1928-12-15 — Page 27

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CHINA MAIL CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT, 1928.

THE ATLANTIC'S CHRISTMAS GIFT.

By CAPT. FRANK H. SHAW.

hard gale from the north-east-a dead- muzzler-welcomed the "Ariel" to the North Atlantic, promising real Christmas weather. With the yards braced up on the backstays, and sail shortened to lower top- rails and a reefed foresail, Captain Amos Stokes said Good-bye to his hopes of making port in time, and cursed the luck of the unkindly seas. He had taken big risks and driven his ship like a fury for three hard months, but all the reckless hurry in the world couldn't beat that black north-easter.

"Never mind, dear," Mrs. Amos Stokes said, in the captain's snug cabin; "don't worry so much; I'll be all right."

"December twenty-fourth!" He mumbled. the air. Stokes spat the salt water out of

"Christmas Eve, eh?", It was utterly im-' his mouth, and spoke wryly:.

"She doesn't know, yet. She's alive possible not to think of another Babe, for just. Asleep, sort of-coma. She'll probably his own thoughts were running on children... die, too.. She set a lot on that child." The His own disappointment was intense-soul- shattering, indiced. He had dreamed of a mate, sympathetic, but helpless, nodded.

"They do when they're first children, strong son to carry on his name and his. sir. I know." And Stokes's grasp on his sub-family traditions of sea-fighting.

Stokes had been sea-warriors almost from ordinate's shoulder tightened,

The

A

Do you know enough to give her-to time immemorial. give her life?" he rasped, his face working. We were going to call him Noel, weren't He happened to be devoted to his wife, as we?" he husked, dampness that was not sea- "Curse this spray dimming his eyes. "A Christmas most deep-water sailors are. gale! She needs peace and quiet and care baby!" He dried his hands, and, taking the and what's she getting? Hell When she pen, wrote shakily: "This day, the ship la wakens, if she does, she'll ask for the child- bouring heavily, Ethel Stokes bore stillborn and I've got to tell her. Then she'll break child-body committed to the deep."

force, stronger than his own will, caused him her heart and die-I know."

to add: "I pray God be merciful to her-and me!" Then he closed the book and went on deck. The short day was already closing in; a horror of low-hanging cloud and snarl- ing seas. There was an unnatural livid glare Big water in the sky that was hardly light. scourged the "Ariel," pouring over her main brace blocks, swirling incessantly along her. decks.

He stared aloft half sightlessly, visualis. ing an ordeal. It is not good for a man to be condemned to chase the, happiness from a loving woman's soul. But it would have to be done at the appointed time. Ethel would ask for her baby. He pictured the rapt joy of her eyes as she made the request. He also imagined the bleak hopelessness of these eyes when the truth hammered itself home to her brain. Being a sailor through it all, he said:

"What's he say?" demanded Amos, just about to run down to his cabin.

"Says there's a ship showing distress signals to leeward, sir."

Mr. Tunbridge, an arm locked about the mizen-swifter, was raking the closed-in horizon with his binoculars.

"What is it?' 'asked Stokes. "That wreck, sir-there she is." "Let her go hang! Give me a hand here." The weather forbade the opening of a Prayer Book; but Stokes recited what he could remember of the Burial Service as he committed the body of his son to the tragic sea. Darkness closed down almost as the pitiful ceremony was completed. The thin thread of an upsoaring rocket illuminated the lowering sky to leeward, to burst in vivid sparks under the canopy of cloud.

"Shall I answer it, sir-give 'em a bit of hope to hang on to?" asked Mr. Tunbridge. "They'll need comforting-even if nothing comes of it."

We.could do it yet if the wind shifted; but it's nailed in the north-east and might stick there, a month-two months. I was a fool to allow you to come to sea with me!"

"It's been worth it-easily." sighed Ethel Stokes. Amos Stokes returned to the deck to shake his big fists in the wind's eye and curse afresh the ill-luck that had com- Danioned him. He was afraid of the future. Ordinary perils left him undaunted, but this matter of aiding a new, fragile life into the 'world was a different thing. With a ship you knew where you were, even in the worst conditions; with a woman-where were you? He took counsel of máte and steward, both "Send a couple of men aloft to make that elderly men, who had been married, but fore topgallant sail fast-it's blowing loose!" owing to the sea's ruling--had never been at "Ay, ay, sir!" Mr. Tunbridge hollowed his home when their children were born. Both hands about his mouth and bellowed. Two prophesied that Mrs. Stokes would be all men sneaked out of cover and moved, waist right when her time arrived. They express- deep in swilling brine, along the deck to the ed these opinions with spindrift cutting them mainmast. They surmounted the sheerpole, bitterly in the teeth. Staring out over the and seemed literally to be blown aloft by the livid, white-crested enormity of the wintry frantic weight of wind. Presently one of sea, Amos Stokes tasted doubt. Remember-them, jockeying a jolting yard; bawled some- ing how keen Ethel had looked forward to thing down to the deck. the coming of the child, he hoped for the best -without much hope. And its worst fears were realised. After three days of riotous wildness, what time she seemed determined to chase her own tail, the "Ariel" gave a dis- "Let her go to the devil, then!" Not that play of restlessness that surpassed all her it was like Amos Stokes to talk in that fash-

"We can't do anything-raise false previous attempts just as Ethel's hour of tra- ion customarily. He had a name for hardi- vail arrived. Amos's presence on deck was hood and gallantry; and he had more than hopes! Why should they have comfort when urgently necessary to aid the ship through once been associated with deep-sea rescue when He felt he hated all humanity. her flurries; it was equally necessary below, work of the most daring kifid. Men had said, Why shouldn't they suffer as he was suffer- when his wife fought the Terror alone and indeed, that the bigger the danger offering ing now? Why should those harassed men unaided. Ice snapped on his eyebrows when the readier Stokes was, to dare it; he liked out there look to a robbed man for succour? He tried In a little while now he would have to break he entered the cabin, breathless, like a man to lick the sea at its own game. who had fought a dozen harsh rounds; he to banish the idea of that distressed ship the news to Ethel and he believed the news from his mind as he softly opened his cabin would kill her. Women were like that; they door and tiptoed to his wife's side. Ethel clung to hope unbelievably, but when hope was restlessly asleep occasionally calling in died they lost their hold on life and just staccato words that were incoherencies: She crumpled up and died! With sickening was in a high fever-dangerously high. Her force, it was borne in on Captain Amos damp hands, which he caught, seemed to be Stokes just what his own existence would be reaching out to cradle the child that had without his wife. never known life. There was little to be done I'm not surprised.] for her, it appeared, but, dreading lest she should waken and ask that unanswerable "And your good lady, sir?" A strange question, Stokes administered a sedative, weakness afflicted Amos Stokes. His knees touching the woman he loved with infinite shook beneath him, and he reached a steady-gentleness that seemed impossible in so big

The and strong a man. ing hand to Tunbridge's shoulder.

-There were certain sad rites to be perform "Ariel," as though exulting in the tragedy below, flung herself to a towering, waveed, and he performed them. Then he entered crest, and then swung sickeningly down a the chart-house and wearily opened the log- ...seemingly interminable watery slope where book. It was necessary to make an entry

the dead things of the sea seemed to taint therein.·

was sodden to the skin, salt-soaked, he felt, to his marrow. When he returned to the wave-swept poop, where Tunbridge, his mate,, hung to. the mizen-swifter, Amos Stokes's face was grey and drawn.

"No use!" he said curtly, because of the lump in his throat.

"Meaning, sir__?”! ·

"Child's dead!

Curse the sea!"

"If they know we're standing by through the night, sir" persisted the mate.

"Oh, all right, then-but it's. no use." The answering rocket screamed upwards into the yelling void, to be answered from the wreck. It was as though a choir of fiends yelled mockery as the wind screamed and harped in the rigging, and the canvas boom- Baid Regular Christmas weather!" Stokes bitterly. "Wonder if it was like this in Bethlehem that other night?" He tried

ed.

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