MACKEREL

Throughout all that night the lights of the fleet were all about us,

ahead and behind. At breakfast next morning--four o'clock--we were off

Delaware Breakwater, and that afternoon at two we began the mast-head

watch for fish. And on that fine April day it was a handsome

sight--forty sail of seiners in sight, spread out and cruising

lazily.

The skipper was the first to get into his oilskins and heavy sweater,

for with a vessel hopping along at even no more than six or seven

knots by the wind it is pretty chilly aloft, nice and comfortable

though it may be on deck in the sun.

There was a game of seven-up going on in the cabin, and the sun

striking down the companionway was bothering Andie Howe. He began to

complain. "Hi, up there to the wheel! Hi, Eddie--can't you put her on

the other tack?--the sun's in my eyes. How can a man see the cards

with the sun in his eyes?"

Parsons didn't have the chance to talk back when the word came from

aloft to put the seine-boat over the side, and after that to overhaul

the seine and pile it in the boat. Vessels ahead had seen mackerel,

the skipper called out. We got into oilskins and boots and made ready.

Those who were going into the seine-boat had already picked out in

what positions they were going to row, and now there was an

overhauling of oars and putting marks on them so that they could be

picked out in a hurry. Clancy and I were to be dorymen. We made ready

the dory, and then Clancy went to the mast-head with the skipper and

Long Steve, whose watch it was aloft.

Things began to look like business soon. Even from the deck we could

see that one or two vessels ahead had boats out. We began to picture

ourselves setting around a big school and landing the first mackerel

of the year into New York. I think everybody aboard was having that

dream, though everybody pretended not to be in earnest. You could hear

them: "A nice school now--three hundred barrels." "Or two hundred

would be doing pretty well." "Or even a hundred barrels wouldn't be

bad." There were two or three young fellows among the crew, fellows

like myself, who had never seen much seining, and they couldn't keep

still for excitement when from the mast-head came the word that a boat

ahead was out and making a set.

We were going along all the time and when we could see from the deck

for ourselves the boats that were setting, Billie Hurd couldn't stand

it any longer, but had to go aloft, too. The four of them made a fine

picture--the skipper and Steve standing easily on the spreaders, one

leaning against the mast and the other against the back-stay, with

Hurd perched on the jib halyards block and Clancy on the spring-stay,

and all looking as comfortable as if they were in rockers at home. I'd

have given a hundred dollars then to be able to stand up there on one

foot and lean as easily as the skipper against the stay with the

vessel going along as she was. I made up my mind to practise it when

next I went aloft.

I went to the mast-head myself by and by, and, seeing half a dozen

schools almost at once, I became so excited that I could hardly speak.

The skipper was excited, too, but he didn't show it, only by his eyes

and talking more jerkily than usual. He paid no attention to two or

three schools that made me just crazy just to look at, but at last,

when he thought it was time, he began to move. Ten or a dozen

Gloucester vessels were bunched together, and one porgy steamer--that

is, built for porgy or menhaden fishing, but just now trying for

mackerel like the rest of us.

"There'll be plenty of them up soon, don't you think, Tommie?" the

skipper asked.

"Plenty," answered Tommie, "plenty," with his eyes ever on the fish.

"I think Sam Hollis has got his all right, but Pitt Ripley--I don't

know."

It was getting well along toward sunset then, with everybody worried,

the skipper still aloft, and one boat making ready to set about a mile

inside of us. "They'll dive," said our skipper, and they did. "There's

Pitt Ripley's school now," and he pointed to where a raft of mackerel

were rising and rippling the water black, and heading for the north.

"There's another gone down, too--they'll dive that fellow. Who is

it--Al McNeill?--yes. But they'll come up again, and when it does,

it's ours." And they did come up, and when they did the skipper made a

jump and roared, "Into the boat!" There was a scramble. "Stay up here,

you Billie, and watch the school," he said to Hurd, and "Go down,

you," to me. I slid down by the jib halyards. The skipper and Clancy

came down by the back-stay and beat me to the deck. They must have

tumbled down, they were down so quick.

"Hurry--the Aurora's going after it, too." The Aurora was one of

Withrow's fleet and we were bound to beat her. I had hardly time to

leap into the dory after Clancy, and we were off, with nobody left

aboard but Hurd to the mast-head and the cook, who was to stay on deck

and sail the vessel.

In the seine-boat it was double-banked oars, nine long blades and a

monstrous big one steering--good as another oar that--and all driving

for dear life, with Long Steve and a cork-passer standing by the seine

and the skipper on top of it, with his eyes fixed on the school

ahead--his only motions to open his mouth and to wave with his hands

to the steersman behind him. "Drive her--drive her," he called to the

crew. "More yet--more yet," to the steering oar. "There's the porgy

steamer's boat, too, after the same school. Drive her now, fellows!"

The mackerel were wild as could be, great rafts of them, and

travelling faster than the old seiners in the gang said they had ever

seen them travel before, and what was worse, not staying up long.

There were boats out from three or four vessels before we pushed off

with ours. I remember the porgy steamer had cut in ahead and given

their boat a long start for a school. However, that school did not

stay up long enough and they had their row for nothing. But then their

steamer picked them up again and dropped them on the way to the same

school that we were trying for. How some of our gang did swear at

them! And all because they were steam power.

It promised to be a pretty little race, but that school, too, went

down before either of us could head it, and so it was another row for

nothing. We lay on our oars then, both boats ready for another row,

with the skipper and seine-heaver in each standing on top of the seine

and watching for the fish to show again. Of course both gangs were

sizing each other up, too. I think myself that the Duncan's crowd were

a huskier lot of men than the steamer's. Our fellows looked more like

fishermen, as was to be expected, because in Gloucester good fishermen

are so common that naturally, a man hailing from there gets so that he

wants to be a good fisherman, too, and of course the men coming there

are all pretty good to begin with, leaving out the fellows who are

born and brought up around Gloucester and who have it in their blood.

A man doesn't leave Newfoundland or Cape Breton or even Nova Scotia or

Maine and the islands along the coast, or give up any safe, steady

work he may have, to come to Gloucester to fish unless he feels that

he can come pretty near to holding his end up. That's not saying that

a whole lot of fine fishermen do not stay at home, with never any

desire to fish out of Gloucester, in spite of the good money that a

fisherman with a good skipper can make from there, but just the same

they're a pretty smart and able lot that do come. And so, while our

gang was half made up of men that were born far away from Gloucester,

yet they had the Gloucester spirit, which is everything in deep-sea

fishing, when nerve and strength and skill count for so much. And this

other crowd--the porgy steamer's--did not have that look.

"Look at what we're coming to," somebody called. "All steam boys soon,

and on wages--wages!" he repeated, "and going around the deck, with a

blue guernsey with letters on the chest of it--A.D.Q.--or some other

damn company."

"Well, that would not be bad either, with your grub bill sure and your

money counted out at the end of every month," answered somebody else.

I was sizing up the two gangs myself, I being in the dory with Clancy,

and I guess that nearly everyone of us was doing the same thing and

keeping an eye out for fish at the same time, when all at once a

school popped up the other side of the porgyman's boat. Perhaps, half

a mile it was and, for a wonder, not going like a streak.

We saw it first and got to going first, but the Aurora's boat and the

steamer's boat were nearer, and so when we were all under good headway

there were two lengths or so that we had to make up on each. Well,

that was all right. Two lengths weren't so many, and we drove her. It

was something to see the fellows lay out to it then--doubled-banked,

two men to each wide seat and each man with a long oar, which he had

picked out and trimmed to suit himself, and every man in his own

particular place as if in a racing crew.

And now every man was bending to it. A big fellow, named Rory

McKinnon, was setting the stroke. There was a kick and a heave to

every stroke, and the men encouraging each other. "Now--now--give it

to her," was all that I could hear coming out of him. All this time we

in the dory were coming on behind, Clancy and I having to beat their

dory just as our boat had to beat their boat. And we were driving,

too, you may be sure. Clancy was making his oars bend like whips.

"Blast 'em! There's no stiffness to 'em," he was complaining. And

then, "Sock it to her," he would call out to our fellows in the

seine-boat. "We've got the porgy crew licked--that's the stuff," came

from the skipper. From on top of the seine he was watching the fish,

watching the gang, watching the other boats, watching us in the

dory--watching everything. Whoever made a slip then would hear from it

afterwards, we knew. And clip, clip, clip it was, with the swash just

curling nicely under the bow of the other boat, and I suppose our own,

too, if we could have seen.

Our boat was gaining on the Aurora's and the skipper was warming up.

The fish was going the same way we were, still a quarter of a mile

ahead.

"Drive her," said the skipper. "Drive her--drive her--another length

and you got 'em. And, Kenney, it's the best of ash you've got. Don't

be afraid of breaking it. And, Dan Burns, didn't y'ever learn to keep

stroke in the Bay of Islands with nine more men beside you rowing? And

drive her--hit her up now--here's where we got 'em--they can't hold it

on their lives. Now then, another dozen strokes and it's over. One,

two, three--quicker, Lord, quicker--six, seven--oh, now she's fair

flying--look at her leap. You blessed lobster, keep rowing and not

looking over your shoulder. We got to get the fish first."

A quarter mile of that with the foam ripping by us, and every man with

his blood like fire jumping to his oar, when the skipper leaped back

to the steering oar. "Stand by," he called, and then, "Now--over with

the buoy," and over it went, with the dory at hand and Tommie Clancy

right there to pick it up and hold it to windward. And then went the

seine over in huge armfuls. Just to see Long Steve throw that seine

was worth a trip South. And he was vain as a child of his strength

and endurance. "My, but look at him!" Clancy called out--"look at the

back of him!" "He's a horse," somebody else would have to say, and

"H-g-gh," Steve would grunt, and "H-g-gh" he would fill the air full

of tarred netting, "H-g-gh--pass them corks," and over it would go,

"H-g-gh," and the skipper would say, "That's the boy, Steve," and

Steve would heave to break his back right then and there. All the time

they were driving the seine-boat to its limit, and the skipper was

laying to the big steering oar, the longest of them all and taking a

strong man to handle it properly--laying to it, swinging from the

waist like a hammer-thrower, and the boat jumping to it. She came

jumping right for us in the dory in a little while. It doesn't take a

good gang long to put a quarter mile of netting around a school of

mackerel.

It was a pretty set he made. "Pretty, pretty," you could almost hear

the old seiners saying between their teeth, even as they were all

rowing with jaws set and never a let-up until the circle was

completed, when it was oars into the air and Clancy leaping from the

dory into the seine-boat to help purse up. "It's a raft if ever we get

'em," were his first words, and everybody that wasn't too breathless

said yes, it was a jeesly raft of fish.

"Purse in," it was then, and lively. And so we pursed in, hauling on

the running line in the lower edge of the seine, something as the

string around the neck of a tobacco bag is drawn tight. It was heavy

work of course, but everybody made light of it. We could not tell if

the fish were in it or not. The leaders might have dove when they felt

the twine against their noses and so escaped with the whole school

following after, or they might have taken no alarm and stayed in.

So we pursed in, not knowing whether we were to have a good haul with

a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars apiece at the end of it, or

whether we would have our work for nothing. All hands kept up the

pretence of joking, of course, but everybody was anxious enough. It

was more than the money--it was fisherman's pride. Were we to get into

New York and have it telegraphed on to Gloucester for everybody that

knew us to read and talk about--landing the first mackerel of the

year? We watched while the circle narrowed and the pool inside grew

shallower. Somebody said, "There's one," and we could see the shine of

it, and another--and another--and then the whole mass of them rose

flipping. They lashed the water into foam, rushed around the edges,

nosed the corks of the seine. I don't think myself that mackerel are

particularly intelligent, take them generally; but at times they seem

to know--these fellows, at least, seemed to know they were gone and

they thrashed about in fury. A mackerel is a handsome fish any time,

but to see him right you want to see him fresh-seined. They whipped

the water white now--tens of thousands of them. I don't believe that

the oldest seiner there didn't feel his heart beat faster--the first

mackerel of the year. "And Lord knows, maybe a couple of hundred

barrels," and the skipper's eyes shone--it meant a lot to him. And

some of the men began to talk like children, they were so pleased.

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