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Title: Man Overboard!
Author: F. Marion Crawford
Release date: February 12, 2008 [eBook #24584]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24584
Credits: Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Roberta Staehlin, Grinnell
College Library and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from
scanned images of public domain material from the Google
Print project.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN OVERBOARD! ***
Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Roberta Staehlin, Grinnell
College Library and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from
scanned images of public domain material from the Google
Print project.)
Man Overboard!
BY
F. MARION CRAWFORD
AUTHOR OF "THE UPPER BERTH," "CECILIA,"
"THE WITCH OF PRAGUE," ETC.
[Illustration]
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
1903
_All rights reserved_
COPYRIGHT, 1903,
BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
COPYRIGHT, 1903,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
* * * * *
Set up and electrotyped April, 1903.
Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Portrait of F. Marion Crawford _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
"He let go of the knife, and the point
stuck into the deck" 54
"One of his wet, shiny arms was round
Mamie's waist" 92
MAN OVERBOARD
Yes--I have heard "Man overboard!" a good many times since I was
a boy, and once or twice I have seen the man go. There are more
men lost in that way than passengers on ocean steamers ever learn
of. I have stood looking over the rail on a dark night, when
there was a step beside me, and something flew past my head like
a big black bat--and then there was a splash! Stokers often go
like that. They go mad with the heat, and they slip up on deck
and are gone before anybody can stop them, often without being
seen or heard. Now and then a passenger will do it, but he
generally has what he thinks a pretty good reason. I have seen a
man empty his revolver into a crowd of emigrants forward, and
then go over like a rocket. Of course, any officer who respects
himself will do what he can to pick a man up, if the weather is
not so heavy that he would have to risk his ship; but I don't
think I remember seeing a man come back when he was once fairly
gone more than two or three times in all my life, though we have
often picked up the life-buoy, and sometimes the fellow's cap.
Stokers and passengers jump over; I never knew a sailor to do
that, drunk or sober. Yes, they say it has happened on hard
ships, but I never knew a case myself. Once in a long time a man
is fished out when it is just too late, and dies in the boat
before you can get him aboard, and--well, I don't know that I
ever told that story since it happened--I knew a fellow who went
over, and came back dead. I didn't see him after he came back;
only one of us did, but we all knew he was there.
No, I am not giving you "sharks." There isn't a shark in this
story, and I don't know that I would tell it at all if we weren't
alone, just you and I. But you and I have seen things in various
parts, and maybe you will understand. Anyhow, you know that I am
telling what I know about, and nothing else; and it has been on
my mind to tell you ever since it happened, only there hasn't
been a chance.
It's a long story, and it took some time to happen; and it began
a good many years ago, in October, as well as I can remember. I
was mate then; I passed the local Marine Board for master about
three years later. She was the _Helen B. Jackson_, of New York,
with lumber for the West Indies, four-masted schooner, Captain
Hackstaff. She was an old-fashioned one, even then--no steam
donkey, and all to do by hand. There were still sailors in the
coasting trade in those days, you remember. She wasn't a hard
ship, for the old man was better than most of them, though he
kept to himself and had a face like a monkey-wrench. We were
thirteen, all told, in the ship's company; and some of them
afterwards thought that might have had something to do with it,
but I had all that nonsense knocked out of me when I was a boy. I
don't mean to say that I like to go to sea on a Friday, but I
_have_ gone to sea on a Friday, and nothing has happened; and
twice before that we have been thirteen, because one of the hands
didn't turn up at the last minute, and nothing ever happened
either--nothing worse than the loss of a light spar or two, or a
little canvas. Whenever I have been wrecked, we had sailed as
cheerily as you please--no thirteens, no Fridays, no dead men in
the hold. I believe it generally happens that way.
I dare say you remember those two Benton boys that were so much
alike? It is no wonder, for they were twin brothers. They shipped
with us as boys on the old _Boston Belle_, when you were mate
and I was before the mast. I never was quite sure which was which
of those two, even then; and when they both had beards it was
harder than ever to tell them apart. One was Jim, and the other
was Jack; James Benton and John Benton. The only difference I
ever could see was, that one seemed to be rather more cheerful
and inclined to talk than the other; but one couldn't even be
sure of that. Perhaps they had moods. Anyhow, there was one of
them that used to whistle when he was alone. He only knew one
tune, and that was "Nancy Lee," and the other didn't know any
tune at all; but I may be mistaken about that, too. Perhaps they
both knew it.
Well, those two Benton boys turned up on board the _Helen B.
Jackson_. They had been on half a dozen ships since the _Boston
Belle_, and they had grown up and were good seamen. They had
reddish beards and bright blue eyes and freckled faces; and they
were quiet fellows, good workmen on rigging, pretty willing, and
both good men at the wheel. They managed to be in the same
watch--it was the port watch on the _Helen B._, and that was
mine, and I had great confidence in them both. If there was any
job aloft that needed two hands, they were always the first to
jump into the rigging; but that doesn't often happen on a
fore-and-aft schooner. If it breezed up, and the jibtopsail was
to be taken in, they never minded a wetting, and they would be
out at the bowsprit end before there was a hand at the downhaul.
The men liked them for that, and because they didn't blow about
what they could do. I remember one day in a reefing job, the
downhaul parted and came down on deck from the pe Next |