A Tragedy of the Columbia [pp. 513-520]

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"oo 5 nC, -?e or mse t
NAWR,'t won't do,'t won't do; the
tide's runnin' too heavy t' take
any o' them chances, which ain't
re'lly needful. I seen too many o' the
boys ketched that away on th' bar; seen
too many on' em go out o' an evenin', happy
an' gay as gulls in a fish-wash, with vishuns o' the haul they's goin' t' make,'n'
never sighted'em alive ag'in. Mebbe
we'd pick'em up'long shore som'er's
where they'd washed in; mebbe they'd
never show up ag'in, hair nur hide, dead'r
alive. The drift's mighty strong from
Astoria south'ard here along the coast,
and I'low their bodies must'a' been carried along by that. Oncet ole Cap. Smith,
who lives down Tillamook way, was tackin' home'ards'long the beach of an evenin','n' seein' some gulls squabblin' over
somethin', he stops to see what's up;
there was some poor feller's body a-layin'
there on th' sand, the bones most picked
clean by the gulls. Only his shoes was
still hangin' to him; they, bein' buckled
on, could n't nowise get off; by them, his
nishuls bein' hob-nailed in the soles, they
afterwards identifies the find as bein' one
o' the fish boys who was spilled out on the
bar."
The speaker, a swarthy fisherman of fifty years or thereabouts, was deftly laying
by a net in the bottom of a stanch, broadbeamed fishing boat. He apparently addressed himself, for no one else was to b0
seen; occasionally he cast his eyes landward along the wharf as if waiting for
513
some one. His brown face, partly concealed by a short and stubbly gray beard,
was furrowed and wrinkled,-not the
wrinkles of care, but rather of age and
wind, and the suns of summer. The boat
rose and fell with the swelling waters of
the Columbia, bumping with a dull leaden
sound in slow regularity against the barnacle-covered pile to which it was made
fast.
"That pardner of mine's gettin' restless an' greedy like," he musingly continued, puffing away on his short-stemmed
corn-cob pipe, black with age, and blowing the smoke with a vicious force from
between his lips. "I seen too many on
'em,-all just like him; they're skerry
and keerful at first, but't ain't long'fore
they gets to thinkin' they knows all there
is to be known'bout the water and handlin' o' a boat, and then you can't tell none
on'em anything. They goes out so many
times an' comes back safe, they comes to
believe that, after all, they ain't no danger.
It's the old sayin''bout famil'r'ty breedin' contemp'. B'sides, the salmon runs
thick out nigh' th' bar, an' as I says, they
gets greedy and ain't satisfied with fair
earnin's."
He paused in his soliloquy, walked toward the bow of the boat, picked up a
rope which was dangling over the gunwale,
and began to draw it in hand over hand,
pulling the boat to a rickety wooden ladder which led from the water to the top of
the wharf.
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