The Seiners Part 11

"No," said Tommie, "I didn't know, but----"

"But you suspected. Well, I didn't even suspect. And there's that seine we lost last night--cost all of eight hundred dollars."

"That's what it did--a fine seine."

A few minutes later the skipper went below, and Clancy, seeing me, said, "Hold on, Joey. Did you hear what the skipper said?"

"About Miss Foster owning a share of the vessel?"

"Well, not that so much, but about the loss of the seine?"

"Yes--why?"

"Why? Joe, but sometimes a man would think you were about ten year old. I tell you, Joe, I'm not too sure it's going to be Withrow. And if you don't see some driving on this one when next we get among the fish, then--" But he didn't finish it, only clucked his tongue and went below.

Clancy was right again. During the night the weather moderated, and in the morning the first of the fleet to go out past the Breakwater was the Johnnie Duncan. It looked to us as if the skipper thought the mackerel would be all gone out of the sea before we got back to the spot where we had struck them two days before.

XIV

A PROSPECT OF NIGHT-SEINING

We might have stayed in harbor another twenty-four hours and lost nothing by it. It was dawn when we put out from the Delaware Breakwater, and by dark of the same day we were back to where we had met the big school and lost the seine two days before. And there we hung about for another night and day waiting for the sea to flatten out. Mackerel rarely show in rough weather, even if you could put out a seine-boat and go after them. But I suppose that it did us no harm to be on the ground and ready.

On the evening of the next day there was something doing. There was still some sea on, but not enough to hurt. Along about eight o'clock, I remember, I came off watch and dropped into the forec's'le to fix up my arm, which was still badly strained from hanging onto the seine-boat's painter when I was washed overboard. The skipper, taking a look, told me not to go into the dory that night, but to let Billie Hurd, who was spare hand, take my place, and for me to stay aboard. I would rather have gone into the dory, of course, but was not able to pull an oar--that is, pull it as I'd have to pull when driving for a school--and knowing I would be no more than so much freight in the dory there was nothing else to do. "And if we see fish, Clancy'll stay to the mast-head to-night--as good a seine-master as sails out of Gloucester is Tommie--better than me," he said. "I'm going in the seine-boat, and Eddie Parsons, you'll take Clancy's place in the dory." And b.u.t.toning his oil-jacket up tight, he put on his mitts and went on deck.

That evening the forward gang were doing about as much work as seiners at leisure usually do. It was in the air that we would strike fish, but the men had not yet been told to get ready. So four of them were playing whist at the table under the lamp and two were lying half in and half out of opposite upper bunks, trying to get more of the light on the pages of the books they were reading. Long Steve, in a lower port bunk nearer the gangway, was humming something sentimental, and two were in a knot on the lockers, arguing fiercely over nothing in particular. There was a fellow in the peak roaring out, "Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled." Only the cook, just done with mixing bread, seemed to have ever done a lick of work in his life, and he was now standing by the galley fire rolling the dough off his fingers. The cook on a fisherman is always a busy man.

Down the companionway and into the thick of this dropped Clancy, oiled up and all ready to go aloft. To the mast-head of a vessel, even on an April night in southern waters, it is cold enough, especially when, like a seiner, she is nearly always by the wind; and Clancy was wrapped up. "I think," said Clancy, as his boot-heels. .h.i.t the floor, "I'll have a mug-up." From the boiler on the galley-stove he poured out a mug of coffee and from the grub-locker he took a slice of bread and two thick slices of cold beef. He buried the bread among the beef and leaned against the foremast while he ate.

Once when Clancy was a skipper he did a fine bit of rescuing out to sea, and after he got home a newspaper man saw him and wrote him up. I had the clipping stuck on the wall of Withrow's store for months and had read it so often that I knew it by heart. "In heavy jack-boots and summer sou'wester, with a black jersey of fine quality sticking up above the neck of his oil-jacket, with a face that won you at sight; cheeks a nice even pink; damp, storm-beaten, and healthful; with mouth, eyes, and jaw bespeaking humor, sympathy, and courage; shoulders that seemed made for b.u.t.ting to windward--an attractive, inspiring, magnetic man altogether--that is Captain Tommie Clancy of the Gloucester fisherman, the Mary Andrews." That, was how it read, and certainly it fitted him now, as he stood there in the middle of the thick curling smoke of the pipes, holding the mug of coffee in one hand and the sandwich of bread and meat in the other, leaning easily against the b.u.t.t of the foremast, and between gulps and bites taking notice of the crew.

"Give me," he said to the cook as the proper man for an audience, "a seiner's crew when they're not on fish for real gentlemen of leisure.

Look at 'em now--you'd think they were all near-sighted, with their cards up to their chins. And above them look--Kipling to starb'd and the d.u.c.h.ess to port. Mulvaney, I'll bet, filled full of whiskey and keeping the heathen on the jump, and Airy Fairy Lillian, or some other daisy with winning ways, disturbing the peace of mind of half a dozen dukes. Mulvaney's all right, but the d.u.c.h.ess! They'll be taking books of that kind to the mast-head next. What d'y' s'pose I found aft the other day? Now what d'y' s'pose? I'll bet you'd never guess. No, no.

Well, 'He Loved, but Was Lured Away.' Yes. Isn't that fine stuff for a fisherman to be feeding on? But whoever was reading it, he was ashamed of it. 'Well, who owns this thing?' says I, picking up the lured-away lad. 'n.o.body,' speaks up Sam there. Of course he didn't own it--O no!

"Violet Vance," went on Clancy, and took another bite of his sandwich.

"Violet Vance and Wilful Winnie and a whole holdful of airy creatures couldn't help a fisherman when there's anything stirring. I waded through a whole bunch of 'em once,"--he reached over and took a wedge of pie from the grub-locker. "Yes, I went through a whole bunch of 'em once--pretty good pie this, cook, though gen'rally those artificial apples that swings on strings ain't in it with the natural tree apples for pie--once when we were laying somewhere to the east'ard of Sable Island, in a blow and a thick fog--fresh halibuting--and right in the way of the liners. And I expect I was going around like a man asleep, because the skipper comes up and begins to talk to me. It was my first trip with him and I was a young lad. 'Young fellow,' says the skipper, Matt Dawson--this was in the Lorelei--'young fellow,' says Matt, 'you look tired. Let me call up the crew and swing a hammock for you from the fore-rigging to the jumbo boom. How'll that do for you? When the jumbo slats it'll keep the hammock rocking. Let me,' he says.

'P'raps,' he goes on, 'you wouldn't mind waking up long enough to give this music box a turn or two every now and then while the fog lasts.'

We had a patent fog-horn aboard, the first I ever saw, and I'd clear forgot it--warn't used to patent horns. But just another little wedge of pie, George.

"However, I suppose when there's nothing doing there's no very great harm. But we'll try to keep some of you busy to-night. Praise the Lord, the moon's out of the way and it's looking black already and the sea ought to fire up fine later on. And there's a nice little breeze to overhaul a good school when we see one. If any of you are beginning to think of getting in a wink of sleep then you'd better turn in now, for you're sure to be out before long. I'm going aloft."

Clancy climbed up the companionway. Then followed the sc.r.a.ping of his boot-heels across the deck. Half a minute later, had anybody cared to go up and have a look, I suppose he would have been discovered astraddle of the highest block above the forethroat--he and the skipper--watching out sharply for the lights of the many other vessels about them, but more particularly straining their eyes for the phosph.o.r.escent trails of mackerel.

XV

CLANCY TO THE MAST-HEAD

The men below knew their skipper and Clancy too well to imagine that they were to be too long left in peace. And then, too, the next man off watch reported a proper night for mackerel. "Not a blessed star out--and black! It's like digging a hole in the ground and looking into it. And the skipper's getting nervous, I know. I could hear him stirrin' 'round up there when I was for'ard just now, and he hollered to the wheel that up to the no'the'ard it looked like planty of fish.

'And I callate we ain't the only vessel got eyes for it,' he said."

"Yes," said his watch-mate, who had just dropped down, "it's nothing but side-lights all 'round and----"

Just then came the skipper's voice from aloft. "Tell the boys they might's well oil up and be ready." The watch did not have to repeat it--we all heard it below, and fore and aft, in cabin and forec's'le, the gang made ready. Cards, novels, and all the hot arguments went by the board, and then after a mug-up for nearly all we slid into oil-clothes, boots and sou'westers, and puffing at what was probably to be the last pipeful of the evening, we lay around on lockers and on the floor, backs to the b.u.t.t of the mast and backs to the stove--wherever there was s.p.a.ce for a broad back and a pair of stout legs our fellows dropped themselves, discussing all the while the things that interested them--fish, fis.h.i.+ng, fast vessels, big shares, politics, Bob Fitzsimmons, John L. Sullivan, good stories, and just then particularly, because two of the crew were thinking of marrying, the awful price of real estate in Gloucester.

By and by, ringing as clear as if he himself stood at the companionway, came the skipper's voice from the mast-head: "On deck everybody!" No more discussion, no more loafing--pipes were smothered into bosoms, and up the companionway crowded oilskins and jack-boots.

Then came: "It looks like fish ahead of us. Haul the boat alongside and drop the dory over."

We jumped. Four laid hands on the dory in the waist and ten or a dozen heaved away on the stiff painter of the seine-boat that was towing astern. Into the air and over the starboard rail went the dory, while ploughing up to the vessel's boom at the port fore-rigging came the bow of the seine-boat.

Then followed: "Put the tops'ls to her--sharp now."

The halyards could be heard whirring up toward the sky, while two bunches of us sagged and lifted on the deck below. Among us it was, "Now then--o-ho--sway away--good," until topsails were flat as boards, and the schooner, hauled up, had heeled to her scuppers.

"Slap the stays'l to her and up with the balloon. Half the fleet's driving to the no'the'ard. Lively."

The Johnnie liked that rarely. With the seventy-five foot main-boom sheeted in to her rail, with the thirty-seven-foot spike bowsprit poking a lane in the sea when she dove and a path among the clouds when she lifted, with her mids.h.i.+p rail all but flush with the sea and the night breeze to sing to her--of course she liked it, and she showed her liking. She'd tear herself apart now before she'd let anything in the fleet go by her. And red and green lights were racing to both quarters of her.

"Into the boat!" It was the skipper's voice again, and fifteen men leaped over the rail at the word. Two dropped into the dory and thirteen jumped from the vessel's rail onto thwarts or netting or into the bottom of the seine-boat--anywhere at all so that they get in quickly. As extra hand on deck I had to stand by and pay out the painter.

In the middle of it came the skipper sliding down from the mast-head.

"Drop astern, boat and dory," he called out, and himself leaped over the quarter and onto the pile of netting as into the Johnnie's boiling wake they went. The thirty-eight-foot seine-boat was checked up a dozen fathoms astern, and the dory just astern of that. The two men in the dory had to fend off desperately as they slid by the seine-boat.

On the deck of the Johnnie were the cook, who had the wheel, and myself, who had to stand by the sheets. There would be stirring times soon, for even from the deck occasional flashes of light, marking small pods of mackerel, could be made out on the surface of the sea.

Clancy, now at the mast-head alone, was noting these signs, we felt sure, and with them a whole lot of other things. To the mast-heads of other vessels out in the night were other skippers, or seine-masters, and all with skill and nerve and a great will to get fish.

The Johnnie was making perhaps ten knots good now, and with every jerk the painter of the seine-boat chafed and groaned in the taffrail chock. The skipper from the boat called for more line. "Slack away a bit, slack away. We're not porpoises."

I jumped to attend to the painter just as Clancy's voice broke in from above: "Swing her off about two points, ease your main sheet and keep an eye on that light to looard. Off, off--that's good--hold her--and Joe, slack stays'l and then foretops'l halyards. Be ready to let go balloon halyards and stand by down-haul. Look alive."

I paid out some sheet from the bitt by the wheel-box, unb.u.t.toned the after stays'l tack, jumped forward and loosed up halyards till her kites dropped limp.

"Down with your balloon there--and at the wheel there, jibe her over.

Watch out for that fellow astern--he's pretty handy to our boat. Watch out in boat and dory!" The last warning was a roar.

The big balloon gossamer came rattling down the long stay and the jaws of the booms ratched, fore and main, as they swung over. From astern came the voices of the men in boat and dory, warning each other to hang on when they felt her jibing. Some of them must have come near to being jerked overboard. "Why in G.o.d's name don't you slack that painter?" came the voice of the skipper from the boat.

I leaped to give them more painter, and "Draw away your jib--draw away your jumbo," came from aloft. Sheets were barely fast when it was: "Steady at the wheel, George--steady her--ste-a-dy--Great G.o.d! man, if you can't see can't you feel that fellow just ahead? And, skipper, tell them to close their jaws astern there--water won't hurt 'em.

Ready all now?"