Chapter 9

"I callate that if he didn't have that cap with the button on front nobody'd know he was a real yachtsman, would they?" Eddie Parsons whispered in my ear.

The owner of the steam-yacht was trying to convince Tommie that yachting would be more in his line than fishing, but Tommie couldn't see it.

"But why not?" he asked at last. "Why not, Mr. Clancy? Is it a matter of money? If it is, I'll make that right. I pay ordinary hands twenty-five and thirty dollars a month and found, but I'll pay you fifty--sixty--seventy dollars a month to go with me. I'm going to race this steamer this summer and I want a quartermaster--a man like you that can steer to a hair-line. Seventy dollars a month now--what do you say?"

"Come now, my good man, what do you say?" Clancy got that off without so much as a smile. "But you couldn't make it seventy-five now, could you? No, I didn't mean that quite, though I've been out the dock in Gloucester of a Saturday noon and back again to the dock of a Tuesday noon--three days--and shared two hundred dollars--not as skipper, mind you, but just as hand. There now, I hope you're not going to get angry. Hadn't we better have another little touch? But I can see myself in a suit of white duck, touching my cap, and saying, 'Aye, aye, sir,' to some slob--no reference to you, mind you--but some slob in a uniform that's got a yacht, not because he loves the sea, but because he wants to butt in somewhere--who lives aboard his yacht just the same as he does in his house ashore--electric bells, baths, servants, barber and all--and hugs the shore so close that he gets the morning paper as regularly as when he's at home. When that kind go yachting all they miss are the tables on the lawn and the automobiles going by the door. They even have canary-birds--some of them--in cages. Yes, and wouldn't be caught twenty miles off shore--no, not even in a summer's breeze for--And where would he be in a winter's gale? I can see myself rowing a gig with somebody like that in the stern giving orders and fooling--well, some simple-minded women folks, maybe, who know as much of the sea as they do of the next world--most of them--fooling them into believing that he's a devil--yes, a clean devil on the water. Seventy a month for that?--couldn't you make it seventy-five?"

"You don't mean to say that----"

"Yes," said Clancy, "I do. I'd rather stick to fishing than--but here's a shoot and let's call the quartermaster's job off."

Minnie Arkell chimed in here. "A real fisherman, you must remember, Mr. Keith, doesn't care much for yachting because--leaving out the question of wages, for he does make more at fishing--he can remain a fisherman and yet be independent."

"You mean they don't have to take orders as if they were on a yacht, Mrs. Miner?"

"No, no--don't make any mistake there. The discipline of a yacht, so far as I know it, is baby play to what they have on a good fisherman. The discipline aboard a warship is nothing to that aboard a fisherman, like Captain Blake's vessel say, when there is anything to be done. Fishermen, it's true, don't have to touch their caps and say, 'Very good, sir,' to a man who may be no more of a real man than themselves. On your yacht I suppose you'd discharge a man who didn't do what he was told, and on a warship he would be sent to the brig, I suppose. On a fisherman he'd be put ashore. On a fisherman they not only obey orders, but they carry them out on the jump. And why? Because they've always done it. Why, deep-sea fishermen are always getting into places where only the best of seamanship can save them, and they very early get in the way of doing things up quick and right. When a Gloucester skipper orders in the sail, say in a gale of wind, and more than apt to be in the middle of the night--you don't see men trying to see how long it will take them to get into oilskins--or filling another pipe before they climb on deck. No, sir--the first man out on the bowsprit, if it's the jib to come in--or out on the foot-ropes, if it's the mainsail to be tied up--he's the man that will have a right to hold his head high next day aboard that vessel. And so the crew of a fisherman jump to their work--if they didn't there'd be a lot more of them lost than there are."

"Dear me," said Mr. Keith, "that never occurred to me before. But how is it, Mrs. Miner, that you have it down so fine?"

"My father was a Gloucester skipper, and since I was that high"--she put her hand on a level with her knee--"I've been listening to fishermen. And yachting life does tend to spoil a fisherman," she went on to explain. "After a summer of yachting a fisherman will begin to think that a winter of fishing is going to be a serious thing." She was warmed up then and went on talking at a great rate. And listening to her I could understand better why men took to her. She had warm blood in her. If it were not for her weakness to be admired by men, she would have been a great woman. "And they get so, that what seems extraordinary work to you is only an every-day matter to them. Do you remember that last schooner-yacht race across the Atlantic?--when two or three reporters went along, and after they got back wrote all kinds of stories of what a desperate trip it was--how rough it was and dangerous! Well, that time there were three or four Gloucestermen making the run to Iceland. Now, they were not as big as the racing yachts and they were loaded down with all the stores for a long salt trip--their holds full of salt, for one thing--and yet they made about as good time to Iceland as that yachtsman made to Queenstown. And they weren't driving their vessels either--they don't drive on the way out. It's only coming home that they try to make passages. Now, they must have got the same weather and yet nobody ever heard them in their letters home report a word of bad weather, or ever afterward, either. And yet--but were you to Iceland that time, Maurice?"

"No," said the skipper, "but you were, Tommie?"

"Yes," answered Clancy, "in the Lucy Foster. We made Rik-ie-vik inside of fourteen days, carrying both tops'ls all the way. Wesley--Wesley Marrs--wasn't hurrying her, of course. As Mrs. Miner says, the vessels going to the east'ard don't hurry, except now and then when two of them with records get together. And the Lucy was logy, of course, with the three hundred and odd hogsheads of salt and other stuff in her. If we'd been driving her going to Iceland that time we'd have had the stays'l and balloon to her--and she'd have gone right along with them, too."

Mrs. Miner looked around at her yachting friends to see if they were getting all that.

"There was one day that passage it blew a bit," exclaimed Clancy. "And that was the day we thought we saw a fellow to the east'ard. We had men by the halyards all that day with splitting knives."

"Why?" asked Keith.

"Why, to cut before she could capsize."

"Oh!" said Keith and said it with a little click.

"But that's nothing. I've seen the gang with Tom O'Donnell standing watch by the halyards for days with axes when he was making a passage."

Minnie Arkell filled another glass of champagne for Clancy, and Clancy didn't give the fizz too much time to melt away either.

"These men are the real things," she said, but Clancy, for fear we were getting too much credit, broke in, "Not us seiners. It's the winter fishermen--trawlers and hand-liners--that are the real things. Of course, we lose men now and then seining, but it's in winter up on the shoal water on the Banks that--there's where you have some seas to buck against," and he went on to tell of a battle with a gale on a winter's night on the Grand Banks. Clancy could tell a story as well as anybody I ever met. He could make the blood jump to your heart, or the tears to your eyes--or he could chill you till the blood froze. When he got through you could hear them all breathing--men and women both, like people who had just run a race. "Two hundred and odd men sailing out of Gloucester," he said, "went down that night. There weren't too many came safe out of that blow. The father of this boy here was lost--the Mary Buckley warn't it, Joe?--named for your mother?"

"And my father, too, was lost soon after," said Minnie Arkell, and the glance she gave me melted a lot of prejudice I had felt for her. That was the good human side to her.

"No better man ever sailed out of Gloucester, Mrs. Miner," said Clancy.

She flushed up. "Thank you, Tommie, for that, though I know he was a reckless man." And, she might have added, he left some of his recklessness in the blood of the Arkells.

The skipper told them a lot about sea life that night. Some of the stories he told, though long known in Gloucester, they took to be yarns at first. They could not believe that men went through such things and lived. And then the skipper had such an easy way of telling them. After a man has been through a lot of unusual things--had them years behind him and almost forgotten them--I suppose they don't surprise him any more.

The skipper looked well that night. When he warmed up and his eyes took on a fresh shine 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 shirt 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 passed 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.

Nobody 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 ashore 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 ashore. 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.

And he was a fisherman. All that summer he drove things with but little time for us ashore. Twice he put into Gloucester with a day to ourselves and another time we had a chance to run down after we had put into Boston for market, and that we suspected was because the skipper found he could not keep away himself any longer. Things, we judged, were going pretty well with him in Gloucester. He did not pretend any longer now that he was not interested in Miss Foster, and from my cousin Nell I got occasional hints, most of which I confided to Clancy, who explained them as if they were so many parables.

"It'll be all right," said Clancy, "if only Minnie Arkell stands clear. I'm glad she's away for the summer, but she'll turn up in the fall. You'll see her just before the race large as life, and some of her swell-dressed friends, and a yacht, I'll bet."

Considering how deeply the skipper was interested in Miss Foster, some of us thought he ought to be putting in a little time ashore between trips. After a run into the Boston fresh fish market, say, we would have liked mighty well to take in the theatre, or a trip to the beach, or some other little entertainment of a night. But no, it was in and out--drive, drive, drive.

He was all ambition, the skipper. He was going to be up front or break something. Miss Foster was one of the ambitious kind, too. If she was going to have a fisherman, he would have to be a killer or she would know why. And so I suppose that had a lot to do with the way the skipper drove things.

We had our loafing spells, as I say, but mostly it was plenty of work. That time when we stayed awake for five days and nights was not the only one. Another time our legs swelled up and the blood came out of the ends of our fingers with standing up to the keelers and dressing fish without rest. But, Lord, nobody minded that. After we'd got rested up we felt better than ever.

We had good luck generally. We lost neither men nor gear to amount to anything that summer. That seine we lost trying for our first school to the s'uth'ard in the spring was the only bit of misfortune that came, and we had long ago made up for that. But others were not so lucky. There was the loss of the Ruth Ripley, Pitt Ripley's vessel. I think I have said that she was a fast vessel. She was fast--fast, but of the cranky type. We were jogging along a little to windward of her one fine afternoon--it had been a fine September day and now it was coming on to evening. To the westward of Cape Sable, in the Bay of Fundy, it was, and no hint of a blow up to within a few minutes of the time when the squall struck the Ruth. I suppose it would have been more prudent on Pitt's part if he had had less sail on, but like most of the skippers in the fleet I guess he was not looking for any record for prudence. Any minute he might have to be up and driving her, and keeping sail on was the quickest way to have it when you needed it in a hurry. The squall hit her--it hit us, too, but we saw it coming and met it and beyond washing a few keelers overboard, when she rolled down, no harm was done to the Johnnie. On the Ripley, I suppose, they saw it too, but the Ripley and the Duncan were not the same class of vessel by any means. She went over--hove down, with her foremast under water to the cross-trees almost.