But this, bad as it seemed, was only the beginning of troubles. There were hours of just such experiences; and Reuben's strength, robust as it was, began to fail him beneath the strain.

In such storms there is no rest for the sailor. Something is needed of him every moment, especially upon these fishing smacks and schooners, which carry such small crews; and often forty or more hours will pa.s.s with literally no rest at all.

They labored on until evening set in once more, and all hands had just been ordered aft to secure a broken spar, when Nick the boy uttered a fearful cry, which gave every man a start. They followed the direction of his horrified gaze, and saw a danger which paralyzed the stoutest nerve. Just ahead was a "gray-back,"--sailor parlance for a wave which is to all other waves as a mountain to a hillock,--and Reuben felt their doom was sealed, for the old Nautilus, disabled as she was already, could never stand that terrific onslaught.

With one short, desperate prayer he closed his eyes and clung with the grip of the dying to the shattered spar.

It was all over in a moment. A roar like a thousand thunders, a stunning blow impossible to imagine, and then--a broad, wreck-strewn expanse, amid which those few poor atoms of humanity showed but as black dots for a moment, soon to be sucked beneath the seething waves.

By dawn of the next day the storm was over, for that gray-back had been one of those climaxes in which nature seems to delight; and, having done its worst, the winds hushed their fury, and wailed away into a chill, sullen, but clearing morning.

The remainder of the fleet, scattered in every direction by the storm, did not discover the absence of the Nautilus till mid-forenoon, when bits of wreckage, into which they sailed, soon told the pitiful story.

Towards noon two bodies were found, that of the captain and steersman, afloat in the pilot-house, but no more; the fate of Reuben, the boy, and the three other hands could only be conjectured.

The next day the drowned men were given honorable burial; and many of the remaining vessels, having been almost disabled by the fury of the elements, had to make for the nearest port for repairs.

Then came a fair and "lucky" run, in which not a hand could be spared to carry the news home, for these fishermen learn to look almost with contempt upon death and disaster. Many a poor fellow with a broken limb must go days, even weeks, before he can reach a physician; and the friends on sh.o.r.e are left as long in ignorance of their fate.

Nearly a month had pa.s.sed, then, since that awful night, when Jasper Norris, dreading his task as he had never dreaded any physical danger in his life, walked down the village street toward Sara and Morton in the cottage doorway.

The former watched him with a growing feeling of suffocation and tightness about her throat and heart, for the droop of his figure was ominous.

Had there been good news he would have given a sailors' hurrah at sight of them, and bounded on, waving his cap in welcome. But, still in dead silence, he turned into the little broken gate, and walked up the path to the door.

Sara, quite white now, and leaning for support against the jamb, kept her piercing eyes on his face, though his would not meet their gaze; while Morton rolled great frightened orbs from one to the other, as from within came unconscious Molly's gleeful babble, and the baby's sweet little trills of laughter.

"Jasper!" gasped Sara in desperation, "why--why don't you speak?"

He looked up, and made a hopeless gesture with his hands.

"Don't, Sairay," he said huskily, "don't give way, but--but I've bad news."

A great trembling now shook her limbs, and she lifted her hands as if to ward off a blow, but her agonized eyes seemed dragging the words out of him.

"Your father, Sairay, he's--he's--the Nautilus went to pieces, like the tub she wor, and he's"--

"_Drowned!_" screamed Morton, putting his hands to his ears.

"Who's drowned?" cried Molly, running to them. "Why, j.a.p, that you?

Where's pa?"

Sara, who had not spoken, at this dropped to the doorstep, and, doubling up in a forlorn little heap, buried her face in her hands. Morton burst out crying; and Molly, with a puzzled look around, joined in promptly, thinking it the proper thing to do, though she had not yet an idea of what had really happened.

But why prolong the heart-rending scene, as little by little Jasper stammered out all the story he had to tell, and the poor children began to realize how doubly orphaned they were? This was a grief before which the loss of their. stepmother seemed as nothing. They had loved their big, kind, good-natured father as a companion, far more than a parent; and the thought of never meeting him again, of never hearing his well- known greeting after his absences,--

"Waal, waal, younkers, come and kiss your old dad! Did you miss him much, eh?"--seemed intolerable.

Sara, under this new blow, for a time lost all self-control, and broke into such a pa.s.sion of grief, that Jasper, much frightened, ran for the nearest neighbor, Mrs. Upd.y.k.e.

She soon appeared,--a gaunt woman, with a wrinkled visage, and a constant sniff.

"Land sakes!" she cried, upon hearing Jasper's ill news, "Yeouw don't say! Well, well, it's a disposition o' Providence, to be sure!" by which she doubtless meant a dispensation, though it did not much matter, for no one paid the slightest attention to her moral axioms just then.

By this time the news had spread, and the neighbors were flocking to the afflicted cottages; for all the drowned men had lived in Killamet, and were well known, while each had left a wife, mother, or some weeping female relative, to mourn his loss.

But all agreed that the Olmstead case was hardest, or, if they did not, Mrs. Upd.y.k.e took pains to impress that idea upon them with a decisive sniff; for, being a next-door neighbor, she naturally desired that the affliction close by should outrank all other distress in the village.

But, finding Sara oblivious just now to everything but her grief, she left her to pace back and forth, wringing her hands and moaning like some caged creature, contenting herself with telling the children "they could mourn for their poor pa jest as well with less noise," while she prepared to receive the sympathetic callers with an intense satisfaction, which the solemnity of the occasion could not quench.

"Yes, it's a awful visitation," she sniffed, as the curious, friendly women flocked in; "I don't know's I ever hearn tell of a harrowin'er!

Four orphans, with no pa nor ma!" (Sniff, sniff.) "Molly, when that babby squirms so, is it pins or worms?"

"He wants Sara," sobbed the poor child, whose laughter and dimples were now all drowned in tears.

But Sara, unheeding of everybody, still kept up that wild walk back and forth, back and forth, every groan seeming wrenched from her very soul; and poor baby had to squirm,--and stand it.

Ah! that is a lesson that comes almost with our first breath!

"Poor child!" said one little dumpling of a woman. "Let me take him home: he'll be amused with my Johnnie, I know. Come baby!" and, managing at length to coax him away, she took him to more cheerful surroundings, where he was soon quite as happy sucking a peppermint lozenge, and watching Johnnie with his toys, as if no father lay buried under the cruel, restless sea.

Meanwhile, awed by Sara's intense grief, the women stood about, quite powerless, and gazed at her.

"Cain't we do nothin'?" asked Betty Pulcher, who could never endure inaction. "What is there to _do?_" "Nothin'," sniffed Mrs. Upd.y.k.e solemnly, "least-wise, not now. Ye see, thar won't be no funeral to make ready fur, an' the sermon won't be till a Sunday. I've gin the house a hasty tech to red it up; an' ef the Armatts an' the Simcotes (them o'

his fust wife's kin, an' his own, ye know) should come over from Norcross, we'll hev to divide 'em up. I kin sleep two on 'em, an' eat four, I guess, ef the rest on ye'll do as much."

Each one agreed to do their best, this cannibal-sounding proposition meaning nothing worse than true fishwives' hospitality; and the group had gathered in a knot to discuss in low tones the children's "prospec's" for the future, when Mrs. Norris and Miss Plunkett came in.

They were cousins, and something alike in face and manner, though the spirituality in Miss Prue's visage became a sort of shrewd good-humor in that of Mrs. Norris; and now each proceeded in a characteristic way to her duty.

Miss Prue went straight to Sara, and took the poor, unstrung little bundle of nerves into her arms, her very touch, both firm and gentle, bringing comfort to the half-crazed girl. She did not say much of anything, only kissed her and wept with her; but soon the violence of Sara's grief was subdued, and her heart-rending moans sank into long, sobbing breaths.

Mrs. Norris, after one pitying look, turned to the women.

"Don't you think, friends, it is possible that seeing so many makes her worse? We all want to do something, I know. Mrs. Deering, you're so good with children, why not take the twins home with you for to-day? Perhaps your own bairnies will help to comfort them! And, Betty Pulcher, their clothes will need some fixing, no doubt, for Sunday. You're just the one to manage that; and get Mandy Marsh and Zeba Osterhaus to help you: they'll be glad to, I know. And you, Mrs. Upd.y.k.e, and Mrs. Shooter,-- were you going to look after the cooking, and so on? There'll likely be a crowd over for the sermon."

As each one was given just the work she preferred, and as there seemed little more chance of excitement here, they soon separated, not realizing they had been sent home, however; and a blissful quiet reigned.

When Mrs. Norris stepped outside to close the gate after the last one, a voice arrested her.

"Mother! mother!"

She turned.

"Why, j.a.p, what are you doing there?" as her son came around one of the rear corners of the little building.

"I'm just--waiting. Say, mother," tremulously, "will it--kill her?"

"Kill her? Who, Sairay? No, indeed. She's lots better now. Gracious! you look sick yourself, child!"