Let It Blow Off

A dissenting group of scientists recently has broken into print with assertions that there is
nothing in heredity. I have a suspicion they take this stand more from pleasure found in argument
than from belief in their statements.

There hung in our old Brooklyn home half a dozen portraits of beruffled gentlemen, stern firm-featured, altogether austere. When about eight years old I was asked my opinion of these distinguished ancestors. My reply was honest but not tactful.

“Look like pirates!”

Loud exclamations of horror, followed by a dissertation of heredity, family tree and the enormity of my offense — during which I learned inadvertently that one of them was author of the dictum: “Windows in the north wall of New York City Hall would be a useless and unnecessary expense because the city never would extend beyond that point!”

That City Father lacked vision but from my juvenile standpoint his features expressed, in no uncertain degree, determination which would order captives to walk the plank and, with a raucous laugh witness their descent into the deep.

“By my faith, that corpulent one splashed beautifully! Perhaps yon slim one would make less
disturbance — let us see!”

These old boys may not have been “pirates” but some of them had followed the sea and what, except heredity, compelled me to join the crew of the EVA AND ANNIE, gathered one keen March morning in her smoke-filled cabin where she lay alongside Custom House Wharf? Although adventure loomed large the real motive was an inherited ornithological instinct and a desire to study and watch ocean birds.

“All the crew here?,” asked the skipper, poking his head down the companionway.

“All but Flannagan.”

“That cormorant?–Probably feedin’ yet. Looks like you'll be without a dorymate, Rex. ‘Rex’ –where did you ever get a name like that? Sounds like some kind of a breakfast food.”

“Don’t blame me, Bill, they cleated it on me when I wasn't lookin' and before I could fight back. However, if you don’t like it, step up on deck and–”

“Yes, you will! I’m one man short now and after I got through with you I’d be two behind. That
would mean a dory left on deck and I don’t like dories on deck. When we get back, maybe, but
not now. Where is that sculpin? Get the mainsail on her while I scout up street aways and dig
him out.”

Something dropped on deck, – an old leather half-bag, half-satchel, followed by Flannagan’s lanky figure.

“What yer waitin’ for, Bill?”

“Waitin’ for? – You – you – long-legged haddock! Your dorymate just wanted to pick a scrap with me and I’ve a good mind to take you on instead!”

“Gwan, you know you couldn’t lick me! If we mixed this bucket would have to go without a skipper!”

Bill pulled out his pipe, lit it, and by that token we knew the argument was ended. All hands turned to getting the schooner clear of the dock. Bow, stern and breast lines were hauled aboard. Gathering sternway with a starboard wheel, her head swung off as she cleared the pier; staysail and jib slid up, filled with puffs from over the housetops, and we were off.

Bill Andrews was not only a fisherman but an artist and so was every one of the crew of sailors; no commands were necessary, each knew what to do and did it with man o’warship celerity and ease. No stumbling over others’ feet, no uncertainty as to who would belay a halliard, no confusion – precision of movement which would make an efficiency expert stand by agape.

The main sheet was kept aboard until the jibe around Bug Light, then let her run to the knot. The
nor’wester freshened. Ten minutes and Portland headlight was abeam, still gleaming. Half an
hour after leaving the dock we were sifting past the Twin Lights of Cape Elizabeth before a hardening breeze with a wan sun low down on the port bow. Nor’ard and west’ard the old familiar cumuli clouds were piling up, separated by wind fingers into long jagged patches as they streamed overhead.

“Plenty of it comin’! Good chance! Guy the foresail off to starboard!”

Puffs from Bill’s pipe drifted forward with the regularity of the motor exhaust. All was well.

Flock after flock of Scoters swung by, some so close the oddly shaped red-and-white bills of the
males were easily distinguishable. Occasionally a flock of Oldsquaws whirled along, driving on high and headed into the wind.

“Those fellows are huntin’ a lee. Probably get a real breeze out of this before sunset!”

There was an edge to it now for some of the icy White Mountain air was carried on its breath.

The thin twin columns on the Cape dwindled to tiny upright points, then disappeared. Gradually
the tip of the main boom described a widening arc against the pale gray-blue eastern sky, swung
higher, dipped lower, then caressed tops of the larger seas.

“Take up on your toppin’ lift!”

It was done: the mainsail no longer wet its skirts.

In old clipper days when a sailor grasped the wheel spokes he became as nearly omnipotent as he
ever would in this life. To strike him then was a mortal offense; to speak to him, scarcely less so.
When these splendid ships disappeared such discipline went with them. To sit on the wheelbox
and talk while Bill guided the schooner did not now endanger life: it was good to be there,
watching the seas; wolves – angry, white-toothed and sybilant, advancing became lambs – fleecy
and gossipy, as they swept on ahead.

“Take her a spell while I mug up.”

Winged out as she was, steering was easy altho the EVA AND ANNIE carried more weather
helm than she should.

“Put worm gear on her since I was aboard last, haven’t you, Bill?”

“Yes. Easier but you don’t feel her like you used to.”

With quadrant gear the helmsman can sense the coming of a variation from the course and meet
it. A worm-gear wheel lessens effort especially with wind on the quarter but accurate steering,
particularly by compass, is more difficult. By eight bells when I turned over my trick I had
caught on somewhat but it takes considerable practice to acquire the knack.

With every mile dropped astern the seas lengthened. By six bells we were driving over great hills
and valleys of mobile green, a good eleven knots.

“Clew up the topsail! One of you go aloft and stop it down!”

Three who were on deck started. Being nearest I had a jump on the others and was in the weather
shrouds first. Tim attempted to follow.

“Back on deck, Cushman! – Only one man aloft!”

I caught Jim’s eye: it was anxious. I reached the hounds before looking down. The men were all
on deck and at their stations. By doing most of the work while she was on the leeward drop that
piece of sheetiron was kicked into some sort of a bunt, the stops passed and fastened. In
ascending that short length of ratlines I developed a claw on each finger – an example of the
most rapid evolution on record! No one save a descendent of pirates could have held on!
Evolution and heredity, both cases proved. Any antis in the audience?

Once, in reaching for the end of a stop, the EVA AND ANNIE recovered unexpectedly and I saw
the figures on deck rush for the mainsheet, all set to flatten her down and come about had I lost
my grip. If that reversed pendulum had released me, a soft landing, though a wet one, was
certain – I would have been flung clear of the deck.

“What’s the open air meetin’ for, Bill?”

“O, the boys thought they’d come up for a little look 'round; right smoky below.”

“Would the boys hold a meetin’ for anyone else in the crew?”

“Well,” said Bill, looking at me speculatively with his kind blue eyes, “I’ve noticed a couple of
them always takes a walk toward the jib sheets and some of them sort o’ saunters aft when
anyone they like is aloft in a seaway. You got your back fins up because you think they was
afraid you couldn’t make it?”

“They had started to rise!”

“Well, snap ‘em shut again.”

I did.

Just before sunset the wind increased as a nor’wester usually does before dying down with the day, and at its height we were logging a good thirteen knots – real traveling for a ninety-footer. In
the hollows between seas the roar of her forefoot rang loud. Gradually, as the bowsprit rose, the
clamor was displaced by a tumult of wind notes through the rigging when the schooner was
poised on the crest. The toboggan drop, – the slow climb – the pause, and then again the rushing
descent! Where else does the sense of speed thrill so deeply? Here on this tiny world of wood
and canvass, action– movement – life! Beyond, across the vast pale cadmium west, slanted a
single gull. Lonesome. . . .About midnight we hove to on the Bank and more good luck trailed in
on the breath of a southerly air.

“Better get all the sleep you can, boys. It looks like a real busy spell ahead, with this nor’wester
petering out and the weather warming up.”
I awoke suddenly to find the bunks empty and a circular spot of sunlight moving lazily up and
down the opposite wall. A fisherman’s toilet is simple – merely a matter of hauling on a pair of
boots. Made the companionway stairs in two jumps. Bill was seated on the wheelbox calmly
puffing that eternal pipe while jogging the vessel off and on.

“Say, what did you let me sleep for? Where’s Flannagan? What time is it? They'll give me the
laugh, you – – old mossbunker!”

“One at a time, son. You looked kind o’ peaked so I thought I'd let your pillow alone. Flannagan's
off with the dough puncher and we’ve got the whole deck to ourselves. Maybe you’d like to wipe
me around on it?”

“I certainly would, you pink-eyed jellyfish! And what’s more –”

“Grab one of those forks and work it off getting that load of fish into the kids!”

We worked. The fair weather held with light varying winds out of the south’ard. The fish were
there, ravenous, literally in thousands. Over with the trawls – underrun them! The dories came
alongside loaded so deep the ocean slid across the fishbacks amidships. Fork, clean, stow and
bait up, keep agoin’ as long as your eyes stay open, drop anywhere for two or three hours’ sleep
and at it again. By afternoon of the third day our bait was all gone but sixty tons of A1 cod and
haddock R. I. P. below. There wasn’t any expression in their eyes but I suppose they were at
peace!

It was dusting up in the northeast. The glass was falling. Regulation Bank weather was on its
way to balance up that three days’ touch of spring.

“You still grouchy because I let you oversleep?”

“No, gone by, forgotten, Bill.”

“All right. Now you start her on the home stretch and keep her goin’”

“Double up on the dory gripes. Get those kid boards down below. Put a couple of extra turns on
the anchor lashing and make fast or put below decks everything that could be ripped off. – Now,
who’s that fellow has charge of the wind factory?”

“Aeolus.”

“That’s the one!”

Bill went down into his trousers’ pocket, pulled out a dime and spun it into the sea.
“Here, Aeolus, give us ten cents’ worth of wind! It’s one hundred thirty knots into Boston and we
don’t want to linger.”

By dark we were moving and the organ notes through the rigging deepened as wind and our
speed increased. Whether or not Aeolus had heard Bill’s invocation doesn’t matter, his ambition
to work up for us a full-fledged gale – varying between north and northeast – was apparent. The
wind was commencing to strike in solid chunks: we were running west by north right in the
trough with the driving power a little abaft the beam. It grew colder, snow threatened but held
off: instead came spurts of sleety rain while the Wind-god’s fingers gradually worked toward the
bass strings.

Excitement of battle banished fatigue. Flannagan slipped a bowline under my arms and belayed
it to the weather bitts. “Lashed to the wheel” is popular fiction: no helmsman is ever so bound.

Including ballast the EVA AND ANNIE had about one hundred thirty tons below and her actions
were very different from those on the run out. Before the nor’wester a kitten, now she lay over
nearly forty degrees, seething through those rolling walls like a marine Mogul with a sullen, slow, determined, heaving motion, scarcely lifting to the seas and buried completely in flying spindrift. The night shut down, a solid Stygian blanket; the dim tops of larger waves merged in the blur to windward. I sensed the advance of some and eased her over them, yet many a big one she had to take solid.

By eight bells there was plenty of conversation going on aloft, in fact it was talking right out loud! To put down a spoke required considerable back muscle.

“You tired?”

“O go below and play checkers! I’ll tell you two little secrets, though: from the way she steers I think the jib is gone. Secondly, if you don’t take some of this ungodly mainsail off her we’re goin’ to lose this cute little rudderhead.”

“Bad as that? Well, you surprise me! Let’s have her!”

Below there was noise aplenty but of a different kind. Every hamadryad evicted when the trees were felled for timber to make this vessel was voicing a protest at the racking. Shrieks, cries and
groans which filled the cabin dissipated the notion that wood-nymphs were always soft-voiced, such is the effect of adverse environment on vocal chords.

“Be careful,” said Flannagan, “or your head will slip through between the planks!”

I remember getting a cup of coffee from the pot slung against the stove, crawling into a weather
bunk (the leeward ones were all occupied) too tired to take off my boots. That’s all I recall until
something hit me on the head and I awoke, wrapped around a table leg on the floor. On deck the blackness was a tangible, overpowering force. A faint glow from the binnacle outlined dimly
Bill’s features, his pipe gripped between his teeth, unlit – and that meant something! When it
blew so hard that Bill’s pipe went out, and stayed out, well, almost anything was likely to
happen.

“Spell you?”

“Sure! Any coffee left? – Keep her to the south’ard of west. She’ll nose out a couple of points.”

There was supposed to be a lookout somewhere on deck but he was as invisible as the mainmast.
I suspect he was sheltered under the lee of the foremast; however it didn’t matter for I could have
heard no warning of danger from his lips in that chaos of sound. She gave a very fair imitation of
a submarine when diving into a steep one, with the water swirling around my boots a foot deep.

Half an hour later Bill showed his head over the companionway slip-ins. His pipe was lit.

“How you makin’ it?”

“Fine! – Remember those two little secrets I told you awhile ago? Well, I’m goin’ to tell you another. If you don’t reef this rag carpet over my head the sticks will go out of her.”

“Wrong! It’ll blow off first and that’s the only way it’s goin’ to be reefed tonight. Do you think that crowd down below would want their sleep disturbed? Why, if I was to bring her into the wind now it would shake the teeth out of them. Every skipper afloat will be shootin’ for market. They’ll be drivin’ by Minot's like a flock of coots and we want to be right there in the lead.”

“O, all right, all right! Send a hand up here and let me get some of that sleep you’re talkin’ about.
You notice it’s commencinÆ to snow?”

“Well, what’s the difference? You can’t see anything anyway.”

. . . .

We were all snug at T Wharf in Boston when I came to.

“Did you draw a trick at the wheel last night?”

“Sure!” said Flannagan, “I brought her in here.”

“How was she rigged?”

“Staysail and mainsail.”

“Funny I never heard it when he took the duck off.”

“He didn’t, the jib and foresail blew off. Bill kept the foresail sheets flat to keep her head off and it split. With only the staysail for’ard we had to ease her off on the peak halliards.”

“Oh, oh, the old scarecat! Where’s he now?”

“Up street trying to get three and a quarter cents for this fare – if he does it will mean over a hundred dollars apiece. Don’t bother him now!”

I didn’t.