They got the _West Wind_ down to the end of the wharf on a cold March
morning. It was dark and the sky was overcast, and as he hauled on the
schooner's mooring lines, Donald wondered how it was that ships
invariably seemed to sail at unearthly morning hours--hours when the
soporific influence is strongest and vitality is at its lowest ebb. He
called to mind the morning he came down to the _Kelvinhaugh_, and the
spirit of romance and adventure which filled him then, until the
actual experiences of sea-faring in the barque dissipated his rosy
visions and made him wonder what there was in the life that sends lads
to sea. He recalled the stirring voyage in the _Helen Starbuck_--an
adventure which brought back some of the glamor and fascination of the
windy sea-roads to his soul, and now he was outwardbound on a new
traverse with the deep-sea fishermen of Nova Scotia. Would he like the
life? He wondered. If he didn't, he would have to make a cast back
into the merchant service, or give up all thoughts of a nautical
vocation and stay ashore. He didn't like the thought of the latter
alternative--sure testimony that Old Ocean had him in its thrall.
"All right, boys, she's daown far enough!" Skipper Nickerson was
singing out. "Aft here, my sons, an' git yer mains'l on her." Eighteen
men tallied on to the throat and peak halliards, and with the skipper
directing them with a "Hold yer peak! Up on yer throat!" and
vice-versa, they soon had the big sail up. "Throat an' peak jigs,
naow, boys!" and the gang swayed up the sail until it set like a
board, with the wrinkles running from peak to tack.
"Fores'l, naow, an' when you're ready, give her th' jumbo!" To Donald,
"Jump on the wharf, Don, an' cast off th' bow line, then stand-by yer
starn line."
They soon got the foresail up, jigged and the halliards belayed, and
Donald cast off the bow line as the jumbo, or fore-stays'l was run up.
"Make yer jumbo tail-rope fast to wind'ard!" cried Captain Nickerson,
"and when she pays off, give her the jib an' hang on to yer
weathersheet!"
Standing by the stern mooring, Donald gazed up at the Nickerson home
and fancied he could see a female figure looking out of one of the
upper windows. He saw her wave a handkerchief, and he returned the
fare-well gesture. It was Ruth Nickerson--he could see that even in
the half light--and he wondered if she was waving to him or her
brother. He waved again, and the salute was returned. "Alright, Don!"
came the skipper's voice. "Leggo yer starn mooring an' jump aboard!"
He slipped the loop off the spile and leaped aboard as the _West Wind_
payed off with her heads'ls a-weather. The skipper spun the wheel and
paced athwart the quarter staring at the anchored vessels ahead--some
of whom were getting under way.
"Your sister is at the window, captain," said Donald, still looking up
at the house. The other turned and waved a hand. "Good little kid is
Ruthie," he remarked to McKenzie. "A good little girl--full of fun,
an' clever as they make 'em. She always was a favorite of mine. I've
got a box of chocolate mush in my bunk which she gave me this
morning--" Donald would have liked to continue the conversation in
this strain, but the skipper broke off. "Skip for'ard, Don, an' leggo
that tail-rope an' weather jib sheet!"
The schooner glided down the harbor with a light air filling her
sails. The men had gone below to the fore-castle and cabin awaiting
breakfast, and were filling in the time by working on their lines and
hooks. Donald, shipped as spare hand, was supposed to work under the
captain's orders and to look after the vessel's gear. Fishermen do no
work on the schooner's hull or gear when at sea. All overhauling must
be done in port. The fishing crew ship only to fish, handle sail,
steer and keep watch. The spare hand is supposed to make all repairs
to the vessel's rigging while at sea, and to look after the stops,
reefing and furling gear. When the men are out in the dories fishing,
or when they are dressing fish, he must assist the skipper in sailing
the schooner, in getting dories hoisted in or out, and wherever he can
be of use.
Donald busied himself coiling up halliards and picking up gaskets, and
as he worked, he whistled a song to himself and thought of Ruth
Nickerson. He had seen her that morning. She had come down in slippers
and a pink silk kimono, and he thought that she looked ravishingly
pretty in such a garb. While he and the skipper were drinking a cup of
coffee which she had prepared, he wondered how she could look so
dainty and fresh at four o'clock in the morning. Her eyes were bright
and her cheeks had a healthy bloom in them like the Okanagan apples he
had seen out in British Columbia, and she teased both of them about
the bet with Ira Burton. "If you lose," she said, with a laugh, "Juddy
and you will have to go to Halifax and go on the stage. You play the
piano and sing, and Juddy will take the money. I'm sure he can look so
fierce sometimes that people will be glad to give you something." And
they all had laughed heartily at the thought.
How he envied brother Juddy when she threw her arms around his neck
and hugged and kissed him! A young fellow of seventeen is at the
susceptible age, and Donald was not blind to the charms of the fair
sex, even though he had had but little opportunity to tread the
primrose path of dalliance with fascinating young ladies. How he
blessed his mother for keeping him to his piano, singing and dancing
lessons! He had looked upon these accomplishments with scorn in his
Glasgow days, and had carefully hidden them from Joak and his other
school-boy chums. "A lassie's wurrk," they would have jeered. "Ye sh'd
take knittin' an' croshay lessons as weel!" Aye! he appreciated such
culture now!
She said "Good-bye!" with a simple clasp of the hand, and the memory
of the soft, warm pressure of her small fingers in his roughened fist
thrilled him yet. "I hope to see you when you come back," she added,
and he had stumbled away in the dark of the morning with a pang of
regret at leaving. He did not know why he should have felt that way,
but the fact remained that he did, and he was glad when he saw her
again waving from the window.
When the Lower Eastville Head came abeam, the cook sang out,
"Breakfast!" and Donald went down into the fo'c'sle. Nine fishermen
were already seated, and when he came below they shouted, "Make room
for Scotty McKenzie--an' ol' Cape Horner but a noo trawler! Sit ye
daown son, an' eat hearty an' give th' ship a good name!" They were a
merry crowd, and Donald compared them with the all-nation scrubs of
the _Kelvinhaugh_ and the wretched provender which they had to eat
aboard the barque. It was vastly different here! There was a blue
checkered tablecloth spread over the triangular table, and upon it
were heaped enamelware pots of first-class porridge, sausages, fried
eggs, new white bread, doughnuts, biscuits and cheese. Each man ate
off white graniteware plates and drank steaming coffee out of
china-clay mugs--no tin pannikins and cups on a Bank fisherman! As
they "scoffed" the good victuals, they joked boisterously over the
wager with Ira Burton, and "cal'lated when they got agoin' they'd trim
him daown to his boot-straps, by Judas!" There were no sullen faces or
growling oaths from this crowd. Every man wore a contented smile, and
they talked and joked and chaffed, but managed to get away with the
food in spite of the conversational interruptions.
"This minds me o' the time I wuz cookin' on a Behring Sea sealer,"
remarked Joak to Donald. "They were a' like these chaps--a verra jolly
bunch." McGlashan, as cook on a fisherman, held an exalted position.
Everybody tried to "stand in" with him, and on a Banker, the cook and
the skipper are the two officers whose word is law and whose commands
must be obeyed.
They ran into South-east Harbor that afternoon and dropped anchor off
the Cold Storage Company's wharf. Nickerson went ashore to procure a
quantity of frozen herring for use as bait, but found that he could
only purchase a few barrels, as several salt Bankers had already
spoken for the available supply. Captain Ira Burton had left for the
fishing grounds that morning with a full baiting, and this fact caused
Nickerson to hustle aboard what he could get. "Hang the patch on her!"
he shouted. "Burton's off and he's got plenty bait. We'll have to
start with what we have and run in for more later."
Under four lowers, they sped out of the harbor to a freshening
sou'-west breeze, and the skipper set the watches. "Number One dory
will take first wheel and look-out," he said, "and the other seven
will follow. It'll be one hour and a half to a watch, but Donald and I
will look after her this afternoon while you fellers bait yer gear.
Draw for baiting places now!"
Hardwood planks were fixed around the cabin house and the gurry-kid--a
huge box for'ard of the house and used for stowing fish-offal while in
port or odd gear at sea--and a man went around with a piece of chalk
and marked and numbered off certain spaces on the planks. Upon these
planks or "bait boards," the fishermen cut their bait, and certain
spots were more desirable than others--hence the drawing for places.
When this was accomplished, the skipper sung out for the stays'l to be
hoisted, and told Donald to stream the taff-rail log. "Four miles off
Salvage Island and four o'clock," remarked the captain. "A hundred an'
thirty miles to make to the sou'-west edge of the Western Bank. Take
the wheel, Donald, and let her go east by south half south. I'll help
the boys bait up!"
Seated on the wheel-box, he steered the able little schooner and
listened to the conversation of the fishermen. The breeze was blowing
fresh and there was a short sea running and the vessel was laying down
to it with the water squirting in through the lee scuppers, and she
was pulling over the rollers as gracefully as a steeple-chaser at a
low hurdle. The well-made sails were full with the wind, and it
thrummed in the rigging and under the booms, while the foam from the
sharp bows hissed and bubbled to loo'ard and raced aft to mingle with
the wake astern. A myriad of gulls, attracted by the herring offal
which was being whisked overboard every now and again, wheeled and
squawked around them, and their graceful winging, with the buoyancy
and gentle pitching and rolling of the flying schooner, combined to
make a picture symbolical of the poetry of sea motion. Wing and sail
were closely allied in this exhilarating off-shore flight, and
McKenzie was thrilled with it to a degree which he had never felt
before.
Chop, chop, chop! went the men's knives on the baitboards as they
deftly severed the frozen herring into portions for garnishing the
hundreds of hooks which went to a tub of trawl. With yellow oilskins
on their stalwart bodies, they stood around the quarters, singing and
bantering one another--a picturesque crowd of clear-eyed, hard-muscled
men. True sons of the sea! thought Donald, and he steered and listened
to a ballad which one of the men was trolling:--
"The galley was as high as the handle of a broom,
For'ad of the cabin, underneath the main-boom,
It warn't very big, an' I hadn't much room,
For cookin' on th' pine-wood dro-o-gher!
I had no room to move abaout,
When I was in, my starn stuck aout,
Th' stove would smoke an' make me shout--
Whoo! While cookin' on th' pine-wood dro-o-ogher!"
The crowd chopped bait and howled the last line with gusto--drawling
the "dro-o-gher!" with all a chantey-man's vim, until it wound up with
the final verse of the cook's troubles on the "pine-wood drogher."
"I kissed the stove a long farewell,
An' wished the maker a mile in h----l,
An' th' builder of the galley there as well,
An' I flew from th' pine-wood dro-o-gher!"
A howl of guffaws greeted the last verse, and with a "Tune her up
again, Tommy-boy!" the ballad singer broke into another Blue-nose
"Come-all-ye" describing the voyage of an Annapolis barquentine to
Demerara. The singer worked her every foot of the way to her
destination and back, and even dilated upon the flirtations of the
crew in the South-American port.
"We wish aour fr'en's could see us naow,
You bet they would be shy,
For we have sweethearts by th' score,
Though we court 'em on the sly;
Daown comes a yaller gal--dressed up like a queen,
Enquiring for th' stoo'ard of Corbett's barquentine."