Evening Star Newspaper, August 8, 1937, Page 77

Avgust 8, 1937 to save three.” He stood, facing us, and we looked at him, our silly mouths open like we “TVuldn’t believe what we’d heard. Little Hines spoke first. He said what we all feit: “We can’t stay here, Cap’n, an’ watch your boys drown before our eyes!” Captain Holbrook rapped out his order for putting up the boat. No one moved. No one spoke. We were here to take risks; we were supposed to save lives. And he’d stopped us. The men began shuffling and muttering. Then they burst into a babble of talk. “You can’t do it, Cap. We got to take her out. We got to try!” We beat on him like waves. Little Hines kept crying: “We went to school with them! We went to school with them!”” We started toward the lifeboat. Sara sprang forward. “Pa!” she shrieked. “Pa, you can’t let ‘'em drown! You can’t stand there and see 'em drown and not lift a hand!”’ Though he looked at her, it was as if her words did not reach him. Sara ran up to me. “Ed,” she screamed. “Don’t listen to him! He's nqt himself. He’s not been himself since that day! It's murder! You can't take orders from a crazy old man who don’t know what he’s doing!”’ A~ did what neither our begging nor her tears could do. She got through his skin. He roared back at her: “Go up to the station! I know what I'm a- doing.” Suddenly he wasn’t a Captain any more but an old man whose vanity has been hurt. His power had gone from him. She pounced upon his weakness like the wind at loose canvas. “Yousee, Ed!" she screamed. ‘‘You see, boys, you can’t let 'em drown! You got to save ‘em!” If he hadn’t cracked and shown the weakness of age, I could never 'a’ broke through the habit of my whole life. I said: “‘Cap’n Hol- brook, I'm sorry. We got to take the boat out. Come on, men!” It was mutiny. We knew it was mutiny. There wasn’t a man who didn’t understand what he was daing. For a moment we wavered. He saw this and he took advantage of it. He went down to the boat and stood facing us. He drew his revolver and said quiet: “I"l shoot the first man who touches that boat. If necessary, I'll wound every last one of you.” For a moment we faced each other. The tide was far out, and the beach sloped sharply at this point. He stood down on the risin’ al- most within reach of the waves. He didn’t see Sara running down the beach. She flung herself on him with her full weight, her arms around his neck. Unprepared, he ¥ ¥ N b W flattened by the wind. We went about THIS WEEK staggered and fell, she with him. Somehow she took the revolver from his grip and flung it far from him. I picked it up as the Captain got to his feet. He swayed as if he was going to fall. Someway he made me think of Samson. He stared first at Sara, then at us, like he couldn’t believe in what had happened. I don’t think I ever can feel as bad again. We went about launching the lifeboat, heads down as if we was ashamed. He didn’t seem to hear Sara who came up to him and said humble: ‘“Pa, are you hurt? Speak to me, Pa!” There was a lull in the storm. The waves " SHE SHRIEKED: ‘‘PA CAN'T LET 'EM DROWN! YOU CAN'T STAND THERE, SEE 'EM DROWN, NOT LIFT A HANDI" launching the boat. Cap’n Holbrook walked up to us mutinied men and said, “I am going with you!” Sara came running after him. “Ed,” she cried, “you can’t let him go! You see how it is!” “I'm your Captain, and I’'m a-goin’,” he said. “Ed, you got to stop him!” Sara cried. ‘“‘He hurt himself when he fell.”” No one spoke. He was our Captain. He had a right to go with us. He got into the boat. She watched him sitting there, the figure of a captain, and she must have understood then. He couldn’t "a’ stayed behind. If we hadn’t mutinied, we'd never have launched that lifeboat. We managed by a miracle in the split second of time when it was possible. Now we had to make good. This wasn’t any ordinary shipwreck, when rescuing men is just our regular duty. We had to save the Cap’n’s boys after what we’d done to their father. We'd got to prove he was wrong; and he was helpin’ us. He was steering that boat as if he was, like Sara had said, “fey,” as if he knew everything beforehand. No men ever were captained as we were by him sitting there erect and stern, barkin’ orders, steering the boat, all his knowledge of sea and wind squeezed into these minutes. It was impossible for us to make the rescue. He’d known it was impossible, yet that’s what we were doing. Against all reason we made the lee of the Three Brothers. Her deck was a welter of rigging. The broken mast which they had man- aged to lash down partially pinned the canvas of the unfurled sail, which billowed and snapped like it was alive. One of the boys was lyin’ on the deck. Jim and Dan called into the storm: “Fred’s leg's broke.” It wasn’t the first time we’d had wounded, helpless men get into our heaving lifeboat from a wrecked vessel. All of a sudden even while we was gettin’ the boys into the boat, what we’d done came over me. I kept looking at the Cap’n and wondering. What was he goin’ to do now? What could he do? We’d mutinied, and we'd been right. We couldn’t "a’ done anything else. “What else could I ’a’ done? He wasn’t himself,” I thought. “He hadn’t any right to judge who he saved, had he? Even if they was his boys, they had the right to their chance.” I was arguing like that as though I was arguing before a judge and jury. Up for the murder of a man. Up for the murder of Captain Isaac Hol- brook. “You next, Dan,”’ the Captain said. Dan was the youngest, under twenty. “Jump!” It was an easy jump; the Three Brothers was a small vessel. I don’t know how he missed. He was swirlin’ past us in the water. As though he’d been waitin’ for this, the Old Man grabbed him as he was rushing by and held him against the tearing of the sea — held him as a young man couldn’t have, his arms torn almost from his sockets, until we could bear a hand and heave Dan inboard. The boy sat shaking with cold in the bottom of the boat. “If it wasn't for you, Pa,” he kept saying, “I'd be a goner! We'd all be goners!” The old man looked at him as though he was saying: “If I'd had my way, you'd "a’ drowned. If 1 had followed my own judgment none of you'd be here.” That was what I read in his face. I wanted to yell to him: “Don’t you feel like that! We all did what we thought was right. You did what no captain ever did before for his crew. We all know it. It’s as if we owed our lives to you.” But he couldn’t ’a’ heard. We rowed inshore easy, the wind behind us. We rushed the boat up the beach on an in- coming wave. Captain Holbrook sat there while the men lifted Fred out. At last he rose slow and careful. Like someone walking in his sleep, he climbed the beach above the risin’. He stood taller than any of us as we gathered around him asking anxious: “You all right, Cap’n?” Sara put her arm through mine and I could feel her shakin’ with fear. She whispered to me: “What’s the matter, Ed?” Then we were quiet because he was going to speak to us. “Men,"”” he said and stopped while we came near to him. His voice was steady and gentle. “You was right, Ed, to take command. I been hangin’ on longer than I'd ought. No use. Sara, come here, I want to lean on you. Ed, you come to my other side. I'm a-goin’ home.” He straightened himself up, towering over us. I needn’t ’a’ worried. He was more our Captain than he’d been in all his years. Only a great man dares say he’s wrong. He leaned on us heavy. “I’'m a-goin’ home,” he said again, and we felt his whole weight crumple on us. The End