The Seiners Part 13

A DRIVE FOR MARKET

Her deck was pretty well filled with mackerel when "All dry," said Long Steve, and drew the last of the seine into the boat.

"Then hurry aboard and drop that seine-boat astern. And--whose watch?

Take the wheel--wait till I give you the course--there. But don't drive her awhile yet. Some of those fish might be washed over. But it won't be for long."

"Ready with the ice?" he asked next.

"All ready," and the men who had been chopping ice and making ready the pens in the hold stood by to take the mackerel as we pa.s.sed them down.

As soon as we had enough of them off the vessel's deck to make it safe to drive her, the skipper gave her a little more sheet and let her go for New York. We hustled the seine-boat aboard too. Some other vessels must have got fish, too, and there was no time to waste.

It was a good-sized school and when we had them all iced and below--more than thirty thousand count--it was time for all hands to turn in--all but the two men on watch of course. I didn't turn in myself, but after a mug-up and pipeful below came on deck again. It was a pretty good sort of a night for a dark night, with a moderate breeze that sang in your ears when you leaned against the halyards and a sea that lapped bucketfuls of spray over her rail forward and that tumbled away in a wide flat hump as our quarter slipped on and left it behind.

I found the skipper leaning against the weather rigging and watching a red light coming up on us. Noticing me he said, "There's that porgy steamer that we beat out for that school the other day overhauling us now. There's the beauty of steam. The crew of this one knows more in a minute than they know in a week about fis.h.i.+ng in that steamer, and we'd be carrying our summer kites when that gang, if they were in a sailing vessel, would be laying to an anchor; and with our boat out and their boat out and a school in sight they'd have to take our leavings. But here's one of the times when they have the best of it."

There wasn't much wind stirring then, but it promised to breeze up, or so the skipper thought, and I'm sure I was glad to hear him say it, for the harder it blew the sooner we would get to New York and the better our chance to beat the porgyman. First in to market got the cream.

It was pretty well on to daybreak when the porgy steamer got up abreast of us and after a while worked by. One of them took the trouble to sing out to us when they went by, "Well, you got a school before us, but we'll be tied up and into the dock and spending our money ash.o.r.e whilst you're still along the Jersey coast somewhere."

And we supposed they would, but Hurd, who was then to our wheel, had to call back to them, "Oh, I dunno. I dunno about that--it's a good run to Fulton Market dock yet." And, turning to us, "I hope the b.l.o.o.d.y old boiler explodes so n.o.body'll be able to find a mackerel of 'em this side the Bay of Fundy. Of course I wouldn't want to see the men come to any harm, but wouldn't it jar you--them scrubs?"

The skipper wasn't saying anything. And it meant a lot to him, too. He was looking after the steamer and, I know, praying for wind. We could see it in his eyes.

And sometimes things come as we like to have them. At full dawn it was a nice breeze with the Johnnie Duncan was.h.i.+ng her face in plenty of good spray and the fine sun s.h.i.+ning warm on a fresh sea-way. Another hour, the wind hauling and still making, the Johnnie was down to her rail, and awhile after that she was getting all the wind she needed.

"We may have a chance to try her out on this run, who knows?" said the skipper. We were coming up on the porgy steamer then and you should have seen his eyes when they looked from the rail to the deck of his vessel and from the deck again to aloft. On the steamer the gang were in the waist watching us coming and they must have been piling the coal into her below and giving her the jet steadily, for out of her funnel was coming the smoke in clouds mixed with steam.

"But their firemen can stoke till they're black in the face and they won't get more than eleven or eleven and a half knots out of her,"

said Clancy. "I know her--the Nautilus--and if this one under us ain't logging her fourteen good then I don't know. And she'll be doing better yet before we see New York."

They were driving the porgyman then, but she was fated. Once we began to get her she came back to us fast enough, and once she was astern she troubled us no more. After the porgyman we pa.s.sed a big white yacht, evidently just up from the West Indies after a winter's cruise.

She looked a model for a good sailer, but there was no chance to try her out, for they had her under shortened sail when we went by.

There was a New York blue-fisherman on our weather bow bound for New York, too, and the way we went by her was a scandal. And farther on we drove by a big bark--big enough, almost, to take us aboard. They were plainly trying to make a pa.s.sage on her, but we left her too.

Then we pa.s.sed another yacht, but she wasn't carrying half our sail.

Her hull was as long as ours, but she didn't begin to be sparred as we were. We must have had ten feet on her main-boom and ten feet more bowsprit outboard, and yet under her four lower sails she seemed to be making heavy going of it. It's a good yacht that can hold a fisherman in a breeze and a sea-way. We beat this one about as bad as we beat the blue-fisherman. As we went by we tried to look as though we had beaten so many vessels that we'd lost all interest in racing, and at the same time we were all dancing on our toes to think what a vessel we had under us. It was that pa.s.sage we held the north-bound Savannah steamer for seven hours. Her pa.s.sengers stood by the rail and watched us, and when at last we crowded our bowsprit past her nose, they waved their handkerchiefs and cheered us like mad.

"When we get this one loosened up a bit and down to her trim, she'll sail some or I don't know," said our skipper. He stood in the cabin gangway then and filled his boots with water, but he wouldn't take in sail. Back behind us was another seiner. We could just make out that they were soaking it to her too. The skipper nodded his head back at her. Then, with one hand on the house and the other on the rail, he looked out from under our main-boom and across at the steamer. "Not a rag--let the spars come out of her."

One thing was sure--the Johnnie was a vessel that could stand driving.

She didn't crowd herself as she got going. No, sir! The harder we drove her the faster she went. Laying down on her side made no difference to her. In fact we were not sure that she wouldn't do her best sailing on her side. But it hadn't come to that yet. She was standing up under sail fine. Most of them, we knew, would have washed everything off their deck before that. And certainly there would have been no standing down by the lee rail on too many of them with that breeze abeam.

Going up New York harbor, where we had to tack, the Savannah steamer could have gone by if she had to, but big steamers slow down some going into a harbor, and we holding on to everything made up for the extra distance sailed. The wind, of course, was nothing to what it was outside, and that made some difference. Anyway, we kept the Johnnie going and held the steamer up to the Battery, where, as she had to go up North River, she gave us three toots. The people on the Battery must have had a good look at us. I guess it was not every day they saw a schooner of the Johnnie's size carrying on like that. Billie Hurd had to pay his respects to them. "Look, you loafers, look, and see a real vessel sailing in."

There was a sa.s.sy little East River towboat that wanted to give us a tow, but our skipper said it would be losing time to take sail off and wait for a line then. The tug captain said, "Oh, no; and you can't dock her anyway in this harbor without a tug."

"Oh, I can dock her all right, I guess," said our skipper.

"Maybe you think you can, but wait till you try it, and have a nice little bill for damages besides."

"Well, the vessel's good for the damages, too."

That towboat tailed us just the same, but we had the satisfaction of fooling him. The skipper kept the Johnnie going till the right time and then, when the tugboat people thought it was too late, he shot her about on her heel and into the dock with her mainsail coming down on the run and jibs dead.

A couple of East Side loafers standing on the wharf cap-log were nearly swept away by the end of our bowsprit, we came on so fast. Four or five of us leaped ash.o.r.e, and with lines out and made fast in no time, we had her docked without so much as cracking a single s.h.i.+ngle of the house across the head of the dock.

We sold our mackerel for nineteen cents apiece. Fifty-seven hundred and odd dollars was our stock, and about a hundred and forty dollars each man's share. We felt a little bit chesty after that. We were not the first to market that year, but we were the first since the early flurry, and the biggest stock so far that spring was to our credit.

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 s.h.i.+ps. 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 Sh.o.r.e trip--that is, head the fish off along the Nova Scotia sh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.body could order it down. Now we clewed it up.