The Seiners Part 12

"Ready!" roared back the skipper.

"All right. Down with your wheel a bit now, George. Down--more yet.

Hold her there."

The vessels that we had dodged by this bit of luffing were now dropping by us; one red light was slowly sliding past our quarter to port, and one green shooting by our bow to starboard. Evidently Clancy had only been waiting to steer clear of these two neighbors, for there was plenty of fish in sight now. The sea was flas.h.i.+ng with trails of them. Clancy now began to bite out commands.

"Stand ready everybody. In the boat and dory there--is everything ready, skipper?"

"All ready, boat and dory."

Out came Clancy's orders then--rapid fire--and as he ripped them out, no whistling wind could smother his voice, no swash of the sea could drown it. In boat, dory and on deck, every brain glowed to understand and every heart pumped to obey.

"Up with your wheel, George, and let her swing by. Stea-dy. Ready in the boat. Steady your wheel. Are you ready in the boat? Let her swing off a little more, George. Steady--hold her there. Stand by in the boat. Now then--now! Cast off your painter, cast off and pull to the west'ard. And drive her! Up with the wheel. More yet--that's good.

Drive her, I say, skipper. Where's that dory?--I don't see the dory.

The dory, the dory--where in h.e.l.l's the dory?--show that lantern in the dory. All right, the dory. Hold her up, George. Don't let her swing off another inch now. Drive her, boys, drive her! Look out now!

Stand by the seine! Stand by--the twine--do you hear, Steve! The twine! Drive her--drive her--blessed Lord! drive her. That's the stuff, skipper, drive her! Let her come up, George. Down with your wheel--down with you wheel--ste-a-dy. Drive her, skipper, drive her!

Turn in now--in--shorter yet. Drive her now--where's that dory!--hold her up!--not you, George! you're all right--ste-a-dy. Hold that dory up to the wind!--that's it, boys--you're all right--straight ahead now! That's the stuff. Turn her in now again, skipper. In the dory there--show your lantern in the dory and be ready for the seine-boat.

Good enough. Now cover your lantern in the dory and haul away when you're ready."

To have experienced the strain and drive of that rush, to have held an oar in the boat during that and to have shared with the men in the confidence they gathered--ours was a skipper to steer a boat around a school--and the soul that rang in Clancy's voice!--why, just to stand on deck, as I did, and listen to it--it was like living.

During this dash we could make out neither boat nor dory from deck, but the flashes of light raised by the oars at every stroke were plainly to be seen in that phosph.o.r.escent sea. Certainly they were making that boat hop along! Ten good men, with every man a long, broad blade, and double banked, so that every man might encourage his mate and be himself spurred on by desperate effort. Legs, arms, shoulders, back, all went into it and their wake alive with smoke and fire to tell them they were moving! To be in that?--The middle of a black night on the Atlantic was this, and the big seine-heaver was throwing the seine in great armfuls. And Hurd and Parsons in the little dory tossing behind and gamely trying to keep up! They were glad enough to be in the dory, I know, to get hold of the buoy, and you can be sure there was some lively action aboard of her when Clancy called so fiercely to them to hold the buoy up to the wind, so that the efforts of the crew of the seine-boat, racing to get their two hundred odd fathoms of twine fence around the flying school, might not go for naught.

XVI

WE GET A FINE SCHOOL

With his "Haul away now when you're ready," Clancy came down from aloft. He was sliding down evidently by way of the jib halyards, for there was the sound of a chafing whiz that could be nothing else than the friction of oilskins against taut manila rope, a sudden check, as of a block met on the way, an impatient, soft, little forgivable oath, and then a plump! that meant that he must have dropped the last twelve or fifteen feet to the deck. Immediately came the scurry of his boot-heels as he hurried aft. In another moment he stood in the glow of the binnacle light, and reaching back toward the shadow of the cook, but never turning his head from that spot out in the dark where he had last seen the boat, he took the wheel.

"All right, George, I've got you. A good-sized school, by the looks, if they got them, and I think they have. Did you see that boat ahead we near ran into?--the last time we put the wheel down? Man, but for a second I thought they were gone. I hope no blessed vessel comes as near to our fellows. And they were so busy rowing and heaving twine they never saw us, and myself nearly cross-eyed trying to watch them and our own boat and the fish all the time. Go below, George, she's all right now, and tell Joe--where is he?--to go below, too, and have a mug-up for himself. He must be soaked through taking the swash that must've come over her bow for the last hour. But tell him to come right up so's to keep watch out ahead."

I didn't go below, however, but standing by the fore-rigging kept an eye out ahead. Clancy himself stood to the wheel with his head ever turned over one shoulder, until he saw the flare of a torch from the seine-boat. "Good!" he exclaimed. "What there is is safe now, anyway."

After that his work was easy. He had only to dodge the lights of other vessels now, the old red and green lights that had been our neighbors all that evening, and a few new yellow flares that came from other seine-boats. So his eyes ranged the blackness and in rings about his own seine-boat he sailed the Johnnie Duncan. That the crew were quite a little while pursing up only gave him satisfaction. "A nice school, Joe, if they got it all," he said, "a nice school of 'em." And after a pause, "I think I'll stand down and have a look."

He ran down, luffed, and hailed, "Hi--skipper, what's it like?"

From the row of figures that were seen to be crowding gunnel and thwarts and hauling on the seine, one shadow straightened up beside the smoky torch and spoke. "Can't be sure yet, Tommie, but things look all right so far. A fair-sized school if we don't lose 'em."

"Lord, don't lose 'em, skipper, though I think you've got 'em fast enough now. Sounds natural to hear 'em flipping inside the corks, don't it? Ought to be hurrying 'em up, skipper--it's getting along in the night."

Clancy, very well satisfied, stood away again and continued to sail triangles around boat and dory. Being now clear of the greater part of the mental strain his spirits began to lighten. Merely by way of being sociable with himself he hummed some old ditties. There was that about the old coaster, the Eliza Jane. I liked to hear him sing that, as, dancing a one-footed jig-step by the wheel-box, he b.u.mped it out:

"Oh, the 'Liza Jane with a blue foremast And a load of hay came drifting past.

Her skipper stood aft and he said, 'How do?

We're the 'Liza Jane and who be you?'

He stood by the wheel and he says, 'How do?

We're from Bangor, Maine--from where be you?'

"The 'Liza Jane got a new main truck-- A darn fine thing but wouldn't stay stuck.

Came a breeze one day from the no'-no'-west And the gosh-darned thing came down with the rest.

Oh, hi-diddle-di--a breeze from the west-- Who'd 'a' thunk the truck wouldn't stuck with the rest?

"Oh, the 'Liza Jane left the wharf one day, A fine flood tide and the day Friday, But the darned old tide sent her bow askew And the 'Liza Jane began for to slew.

Oh, hi-diddle-di--she'd 'a' fairly flew, If she only could sail the other end to.

"Oh, the 'Liza Jane left port one day, With her hold full of squash and her deck all hay.

Two years back with her sails all set She put from Bath--she's sailing yet.

Oh, hi-diddle-di for a good old craft She'd 've sailed very well with her bow on aft."

There was a long story to the Eliza Jane, but Clancy did not finish it. Maybe he felt that it was not in harmony with that lowering sky or that flas.h.i.+ng sea. Maybe, too, in the waters that rolled and the wake that smoked was the inspiration for something more stirring. At any rate he began, in a voice that carried far, an old ballad of the war of 1812.

Two or three more stanzas to warm up, and the fight was on. And you would think Clancy was in it. He laid every mast and yard of the enemy over the side of her, he made her decks run with blood, and at the last, in a n.o.ble effort, he caused her to strike her flag.

By the time he had finished that, it happened that we were running before the wind, and, going so, it was very quiet aboard the vessel.

There was none of the close-hauled wash through her scuppers, nor was there much play of wind through stays and halyards. It was in fact unusually quiet, and it needed only that to set Clancy off on a more melancholy tack. So in a subdued voice he began the recitation of one of the incidents that have helped to make orphans of Gloucester children:

"Twelve good vessels fighting through the night Fighting, fighting, that no'the-east gale; Every man, be sure, did his might, But never a sign of a single sail Was there in the morning when the sun shone red, But a hundred and seventy fine men--dead-- Were settling somewhere into the sand On Georges shoals, which is Drowned Men's Land.

"Seventy widows kneeling----"

A long hail came over the water and a torch was raised and lowered.

"Hi-i--" hallooed the voice.

"Hi-i-i--" hallooed back Clancy as he pulled down his wheel. You might have thought he intended to run over them. But no, for at the very last second he threw her up cleverly and let her settle beside the boat, from which most of the men came tumbling immediately over the side of the vessel. Of those who stayed, one shackled the boat's bow onto the iron that hung from the boom at the fore-rigging, and having done that, braced an oar between himself and the vessel's run to hold the boat away and steady while another in the stern of the boat did the same thing with his oar. In the boat's waist two men hung onto the seine.

A section of the cork edge of the seine was then gathered inboard and clamped down over the vessel's rail, with the mackerel crowded into the middle part, and the bunt of the seine thus held safely between boat and vessel. Into this s.p.a.ce the sea swashed and slapped after a manner that kept all in the boat completely drenched and made it pretty hard for the men in bow and stern to fend off and retain their balance at the same time.

And then began the bailing in. Guided by the skipper, who stood on the break, our big dip-net, which could hold a barrel easily, was dropped over the rail and in among the kicking fish. A twist and a turn and "He-yew!" the skipper yelled. "Oy-hoo!" grunted the two gangs of us at the halyards, and into the air and over the rail swung the dip-net, swimming full. "Down!" We let it sag quickly to Clancy and Parsons, who were at the rail. "Hi-o!" they called cheerfully, and turned the dip-net inside out. Out and down it went again, "He-yew!" and up and in it came again. "Oy-hoo!" "Hi-o!" and flop! it was turned upside down and another barrel of fat, l.u.s.ty fish flipped their length against the hard deck. Head and tail they flipped, each head and tail ten times a second seemingly, until it sounded--they beat the deck so frantically--as if a regiment of gentle little drummer boys were tapping a low but wonderfully quick-sounding roll. Scales flew. We found some next morning glued to the mast-head. I never can get some people to believe that it is so--mackerel scales to the mast-head.

"He-yew!" called the skipper, "Oy-hoo!" hollered the halyards gang, "Hi-o!" sung out Clancy and Parsons cheerily at the rail. "Fine fat fish," commented the men in the seine-boat, the only men who had time to draw an extra breath.

Blazing torches were all around us. Arms worked up and down, big boots stamped, while inboard and out swung the dip-net, and onto the deck flopped the mackerel. "Drive her!" called the skipper, and "He-yew!"

"Oy-hoo!" and "Hi-o!" it went. Drenched oilskins steamed, wet faces glowed, glad eyes shone through the smoke flare, and the pitching vessel, left to herself, plunged up and down to the lift and fall of every sea.

XVII