Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/147

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FROZEN MARGIT
139

which I had bought at Bergen from the Lofoden smacks—fish for the Roman Catholics to eat in Lent. Nils Pedersen, the captain, was my husband: Knud Lote was mate." Mr. Scammell having expressed some surprise that so young a man should have been captain, she explained, "He was twenty-two. I made him captain. My father and mother died: they had not wished me to marry him. They were proud. But they left very little money, considering; and with it I bought the brig and cargo. She was an old craft, half rotten. We had fair weather, mostly, down the English Channel and almost to Ushant. There we met a strong southerly gale, and in the middle of it a pintle of our rudder gave way and the loose rudder damaged our stern-post. We tried to bear up for Falmouth, but she would not steer; and we drove up towards the Irish Coast, just missing Scilly. On the 8th the wind changed to N.W. and increased. That night, as Nils tried to lay to, she carried away her fore-mast, which had been shaky for days. She was now leaking fast. At noon on the 9th we managed to launch a boat, and abandoned her. She sank at four o'clock: we saw her go down. The weather grew colder, that night. I think it snowed all the time: and the seas were too heavy to let the boat run. The men pulled to keep her nose to them and the wind, and so she drifted. I forget when they gave over pulling. For a night and a day I baled steadily. After that I lay most of the time in the bottom of