We stood on the deck and watched the porgy steamer come in and tie up, too late for that day's market. Some of our fellows had to ask them where they got their fish—to the s'uth'ard or where?—and two or three fights came out of it, but no harm done. Then nearly everybody drew some money off the skipper, and we smoked fifteen-cent cigars and threw our chests out. We all went uptown, too, and took in the theatres that night, and afterwards treated each other and pretty nearly everybody else that we met along the East Side on the way back, until the policemen began to notice us and ask if we didn't think we'd better be getting back to our ships. One or two of the crew had to get into fights with the toughs along the water front, but we were all safely aboard by three o'clock in the morning.

All but Clancy. Some of us were trying to get some sleep along towards morning when Clancy came aboard with a fine shore list. The cook, who was up and stirring about for breakfast, noticed him first. "It's a fine list you've got, Tommie."

"And why not?—and a fine beam wind coming down the street. I'm like a lot of other deep-draught craft of good model, George—I sail best with the wind abeam. A bit of a list gets you down to your lines." And until we turned out for breakfast, after which it was time to be off and away to the fleet again, he kept us all in a roar with the story of his adventures.



XVIII

A BRUSH WITH THE YACHTING FLEET

Through all of that month and through most of the month of May we chased the mackerel up the coast. By the middle of May we were well up front with the killers, and our skipper's reputation was gaining. The vessel, too, was getting quite a name as a sailer. Along the Maryland, Delaware, and Jersey coasts we chased them—on up to off Sandy Hook and then along the Long Island shore, running them fresh into New York. There were nights and days that spring when we saw some driving on the Johnnie Duncan.

Toward the end of May, with the fish schooling easterly to off No Man's Land and reported as being seen on Georges and in the Bay of Fundy—working to the eastward all the time—we thought the skipper would put for home, take in salt, fill the hold with barrels and refit for a Cape Shore trip—that is, head the fish off along the Nova Scotia shore, from Cape Sable and on to anywhere around the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and stay there until we had filled her up with salt mackerel. We thought so, because most of the fleet had decided on that plan and because we had been away from home since the first of April. But no—he stayed cruising off Block Island and running them fresh into Newport with the last half-dozen of the fleet.

Our idea of it was that the skipper wanted to go home badly enough, but he was set on getting a big stock and didn't care what it cost himself or us to get it. Some of us would have given a lot to be home.

"Oh, fine blue sky and a fine blue sea And a blue-eyed girl awaiting me,"

was how Clancy put it as he came down from aloft one afternoon and took the wheel from me. "By the wind is it, Joe?"

"By the wind," I said—the usual word when seiners are cruising for mackerel, and I went aloft to take his place at the mast-head. It was a lazy watch, as the mackerel generally were not showing at this time in the middle of the day. They seemed to prefer the early morning or the late afternoon, or above all a dark night.

Long Steve, who came up this day to pass the time with me aloft, had been telling me about his old home, when we both noticed the topsails of what we knew must be the first of a fleet of big schooner yachts racing to Newport—from New York, no doubt, on one of their ocean races. Steve, of course, had to try to name the leader, while she was yet miles away—seiners have wonderful eyes for vessels—and was still at it, naming the others behind, when the next on watch relieved me and I went below.

The first of the yachts was almost on us when I came down, and Clancy was watching her like a hawk when he turned the wheel over to the next man. She was as about as big as we were. We knew her well. She had been a cup defender and afterwards changed to a schooner rig. Our skipper was taking a nap below at this time, or we supposed he was. He had been up nearly a week, with no more than a two-hours' sleep each day, and so was pretty well tired. That was what made Clancy stand by the wheel and ask if the skipper was still asleep.

"No," said the skipper himself. He had just turned out, and in his stocking feet he came to the companionway and looked up. "What is it?"

"Here's this big yacht crawling by on our quarter—she'll be by us soon. I thought you wouldn't like it."

"I'll be right up. Tell the gang to sway up."

He drew on his slip-shods and came on deck. He took a look over at the yacht while we were swaying up. When we had everything good and flat and trimmed sheets a bit, the skipper called out to take in the fore-topsail. "She hasn't got hers set," he explained.

Now, a fore-topsail does not help much—hauled up, as were the Johnnie Duncan and the yacht, it would be a hindrance to most vessels, and, perhaps, because it did not help her was why the yacht had not hers set. But it showed the skipper's fairness. Ours had been left set, because we might need it in a hurry, and also because with the skipper below nobody could order it down. Now we clewed it up.

Clancy, standing aft, threw a look at our seine-boat, which of course we had in tow. "She's quite a drag," he suggested, "for a vessel that's racing."

"Yes," said the skipper, "but wait a while. We won't cast it off unless we have to."

We did not have to. We soon had her in trim. For weeks the skipper and Clancy had been marking the Johnnie's sheets so that in an emergency they could whip her into her best sailing in no time. With that, and with the shifting of some barrels of salt that we had on deck, we soon had her going. It is surprising what a lot of difference the shifting of a few barrels of salt will make in the trim of a vessel. We had not had a try with anything for two weeks or so and had become careless. The last thing we did was to take some barrels of fresh water that happened to be standing forward of the windlass and shift them aft, and then the Johnnie began to go along for fair.

Coming up to Block Island Light things were pretty even. Then it came a question of who was to go to windward. The yacht hauled her mainsheet in to two blocks. So did we, and, further, ran a line from the cringle in her foresail to the weather rigging. She could not make it—we had her.

"Mind the time," said the skipper, when at last we had her under our quarter—"mind the time, Tommie, when we used to do so much racing down on the Cape shore? There's where we had plenty of time for racing and all sorts of foolishness. I was pretty young then, but I mind it well. A string of men on the rigging from the shear poles clear up to the mast-head—yes, and a man astraddle the main gaff once or twice, passing buckets of water to wet down the mains'l."

"Yes, and barrels of water out toward the end of the main-boom keep the sail stretched. Man, but those were the days we paid attention to racing."

"Those were the days," asserted the skipper. "But we can do a little of it now, too."

By that you will understand we were walking away from our yacht. We were to anchor in the harbor while she was still coming, and we had towed our seine-boat all the way.

"Lord," said Clancy, as we were tying up our foresail, "but I'd like to see this one in an ocean race with plenty of wind stirring—not a flat breeze and a short drag like we had to-day."



XIX

MINNIE ARKELL AGAIN

Coming on to dark that night a gig put off from the schooner-yacht and rowed over to us. On the way she was hailed and passed a few words with a steam-yacht anchored in between. The man in the stern of the gig was not satisfied until he had been rowed three times around the Johnnie. When he had looked his fill he came alongside.

He mistook Clancy for the skipper. I suppose he couldn't imagine a man of Clancy's figure and bearing to be an ordinary hand on a fisherman. So to Clancy he said, "Captain, you've got a wonderful vessel here. Put a single stick in her and she'll beat the world."

"Yes," said Clancy, "and she'd be a hell of a fine fisherman then, wouldn't she?"

The rest of us had to roar at that. We at once pictured the Johnnie rigged up as a sloop out on the Grand Banks, trawling or hand-lining, with the crew trying to handle her in some of the winter gales that struck in there. And a great chance she would have rigged as a sloop and her one big sail, making a winter passage home eight or nine or ten hundred miles, when as it was, with the sail split up to schooner rig, men found it bad enough.

The master of the yacht had a message for our captain, he said, and Clancy told him the skipper was below. There they talked for a while and after the yachtsman had gone Maurice, inviting four or five of us along, dressed up, called for the seine-boat, got in and was rowed over to a steam-yacht that we now remembered had hailed the schooner-yacht's gig. All brass and varnish and white paint and gold she would be in the daytime, but now she was all lit up with electric lights below and Japanese lanterns on deck.

When we came alongside, who should come to the gangway of the yacht and welcome Maurice but Minnie Arkell—Mrs. Miner. She greeted all of us for that matter—she never pretended not to see people—and invited us all below for refreshments. There was a good lay-out there and we pitched into it. Seiners are great people at table or in a bunk. They can turn to and eat, or turn in and sleep any minute, day or night. So now we turned to. Clancy did great things to the wine. Generally he took whiskey, but he did not object to good wine now and then. He and one fellow in a blue coat, white duck trousers, and a blue cap that never left his head, had a great chat.

"I callate that if he didn't have that cap with the button on front nobody'd know he was a real yachtsman, would they?" Eddie Parsons whispered in my ear.

The owner of the steam-yacht was trying to convince Tommie that yachting would be more in his line than fishing, but Tommie couldn't see it.

"But why not?" he asked at last. "Why not, Mr. Clancy? Is it a matter of money? If it is, I'll make that right. I pay ordinary hands twenty-five and thirty dollars a month and found, but I'll pay you fifty—sixty—seventy dollars a month to go with me. I'm going to race this steamer this summer and I want a quartermaster—a man like you that can steer to a hair-line. Seventy dollars a month now—what do you say?"

"Come now, my good man, what do you say?" Clancy got that off without so much as a smile. "But you couldn't make it seventy-five now, could you? No, I didn't mean that quite, though I've been out the dock in Gloucester of a Saturday noon and back again to the dock of a Tuesday noon—three days—and shared two hundred dollars—not as skipper, mind you, but just as hand. There now, I hope you're not going to get angry. Hadn't we better have another little touch? But I can see myself in a suit of white duck, touching my cap, and saying, 'Aye, aye, sir,' to some slob—no reference to you, mind you—but some slob in a uniform that's got a yacht, not because he loves the sea, but because he wants to butt in somewhere—who lives aboard his yacht just the same as he does in his house ashore—electric bells, baths, servants, barber and all—and hugs the shore so close that he gets the morning paper as regularly as when he's at home. When that kind go yachting all they miss are the tables on the lawn and the automobiles going by the door. They even have canary-birds—some of them—in cages. Yes, and wouldn't be caught twenty miles off shore—no, not even in a summer's breeze for—And where would he be in a winter's gale? I can see myself rowing a gig with somebody like that in the stern giving orders and fooling—well, some simple-minded women folks, maybe, who know as much of the sea as they do of the next world—most of them—fooling them into believing that he's a devil—yes, a clean devil on the water. Seventy a month for that?—couldn't you make it seventy-five?"

"You don't mean to say that——"

"Yes," said Clancy, "I do. I'd rather stick to fishing than—but here's a shoot and let's call the quartermaster's job off."

Minnie Arkell chimed in here. "A real fisherman, you must remember, Mr. Keith, doesn't care much for yachting because—leaving out the question of wages, for he does make more at fishing—he can remain a fisherman and yet be independent."

"You mean they don't have to take orders as if they were on a yacht, Mrs. Miner?"

"No, no—don't make any mistake there. The discipline of a yacht, so far as I know it, is baby play to what they have on a good fisherman. The discipline aboard a warship is nothing to that aboard a fisherman, like Captain Blake's vessel say, when there is anything to be done. Fishermen, it's true, don't have to touch their caps and say, 'Very good, sir,' to a man who may be no more of a real man than themselves. On your yacht I suppose you'd discharge a man who didn't do what he was told, and on a warship he would be sent to the brig, I suppose. On a fisherman he'd be put ashore. On a fisherman they not only obey orders, but they carry them out on the jump. And why? Because they've always done it. Why, deep-sea fishermen are always getting into places where only the best of seamanship can save them, and they very early get in the way of doing things up quick and right. When a Gloucester skipper orders in the sail, say in a gale of wind, and more than apt to be in the middle of the night—you don't see men trying to see how long it will take them to get into oilskins—or filling another pipe before they climb on deck. No, sir—the first man out on the bowsprit, if it's the jib to come in—or out on the foot-ropes, if it's the mainsail to be tied up—he's the man that will have a right to hold his head high next day aboard that vessel. And so the crew of a fisherman jump to their work—if they didn't there'd be a lot more of them lost than there are."

"Dear me," said Mr. Keith, "that never occurred to me before. But how is it, Mrs. Miner, that you have it down so fine?"

"My father was a Gloucester skipper, and since I was that high"—she put her hand on a level with her knee—"I've been listening to fishermen. And yachting life does tend to spoil a fisherman," she went on to explain. "After a summer of yachting a fisherman will begin to think that a winter of fishing is going to be a serious thing." She was warmed up then and went on talking at a great rate. And listening to her I could understand better why men took to her. She had warm blood in her. If it were not for her weakness to be admired by men, she would have been a great woman. "And they get so, that what seems extraordinary work to you is only an every-day matter to them. Do you remember that last schooner-yacht race across the Atlantic?—when two or three reporters went along, and after they got back wrote all kinds of stories of what a desperate trip it was—how rough it was and dangerous! Well, that time there were three or four Gloucestermen making the run to Iceland. Now, they were not as big as the racing yachts and they were loaded down with all the stores for a long salt trip—their holds full of salt, for one thing—and yet they made about as good time to Iceland as that yachtsman made to Queenstown. And they weren't driving their vessels either—they don't drive on the way out. It's only coming home that they try to make passages. Now, they must have got the same weather and yet nobody ever heard them in their letters home report a word of bad weather, or ever afterward, either. And yet—but were you to Iceland that time, Maurice?"

"No," said the skipper, "but you were, Tommie?"

"Yes," answered Clancy, "in the Lucy Foster. We made Rik-ie-vik inside of fourteen days, carrying both tops'ls all the way. Wesley—Wesley Marrs—wasn't hurrying her, of course. As Mrs. Miner says, the vessels going to the east'ard don't hurry, except now and then when two of them with records get together. And the Lucy was logy, of course, with the three hundred and odd hogsheads of salt and other stuff in her. If we'd been driving her going to Iceland that time we'd have had the stays'l and balloon to her—and she'd have gone right along with them, too."

Mrs. Miner looked around at her yachting friends to see if they were getting all that.

"There was one day that passage it blew a bit," exclaimed Clancy. "And that was the day we thought we saw a fellow to the east'ard. We had men by the halyards all that day with splitting knives."

"Why?" asked Keith.

"Why, to cut before she could capsize."

"Oh!" said Keith and said it with a little click.

"But that's nothing. I've seen the gang with Tom O'Donnell standing watch by the halyards for days with axes when he was making a passage."

Minnie Arkell filled another glass of champagne for Clancy, and Clancy didn't give the fizz too much time to melt away either.

"These men are the real things," she said, but Clancy, for fear we were getting too much credit, broke in, "Not us seiners. It's the winter fishermen—trawlers and hand-liners—that are the real things. Of course, we lose men now and then seining, but it's in winter up on the shoal water on the Banks that—there's where you have some seas to buck against," and he went on to tell of a battle with a gale on a winter's night on the Grand Banks. Clancy could tell a story as well as anybody I ever met. He could make the blood jump to your heart, or the tears to your eyes—or he could chill you till the blood froze. When he got through you could hear them all breathing—men and women both, like people who had just run a race. "Two hundred and odd men sailing out of Gloucester," he said, "went down that night. There weren't too many came safe out of that blow. The father of this boy here was lost—the Mary Buckley warn't it, Joe?—named for your mother?"

"And my father, too, was lost soon after," said Minnie Arkell, and the glance she gave me melted a lot of prejudice I had felt for her. That was the good human side to her.

"No better man ever sailed out of Gloucester, Mrs. Miner," said Clancy.

She flushed up. "Thank you, Tommie, for that, though I know he was a reckless man." And, she might have added, he left some of his recklessness in the blood of the Arkells.

The skipper told them a lot about sea life that night. Some of the stories he told, though long known in Gloucester, they took to be yarns at first. They could not believe that men went through such things and lived. And then the skipper had such an easy way of telling them. After a man has been through a lot of unusual things—had them years behind him and almost forgotten them—I suppose they don't surprise him any more.

The skipper looked well that night. When he warmed up and his eyes took on a fresh shine and his mouth softened like a woman's, I tell you he was a winner. I could not help comparing him with the steam-yacht owner, who was a good-looking man, too, but in a different way. Both of them, to look at, were of the same size. Both had their clothes made by tailors who knew their business and took pains with the fitting, though it was easy to fit men like Clancy and the skipper, such fine level shoulders and flat broad backs they had. Now the skipper, as I say, when he warmed up began to look something like what he ought—like he did when walking the quarter and the vessel going out to sea. Only then it would be in a blue flannel shirt open at the throat and in jack-boots. But now, in the cabin of that yacht, dressed as he was in black clothes like anybody else and in good-fitting shoes, you had to take a second look at him to get his measure. The yachtsman thought that he and the skipper were of about the same size, and barring that the skipper's shoulders were a shade wider there wasn't so much difference to look at. But there was a difference, just the same. The yachtsman weighed a hundred and seventy-five pounds. He asked what Maurice weighed. "Oh, about the same," said Maurice. But I and Clancy knew that he weighed a hundred and ninety-five, and Minnie Arkell, who knew too, finally had to tell it, and then they all took another look at the two men and could see where the difference lay. There was no padding to Maurice, and when you put your hand where his shoulders and back muscles ought to be you found something there.

When we were leaving that night, Mrs. Miner stopped Maurice on the gangway to say, "And when they have the fishermen's race this fall, you must sail the Johnnie Duncan, Maurice, as you've never sailed a vessel yet. With you on the quarter and Clancy to the wheel she ought to do great things."

"Oh, we'll race her as well as we know how if we're around, but Tom O'Donnell and Wesley Marrs and Tommie Ohlsen and Sam Hollis and the rest—they'll have something to say about it, I'm afraid."

"What of it? You've got the vessel and you must win—I'll bet all the loose money I have in the world on her. Remember I own a third of her. Mr. Duncan sold me a third just before I left Gloucester."

That was a surprise to us—that Mrs. Miner owned a part of the Johnnie Duncan. It set Clancy to figuring, and turning in that night, he said—he was full of fizzy wine, but clear-headed enough—"Well, what do you make of that? The Foster girl a third and Minnie Arkell a third of this one. I'm just wise to it that it wasn't old Duncan alone that wanted Maurice for skipper. Lord, Lord, down at the Delaware Breakwater do you remember that when we heard that the Foster girl owned a part of this one, I said, like the wise guy I thought I was, 'Ha, ha,' I said, 'so Miss Foster owns a third? That's it, eh?' And now it's Minnie Arkell a third. Where does Withrow come in? And did you hear her when she invited Maurice to the time they're going to have on that same steam-yacht to-morrow night?—that was when she whispered to him at the gangway, when we were leaving. She tried to get him to promise to come, and at last he said he would if he was in the harbor. 'Then be sure to be in the harbor—you're skipper and can do as you please. Do come,' she said at the last, good and loud, 'and tell them how to sail a vessel in heavy weather. They only play at it, so do come and tell them.' And then in a low voice—'But I want you to come for yourself.' That's what she says—'For yourself,' she says—in a whisper almost. 'Take a run into the harbor to-morrow night if you can, Maurice,' she says. O Lord, women—women—they don't know a thing—no," and Clancy turned in.



XX

THE SKIPPER PUTS FOR HOME

We were out of Newport Harbor before daybreak of next morning, and cruised inside Block Island all that day. We all thought the skipper would be in to Newport that night—it was no more than a two hours' run the way the wind was—and we waited.

The test came after supper. We had supper as usual, at three o'clock. Breakfast at four, dinner at ten, supper at three—mug-ups before and after and in between. Along about four o'clock the skipper, standing on the break, stood looking back toward where Newport lay. Had we turned then we'd have been in nicely by dark. It was a fine afternoon—the finest kind of an afternoon—a clear blue sky, and a smooth blue sea with the surface just rippling beautifully. All fire was the sun and the sails of every vessel in sight looked white as could be. Several yachts passed us—steam and sail—all bright and handsome and all bound into Newport, and the skipper's eyes rested long on them—on one of them particularly with music aboard.

The skipper looked back a long time—looked back, and looked back. He began walking the quarter—back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The sun got lower and lower, the sea lost some of its blue, and the air grew fresher, and still he kept looking back.

"It'll be a grand sunset to-night, Tommie."

"The finest kind. But one thing wrong with it."

"What's that?"

"We're not seeing it astern of us."

The skipper stopped. "Astern? That's so, too—it is a fine westerly, isn't it?"

Clancy said nothing, only leaned against the rigging, not a move out of him—puffing his pipe and looking away.

Nobody spoke till the skipper spoke again.

"Who's to the wheel—you, Steve? How's she heading now?"

"No'the by west."

"No'the by west? Put her east by no'the—ease off your mainsheet. Let it go to the knot. Call the gang and make sail—stays'l and balloon—everything—we'll go home, I guess."

Clancy snapped the pipe out of his mouth and hove it over the rail. Then he went for the forec's'le gangway. In two jumps he was there.

"Up, you loafers—on deck and make sail. 'To the east'ard,' says the skipper, and over the shoals we'll put her to-night."

"Home! Home—good enough—and hurroo!" we could hear from below.

The skipper said nothing more—only all night long he walked the quarter.

Next day when we were almost abreast of Cape Cod Clancy began to instruct me. "Here's a tip for any girl friends you got, Joe. See the skipper last night? Tell them if they're after a man—a real man—even if he's a bit shy—tell them—" Oh, the advice that Clancy could give!

About the time that we left Cape Cod light astern and squared away for Thatcher's—with Gloucester Harbor almost in sight—with the rocks of Eastern Point dead ahead—Clancy began to sing again:

"Oh, a deep blue sky and a deep blue sea And a blue-eyed girl awaiting me— Too-roo-roo and a too-roo-ree— Who wouldn't a Gloucester seiner be?

Ha, Joey-boy?" and gave me a slap on the shoulder that sent me half-way to the break.

That was all right, but I went aloft so I could see the rocks of Cape Ann a mite sooner. I was just beginning to discover that I had been almost homesick.



XXI

SEINERS' WORK

We were high line of the seining fleet when we got home from the Southern cruise and we felt pretty proud of ourselves. It was something to stand on the corner on one of the days when the Johnnie was fitting out again, and have other fellows come up to you and say, "What's that they say you fellows shared on the Southern trip?" And when we'd tell them, and we trying not to throw out our chests too much, it was fine to hear them say, "That so? Lord, but that's great. Well, if Maurice only holds out he'll make a great season of it, won't he?"

"Oh, he'll hold out," we'd say, and lead the way down to the Anchorage or some other place for a drink or a cigar, for of course, with the money we'd made, we naturally felt like spending some of it on those who were not doing so well. And of course, too, no seiner could ever resist anybody who talks to him in a nice friendly way like that.

The skipper's doings ashore interested all of his crew, of course, although me, perhaps, more than anybody else, unless it was Clancy. I got pretty regular bulletins from my cousin Nell. She was for the skipper, first, last and all the time.

"I like him," she said to me more than a dozen times. "I do like him, but I never imagined that a man who does so well at sea could shrink into himself as he does. Why, you almost have to haul him out by the ears ashore. If it weren't for me I really believe—" and she stopped.

But I thought I understood what she meant. "Meaning your chum, Alice Foster?" I said.

"Yes, meaning my chum, Alice Foster. Why?"

"Oh, I don't know. Sometimes I think she's a kind of a frost."

"No, she isn't a frost, and don't you come around here again and tell me so."

Nor did I, for I would not have an argument with Nell for all the Alice Fosters in the world, for if Nell were anybody else but my first cousin, I think I would have fallen in love with her myself.

And then we put out to sea and again we were living the life of seiners, having it hard and easy in streaks. There were the times when we went along for a week and did not do a tap but eat, sleep, stand a trick at the wheel, a watch to the mast-head, and skylark around the deck, and read, or have a quiet game of draw or whist or seven-up below. But again there were times when we were on fish, and our skipper being a driver, it was jump, jump, jump for a week on end. There was that time in August when the fish were so plentiful on Georges Bank, when, standing to the mast-head, you could see nothing but mackerel schooling for fifteen or twenty miles either side of the vessel. But, oh, they were wild! A dozen times we'd heave the seine—put off from the vessel, put out that two hundred and odd fathom of twine, drive seine-boat and dory to the limit, purse in—and not so much as a single mackerel caught by the gills. That happened fifteen or twenty times some days, maybe. We got our fill of sets that month. But then again there was a week off Cape Cod and in the Bay of Fundy and off the Maine coast when we ran them fresh to Boston market, when we landed more mackerel it was said in a single week than was ever landed before by one vessel. We were five days and five nights that time without seeing our bunks. It was forever out and after them, heave the seine, purse up and bail in, ice some, and dress the rest along the way, and the vessel with everything on driving for Boston.

We stood to it that week, you may be sure, until coming on the fifth day some of us fell asleep over the keelers as the Johnnie was coming into T Wharf. I remember that I could just barely see in a kind of a hazy way the row of people along the cap-log when we made fast. And yet after that we had to hoist them out of the hold and onto the dock. That day, going out again, the skipper made all but the watch and himself turn in. That afternoon, when everybody had had a little kink, the skipper himself, who had been under a heavier strain than any of us, suddenly fell backward over the house and sound asleep. And there he lay all the rest of that day and that night.

After ten or twelve hours of it we tried to wake him, but not a budge. We tried again, but no use. At last he came to and without any help at all. Sitting up, he asked where we were, and being told, he said nothing for a moment or so, and then suddenly—"That so? How long was I asleep?" We told him—seventeen hours. "Good Lord!" he groaned, and after a mug-up scooted for the mast-head like a factory hand with the seven o'clock whistle blowing. "He's a fisherman, the skipper," said the gang as they watched him climb the rigging.

And he was a fisherman. All that summer he drove things with but little time for us ashore. Twice he put into Gloucester with a day to ourselves and another time we had a chance to run down after we had put into Boston for market, and that we suspected was because the skipper found he could not keep away himself any longer. Things, we judged, were going pretty well with him in Gloucester. He did not pretend any longer now that he was not interested in Miss Foster, and from my cousin Nell I got occasional hints, most of which I confided to Clancy, who explained them as if they were so many parables.

"It'll be all right," said Clancy, "if only Minnie Arkell stands clear. I'm glad she's away for the summer, but she'll turn up in the fall. You'll see her just before the race large as life, and some of her swell-dressed friends, and a yacht, I'll bet."

Considering how deeply the skipper was interested in Miss Foster, some of us thought he ought to be putting in a little time ashore between trips. After a run into the Boston fresh fish market, say, we would have liked mighty well to take in the theatre, or a trip to the beach, or some other little entertainment of a night. But no, it was in and out—drive, drive, drive.

He was all ambition, the skipper. He was going to be up front or break something. Miss Foster was one of the ambitious kind, too. If she was going to have a fisherman, he would have to be a killer or she would know why. And so I suppose that had a lot to do with the way the skipper drove things.

We had our loafing spells, as I say, but mostly it was plenty of work. That time when we stayed awake for five days and nights was not the only one. Another time our legs swelled up and the blood came out of the ends of our fingers with standing up to the keelers and dressing fish without rest. But, Lord, nobody minded that. After we'd got rested up we felt better than ever.

We had good luck generally. We lost neither men nor gear to amount to anything that summer. That seine we lost trying for our first school to the s'uth'ard in the spring was the only bit of misfortune that came, and we had long ago made up for that. But others were not so lucky. There was the loss of the Ruth Ripley, Pitt Ripley's vessel. I think I have said that she was a fast vessel. She was fast—fast, but of the cranky type. We were jogging along a little to windward of her one fine afternoon—it had been a fine September day and now it was coming on to evening. To the westward of Cape Sable, in the Bay of Fundy, it was, and no hint of a blow up to within a few minutes of the time when the squall struck the Ruth. I suppose it would have been more prudent on Pitt's part if he had had less sail on, but like most of the skippers in the fleet I guess he was not looking for any record for prudence. Any minute he might have to be up and driving her, and keeping sail on was the quickest way to have it when you needed it in a hurry. The squall hit her—it hit us, too, but we saw it coming and met it and beyond washing a few keelers overboard, when she rolled down, no harm was done to the Johnnie. On the Ripley, I suppose, they saw it too, but the Ripley and the Duncan were not the same class of vessel by any means. She went over—hove down, with her foremast under water to the cross-trees almost.

Most of her crew were below at the time, some in their bunks. Four or five of those below never reached the deck at all—the water rushing down the companionways cut them off. Some rushed aft where the stern was high out of water and some piled into the rigging. Some were calling out and giving advice to others. We could hear them plainly. Two jumped to the wheel and threw it up, but she would not right.

We had the Johnnie to keep right side up, but we saw the whole thing. It could not have been more than two or three minutes from the time the squall struck her when she was going down head-first. Those of her crew who had gone to the stern were going with her, but those who had taken to the rigging, by leaping wide came clear. Their seine-boat, which had been towing astern, might have been of use to them, but being fast to the vessel by the painter it was pretty well filled with water before anybody had a chance to cut the painter. The man that cut it went down with the vessel. He was all right, whoever he was. Those in the water were looking about for the dory, and found that half full of water, too. They were trying to bail the water out of the dory, after hauling it across the bow of the submerged seine-boat, when we got them in our seine-boat and picked up what was left of them.

Nine of them were lost, her skipper among them. One of the men saved—the cook—said that when the squall struck the vessel, Captain Ripley had been seen to jump for the boom tackle, which he unhitched, and then to spring for the lashings of the dory, which he cut with his knife. The cook also said that he thought the skipper lost his life because of the half-stunning blow that he must have received from the fore-boom while he was on the rail trying to free the dory. The vessel was sinking all the time and it being dark—or near it in the squall—I suppose Captain Ripley could not watch everything. No doubt, it was the fore-boom hit him and knocked him overboard. Certainly he was knocked overboard, and the last seen of him he was swimming and pushing an empty barrel before him to one of the crew. "Keep your nerve up," he called to the cook, and after that he suddenly disappeared. He got a man's death, anyway.

We rowed back to the Duncan with the survivors. Nine men gone—it was a hard story to take home with us, but we had it to do. It was all a part of fishing life, and so we put back for Gloucester.



XXII

ON THE CAPE SHORE

While we were into Gloucester, after taking home the crew of the Ruth Ripley, our vessel was put on the ways. That was after a talk between the skipper and Mr. Duncan. There is always something that needs attending to on a fisherman, and this time it was our water-tanks. And while they were being looked after, the Johnnie was overhauled, her bottom scrubbed and topsides painted. Old Mr. Duncan, we found, was beginning to take a lot of pride in our vessel and balked at no expense to have her in trim. And now that the Ripley was lost, he would have only two vessels to represent him in the big fishermen's race, which was then only four weeks away.

"Hurry up home now," he said to Maurice as we left the dock that time. "Hurry up, and give yourself plenty of time to tune her up and get her in trim for the race. I've set my heart on it. You or the Lucy Foster must win that race, and whatever else we do we've got to beat Withrow's vessel, anyway."

And Miss Foster said that one of her guardian's vessels would have to win the race, and my cousin Nell said that the Johnnie Duncan would have to win. There was a lot depending on it, she said. It meant a lot to Will Somers, I suppose Nell meant.

We figured that we had time to make a Cape shore trip, and, with fair luck, to fill the Johnnie with salt mackerel and be back in time to get her in good condition for the race, which this year, because it was anniversary year in Gloucester, promised to be the greatest ever sailed.

Our plans were somewhat interfered with by a rescue we made. We found a Glasgow bark, New York bound, in the Bay of Fundy, and her crew in hard straits. We stood down and after a lot of trouble took them off—Clancy and Long Steve in the dory. Billie Hurd came near being the second man in the dory, but Clancy, grabbing him as he had one foot over the rail, hauled him back with, "Way for your elders, little man," and jumped in beside Long Steve.

"Elders, but not betters," said Hurd.

"Have it your own way," answered Clancy, "but I go in the dory."

The rescue was really a fine thing, but the important thing was that some of the rescued men had been exposed to the battering of the sea so long that they needed medical attention, and so we drove for home—and cracked our foremast-head doing it. That delayed us almost a week, for the skipper had to have that spar just so. A lot might depend on it, same as the rest of the gear. And it was a spar—as fine a bit of timber, Oregon pine of course, as was ever set up in a fisherman. And maybe that too was just as well, with the race coming on.

By the time we were down the Cape shore—down Canso way—and among the fleet again, we had lost a week. Our hold was still to fill up, and only two weeks and a day to the race. Wesley Marrs, Tom O'Donnell, Sam Hollis, and the rest were then talking of going home and making ready for the race. Bottoms would have to be scrubbed, extra gear put ashore—a whole lot of things done—and a few try-outs in the Bay by way of tuning up.

The race was the talk of all the fleet. Half the crews on the Cape shore wanted to be in Gloucester when the race came off, and some of the skippers of the slower vessels, which would not enter because they had no show to win, were already scheming to be home just before the race so that they could be on hand to follow it.

The morning after we were back among the fleet we got a small school right from under the eyes of the Lynx, one of the English cutters which were patrolling the coast to see that we didn't get any fish within the three-mile limit. I remember that while we were satisfied at the time that we were outside the line, we did not know what the revenue-cutter might say, and particularly the Lynx, whose captain had a hard name among our fleet for his readiness to suspect law-breaking when there wasn't any. The cutter people generally seemed to want to be fair toward us, but this Lynx's captain was certainly a vindictive cuss. Anything hailing from Gloucester was an abomination in his eyes. And so this morning, when, after we had decided that we were outside the limit, and made ready to set, it was hard to have to take the order of the Lynx and sheer off. Our judgment of distance ought to have been as good as his—better, really, we thought it, because we were always judging distances at sea, and more at home upon the sea, too. But that made no difference—what the cutter people said had to be law for us.

So this time he ordered us not to set where we were or he'd seize our vessel. Several Gloucester vessels had been confiscated just before this and the owners had to pay the fine to recover them. One owner disputed the judgment and his case was then waiting settlement. Another who refused to pay saw his vessel turned into a lightship and placed down Miramichi way in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where it is yet. This day the commander of the Lynx might have some reason to think that his order ended that for us—and we could almost see him chuckling—but it didn't. A fog was creeping up at the time and in ten minutes it was on us, and under cover of the fog we got a little school—the same school we thought and on the exact spot where the cutter was lying when she ordered us off. Didn't we cackle though when we bailed it in? Oh, no! It was not much of a school—only twenty barrels—but it made us all feel fine. Not alone did we feel that we had got the better of the English cutter, but also that luck was coming to us again. We justified ourselves by saying that we honestly believed we were outside the three-mile limit, and that our judgment was as good as theirs.

That night the forec's'le of the Johnnie Duncan presented one of the most beatific scenes I ever saw. Everybody was in the temper of an angel. There was nothing doing—no whist at the table, no reading out of upper bunks, no love song from the peak, and no fierce argument on the lockers. We were discussing the cutters and the talk was very soothing. The cook, as usual, was finishing up a batch of dough. You might have thought he was the only man who had been working in a week, were it not for the wet oil-clothes hanging up to dry, and the overhauling of second suits of oil-clothes by some of the gang. Every man, except the cook, who never smoked while at work, was puffing away as if he misdoubted he would ever get another chance for a pipeful in his life. "Harmony most ex-quis-ite," said somebody, and that's what must have been that hung over the forec's'le, and it seemed to be merely in keeping with the heavenly order of things that the atmosphere showed pale blue wherever the rays of the lamp could get a chance to strike through.

When Clancy dropped down for his usual mug-up before going to the mast-head for the night of course, he wasn't going to let that get by without having a word to say about it. He leaned against the foremast and took a look around. "My soul, but it's as if the blessed angels were fanning their wings over this forehold. There's Brian Boru and Lord Salisbury there double-banked on the same locker, and nothing doing on any Irish question. There's the lad that sleeps in the peak and not a single hallelujah of praise for his darling Lucille. The other one—the wild man that sings the Bobbie Burns songs—not a shriek out of him. And Bill and John no longer spoiling their eyesight on bad print. I expect it's that little school of fish—the first in two weeks or more. The prospect must be making you all pleased. Well, it ought. A few hundred barrels of that kind of mackerel—as fine fish as ever I see bailed over the rail. And some of you ready reck'ners ought to easily figure up what'll be coming to us if we ever fill her up—say five hundred barrels. A good thing—a few hundred barrels of mackerel. A few too many of 'em for good trim, but it's comforting to know they're there. She seemed to be in pretty nice trim when we tried out one or two of the fleet this morning, didn't she? And to-night, if it breezes up—and it looks now as if it will—we'll get some more—if it's a night like last night. One time there last night—did you notice her, cook?—that time that crazy lad started to cross our bow and we luffed her. Why, man, she shot over like I don't know what—just shot like one of those torpedo boats we see around when the Navy goes evoluting. I was near shook overboard from aloft. They tell me they're going crazy over the race in Gloucester. Well, here's one that'll bet his summer's earnings——"

"What's left of it, you mean, Tommie," said George Moore from his pan of dough.

"Well, yes, what's left of it—and what I c'n borrow. Old man Duncan'll stake me, and there's others. I hope, though, it blows a jeesly gale. For this one, God bless her, she c'n sail, and some of them'll find it out—when it's too late, maybe. Sam Hollis for one. There's a man I'd give my eye almost, to beat. And maybe the skipper hasn't got it in for him! He doesn't say much, Maurice don't, but a while ago, after coming down from aloft, Billie Simms hails him and tells him that the cutter people know all about that little school to-day—and who told him, who told him? Well, the skipper'll drive this one to the bottom before he ever lets Sam Hollis or any of Withrow's vessels get by him when we race. Yes, sir. But, Georgie-boy"—Clancy shouldered away from the foremast—"how is it for a wedge or two of one of those blueberry pies you got cooling there? Just a little wedge, now. But you don't need to be too close-hauled with your knife—no. Sailing by the wind is all right when you're jogging in and out among the fleet, and nothing partic'lar doing except an eye out for mackerel, but you want to give her a full always—always, Georgie—when you're cutting pie. There's the lad—straight across the beam. And now at right angles again. And now lay one atop of the other, and you have it—an invention of my own—a blueberry sandwich. M-m—but look at the juice squish through her scuppers!" He held it up for all of us to have a look. "Now another little wash of coffee in the wake of that and I'll be all right for a fine little watch aloft."

He jammed his sou'wester hard down, and heroically waved away the remainder of the pie. "No, no. First thing I know I'll be having dyspepsia. I never had it yet, but I might," and then heaved himself up the companionway, humming, as he went, one of his old favorites:

"Oh, the 'Liza Jane and the Maria Louise Sailed a race one day for a peck of peas. You'd hardly believe the way them two Carried sail that day—they fairly flew.

People ashore they said, 'Gee whiz! The 'Liza Jane the fastest is.'"

We could hear him scrambling, still humming, over the barrels on deck. He halted long enough by the rail to say, "How is it, boys?" to the watch on deck, and then swung himself up the rigging. Once aloft he had his work cut out, with hours of strain on brain and nerve. But Clancy never minded—he never minded anything so far as we could make out.



XXIII

DRESSING DOWN

That night was the worst I ever put in towing astern of a vessel. "Owling" is the seiners' word for that kind of work. It was "owling" sure enough, with the seine-boat on a short painter and the dory on a shorter painter still and astern of the seine-boat again. We came near to being lost in the dory. Mel Adams, who was in the dory with me, thinking she was surely going to capsize one time she rode up over the stern of the seine-boat, took a flying leap into the seine-boat. He had a hard time getting back, for there was quite a little sea on. Even in the seine-boat they were all glad enough to hear Clancy give the word to cast off and pull after the school.

It was a big school, and hard work in that sea, but we had them safe at last. The vessel then came alongside and the bailing in began. Having had a good long lay-off we bailed them in with plenty of good-will. It was "He-yew!" "Oy-hoo!" "Hi-o!" and "Drive her!" all along the line until we had on deck what the skipper thought was a hundred barrels. Then the bag was put around the seine to protect the rest of the mackerel from dogfish and sharks, and we were ready to dress.

Barrels were tossed out of the hold, keelers set up, sharp-edged knives drawn from diddy-boxes below, and a chance had to see a smart crew dressing a haul of mackerel that were to be salted. It was too long a run, four hundred miles or so, to take a chance of getting them fresh to market. It needed a fair and fresh breeze to be sure of it, and besides with the market for salt mackerel getting stronger all the time it was good judgment to salt down and fill her up before going home.

We had been through the same thing before, even with as good a deckload, but now we were getting near the end of the season. This trip, then the race, and maybe one more trip after the race, and we would be done seining. And so we drove things.

Four gangs of four men each took corners in the waist. Each gang had two keelers—yard square boxes, eight inches or so in depth, and set up on two or three barrels. Into the keelers the mackerel on deck were bailed and around them the men gathered, with long-handled torches set up all about.

All hands came into the dressing—skipper and cook too—and the work went on. It was one gang against the other, each jealously counting barrels when they were filled, that full credit might be given for speed. Sixteen men were accounted for in this way. The seventeenth and eighteenth were to keep the keelers filled, draw water for pickle from over the side, roll the filled barrels out of the way—in short, to help out generally.

It was fine to watch the splitters. One left-handed grab and the mackerel was in place; flat and smooth, one right-handed slit and he was laid open the length of his back. Forty-five mackerel a minute either the skipper, Clancy or Moore could split—that is, pick them up, place in position, split from nose to tail along the back, and slide out of the way again. Sixty a minute they could do in spurts, if somebody would place the mackerel in rows for them.

The busiest man of all was the skipper. He had to keep an eye out for the course of the Johnnie. Vessels that are dressing fish, vessels on which the entire crew are soaked in blood, gills, intestines, and swashing brine, might be allowed privileges, one might think; but no, they must keep a lookout just the same. On this dark night, the Johnnie Duncan, though making a great effort—considering that she had jibs down and wheel in the becket—to stay as she was put, yet would fall away or come-to, especially when the wind shifted two or three points at a jump. And just as soon as she did the skipper would notice it instantly, jump aft and set her right. Generally, to shift the wheel a few spokes would be enough, but now and then he would have to give the wheel a good round whirl. At such a time he would sing out a warning, the torches would be lowered, we would duck our heads, the boom would go swinging by in the smoky yellow glare, and the Johnnie Duncan would be off on another tack. We would brace our legs to a new angle, the skipper would hop back to his knife, and again the dressing would go humming along.

When we had the first hundred barrels of mackerel swashing in brine, the rest of them, perhaps another hundred barrels, were bailed in. And all night long like that we stood to it driving. Under the yellow and smoky light of the torches I could see nothing but mackerel or the insides of mackerel in the air. Keelers, deck, rail, our hands, faces, boots and oilskins were sticky with the blood and gurry. At top speed we raced like that through the night. Once in a while a man would drop his knife or snap off his gibbing mitt, rinse his hand in the brine barrel by his side, slap his hand across the hoops, and condemn the luck of a split finger or a thumb with a fish-bone in it. Another might pull up for a moment, glance up at the stars or down at the white froth under the rail, draw his hand across his forehead, mutter, "My soul, but I'm dry," take a full dipper from the water-pail, drink it dry, pass dipper and pail along to the next and back to his work.

When the cook called out for breakfast we were still at it, with the deck of the vessel covered with barrels of pickling mackerel. It was beginning to get light then. "Oh, the blessed day's coming on. Smother the torches, boys," said the skipper, and led the way below for the first table to have a bite.

Before the sun came up we were beginning to make out the rest of the fleet. One after another they were coming into view, their long hulls and high spars reaching across the wind. Between the gray sky and the slaty sea their white sails looked whiter than chalk.

We had to name the different vessels then. "There's Tom O'Donnell—and Wesley Marrs—and Sam Hollis—and—" sung out Andie Howe.

"Sam Hollis—where's Sam Hollis?" broke in Mel Adams.

"Away to the east'ard, ain't it, Andie?—the fellow with jibs down?" spoke up Billie Hurd, who was a bit proud that he too could pick her out at such a distance.

"So it is, ain't it?" said Mel, and he began to tell our troubles in the dory. "'Twas him near ran over us last night—remember, Joe? Leastways, it looked like Hollis's new one's quarter goin' by. He was pointin' 'bout no'the-east then, but he couldn't 've held on that tack long or he'd be somewhere up by Miquelon and not here this mornin'—the gait he was goin'. Man, but there was smoke coming out of his scuppers when he went by. 'Why don't y' come aboard whilst you're about it—come aboard and be sociable,' I hollers. 'Oh, don't cry, y' ain't hurted,' says whoever's to the wheel of her. Least it sounded like that, 'Y' ain't hurted,' he says."

"Must have been pretty close, Mel?" said Clancy, never stopping, but keeping a string of split mackerel rolling into his keeler. Mel and I were gibbing for Clancy.

"Close? I could've touched his chain-plates like that," and Mel, getting excited, reached his mittened hand across the keeler and touched Clancy on the arm. Clancy's knife took a jump and cut a finger. For a few seconds Clancy laid down the law of a splitting knife to Mel, but Mel didn't mind.

"That's just about the way I swore at the man to the wheel of the Withrow. Didn't I, Joe? Yes, sir, I cert'nly swore at him good, but it no more jarred him than—but when their seine-boat came by, half of 'em smokin', some half-breed among 'em has to sing out, 'Y'ought to hang up a riding light if your vessel's hove-to,' he says. What do you think of that, Tommie—'if your vessel's hove-to!'—and if the Johnnie was going one she was going ten knots an hour."

"That's right, Mel—I heard you to the mast-head," said Clancy. Clancy heard it about as much as old Mr. Duncan back in Gloucester did, but he was always ready to help a man out.

"Did you? Well, I hove-to him. I hove the bailer at him, that's what I did, and he ducked. But he ducked too late, I callate, for 'Bam!' it caught him—or somebody in the seine-boat with him. He swore some, or somebody swore, you c'n bet. 'I don't know who y'are,' he hollers, 'but if ever I meet you ashore,' and he was so far away then I couldn't ketch no more of it. 'Don't know who y'are, but if I ketch you ashore'—Lord——"

"So, if a lad with a bump on the side of his head waltzes up to you on Main Street and whangs you, Mel, next time you're ashore in Gloucester, what'll you do?" asked Clancy.

"I'll say, 'Where's that bailer, you loafer?' but first I'll whang him back. I had to finish the bailing out with my sou'wester. I sings out to Andie Howe in the boat here to hand me one of the bailers in the boat. 'I'm usin' my hat,' I hollers, 'and Joe's using his sou'wester,' thinkin' that would fetch him all right. 'Well, we're usin' ten sou'westers here,' says Andie, 'and one or two of 'em leaks,' and that was all the satisfaction I got."

"Yes," said Eddie Parsons, "the seine-boat was sure wallerin' then. The skipper had only just told Jimmie Gunn to quit his growling. 'You'll be wanting hot-water bags to your feet next, I suppose,' says the skipper."

"I was thinking of the boat—afraid she'd be so logy with the water in her that we couldn't drive her when the time came," bristled up Jimmie Gunn to that.

"Y-yah!" snorted Eddie, "if you weren't scared, then I never saw a man scared. Logy? I notice we made her hop along all right after we cast off from the vessel. Man, but she fair hurdled some of them seas—some of the little ones, I mean. Didn't she, Steve? We thought we'd lost Joe and you, Mel, in the dory, didn't we, fellows?"

"You did, hey? Well, you didn't, nor nowheres near it," broke in Mel. "We were right there with the goods when they hove the seine, warn't we, Joey?"

And so it went on through all that day, while the men worked, dressing, salting, and putting all in pickle. It was a drive all through without any quitting by anybody, except when it was time to relieve lookouts at the mast-head. In the middle of it all, had the call of "School-O!" been heard from aloft, we would have been only too glad to drop everything, jump into the boat and dory, get after the mackerel, and do the same thing over—split, gibb and pack away—for all of the next night, and the night after that—for a week if necessary.

Not until well into the afternoon, when the last mackerel was flattened out in its barrel, did any of us feel that we could step back in our own time, straighten ourselves out, and take a look over our work. Then we counted the oozing barrels with great satisfaction, you may be sure, even while we were massaging our swollen wrists with our aching fingers. It was a good bit of work that, well and quickly done, and it was fine to get a rest after it, although it might be only for a little while. Even though we had to do it all over again—to stay half-drowned and chilled through in the seine-boat or dory for half the night and then dress down for eighteen or twenty hours on top of it—what did a little hard work matter? "Think of the hundred-dollar bill, maybe, to be carried home and laid in the wife's lap," said Long Steve.

"Or the roaring night ashore when a fellow's not a family man—m-m—!" said Eddie Parsons. Eddie was not a family man.



XXIV

THE WITHROW OUTSAILS THE DUNCAN

We certainly were feeling pretty good along about that time, and we felt better when next day, cruising in and out among the fleet, other crews began to take notice of our catch. By that time the word had gone around. One after another they came sailing up—as if to size us up was the last thing that could enter their heads—rounding to, and then a hail. Something like this it went:

"Hulloh, Maurice."

"Hulloh, Wesley," or George Drake, or Al McNeill, or whoever it might be.

"That's a mighty pretty deckload of fish. When'd y'get 'em?"

"Oh, twenty barrels yesterday morning and the rest last night."

"That so? How many d'y'call 'em, Maurice?"

"How many? Oh, two hundred and eighty or ninety wash barrels. Ought to head up about two sixty."

"That so? Fine, Maurice, fine. As handsome a deckload as I've seen this year."

And he would bear off, and another vessel would come and go through the same ceremony. It was very satisfying to us and the skipper must have felt proud. Not that a lot bigger hauls had not been made by other men before—indeed, yes, and by the very men perhaps who were complimenting him. But three hundred barrels, or near it, in pickle at one time does look fine on a vessel's deck, and they looked especially fine at this time because there was not another vessel in the fleet that had half as many, so far as we knew.

Not another but Sam Hollis—or so he claimed. He came ranging up that same day and began asking how the Duncan was sailing lately, and followed that up by saying he himself had two hundred odd barrels in the hold. He showed about sixty wash barrels on deck. We did not believe he had twenty below. She looked cork light. "If she sets as high out of water with two hundred and forty barrels, then you ought to put two hundred and forty more in her and she'd fly," called out Clancy to Hollis, and that was pretty much what we all thought.

And 'twas Sam Hollis made trouble for the Duncan that day. He bore off then but came back in the afternoon. More talk there was, and it wound up by our racing with him. We did not start out to race, but gradually, as we found ourselves jogging along side by side, jibs were drawn away and sheets began to be trimmed. The first thing we knew we found ourselves swaying up sails, and then before we really woke up to it we were both off and away before a little breeze.

Hollis had all the best of it. He was bound to, with the Duncan carrying most of her mackerel aft and away down by the stern. Even had we had time to—we did shift some of it forward—we were too deep for any kind of racing in that moderate breeze. We said that to ourselves, anyway, and yet we held on. But it was no use—it wound up by Hollis giving us a scandalous beating. And after running away from us he kept straight on to the westward, and by that we knew that he was bound for Gloucester to get ready for the big race.

The skipper felt it. He was one that took things to heart.

"I've been bragging about this one—what she could do. I told the old man only the last time we were in that he could go broke that I'd beat Sam Hollis, and here the first time we come together he makes her look like a wood-carrier. The best thing I can do, I guess, is to keep out of the race; maybe it will save the old man some money. I expected he'd beat us, the trim we were in—but to beat us the way he did!"

Nothing the crew could say seemed to make him think otherwise, and that night it was not nearly so joyful below in the Johnnie Duncan. The talk was that she would not go home for the race. Only Clancy seemed to be as cheerful as ever. "Don't any of you get to worrying," he said. "I know the skipper—the Johnnie Duncan'll be there when the time comes."

Yet next morning when Wesley Marrs went by us with the Lucy Foster bound for home and sang out, "Come along, Maurice, and get ready for the race—we'll have a brush on the way," our skipper only waved his hand and said, "No—this old plug can't sail." Wesley looked mighty puzzled at that, but kept on his way.



XXV

TROUBLE WITH THE DOMINION CUTTERS

Next day after, in a calm, Clancy and I had to take the dory and row out among the fleet for some salt. The skipper thought it likely that some of the vessels that were going home might have salt to spare. He doubted if he himself would have enough in case we struck another good school. So we rowed out. We went from one vessel to another without any luck, until we found ourselves aboard Tom O'Donnell—the Colleen Bawn. And just as we got aboard a school showed near by her, and they made a dash for it. The Colleen was pretty well inshore then, and yet safe outside the three-mile limit in our judgment. Even in the judgment of one of the Canadian revenue cutters, the Mink, she was outside the limit. "You're all right, go ahead," her commander sang out from the bridge.

Yet trouble came of it. The Colleen's gang were making a set when along came the Lynx, the same cutter that had ordered our own skipper not to set two or three days back in the fog, and we had set in spite of him. I think I said that he had a bad reputation among our fleet. In this case some said afterwards that he had been watching the Duncan since that time, and having seen a dory put out from her and go aboard Tom O'Donnell, that he then had a special watch for O'Donnell. Anyway, we know that as the Colleen Bawn's crew were pursing in the seine he came along and ordered them to cast loose the fish. "You're inside the limit," said this fellow now.

"I may be, but I don't think so," said O'Donnell to that.

"You're inside and you know it."

"You're a liar if you say I know it."

O'Donnell had had trouble with the Lynx before, and had small patience with her captain. More words came out of it, and while they were talking back and forth another of the fleet a mile to the east'ard put out a boat.

The cutter went after him, her captain singing out as he went, "You wait here till I come back." "Wait like hell!" said O'Donnell, "and this breeze making," and continued to purse up. Pursed up, the fish aboard—there were forty or fifty barrels—he started off. One of those sudden breezes were springing up and it promised to be wind enough to suit anybody. We made out the Johnnie Duncan bearing down, intending no doubt to take off Clancy and me. But the cutter was coming toward us then, and O'Donnell said we had better stay aboard or we would be picked up on the way by the cutter's people and maybe get the Duncan and our skipper into trouble. That last—the thought that our skipper or the vessel might get mixed up in it—kept us aboard the Colleen Bawn.

The Lynx could steam as fast as any cutter they had on the Cape shore at that time, but the Colleen was a witch and O'Donnell a wonder at sailing her. So we stayed with O'Donnell and watched him and the cutter have it out. They had it, the cutter letting drive a shot every once in a while. The first shot, I remember, went whistling by the ear of one of O'Donnell's crew who was standing back-to in the waist, and so astonished him, he not expecting it, that he fell into the forehold. He raised a great racket among a lot of empty barrels. The fall never hurt him, but the things he said when he came on deck again! O'Donnell made him lie flat—and then all of us but Clancy, who refused to lie down but compromised by leaning over the house and watching the cutter and making comments on her actions for the benefit of the rest of us. Through it all O'Donnell stood to the wheel and the nearest he came to honoring the cutter by a compliment was when he'd half turn his head, spit over the rail and swear at her. The wind and sea-way together were too much for the cutter. The Colleen left her behind, and she at last drew off after bunching a few farewell shots.

O'Donnell then hove-to and took his seine-boat on deck. He had been towing it the wrong end foremost for the whole forty miles, and he was worried over it. "It's strained her maybe—and she almost a new boat," he lamented. "For the rest I don't care. That lad had it in for me all along. The other one though, he's decent—never bothers a man without a little reason. I was going home anyway for the race, and so it don't matter. I suppose Maurice will be along soon, Tommie? Did you see him coming after the cutter—he held her fine and he in no trim. What's it they say about Hollis beating the Johnnie yesterday? If he did, be sure he was specially prepared, and the Johnnie had an off-day. But I suppose he'll be holding on now for Gloucester?"

Clancy said maybe, but no telling, and explained how it had been—the skipper's discouragement after Hollis had beaten him.

O'Donnell said he was foolish to worry over a thing like that. "I know Sam Hollis," he said—"'twas a trap he laid for Maurice. He's got a smart vessel in the Withrow, but he can't run away from Maurice. No, nor beat him I doubt—with both in trim. But wait a while—let the day of the race get near and Maurice to thinking it over, and you'll see him flyin' home."

We hoped so. For ourselves we went home on the Colleen. There was nothing else for us to do. We had quite a time of it that trip with O'Donnell. He sailed about five hundred miles out of his way—away to the eastward and s'uth'ard. There might be cruisers and cutters galore after him, he said—they might put out from Halifax, or telegraph ahead—you couldn't tell what they might do, he said, and so he sailed the Colleen out to sea. But we came across the Bay one dark night without side-lights, and reached Boston all right. O'Donnell had a suit of sails stowed away in an East Boston wharf that he wanted to get out for the race. And also he didn't like his new foremast and was going to have a new one put in if there was time.



XXVI

THE GOSSIP IN GLOUCESTER

Clancy and I went home by train, reaching Gloucester as the first of an easterly gale set in. There we found it was nothing but talk of the race. We had not reached Main Street at all before Clancy was held up. Clancy, of course, would know. Where was Maurice Blake? What were we doing in Gloucester and the Johnnie not in? The Duncans—especially the elder Mr. Duncan—Miss Foster, my cousin Nell, and Will Somers were boiling over. Where was Maurice Blake? Where was the Johnnie Duncan? Everybody in town seemed to know that Sam Hollis had given us a bad beating down Cape shore way, and the news had a mighty discouraging effect on all Maurice's friends, even on those of them who knew enough of Sam Hollis not to take his talk just as he wanted them to take it. Withrow's vessel had beaten the Johnnie Duncan with Maurice Blake sailing her—they had to believe that part of it, and that in itself was bad enough. Sam Hollis's stock was booming, you may be sure—and the race right close to hand, too.

"That little beating the Johnnie got didn't lose any in the telling by Sam Hollis and his gang, did it, Joe?" said Clancy to me, and then he went around borrowing all the money he could to bet the Johnnie Duncan would beat the Withrow in the race. But would Maurice now enter at all? I asked Clancy about that part—if there was not a chance that Maurice might not stay down the Cape shore way and let the race go. But he only laughed and said, "Lord—Joey-boy, you've a lot to learn yet about Maurice in spite of your season's seining along with him."

It was a Monday morning when Clancy and I reached Gloucester. The race was to be sailed on Friday of that same week. For several days before this, we were told, Wesley Marrs, Sam Hollis, Tommie Ohlsen, and the rest of them had been out in the Bay tuning up their vessels like a lot of cup defenders. Never before had fishermen given so much attention to the little details before a race. The same day that we got home they were up on the ways for a final polishing and primping up. They were smooth as porcelain when they came off. And coming off their skippers thought they had better take some of the ballast out of them. "'Tisn't as if it was winter weather"—it was the middle of September then—"with big seas and driving gales," was the way Wesley Marrs put it, and they all agreed that the chances were ten to one that the wind would not be strong enough to call for the heavy ballast they carried. Fishermen, of course, are built to be at their best when wind and sea are doing their worst, and so the taking out of ballast for a September race looked like good judgment. So about forty tons of ballast were taken out of most of them—the Lucy Foster, the Withrow, the Nannie O, and half a dozen others.

That looked all right, but on Tuesday night an easterly gale set in, the wind blowing forty-odd miles an hour. All day Wednesday it blew, and all day Thursday even harder, with a promise of blowing harder still on Friday, which was to be the day of the race. The people of Gloucester who had been praying for wind, "Wind for a fisherman's race—wind—wind," seemed likely to get what they wanted.

On Thursday I saw Tommie Ohlsen and Wesley Marrs in conference on the street. Wesley had his nose up in the air, sniffing the breeze. He shook his head with, "Tommie, I ought to've let the ballast stay in the Lucy. It looks like it's going to be the devil's own breeze for vessels that ain't prepared for it."

"Yes," said Ohlsen, "wind fifty-two mile an hour the weather man says, and still making. That's bad for light ballast and whole sail. If we could only put the ballast back——"

"Yes—if we could. But we can't put it back now—there ain't time to do it right and everybody would laugh at us too. And besides, if we did, all the others would put it back, and where's the difference?"

"Of course," said Tommie, "but if all of us would put it back it would make a better race."

In view of the reputation of Wesley Marrs and Ohlsen and O'Donnell and their vessels, we could not understand the confidence of Withrow and his people in Sam Hollis. He had a great vessel—nobody doubted it. But it was doubted by many if she was the equal of some of the others, and few believed she was better. And Sam Hollis was not the man to carry the sail, or at least the fishermen of Gloucester generally did not think so. But Withrow and Hollis's gang kept on bragging and they backed their bragging up, too. I drew what money I had saved that summer out of my seining share—two hundred and twenty-five dollars—and bet it myself with one of the Withrow's crew that the Johnnie Duncan would beat the Withrow, whether the Johnnie was home to race or not. It was really betting against Withrow himself, who, it was said, was taking up every bet made by any of the Withrow's crew. That was Thursday afternoon, and still no word of the Duncan.

"Good for you, Joey," said Clancy when he heard of that. "Even if Maurice don't come it's better to lose your money and shut them up. But don't worry—he'll come. Do you think he's been standing and looking at this easterly—it's all along the coast to Newf'undland I see by the papers—and not swing her off? He's on his way now, and swinging all he's got to her, I'll bet. Wait and see."

"My," said my cousin Nell, "and so you bet your pile on the Johnnie Duncan whether she's in or not?—and if she don't reach here in time you lose it all?" and told it all over to her Will Somers, to whom I learned she was now engaged. And from that time on I noticed that Alice Foster beamed on me like an angel.

Minnie Arkell was home for the race just as Clancy had prophesied. She had come with some of her friends down from Boston three or four days before this, in the same steam-yacht she had been aboard of at Newport in June. Meeting me she asked me about our passage home on the Colleen Bawn, and I told her of it. She listened with great interest.

"Is Tom O'Donnell as fine-looking as he used to be—with his grand figure and head and great beard? I remember some years ago I used to think him the finest-looking man I ever saw."

I told her that I guessed she'd think him fine-looking yet if she'd seen him to the wheel of the Colleen Bawn with the six-pound shot whistling by him, and he never so much as letting on he knew they were there. Her eyes shone at that. Then she offered to take any bets I made off my hands. "You can't afford to take your little savings out of the bank and bet it on a vessel that may not be here in time. I'll take it off your hands—come!"

That was an attractive side to her—caring but little for money—but I wasn't letting anybody take my bets off my hands. I still believed that Maurice would be home, though that was seven o'clock Thursday evening. I knew he would be home if he only guessed that his friends were betting on his vessel—and they not even knowing whether she was to be home in time for the race. And if he weren't home, I was ready to lose my little roll.



XXVII

IN CLANCY'S BOARDING-HOUSE

From Minnie Arkell, whom I met at the door of her own house, I went to Clancy's boarding house. I did not find Clancy then and I went off, but coming back again I found him, and a very busy man he was, with an immense crock of punch between his knees. He was explaining down in the kitchen to the other boarders—fifteen or twenty of the thirstiest-looking fishermen I ever laid eyes on—just how it was he made the punch. The bowl was about the size of a little beer keg.

"On the night of last Fourth of July," he was saying—"and I mind we came in that morning with a hundred and seventy-five barrels we got off Mount Desert—that night I warn't very busy. I gets this crock—four gallons—let you all have a look—a nice cold stony crock you see it is, and that they'd been using then in the house here for piccalilli—and a fine flavor still hanging to it. Wait a minute now till I tell you. It'll taste better, too, after you hear. And into the crock I puts two gallons of rum—fine rum it was—for a bottom. Every good punch has to have a bottom. It's like the big blocks they put under a house by way of a foundation, or the ballast down near the keel of a vessel—there'd be no stiffening without it, and the first good breeze she'd capsize, and then where'd you be? Now, on top of those two gallons—it was two o'clock in the morning, I mind, when I started to mix it—whiskey, brandy, and sherry—no, I can't tell what parts of each—for that's the secret of it. A fellow was dory-mate with me once—a Frenchman from Bordeaux—told me and said never to tell, and I gave my oath—down in St. Peer harbor in Miquelon it was—and afterwards he was lost on the Heptagon—and of course, never being released from the oath, I can't tell. Well, there was the rum, the whiskey, the brandy, and the sherry—and on top o' that went one can of canned pine-apple—canned pine is better than the pine-apple right out of its jacket. Why? Well, that's part of the secret. Then a dozen squeezed lemons and oranges. Then some maraschino. I'd got it off an Italian salt bark skipper in the harbor once. On top o' that I put one quart of green tea—boiled it myself—it was three in the morning then, I mind—and I sampled a cup of it. Wait now—wait. Just ease your sheets and let me tell it. Here's the best part of it. I takes that crock with the fourteen quarts of good stuff in it and lowers it to the bottom of the old well out in the yard with a lot of cold round little stones above and below and more little stones packed all around and then I lowers down two good-sized rocks on top o' that—and nails boards over the well—that's why nobody could get into that well all this summer. Well, that was the morning after the last Fourth of July—I mind the sun was coming up over the rocks of Cape Ann when I was done. And that was July, and now the last of September—three months ago. A while ago in the dark and a howling gale—you all see me come in with it, didn't you? Yes, if you go out quick, you c'n see the well just where I left it—I goes out and digs it up—and here it is—and now it's here, we'll all have a little touch in honor of to-morrow, for it's a great day when the wind blows fifty or sixty miles an hour so that fishermen can have good weather for a race."

And they all had a little touch. Clancy sat on the table with the crock between his feet and bailed it out while they all agreed it was the smoothest stuff that ever slid down their throats. There was not a man in the gang who was not sure he could put away a barrel of it.

"Put away a barrel of it?" whispered Clancy—"yes. Let's get out of here, Joe. In an hour they'll be going into the air like firecrackers."



XXVIII

IN THE ARKELL KITCHEN

We left Clancy's boarding house and went over to old Mrs. Arkell's place, where most of the skippers who were going to race next day had gathered. Clancy at once started in to mix milk-punches. And he sang his latest favorite, with the gang supping his mixture between the stanzas:

"Oh, hove flat down on Quero Banks Was the Bounding Billow, Captain Hanks, And the way she was a-settlin' was an awful sight to see"—

Then Wesley Marrs sang a song and after him Patsie Oddie followed with a roarer.

The punch-mixing, singing and story-telling went on and in the middle of it Tom O'Donnell came driving in. He was like a whiff of a no'the-easter out to sea. "Whoo!" he said. "Hulloh, Wesley-boy—and Patsie Oddie—and Tommie Ohlsen—and, by my soul, Tommie Clancy again. Lord, what a night to come beating down from Boston! What's that, Wesley?—did the Colleen outfoot the cutter down the Cape shore way? Indeed and she did, and could do it over again in the same breeze to half their logy old battleships. Into Boston I was Monday morning, and the fish out of her the same morning. Tuesday I took her across to Cape Cod, tuning her up, and into Provincetown that night. Next day it was blowing pretty hard. A fine day for a run across the Bay, I thinks, and waits for maybe a Boston vessel, one of the T Wharf fleet. For I'll go to Boston, I thinks, to put the Colleen on the railway to-day, because maybe in Gloucester I may have to wait—or may get no chance at all—with half a dozen or more that will be waiting to be scrubbed for the race. And who comes along then but Tom Lowrie. 'Waiting for me?' he asks, and I tells him I was hoping it would be the new Whalen vessel. 'Here's one that's as good as any Whalen vessel,' he says—'as good as anything out of Boston—or Gloucester,' he says. So across the Bay we had it out. And, gentlemen, I'm telling you the Colleen sailed—all the wind she wanted. She came along, and Lowrie—by the looks of things then—he's sailing yet. Well, I never did like that forem'st that was in the Colleen, and so, thinks I, here's a chance to test it—and why not, with the race coming on? So I jibed her over off Minot's just—and sure enough it cracked about ten feet below the mast-head."

"You were satisfied then, Tom?"

"Sure and I was. And better before the race than in the race. And next day—that's to-day—we spent putting in a new stick. I had to take what I could get to save time, and I don't think it's what it ought to be and maybe it won't last through to-morrow. But, anyway, you want to have an eye out for the Colleen to-morrow, for I'm telling you I never see her sail like she did yesterday coming across the Bay. Ask Tom Lowrie next time you see him. Well, to-night I had to beat down here to be sure and be here in time, and so out we put—and here I am. Blowing? Indeed and it is. And thick, is it? Standing on her knight-heads and looking aft you c'd no more than make out her side-lights. We came along, and Boston inner and outer harbor crowded with vessels, steamers and sail, waiting for it to moderate so they c'd put out. A blessed wonder it was we didn't sink somebody—or ourselves. Outside we went along by smell, I think, for only every once in awhile could we see a light. One time we almost ran into something—a fisherman it must have been, for I s'pose only a fisherman would be going in on a night like this—out of a squall of snow and blackness she came—man alive! but, whoever she was, she was coming a great clip. Winged out and we didn't see her till the end of her bowsprit caught the end of our main-boom—hauled in we were to two blocks—and over we went on the other tack—yes, sir, over on the other tack. Thinks I, ''Tis a new way to jibe a vessel over.' And the end of her fore-boom all but swept me from beside the wheel and over the rail as she went by—she was that close. And I sings out to her, 'Won't you leave us your name so I can thank you next time we meet?' but Lord, not a word out of him. He kept on to Boston, I suppose, and we kept on to Gloucester, and here I am."

"And the Colleen, Tom—she's all right?"

"Right, man? Watch her to-morrow. Barring that forem'st being too light—but whoever looked for a breeze like this?—two days and three nights now and blowing harder all the time. But never mind, she'll make great going of it to-morrow. Divil take it, but we'll all make great going of it. Tommie, dear, what's in the bowl? Milk? Man, but don't be telling me things like that—and the one thing the doctors warn me against is heart-trouble. Ah, milk-punch—that's better, man. A wee droppeen. Look at it—the color of the tip of a comber in twelve fathom of water and a cross-tide. Well, here's to every mother's son of us that's going to race to-morrow. May ye all win if the Colleen don't—all but you, Sam Hollis. But where's he gone—into the other room? Well, if he was here 'twould be the same. He's got a vessel that can sail. Let him sail her to-morrow and win, if it's in her—or in him. But a thousand dollars—and outside my house and vessel, Lord knows, it's all the money I've got in the world—beyond my house and vessel—a thousand dollars the Colleen beats the Withrow. Hello, there—what d'y'say, Sam Hollis—the Colleen and the Withrow—a thousand dollars, boat for boat. But where the divil is he? Gone? Are you sure? Gone! But a queer time to leave a party—just when it's getting to be real sociable."