Out of the Fog | Page 2

more than a hundred
and fifty feet to spare. I can see them tonight, as they vanished into the
fog--three men and a big Newfoundland dog, looking over the rail and
down on us who, a moment before, were about to die.
Storm, fog, icebergs, cold, exposure, the alert and strenuous life, with
his own life the forfeit of failure, are a part of the normal experience of
a deep sea fisherman. Two members of our crew were father and son,
Uncle Ike Patch and his son, Frank. The old man had been a fisherman
in his youth, but had been on shore for thirty years. When we were

making up our crew, Frank caught the fishing fever and wanted to go,
and his father decided to go along with him. They were out in their
dory, one foggy day, and when the boats came back to the vessel from
hauling their trawls, Uncle Ike and Frank were missing. We rang the
bell, fired our small cannon, shouted and sent boats out after them. As
night came on, we were huddled together in the forecastle, wondering
about their fate, while the old fishermen told stories of the fog and its
fearful toll of human life. It seemed a terrible thing for the old man and
his boy to be out there, drifting no one knew where; and though we
were accustomed to danger, there was a gloomy crew and little sleep on
our schooner that night. In the morning the weather cleared and soon
our missing boat came alongside; we received them as men alive from
the dead. They had found shelter on another fishing vessel that
happened to be lying at anchor not more than two or three miles away.
There was reason for our solicitude, for we knew very well that a large
proportion of the men who get adrift in the fog are never found alive.
Shortly before this experience we had spoken a Gloucester vessel and
learned that her crew had picked up, a short time before, one of the
boats of a Provincetown schooner that had been adrift four days. One of
the two men was dead and the other insane. Each day brought its own
dangers, which the fishermen met as part of the day's work, thinking
little of them when they were past, and ready for whatever another day
might bring.
But four months is a long time to be out of sight of land, on a fresh fish
and "salt hoss" diet, with molasses instead of sugar in your tea, and
fresh water too much needed for drinking purposes to waste in personal
ablutions. We all swore that we would never go to sea again; and when,
after gliding into harbor in the night, we looked, one clear September
morning, on the seemingly unnatural green of the grass and trees of the
old North Shore, I said to myself, "This is God's country, if there ever
was one, and I, for one, will never get out of sight of it again."
But I had tasted fog and brine, and the "landlubber's" lot was too
monotonously tame for me. The next spring saw me on the deck of the
same schooner headed for the Newfoundland Banks, the home of the
codfish and the fog.
A seafaring ancestry and a boyhood spent within sound of the surf
doubtless had much to do with my love of the salt water. My

grandfather was one of six brothers who were sea captains, and our
family had clung to the North Shore of Massachusetts Bay almost since
the first white settler had moored his bark in that vicinity, more than
two hundred years Before.
My boyhood home was originally a fishing town, since changed to
manufacturing, and was fragrant with traditions of the sea. Many of the
neighborhood homes in which I visited as a boy had souvenirs of the
ocean displayed on the mantelpiece or on the everlasting solitude of the
parlor table. There were great conch shells that a boy could put to his
ear and hear the surf roaring on the beaches from which they had been
taken; articles made of sandalwood; curiously wrought things under
glass; miniature pagodas; silk scarfs; bow-legged idols; and a
wonderful model of the good ship Dolphin, or of some other equally
staunch craft, in which the breadwinner, father or son, had sailed on
some eventful voyage. These had all been "brought from over sea," I
was told, and this gave me the impression that "over sea" must be a
very rich and interesting place.
But the souvenirs of the sea were not as interesting to me as its
survivors. We had in our town, and especially in our end of it, which
was called "the Cove," a choice assortment of