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The Red Island Shoals
by
“Something black on the ice on the port bow!” shouted the man from the foretop.
“Where away?” answered the master of the bridge.
“About four points to the northwest.”
“Hard astarboard!” from the bridge.
“Starboard hard!” from the wheel, and the big ship wheeled a course direct for the Red Island Shoals.
“Steady!” from the bridge.
“Steady it is!” And the Artemis wheeled a little more, and leaving the shoals on her right, steamed towards the object that had attracted the attention of the watch. The bridge master, viewing it through his glasses, suddenly stopped short, fixing his gaze on the spot with far more than his wonted intensity.
“What is it, John?” he said to the watchman. “Seems queer to me. It’s no seal, I’ll swear.”
John took the glasses, and, putting them to his eyes, made out at once what the object was.
“‘T is a small boat upside down–and yes, there’s a man’s body for certain, stretched out beside it,” he announced in a subdued voice.
“Go slow!” to the engine man.
“Slow!” rang back the watchful engineer.
“Stop her!” and over the side went half a dozen men.
“Take that hatch over, and bring in the man off the ice.”
All the crew, some three hundred blackened figures, were now leaning over the rail to see the evidence of this latest tragedy. No one knew him, or could even guess where he and his boat had come from, or on what strange quest he had been bound. Those ice pans might have come from anywhere along the hundreds of miles between Anticosti and Cape Chidley. To these men, it was just the body of an old man, a stranger. Not much loss. He could not have lived many more years, anyhow. Probably no one would miss him. No need to trouble over it. A prompt burial at sea, thought the captain, would be as good as on the land, where a grave was an impossibility now, anyhow. Besides, he was obviously an old seaman, and what could be more appropriate? Moreover, the crew would rather have it so than to carry the corpse around while they were seal-hunting.
There was no parson aboard, but the skipper was a God-fearing man. So the flags were hauled to half-mast, the ship hove to the wind, the crew called on deck just as they were, and when the skipper had read a brief prayer, “in sure and certain hope” the body of Uncle Reuben Marston, vanquished by his enemy at last, was committed to the deep within a biscuit toss of the Red Island Shoals.