Billingsgate Shoal (3 page)

To hell with it. Help was
there if they needed it. We got into the car and headed up route 6 to
Wellfleet, the next town north of Eastham. Our boat,
Ella
Hatton
, was moored in a slip in the harbor
there.

* * *

We parked in the big lot
and walked over to the
Hatton's
slip. She rode motionless on/the quiet water, as broad as a sunflower
seed. She is a sloop-rigged catboat, twenty-two feet long and over
twelve feet wide. Her hull is like a tapered pie-pan. Our slip was
nestled amongst those reserved for the smaller pleasure boats. The
other side of the harbor, which was once the center of America's clam
and scallop trade, is reserved for big commercial vessels, mostly
draggers. These big, blocky boats have high steep bows to fend off
the chops and troughs that develop in the North Atlantic. The
freeboard is low aft: the gunwales taper smoothly down to the stem;
This low freeboard (or low height of the hull above the waterline) is
to facilitate the easy dumping of the iron dredges that are dragged
all over the bottom of Cape Cod Bay, slurping up those bay scallops
and clams. These boats are heavy-timbered and beamy, with big diesel
engines to push them through the steep swells while hauling heavy
trawls. The average coastal or bay trawler is between forty and sixty
feet long. They are mostly deck, with a small wheelhouse usually
located forward. Behind this, standing toward the middle of the
wide-open afterdeck where the crew works, is the diesel engine and
its stack. The short mast is here too, with the radar on top and
gafflike arms and A-frames attached to it. These are the tackle that
lift and lower the drags, and get their power also from the diesel.

* * *

We saw one fisherman preparing to go out. He wore a
flannel shirt, bill-fisherman's canvas hat with big visor, and the
huge rubber overalls that are the primary stamp of the New England
fisherman; A sticker stuck to his wheelhouse bulkhead read:

BUSINESS IS SO GOOD I COULD PUKE

I shot a picture of him and the sticker. He looked up
in confusion that bordered on suspicion. People don't like having
their pictures taken by strangers. I shouted I was an amateur
feature-story photographer for the Globe. He brightened and waved.
His diesel was grinding away. A big cable-wound drum near the stack
was turning slowly. He nodded at us, smiling, and cast off. His boat
eased away from the pier and whined softly through the harbor.

And as he left, trailing a wispy, almost invisible
plume of oily smoke, we could see another trawler heading around the
breakwater. She was green, and the right size too.

We watched the boat circle the point and come
chuffing and grinding into the inner harbor where we were preparing
to depart. There was an aura of desperation about her as she rolled
in the faint current.

She was riding low. She paused on the far side of the
harbor and dropped her hawser. Quick as a wink a dory came scooting
around from her side with a man hunched over in the stern, steering
the little outboard. The dory zinged along, whining through the outer
raft of moored sailboats, and snaked its way up to the harbormaster's
dock. The man steering had scarcely finished throwing a hitch around
a piling before he left the small boat and was sprinting up the ramp
to the office.

The green boat, which was without doubt the same one
stranded on my doorstep an hour earlier, swayed lazily around her
anchor cable. But I noticed her crew had dropped another hook off her
stern, so that she kept her bow toward us. A boat of almost any size
is impenetrable head-on. Her engines were still working, and fast.
The whine was audible even from where we stood; and the plume of
smoke shot straight up from her stack. I nudged Mary.

"See why the engine's working overtime?"

I pointed to the thick stream of water gushing from
the boat's bilge pipe. It came squirting out in thick, ropy geysers.
Had it been red it would have resembled a severed artery.

"What's that, the cooler?" she asked.

"No." I pointed to another stream of water,
this one a straight hard jet of clean spray. That was the outlet for
the sea water that had just run around her engines, cooling them. No,
this rust-colored water coming in torrents was bilge water. And there
was a lot of it. Almost before my eyes the boat seemed to rise higher
in the water.

"They're pumping her out. Did you see how low
she rode as she came in? I'd say she was close to sinking. No wonder
he was in a hurry."

"Who? The man in the little boat?"

"Yep. Well they've made it in all right. I bet
the motion of the boat through the water was what intensified the
leak. Now that she's in still water they can keep her up until she's
repaired properly."

Allan Hart was ambling up the dock, clad in his scuba
suit. A big strapping kid we'd known since he was six. It was Allan
Hart who finally gave Jack (then called Jackie) the courage to put
his head underwater and do the dead man's float. The two had been
inseparable ever since: the Mutt and Jeff of our summers on Cape Cod.

"Hey Allan!" shouted Mary, waving her arm
up high.

He was wearing a wetsuit top and carrying a big
stainless steel tank under his arm. Across his wide shoulders were
strung a yellow weight belt and a huge pair of swim fins. He grinned
at us and hurried along. Allan was a native Cape Codder who lived
with his mother, a widow, in Eastham. He was strong; those tanks,
regulators, and weight belts weigh considerable. I know because I've
tried to heft them. And yet Allan was moseying along the dock with
all his gear tucked away, under his arm and on his shoulder as if he
didn't even notice it. In his right hand he carried a long shiny
object. Spear gun. I saw the reddish-tan pieces of surgical latex
tubing bounce and flip around with each step he took. Those were the
elastic ropes that drove the barbed spear through fish.

"How ya doing'?" he asked as he set his
gear on the gray boards above us; He looked down approvingly at the
catboat. I snapped two pictures of him.

"See you're goin' out. Is Jack back yet? Tell
him to stop by—"

"Why don't you stop by? He's due up here around
four or five. C'mon over to the cottage then and—"

"Thanks, Mrs. Adams, but I've got a date for
dinner in Chatham."

"Well stop by anyway on your way down for a
beer. Jack would be glad to see you, I'm sure."

"Good. OK I'll do that. And if I get lucky today
I'll bring some fish for you."

He sat on the pier, his legs dangling over the side.
He strapped on the tank and regulator and slipped the weight belt
around his waist. I saw the yellow-painted steel rectangular weights
spaced evenly around the nylon webbing of the belt. There were a lot
of them. There was a biggish knife—with a cork handle in a red
plastic sheath strapped to his right calf. Staring out at the green
trawler, he put on a rubber hood that was bright gold, and had USN on
it in big letters.

"You join the navy, Allan?"

"Naw. I just borrowed this from a friend. If you
can keep your head and chest warm you can stay down a long time. That
water out around the outer breakwater is deep and cold, but that's
where the big tautog hang out. Hey she looks mighty low."

We all turned and looked back at the boat.

"Why don't you swim out there and see what you
can see?" I asked. "Take a peek at her hull. Bet you see a
gash somewhere."

He put on the big flippers. They made a
sound—
squidge, squidge
—as
he slipped them over his feet.

"OK. It's right on my way over to the breakwater
anyway."

We mentioned seeing the boat stranded out on
Billingsgate, which seemed to increase his curiosity still more. Then
I noticed he also carried a small flashlight, encased in black hard
rubber, which he tested, then fastened to his belt. The face mask was
resting up on top of his head as he inserted the mouthpiece, then
spat it out.

"Guess I'm ready."

The
Ella Hatton's
little diesel was grinding away nicely under the cockpit hatch. Mary
had removed the sail cover from the long boom and stowed it beneath
the seat. The lunch basket was tucked into the corner of the galley
counter, right near the sink. We were ready too.

"Wonder why she's out in the middle of the
harbor anyway?" mused Allan. "As low as she's riding you'd
think she'd wanta come right up to the big pier."

"Hey how's your mom been, Allan?" Mary
asked.

"She's been pretty good. She still hasn't got a
boyfriend or anything yet, but you know, something'll turn up."

"Well we'll have to ask her over some evening,"
I said. Mary grabbed the heavy lines that Allan Flipped down to her;
I put the engine into gear and we purred slowly out of the slip.

"See you at around five, Allan. Get us a fish!"
yelled Mary.

He waved back, replaced the mouthpiece, drew down the
mask, and pushed himself forward off the dock with his arms, turning
around in midair, and fell backward into the sea. He entered the
harbor water softly, quietly, for such a big guy. He surfaced again,
doing a slow lazy flip-flop with his fins. As we began to thread the
Hatton
through the
maze of moored boats toward the harbor mouth we saw a last flutter of
brightness just under the water's surface, a quick glimmer of shiny
tank and yellow diving hood. Then there was a little flip of motion,
and he was gone, heading out to the green boat, which was riding much
higher in the water now.

Still, the boat's half-submerged look intrigued me.
It wasn't a sight you saw every day. I clacked away at it with my
camera. The motor drive advanced the film quickly with a loud
whirr
in between clacks of the mirror. A man appeared on her foredeck,
looking anxiously at the tiny harbormaster's shack. He had a faint
beard and wore a canvas jacket. I snapped more pictures. The man
didn't notice me; he was too busy gesticulating to the two figures
talking near the shack.

One was Bill Larson, the harbormaster. The other was
the fellow who'd just run ashore in the little dinghy. As we neared
the harbor mouth we passed the boat's quarter at about thirty yards'
distance. I could read her name and port on her transom:
Penelope
,
Boston. I was snapping a final shot when the man turned and looked in
our direction. When he saw me I saw a hint of a snarl start to form
on his lips. But as if he thought better of it, he turned and
disappeared into the wheelhouse. No doubt this had not been one of
his best mornings. Still I felt the prick of curiosity, and spun off
my 50-millimeter lens in exchange for a 135 and snapped a few more
photos of
Penelope
,
whoever she was, before we got out around the breakwater.

After three hours on Cape Cod Bay we headed back.
Mary was at the helm, holding the teak wheel that sits at the end of
the big round cockpit.
Ella Hatton
was close-hauled and heeled over slightly, churning her way up the
outer channel into the harbor. Two sportfishermen roared by us. The
men stood over the transoms laughing and drinking beer. No doubt they
had been out since before dawn hunting bluefish and striped bass. I
stared enviously at the big boats, with their flying bridges and long
outrigger poles. The tall towers swayed far and wide as the boats
rolled in the swells, their big engines growling and sputtering.

A big boat was rolling out of Wellfleet toward us.
She tipped and plunged in the wake of the two sportfishermen. It was
our friend the
Penelope
;
she was hustling too. We passed each other off Jeremy Point. The big
green dragger chuffed by us with nobody visible except a dim shape in
the wheelhouse. Evidently the repair was satisfactory; she was riding
high and quick. Seconds later her skipper opened her engines up; the
dark smoke shot up out of the stack like Old Faithful and the
engine's whine increased to a thunderous roar. She shook a
tailfeather south around Billingsgate Shoal (now invisible but still
treacherous), where she'd been stranded hours earlier, and headed off
due west, toward Plymouth, with remarkable felicity.

"Geez, honey, look at her go," I murmured.

Mary turned to see the long sloping plume fast
disappearing in the distant haze. We dropped sail a few minutes
later, stowing the jib down the forehatch and fastening the main and
its gaff along the boom with shock cords. We motored in the rest of
the way and gently glided
Hatton
back into her berth.

The sun had been making good progress all morning,
and now was halfway out. We left the harbor and hurried back to the
domicile where Mary promptly changed into her swimsuit and flopped
down on the deck, swatting at greenheads. I went running.

I left the cottage and began my run along Sunken
Meadow Road. I ran up to the main road, then along it until I came to
the old windmill (Eastham's landmark), and then back. It was slightly
over six miles, and during the last part was setting a pretty good
clip. I staggered into The Breakers and paced around until I cooled
off, flicking on the sauna bath. I grabbed my bucket and digging
fork, and an old-fashioned tin salt shaker, and strolled out onto the
flats. The tide was ebbing; by 5:30 it would be out. Already though,
the long tan flats stretched away for hundreds of yards. I was
looking for razor clams. Half a mile from the beach, I began to see
tiny ovoid depressions in the damp sand. Sprinkling salt from the
shaker on these, I watched the long, rectangular creatures squirt up
out of these depressions, exposing half of their delicate shells to
the air. Sometimes they dove down the other way, into the sand about
a foot. Then I'd pry them out with the fork. They were six to eight
inches long and shaped like a folded barber's razor. In forty minutes
I had filled my bucket, and started back to the cottage. I stopped at
a tide pool and filled the bucket to overflowing with brine, then
padded back to the beach.