The Trawler | Page 2

A living gale it was, a November no'wester--you know what
that is, John Snow--but I'd all night been telling the crew to be careful,
for a sea there was to sweep to eternity whoever it could've caught
loose around deck. I could've hove her to and let her lay, but I was
never one to heave to my vessel--not once I'd swung her off for home.
And there, God help me, is maybe my weakness.
"She was under her gaff tops'l, but I see she couldn't stand it. 'Boys,'
says I, 'clew up that tops'l.' Which they did, and put it in gaskets, and
your Arthur, I mind, was one of the four men to go aloft to clew it up.
Never a lad to shirk was Arthur. Well, a stouter craft of her tonnage
than the Arbiter maybe never lived, nor no gear any sounder, but there
are things o' God's that the things o' man were never meant to hold out
against. Her jib flew to ribbons. 'Cut it clear!' I says, and nigh half the
crew jump for'ard. Half a dozen of the crew to once, but Arthur,--your
Arthur, your boy, Mrs. Snow, your son, John Snow--he was quick
enough to be among the half-dozen. Among a smart crew he was never
left behind. It looked safe for us all then, coming on to morning, but
who can ever tell? Fishermen's lives, they're expected to go fast, but
they're men's lives for all that, and 'Have a care!' I called to them,
myself to the wheel at the time, where, God knows, I was careful.
"Well, I saw this big fellow coming, a mountain of water with a
snow-white top to it against the first light of the morning. And I made
to meet it. A better vessel than the Arbiter the hand o' man never turned
out--all Gloucester knows that--but, her best and my best, there was no
lifting her out of it. Like great pipe-organs aroaring this sea came, and
over we went. Over we went, and I heard myself saying: 'God in
heaven! You great old wagon, but are you gone at last?' And said it
again when maybe there was a fathom of water over my head--her

quarter was buried that deep and she that long coming up. Slow coming
up she was, though up she came at last. But a man was gone."
He had stopped; but he went on. "It was Arthur, John Snow, and you,
Mrs. Snow, who was gone. The boy you were expecting to see in this
very room by now, he was gone. Little Arthur that ten years ago, when
first I saw him, I could've swung to the ceiling of this room with my
one finger--little Arthur was gone. Well, 'Over with a dory!' I said. And,
gale and all, we over with a dory, with three of us in it. We looked and
looked in that terrible dawn, but no use--no man short o' the Son o' God
himself could a' stayed afloat, oilskins and red jacks, in that sea. But we
had to look, and coming aboard the dory was stove in--smashed, like
'twas a china teacup and not a new banker's double dory, against the rail.
And it was cold. Our frost-bitten fingers slipped from her ice-wrapped
rail, and the three of us nigh came to joining Arthur, and Lord knows--a
sin, maybe you'll say, to think it, John Snow--but I felt then as if I'd just
as soon, for it was a hard thing to see a man go down to his death,
maybe through my foolishness. And to have the people that love him to
face in the telling of it--that's hard, too."
He drew a great breath. "And"--again a deep breath and a deepened
note of pain--"that's what I've come to tell you, John Snow, and you,
Mrs. Snow--how your boy Arthur was lost."
John Snow, at the kitchen table, I remember, one finger still in the
pages of the black-lettered Bible he had been reading when Hugh
Glynn stepped in, dropped his head on his chest and there let it rest.
Mrs. Snow was crying out loud. Mary Snow said nothing, nor made a
move, except to sit in her chair by the window and look to where, in the
light of the kitchen lamp, Hugh Glynn stood.
There was a long quiet. Hugh Glynn spoke again. "Twenty years, John
Snow, and you, Mrs. Snow--twenty good years I've been fishing out o'
Gloucester, and in that time not much this side the western ocean I
haven't laid a vessel's keel over. From Greenland to Hatteras I've fished,
and many smart seamen I've been shipmates with--dory, bunk, and
watch mates with in days gone by--and many a grand one of 'em