The Seiners Part 15

The skipper looked well that night. When he warmed up and his eyes took on a fresh s.h.i.+ne 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 pa.s.sed 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.

n.o.body 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 ash.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e. 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.