The Seiners Part 7

"We'll know more about it after we've tried her out with the Lucy Foster or the Colleen Bawn or Hollis's new vessel," he said, after a while.

One thing we soon found out, and that was that she was a stiff vessel.

That was after a squall hit us off Cape Cod. We watched the rest of them then. Some luffed and others took in sail, and about them we could not tell. But those that took it full gave us an idea of how we were behaving. "Let her have it and see how she'll do," said the skipper, and Howe, who was at the wheel--with his clothes good and dry again--let her have it full. With everything on and tearing through the water like a torpedo-boat, one puff rolled her down till she filled herself chock up between the house and rail, but she kept right on going. Some vessels can't sail at all with decks under, but the Johnnie never stopped. "She's all right, this one," said everybody then. A second later she took a slap of it over her bow, nearly smothering the cook, who had just come up to dump some potato parings over the rail. The way he came up coughing and spitting and then his dive for the companionway--everybody had to roar.

"Did y'see the cook hop?--did y'see him hop?" called Andie, who was afraid somebody had missed it.

We pa.s.sed the Marauder, Soudan McLeod, soon after. His mainmast had broken off eight or ten feet below the head. They were clearing away the wreckage. "I s'pose I oughter had more sense," he called out as we went by.

"Oh, I don't know--maybe the spar was rotten," said Maurice, and that was a nice way to put it, too.

That night it came a flat calm, and with barely steerage way for us.

There was a big four-masted coaster bound south, too, and light, and for the best part of the night we had a drifting match with her.

Coasters as a rule are not great all-round sailers, but some of them, with their flat bottoms and shoal draft, in a fair wind and going light, can run like ghosts, and this was one of that kind. We had our work cut out to hold this one while the wind was light and astern, but in the morning, when it hauled and came fresher, we went flying over the shoals. So far as the looks of it went the big coaster might as well have been anch.o.r.ed then.

All that day we held on. And it was a lesson in sailing to see the way some of those seiners were handled. Our skipper spent most of that day finding out how she sailed best and putting marks on her sheets for quick tr.i.m.m.i.n.g by and by.

Trying each other out, measuring one vessel against another, the fleet went down the coast. We pa.s.sed a few and were pa.s.sed by none, and that was something. Ahead of us somewhere were a half-dozen flyers. If we could have beaten some of them we should have had something to brag about; but no telling, we might get our chance yet.

IX

MACKEREL

Throughout all that night the lights of the fleet were all about us, ahead and behind. At breakfast next morning--four o'clock--we were off Delaware Breakwater, and that afternoon at two we began the mast-head watch for fish. And on that fine April day it was a handsome sight--forty sail of seiners in sight, spread out and cruising lazily.

The skipper was the first to get into his oilskins and heavy sweater, for with a vessel hopping along at even no more than six or seven knots by the wind it is pretty chilly aloft, nice and comfortable though it may be on deck in the sun.

There was a game of seven-up going on in the cabin, and the sun striking down the companionway was bothering Andie Howe. He began to complain. "Hi, up there to the wheel! Hi, Eddie--can't you put her on the other tack?--the sun's in my eyes. How can a man see the cards with the sun in his eyes?"

Parsons didn't have the chance to talk back when the word came from aloft to put the seine-boat over the side, and after that to overhaul the seine and pile it in the boat. Vessels ahead had seen mackerel, the skipper called out. We got into oilskins and boots and made ready.

Those who were going into the seine-boat had already picked out in what positions they were going to row, and now there was an overhauling of oars and putting marks on them so that they could be picked out in a hurry. Clancy and I were to be dorymen. We made ready the dory, and then Clancy went to the mast-head with the skipper and Long Steve, whose watch it was aloft.

Things began to look like business soon. Even from the deck we could see that one or two vessels ahead had boats out. We began to picture ourselves setting around a big school and landing the first mackerel of the year into New York. I think everybody aboard was having that dream, though everybody pretended not to be in earnest. You could hear them: "A nice school now--three hundred barrels." "Or two hundred would be doing pretty well." "Or even a hundred barrels wouldn't be bad." There were two or three young fellows among the crew, fellows like myself, who had never seen much seining, and they couldn't keep still for excitement when from the mast-head came the word that a boat ahead was out and making a set.

We were going along all the time and when we could see from the deck for ourselves the boats that were setting, Billie Hurd couldn't stand it any longer, but had to go aloft, too. The four of them made a fine picture--the skipper and Steve standing easily on the spreaders, one leaning against the mast and the other against the back-stay, with Hurd perched on the jib halyards block and Clancy on the spring-stay, and all looking as comfortable as if they were in rockers at home. I'd have given a hundred dollars then to be able to stand up there on one foot and lean as easily as the skipper against the stay with the vessel going along as she was. I made up my mind to practise it when next I went aloft.

I went to the mast-head myself by and by, and, seeing half a dozen schools almost at once, I became so excited that I could hardly speak.

The skipper was excited, too, but he didn't show it, only by his eyes and talking more jerkily than usual. He paid no attention to two or three schools that made me just crazy just to look at, but at last, when he thought it was time, he began to move. Ten or a dozen Gloucester vessels were bunched together, and one porgy steamer--that is, built for porgy or menhaden fis.h.i.+ng, but just now trying for mackerel like the rest of us.

"There'll be plenty of them up soon, don't you think, Tommie?" the skipper asked.

"Plenty," answered Tommie, "plenty," with his eyes ever on the fish.

"I think Sam Hollis has got his all right, but Pitt Ripley--I don't know."

It was getting well along toward sunset then, with everybody worried, the skipper still aloft, and one boat making ready to set about a mile inside of us. "They'll dive," said our skipper, and they did. "There's Pitt Ripley's school now," and he pointed to where a raft of mackerel were rising and rippling the water black, and heading for the north.

"There's another gone down, too--they'll dive that fellow. Who is it--Al McNeill?--yes. But they'll come up again, and when it does, it's ours." And they did come up, and when they did the skipper made a jump and roared, "Into the boat!" There was a scramble. "Stay up here, you Billie, and watch the school," he said to Hurd, and "Go down, you," to me. I slid down by the jib halyards. The skipper and Clancy came down by the back-stay and beat me to the deck. They must have tumbled down, they were down so quick.

"Hurry--the Aurora's going after it, too." The Aurora was one of Withrow's fleet and we were bound to beat her. I had hardly time to leap into the dory after Clancy, and we were off, with n.o.body left aboard but Hurd to the mast-head and the cook, who was to stay on deck and sail the vessel.

In the seine-boat it was double-banked oars, nine long blades and a monstrous big one steering--good as another oar that--and all driving for dear life, with Long Steve and a cork-pa.s.ser standing by the seine and the skipper on top of it, with his eyes fixed on the school ahead--his only motions to open his mouth and to wave with his hands to the steersman behind him. "Drive her--drive her," he called to the crew. "More yet--more yet," to the steering oar. "There's the porgy steamer's boat, too, after the same school. Drive her now, fellows!"

The mackerel were wild as could be, great rafts of them, and travelling faster than the old seiners in the gang said they had ever seen them travel before, and what was worse, not staying up long.

There were boats out from three or four vessels before we pushed off with ours. I remember the porgy steamer had cut in ahead and given their boat a long start for a school. However, that school did not stay up long enough and they had their row for nothing. But then their steamer picked them up again and dropped them on the way to the same school that we were trying for. How some of our gang did swear at them! And all because they were steam power.

It promised to be a pretty little race, but that school, too, went down before either of us could head it, and so it was another row for nothing. We lay on our oars then, both boats ready for another row, with the skipper and seine-heaver in each standing on top of the seine and watching for the fish to show again. Of course both gangs were sizing each other up, too. I think myself that the Duncan's crowd were a huskier lot of men than the steamer's. Our fellows looked more like fishermen, as was to be expected, because in Gloucester good fishermen are so common that naturally, a man hailing from there gets so that he wants to be a good fisherman, too, and of course the men coming there are all pretty good to begin with, leaving out the fellows who are born and brought up around Gloucester and who have it in their blood.

A man doesn't leave Newfoundland or Cape Breton or even Nova Scotia or Maine and the islands along the coast, or give up any safe, steady work he may have, to come to Gloucester to fish unless he feels that he can come pretty near to holding his end up. That's not saying that a whole lot of fine fishermen do not stay at home, with never any desire to fish out of Gloucester, in spite of the good money that a fisherman with a good skipper can make from there, but just the same they're a pretty smart and able lot that do come. And so, while our gang was half made up of men that were born far away from Gloucester, yet they had the Gloucester spirit, which is everything in deep-sea fis.h.i.+ng, when nerve and strength and skill count for so much. And this other crowd--the porgy steamer's--did not have that look.

"Look at what we're coming to," somebody called. "All steam boys soon, and on wages--wages!" he repeated, "and going around the deck, with a blue guernsey with letters on the chest of it--A.D.Q.--or some other d.a.m.n company."

"Well, that would not be bad either, with your grub bill sure and your money counted out at the end of every month," answered somebody else.

I was sizing up the two gangs myself, I being in the dory with Clancy, and I guess that nearly everyone of us was doing the same thing and keeping an eye out for fish at the same time, when all at once a school popped up the other side of the porgyman's boat. Perhaps, half a mile it was and, for a wonder, not going like a streak.

We saw it first and got to going first, but the Aurora's boat and the steamer's boat were nearer, and so when we were all under good headway there were two lengths or so that we had to make up on each. Well, that was all right. Two lengths weren't so many, and we drove her. It was something to see the fellows lay out to it then--doubled-banked, two men to each wide seat and each man with a long oar, which he had picked out and trimmed to suit himself, and every man in his own particular place as if in a racing crew.

And now every man was bending to it. A big fellow, named Rory McKinnon, was setting the stroke. There was a kick and a heave to every stroke, and the men encouraging each other. "Now--now--give it to her," was all that I could hear coming out of him. All this time we in the dory were coming on behind, Clancy and I having to beat their dory just as our boat had to beat their boat. And we were driving, too, you may be sure. Clancy was making his oars bend like whips.

"Blast 'em! There's no stiffness to 'em," he was complaining. And then, "Sock it to her," he would call out to our fellows in the seine-boat. "We've got the porgy crew licked--that's the stuff," came from the skipper. From on top of the seine he was watching the fish, watching the gang, watching the other boats, watching us in the dory--watching everything. Whoever made a slip then would hear from it afterwards, we knew. And clip, clip, clip it was, with the swash just curling nicely under the bow of the other boat, and I suppose our own, too, if we could have seen.

Our boat was gaining on the Aurora's and the skipper was warming up.

The fish was going the same way we were, still a quarter of a mile ahead.

"Drive her," said the skipper. "Drive her--drive her--another length and you got 'em. And, Kenney, it's the best of ash you've got. Don't be afraid of breaking it. And, Dan Burns, didn't y'ever learn to keep stroke in the Bay of Islands with nine more men beside you rowing? And drive her--hit her up now--here's where we got 'em--they can't hold it on their lives. Now then, another dozen strokes and it's over. One, two, three--quicker, Lord, quicker--six, seven--oh, now she's fair flying--look at her leap. You blessed lobster, keep rowing and not looking over your shoulder. We got to get the fish first."

A quarter mile of that with the foam ripping by us, and every man with his blood like fire jumping to his oar, when the skipper leaped back to the steering oar. "Stand by," he called, and then, "Now--over with the buoy," and over it went, with the dory at hand and Tommie Clancy right there to pick it up and hold it to windward. And then went the seine over in huge armfuls. Just to see Long Steve throw that seine was worth a trip South. And he was vain as a child of his strength and endurance. "My, but look at him!" Clancy called out--"look at the back of him!" "He's a horse," somebody else would have to say, and "H-g-gh," Steve would grunt, and "H-g-gh" he would fill the air full of tarred netting, "H-g-gh--pa.s.s them corks," and over it would go, "H-g-gh," and the skipper would say, "That's the boy, Steve," and Steve would heave to break his back right then and there. All the time they were driving the seine-boat to its limit, and the skipper was laying to the big steering oar, the longest of them all and taking a strong man to handle it properly--laying to it, swinging from the waist like a hammer-thrower, and the boat jumping to it. She came jumping right for us in the dory in a little while. It doesn't take a good gang long to put a quarter mile of netting around a school of mackerel.

It was a pretty set he made. "Pretty, pretty," you could almost hear the old seiners saying between their teeth, even as they were all rowing with jaws set and never a let-up until the circle was completed, when it was oars into the air and Clancy leaping from the dory into the seine-boat to help purse up. "It's a raft if ever we get 'em," were his first words, and everybody that wasn't too breathless said yes, it was a jeesly raft of fish.

"Purse in," it was then, and lively. And so we pursed in, hauling on the running line in the lower edge of the seine, something as the string around the neck of a tobacco bag is drawn tight. It was heavy work of course, but everybody made light of it. We could not tell if the fish were in it or not. The leaders might have dove when they felt the twine against their noses and so escaped with the whole school following after, or they might have taken no alarm and stayed in.

So we pursed in, not knowing whether we were to have a good haul with a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars apiece at the end of it, or whether we would have our work for nothing. All hands kept up the pretence of joking, of course, but everybody was anxious enough. It was more than the money--it was fisherman's pride. Were we to get into New York and have it telegraphed on to Gloucester for everybody that knew us to read and talk about--landing the first mackerel of the year? We watched while the circle narrowed and the pool inside grew shallower. Somebody said, "There's one," and we could see the s.h.i.+ne of it, and another--and another--and then the whole ma.s.s of them rose flipping. They lashed the water into foam, rushed around the edges, nosed the corks of the seine. I don't think myself that mackerel are particularly intelligent, take them generally; but at times they seem to know--these fellows, at least, seemed to know they were gone and they thrashed about in fury. A mackerel is a handsome fish any time, but to see him right you want to see him fresh-seined. They whipped the water white now--tens of thousands of them. I don't believe that the oldest seiner there didn't feel his heart beat faster--the first mackerel of the year. "And Lord knows, maybe a couple of hundred barrels," and the skipper's eyes shone--it meant a lot to him. And some of the men began to talk like children, they were so pleased.

X

WE LOSE OUR SEINE

Two hundred barrels the skipper had said, but long before we were all pursed up we knew that five hundred barrels would never hold the fish in that seine. The size of that school filled us with joy and yet it was the very size of it that caused us our trouble. It was too big for the seine, and when they began to settle down and take the twine with them the trouble began for us. No bit of twine ever made to be handled from a seine-boat was big enough to hold that school of fish when they began to go down.

The skipper was awake to it early and signalled for the vessel to come alongside. So the Johnnie stood over to us, and Hurd, pus.h.i.+ng the spare dory over with Moore's help, came jumping with it to the side of the seine where I was alone in the first dory. He hadn't even stopped to get into his oilskins, he was in such a hurry. By the skipper's orders I had made fast some of the corks to the thwarts in the dory and Billie took some into the spare dory. The whole length of the seine-boat they were making fast the seine too. In that way the skipper hoped to buoy up the fish and hold them until we could lighten the seine up by bailing some of the fish onto the deck of the vessel.

But it was of no use. There must have been a thousand barrels of them, and dories and seine-boat began to go under. It was over the rail of my dory and spare dory both, and both Billie and myself to our waists, when the skipper sung out for us to jump and save ourselves. We hung on a little longer, but it got to be too much for us and overboard we went. We were not in danger then. It is true that the sea was making and we were weighted down with oilskins and rubber boots, but we had for support the corks that had not yet gone under. And along the corks we hauled ourselves toward the seine-boat. I was praying that the sharks that sometimes follow up mackerel would not bother us. It is probable that they would not even if there were any around, as mackerel are better eating. And such a fuss as we made hauling ourselves through the water! We'd have scared away a whole school of sharks. Before we could get to the seine-boat that, too, was under.

"Jump!" called the skipper, and "Jump everybody!" called Clancy, and themselves both hanging on to a last handful of twine. The men in the seine-boat jumped and struck out for the vessel, which was now quite close, with the cook, the only man left aboard, throwing over keelers, draw-buckets, the main sheet--anything within his reach that was loose and would support a man.

The skipper and Clancy hung on to the last. "Jump you, Tommie!" called the skipper. "Not me till you go," answered Clancy. They couldn't do a bit of good, but they hung on, each grabbing handfuls of twine in a last effort to hold up the seine. The seine-boat went under--and they up to their necks--and then it turned over and in toward the seine.