Klee Wyck - Emily Carr [33]
Mine was sore for my Ginger Pop in his box on the doomed boat. We each took our trouble to an opposite end of the bay … brooding.
Suddenly the mournful little group on the farther point galvanized into life. I heard a chorus of yells, saw the man strip off his oilskin pants, tie them to a pole and beat the air. I hurried across but found the Indians limp and despairing again.
“Boat see we was Indian, no stop,” said the man bitterly.
Fish boats were hurrying to shelter, few came our way, sanctuary was not to be found in Skedans Bay. I could not help hoping none would see our distress signal. The thought of going out on that awful sea appalled me.
A Norwegian seine boat did see us however. She stood by and sent two small boats ashore. One went to the rescue of the drifting gas boat and the other beached for us.
“Please, please leave us here on the land,” I begged. The Indians began rushing our things into the boat and the big Norwegian sailors with long beards like brigands said, “Hurry! Hurry!” I stood where land and sea wrangled ferociously over the overlap. The tea kettle was in my hand. “Wait,” I roared above the din of the waves, seeing I was about to be seized like a bale of goods and hurled into the boat. “Wait!”—plunging a hand into my pocket I took out a box of “Mothersill’s Seasick Remedy,” unwrapped a pill, put it on my tongue and took a gulp from the kettle’s spout; then I let them put me into the maniac boat. She was wide and flat-bottomed. It was like riding through bedlam on a shovel. “Mothersill” was useless; her failure climaxed as we reached the seiner, which at that particular moment was standing on her nose. When she sat down again they tied the rescued gas boat to her tail and dragged us aboard the seiner. When they set me on the heaving deck, I flopped on top of the fish hatch and lay there sprawling like a star fish.
Rooting among my things the Indian girl got a yellow parasol and a large tin cup; but the parasol flew overboard and the cup was too late—it went clanking down the deck. Being now beyond decency I made no effort to retrieve it. The waves did better than the cup anyway, gurgling and sloshing around the hatch which was a foot higher than the deck. Spray washed over me. The taste of the sea was on my lips.
The Captain ordered “all below”; everyone rushed to obey save me. I lay among the turmoil with everything rattling and smashing around and in my head no more sense than a jelly fish.
Then the Captain strode across the deck, picked me up like a baby and dumped me into the berth in his own cabin. I am sure it must have been right on top of the boiler for I never felt so hot in my life. One by one my senses clicked off as if the cigarette ladies jazzing over every inch of the cabin walls had pressed buttons.
When I awoke it hardly seemed possible that this was the same boat or the same sea or that this was the same me lying flat and still above an engine that purred soft and contented as an old cat. Then I saw that the Indian girl was beside me.
“Where are we?”
“I dunno.”
“Where are they taking us?”
“I dunno.”
“What time is it?”
“I dunno.”
“Is Ginger Pop safe?”
“I dunno.”
I turned my attention to the Captain’s cabin, lit vaguely from the deck lantern. The cigarette ladies now sat steady and demure. From the window I could see dark shore close to us. Suddenly there was no more light in the room because the Captain stood in the doorway, and said, as casually as if he picked up castaways off beaches most nights,
“Wants a few minutes to midnight—then I shall put you off at the scows.”
“The scows?”
“Yep, scows tied up in Cumshewa Inlet for the fish boats to dump their catches in.”
“What shall I do there?”
“When the scows are full, ‘packers’ come and tow them to the canneries.”
“And I must sit among the fish and wait for a packer?”
“That’s the idea.”
“How long before one will come?”
“Ask the fish.”
“I suppose the Indians will be there too?”
“No, we tow them on farther, their engine’s broke.