The Ebbing Tide (12 page)

Up here the gables shuddered with the impact of each gust. And every time the window panes rattled she was drawn inexorably across the room to look. . . . She was watching the boil of surf on the outer ledges as she swept, when a nearer movement caught her eye and she looked down to see Francis Seavey come into view between the fishhouses and Sigurd's house. He was running. His jacket flapped out behind him and he ran clumsily. She smiled at the picture he made. Francis always had such a time with his boots, as if he wore flatirons in them as well as his feet.

Sigurd came along behind him, his big body moving swiftly and easily, his bare yellow head bright against the silver shingles of the fish houses. He outdistanced Francis and turned down by Nils' fish house; for an instant, as the wind struck him, he halted and then went on, toward the front of the fish house where the broken, shifting, green and white water boiled on the edge of the shore. Francis followed him; and then she saw Matthew and Owen and Dennis coming. There was such urgency in them that it hit her like a blow. Her hands tightened on the broom handle.
What were they running for?

She knew in a moment when they came back into sight, the five men, dragging Nils' dory. It had been hauled up in front of the fish house. Two men on each side, and one ahead straining with all his weight on the painter, they set out around the shore toward Grant's wharf and went out of sight beyond the old house called the Binnacle.

“It's a boat,” Joanna said aloud. “That's all it could be. A boat's dragged her mooring.”

She ran downstairs and pulled on her coat, tied a kerchief over her hair and under her chin. Her heart was pounding with dread but it didn't slow her down. She went out the back way and swooped up Jamie from his sand-box. He protested, and braced his sturdy small body against her.

“We're going to the wharf, Jamie,” she told him crisply. “Behave yourself.”

“Walk,”
said Jamie firmly, and wriggled.

“Not this time.” She went past the lilac bushes with him held against her shoulder, his arm around her neck. Dick was affected by the wind too. He barked and dashed ahead, the wind sleeking back his coat and flattening his ears.

She thought she'd never reach the wharf; but she didn't have to go to the wharf to see what was wrong. When she came out by the fish houses, with the wind tearing at her so that she must lean forward into it, she saw the boats that were out of place. The
Donna
and the
White Lady
shared the same mooring, whose ground-line reached from a heavy anchor just inside Eastern Harbor Point to the massive ledge which showed at low tide between Nils' wharf and Grant's. And they weren't where they should have been, where they always had been. They were out of place with the same sickening
wrongness
as a broken bone showing where no bone should be.

She needed only a moment to know what had happened and what would happen. Somehow the groundline had chafed, near the ledge; the anchored end, near the harbor mouth, still held fast, but the wind had driven the two boats back to the rocky and deadly wall of Eastern Harbor Point. Unloosed at one end, the ground-line was pulled across the harbor floor. It was high tide and the boats were almost in the edge of the frothing surf. If they were not rescued within an hour of the tide's turn they would lie in the foaming welter and could be smashed, helplessly, against the rim of rock, thrown at it with heavy breaking sea, until they were matchwood.

On the inner mooring Matthew's and Sigurd's boats were safe though restless, and on the innermost mooring Francis Seavey's boat was secure. But the
Donna
and the
White Lady
, laying huddled together as if for comfort, were on the way to destruction. Something like a sob tightened Joanna's throat, but she forced it back. Island women had no time to blather and bleat. She went on steadily toward the wharf and found all the men there.

Here in the shelter of the wharf was the only real lee spot in the harbor, and the nearest approach to the endangered boats. The planks of the wharf were bad, and the spilings trembled with every sea that broke against the exposed end, but the men, moving lightly and quickly in their heavy boots, were lowering the dory by means of the old derrick and tackle that had once hoisted Pete Grant's freight.

Joanna stood in the shed, where there was some shelter, and watched. The little knot of five men, and one of them an outsider, looked pitifully small against the wilderness of white and green water beyond them. Yet there was no hesitation. Down went the dory, to bob restlessly on the surge and swell of the lee; and, down over the side of the wharf Sigurd and Owen went like cats. When they had put the thole-pins in and had the oars ready—Sigurd forward and Owen aft—Matthew went down over the side and took his place in the stern.

The two at the oars began to row. It was an old story to Joanna, she had seen it at intervals all her life; but she would never be able to watch with the calm certainty that they'd reach the boats safely and be safe themselves. She watched with a dry throat and an ache in her legs and shoulders as if she were at the oars with them, driving the dory across the wildly heaving expanse of harbor waters. When they went out past the end of the wharf the gale hit them. To go directly across its path would be dangerous; they went in a quarterly direction toward the boats, of necessity letting the seas take them to leeward for a few yards and then straining against the wind and water pulling to windward, but always creeping on toward the
Donna
and the
White Lady
. It was a task that demanded every ounce of their strength, and Joanna could almost feel the strain upon her own muscles as she watched the dory rise and fall and lurch over the enormous hills of shining green, hills that shattered into a boiling confusion of jade green streaked with swirls of white. She saw how Matthew waited in the stern, every muscle tightened, his body pulled together in taut anticipation of the moment when he must jump aboard the first boat they reached.

Even Jamie was quiet in her arms, and she was watching so intensely that she was startled when Dennis Garland spoke to her.

“This is new to me,” he said. “Frankly, I'm nervous. This harbor is a horrible sight right now.”

“It's not new to me,” she answered. “And I'm nervous.” Her lips felt stiff. “I always wonder—I mean, there's always a chance—”

He nodded. “I know . . . Tell me something. Your brother said it could be worse, but I don't see how it could be. Do you?”

Francis joined them in the sparse shelter of the shed. He looked bleak and rabbity, and he was sweating. Joanna felt an impersonal pity for him; this was all new to Francis too, and he wasn't merely a bystander, he had to make his living here.

“Of course it could be worse,” she said, sounding cheerful. “It's high tide now, and the boats are comparatively safe there until the tide begins to go—then they'll be getting surf coming and going. If they'd drifted down on the point at half-tide, they'd be a mess by now. They'd be on the rocks for sure. The flood is what's saving them.”

They watched the dory go; it was almost half-way now, and it was gaining. The gain seemed agonizingly slow, but at least the dory wasn't being driven off its course by the wind, and the oars held.

“Be sumpin now if that anchor let go,” Francis muttered. “That's all that's holdin' those boats—”

“The anchor won't let go,” said Joanna with more assurance than she felt. She was gazing so hard that her eyes felt hot and strained, and her arms had tightened on Jamie until he began to squirm.

“Come here, Jamie,” Garland said, and took the baby away from her. She had to talk. She couldn't watch in silence any more. She began to explain to Garland, trying not to gauge the aching slowness of the dory's progress.

“They'll have to go up into the wind and ride down on a sea. When they're right off the bow—they'll probably go to the
Lady
first—they'll slip their oars at the same moment, and when the dory rides past the boat Matthew will jump aboard. Then he'll grab the dory painter and make it fast around the winch head—” Garland was listening, his thin face absorbed as he followed each move in his mind. Francis was smoking a cigarette in violent puffs. He kept moving out onto the wharf to stare and then came back, shaking his head.

“You've probably seen worse things in the Pacific,” she said to Garland.

“I've seen worse, but here the enemies are the sea and the wind. There's something monumental about the struggle, when you think how many hundreds of years it's been going on. . . . But you're not interested in my maunderings right now.” His mouth twitched.

“Yes, I am. I've thought about it often, only I've never said it to anyone. No use saying it to the ones who're living through it. They
are
the struggle. . . . I know what I mean but I'm getting mixed up.”

“Never mind, I know what you mean.” And she knew that he did.

“Jeest!”
said Francis wildly. He swallowed a mouthful of smoke and began to cough. “They're almost there, by gosh,” he got out, his eyes streaming, “but what ails Owen?”

Joanna had seen it before he told her, that split second when only Sigurd was pulling on the oars and Owen wasn't moving. She ran out on the wharf, Garland with her, Jamie blinking in the wind. They saw Matthew move forward as Owen slumped, his hands on the oars before Owen's hands left them; then Matthew was rowing, standing up and pushing forward on the oars, facing Sigurd, who was pulling. Owen had gone down into the bottom of the dory; even at this distance there was something final and frightening about the completeness of his collapse.

“What is it?” Joanna turned desperately to Garland, her eyes strained wide. “What's happened to him?”

“He's played out,” Garland said. He spoke quietly, without alarm. “He's not over his bout yet, you know.”

“No matter how much he's drunk, he's never given out like that before,” she cried furiously. “He
can't
be—”

“Can't he?” Dennis Garland looked at her with compassion in his gray eyes, and yet with such certainty that she stopped protesting.

She realized she had put her hand on his arm, her fingers were gripping through the rough tweed. She took them away, swiftly, and turned back to stare at the harbor. Sigurd and Matthew were rowing as if Owen hadn't been with them at all. She tried not to think of him lying in the bottom of the dory, his head close to Matthew's boots and the water sloshing against his face.

Dennis Garland was still close to her. He said against her ear, “He's probably fainted. Don't worry about him.”

“Jeest,” said Francis again. “If that ain't the damnedest thing!”

Fighting against the wind, the dory moved up a length or more beyond the boats, and then the men let her ride down on a sea. It carried her at an incredible speed toward the port side of the rearing
Lady
. For a moment Joanna forgot Owen. With one man gone, this job of boarding was doubly hard. To ship the oars an instant too soon or too late meant they must maneuver into place all over again, and they would be very tired by now. She saw the dory coast down, with a sea breaking under her, toward the rearing bow of the
White Lady
, and with a swift gesture Matthew shipped his oars; there was a moment when Sigurd fought to hold the dory in place, and Matthew was crouched and waiting. She felt the breath go out of her in a long weakening sigh as Matthew scrambled aboard the
White Lady
, and Sigurd shipped the other oars. The big power boat plunged down into the trough, and Sigurd, with the strength born of sheer desperation, plucked Owen from the bottom of the dory and rolled him quickly over the washboard of the other boat. Matthew had made the dory painter fast to the winch head, and Sigurd, waiting while the
Lady
reared again and the dory tossed helplessly, climbed aboard as soon as the copper-painted bottom slammed down against the water.

“Made it, b'gosh,” muttered Francis. Joanna and Garland stood side by side, without moving or speaking, only watching. From the other end of the shed Thea and Leonie were coming, Thea's voice shrill above the roar of wind and water. Joanna didn't look around.

Once aboard the boat the job wasn't done. The
Donna
and the
Lady
had to be brought to the safety of the beach. Matthew took the dory painter from the winch head and slacked her off astern, while Sigurd inched forward on his belly over the deck to the paul-post, and began to loosen the mooring line. It was a precarious business, with the big boat rising high at every sea, slamming down with a sickening impact as the sea rolled on to explode on the rocks so wickedly close astern. Sigurd lay pressed flat on the wet deck, holding to the paul-post to keep from being thrown overboard as he slackened the line. Every now and then a breaking wave sent a deluge of spray over him as he lay there. He couldn't let the mooring chain go until he felt the vibration of the engine through the planks and knew Matthew had started it up. Even then he would wait until Matthew put the
White Lady
forward a few feet; when the mooring chain slackened he could quickly cast it from the bow, and the
Lady
would be free and under her own power.

On the wharf the watchers only knew the engine had started up when they saw Sigurd cast off the mooring. One boat was safe; Owen's boat. And Owen lay on her platform. The others had no time for him now, the boats were their chief concern.

Matthew edged the
White Lady
close to the
Donna
, close enough for Sigurd to jump over into the cockpit. But now there was no extra man to cast off the mooring for Sigurd. He took a line with him from the
Lady
and crawled forward over the deck as he'd done before. The
White Lady
must tow the
Donna
, because if Sigurd cast off her mooring, she could be borne to destruction in the brief interval that it took to start the engine. With the tow line made fast, the mooring off, and the
White Lady
started on her careening trip for the beach in the shelter of the Old Wharf, Sigurd crawled aft. Now he could start up the engine and the
Donna
could come in under her own power as she'd always done, when she was Stephen Bennett's boat. Now she was Nils' boat, and his brother was manning her; but she was still the
Donna
.