137XVIWE GET A FINE SCHOOL
With his “Haul away now when you’re ready,” Clancy came down from aloft. He was sliding down evidently by way of the jib halyards, for there was the sound of a chafing whiz that could be nothing else than the friction of oilskins against taut manila rope, a sudden check, as of a block met on the way, an impatient, soft, little forgivable oath, and then a plump! that meant that he must have dropped the last twelve or fifteen feet to the deck. Immediately came the scurry of his boot-heels as he hurried aft. In another moment he stood in the glow of the binnacle light, and reaching back toward the shadow of the cook, but never turning his head from that spot out in the dark where he had last seen the boat, he took the wheel.
“All right, George, I’ve got you. A good-sized school, by the looks, if they got them, and I think they have. Did you see that boat ahead we near ran into?––the last time we put the wheel down? Man, but for a second I thought they were gone.138I hope no blessed vessel comes as near to our fellows. And they were so busy rowing and heaving twine they never saw us, and myself nearly cross-eyed trying to watch them and our own boat and the fish all the time. Go below, George, she’s all right now, and tell Joe––where is he?––to go below, too, and have a mug-up for himself. He must be soaked through taking the swash that must’ve come over her bow for the last hour. But tell him to come right up so’s to keep watch out ahead.”
I didn’t go below, however, but standing by the fore-rigging kept an eye out ahead. Clancy himself stood to the wheel with his head ever turned over one shoulder, until he saw the flare of a torch from the seine-boat. “Good!” he exclaimed. “What there is is safe now, anyway.”
After that his work was easy. He had only to dodge the lights of other vessels now, the old red and green lights that had been our neighbors all that evening, and a few new yellow flares that came from other seine-boats. So his eyes ranged the blackness and in rings about his own seine-boat he sailed the Johnnie Duncan. That the crew were quite a little while pursing up only gave him satisfaction. “A nice school, Joe, if they got it all,” he said, “a nice school of ’em.” And after a pause, “I think I’ll stand down and have a look.”
139
He ran down, luffed, and hailed, “Hi––skipper, what’s it like?”
From the row of figures that were seen to be crowding gunnel and thwarts and hauling on the seine, one shadow straightened up beside the smoky torch and spoke. “Can’t be sure yet, Tommie, but things look all right so far. A fair-sized school if we don’t lose ’em.”
“Lord, don’t lose ’em, skipper, though I think you’ve got ’em fast enough now. Sounds natural to hear ’em flipping inside the corks, don’t it? Ought to be hurrying ’em up, skipper––it’s getting along in the night.”
Clancy, very well satisfied, stood away again and continued to sail triangles around boat and dory. Being now clear of the greater part of the mental strain his spirits began to lighten. Merely by way of being sociable with himself he hummed some old ditties. There was that about the old coaster, the Eliza Jane. I liked to hear him sing that, as, dancing a one-footed jig-step by the wheel-box, he bumped it out:
“Oh, the ’Liza Jane with a blue foremastAnd a load of hay came drifting past.Her skipper stood aft and he said, ‘How do?We’re the ’Liza Jane and who be you?’He stood by the wheel and he says, ‘How do?We’re from Bangor, Maine––from where be you?’140“The ’Liza Jane got a new main truck––A darn fine thing but wouldn’t stay stuck.Came a breeze one day from the no’-no’-westAnd the gosh-darned thing came down with the rest.Oh, hi-diddle-di––a breeze from the west––Who’d ’a’ thunk the truck wouldn’t stuck with the rest?“Oh, the ’Liza Jane left the wharf one day,A fine flood tide and the day Friday,But the darned old tide sent her bow askewAnd the ’Liza Jane began for to slew.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 setShe put from Bath––she’s sailing yet.Oh, hi-diddle-di for a good old craftShe’d ’ve sailed very well with her bow on aft.“
“Oh, the ’Liza Jane with a blue foremastAnd a load of hay came drifting past.Her skipper stood aft and he said, ‘How do?We’re the ’Liza Jane and who be you?’
“Oh, the ’Liza Jane with a blue foremast
And a load of hay came drifting past.
Her skipper stood aft and he said, ‘How do?
We’re the ’Liza Jane and who be you?’
He stood by the wheel and he says, ‘How do?We’re from Bangor, Maine––from where be you?’
He stood by the wheel and he says, ‘How do?
We’re from Bangor, Maine––from where be you?’
140“The ’Liza Jane got a new main truck––A darn fine thing but wouldn’t stay stuck.Came a breeze one day from the no’-no’-westAnd the gosh-darned thing came down with the rest.
140
“The ’Liza Jane got a new main truck––
A darn fine thing but wouldn’t stay stuck.
Came a breeze one day from the no’-no’-west
And the gosh-darned thing came down with the rest.
Oh, hi-diddle-di––a breeze from the west––Who’d ’a’ thunk the truck wouldn’t stuck with the rest?
Oh, hi-diddle-di––a breeze from the west––
Who’d ’a’ thunk the truck wouldn’t stuck with the rest?
“Oh, the ’Liza Jane left the wharf one day,A fine flood tide and the day Friday,But the darned old tide sent her bow askewAnd the ’Liza Jane began for to slew.
“Oh, the ’Liza Jane left the wharf one day,
A fine flood tide and the day Friday,
But the darned old tide sent her bow askew
And the ’Liza Jane began for to slew.
Oh, hi-diddle-di––she’d ’a’ fairly flew,If she only could sail the other end to.
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 setShe put from Bath––she’s sailing yet.
“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 craftShe’d ’ve sailed very well with her bow on aft.“
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 Clancy141was 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 nightFighting, fighting, that no’the-east gale;Every man, be sure, did his might,But never a sign of a single sailWas there in the morning when the sun shone red,But a hundred and seventy fine men––dead––Were settling somewhere into the sandOn Georges shoals, which is Drowned Men’s Land.“Seventy widows kneeling–––”
“Twelve good vessels fighting through the nightFighting, fighting, that no’the-east gale;Every man, be sure, did his might,But never a sign of a single sailWas there in the morning when the sun shone red,But a hundred and seventy fine men––dead––Were settling somewhere into the sandOn Georges shoals, which is Drowned Men’s Land.
“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–––”
“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 very142last 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 the143rail. “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.
144XVIIA 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––all145but 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.
146
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.
147
“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 the148way 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.149We 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 Battery150must 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 much151as 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 Clancy152came 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.
153XVIIIA 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. We154thought 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 seaAnd a blue-eyed girl awaiting me,”
“Oh, fine blue sky and a fine blue seaAnd a blue-eyed girl awaiting me,”
“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 New155York, 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 and156flat 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 fresh157water 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 the158harbor 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.”
159XIXMINNIE 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 chance160she 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 fellow161in a blue coat, white duck trousers, and a blue cap that never left his head, had a great chat.
“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 see162myself 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,163you 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 see164men 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 race165across 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 hogsheads166of 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 water167on 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.168They 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 shade169wider 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 of170her. 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.’171That’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.
172XXTHE 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.