FARMING THE SALT SEAWith the Captain
“Stay on Cape Cod, boy,†an old timer once counselled me. “There’s no snow to fight in winter and plenty of food in the sea for those who will go after it.†The Captain was one of those who went after it with the aid of one of those wonderful Cape Cod Catboats, in the beginning to sell his catch commercially, and later for the entertainment of the summer visitor on charter excursions into the Sound. Such a trip was something to look forward to with great excitement and it was no wonder that one gray morning he caught me with my foolish questions down. I arrived at the old fish shanty on the bank of the little tidal river out of breath and fearful that the lowering skies and soft gray puffs of fog from the Sound might cancel our long-awaited trip. I found the Captain seated on an upturned keg cracking shellfish bait and examining stout coils of sturdy hand-line. Like so many of my friends on the Cape he was never one to waste words and when I entered the fragrant dimness of the shanty he said his “good day†with a quick look in my direction and a slight nod of the head. (Nothing more was needed because if he hadn’t been pleased to see you, you would not in the first place have had access to the temple where all the precious tools of his trade were spread about him, where a green-horn could get all snarled up and ruin everything, and where more than sometimes the Captain would retire to think and claim sanctuary from the women-folk and the complications of life away from the shore.)
“Is it going to clear up,†I asked him breathlessly and fearful of the answer.
“It always has,†he answered soberly, and I have never been able to bring myself to ask that question of anyone since.
The Captain was right of course and it cleared much sooner than anyone could have hoped, with the first sun in many days shining eerily through the gray skies to chase the fog back out towards Nantucket. In what seemed moments, a mean kind of day had become a day of rare beauty and we were out in the Cat with a fair southwest breeze and the golden sunlight glinting off blue-green water. There was the wonderful smell of salt and of hemp and of the sun-bleached wood of the fish barrels that now carried only our hopes. There was the less appealing smell of the fresh bait in which the circling and scolding gulls had placed their hopes.
The Captain stood at the helm, his heavily tanned and wind-burned face almost black against the morning sky. One cheek was now heavily distorted and a thin line of tobacco juice seeped slowly out of the corner of his mouth. Sometimes he would wipe at it casually with the back of his hand in a most natural gesture and sometimes he would let go into the Sound but never would the tiniest speck reach the immaculate decks of his ship. His eyes were like an Indian’s, keen and penetrating, always alert and picking out things at sea, and back on the receding, pine-fringed shore, that I never learned to see although I knew they were there. He only spoke when there was really something to say and we knew that one thing he would ultimately say was that I could take a turn at the tiller. In spite of the importance of that to me it was entirely against the code to request the privilege before it was extended and I respected the code. When the great moment came the Captain would direct my course by the pointed-finger method and his own estimate of land and sea marks proved to be as unerring as any compass. Soon he would have guided us skillfully and mystically to the fishing ledge that was his secret. (He had given me explicit directions for three successive summers that had proved to be as different and contradictory as they were explicit before I became discreet enough not to askagain for the location of his particular salt water farm.) There we would sit with the sun warm and all over us and sending up little waves of heat from the bright sands of Monomoy, and with the lazy tolling of a distant bell-buoy in our ears.
The rhythmic toll of the bell combined with the slow roll of the boat was almost hypnotic and, in any other circumstances than good fishing, would have induced sleep to the worst insomniac. But the fishingwasgood and it was a rare thrill to see the barrels fast filling with flounders, scup and tautog. It seemed that it might go on forever, a wonderful forever, the constant baiting and hauling, and the lively flopping noises from the barrels. But the sun moved relentlessly westward and after just one more catch it was time to stow our gear and weigh anchor. Then we would head for the distant shoreline of the Sound which was now but a hazy, purple line in the distance. Off towards Great Island the sun was an orange ball, full of promise of a bright tomorrow, but the air was suddenly chill and it was time to fetch the warm jacket that had been carefully stowed in the little cabin. The Captain now relinquished his “chaw†for a well-worn pipe and you could feel his mood of contentment at the end of a day well spent in a way he liked to spend it. My own reluctance to leaving the ledge was tempered by thoughts of the dinner waiting ashore and the pure joy of describing our fishing luck to the poor, land-bound neighbors to whom I would proudly deliver my share of the catch. Looking back on those summer evenings I can believe that those neighbors frequently had a superfluity of fish. But they were kind and gracious and laudatory and I never suspected for a moment that they did not share my excitement and enthusiasm.
The Sound is as unpredictable as any sea and there were days when the Cat rolled and strained and was never still. One of the safest and most seaworthy boats ever built, it can, nevertheless, achieve the most disturbing movements.But I could never let the Captain think me a landlubber by self-indulgence in mal de mere and I never did. I was grateful for that training years later when I rounded the Cape of Good Hope in a troopship that was being tossed about by the largest seas I have ever seen. Huge vessels that were part of the convoy would completely disappear for long and anxious moments into the gaping troughs of the seas and I was able to stay on deck and watch and rather enjoy it. Feeling the roll of the great ship as it edged its way around Africa it was easy to send the mind spinning back across the sea to that little Catboat on the Sound. I could have wished, though, that the Captain had been there and at the helm. I would have felt safer.