A Sailor's Wife

I

A NEW mate was coming on board just as the steward, holding the dinner bell by the clapper, stepped over the sill on to the grating. The newcomer carried tenderly in one hand a square wooden box and under his arm a three-cornered wooden box; he clutched furthermore a dilapidated grip, reenforced by a rope around its middle; a sea bag half full of something and a long wooden chest followed him over the rail. ‘He thinks he’s a navigator,’ sniffed the steward, letting the soup cool while he appraised this young man. ‘Huh! With his charts and his clock and his sextant and trash.’ The steward was a yellowish lean man with long ringlets.

The new mate cast an expert eye about and started toward the cabin; he did have an experienced air.

‘Dinner’s ready, sir,’ said the steward politely.

‘So’m I,’ responded the young man, vanishing into his room and placing the objects of his solicitude on the berth. A couple of sailors brought in the rest of the dunnage. The steward remembered to ring the bell, loud and long.

There came presently a murmur in the forward cabin. The mate pulled his red tie straight, adjusted his bright blue suit, smoothed his hair, took a deep breath for another new skipper, and advanced, hesitating respectfully within the forward cabin door. A little gray wisp of a woman in a purple dress was just stopping, with her hand on the wooden settee on the starboard side. Behind her followed a man, not tall, with stiff, carefully trimmed white hair and a neat white pointed beard, and a fierce blue eye that stabbed the stranger; however, he shook hands. He turned to the gray little woman.

‘ M-m-m-m — ’ he darted a murderous blue gleam at the new officer’s serene face—‘M-mister K-k-k-k—'

‘He’s going to crow,’ thought the mate. Should he help him out? He glanced at the old woman and found her watching him anxiously as if there were some clue which he was unlikely to know; he decided against assistance and waited coolly, turning his grayishblue eyes on the furious skipper, mouthing and grimacing.

‘ K-k-k-kimball,’ said Captain McClellan, rushing off the name rapidly lest it elude him at the ‘b.’ In relief the old woman smiled at the young man, and his own set face relaxed into a cheerful grin in no wise hinting at the spasmodic giggles wriggling around inside him. They sat down. The soup was cold.

‘S-s-s-steward! ’ burst out the old man like a steam exhaust. ‘This s-s-s-soupis s-s-s-stone c-c-c-cold!’

‘Yes, sir!’ The steward retired suddenly to the back of the pantry and rattled dishes and silver. The old man glared.

‘I g-g-g-getanew s-s-s-stewardevery t-t-t-trip! ’

The rattling stopped. The mate nodded. ’They ain’t much good,’ he agreed.

The steward brimmed with venom. ‘He gets a new mate, too,’ he muttered devastatingly to the mustard pot.

The old woman made a few amiable remarks and the new mate thought she was n’t bad as old women went. The skipper told a long and funny tale, stuttering fearfully throughout. Mr. Kimball laughed in the right place, showed no impatience at the coyness of consonants, and seemed not in the least surprised or amused at his superior’s affliction; he was utterly calm. Sometimes the old woman almost glowed, and then again a terrible anxiety seized her; soon he was bound to laugh in the wrong place or laugh a little too hard — oh, it was dreadful! But the meal drew to an end without mishap.

' Hada f-f-f-firstofficer f-f-f-fiveyearsago n-n-n-named K-k-k-kimball,’ the captain vouchsafed. ' R-r-r-redhair.’

‘Must have been my brother John,’ replied Mr. Kimball, inwardly racked at the thought of how John must have behaved under these trying conditions.

‘That s-s-s-so! A c-c-c-capableman b-b-b-buta p-p-p-perfect f-f-f-fool!’ A memory of old wrongs caused the bright blue eyes to transfix the brother of such a seaman. Stephen Kimball’s diaphragm or stomach or some powerful organ within turned a backward somersault and a double twist; he felt the alarmed eyes regarding him from across the table, clenched a big fist, and recovered.

‘He’s always been like that,’he managed to reply casually.

The fierce blue eyes and the worried faded eyes fell away. The skipper pushed back his chair and rose. They all rose. The skipper gave the mate a matter-of-fact nod and the old woman smiled at him shyly. ‘ She seems a good old thing,’ thought the mate, feeling in his pocket for his pipe.

II

Seven years almost to a day had passed since Stephen Kimball first set foot on the deck of the Joseph M. Parr. To-day he leaned on the rail waiting to see the skipper over the side into the Chinese boat bobbing at the foot of the ladder. At his left the dark red railroad ties were being tossed up endlessly from the hold to the shoulders of naked coolies, who bore them lightly to the rail and cast them over the side to the lighter. Like a machine they worked, howling a wild chant. The mate whistled it softly. Before him the water stretched smooth, streaked with red and green and yellow, shallow, doubtless filthy, warm, silvered in the sun; far away were the mud forts of Taku, low against the pale sky. Lord, it was hot already, and the old man had to make the trip up to Tientsin. There he was now.

The skipper stepped over the forward cabin doorsill and came to the rail. Pausing with his foot on the lowest brass-bound step, he felt in his pocket, excitedly called to the boatman, and hurried back to the cabin. Stephen lounged over to the companionway for a drink of lukewarm boiled water. What tasteless stuff it was! He strolled over to port and stared at the limitlessness of the Yellow Sea. A seamanlike consciousness warning him presently that the old man was at the door again, he stepped quickly across the deck to the gangway for the slight ceremony of departure. Simultaneously both men perceived that there, afar off, making for Taku, was the boatman. Scarlet flamed in the old man’s face; his white whiskers bristled; he shook a furious and threatening arm at the departing one.

’K-k-k-k-k-k-k-k — ’he shouted impotently.

Without a thought the mate broke a seven-years-old rule. He raised his bad-weather voice in a hearty shout, and he too made a gesture of the arm that, with the accompaniment of the bellow, stopped the Chinaman in his tracks. Idling sailors on the fo’c’sle fell to work earnestly; the cook dropped an iron kettle; down below the old woman stuck a needle in her thumb.

‘Come back yere!’ he roared. ‘You devilish fool! You—’ He stopped, aghast. But the boatman, likewise aghast, spun his boat like a top and bent dementedly to the oars. In dead silence Stephen watched him. Seven years he’d just thrown away — seven good years. Slowly, at a chattering sound at his right, he turned his crimsoned face.

’Q-q-q-quiteright, M-m-m-m-mister K-k-k-k-kimball,’ sputtered the old fellow, nodding his head quickly and emphatically.

The mate leaned on the rail, gazing at the receding boat. He pulled a yellowed handkerchief from a pocket and mopped his wet and anguished face. Oh, gosh! That was a good chap, that white-whiskered old tartar. His mind sped back over the years of his service under him on the Joseph M. Parr, the seas they had sailed, the storms and the calms, danger and weariness and monotony — he was, yes, he was a prime old fellow. The old woman, too — gosh, she was a hero; she also had shared the years of danger and weariness and monotony. Through them all she had sat opposite him at table, a tiny dignified woman, dressed in gay-colored wool gowns and foreign silks. She was never inquisitive, never silly; always kind and pleasant and quiet and proud — not like some skippers’ wives he’d seen! They were good friends. The fact that he never appeared to notice the eccentric speech of ‘Stuttering Johnny’ had, he thought, created a bond, and an interest in those rugs she hooked with her poor knotted fingers strengthened it. It was a great day when she discovered that he could draw. She called him Stephen. It would have been humiliating to have left in disgrace with the old man.

The mate roused himself and began a tour of the ship, urging a display of more energy in various quarters. He observed a couple of sailors in earnest conference, hastily broken off, with one of the Chinamen, and he suspected they were after some liquor. It was about time; he must keep his eye open. From the main deck he noticed presently that the old woman was up on the poop; he’d go and chin with her in a minute.

Mrs. McClellan walked slowly back and forth, enjoying the windless heat; occasionally when she reached the limit of the awning she spread and bent her fingers in the sunshine, laying them on the warm white rail. Homely old hands with swollen joints — the fingers were almost limber again. Even her knees were flexible. Her shoulder was all right. At the moment she resembled Father William for general suppleness; she felt quite young and happy. If a ship might only stay forever in one place, a baking-hot glorious place, she would not feel like eighty when she was only fiftyseven; this rheumatism had really begun that time about twenty years ago when they were in Bombay during the rainy season. Last winter had been particularly bad, though; there were two months when she could n’t, simply could not, hold her rug hook strongly enough to pull the rags through the burlap. Her shoulder never had hurt her until last winter. She wiggled all her fingers joyously and hoped that Russell would n’t get that charter he was promising; he might prefer to send an English ship — indeed, he should.

The deck was warm under her feet. She had come up the companionway stairs with the Chinese rug in her arms just like any old woman — any woman of fifty-seven, that is. Captain Bristol’s wife, who must be older than she, looked much younger, and she behaved, moreover, in a silly, hail-fellow way even with the mates; why, once in Russell’s she had actually been flirting quite boisterously with some captains loafing there. It must be mortifying to Captain Bristol. Of course that was three years ago; but the Fortuna had sailed from Boston two weeks before they had arrived there a year ago last spring, and Mr. Bellows had said, laughing, that she was just the same as ever. Poor woman — she was so terrified at sea.

Mrs. McClellan leaned against the rail so that the slanting rays of sun beat on her shoulders, and she put her hands behind her so that they also basked in the warmth. It looked hot — the naked coolies; the water striped in brown and green and light blue; bluish in the distance the low forts of Taku; the gaudy dragon flies still clinging to the rigging. It would be a hot journey to Tientsin for Kit; he would n’t be able to get back before evening, surely. Had he remembered to take the letter?

She pushed the barrel chair, which had been in the sun and was lovely and warm, nearer the lazaret hatch and sat down. She wished Stephen would come up so that she could show him the rug, but of course she could not call him. She would just have to wait.

It was strange about responsibility. She seemed always to be feeling responsible for something. Ever since she had married Kit she had burdened herself with the good report of sea captains’ wives; before that, even when she was a little girl, she had appreciated her conspicuous place in her father’s country parish. She had continually to represent something — some grown-up person’s idea of little girls, her irascible husband’s dignity, a sea captain’s wife’s position. Harking back over fifty-seven years, she could recall as a release from the burden of obligation only those Saturday afternoons in summer when, in awful selfcontrol, she accompanied her father down to that point on the Kennebec where he retired to prepare his Sunday sermons. There, in intervals of relaxation, — frequent intervals, it seemed, — he taught her to swim, a younger, shrieking, excited child, far from watchful parishioners who she hoped pictured her sitting quietly beside their pastor or perhaps picking flowers elegantly, instead of kicking madly in the cold water under direct clerical supervision or kicking in a less evangelical way, connected to the Sunday sermon simply by a long bit of old clothesline. In an irresponsible, unparsonlike past had her father splashed and yelled and swum?

What good had it been to her to be so scrupulous? There was the camel she had wanted to ride twenty years ago; what harm would it have been? There were those dances when she was a girl — no, when she was a parson’s daughter. There was that ricksha race for skippers’ wives; even though she was but twenty-eight then, and weighed only ninety-two pounds, it had n’t seemed the thing to do exactly. Then there were the many years when she had so longed to go on deck and get drenched with rain and spray, windblown and storm-beaten; but everyone on board would have thought it strange, and she would have been in the way. Where does responsibility come from? And why does it seize upon some people and not on others? And in any case why should it attack any person before she is sixty and rheumatic?

Well, her dresses were of gay colors.

Ah, there was Stephen. He had slicked his hair and straightened his tie and donned his faded blue dungaree coat; the blue was becoming to his brown face and grayish-blue eyes. His grin was hearty.

‘This is a warm day for you,’ he congratulated the old woman.

‘Is n’t it!’ she rejoiced. ’I have n’t had a twinge for a week!’

‘Is that so? You might get the skipper to settle here — be a missionary,’ he remarked cheerfully. ‘You could teach the Ladies’ Aid to make rugs — but I don’t see where you’d get the cast-off clothing. Though it seems to have been cast off, all right.’ They laughed.

‘I have brought up the Chinese rug for you to see,’ she said. ‘Will you undo it? The tape is in a hard knot. Mr. Goss — it’s for him — wrote and asked Kit to get him one. They told Kit in Tientsin that it was sixty or seventy years old and excellent work. It’s very pretty,’

Stephen bent to the knotted tape, picking earnestly with his big fingers; the rug was wrapped in a coarse ship’s sheet and firmly tied. Mrs. McClellan leaned forward eagerly. The last knot yielded and the mate let the rug and sheet unroll on the spotless deck.

‘Oh!’ he said at once, softly.

It was thick and soft and velvety. The ground was a deep, deep blue. In the centre there was a medallion of a stiff arrangement of conventional flowers and some geometrical lines in rich dim colors — red and white, with touches of yellow and a blue more intense than the ground. The border repeated the colors in a trailing stiff floral pattern — deep blue, dull red, touches of yellow and white. The little lines on the inside edge of the main border were narrow strips of color, and on the outer edge were again three narrow ribbons of white, deep blue, and red. Each corner of the field contained a scheme of branches, flowers, lines, in the same shades. It was like a painting perfect in design and tint. The mate, leaning against the rail, and Mrs. McClellan, bending forward in her chair, chin in hand, stared at it; it evoked dreams like a leaping fire on the hearth.

‘Gee!’ said Stephen presently with a sigh. ‘It’s the prettiest rug I ever saw.’

‘Do you know, Stephen, it’s made something like a hooked rug. I examined it carefully on the cabin table. All those little bits of wool are pulled through with a loop on the wrong side and with both ends up, but they’re twisted around the foundation so they don’t pull out easily. I pulled one out with the tweezers. Think how long it must have taken to put in all those tiny threads of wool — why, they are n’t a twentieth of the size of my rags.’

‘You must have to learn to make a pattern like that,’ commented Stephen. ‘That border repeats and comes out right at the end, and goes around the corners, too, just as neat. And those things in the corners — they are n’t just like the middle affair or exactly like the border, either, but you can see they all belong to the same family. The colors help, I suppose. It’s a pretty sight.’

‘Do you think,’ the old woman halfhesitated, ‘that we could make a hooked rug something like it? Do you think you could copy it? Is it too hard?’

‘Sure I could do it,’ he responded. ‘It’s hard to draw such little whirligigs on burlap, but I guess I could, all right. The bos’n’s got a good piece of burlap.’

‘I could tear the rags smaller than usual,’ meditated the old woman.

‘It would take longer.'

‘Yes, it would, of course.’ There was a pause, each pondering the undertaking. The mate came to a decision.

‘I’ll get a pencil.’ Soon he was back again with a large folded piece of brown paper, a pencil, and a ruler. He flattened the paper on the hatch, smoothing and patting the creases. ‘It’ll be easier to copy it on paper first,’ he remarked. ‘And I’ll be getting used to the pattern, too.’ He measured the paper carefully; it was a large sheet and bent stiffly over the edges of the hatch. He measured the rug and looked up, pleased. ’It will be an easy scale. Just half size.’

‘Why don’t you — It’s alike on both ends, is n’t it? Why don’t you just copy one end, life-size?’

He started, stared at her, and laughed. ‘What a brain!’

‘I just thought —' she murmured apologetically, flushing.

‘That’s it,’ he pursued. ‘You just thought. That was all.’ When the skipper was not about he loved to tease her a little. ‘Now I—’

He measured and drew, measured and drew, and presently had the outline of half the rug and its borders on the paper. He cut off the extra length of paper and stowed it away in his pocket. Then he gave himself to a careful study of the rug. It was almost alike at both ends, evidently supposed to be alike; but here was a little blue branch that seemed to have no counterpart, and those little white lines there were not in the corresponding corner. Even that medallion in the middle was quite different on the two sides, though he had thought it the same. The more he regarded the medallion the more irritated he grew with it; it seemed quite different. And he had cut off the paper. How could it look so symmetrical? Mrs. McClellan saw that he was annoyed.

‘What is the matter?’ she asked anxiously.

‘It’s that, cussed medallion,’ he explained. ‘I guess I’ll have to do it whole. It’s not alike on both sides. You see here — that little white piece that goes under the yellow thing? Well, now, where are they on the other side? They’re not there. But there is a kind of dark blue leaf there on that side, and now look, it’s not here. It’s all different. And I cut off that paper!’ He took the paper from his pocket and unfolded it; hopefully he compared the medallion with the width of the paper. Confound it, the paper was too narrow. ‘I’ll have to paste two pieces together,’ he mourned. ‘I have n’t any more. I ’ll get the cook to make me some paste.’

Mrs. McClellan settled back in her chair and eyed the deceitful rug. Perhaps that was why it was so charming — because it was n’t so exactly so. Still, in her rugs — She had always to make little changes in the patterns because of a dearth of rags of the right color, or because she had rubbed out part of the design with her sleeve and later made an error in guessing where the original line had been. But she had supposed a bough ten rug would be as perfect as an oilcloth. It gave her a singularly triumphant feeling now to recall the number of rugs that had turned out to have small irregularities. There was that funny one she had sent to Mary Ann in which the last twelve inches of the background were blue and all the rest was black — Kit’s wedding suit that the moths got into. Then in the ship rug some of the water was blue and some was green, and in the end she had had to pull out some blue from one place to put in another and consequently had had to incorporate a great many white-topped waves, so that Kit never failed to say the ship was not the right build for an Arctic explorer among icebergs. They had had some good times about the rugs since Stephen had been mate; at dinner and at supper they discussed the present rug or the next one, Kit stammering frightfully but serenely. Kit had always wanted a rug with the stars on it; on cold clear nights he selected favorite constellations that he clamored to have represented. Stephen, of course, like a good subordinate, agreed respectfully to all the skipper’s notions, and she had had to furnish all the opposition. They had finally compromised on the stars by making a star border on that ship rug — all Kit’s favorites were there, though when he found they were arranged just anyhow so as to form a good sensible design he scolded two whole voyages without ceasing over the incongruity of placing the Dipper and Orion cheek by jowl and other similar absurdities. Kit loved to talk. He wanted a fruit rug now — a fruit rug! Even she could n’t wear pink and orange and yellow and scarlet dresses! Kit was a painstaking, docile trimmer, though. She could n’t use the scissors much herself. Except for the rheumatism, life had been incomparably easier the last six or seven years.

The mate emerged from the galley holding a cup. Mrs. McClellan watched him as he came. She never grew tired of seeing the sailors cross the deck and come up by the side of the house — the effortlessness, the stride apparently slow but as rhythmic as a dance; a cat had hardly more ease of movement than any old tar in his worn sea clothes.

Stephen cut and pasted his paper and put it to dry on top of the house in the sun; he weighted it down with a belaying pin.

‘I’ll make the medallion on that piece,’ he announced, partly to himself and partly to his companion, ‘and the border and corner pieces on this.’ He moved the rug about so that, squatting beside the hatch, he could draw and measure without too much getting up and down. He whistled softly. It was an absorbing task. Those straight narrow borders were easy. He took a deep breath and attacked a corner of the field. It was quite intricate, requiring accuracy of eye and hand; carefully he laid on line after line, the exact weaving of stiffly floral forms.

‘There!’ he said, rising to his feet to stretch his legs. ‘There!’

‘I think I’ll mark the colors,’ he mused. ‘And then you won’t have to keep getting out the rug after you’ve put it away from the moths.’

‘Oh, yes!’

Again he squatted to the work. The other corner was of course a trifle different. Now where to begin on the border? That white thing like a crown, which might be a Chinaman’s idea of a thistle. The yellow leafish branch. The blue spray with the red and white things clinging to it. Now that little daisy, just like a real little flower dropped on the rug. The border unrolled steadily under his swift pencil. Those red scrolls in the corner and a kind of reddish flower effect. Now it repeated — almost, anyway. Now around to the left, which was harder, starting once more from the thistle.

‘Gee!’ he exclaimed, straightening his cramped knees. ‘ I ’ll get the crayons. I’ll have to take a look around.’ He grinned at Mrs. McClellan and strolled off, disappearing from view below the house.

Presently she saw him lighting his pipe and chatting with the second mate; the two went forward together. After a time they returned, and paused to watch the line of naked coolies a moment; they exchanged an occasional word, glanced over the side at the lighters, nodded to each other, and parted. The first mate, on his way to the poop, picked up the pasted paper, dropping the belaying pin into its wonted hole.

‘The cook,’ he grumbled, picking at the pasted edges, ‘made enough paste to paper a house, but it ain’t much for sticking. However, I guess it will do. If it comes apart I ’ll get the carpenter’s glue — I’ll tell him you need a little.’ He looked mischievously at the skipper’s wife, so punctilious about making no demands on anyone. ‘He’s awful mean with his glue. He would n’t let me have any.’ He paced the width of the deck a couple of times, mechanically glancing into the empty binnacle, at the far horizon, at the distant blue forts of Taku, at the cloudless sky, at the expanse of shallow water, at the limp telltale. He rapped the ashes from his pipe over the side, said ‘Ho! Hum!' reflectively, and was once more the artist.

The medallion occupied his attention and pencil. There was a kind of white fenceish thing of straight lines with corners singularly difficult to draw, which he had twice to erase, discovering that those corners turned the wrong way; there was a flower in the middle; there were graceful shapes outside the fence, each enough different to be a bother. Eight of them!

Roughly he indicated the colors.

‘It’s going to take a lot of blue,’ he said, glancing up.

‘Two shades of blue,’ she murmured. ‘The background and those sprays of dark blue. I’ve got enough dark blue. And my old blue wool dress I think is just the right shade for the ground. But I doubt if there is enough of it.’ She wrinkled her brow and ran over in her mind the old clothes at her disposal. ‘I don’t think of another blue thing.’

‘Well,’ Stephen laughed rather selfconsciously, ‘I’ve got an old suit that I bought — lemme see — eight years ago in Melbourne. I know now that it was awful bright, but then I thought I was a fine dresser. It’s faded some, but it’s good cloth and about this color now. You could have it if you want. I can scrub it with soap and salt water. It ought to make good rags.’ Again he laughed awkwardly; she was such a sedate little creature that it seemed impudent to offer her an old suit of clothes even for rug rags.

‘A bright blue? Why, I remember it! Did you wear it when you joined the ship? With a red tie? I remember I thought when I first saw you that you would be too gay to get along with us!’ Her eyes shone with interest.

‘Aw!’ he groaned. ‘What a fool I must have looked! Sometimes when I think of the colors and the vests and the cuts of suits I used to buy and admire I can’t sleep for mortification!’ They smiled at each other.

‘ Well, then. I can always get plenty of white,’ she continued, evidently having accepted the bright blue model. ‘But yellow —’

‘We’ve got an old yellow Q-flag, have n’t we, that’s all eaten up?’

‘Why, yes, I believe we have. We got some new flags the last time we were in New York. And I’ve got some good red, but only just a little — not much.’ She surveyed the rug. ‘Not more than enough for the red in the middle; and there’s quite a lot of red in the border, and that narrow strip is all red.’ The mate leaned placidly against the house, glad that he had no red suits in his possession. ’But then, I could do the border plain, all in one color.’

‘Oh, no! You would n’t do that, would you?’ It was a distressing thought.

‘You see,’ she pursued, ‘I may not have time to finish it all. I think it’s going to be my last rug,’ — Stephen gave her a startled look, — ‘and I’d like to finish it at sea. Kit told me I could tell you. He thinks this will be our last voyage; he wrote to Mr. Goss yesterday and said he considered turning the ship over to you after this trip. He expects we’ll get a general cargo to England or New York, and then, if we hear from Mr. Goss there, we’ll go. I ’ll be sorry to leave you, Stephen.’ She was quite embarrassed over this bold declaration.

‘It won’t be the same without you,’ he murmured, casting down his eyes over so much sentiment.

She smiled faintly at him; she would miss him like a son. ‘My rheumatism bothers Kit, you know, more than it does me, and he’s made up his mind to settle down ashore. But of course it depends on what we hear from Mr. Goss. However, we expect everything to be all right. Kit has sailed for him for over thirty years.’ She turned once more to the rug. ‘So I should n’t be surprised if I just did the border plain, and in that case there will be enough red. I’d better put it away, I think; I should n’t want it to fade.’

‘Your last trip,’ repeated the mate, motionless.

‘Yes,’ patiently. ‘Kit took the letter ashore this morning. You’ve known for a long time he was going to recommend giving the ship to you? Well, he has. Kit commended you highly. He’s very fond of you.’ One must not be extravagant in expressions of affection. ‘I like to think that his last years at sea have been so free from — from friction and so — so comfortable. We’ve had so many first officers.’ There was almost a dimness in the kind eyes.

A ship at last, dreamed the mate.

‘Mr. Goss may have other plans,’ he suggested, guarding himself from disappointment. A command of his own!

‘Kit has sailed for him for years. We own in this vessel.’ A hint of firmness sounded in the old woman’s voice. Stephen bent to roll up the thick, soft rug, his strong hands trembling a little. A ship at last!

‘I do hope,’ she continued tranquilly, ‘that we’ll have pleasant weather — I’d like to make this rug.’

‘Shall I carry it down below?’

‘I wish you would.’ She envied him the way he moved with the great rug roll, the way he bent his head as he stepped into the companionway, turning his body a little to get the bundle through the door, easy as easy. When had she been able to walk without creaking in her joints?

‘The cold and the dampness and the storms and Cape Horn,’ she complained softly to herself. ‘I can’t bear them any more.’

III

The passage was only fair. A spell of cold and rain brought on an attack of rheumatism which delayed the work on the rug; moreover, as the rags were narrower than usual there was more hooking to be done. Old Abby McClellan was more and more charmed as she proceeded. It would surely be a very pretty rug — not perhaps of the rich, soft gorgeousness of the original, but nevertheless a rug of soft colors and beautiful design. Alas! She had finished only the central medallion, two of the corners of the field, and three quarters of the background when they arrived in London. It would be necessary to take it out of the frame and complete the work at home; it was most disappointing.

Kit went ashore at once to attend to the first dull things; he would bring back the letters. It was a dreary February day, but in her excitement she kept going on deck to scan the small boats and the pushing tugs, watching for the one that would be bringing Kit back to the ship. Stephen, too, behind a mask of imperturbability, was excited; he continually warned himself that old Goss might not — A ship to command — think of it ! It had taken a long time. He smoked innumerable pipes.

Not till two o’clock did the old man return. Stephen, meeting him at the rail, read that blazing blue eye like print. So he must go to sea again as mate — he might have known it.

In the cabin the skipper raged.

‘ S-s-s-sailed forhim th-th-th-thirtyyears,’ he jerked out, thrusting the letter into his wife’s knotted fingers. ’Andhe s-s-s-says he’ll s-s-s-sendouta f-f-f-fellow n-n-named M-m-m-mains torelieve m-m-m-meifI w-w-w-wantto r-r-r-retire! N-n-n-notaword a-a-about K-k-kimball. D-d-d-damnhim! H-hhe’sa s-s-s-skunk!’ He paced the cabin floor, the very sparks snapping from his bright eyes and his pointed white beard. Mrs. Kit read the letter and laid it on the arm of the chair.

‘His wife came from Dresden,’ she volunteered, ‘and she was a connection of the Mainses there.’ How disappointed Stephen would be!

‘ W-w-w-w-we ’ll p-p-p-p-packupthis e-e-e-evening! ’

‘Why, Kit!' she reproved him. ‘You just telegraph him you have changed your mind. He says we’ll probably go to Baltimore light and get a cargo there, and by that time maybe — It’ll only be a month or two longer anyway.’

‘ W-w-w-wantedthistobe y-y-yourlast t-t-t-trip!’ The old chap put his hand on her bright-green-wool shoulder. ‘S-s-s-scoundrel!’ he detonated.

‘I won’t have Stephen put upon,’ said the old woman firmly.

So they went to Baltimore in ballast, bounding about upon a sea that was itself minded to bound about in its most disagreeable style; but after all, crossing even a tempestuous Atlantic is merely a little jaunt that one can see the end of. The rug made progress; the field was all finished and a quarter of the border was worked in solid blue, obliterating the design that Stephen, licking the carpenter’s pencil, had drawn on the hubbly burlap through several dogwatches and parts of his watch below.

Spring, they found, had come in Baltimore. But there was no spring in the skipper’s heart; in fact there was rather the worst blizzard of a hard winter when he received the communication awaiting him from the managing owner. Mr. Goss merely remarked once more that Captain Mains was holding himself in readiness to relieve him whenever he decided to leave the ship; the ship was chartered to go to San Francisco and the cargo was doubtless ready to go on board.

‘Cape Horn!’ exclaimed Mrs. Kit. ‘It will be winter there!’

‘It’s t-t-t-toomuch! You c-c-c-can’tdoit. I-I-I c-c-c-can’t a-allowit. You c-c-c-can g-g-gohomeand w-w-w-waitforme. B-b-b-buyahouse. B-b-b-buya f-farm. B-b-buy—’

The old woman gave him a severe glance.

‘We will make another trip,’ she said inexorably. ‘You telegraph him. Anyway, I want to finish my rug with the border in colors before we go home.’

Cape Horn in the winter time! she thought

IV

All that solid blue her old Fingers had so laboriously hooked into the border the old fingers pulled out. The mate in a spare dogwatch or two bent over the rug frame on the forward cabin table, busily licking the carpenter’s pencil and replacing the blurred design. Keen interest was felt in the border; very soon it was manifest that its trailing flowers would make a tremendous difference in the appearance of the whole. Kit admitted that it was a handsome rug, through he averred that he had no winter underwear left to get him around the Horn. He assured the mate at dinner in stuttering excitement that if his wife discovered that his long sea boots were lined with red she’d have the lining out in a minute! He also asserted that he had to keep the ensign under lock and key and hide the key! There was a scarcity of red rags. As they drew farther and farther south and the days grew shorter and darker and colder, the old woman in the evenings measured off her strings of red wool and calculated the inches more of red to be done and the amount per stitch used and the probability of the supply holding out. It was certain that there would not be enough for the narrow edge on the outside.

‘I should have bought a little piece in Baltimore,’ she told Stephen as she took the air one bitter afternoon, ‘but I’ve never used a new piece in a rug.’

‘Maybe it’ll hold out,’ encouraged the mate, staring up at the telltale streaming red and stiff.

‘ B-b-b-barometer’sfalling,’ remarked the skipper casually, popping out of the companionway and pacing swiftly back and forth a time or two, with a shrewd look above and around.

‘Yes, sir,’ acknowledged the mate. ‘Wind’s hauled a couple of points in the last fifteen minutes.’

The skipper nodded and vanished below again. He was sewing a buckle on his sou’wester and mending a long rip in his oilskin coat against the approaching time of need. He hoped Abby would stay on deck till he got that bit of stiff sewing done. He hunched on a stool beside the medicine chest, manipulating a small sail needle, a stretch of thread waxed to a rigidity, and a leather palm. The needle, confound it, never came through in the right place. He lifted his head to the sound of movement and deep voices and creaking; the wind had shifted some more. Hum. . . .

For two weeks old Abby had been waiting to get around the Horn; she had not had her nose on deck for the last week. Two or three times a day she climbed the companionway stairs and peered through the glass there; she saw the bare masts, the few sails blown fat and hard to bursting, the ugly gray sky, the wicked seas. The ship plunged about fearfully. She longed to go on deck, but Kit forbade it; and as everyone was bothered when she went on deck in the least bit of a storm she stayed resignedly below. The sound of swift feet, a sudden shout, a heavy sea followed by even a whisper of disturbance, were all alike alarming to the imagination. For three days they had not had a meal on the table. At suitable times the steward staggered aft with some solid food and a pot of coffee, and each of his beneficiaries chose a doorway, bracing himself therein by knee and elbow and back, and bolted the food from the plates; thereupon was served a mug of coffee, to be taken with a sharp eye on the agile liquid. The rest of the time the old woman sat in the armchair; from that seat she could see the dark, fierce water surging apace by the window in the little room opposite. All the shutters were closed on one side now, for a sea had broken the glass in two of them. The storm seemed to grow worse.

There came the terrific crash of a sea and an awful sound of splintering wood. She heard, erect, the rush of water and a crack like a shot on deck. That crack — well, something had carried away. She balanced herself along the tipping floor to the foot of the companionway, catching at the table as she passed; and clinging to the handrail of the stairs she listened tensely for Kit’s voice. There! He was all right. But the voice she heard was both familiar and strange.

‘Call all hands on deck, Mr. Sears, and secure . . .’ he was saying.

That was ominous. The skipper’s wife in her early seafaring life used to wonder if he realized that he never stuttered or hesitated when the sea roared and the wind screamed and things crashed and cracked and whistled around him; she could never quite ask him. So even Kit thought the weather was bad.

A stream of water ran across her feet. The cabin was a little lighter. Oh, ho, that sea had broken in two of the shutters now. She steadied herself into the big stateroom. A flood of water poured in through the broken windows and some was sluicing about on the chart table. The stinging spray blew in. She fetched some of her rags and solicitously stuffed the inside of the chronometer case with them; she covered the whole case with Kit’s short oilskin coat, wedging it down with a couple of heavy books. Every time the ship plunged and rolled, another sea crashed against the house and sent in its quota of icy water. Her feet were soaked. She found some dry stockings and went into the after cabin to put them on. Then she could see that a shutter in the pantry had been broken, and already several inches of water rolled about on the floor. Forsaking the armchair, she seated herself on the red divan, drawing her feet up on it. She listened and listened and listened. An occasional crack told her that the sail that had carried away was still at large. This was n’t just bad weather; it was a particular storm of increasing violence.

It was three bells — four bells. The short day was over; it was almost dark. Now and then, after some especially heavy sea had crashed and passed, the companionway door would open an inch and a familiar voice would shout down.

‘Abby?’

‘All right, Kit!’ And the door immediately closed.

The steward entered and lighted the lamps, and they shook their heads pessimistically at one another, as became experienced mariners. The water reached halfway up the steward’s knee boots as he stood there. He put coal on the fire; then, pausing for a suitable opportunity, he dashed out. She guessed from his clothes that he was lending a hand on deck. It was lonelier than ever after he had gone.

When the ship rolled and the water rushed pellmell from side to side it came ever nearer and nearer to the red plush. She feared she might presently have to sit on that little corner shelf of woodwork where the back of the divan curved, and her feet would get dreadfully cold in the water. She wished she could go on deck. Reviewing the gales of thirty years, it seemed to her, huddled on the divan, that there had never been one to compare with this, and she doubted if the ship would live through it. It would be better to be drowned in one wild moment out of doors than down here like a rat in a trap. Oh! She was sitting in the water. She climbed stiffly to her feet and sat herself against the triangular shelf of woodwork with her feet on the wet red plush; it was a ridiculous place to be and she was glad that the steward had gone. When the ship rolled down, down, down on her side she was held there on her shelf easily, though the water rose, rose, and rose around her ankles; but when the ship rolled back in the other direction she had to brace herself against the wall to keep her place. The fat stove kept hissing, hissing. Years she sat there — years.

‘Abby?’

’Oh, yes, Kit, all right!’ she screamed cheerfully, with her feet in the freezing water and every muscle aching from the long effort of clinging like a bat to the wall. The door closed.

What was that? She heard a shout on deck above the noise of wind and sea. What did Kit say? Did he say ‘Hold fast’? Almost upon the words followed a terrific shock, a rending and crashing — the end must have come. The ship lay over, over. Water fell in torrents from the place over her head where the skylight had been. It surrounded her. Every drop of water in the cabin leaped upon her, and still the ship lay over. The water tore at her. There was nothing to hold fast to, and this water was getting too deep. Was Kit all right? The water was almost to her chin and still the ship had not righted herself; one more little wave and — The next sea through the skylight washed her from the divan like a chip. Desperately she clutched at anything, at water. Why, she was swimming! Her old arms and legs were going mechanically through motions they had learned when they were short and fat and limber. In that moment of confidence she bethought herself of the companionway stairs; there were two at the top, like Mount Ararat. Perhaps she could get outdoors before the water filled the cabin to the very ceiling — oh, anything to get out of the cabin! With frenzied paddling she turned about; she stroked fiercely, gasping for breath, her gray hair streaming. She reached the door; she was through it, skinning her shin in passing, that old shin kicking undignifiedly about. Something pushed out of the bathroom door and hit her a sharp blow on the arm; it was the corner of her rug frame, bumping around in the bathroom like a raft. More and more desperate strokes she took. The companion way door was snatched suddenly open.

‘Abby!’ shouted a dreadful voice.

‘Kit!’ she gasped, reaching out urgently, kicking wearily, wild blue eyes fixed on the brass edge of a welcoming stair.

‘Abby!’ Her fingers gripped the stair and she looked up into her old husband’s face. She smiled exhaustedly.

‘Forty-two strokes,’ she panted. ‘And it’s only that little way.’

‘That’s the girl!’ said Kit admiringly. The door closed.

The ship lived on, battered and weary. All night the refugee crouched on the top stair. Now and then she received a hasty bulletin through the door; they had lost the foremast, they had lost the skylights, they had stove in two boats, they had lost this and that; it had been a bad blow, said Kit.

The gale, at last discouraged, abated. In the gray light and comparative peace toward ten o’clock the skipper began to slosh about in the cabin, his oilskin coat wrapped around his shoulders and the water seeping in the tops of his hip boots, seeking something dry for his wife to put on. Nothing was dry. On the top shelf of the slop chest he did find a pair of coarse black trousers that had caught on a nail and so stayed on the shelf. He pondered on these articles, standing in the bathroom holding them above the washing waters.

’Cap’n!' The skipper backed a little and saw his first officer in the forward cabin door holding aloft a red object. ‘Sir! It’s the bos’n’s shirt! It was pinned to a line in the galley. The cook had washed it for him.’ The skipper waded over and took it.

‘Th-th-th-thanks,’ he said. ‘ J-j-just the t-t-t-ticket.’

Old Abby, balancing on one leg on the top stair and clinging to the handrail, inserted herself in the red shirt and the black trousers, rolled up many inches at the bottom; she had little hope that these horrible garments were concealed by a very damp short oilskin coat and a yellow sou’wester. Blushing, but defiant, she stepped over the high board to the poop deck; a glance assured her that the man at the wheel and the second mate were both suspiciously solemn. Each extended a strong arm to help her as she staggered up against the wind and rain; she reached the lazaret hatch and sat down. The icy wind tore along, the sea roared by the lee rail, and the slanting rain beat down in gusts; the tail end of the gale swooped at her. It was splendid. Why, at the age of sixty — almost — she had swum, kicking and splashing in a highly unsuitable way; she was dressed shockingly for a woman of any age; she sat on deck in the howling blasts of Cape Horn and she could see and hear and know every single thing that went on. It was glorious. Down below, of course, tired sailors pumped and bailed and swabbed, and the weary, dripping carpenter nailed boards everywhere, preparing her prison anew; this once she had escaped.

She was spent and cold, but happy withal.

Old Abby was indeed making her last trip. Mr. Goss surrendered. He wrote, in fact, that Kit might at his own convenience turn over the ship to Kimball, or, if he saw fit, to the cabin boy or the carpenter, observing tartly that Kit had been a stubborn damn fool even when a small boy. In a postscript he added that he knew of a good little house for sale in Bath. Aside from that unjust reflection upon her husband, it was a very welcome letter to a rheumatic seafarer! On another score also she rejoiced — she had finished her rug to the last loop. The outer edge and the red sprays in one corner of the border were made of the faded red wool of the bos’n’s shirt. The stout old bos’n never needed any shirt again; he had been lost that squally afternoon off Cape Horn. Three brave men had made that rug, old Abby always thought.