Rugged water

Front matter

Tet

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Chapter I

DARK night, but a clear one. No clouds, no : fog, and the wind but a light southwesterly breeze. Warm, too, for November. The little room in the tower of the Setuckit Life-Saving Station was chilly, : of course—a landsman might have considered it decidedly _ cold—but to Seleucus Gammon, the member of the Setuckit _ crew on watch in the tower, it was warm, noticeably and * surprisingly so. Seleucus, who had come on duty dressed ’ for the ordinary November temperature, had unbuttoned the heavy jacket which he wore over his sweater and had hung his cap on the hook on the wall, beside the round, brass » ship’s clock. The brass of the clock was polished to a mirrorlike glisten. So, too, was the metal of the telescope on its stand in the middle of the room. So, also, was every particle of brass or nickel in that room. There was no light to render these things visible, and no stove or other heating apparatus. .. Heat within and cold without meant frost-covered window panes and consequent difficulty in looking through and from - those windows, in keeping watch up and down the beaches - and over the stretches of sea and shoal. In many stations .- at this period it was not customary to keep a man on watch ~ in the tower at night; the regulations did not require it *.and the matter was left to the discretion of the keeper. At . Setuckit, however, night watch in the tower was a part » of the regular routine; at least, since Captain Oswald » Myrick had been in charge there. ~~ Seleucus strolled slowly about the glass-inclosed room, — stopping to peer from each window in turn. He was a : :

huge, bulky man, with a salt sea roll in his walk, and as he lumbered from window to window in the darkness, a seeker for comparisons might have been reminded of a walrus wallowing about in an undersized tank. A bald head and a tremendous sweep of shaggy mustache were distinct aids to the walrus suggestion.

The views from each window were made up solely of blackness, spotted with fiery points. To Seleucus, however, the blackness was underlaid with the familiarity of long acquaintance, and every pin prick of fire a punctuation on a page he knew by heart. For example, to the east, ten miles away, the steady white spark was the Orham lighthouse shining out from the high sand bluffs fronting the Atlantic. Far out, and more to the south, another brilliant point marked the position of the lightship at Sand Hill Shoal, and still farther to the southeast and fainter, because of distance, were the lanterns of the Broad Rip lightship. Swinging to the south he noted two more lightships, those marking respectively the edges of the Tarpaulin and Hog’s Back, smaller shoals but quite as dangerous as their bigger brothers. To the west was still another, that moored by Midchannel Shoal, and, eight miles beyond, and flashing at minute intervals, was the lighthouse on Crow Ledge, unique because, like the house in the Scriptural story, it was founded upon a rock, and rocks are distinct novelties along the Cape Cod coast.

On this night—or morning, for it was almost that—and visible because of the unwonted clearness of the atmosphere, one more spark pricked the southern horizon, the light at Long Point, on Nonscusset Island. Between these were scattered others, much less brilliant, and these the watcher knew to be the lights of vessels—schooners for the most part—taking advantage of the fair weather to make safe passage between ports south of “Down East.” From the tower of the Setuckit Life-Saving Station in the later years of the nineteenth century—the years before the United States Life-Saving Service was taken over by the Naval Department and rechristened the Coast Guard, before the era of wireless stations and the Cape Cod Canal—on a clear night from Setuckit tower one might count no less than six lighthouses and six lightships, not including that of Setuckit lighthouse itself, which reared its blazing head two miles up the beach, and was, therefore, a next-door neighbor.

A beautiful coast in summer; in winter a wicked, cruel coast, where, so the records show, there were more wrecks during a period of fifty years than at any other spot, except one, from Key West to Eastport, Maine.

These matters, statistical and picturesque, were not, of course, in the thoughts of Mr. Gammon as he stood, hands in pockets, gazing through the tower window facing west. His mental speculations were engaged with matters much more personal and intimate. The little ship’s clock on the wall had just struck twice, so he knew that the time was two bells, or five o’clock, therefore it would soon be daybreak, and, later, sunrise, when his watch would end. He knew also that, down below, in the kitchen of the station, Ellis Badger, who happened to be cook that week, was preparing breakfast. Breakfast, the first meal of the four in the station routine of those days, was served before daylight. Dinner was at eleven, supper at four, and there was an extra meal about eight in the evening.

Seleucus thought of breakfast and his always present and enthusiastic appetite hailed the thought joyfully. Then he remembered the sort of cook Badger was, and the joy was chilled with a dash of foreboding. It was Ellis Badger who had accidentally dropped the kitchen cake of soap into the bean pot on a Saturday of the previous winter. The comments of his comrade were expressed with feeling.

“You ain’t mad, be you, Seleucus?” queried Mr. Badger solicitously. Gammon’s reply was noncommittal.

“TI don’t know’s I’m so mad that they’ll have to shoot me, Ellis,” he observed. “I ain’t bit nobody yet. But I am beginnin’ to show signs—I’m frothin’ at the mouth.”

It was he, also, who suggested that the soap be put into the Badger coffee. “So’s it'll be strong enough to wash with,” he explained, referring to the coffee.

His anticipations concerning breakfast were not, therefore, entirely free from misgiving, but forty-nine years of a life spent amid storms—meteorological always and matrimonial for the latter hali—had endowed Seleucus with a sort of amphibious philosophy, and made him more or less weatherproof. The most savage northeaster blew itself out eventually, and Mrs. Gammon—her Christian name was Jemima—stopped talking if one had sufficient fortitude to endure to the end. The sane procedure during both trials was patiently to wait for that end, and think of something else while waiting.

So, true to his code, and reflecting that, after all, a poor breakfast was better than no breakfast, Mr. Gammon shifted his thought, also his position, and, walking to the eastern window, looked out from that. As he stood there the eastern horizon turned from black to gray, the low-hanging stars above it began to dim; and below him the sand dunes and the cluster of shanties and fish houses of the little settlement at Setuckit Point slowly emerged from the gloom, separated, and assumed individual shape and proportions.

A step sounded on the stair leading to the tower, the door opened and Calvin Homer entered the little room. Homer was Number One man at the Setuckit Station; that is, his was, next to Captain Oswald Myrick’s, the position of greatest responsibility and command. On board a ship, he would have ranked as mate and his associates would have added a “sir” to their remarks when addressing him. On the station records he was “Surfman Number One,” but his comrades called him Calvin or “Cal,” just as they called their commander “Cap’n Oz” or “Ozzie.” The keeper of a Cape Cod Life-Saving Station, at that time, had absolute and autocratie control of his crew while the latter were on duty, and the crew recognized and obeyed that authority. But, being independent Yankees, they remained democrats so far as verbal homage to rank and title was concerned.

Homer came into the tower room, closing the door behind him. He was twenty-six, lean, square shouldered, smooth faced, gray eyed, and sunburned to a deep brick red. He had iSite just come up from his cot in the sleeping quarters on the second floor, and was wearing his blue uniform suit, with “NO. I” in white upon the coat sleeves. Gammon noticed the uniform immediately.

“Hello, Cal,” he drawled. “Up airly, ain’t you? And all togged out, too. Practicin’ up to show off afore the girls next summer ?”

Homer smiled. ‘Next summer is a long way off, Seleucus,” he said.

“Huh! Maybe ’tis when a feller is as young as you be. I'll be fifty next June, and I can smell Mayflowers already. How’s Cap’n Ozzie this mornin’ ?”

“T don’t know. His door is shut, so I hope he’s asleep, and his wife, too. I didn’t hear anybody moving as I came by. It was a quiet night, so maybe they both slept. I hope so. The cap’n needs all the rest he can get. He starts for home this morning.”

“Um-hum. I know he does. Peleg Myrick’s goin’ to take him over, they tell me. Good thing there’s a smooth sea. That old craft of Peleg’s is as sloppy as a dish pan if there’s more’n a hatful of water stirrin.’ I went up to Orham along of Peleg my last liberty day but one, and—crimustee !—I give you my word I thought I’d be drownded afore we made Baker’s beach. I told Peleg so. ‘What’s the matter with ye?’ says Peleg. “This boat of mine ’Il weather anything!’ he says; ‘and this ain’t nothin’ but a moderate blow. You won't get overboard this trip.” ‘I know it,’ I told him, ‘and that’s the trouble. When I’m overboard I can cal’late to make out to swim, but aboard here all I can do is set still and wait for the tide to go over my head. That last sea we shipped filled my ileskins full to the waist. Let me take your hand pump so I can see how bad my boots leak.’ He, he! Crimus! Peleg named that boat of his The Wild Duck. I told him he’d ought to named her The Loon. ‘A loon spends half his time under water,’ I says. He, he! ... Humph! Wonder to me Ozzie didn’t have a hoss ’n’ team to come down over the beach to fetch him and his wife. Don’t see why he didn’t, do you?”

Homer shook his head. “It’s a rough road and a long one,” he said. “I guess his wife thought it would be easier for a sick man to travel to West Harniss by water. And it’s almost a flat calm just now.”

“Just now? Do you mean ’tain’t likely to last?”

“Y’m afraid not—all day. The glass has fallen a good deal since ten o’clock and it’s still going down. ... Well, has anything happened since you came on watch?”

“Nothin’ but watchin’, and plenty of that. But you ain’t told me why you’ve got your dress-up clothes on? Don’t expect no summer boarders down to watch beach drill this time of year, do you?”

“Hardly. I put the uniform on to please the skipper. He told me he wished I would. Said it would make him feel a little more as if he was leaving somebody in command here when he quit. He’s pretty blue at going, but I tell him he'll be back here as well as ever in a fortnight or so.”

- Mr. Gammon shook his head, sighed, and reached into his pocket for his chewing tobacco.

“That’s what you told him, was it?’ he observed. “Humph! Ain’t you ever been to prayer meetin’ ?”

“TI guess I have. What’s that got to do with it?”

Seleucus inserted the plug of tobacco between his teeth and bit and tugged until he separated a section, which he tucked into his cheek.

“T used to go to Methodist vestry meetin’ myself about thirty year ago or such a matter,” he observed. “Used to go consider’ble in them days, I did, when I was home from fishin’. I was young and my morals wan’t settled in the straight and narrer channel, same as they be now. ... Eh? What did you say?”

“T didn’t say anything.”

“Didn’t you? Then it must have been what you looked that I heard. I went to meetin’ Friday nights pretty reg’lar. I was always the churchy kind. . . . Didn’t you say nothin’ then?”

Noi?

“Humph! You’re missin’ chances. I did go, for a fact.

RUGGED WATER a

You see, there was a girl that—well, never mind that part. But at them meetin’s, time and again, I’ve heard your greatuncle, Zebedee Ryder, him that kept grocery store, rant and rave about the sin of lyin’. He wouldn’t tell a lie for nothin’, your Uncle Zeb wouldn’t. Used to make his brags about it right out loud.” .

“Weil, it was something to brag about—if it was true.”

“Oh, I guess likely ’twas true enough. Nigh as I ever heard Zeb Ryder wouldn’t tell a lie—for nothin’. If there was five cents to be got a holt of then things might be different... . But, anyhow, what I’m tryin’ to say is that I can’t understand how you, one of Uncle Zeb’s own—er—ancestors, can sit in the skipper’s room down below there and tell Ozzie that he’ll be back here in a fortni’t. You know plaguy well he’ll never come back.”

The younger man did not answer immediately. When he did he said, “I surely hope he will.”

“So do I—in one way. In another I don’t. Oz Myrick has been life-savin’ for twenty-odd year. He was one of the first surfmen on one of the fust reg’lar crews ever set patrollin’ a Cape Cod beach. Afore that he was fishin’ on the Banks, and swabbin’ decks aboard a square rigger when he wan't more’n a kid. He’s pretty night as much of a veteran as Superintendent Kellogg, down to Provincetown. It’s time he give up and took a rest. Yes, and his check is about ready to be handed in for keeps. He’s sick and it’s the kind of sickness folks his age don’t get over.”

Homer nodded. “He knows it,” he said, briefly.

“Course he knows it. Cap’n Oz ain’t anybody’s fool. Told you he was cal’latin’ to try and have you appointed keeper in his place, didn’t he?”

Homer looked at him sharply. “What makes you say that?’ he demanded.

“’Cause he told me he was cal’latin’ to. Good notion, too.”

His companion shook his head. “I’m not so sure that the notion is good,” he said. “There are at least five men here, and one of ’em is yourself, who have been in the service fonger than I have.”

“Humph! I cal’late you could find plenty of fellers up to Charlestown jail that have been in there long enough, but *twouldn’t be one of them that would be picked out for warden. It takes more’n a kag of salt mackerel on legs to handle this job down here. It takes a man—with brains. We've got a good crew, there’s no doubt about that.”

“You bet there isn’t!’

“T shouldn’t take no such bet. They’re all right, for this Setuckit crew. But what are they? Why, the heft of ’em are fellers like me, that have been in and on and around salt water so long the pickle drips off ’°em when they walk. They ain’t scared of nothin’. I give in to that, but that ain’t because they don’t know enough to be. They’re too stubborn to let anything scare ’em, that’s why. But they’re as independent and cranky as a parcel of washtubs afloat. A man they know and have confidence in, he can handle ’em. But you let somebody try it that ain’t that kind and then see. Would I take the job of keeper down here? I, nor Hez Rogers, nor Ed Bloomer, nor Sam Bearse, nor any of ’em? You bet we wouldn’t!”

“Why not?”

“Cause we've got sense enough to realize the kind of sense we ain’t got. A good fo’mast hand don’t necessary make a good skipper. Takes more’n rubber muscles and codline hair, that does. Takes brains, I tell you. You’ve got brains, Cal, along with nerve and the rest of it. You can handle a schooner in a shoal, or a surfman that’s been on liberty, and has come back full of pepper tea, and do it judgmatically. When you get through the wreck’s afloat, if she’s floatable, and the man’s ready and willin’ to go to work again. And all hands are satisfied the right thing’s been done. This crew here—the heft of ’em—would row you to hell over bilin’ water if you give the word to launch. They’ve seen you go there and back again more’n once since Cap’n Oz was took sick. They’d be glad to have you for skipper. And Ozzie wants you to be, and so does District

Superintendent Kellogg, for the matter of that. There’s only one man I know that hadn’t ought to want it.”

“Who is that ?”

“You yourself. You ain’t a Scrabbletown lobscouser, like the most oi us. Your old man was a square-rig cap’n, in his day, and your mother was a Baker and time was when her folks was counted high toned’and worth money, so I’ve heard tell. You’re smart. You’ve been to high school. You could get a job up to Boston, and have vessels of your own runnin’ ashore afore you died, if you’d mind to set out for it. What in the nation you want to waste your time chasin’ other folks’s wrecks is more’n I can make out. If you want to be keeper of Setuckit Life-Savin’ Station I cal’late you can. But why you want to, that I don’t know. Why do you, Cal? What makes you stay here?”

The young man shook his head. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I guess it’s because—because—well, you could have had a good job ashore last winter, Seleucus. I know of at least one that was offered you. Why do you stay here?”

Gammon grinned. “’Cause I was born a darn fool, and ain’t growed out of the habit, I cal’late,” he said. “I swear off every fall and vow I’m through life-savin’. Then I turn to and swear on again. There’s somethin’ about this—this crazy job that gets a feller, same as rum. I like it.”

Homer nodded. “I know,” he said. “And it’s the same way with me. I like it—and I can’t give it up—yet. I went into the service just as a time-filler four years ago. I had been at home up in the village for three months with mother ; she was sick, and I had to be there. Then she died and— well, there was nothing else in the way of work in sight, and here was sixty-five a month, and a good deal of fun. I meant to stay six months, perhaps. I’m here yet.”

“Yes, so you be. But you don’t have to stay here, twelve mile from nowhere, do you?”

“No-o. But—weil, I seem to be married to the job.”

Seleucus shivered. “Boy,” he said solemnly, “don’t talk that way at your age. If you was married you’d have an excuse for the tweitve mile—yes, or fifty. . . . There, there!

Let’s talk about somethin’ cheerful. There was a Swede drownded off a schooner down along Race Point last week, so Wallie Oaks was tellin’ me. He see it in the Boston paper day afore yesterday when he was over to Harniss.” The clock struck three bells and, later, four. The gray streak along the eastern horizon broadened, turned to rose and then crimson. Over the edge of the Atlantic, seen beyond the distant roofs of Orham, rolled the winter sun. Seleucus yawned, stretched and took his cap from the hook. “And that’s over,” he observed thankfully, referring to his term on watch. “One more night nigher the graveyard, as my grandmother used to say, by way of brightenin’ up breakfast. Well, I don’t need no brightenin’ up for my breakfast. And you ain’t had yours neither, have you? Here’s Sam. Cal, let’s you and me go down and mug up.”

Sam Bearse, raw boned, tanned and mustached, had entered the room while his fellow surfman was speaking. He grunted a “How be you, Seleucus? Hello, Cal,” and, hanging his cap up on the hook, prepared to take over the tower watch. Homer and Gammon descended to the kitchen. Then they “mugged up,” that is, they ate breakfast together. The other men, having already breakfasted and washed the dishes—each washing his own—were now smoking and sky- Jarking outside the station in the sunshine. It being clear weather, no one was on beach patrol that morning.

Homer finished first, and, leaving his comrade still busy with coffee and doughnuts, rose from the table and prepared to go out.

“T’ll attend to my dishes when I come in, Seleucus,” he said. “I’m going to look around a minute or two.”

Seleucus nodded. ‘“Heave ahead,” he observed, his mouth full. “I'll be done after a spell. Cal’latin’ to have another cup of Ellis’s coffee.”

“That'll be the fourth, won’t it?”

“Um-hum. But it takes about five of this slumgullion to make one of reg’lar coffee. If I didn’t have no more body to me than this coffee’s got, I’d have to hire help to find myself on a dark night. Like drinkin’ fog, ’tis. Every doughnut I eat sinks right down through to the bottom.”

There was a chill in the air in spite of the sunshine, but to Calvin Homer and his associates the morning was astonishingly mild and balmy. A little breeze had sprung up, and had shifted more toward the north; the beach grass in the hollows between the dunes and on their crests was waving, the water of the bay was blue and sparkling. Over all, as always at Setuckit, sounded the surge and hiss and thunder of the surf along the beach on the ocean side.

Hezekiah Rogers, surfman Number Four, hailed Homer as the latter passed.

“Wind’s breezin’ on a little mite, Cal,” he said. ‘And cantin’ round more to the no’th. Have you noticed the glass? Fallin’, ain’t it?”

“Yes. It has been falling all night.”

“TI bet you! Never see a day like this, this time of year, but it turned out to be a weather breeder. We'll have one old bird of a no’theaster by nighttime, see if we don’t. And I have to turn out on patrol at twelve. Godfreys! Who wouldn’t sell the farm and go to sea?”

Homer smiled, but did not answer, and, turning the corner of the station, walked toward the buildings at its rear. Two cats and a weather-beaten terrier, the latter a survivor from a wrecked schooner, came trotting to meet him. In a lath inclosure adjoining the barn, a half dozen hens and a rooster with most of his tail feathers blown or pecked away were scratching—presumably for exercise—at the sand. In the barn itself, the station horses—a pair of sturdy animals, named respectively, “Port” and “Starboard”—were standing in their stalls. The horses were almost as valuable members of the Setuckit life-saving outfit as the humans. They pulled the boat wagons to the shore, hauled the heavy car bearing the beach apparatus—the latter comprising the Lyle gun, the breeches buoy, the life car, and all their paraphernalia—on the rare occasions when the apparatus was used, and were respected, pampered and better fed than their twolegged comrades. Homer patted their heads, made sure that they had been given their morning rations, and turned to go out. Hez Rogers met him at the barn door.

“Olive’s lookin’ for you, Cal,” he announced. “She says Ozzie’s up and rigged and ready to leave, and wants to see you.”

Olive Myrick was the captain’s wife. Her home was at West Harniss, nine miles distant across the bay, but she had come down to the station when her husband was taken ill, and had been living there for three weeks. The keeper was permitted, under the regulations, to have his wife with him. In some stations she acted as cook and general housekeeper, receiving a small allowance for the work.

Homer found her waiting for him in the kitchen. She looked tired and worn and anxious, as she had reason to be.

“Oswald wants to see you, Calvin,” she said. “We’re goin’ over to the main just as soon as the boat’s ready and he’s set on talkin’ with you afore he leaves. Go right in.”

The skipper’s room at Setuckit was on the first floor, leading from the mess room. Entering, Homer found Captain Myrick, dressed and sitting in a rocking chair. The skipper was pale and haggard and his clothes hung loosely on his body. He had lost weight during his illness. Calvin hailed him cheerfully.

“Good morning, Cap’n,” he said. ‘Well, well! you look fitas a fiddle. All taut and rigged and ready to put to sea, eh? We're going to miss you, but we'll be all the more glad when you come back. And you couldn’t have better weather for the trip.”

Myrick ignored the reference to his appearance, and the weather. He motioned to the only other chair in the room.

“Sit down, Cal,” he ordered. “I’ve got a word or so to say to you.”

Homer took the other chair. Captain Myrick drew a long breath.

“Calvin,” he went on, “I’m startin’ on my last cruise, and I know it.” |

His subordinate hastened to protest. “No, no!” he exclaimed. ‘You shouldn’t talk that way. What you need is rest. You'll be all right in—” :

“Sshh! We ain’t young ones, you and I, and there’s no sense in makin’ believe. I’m never comin’ back. I’ve got my orders and I’m bound in. I know it—although I try to let Olive think I don’t. But I do, and so does she, and so do you and all hands. I’m through.”

“But, Cap’n—”

“Sshh! You’re wastin’ time, and I ain’t got much more to waste, down here. There'll be a new skipper at the Setuckit Station inside of a month—inside of a week, if my say-so counts—and you’re the man that’ll have the job, if you want it. What I want to make sure of is that you do want it. Do you?”

Homer hesitated. He did want the appointment, wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, but he liked and admired the man before him, and his sense of loyalty was strong.

“T don’t see any use in talking about that,’ he declared stubbornly. ‘“You’re the keeper here, and there never was a better one. I’ve enjoyed working under you and I’d like nothing better than to keep on doing it, as long as I stay in the service.”

“Um-hum. Well, what I’m asking you is if you’re figgerin’ on stayin’ in the service. Are you?”

“Yes. I guess so. For the present, anyway.”

“You guess so? Ain’t you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. But—”

“Never mind the buts. What do you want to stay for? It ain’t the pay. I’ve been chasin’ wrecks for twenty-odd year, and all I’m gettin’ is seventy-five a month. You could earn more’n that—a smart young feller like you—at almost anything ashore. What are you wastin’ your time life-savin’ for?”

It was the same question Seleucus Gammon had asked that very morning. And Homer had asked himself that question many times during the past months. And the answer, however unsatisfactory, was always the same.

“T like the work, Cap’n,” he replied. “I realize the pay amounts to nothing. It isn’t that. It is just—well, there is something about it that—that—”

“T know. And I know what ’tis, too. It’s the same thing that makes a feller go out codfishin’ right along, winter and summer, when he could earn more money sawin’ wood at home.”

“Yes. But, you see—well, it’s a man’s job.”

“So’s sawin’ wood. But I know what you mean. This life-savin’ game is a man’s job—for a boy’s wages. And it’s more’n that; there’s the gamble init. You kind of gamble against all outdoors for your life and the other man’s. I know-——Lord, don’t I! It’s that, and the salt in your blood and mine, that makes us stick to it. And there’s a kind of pride, too. Cal, the average man would call me a fool, and I guess I am, but I’ve took more pride in keepin’ this station the way it ought to be than I would bein’ President of the United States.”

“T understand. And you’ve kept it well, too.”

“Yes, I cal’late I can say I have. And that’s another thing I wanted to say to you. If you’re sure you want to be keeper here, I’m goin’ to recommend you and my word ought to carry some heft with the superintendent. But, if you are skipper of this station, I want you to promise me you'll keep up the Setuckit record. Since I’ve been here we’ve handled I don’t know how many wrecks, some of ’em we got afloat again and lots of ’em we didn’t, but we never lost one life. I’m kind of proud of that.”

“You ought to be.”

“Maybe so; I am, anyhow. And there’s another thing I’ve took pride in. There’s never been a call come to this station yet that we ain’t answered. There never was a vessel in distress off our section—and some that weren’t ours— that we ain’t gone out to her, no matter how much of a gale of wind was blowin’ nor what kind of a sea was runnin’. And we never started and then give up and turned back. There ain’t so many stations can say that.”