Chapter 2

Maurice was standing on the front steps of Mrs. Arkell's boarding-house when I saw him. It was Mrs. Arkell's granddaughter Minnie that married the wealthy Mr. Miner--a rather loud sort of man, who had been reported as saying that he would give her a good time and show her life. He may have given her a good time--I don't know--but he was dead in two years. He was supposed to be very rich--three or four millions--but on settling up there was less than half a million. Of course that wasn't bad--enough for Minnie to buy a big house next her grandmother's for a summer home, and enough to go off travelling whenever she pleased.

When she came back to Gloucester she was still a very handsome girl, spoken of as the "Miner widow" among people who had known her only since her marriage, but still called Minnie Arkell by most of those who had known her when she was a child. In Gloucester she bought the first house just around the corner from her grandmother's. A handy passage between their two back yards allowed her to visit her grandmother whenever she pleased. She wanted to be near her own people, she said, and was more in her grandmother's house than her own.

Maurice came down the steps of Mrs. Arkell's boarding-house as I came along, and joined me on the sidewalk. He asked me the first thing if I wouldn't have a drink, and I said no.

"Oh, I forgot," he said, "you don't drink. Have a cigar," and he pulled one out of his pocket, and I took and lit it. Generally I smoked a pipe, but I liked good cigars, though I couldn't afford them myself. This was not a good one--more like the kind they hand out in bar-rooms when men get tired of drinking and say they guess they'll have a smoke.

"How does it happen, Joe, you're not at the store? I always thought Withrow held his men pretty close to hours."

"Well, so he does, but I'm not working for him now." And then I told him that I had had an argument with Withrow, been discharged, and was thinking of going fishing. I didn't tell him at first how it all came about, but I think he guessed it, for all at once, after a searching look, he reached out and shook hands with me.

"If ever I get a vessel again, Joe, and you still want to go fishing and care for a chance with me, you can have it--if you can't go with a better man, I mean. I'll take you and be glad to have you."

That meant a good berth, of course, for Maurice was a killer.

I looked at Maurice when he wasn't watching me, and felt sorry for him. He was a man that anybody would like the looks of. It wasn't that he was a handsome man--I never could get to like pretty men myself--but there was something about him that made you feel you could trust him. The heavy tan of his face and the grip of his jaw would spoil almost anybody for a beauty man, I suppose, but he had fine eyes and his mouth was all right, and he had a head that you'd like to stand off one side and look at, with hair that seemed to lift and wave with every breath of wind, and when he smiled you felt somehow that he'd saved that particular smile for you. He was no better built than a hundred other men I knew who were going fishing, and he was no bigger than a thousand others sailing out of Gloucester, and not near so big as a lot of others--five feet ten or eleven, maybe, he was, with level shoulders, and very light on his feet--but looking at him you knew he was all there.

After smoking a while and watching him between puffs, it flashed on me all at once that I was pretty thick. A word or two my cousin Nell had let slip--not so much what she said as the way she said it--gave me a hint of a whole lot of things. Looking at Maurice now I asked him if he had seen my cousin or Miss Foster lately.

He flushed up as he looked at me, and I saw that whatever he was thinking of it had not been far away from what I had been thinking of. "No, I haven't seen them"--slowly. "How is your cousin?"

"Oh, she seems to be all right. They were both in to the store this morning."

"What doing?" I thought he was beginning to worry, but I tried not to let on that I noticed it. I was beginning to feel like a sleuth, or a detective, or a diplomat, or something.

"Well, I don't know. Nell said they came in to see me, but all that happened that I had any hand in was to weigh her. She gained another pound last week, and it's worrying her. The more exercise she takes the heavier she gets, she says. She's a hundred and thirty-one now. Of course, while they're there Withrow had to help out and make himself agreeable, especially to Miss Foster, but I can't see that she warms up to him."

"Ha? No? You don't think so?"

"Not much, but maybe it's her way. She's pretty frosty generally anyway, different from my cousin--she's something like."

"Yes, your cousin is all right," said Maurice.

"You bet," I said. "She don't stand around and chill the air."

"Why--does Miss Foster always? Is that her way? I--don't--know--much about her."

"Well, I don't know so very much myself--mostly what my cousin tells me. Still, I guess she's all right; but she strikes me as one of the kind that might make an awful lot of a man and never let on until she was dead sure of him."

"H-m--That means she could think a whole lot of Withrow and not let on, Joe?"

I tried to look at Maurice like my oldest brother used to look at me sometimes when he tried to make me feel that I was a very green kid indeed, and said, "Well, if she's the kind to care for a man like Withrow, all I've got to say is that she'll deserve all she'll get. He's no good."

"That may be, but how's she to know? I know, you know, and half the men in Gloucester know that he's rotten; but take a woman who only sees him at his best and when he's watching out--how's she to know?"

"I don't know, but being a woman she ought to," was all I could say to that. It came into my mind just then that when I next saw my cousin Nell I'd tell her what I really knew, and more than that--what I really thought of my old employer. Perhaps she'd carry it to Miss Foster. If it was to be Maurice or Withrow, I knew on which side I was going to be.

Both of us were quiet then, neither of us quite knowing what to say perhaps. Then together we started to walk to the corner of the side street. We were past the side-door of the boarding-house when a voice called out, "Oh, Maurice," and then, maybe noticing me, I suppose, "Oh, Captain Blake," and Maurice turned. Minnie Arkell--Mrs. Miner rather--was there at the kitchen window. I didn't know she was in town at all--thought she hadn't got back from Florida, or North Carolina, or wherever it was she had been for the winter.

"Won't you come in a minute, Captain, and your friend? He doesn't remember me--do you, Joe?--and yet we were playmates once," which was true. I was often taken to Mrs. Arkell's when a little fellow by skippers who were friends of my father's. They used to tell me about him, and I liked to listen.

"I thought I'd run over and see granny," she went on. "I'm back to the old house for a while. Won't you come in?"

My mind had long been set against Minnie Arkell. I knew about her throwing over a fine young fellow, a promising skipper, to marry Miner. I may have been too young at the time to judge anybody, but after that I had small use for her. My ideas in the matter were of course pretty much what older men had put into me.

I had listened to them--skippers and others--and yet now, when she held out her hand to me and smiled, I didn't feel nearly so set against her. She certainly was a handsome girl, and yet I hoped that Maurice wouldn't fall in love with her, as most everybody did that came to the Arkell house.

I said that I did not have time to come in, and started to make off. Maurice asked me where I was bound. I told him that I thought of taking a look in at Crow's Nest and getting the news.

"Yes, you'll get it there, sure enough. When they can't tell you anything else up there they can tell you what everybody's doing." He smiled at that, turned slowly toward the side-door, as if he would rather go with me to Crow's Nest, and I went off.

Just outside the gate I saw Sam Hollis, a man I never did like. Tommie Clancy, the man that could size up a person quicker than anybody I'd ever met, used to say that deep down, if you could get at Hollis, you'd find a quitter, but that nobody had ever got into him. I'd been meeting Hollis after every trip in for two years in Withrow's store. He was a successful fisherman, and a sharp, keen man ashore, but he was a man I never quite took to. One of his ambitions, I felt satisfied, was to be reckoned a devil of a fellow. He'd have given a year's earnings, I knew, to have people point him out on the street and say, "There's Sam Hollis--there's the boy to carry sail--nobody ever made him take his mains'l in," the same as they used to say of a half dozen or so that really would carry sail--that would drive a vessel under before they would be the first to reef. But the people didn't do that, although, let him tell it, he did wonderful things out to sea, and he had such a way of telling it, too, that he'd almost make you believe him. But as Clancy used to say, after he'd left you, and you had time to think it over, you'd see where here and there his story wasn't well-calked. My own idea was that he wanted a reputation so that he could pose as a devil of a fellow with certain people ashore. It is easy enough to see that even a more careful man than Sam Hollis might take a chance for a smile from a woman like Minnie Arkell.

Anyhow, I never felt at home with Hollis, and so was willing to take Clancy's judgment straight. Hollis was a man about forty, and had been one of Minnie Arkell's admirers ever since I could remember--ever since she was old enough to have any, I mean, and she wasn't any late bloomer, as Clancy used to say.

Hollis went into the Arkell house by the door that had only just closed behind Maurice and Minnie Arkell. I didn't like that very much, and was thinking of turning back and going in, too; but on second thought it occurred to me that perhaps only Maurice would have a welcome for me. So I didn't enter, but kept on to Crow's Nest instead.

IV

LITTLE JOHNNIE DUNCAN STANDS EXAMINATION

By this time I should have gone home, I suppose, and had something to eat--it was getting on into the afternoon--but I didn't want to have a talk with my mother yet awhile, and so kept on to Crow's Nest, where I found half a dozen good-natured loafers. Not all were loafers exactly--three or four were simply waiting around before shipping on some seiner for the mackerel season. It promised to shower at the time, too, and of course the gentlemen who formed old Peter's staff could not think of venturing out in threatening weather.

And there they were, with Peter Hines, the paid man in charge of Crow's Nest, keeping a benevolent eye on them. Yarning, arguing, skylarking, advising Peter, and having fun with little Johnnie Duncan they were when I entered. Johnnie was the grandson of the head of the Duncan firm, a fine, clear-eyed boy, that nobody could help liking. He thought fishermen were the greatest people in the world. Whatever a fisherman did was all right to Johnnie.

I had got all the news at Crow's Nest and was just thinking of moving along toward home when Tommie Clancy popped in. Of course that made a difference. I wasn't going to move while Clancy was around.

"My soul, but here's where the real gentlemen are," he had to say first, and then, "Anybody seen Maurice to-day?"

I told him I had, and where.

"Anybody with him?"

"Well, not with him exactly." I shook my head, and said nothing of Minnie Arkell, nor of Sam Hollis, although Clancy, looking at me, I could see, guessed that there was something else; and he might have asked me something more only for the crowd and little Johnnie Duncan.

Johnnie was trying to climb up onto Clancy, and so Clancy, turning from me, took Johnnie up and gave him a toss that all but hit his head against the roof. "And how's she heading, Johnnie-boy?" and taking a seat stood Johnnie up beside him.

"East-s'uth-east, and a fair, fair wind," answered Johnnie.

"East-s'uth-east--my, but you said that fine. And a fair wind? Must be bound Georges Bank way. And how long will you hold that course?"

"From Eastern Point--a hundred and thirty-five mile."

"Yes--and then?"

"Then you throw her up and heave the lead."

"And heave the lead--sure enough. And then?"

"And then, if you find you're clear of the North Shoal, you put her to the s'uth'ard and west'ard till you're in onto the Bank."

"S'uth'ard and west'ard--that's the boy. Man, but I'll live to see you going to the Custom House and taking out your master's papers yet."

"And can I join the Master Mariners then?"

"That's what you can, and walk down Main Street with a swing to your shoulders, too. And now you're up on the Bank and twenty-five fathom of water and the right bottom--and you're a hand-liner, say, after cod--what then?"

"Let go her chain and begin fishing."

"And would you give her a short or a long string of cable?"

"M-m--I'm not sure. A long string you'd hang on better, but a short scope and you could get out faster in case you were dragging and going onto the shoals. What would you do, Captain Clancy? You never told me that, did you?"

"Well, it would depend, too, though handliners generally calculate on hanging on, blow how it will. But never mind that; suppose your anchor dragged or parted and into the shoal water you went in a gale, an easterly, say--and the bank right under your lee--wind sixty or seventy or eighty mile an hour--what would you do?"

"Anchor not hold? M-m--Then I'd--give her the second one."

"And if that dragged, too--or parted?"

"Both of 'em? M-m"--Johnnie was taking deep breaths now--"why, then I'd have to put sail to her----"

"What sail?"

"Why, jib, jumbo, fore and main."

"And the wind blowing eighty mile an hour?"

"Why, yes, if she'd stand it."

"My, but she'd have to be an able vessel that--all four lowers and the wind blowing eighty mile an hour. Man, but you're a dog! Suppose she couldn't stand it?"

"Then I'd reef the mains'l."

"And if that was too much--what then?"

"Reef it again."

"And too much yet?"

"Balance-reef it--maybe take it in altogether--and the jib with it, and get out the riding-sail."

"And would you do nothing to the fores'l?"

"M-m--I dunno--with some vessels maybe I'd reef that, too--maybe take it in altogether."

"My, but you're cert'nly a dog. And what then?"

"Why, then I'd try to work her out."

"And would you be doing anything with the lead?"

"Oh, we'd be keeping the lead going all the time, for banging her across and back like that you wouldn't know where you were just."

"And would you come clear, d'y' think?"

"Yes, sir--if the gear held and with an able vessel we ought to."

"If the gear held--that's it. Be sure, Johnnie-boy, you see that the gear is all right before ever you leave port. And with an able vessel, you say? With that new one of your gran'pa's--would you come clear with her?"

"Oh, she'd come clear--built to go fresh halibuting next winter, that one."

"Yes--and seining this spring. But suppose now you were haddocking--trawling--eight or ten dories, and you just arrived on the grounds, picked out a good spot, and there you are--you're all baited up and ready?"

"Winter time?"

"Winter time, yes."

"First I'd single-reef the mains'l. Then I'd hold her up a little--not too much--me being skipper would be to the wheel myself--and then I'd give the order, 'Dories to the rail!' and then, when everything was all right--when I'd be satisfied we wouldn't foul the next vessel's trawls--I'd call out, 'Over with your wind'ard dory!'"

"Loud and clear you'd holler, because the wind might be high."

"Loud and clear, yes--'Let go your wind'ard dory!'--like that. And 'Set to the west'ard,' or the east'ard, whatever it was--according to the tide, you know. I'd call that out to the dory as it went sliding by the quarter--the vessel, of course, 'd be sailing all the time--and next, 'Wind'ard dory to the rail!' And then, when we'd gone ahead enough, again, 'Let go your looard dory!' and then, 'Looard dory to the rail! Let go your wind'ard dory! Let go your looard dory!' and so till they were all over the side."

"And supposing, they being all out, it came on thick, or snowing, and some of them went astray, and it was time to go home, having filled her with eighty or ninety or a hundred thousand of fresh fish, a fair wind, and every prospect of a good market--what then?"

"Oh, I'd have to wait, of course--cruise around and stand by."

"And suppose you couldn't find them again?"

"Why, after waiting until I was sure they were gone, I'd come home."

"And your flag?"

"Half-mast."

"Half-mast--that's it. I hope you'll never have to fly a half-masted flag, Johnnie. But suppose you did see them, and they were in shoal water, say--and the shoals to looard, of course, and it blowing----"

"I'd stand in and get them."

"And it blowing hard--blowing hard, Johnnie?--and shoal--shoal water?"

"Why"--Johnnie was looking troubled--"why, I'd have to stand in just the same, wouldn't I?"

"Your own men and you ask me, Johnnie-boy?"

"Why, of course I'd have to stand in and get them."

"And if you got in so far you couldn't get out--you got smothered, say?"

"Why, then--then we'd be lost--all hands would be lost."

Poor Johnnie! he was all but crying.

"That's it. And that's where some would say you showed yourself a man, and some a fool, Johnnie-boy. Some would say, 'Use judgment--think of the other eighteen or twenty men safe aboard the vessel.' Would you use judgment, or what, Johnnie?"

"M-m--I don't know. What would you do, Captain Clancy?"

"What d'y' think I'd do, Johnnie?" Clancy drew the boy up and tucked the little face to his own broad breast. The rest of us knew well enough what Clancy would do. "Judgment hell!" Clancy would say, and go in and get lost--or maybe get away with it where a more careful man would be lost--but we waited to hear what Johnnie--such a little boy--would say. He said it at last, after looking long into Clancy's face.

"I think you'd go in, Captain Clancy."

Clancy laughed at that. "Lord, Johnnie-boy, no wonder everybody loves you. No matter what a man does, all you see is the best that's in him."

It was time to clean up then, and Johnnie of course was bound to help.

V

FROM OUT OF CROW'S NEST

"What'll I do with this?" asked Johnnie, in the middle of the cleaning up, holding up a pan of sweepings.

"Oh, that"--Clancy naturally took charge--"heave it overboard. Ebb tide'll carry it away. Heave it into the slip. Wait--maybe you'll have to hoist the hatches. 'Tisn't raining much now, anyway, and it will soon stop altogether. Might as well go aloft and make a good job of the hatches, hadn't he, Peter?"

"Wait a minute." Peter was squinting through the porthole. "I shouldn't wonder but this is one of our fellows coming in. I know she's a banker. The Enchantress, I think. Look, Tommie, and see what you make of her."

Clancy looked. "That's who it is, Peter. Hi, Johnnie, here'll be a chance for you to hoist the flag. Hurry aloft and tend to the hatches, as Peter says, and you can hoist the flag for the Enchantress home from the Banks."

In bad weather, like it was that day, the little balcony of Crow's Nest was shut in by little hatches, arranged so that they could be run up and down, the same as hatches are slid over the companionway of a fisherman's cabin or forec's'le. Johnnie was a pretty active boy, and he was up the rope ladder and onto the roof in a few seconds. We could hear him walking above, and soon the hatches slid away and we all could look freely out to sea again.

"All right below?" called out Johnnie.

"Not yet," answered Peter. He was standing by the rail of the balcony and untwisting the halyards that served to hoist the signal-flags to the mast-head. Peter seemed slow at it, and Clancy called out again, "Wait a bit, and we'll overhaul the halyards." Then, looking up and noticing that Johnnie was standing on the edge of the roof, he added, "And be careful and not slip on those wet planks."

"Aye, aye!" Johnnie was in high glee. "And then I can run up the flag for the Enchantress?"

"Sure, you've been such a good boy to-day."

"M-m--but that'll be fine. I can catch the halyards from here if you'll swing them in a little."

"All right--be careful. Here you go now."

"Let 'em come--I got----"

The first thing we knew of what had happened was when we saw Johnnie's body come pitching down. He struck old Peter first, staggering him, and from there he shot down out of sight.

Clancy jumped to the rail in time to save Peter from toppling over it and just in time, as he said afterward, to see the boy splash in the slip below. He yanked Peter to his feet, and then, without turning around, he called out, "A couple of you run to the head of the dock--there'll be a dory there somewhere--row 'round to the slip with it. He'll be carried under the south side--look for him there if I'm not there before you. Drive her now!"

"Here, Joe, wake up!" Clancy had untied the ends of the halyards after whirling them through the block above, and now had the whole line piled up on the balcony. He took a couple of turns around his waist, took another turn around a cleat under the balcony rail, passed the bight of the line to me, and said, "Here, Joe, lower me. Take hold you, too, Peter. Pay out and not too careful. Oh, faster, man! If he ain't dead he'll drown, maybe--if he gets sucked in and caught under those piles it's all off."

He was sliding over the rail, the line tautening to his weight in no time, and he talking all the time. "Lower away--lower, lower! Faster--faster than that--he's rising again--second time--and drifting under the wharf, sure's fate! Faster--faster--what's wrong?--what's caught there?--let her run!"

The halyards had become fouled, and Peter was trying to clear them, calling to Clancy to wait.

"Fouled?" roared Clancy. "Cast it off altogether. Let go altogether and let me drop."

"We can't--the bight of it's caught around Peter's legs!" I called to him.

"Oh, hell! take a couple of half-hitches around the cleat then--look out now!" He gripped the halyards high above his head with both hands, gave a jumping pull, and let himself drop. The line parted and down he shot.

He must have been shaken by the shock of his fall, but I guess he had his senses with him when he came up again, for in no time he was striking toward where Johnnie had come up last. Then I ran downstairs, down to the dock, and was just in time to see Parsons and Moore rowing a dory desperately up the slip, and Clancy with Johnnie chest-up, and a hand under his neck, kicking from under the stringers, and calling out, "This way with the dory--drive her, fellows, drive her!"

I did not wait for any more--I knew Johnnie was safe with Clancy--but ran to the office of the Duncans and told them that Johnnie had fallen into the dock and got wet, and that it might be well to telephone for a doctor. His grandfather knew it was serious without my saying any more, and rang up at once.

That had hardly been done when Clancy came in the door with Johnnie in his arms. The boy was limp and unconscious and water was dripping from him. Old Mr. Duncan was worried enough, but composed in his manner for all that. He met Clancy at the door. "This way, Captain; lay him on this couch. The doctor will be here in a very few minutes now. Perhaps we can do something while he is on the way. Just how did it happen? and we'll know better what to do, perhaps."

Clancy told his story in forty words. "He's probably shook up and his lungs must be full of water. But he may come out all right--his eyelids quivered coming up the dock. Better strip his shirt and waist off. He's got a lot of water in him--roll him over and we'll get some of it out."