I still looked after the big jobs myself. There were those who used to say that if I'd only learned to stand by and look on long enough to train a good man to take my place in the deep divin', that I'd be goin' yet. Maybe so, but maybe, too, they didn't know it all. I'd yet to meet a man who would do my work half as well as I could myself--never but one, and she was a woman and could do her part better--Sarah, my first wife, and her kind aren't livin' now.

He was not so soft, this yacht man, as I used to think. He stood the rough winter trips with me well. I learned to like him--rarely. I could talk to him about the work, and he'd try to understand--as so few of his kind would. He understood better after he'd been some trips with me, and I came to love him--almost. When I was away on those trips, my wife would be at home--until the time her aunt took sick. I recollect her speakin' of her aunt--or did I? No matter. She lived out West somewhere, and didn't want her to marry me--or so I made out. I didn't go too deep into it. When she hinted that she hadn't told me of her aunt before for fear of hurtin' my feelin's, it was enough. Women feel things more than men, and no use to rake 'em over. I knew I was a rough man, not the kind many women folks might take to--I never quite got over Her likin' me--nor did a whole lot of people--and 'twas natural a woman of the kind her aunt must be, didn't like her marryin' a man like me. But no matter; her aunt was bein' reconciled, she used to write me, and when your wife is makin' up to her only livin' relative, and she dyin', it's no time to be exactin'. So she stayed on in the West. I've forgotten where--Chicago maybe?--too far, anyway, for me to go to her, because I had to stand ready in my business to leave at a minute's notice. A gale c'd rise in an hour, the coast be cluttered with wrecks in one day. And there were so many big people, steamboat people and big shippin' firms, who counted on me, would 'a' been disappointed, you see, if I wasn't on deck when needed. It's something, after all, to be honest in your work all your life, not leave it to careless helpers.

He lost his interest in the wreckin' after a while, and natural, too. He hadn't to build up his family's name or provide a livin' for anybody by it. And her aunt still lingered, she wrote. And then I wrote that I would give up the business if she said so, and go out there. I could begin again--there was great shippin' on the lakes--better sell out a hundred wreckin' plants than be so much apart, for it's terrible to be comin' from the sea and never find the woman afore ye. But she telegraphed to wait, she would be home soon, and she wanted to see me, too, about something partic'lar. That was the night before the Portland breeze--in the year o' the war with Spain--yes, '98 that would be, the year the Portland went down on Middle Bank with all on board. A foolish loss that, and nobody ever went to jail for it; but it's mostly that way, nobody sufferin' for it--but the families o' the lost ones--when passenger ships go down at sea.

There was half a dozen steamboat firms telegraphin' and telephonin' the morning after that storm, and I had to leave without waitin' till she got home. There was a wreck off Cape Cod, and that kept me away a week, and I was hurryin' back by way of Boston. And I saw him--me hurryin' up Atlantic Avenue to take the train and him headed for the docks. I hailed him. There was a rumor--'twas in the papers--that I'd gone down with the wreck I'd been workin' on off Cape Cod--Chatham way--but of course no one who knew me well believed it. But he must've believed it, for--"What, you!" he says--not even puttin' in the "Captain" that he never before forgot. I missed that little word from him--and he didn't look at me the same--him that had always such a friendly way with me. He seemed to be in a great hurry, and so I left him without more talk. He did not even tell me that the Rameses was in the harbor and he leavin' on her, but the thought of that came later.

I had to stop off at Newport, to get things started for another wreck there, and that took me the rest of that day and the next, and then I was all ready to take the night boat for New York, but my oldest boy came hurryin' down the dock to me, and an old lady--no--not so old, but lookin' old--with him. And they told me how the Rameses, that had left Boston the morning before, 'd been wrecked off Gay Head durin' the night and sunk; and this was his mother, and she wanted me to go to the wreck right away and see if I could find and bring up his body.

I wanted to go home--a week of days and nights--and I was tired, too, and not easy to tire me in those days, but I thought of him and the trust he had in the skipper that didn't know his business, and I looks at my boy and at his mother, and Sarah's face came to me; 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 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 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.

[The end]
James B. Connolly's short story: Wrecker

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