Chapter 3

He worked away on Johnnie, and had the water pretty well out of him by the time the uncle and the doctor came. It was hard work for a time, but it came at last to when the doctor stood up, rested his arms for a breath, said, "Ah--he's all right now," and went on again. It was not so very long after that that Johnnie opened his eyes--for about a second. But pretty soon he opened them to stay. His first look was for his grandfather, but his first word was for Clancy. "I could see you when you jumped, Captain Clancy--it was great."

Then they bundled Johnnie into a carriage and his uncle took him home.

"Lord, but I thought he was gone, Joe. But let's get out of this," said Clancy, and we were making for the door, with Clancy's clothes still wringing wet, when we were stopped by the elder Mr. Duncan, who shook hands with both of us and then went on to speak to Clancy.

"Captain Clancy----"

"Captain once, but----"

"I know, I know, but not from lack of ability, at any rate. Let me thank you. His mother will thank you herself later, and make you feel, I know, her sense of what she owes to you. And his cousin Alice--she thinks the world of him. There, I know you don't want to hear any more, but you shall--maybe later--though it may come up in another way. But tell me--wait, come inside a minute. Come in you, too, Joe," he said, turning to me, but I said I'd rather wait outside. I wanted to have a smoke to get my nerves steady again, I guess.

So Clancy and Mr. Duncan went inside, and through the window, whenever I looked up, I could see them. As their talk went on I could see that they were getting very much interested about something or other. Clancy particularly was laying down the law with a clenched fist and an arm that swung through the air like a jibing boom. Somebody, I knew, was getting it.

When they came out Mr. Duncan stopped at the door, and said, as if by way of a parting word, "And so you think that's the cause of Withrow's picking a quarrel with Maurice? Well, I never thought of that before, but maybe you're right. And now, what do you say to a vessel for yourself?"

"Me take a vessel? No, sir--not for me. But when you've got vessels to hand around, Mr. Duncan, bear Maurice in mind--he's a fisherman."

We left Mr. Duncan then, he making ready to telephone to learn how Johnnie was getting along. Clancy said his clothes were beginning to feel so dry that he did not know as he would go to his boarding-house. "I think we'd better go up to the Anchorage and have a little touch. But I forgot--you don't drink, Joe? No? So I thought, but don't you care--you're young yet. Come along, anyway, and have a smoke."

And so we went along to the Anchorage, and while we were there, I smoking one of those barroom cigars and Clancy nursing the after-taste of his drink and declaring that a touch of good liquor was equal to a warm stove for drying wet clothes, I told him what I would have told him in Crow's Nest if there had not been so many around--about Minnie Arkell calling Maurice back into her grandmother's house, and then Sam Hollis coming along and going in after him.

"What!" and stopped dead. Suddenly he brought his fist through the air. "I'll"--and as suddenly stopped it midway. "No, I won't, either. But I'll put Maurice wise to them. What should he know at his age and with his up-bringing of what's in the heads of people like them. And if I don't have something further to say to old Mr. Duncan! But now let's go back to Arkell's--come on, Joe."

But I didn't go back with him. I didn't think that I could do Maurice any good then, and I might be in the way if Clancy wanted to speak his mind out to anybody. I went home instead, where I expected to have troubles of my own, for I knew that my mother wouldn't like the idea of my going seining.

VI

MAURICE BLAKE GETS A VESSEL

Three days after Johnnie Duncan fell out of Crow's Nest the new Duncan vessel designed by Will Somers was towed around from Essex. She had been named the Johnnie Duncan. I spent the best part of the next three days watching the sparmakers and riggers at work on her. And when they had done with her and she fit to go to sea, she did look handsome. She had not quite the length of the new vessel of Sam Hollis's, which lay at Withrow's dock just below her, and that probably helped to give her a more powerful look to people that compared them. Too able-looking altogether to be real fast, some thought, to hold the Withrow vessel in anything short of a gale, but I didn't feel so sure she wouldn't sail in a moderate breeze, too. I had seen her on the stocks, and knew the beautiful lines below the water-mark. And she was going to carry the sail to drive her. I took particular pains to get the measurements of her mainmast while it lay on the dock under the shears. It was eighty-seven feet--and she only a hundred and ten feet over all--and it stepped plumb in the middle of her, further forward than a mainmast was generally put in a fisherman. To that was shackled a seventy-five foot boom, and eighty-odd tons of pig-iron were cemented close down to her keel, and that floored over and stanchioned snug. For the rest, she was very narrow forward, as I think I said--everybody said she'd never stand the strain of her fore-rigging when they got to driving her on a long passage. And she carried an ungodly bowsprit--thirty-seven feet outboard--easily the longest bowsprit out of Gloucester. Topmasts to match, and there was some sail to drive a vessel. But she had the hull for it, full and yet easy, with the greatest beam pretty well aft of the mainmast, and she drew fifteen and a half feet of water.

I was still looking her over, her third day in the riggers' and sailmakers' hands, when Clancy came along.

"Handsome, ain't she, and only needing a skipper and crew to be off on the Southern cruise, eh, Joe?"

"That's all. And according to the talk, you're to be the skipper."

"Well, talk has another according coming to it."

"I'm sorry to hear that. But what happened at Mrs. Arkell's the other day?"

"What happened? Joe, but I was glad you didn't come with me. You'd have felt as I did about it, I know. There they were--the two of them--Hollis and Withrow--yes, Withrow there--when I broke in on them, and Maurice between them--drunk. Yes, sir, drunk and helpless. They called it a wine-party, as though a man couldn't get as good and drunk on wine in a private residence as ever he could on whiskey or rum in the back room of a saloon. Well, sir, I asked a question or two, and they tried to face me out, but out they went--first Hollis, and then Withrow, one after the other, and both good and lively. And then Minnie Arkell popped in from her own house by way of the backyard. She didn't expect to see me--I know she didn't. Had gone over to her house when the men began to drink, she said, and had just come over to see granny.

"Well, I told her what I thought. 'It means nothing to you,' I said, 'to see a man make a fool of himself--that's been a good part of your business in life for some time, now--to see men make fools of themselves for you. Withrow had reasons for wanting him disgraced--never mind why. Sam Hollis, maybe, has his reasons too. And the two of them are being helped along by you. You could have stopped this thing here to-day, but you didn't.' 'No, no, Tommie,' she says. 'Yes, yes,' I went on, 'and don't try to tell me different. If I didn't know you since you were a little girl you might be able to convince me, but I know you. Maurice, when he was himself, passed you by. You were bound to have him. You know a real man, more's the pity, when you see one, and you know that Maurice, young and green and soft as he is, has more life and dash than a dozen of the kind you've been mixing with lately.'

"Oh, but I laid it on, Joe. Yes. A shame to have to talk like that to a woman, but I just had to. I didn't stop there. 'You're handsome, and you're rich, Minnie Arkell; got a lot of life left in you yet, and go off travelling with people who get their names regularly in the Boston papers; but just the same, Minnie Arkell, there are women in jail not half so bad as you--women doing time who've done less mischief in the world than you have.'"

"Wasn't that pretty rough, Tommie?"

"Rough? Lord, yes--but true, Joe, true. And if you'd only see poor Maurice lying there! Cried? I could've cried, Joe--not since my mother died did I come so near to it. But it was done.

"Well, I made Minnie go and get her grandmother. And, Joe, if you'd seen that fine old lady--oh, but she's got a heart in her--stoop and put Maurice's head on her bosom as if he was a little child. 'The poor, poor boy. No mother here,' she said, 'and the best man on earth might come to it. Leave him to me, Tommie.' Lord, I could have knelt down at her feet--the heart in her, Joe."

"And how has Maurice been since?"

"All right. That was the first time in his life that he was drunk. I think it will be his last. But let's go aboard the Johnnie."

After looking over the Johnnie Duncan and admiring her to our hearts' content, we sat down in her cabin and began to talk of the seining season to come. Others came down and joined in--George Moore, Eddie Parsons among others--and they asked Clancy what he was going to do. Was he going to see about a chance to go seining, or what? Moore said he's been waiting to see what Maurice Blake was going to do; but as it was beginning to look as though Maurice was done for, he guessed he'd take a look around. He asked Clancy what he thought, and Clancy said he didn't know--time enough yet.

Maurice Blake himself dropped down then. He was looking better, and everybody was glad to see it. He'd quit drinking--that was certain; and now he was a picture of a man--not pretty, but strong-looking, with his eyes glowing and his skin flushing with the good blood inside him. He took a seat on the lockers and began to whittle a block of soft pine into a model of a hull, and after a while, with a squint along the sheer of his little model, he asked if anybody had seen Tom O'Donnell or Wesley Marrs. Several said yes, they had, and he asked where, and when they told him he got up and said he guessed he'd go along--as he couldn't get a vessel himself, he might as well see about a chance to go hand. "And as we've been together so much in times gone by, Tommie, and you, Eddie and George, what do you say if we go together now?"

"All right," said Clancy, "but wait a minute--who's that in the gangway?"

It turned out to be Johnnie Duncan. He had a fat bundle under his arm, and bundle and all Clancy took him up, tossed him into the air, said "All right again, Johnnie-boy?" and kissed him when he caught him down.

Johnnie started to undo his bundle. "I tell you it's great to be out again--the way they kept me cooped up the last few days," and then, cutting the string to hurry matters, opened the bundle and spread a handsome set of colors on the lockers. "The Johnnie Duncan's," said he. "I picked out the kind they were to be, but mummer worked the monograms herself. See, red and blue. And see that for an ensign! and the firm's flag--and the highs--look!--the J. A. D. twisted up the same as on the handkerchiefs we strained the coffee through last week. And the burgee--the letters on the burgee--my cousin Alice worked them. And these stars--see, on the ensign--mummer and my cousin both worked them. Gran'pa said the vessel ought to be sure a lucky one, and all she needs is an able master, he says, and if Captain Blake will take her he'll be proud to have him sail the Johnnie Duncan----"

Maurice Blake stood up. "Me?"

"Yes," said Johnnie. "Gran'pa says that you can have her just as soon as you go to the Custom House and get your papers. There, I think I remembered it all, except of course that the colors are from me and mummer and my cousin Alice, and will you fly them for us?"

Maurice laid down his model and picked up the colors. Then he looked at Johnnie and said, "Thank you, Johnnie; and tell your mother, Johnnie, and your cousin, that I'll fly the Johnnie Duncan's colors--and stand by them--if ever it comes to standing by--till she goes under. Tell your grandfather that I'll be proud to be master of his vessel and I'll sail her the best I know how."

"That's you, Maurice," said Clancy.

Maurice drew his hand across his eyes and sat down again. And as soon as they decently could, Clancy, George Moore, and Eddie Parsons asked him if they might ship with him for the Southern cruise. Maurice said they very well knew that he'd be glad to have them. He asked me, too, he felt so good, and of course I jumped at the chance.

VII

CLANCY CROSSES MINNIE ARKELL

The Johnnie Duncan only needed to have her stores taken aboard to go to sea. And that was attended to next morning, and she was out for her trial trip the same afternoon. Everybody said she looked as handsome as a photograph going out, though all the old sharks, when they saw her mainsail hoisted for the first time, said she'd certainly have need of her quarter and draught to stand up under it.

It was a great day for sailing, though--the finest kind of a breeze, and smooth water. We early carried away our foretopmast, which had a flaw in it. It was just as well to discover it then. Without topsail and balloon we had it out with the Eastern Point on her way back from Boston. She was not much of a steamer for speed, but her schedule called for twelve knots and she generally made pretty near it--eleven or eleven and a half, according to how her stokers felt, I guess. We headed her off after a while, and that was doing pretty well for that breeze, with a new vessel not yet loosened up.

"But the balloon was too much for her," said Mr. Duncan, as we shot into the dock after beating the Eastern Point.

"No, the balloon was all right--'twas the topm'st was a bit light," answered Maurice.

Old Mr. Duncan smiled at that. "But what do you think of her, Captain Blake?"

"Oh, she's like all the rest of them when she's alone--sails like the devil," the skipper answered to that, but he smiled with it and we all knew he was satisfied with her.

That night was the Master Mariners' Ball, and I waited up till late to talk with my cousin Nell, who had gone there with Will Somers. Finally they came along past my house and I hailed them.

Nell broke right in as usual with what was uppermost in her mind. "I don't suppose you saw me and Alice, but we were in Mr. Duncan's office when you and Mr. Clancy and Captain Blake were coming up the dock to-day after the trial trip. Mr. Duncan told us what Captain Blake said of the Johnnie Duncan, but now tell me, what did the rest of you think of her? What does your friend Clancy say? He knows a vessel."

"Clancy," I answered, "thought what we all thought, I guess--that she's a fast vessel any way you take her, but he won't say she's the fastest vessel out of Gloucester, even after she's put in trim and loosened up. But in a sea-going way and with wind enough--with wind enough, mind--he thinks she'll do pretty well."

"With wind enough and in a sea-way?" repeated Nell. "Then I hope that when the fishermen's race is sailed next fall it's a howling gale and seas clear to your mast-head. Yes, and you needn't laugh--don't you know what it means to Will?"

And I did realize. Somers, a fine fellow, was just then beginning to get a chance at designing fishermen. So far he had done pretty well, but it was on the Johnnie Duncan, I knew, he had pinned his faith. For his own sake, I hoped that the Johnnie would do great things, but for Nell's sake I prayed she would. Nell thought a lot of Will and wasn't ashamed to show her liking, and thinking of that set me to thinking of other things.

"Was Miss Foster to the ball?" I asked her.

"She was," said Nell.

"And with whom?"

"Mr. Withrow."

"Oh-h, Lord!"

"Oh-h!--and why Oh-h-h?"

"I wish she'd gone with Maurice."

"H-m--that was drunk the other day?"

"Yes, I suppose that queers him forever. And the other fellow does ten times as bad, only under cover. Who told you?"

"Never mind. Wasn't he?"

"Was Maurice to the ball?"

"He was."

"And who with?"

"With nobody."

"Good. Was Mrs. Miner there?"

"Mrs. Miner?"--and such a sniff!--"yes, she was there."

"With Sam Hollis?"

"Yes, and flirted with half the men in the hall and with your Maurice Blake outrageously."

"That so? Could Maurice help that much? But I wish, just the same, that Miss Foster had gone with Maurice."

"Well, there was one very good reason."

"What?"

"He didn't ask her. And Mr. Withrow made a handsome cavalier anyway."

"A handsome"--I was going to say lobster, but I didn't. Instead I told her why Maurice didn't ask Miss Foster--that he didn't think enough of himself, probably. And that led up to a talk about Maurice Blake and Clancy. Before I got through I had Nell won over. Indeed, I think she was won over before I began at all.

"There's a whole lot you don't know yet," she said at last. "Get Captain Blake to make a name for himself seining, and for sailing his vessel as she ought to be sailed, and I'll get down on my knees to Alice for him--sail her as she ought to be sailed, remember. And make a good stock with her, and you'll see."

So, as I walked down the street with Nell and Will Somers a part of the way, the talk was in that strain, and when I left them, after passing Sam Hollis bound home, it was with the hope of things coming out all right. I was feeling happy until I got near Minnie Arkell's door, where my worrying began again, for there on the steps and in the glare of the electric light was Minnie Arkell herself, as though she were waiting for somebody. And not wanting to have her know that I saw her waiting at her door steps at that time of night, I stepped in the shadows until she should go in. It was then that Maurice came along, and she called him up. And he went up and stood on the step below her and she bent over him as if she wanted to lift him up. And it was less than five minutes since Sam Hollis left her.

"Come around by way of the side door of grandma's house, Maurice, and through her yard and into my house, and nobody will see you. And then no old grannies will talk and we'll have a little supper all to ourselves. Hurry now." She was talking as if she owned him. I did not hear what Maurice said, nor I did not want to hear; but making for the corner, he went by me like a shot, and "O Lord!" I heard him groan as he passed me, not recognizing me--not even seeing me, I believe.

I did not know what to make of it and let him go by. But after he had turned the corner and Minnie Arkell had shut her door--and she watched him till he disappeared around the corner--I ran after him. In my hurrying after him I heard the voice of Clancy coming down the street. He was singing. I had heard from Nell of Clancy being at the ball, where he was as usual in charge of the commissary. I could imagine how they must have drove things around the punch-bowl with Clancy to the wheel. He was coming along now and for blocks anybody that was not dead could hear him. And getting nearer I had to admire him. He was magnificent, even with a list to port. Not often, I imagined, did men of Clancy's lace and figure get into evening dress. The height and breadth of him!--and spreading enough linen on his shirt front to make a sail for quite a little vessel. He was almost on top of me, with

"Oh, hove flat down on th' Western Banks Was the Bounding Billow, Captain Hanks-- And----"

when I hailed him.

"Hulloh, if it ain't Joe Buckley. Why, Joey, but aren't you out pretty late to-night? But maybe you're only standing watch for somebody? Three o'clock, Joey, and no excuse for you, for you didn't have to stand by the supplies--" But then I rushed him around the corner, and down the street to the side door of Mrs. Arkell's and just in time to head off Maurice, bound as I knew for Minnie Arkell's house across the yard. I didn't have a chance to say a word to Tommie, but he didn't have to be told. If I'd been explaining for a week he couldn't have picked things up any better than he did.

"Maurice--hi, Maurice! Oh, 'tis you, isn't it. Well, Maurice-boy, all the night I waited for a chance to have a word with you, but ne'er a chance could I get. Early in the evening--when I was fit for ladies' company--Miss Foster said how proud she was to know me--me, who had saved her cousin Johnnie's life. And then she asked me about the vessel, and I told her, Maurice, that nothing like the Duncan ever pushed salt water from out of her way before. 'Nothing with two sticks in her,' says I, and I laid it on thick; 'and Maurice Blake,' says I--and there, Maurice, I only spoke true catechism. 'Maurice Blake,' says I, 'is the man to sail her.' She was glad, she said, to know that, because her chum, Miss Buckley--Joe's cousin there--wanted that particular vessel to be a success. And she herself was interested in it. Never mind the reasons, she said. And she always did believe--and, Maurice, listen now--she knew that Captain Blake would do the Johnnie Duncan justice. And I said to her--well, Maurice, what I said you can guess well enough. No, come to think, you can't guess, but I won't tell you to your face. But thinking of it now, I mind, Maurice, the time when we were dory-mates--you and me, Maurice--and the cold winter's day our dory was capsized. And dark coming on and nothing in sight, and I could see you beginning to get tired. But tired as you were, Maurice, tired as you were and the gray look beginning to creep over you, you says, 'Tommie, take the plug strap for a while, you.'"

"But you didn't take it, Tommie."

"No, I didn't take it--and why? I didn't take it--and why? Because, though the mothers that bore us both were great women--all fire and iron--'twas in me to last longer--you a boy and your first winter fishing, and me a tough, hard old trawler. And you had all of life before you, and I'd run through some hard years of mine. If I'd gone 'twould have been no great loss, but you, Maurice, innocent as a child--how could I? I'd known men and women, good and bad--I'd lived life and I'd had my chance and thrown it away--but at your age the things you had to learn! Maybe I didn't think it all out like that, but that was why I didn't take the plug strap. But, Maurice-boy, I never forgot it. 'Take the plug strap, you, Tommie,' you says. We were dory-mates, of course, but, Maurice-boy, I'll never forget it."

Clancy took off his hat and drew his hand across his forehead. "And where were you bound when we stopped you, Maurice?"

"Oh, I don't know. To take a walk maybe."

"Sure, and why not? Let's all take a walk. Let's take a walk down to the dock and have a look at the vessel. Too dark? So it is, but we can see the shadow of her masts rising up to the clouds and we can open up the cabin and go below and have a smoke. Come, Maurice. Come on, Joe."

And down to the cabin of the Johnnie Duncan we went, and Clancy never in such humor. For three hours--from a little after three o'clock until after six--we sat on the lockers, Clancy talking and we smoking and roaring at him. Only the sun coming up over Eastern Point, lighting up the harbor and striking into the cabin of the Johnnie Duncan, brought Clancy to a halt.

He moved then and we with him. We left Maurice at the door of old Mrs. Arkell's, the old lady herself in the doorway and asking us if we had a good time at the ball. Standing on the steps, before he went in, Maurice said to me: "Tell your cousin, Joe, that when I do race the Johnnie, I'll take the spars out of her before anything gets by--take the spars out or send her under. I can't do any more than that."

The Johnnie Duncan was to leave at ten o'clock and so I left Clancy at his boarding-house. He looked tired when I left him. But he was chuckling, too. I asked him what it was that made him smile so.

"I'll give you three guesses," he said, but I didn't guess.

VIII