Three days after Johnnie Duncan fell out of Crow's Nest the new
Duncan vessel designed by Will Somers was towed around from Essex.
She had been named the Johnnie Duncan. I spent the best part of the
next three days watching the sparmakers and riggers at work on her.
And when they had done with her and she fit to go to sea, she did look
handsome. She had not quite the length of the new vessel of Sam
Hollis's, which lay at Withrow's dock just below her, and that
probably helped to give her a more powerful look to people that
compared them. Too able-looking altogether to be real fast, some
thought, to hold the Withrow vessel in anything short of a gale, but
I didn't feel so sure she wouldn't sail in a moderate breeze, too.
I had seen her on the stocks, and knew the beautiful lines below the
water-mark. And she was going to carry the sail to drive her. I took
particular pains to get the measurements of her mainmast while it
lay on the dock under the shears. It was eighty-seven feet--and
she only a hundred and ten feet over all--and it stepped plumb in
the middle of her, further forward than a mainmast was generally put
in a fisherman. To that was shackled a seventy-five foot boom, and
eighty-odd tons of pig-iron were cemented close down to her keel, and
that floored over and stanchioned snug. For the rest, she was very
narrow forward, as I think I said--everybody said she'd never stand
the strain of her fore-rigging when they got to driving her on a
long passage. And she carried an ungodly bowsprit--thirty-seven feet
outboard--easily the longest bowsprit out of Gloucester. Topmasts to
match, and there was some sail to drive a vessel. But she had the
hull for it, full and yet easy, with the greatest beam pretty well
aft of the mainmast, and she drew fifteen and a half feet of water.
I was still looking her over, her third day in the riggers' and
sailmakers' hands, when Clancy came along.
"Handsome, ain't she, and only needing a skipper and crew to be off on
the Southern cruise, eh, Joe?"
"That's all. And according to the talk, you're to be the skipper."
"Well, talk has another according coming to it."
"I'm sorry to hear that. But what happened at Mrs. Arkell's the other
day?"
"What happened? Joe, but I was glad you didn't come with me. You'd
have felt as I did about it, I know. There they were--the two of
them--Hollis and Withrow--yes, Withrow there--when I broke in on them,
and Maurice between them--drunk. Yes, sir, drunk and helpless. They
called it a wine-party, as though a man couldn't get as good and drunk
on wine in a private residence as ever he could on whiskey or rum in
the back room of a saloon. Well, sir, I asked a question or two, and
they tried to face me out, but out they went--first Hollis, and then
Withrow, one after the other, and both good and lively. And then
Minnie Arkell popped in from her own house by way of the backyard. She
didn't expect to see me--I know she didn't. Had gone over to her house
when the men began to drink, she said, and had just come over to see
granny.
"Well, I told her what I thought. 'It means nothing to you,' I
said, 'to see a man make a fool of himself--that's been a good
part of your business in life for some time, now--to see men make
fools of themselves for you. Withrow had reasons for wanting him
disgraced--never mind why. Sam Hollis, maybe, has his reasons too. And
the two of them are being helped along by you. You could have stopped
this thing here to-day, but you didn't.' 'No, no, Tommie,' she says.
'Yes, yes,' I went on, 'and don't try to tell me different. If I
didn't know you since you were a little girl you might be able to
convince me, but I know you. Maurice, when he was himself, passed
you by. You were bound to have him. You know a real man, more's the
pity, when you see one, and you know that Maurice, young and green
and soft as he is, has more life and dash than a dozen of the kind
you've been mixing with lately.'
"Oh, but I laid it on, Joe. Yes. A shame to have to talk like that to
a woman, but I just had to. I didn't stop there. 'You're handsome, and
you're rich, Minnie Arkell; got a lot of life left in you yet, and go
off travelling with people who get their names regularly in the Boston
papers; but just the same, Minnie Arkell, there are women in jail not
half so bad as you--women doing time who've done less mischief in the
world than you have.'"
"Wasn't that pretty rough, Tommie?"
"Rough? Lord, yes--but true, Joe, true. And if you'd only see poor
Maurice lying there! Cried? I could've cried, Joe--not since my mother
died did I come so near to it. But it was done.
"Well, I made Minnie go and get her grandmother. And, Joe, if you'd
seen that fine old lady--oh, but she's got a heart in her--stoop and
put Maurice's head on her bosom as if he was a little child. 'The
poor, poor boy. No mother here,' she said, 'and the best man on earth
might come to it. Leave him to me, Tommie.' Lord, I could have knelt
down at her feet--the heart in her, Joe."
"And how has Maurice been since?"
"All right. That was the first time in his life that he was drunk. I
think it will be his last. But let's go aboard the Johnnie."
After looking over the Johnnie Duncan and admiring her to our hearts'
content, we sat down in her cabin and began to talk of the seining
season to come. Others came down and joined in--George Moore, Eddie
Parsons among others--and they asked Clancy what he was going to do.
Was he going to see about a chance to go seining, or what? Moore said
he's been waiting to see what Maurice Blake was going to do; but as it
was beginning to look as though Maurice was done for, he guessed he'd
take a look around. He asked Clancy what he thought, and Clancy said
he didn't know--time enough yet.
Maurice Blake himself dropped down then. He was looking better, and
everybody was glad to see it. He'd quit drinking--that was certain;
and now he was a picture of a man--not pretty, but strong-looking,
with his eyes glowing and his skin flushing with the good blood inside
him. He took a seat on the lockers and began to whittle a block of
soft pine into a model of a hull, and after a while, with a squint
along the sheer of his little model, he asked if anybody had seen Tom
O'Donnell or Wesley Marrs. Several said yes, they had, and he asked
where, and when they told him he got up and said he guessed he'd go
along--as he couldn't get a vessel himself, he might as well see about
a chance to go hand. "And as we've been together so much in times gone
by, Tommie, and you, Eddie and George, what do you say if we go
together now?"
"All right," said Clancy, "but wait a minute--who's that in the
gangway?"
It turned out to be Johnnie Duncan. He had a fat bundle under his arm,
and bundle and all Clancy took him up, tossed him into the air, said
"All right again, Johnnie-boy?" and kissed him when he caught him
down.
Johnnie started to undo his bundle. "I tell you it's great to be out
again--the way they kept me cooped up the last few days," and then,
cutting the string to hurry matters, opened the bundle and spread a
handsome set of colors on the lockers. "The Johnnie Duncan's," said
he. "I picked out the kind they were to be, but mummer worked the
monograms herself. See, red and blue. And see that for an ensign! and
the firm's flag--and the highs--look!--the J. A. D. twisted up the
same as on the handkerchiefs we strained the coffee through last week.
And the burgee--the letters on the burgee--my cousin Alice worked
them. And these stars--see, on the ensign--mummer and my cousin both
worked them. Gran'pa said the vessel ought to be sure a lucky one, and
all she needs is an able master, he says, and if Captain Blake will
take her he'll be proud to have him sail the Johnnie Duncan----"