Chapter 8

Oh, hi-diddle-di--she'd 'a' fairly flew, If she only could sail the other end to.

"Oh, the 'Liza Jane left port one day, With her hold full of squash and her deck all hay. Two years back with her sails all set She put from Bath--she's sailing yet.

Oh, hi-diddle-di for a good old craft She'd 've sailed very well with her bow on aft."

There was a long story to the Eliza Jane, but Clancy did not finish it. Maybe he felt that it was not in harmony with that lowering sky or that flashing sea. Maybe, too, in the waters that rolled and the wake that smoked was the inspiration for something more stirring. At any rate he began, in a voice that carried far, an old ballad of the war of 1812.

Two or three more stanzas to warm up, and the fight was on. And you would think Clancy was in it. He laid every mast and yard of the enemy over the side of her, he made her decks run with blood, and at the last, in a noble effort, he caused her to strike her flag.

By the time he had finished that, it happened that we were running before the wind, and, going so, it was very quiet aboard the vessel. There was none of the close-hauled wash through her scuppers, nor was there much play of wind through stays and halyards. It was in fact unusually quiet, and it needed only that to set Clancy off on a more melancholy tack. So in a subdued voice he began the recitation of one of the incidents that have helped to make orphans of Gloucester children:

"Twelve good vessels fighting through the night Fighting, fighting, that no'the-east gale; Every man, be sure, did his might, But never a sign of a single sail Was there in the morning when the sun shone red, But a hundred and seventy fine men--dead-- Were settling somewhere into the sand On Georges shoals, which is Drowned Men's Land.

"Seventy widows kneeling----"

A long hail came over the water and a torch was raised and lowered. "Hi-i--" hallooed the voice.

"Hi-i-i--" hallooed back Clancy as he pulled down his wheel. You might have thought he intended to run over them. But no, for at the very last second he threw her up cleverly and let her settle beside the boat, from which most of the men came tumbling immediately over the side of the vessel. Of those who stayed, one shackled the boat's bow onto the iron that hung from the boom at the fore-rigging, and having done that, braced an oar between himself and the vessel's run to hold the boat away and steady while another in the stern of the boat did the same thing with his oar. In the boat's waist two men hung onto the seine.

A section of the cork edge of the seine was then gathered inboard and clamped down over the vessel's rail, with the mackerel crowded into the middle part, and the bunt of the seine thus held safely between boat and vessel. Into this space the sea swashed and slapped after a manner that kept all in the boat completely drenched and made it pretty hard for the men in bow and stern to fend off and retain their balance at the same time.

And then began the bailing in. Guided by the skipper, who stood on the break, our big dip-net, which could hold a barrel easily, was dropped over the rail and in among the kicking fish. A twist and a turn and "He-yew!" the skipper yelled. "Oy-hoo!" grunted the two gangs of us at the halyards, and into the air and over the rail swung the dip-net, swimming full. "Down!" We let it sag quickly to Clancy and Parsons, who were at the rail. "Hi-o!" they called cheerfully, and turned the dip-net inside out. Out and down it went again, "He-yew!" and up and in it came again. "Oy-hoo!" "Hi-o!" and flop! it was turned upside down and another barrel of fat, lusty fish flipped their length against the hard deck. Head and tail they flipped, each head and tail ten times a second seemingly, until it sounded--they beat the deck so frantically--as if a regiment of gentle little drummer boys were tapping a low but wonderfully quick-sounding roll. Scales flew. We found some next morning glued to the mast-head. I never can get some people to believe that it is so--mackerel scales to the mast-head.

"He-yew!" called the skipper, "Oy-hoo!" hollered the halyards gang, "Hi-o!" sung out Clancy and Parsons cheerily at the rail. "Fine fat fish," commented the men in the seine-boat, the only men who had time to draw an extra breath.

Blazing torches were all around us. Arms worked up and down, big boots stamped, while inboard and out swung the dip-net, and onto the deck flopped the mackerel. "Drive her!" called the skipper, and "He-yew!" "Oy-hoo!" and "Hi-o!" it went. Drenched oilskins steamed, wet faces glowed, glad eyes shone through the smoke flare, and the pitching vessel, left to herself, plunged up and down to the lift and fall of every sea.

XVII

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 passed 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 fishing 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 ashore 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 bloody old boiler explodes so nobody'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 washing her face in plenty of good spray and the fine sun shining 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 passed 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 passage on her, but we left her too. Then we passed 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 passage we held the north-bound Savannah steamer for seven hours. Her passengers 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 sassy 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 ashore, and with lines out and made fast in no time, we had her docked without so much as cracking a single shingle 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 ships. 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 shore 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 shore, 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 Shore trip--that is, head the fish off along the Nova Scotia shore, 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 pass 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 nobody could order it down. Now we clewed it up.

Clancy, standing aft, threw a look at our seine-boat, which of course we had in tow. "She's quite a drag," he suggested, "for a vessel that's racing."

"Yes," said the skipper, "but wait a while. We won't cast it off unless we have to."

We did not have to. We soon had her in trim. For weeks the skipper and Clancy had been marking the Johnnie's sheets so that in an emergency they could whip her into her best sailing in no time. With that, and with the shifting of some barrels of salt that we had on deck, we soon had her going. It is surprising what a lot of difference the shifting of a few barrels of salt will make in the trim of a vessel. We had not had a try with anything for two weeks or so and had become careless. The last thing we did was to take some barrels of fresh water that happened to be standing forward of the windlass and shift them aft, and then the Johnnie began to go along for fair.

Coming up to Block Island Light things were pretty even. Then it came a question of who was to go to windward. The yacht hauled her mainsheet in to two blocks. So did we, and, further, ran a line from the cringle in her foresail to the weather rigging. She could not make it--we had her.

"Mind the time," said the skipper, when at last we had her under our quarter--"mind the time, Tommie, when we used to do so much racing down on the Cape shore? There's where we had plenty of time for racing and all sorts of foolishness. I was pretty young then, but I mind it well. A string of men on the rigging from the shear poles clear up to the mast-head--yes, and a man astraddle the main gaff once or twice, passing buckets of water to wet down the mains'l."

"Yes, and barrels of water out toward the end of the main-boom keep the sail stretched. Man, but those were the days we paid attention to racing."

"Those were the days," asserted the skipper. "But we can do a little of it now, too."

By that you will understand we were walking away from our yacht. We were to anchor in the harbor while she was still coming, and we had towed our seine-boat all the way.

"Lord," said Clancy, as we were tying up our foresail, "but I'd like to see this one in an ocean race with plenty of wind stirring--not a flat breeze and a short drag like we had to-day."

XIX

MINNIE ARKELL AGAIN

Coming on to dark that night a gig put off from the schooner-yacht and rowed over to us. On the way she was hailed and passed a few words with a steam-yacht anchored in between. The man in the stern of the gig was not satisfied until he had been rowed three times around the Johnnie. When he had looked his fill he came alongside.

He mistook Clancy for the skipper. I suppose he couldn't imagine a man of Clancy's figure and bearing to be an ordinary hand on a fisherman. So to Clancy he said, "Captain, you've got a wonderful vessel here. Put a single stick in her and she'll beat the world."

"Yes," said Clancy, "and she'd be a hell of a fine fisherman then, wouldn't she?"

The rest of us had to roar at that. We at once pictured the Johnnie rigged up as a sloop out on the Grand Banks, trawling or hand-lining, with the crew trying to handle her in some of the winter gales that struck in there. And a great chance she would have rigged as a sloop and her one big sail, making a winter passage home eight or nine or ten hundred miles, when as it was, with the sail split up to schooner rig, men found it bad enough.

The master of the yacht had a message for our captain, he said, and Clancy told him the skipper was below. There they talked for a while and after the yachtsman had gone Maurice, inviting four or five of us along, dressed up, called for the seine-boat, got in and was rowed over to a steam-yacht that we now remembered had hailed the schooner-yacht's gig. All brass and varnish and white paint and gold she would be in the daytime, but now she was all lit up with electric lights below and Japanese lanterns on deck.

When we came alongside, who should come to the gangway of the yacht and welcome Maurice but Minnie Arkell--Mrs. Miner. She greeted all of us for that matter--she never pretended not to see people--and invited us all below for refreshments. There was a good lay-out there and we pitched into it. Seiners are great people at table or in a bunk. They can turn to and eat, or turn in and sleep any minute, day or night. So now we turned to. Clancy did great things to the wine. Generally he took whiskey, but he did not object to good wine now and then. He and one fellow in a blue coat, white duck trousers, and a blue cap that never left his head, had a great chat.