Black Cat Weekly #8

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3The Delight Makes Port

MRS. PURCHAS was already on the float, stowing boxes of sandwiches and a couple of quart thermos bottles of coffee in a skiff when Captain Pel and his crew came down the gangplank.

“Enough for lunch and plenty to spare if the people on the cruiser need it,” she told them briskly. “And the barometer’s rising, Pel. Perhaps the fog’ll lift by the time you get outside the harbor.”

She pulled off her slicker, nevertheless, and wrapped it around Linda. “Good luck,” she called as they shoved off. “Good hunting.”

Linda, seated in the stern, turned her head to smile, but Purchas Landing had faded into the fog behind them as quickly as Steve’s oars dipped in the lobsterman’s short, choppy strokes. With a dozen more, her bearings were gone completely. We could be rowing in circles for all I’d know, she thought, and Steve Purchas acts like a homing pigeon! Another dozen or two and the Abenaki was practically dead ahead of them. Linda could already see a vague green hull, shrouded in mist.

“Tie the skiff on the mooring, Steve, and cast us off,” his father ordered as they drew alongside. “We’ll take care of the anchor.” He climbed aboard and leaned hastily over the rail. “Here, Linda, let me give you a hand up. Steve’ll be along in a minute with instructions.”

He and Dr. Cobb strode toward the stern, leaving her stranded amidships until Steve hit the deck five minutes later. But he was beckoning even before he headed for the engines, and she trailed willingly at his heels.

“Your father gets this engine job, once the anchor’s up,” he explained. “Dad’ll take the wheel. You and I draw the towing gear.” His hand on the throttle, he listened to the rattle of chains from the stern, waiting for his father’s signal. “We’ll be working back there, too,” he said. “We only have to stick around here till your father takes over.”

Finally a bell sounded from the wheelhouse forward, and Steve got the engines moving. Then Dr. Cobb was at hand to check briefly with Steve before he assumed his responsibilities, and the younger members of the crew headed aft to tackle their own job. Working together, they opened up stern lockers and began to ready gear. “Boat hooks, too, Linda,” Steve said, and went on dragging, out heavy coils of cable as she hunted them up. Though he hadn’t taken time off to say so, he thoroughly approved of having her along. For the second time in two days Linda was coming in handy in an emergency.

Often a crewman from the rescue ship was needed on a disabled craft, and Steve knew that he might have to return aboard their tow. Linda was no Wait Webber in a crew; still, without her on the way back, Dr. Cobb might have been saddled with the winch and the towing gear, in addition to the engines. A man could manage a lot of things simultaneously when he had to, of course, but it might have been strenuous. Towing cables had parted before this.

Hawk-eyed, Steve examined every inch of the cables before he shoved two aside in case of trouble, and turned back to Linda.

“We’ll thread a couple on the winch,” he told her. “This cruiser’s heavy and we’ll probably need them both. Can you hang on to this stuff and feed it to me?”

Linda nodded, and they struggled with the salt-stiffened cables, not evey trying to talk, their thoughts on the cruiser somewhere ahead of them in the fog. But the barometer really had meant business, the girl decided, when Steve made her take a minute off to rest her hands and she had a chance to look around. She could see half a dozen boats on their moorings, in the harbor now and make out the blurred outlines of the long wharf where the Casco Bay Line’s Aucocisco docked on her trips to and from Portland. Back in Purchas Basin all that she had been able to see was the water under their own bow.

“Is Haddock Rock far from us?” she asked.

Steve shook his head. “Not in miles, but too far for that cruiser’s comfort. This fog’s been slowing us like crazy, and the Abenaki’s no race horse at best.” He pointed at the jagged, weed-covered ledges stretching down into the Bay off Harpswell Neck. “Nasty things to pile up on,” he said soberly, “and the cruiser’s got plenty of them to worry her out behind Haskell Island.”

They went back to their job on the winch. Time was getting shorter. Now that the visibility was improving by the minute, Captain Pel had begun to drive the Abenaki hard through the heavy seas. The storm that had blown through the night and early morning had left the Bay in turmoil. Even in the shelter of the harbor, they had felt the force of the swells under their ship’s keel, and out here beyond the end of Potts Point she fought head on against the rising tide.

His father was holding their course straight out for deep water off Haskell, Steve noticed, as they finished their job and hurried forward to join the others around the wheel for a hasty lunch. Apparently he was calculating the effect of wind and tide on the cruiser’s drift.

Captain Pel nodded when he saw his son’s glance.

“There was no sense in working through the Gut and running along the outside shore,” he said. “That ‘ham’ thought the cruiser’s engines were dead so she’s more’n likely drifted up this way—if she isn’t hung up on a ledge somewhere.” He sounded troubled. “Tide’s turned and the weight of the wind’s behind it. There’ll be a sea off Haskell.”

Linda blinked at him. What did he call this? With the Abenaki pitching headlong, it didn’t seem like a duck pond to her. But when they finally ran out from the protection of the farthest headland, she knew what he had meant. The Abenaki stopped pitching and began to buck like a rodeo bronco. Then Steve gave a shout and she forgot the ship’s antics to race to the rail. Between the ragged ledges of Haskell Island and Haddock Rock, they had found the cruiser wallowing heavily, broadside to the incoming seas. Steve just made out the name and port across her stern as the Abenaki, engines throttled down, nosed into hailing distance.

“Delight, Palm Beach,” he said to Linda. “Great guns, she’s come a long way to find trouble!”

The four men aboard the Delight cheered them heartily. “Our second anchor, on chain, parted ten minutes ago.” It was the broad-shouldered man with the iron-gray hair who shouted to them. “Can you shoot us a line, Abenaki? We’re using a drag but we’re drifting in fast.”

Captain Pel nodded. “Stand by,” he called. “We’re dropping a cable in your bow.”

Braced in the stern, Steve waited while the Abenaki forged slowly ahead. Then, with one tremendous heave, he shoved the coiled ends of the heavy towing cables onto the deck of the cruiser and sprang down to take care of his end of the operations at the winch.

The gray-haired man smiled his thanks. “My name’s Sutton. Dr. Bartley Sutton.” He raised his voice as the water widened between the two boats. “We’re mighty grateful to you.” Lifting an arm in salute, he turned quickly away to lend his men a hand.

Steve knew that his father would idle the Abenaki’s engines as long as he dared, and he kept his eyes on the Delight’s crew, approvingly gauging their speed with the towlines. Every second counted now. At Captain Pel’s quiet orders, Dr. Cobb sent their engines inching ahead again and again to counteract their own drift, but with each wind-driven wave they could see the Delight roll perceptibly closer to the ledges. No improvised drag could possibly hold the big cruiser long in a sea as heavy as this. The four on the Purchas ship, waiting grimly for some word that the towlines were secured, felt ready to cheer when Dr. Sutton sprang into the Delight’s bow, signaling with his arms, and Captain Pel could get cautiously under way.

Steve and Linda stayed together in the stern, nursing the towing gear. Even a greenhorn like Linda could see that they were not out of trouble. If those towlines parted, their difficulties would start all over again; yet they had to haul the Delight clear of Haskell before there would be leeway to circle out for the return trip. Fighting the tide in a rough sea, with the heavy cruiser dragging, was slow, grueling work for the Abenaki. This was not like towing in the open sea with a long length of line paid out behind you. Here you had to shorten lines to keep your tow off the reefs, and the strain on the cables increased proportionately. Steve sat tense and tight-lipped, ready to shout a warning to his father, until the laboring Abenaki rounded the island and had wind and tide behind her to ease the cables’ strain.

“Look, we’re actually moving again!” Linda exclaimed. “I began to think this Bay was filled with glue.”

Steve grinned and relaxed a little. “Some job,” he said feelingly. “That’s what we get for being nearer than the Coast Guard this time. You pulled your weight, Linda. It was a smart idea to bring you along.”

The girl’s face flushed with pleasure. “At least I didn’t get seasick,” she said, laughing, “so I guess I passed your father’s test.”

They sat in companionable silence for a while. Behind them in the Delight, Dr. Sutton and his crew were spelling each other, two of them manning the towlines and two resting, turn and turn about. After their battle with high seas in the helpless cruiser, they were exhausted.

“I wonder who Dr. Sutton is,” Steve said finally. “One thing sure, he’s not starving, not with a plaything like that cruiser. I hope he sticks around long enough to let us get aboard.”

“Well, he can’t get very far till his engines are fixed,” Linda pointed out. “We’ve got him in our clutches for a few days anyway. I’ve always wanted to see a ship’s galley.”

Reminded of food, she rummaged around for the sandwiches she had put aside and set the open box between them. “There wasn’t any sense in passing these over to that cruiser,” she said, biting into deviled ham contentedly. “That man bringing out the coffeepot back there now must be the cook.”

“Could be,” Steve agreed. “Even the luxury liner behind us doesn’t need more than two in her crew when her owner’s his own skipper.” Again he eyed the big cruiser with admiration. “She’s a beauty all right.”

Eventually, the Abenaki worked her slow way past the tip of Harpswell Neck, and Captain Pel called Steve forward.

“Shorten those cables still more,” he told his son. “I’m not aiming to run foul of the Petticoat or the Delilah or any other craft in the harbor with that dancing tow. She’s as skittish as a porpoise. And stand by, Steve, in case of trouble.”

But the cruiser behaved like a lady, once Steve and the winch had worked her in closer, and they threaded their way through the harbor without any incidents.

Leaning out of his store window, Ed Randall waved cheerfully as they passed Town Landing; and in home waters, when they reached at last for their mooring, they could see Deborah Purchas flapping a dish towel in triumph on the back porch. The Delight was safe in port.