The call of the offshore wind

Front matter

. ity ete ee be Saat ing Bate oe FS mTy eh Aart Ai yay bet ih (1: Qe b(t Ten Das

Books bp Ralph D. Paine

PUBLISHED BY

Contents

. Duprey FENWICK sAILs CoASTWISE AuL HANDS ABANDON Sup!

Sart Ho!

. Cap’n Joz Dapney “‘Piays A Huncn” . WAs SHE A DERELICT?

Chapter I An Old Shipyard And Young Blood

Tur November morning was joyous with sunlight, but the easterly wind seemed a chill harbinger of winter when old Israel Fenwick sought the lee of a pile of hewn timbers in the shipyard and sat down, absently shaving a bit of pine with his knife. A shapeless gray hat was shoved back on his head, the mop of silvered hair disordered as usual. His face was smooth-shaven, massive, and burned a brickred by exposure. This same aspect of a solidity that defied the crumbling processes of age was suggested by the thick-set figure whose hardened muscles had not begun to sag. Only in his eyes could the story be read, that look of wistful futility, of realization that the end of the passage is near, which the bravest heart cannot always dissemble.

It was wonderful to think that the lives of Israel Fenwick and his father had spanned eighty years of building wooden ships in the yard at Spring Haven where the Winnebasset River meets the tide of the Maine coast. Eighty years between them!

It meant that the elder Israel had whittled his models and chalked the patterns on the floor of the old loft before the first steamer challenged the roaring packets in the Atlantic trade, when snowy skysails in every sea proudly served notice that Columbia, not Britannia, ruled the wave.

Forgotten days and vanished glories, the incomparable epic of blue water, with few to mourn or care! The sooty box of a tramp freighter wallows over the long road where once the Flying Cloud or Westward Ho swept homeward-bound, save only a cathedral the loveliest, noblest fabrics ever wrought by man’s handiwork.

To Israel Fenwick of the second generation had been bequeathed an honorable repute, together with shares in many vessels and savings soundly invested | ashore. A master mind had taught him his trade and no other career occurred to him as possible. When the demand for square-riggers slackened and died, he turned to building schooners for the coastwise trade, and so carried the yard along without serious adversity until he had passed middle age. Then the tide of his affairs began to ebb, so very slowly that he failed to comprehend the change.

The small schooner had also seen its day and seemed doomed to go under in the struggle for survival. The competition of steam was merciless, and the only hope of meeting it lay in the large fore-andafters, five- and six-masted, with a capacity of thousands instead of hundreds of tons of cargo. Fewer of these were needed, and therefore some yards must be idle. Israel Fenwick remembered when the river at Spring Haven was crowded with a score of yards engaged in building wooden vessels. One by one they had been dismantled and the grass covered their rotting timbers. Now his alone was left.

When no orders were in hand, it had been a simple matter to assemble the modest capital required to put a little three-master afloat and so keep the plant employed. According to ancient custom the estimated cost was divided into sixty-four shares or ‘pieces’? which were offered for sale at a few hundred dollars each. They were bought by friends and neighbors, by the carpenters, calkers, and riggers in the yard, by skippers with an eye to a rainy day. The vessel was a codperative affair. Such pieces as were not disposed of otherwise, Israel Fenwick assumed as his own investment and so became the managing owner. |

It was far more difficult to promote as a community enterprise the building of a stately fivemaster to cost a hundred thousand dollars or more, and so it happened that the Fenwick yard was often empty, with no tapering rows of oak frames rising from the keel blocks. More and more Israel Fenwick was dependent on his marine railway which hauled out the smaller schooners and repaired them to go to sea again.

Even this resource diminished when dull times came and the owners of these battered, leaky little craft could not afford to mend them, but somehow kept them going and broke the crews’ hearts at the pumps in weather fair and foul. Sooner than abandon the yard, a tragedy more bitter than death to contemplate, Israel Fenwick turned his other property into cash as an emergency fund and stubbornly, unreasonably hoped for better days.

The yard had appeared much the same in his father’s time, for no other native industry has been so independent of the complex improvements of invention, of the substitution of the machine for the man. Weather-beaten shops for the carpenters and smiths, gaunt stagings, the rows of blocks sloping to the water’s edge, this was the equipment sufficient to fashion a ship stanch to endure the eternal conflict with the sea. It remained the handicraft of elderly, slow-spoken men who worked in wood for the love of it, hand and eye superbly trained. The ground was carpeted with chips and shavings, the smell of the place wholesomely redolent of balsam and tar.

Propped high and ave upon the alas was a three-masted schooner with a white rail and deck-houses. Fresh paint preserved an air of neat respectability, but it was evident that she had seen service long and arduous. No more than a woman can a vessel hide her age by means of artifice. Crouching beneath the bows, several workmen, with a boy or two to help, were ripping out a spongy section of stem and driving home new planks. The blows of their mallets rang with a cheerful rhythm. |

The master of the schooner emerged from the cabin, stiffly clambered down a ladder, and crossed the yard. He was lanky, sun-dried, and bearded, walking with a rheumatic limp. The black coat and sober mien conveyed a flavor of godly piety, but Captain Wesley Amazeen was famed from Eastport to Savannah for a blistering habit of speech. At the pile of timber where Israel Fenwick sunned himself, he halted to say: —

**T dunno as it’s much use to take her out of the river unless there’s a chance to earn her keep. Lumber from Bangor to New York ain’t touched such a ridiculous figger in a dozen years.”

The shipbuilder was awakened from a reverie and he stared a moment before replying: —

“Oh, yes, that reminds me, Wesley, —I wired and got a charter for you. Nothing much. Coal from Perth Amboy to an eastern port, and you'll have to go down empty. It will pay wages and leave a few dollars for your share. You know how I feel about the Anne Dudley. If I lay the vessel up I’ll feel that the breath of life has gone out of her for good.”

“Named after your wife that’s dead,” gently affirmed the skipper. ‘“‘You ain’t sayin’ it, Israel, but you are mighty considerate of an old cuss named Wesley Amazeen, and you don’t want to shove him out on the beach. It’s the same with Cap’n Sam Pickering in the Ulysses S. Grant, and Elmer Gallant in the Mary Fenwick. There’s only three of us old-timers left to sail for you. And you refuse to get out from under.”

“They are all the schooners I own in now, to any extent, Wesley. I’ve been selling out my other interests for what they would fetch. You men are old friends of mine and I naturally want you to make a living if there’s any way to do it. Trade will pick up again, as sure as guns. God Almighty’s wind is cheaper than steam and always was.”

Israel once more fell to musing, which was odd for him, and Captain Amazeen surveyed him curiously, stowing a fresh chew of tobacco in his wizened cheek. For some time they sat side by side in silence, gazing at the venerable Anne Dudley whose spars soared against the sky in delicate outline. At length Israel sighed and no longer rebelled against the strong desire to confide his intimate reflections. He had never been garrulous or emotional. The blood of his ancestry forbade it. But it seemed as if he and Wesley were again boys together. It was a symptom which he recognized as foretelling the decline of his faculties.

“I don’t show it, Wesley,” said he, in his resonant voice, “but I am breaking up. It’s my heart or

7 ee teat something below decks. The doctors seem kind of adrift about it. The pain keeps me awake nights. When we hoisted the foremast into that Nova Scotia schooner last spring, the tackle busted in the shears and I was knocked off the staging, — remember? I did n’t mend right somehow.”’

“Like hell you didn’t,” indignantly exclaimed Captain Amazeen. “You’ll live to see me drowned in the Anne Dudley ten years from now.”

*“You know those two boys of mine,” unheedingly resumed Israel. “‘Queer, awful queer, that a man should have two sons so totally different. You build two vessels from the same moulds and they’ll handle and sail and carry cargo pretty much alike. Here’s the oldest boy, my namesake, that I expected to be a right bower, and he isn’t worth a hoot any way you look at him. Thirty years old and losing one job after another, clerkin’ in a Portland shoe-store now, and married to a shiftless, draggled girl from God knows where.”

“He is nothin’ for a Fenwick to brag about,” cheerfully agreed the mariner; “but look at Dudley, the younger one. Smarter’n chain-lightning and not afraid to dirty his hands with hard work. When do you expect to fetch him ashore?”

“As soon as I can get word to him,” slowly answered Israel. “‘The U. S. Grant ought to be reported at the Vineyard this week and maybe I can catch him there with a letter. I sent him as mate in her to learn the trade of seafarin’, same as I did and my father before me. You must learn to know vessels, Wesley, before you can build ’em. Dudley is a licensed master by now, but I could n’t take the schooner away from Sam Pickering, and anyhow it’s time for the boy to come home and take over the yard. My cable is paid out ’most to the last link.”

“Dudley Fenwick take over the yard?” was the dubious echo. “I dunno but what I’m surprised, Israel. Are n’t you sort of sentencin’ him to a losing game?”

Obstinate, impassioned, unconvinced, the builder pounded his knee with his fist and his cheek was crimson as he shouted: —

“Young blood will bring it up again, I tell you! What else have I got to leave the boy except the yard and the three old schooners, and the name of Fenwick? He’ll stand by. He promised to, last time he came home.”

“Pshaw, I didn’t go to rile you,” said Captain Amazeen, a trifle puzzled by this vehement outburst. “Dudley will be jammin’ this yard plumb full of new vessels, wallopers of schooners to make Spring Haven’s eyes bug out.”

The skipper awkwardly regained his feet, pro- )

fanely complained of lumbago, and stood gazing down at Israel Fenwick, who ceased to notice him and was lost in dreams of vanished achievements, of ships long ago effaced by the sea. He had sent so many of them forth, — brave and sentient they had seemed to him, —and now they moved across his memory like a fleet of misty shadows, as unsubstantial as life itself. Presently Wesley Amazeen limped in the direction of the gate, squinting at the sun to find the time of day, and his lean visage was disconsolate. Something was infernally wrong with Israel or he would n’t be croaking like an old woman. He had n’t logged seventy years yet and looked as sound as a dollar. A flighty spell, most likely. Gone a leetle mite off at the top.

At the end of the voyage, a fortnight later, young Dudley Fenwick quitted the schooner and went home by rail. His father’s letter had been disquieting, an appeal rather rambling and pitiful to spend the winter in Spring Haven. Business coastwise was sure to pick up before long and the yard must be ready to accept orders for new vessels. He was n’t quite as strong as usual and the men needed a boss who could jump into overalls and hustle them along.

Dudley smiled at the thought of “hustling” those grave, elderly carpenters who appeared to intolerant youth more like a crew of pensioners.

Entering the low, white house just outside the gate of the yard, he found his father’s sister, Miss Mary Fenwick, in the kitchen. Spare and prim and wrinkled, her thin lips virtuously repressed the joy she felt at this home-coming. She pecked at his brown cheek, nervously fluttered from one room to the other, dropped a teacup on the floor, wrung her hands over it, and exclaimed : —

“Why, Dudley Fenwick, I never saw you look so well and hearty. I’ve been cooking up for you, but, land! there’s no appetite like a sailor’s. Thank you, I’m enjoyin’ poor health as usual, but so as to be about.” |

‘How is father and where is he, Aunt Mary?”

“In the yard, of course. He sets in the office and looks at the models on the wall, or putters outside. Putters, Dudley! A man who always steered straight from one job to the next. And I hear him walkin’ in his room at night. He looks about the same and yet he don’t. I can’t describe it, but Israel is like an old ship that is getting ready to go to pieces all at once.”

Dudley Fenwick nodded and left the house. As he strode into the yard, solid, outwardly tmperturb- © able, it was apparent that his father must have been just such a figure of a man in his youth. There were invisible differences, however, for that gentle mother, Anne Dudley, shy and like a flower, had been all sentiment and tenderness and it tempered the masterful Fenwick strain. She wrote verses for the “‘Spring Haven Beacon,” pensive little fragments signed with another name for fear Israel might laugh at her. To this younger son she had

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MISS MARY FENWICK left a smile that was warmer than his father’s and a mind that more readily betrayed his feelings. In both men was manifest the candid simplicity that is bred of close communion with the sea.

Israel was at his desk, poring over the dog-eared account-books of this schooner and that, balanced for every voyage with dividends or losses duly reckoned. At sight of Dudley in the door he said nothing, but his lip quivered and a trembling hand dropped the pen. Pulling himself together while the son regarded him wonderingly, he lumbered from the chair and huskily exclaimed: —

*“*T am ever so glad to see you. Did you tell Sam Pickering to sign another mate? I guess you will have to stay home.”

‘* Aye, sir, if you need me. You deserve a vacation. I can handle things for the winter.”

**It’s permanent,” said Israel, with labored emphasis. “‘I am a sheer hulk, Dudley, surveyed and condemned all of a sudden. There is n’t very much business to talk over with you. You know the ropes, and there is no better foreman on the coast than John Moon. He can build anything. I trained him myself.”

“We shall turn out no poor work,” agreed Dudley, reluctant to oppose or argue. ‘‘ Anything due in for repairs?”

“Only our own vessel, the Mary Fenwick. She was in Boston last I heard and Elmer Gallant

12.y THE CALL OF THE OFFSHORE WIND writes that he can’t risk winter weather in her without overhaulin’. He is liable to show up with her in a week or so. Sorry you missed the Anne Dudley. Wesley Amazeen is the same cantankerous old rooster, only more so, — still likes his Medford rum and bitters before breakfast. He speaks well of you.”

The shipbuilder lapsed into one of those spells of brooding detachment which were clouding him more and more frequently. His son waited and turned to look out at the yard, gray and almost deserted beneath a sodden sky. Three men and a pair of horses were moving a pile of ponderous timbers and he identified them as material for a keel. Israel was placing the stuff where it would be handy for starting work on the next new vessel. The young man’s eyes filled, and he laid a hand upon his father’s shoulder as he said: —

“It is warmer and snugger in the hiiies Supposing we go over there and take it easy till after dinner.”

Israel obeyed, dumbly, walking with a heavy, dragging tread. His massive features were less careworn, however, and he rallied after a time to spin a racy yarn or two with his old gusto. With the arrival of Dudley the future of the yard had ceased to. fret him. The burden was transferred and he serenely accepted the fact that his task was finished. Strange, he thought, that he should. still seem, to all appearances, rugged and unbroken and yet be so near to slipping his moorings. The malady, whatever it was, that tortured him with spasms of pain, mostly during the night, had become increasingly acute.

He lived no more than a month after this, going out peacefully while his sister and son were asleep. It was like a farewell message and a weighty obligation that he should have said to Dudley that very evening: —

“God Almighty’s wind is cheaper than steam, my son, and always was. The Fenwick yard has been building ’em for eighty years and you must n’t let go.”

The Mary Fenwick schooner had been delayed by stranding in a fog, but she was towed in a day before the funeral, and Captain Elmer Gallant, chubby and bald, half-masted the ensign and tied a bit of crape around his hat. Wesley Amazeen was beating up from Perth Amboy in the Anne Dudley when a gale blew him into Provincetown and he read the tidings in a Boston paper. He straightway hastened home by land to pay his respects to the memory of a friend and employer. The Ulysses S. Grant was loading granite at Rockland, and so Captain Samuel Pickering had not far to journey. All three men were past their prime, hardily enduring discomfort and danger to earn their bread, so _ buffeted by fortune that they had no other resource.

Israel Fenwick was borne to the burying-ground at Christmas Point and laid beside his father, within sight and sound of the open sea. Like a flagrant intrusion was the presence of the elder son and his shrew of a wife from Portland. In this solemn company of seafarers and artisans they seemed impossibly cheap and alien, displaying a counterfeit grief. At such a time it seemed a profanation that this flabby waster of a man should have been given the name of Israel Fenwick. He was a throw-back to some weaker graft on a sturdy tree. For years he had been a stranger at home, not disowned, but ignored. The loss of a father concerned him not so much as what the father had been unable to take with him, and as soon as was decently permissible he broached the subject to Dudley.

“He left a will, I presume. Know what’s in it, do you? Better put me wise and see if we can’t fix things up without a row.” :

““We propose to stand up for our rights,” sharply interjected young Mrs. Fenwick. ‘Father was very well off, with all this property and goodness knows how many schooners.”

Dudley frowned at them, but held his temper under. His brother had been christened Israel Charles, but with a nice regard for the fitness of things the family name had been dropped in Spring Haven.

*“The will leaves everything to me, Charlie,” courteously answered Dudley. “It may seem unfair to you, but —”’ | |

“But it’s a dirty shame,” blurted the other, his sallow cheek showing a trace of color. ‘I won’t stand for it. You can come through or [’ll fight it in court and prove unsound mind and undue influence. Oh, yes, I know the cards. I’m a pretty smooth guy.”

“He always treated us outrageously,” chimed in the loving wife. ‘“‘We expect to live in this house for one thing. It should belong to the married brother, of course.”

“Aunt Mary Fenwick has nowhere else to go and she is as poor as a church mouse,” Dudley patiently explained. “I have offered her the use of it.”

“You are surely the free-handed, generous gink, aren’t you,’ whined Charlie. “Any chance of a compromise before I begin busting the will? Look at the rotten luck I’ve had — one thing after another. And I’m Israel Fenwick, the third. Won’t that even dent you?”

**Don’t bother with him,” urged the wife, her chin in air. “The lawyer told us what to do if he turned nasty.”

Dudley’s face was as hard as the native granite, and the temptation was strong to make them the butt of a grim joke by offering to share his luckless inheritance, but a feeling of compassion restrained him.

Just then his brother suggested: —

““Fifty-fifty is the proper thing, Dudley, old man. There are only two of us to split it. Loosen up and be decent. There’s plenty for both.”

“Well, I'll tell you the truth,” exclaimed the younger Fenwick, with a laugh. “If I took you up on that, you would hate me worse than you do now. This estate is a minus quantity. It owes more than it can pay. Do you get that through your heads? The yard has been losing money, the vessels can’t earn dividends, and they are too old to sell. The bank holds a mortgage on the property. I am assigning to Aunt Mary Fenwick the few scattered pieces in outside schooners which father held fast to, on the chance that they may give her a small income. You have made a lovely exhibition of yourself, Charlie. I am prouder of you than ever.”

“Trying a bluff, Dudley? I’ll just have to call you. Make out the papers, easing yourself of half the estate, and I’ll sign ’em like a shot. That will keep the mess out of court.” |

“You make me want to throw the harpoon into you and twist it,’’ was the savage rejoinder. “‘When you are out of a job and hungry, let me know and I will lend a hand. There is n’t room in this house for you overnight. You have crowded yourself out of | ote

‘< It was his chance to make friends with us, dearie,”’ rose the shrill voice of Mrs. Fenwick. “‘We came to the funeral in a forgiving spirit, our hearts softened by a great loss. We may be up against it, but we ain’t obliged to swallow insults.”

“We may as well beat it, Ethel,”’ said her consort, snarling the words from a corner of his slack mouth, “but you can take it from me that I’ll get young Dudley yet. Sure, I was ready to be friendly, but can you see me playing the fond brother act any more?”

When they had gone, Aunt Mary Fenwick made no comment, but marched into the sitting-room and vehemently opened the windows to let in the fresh, clean air. This unhappy family affair disposed of, Dudley summoned the sorrowful skippers and round-shouldered John Moon, foreman of the yard, to a conference in the office. Courageously they faced him, but he knew they quaked lest he turn them adrift. He smiled rather unsteadily, for this was an episode in which business could not be kept clear of sentiment, and it was not easy to control his voice as he said: —

“I intend to do my level best to carry out my father’s wishes. I can do nothing else without breaking my word to him. And it is not all a matter of duty with me, for I honestly believe there is a fighting chance to win out. The whole coast knows the Fenwick yard and what it stands for. Old vessels are dropping from the list pretty fast. Last winter’s gales wiped out more than fifty of them. There is bound to be a scarcity of tonnage some day and some of the new building will come to us. Meanwhile

I’ll try to keep the yard in commission with repair work. In his last days my father seemed to see this place as it used to be, but perhaps it wasn’t all an old man’s dreaming. He was ready for the dark voyage over the uncharted sea and his vision may have been clearer than ours.”’

The group of listeners hung on every word. It profoundly impressed them to perceive that in speech and manner this might have been the Israel Fenwick of their earlier years, talking with them in this same room. The resemblance thrilled them. They felt the intrepid spirit, the fine edge of youth that no obstruction can dull. The foreman spoke for the others, a huge, gnarled hand upraised: —

“We old codgers have n’t been exactly blind to the drift of things, Dudley. The business has been scrapin’ bottom for a long spell, but you realize what Israel was. Sot till a winch could n’t budge him. Now we don’t cal’late to ride on your back, and that’s to be understood at the start.”

“Right you are, John,” smiled the son of his father. “That’s why we are here. You will stay on, of course. Make out a list, if you please, of the men who can best afford to lay off. Let them go as soon as the Mary Fenwick is overhauled. Keep the spar-maker, blacksmith, boss rigger, and two or three carpenters for the winter jobs that are sure to come with heavy weather outside. It has been a mild season so far, and few vessels in trouble.”’

“That sounds real sensible, Dudley,” hopefully approved the foreman, “‘if you are sure you can provide the wages without strainin’ yourself.”

“T can get away with it, John. I saved a few hundred dollars at sea and you bet it goes into the yard. Now about our own schooners. Fenwick vessels have always been sailed on shares, as you know, — the skipper to pay wages, grub, and half the port charges, and pocket fifty per cent of the gross freight. Can you manage to keep the Anne Dudley going on this basis, Captain Amazeen?”’

“‘I’d ruther not commit myself,” grinned Wesley, clutching his beard. “‘If you'll cast an eye over the vessel’s book for the last year, mebbe you'll see why I did n’t buy a few automobiles.”

**T understand,” said Dudley. ‘‘I was in the U. S. Grant myself, so you don’t have to tell me anything about her, Captain Pickering.”

Roly-poly Elmer Gallant, of the Mary Fenwick, mopped his face with a flurried gesture and feelingly ejaculated : —

“Tf it wa’n’t for a passel of relations that have no other visible means of support, I guess I could manage on shares —”’

“That’s enough,” broke in their employer. ‘‘Here is the proposition. For the present I waive my share, cut it out entirely. You three captains are to take your schooners and earn what you can for yourselves. There are some small pieces owned here in town, and if you can pay a little on them, all right, but this won't burden you much. I will undertake necessary repairs, to be made in this yard.”

“Tt sounds hellish generous to me,” was the laudatory verdict of Wesley Amazeen; “and if the blankety old hookers don’t appreciate a new lease of life, it won’t be for lack of drivin’ ’em.”’

*““My vessel will be shoved along for all she is worth,” chirruped little Elmer Gallant, his round face beaming.

“You won’t regret it, Dudley. There’s ginger in us yet,” came the deep accents of gruff Sam Pickering.

It was in this same room that these and many other masters had foregathered between voyages, tilting back in the wooden armchairs, aiming with notable accuracy at the sawdust box in the middle of the floor, talking interminably of their own trade as if there was nothing to interest them ashore. Dudley Fenwick was moved to shake hands with his stanch companions. It was, in a way, a ceremony, a symbol of his admission to this fraternity of the sea.

With no immediate purpose he left them and wandered into the yard, his heart heavier than his brave words had let them surmise. He stood gazing across the river where the leafless trees huddled among the rocks of a bleak and broken shore. At the lower end of the yard was an old wharf abandoned as unsafe and beside it rested the hull of a dismasted schooner given over to decay. Dudley’s idle vision was caught ee a oe

AN OLD SHIPYARD AND YOUNG BLOOD Q1 and held by a brilliant bit of color and he ran to warn - the girl in the crimson sweater who had ventured too far out upon the rickety wharf.

“Those planks are as brittle as punk,” he said to himself. “I must tell John Moon to put up a fence.”