It wasn't bad enough that we came near losing a few men and our boat,
and our seine altogether, but it must come on to breeze up on top of
that and drive us off the grounds. After putting everything to rights,
we were having a mug-up forward and wondering if the skipper would
take sail off her or what, when we heard the call that settled it.
"On deck everybody!" we heard. And when we got there, came from the
skipper, "Take in the balloon, tie it up and put it below. Haul down
your stays'l too--and go aloft a couple of you, fore and aft, and put
the tops'ls in gaskets."
We attended to that--a gang out on the bowsprit, half a dozen aloft
and so on--with the skipper to the wheel while it was being done. When
we had finished it was, "Haul the seine-boat alongside--pump out what
water's left." Then, "Shift that painter and hook on the big painter.
Drop her astern and give her plenty of line. Where's the dorymen?
Where's Tommie and Joe? Haul the dories into the hatch, Tommie, and
make 'em fast. Gripe 'em good while you're at it. Clear the deck of
all loose gear--put it below, all of it--keelers, everything. Maybe
'twon't be much of a blow, but there's no telling--it may. She mayn't
be the kind that washes everything over, but put it all safe anyway."
The skipper watched all this until he had seen everything cleared up
and heard "All fast the dory," from the waist. Then he looked up and
took note of sky and wind. "Don't feel any too good. Maybe 'twill blow
off, but we might's well run in. We'll have to wait for our other
seine anyway and Wesley will be sure to put into the Breakwater for
news on his way down, especially if it comes to blow."
He dropped below then to light his pipe. Seeing me and Parsons, with
me trying to fix up Parsons's leg where it had been gashed--Eddie
never knew how--in the mix-up of the evening, the skipper said,
"There's some liniment in the chest and some linen in one of the
drawers under my bunk. Get it. And some of you might's well turn in
and have a nap. She'll be all right--the watch and myself can look
after her now," and he went on deck again, puffing like an engine to
keep his pipe going.
Most of them did turn in and were soon asleep. Some of the older men
had a smoke and an overhauling of their wet clothes, while a few
joined in a little game of draw before turning in. One or two were
deploring the loss of the seine. The nearness to losing lives didn't
seem to be worrying anybody. For myself, I was somewhat worked up.
There was one time in the water when I thought I was gone. So I went
on deck after the skipper. It was a black night and breezing all the
time and I wanted to see how the vessel behaved. The Johnnie was
close-hauled at this time and swashing under, and I knew without
asking further that the skipper intended to make Delaware Breakwater.
While hurrying forward, after lending a hand to batten down the main
hatch--the Johnnie plunging along all the time--and my head perhaps a
little too high in the air, I stumbled off the break and plump over a
man under the windward rail. I thought I was going to leeward and
maybe overboard, but somebody hooked onto the full in the back of my
oil-jacket, hauled me up the inclined deck again, and in a roaring
whisper said, "Get a hold here, Joey--here's a ring-bolt for you.
Don't let go on your life! Isn't it fine?" It was Clancy. He had
nights, I know, when he couldn't sleep, and like me, I suppose, he
wanted to watch the sea, which just then was firing grandly. Into this
sea the vessel was diving--nose first--bringing her bowsprit down,
down, down, and then up, up, up, until her thirty-seven-foot bowsprit
would be pointing to where the North star should be. Whenever she
heaved like that I could feel her deck swelling under me. I remember
when I used to play foot-ball at the high school at home and it was
getting handy to a touch-down, with perhaps only a few yards to gain
and the other side braced to stop it, that a fellow playing back had
to buck like that from under a line when he had to scatter tons, or
what he thought was tons, of people on top of him. The vessel was that
way now, only with every dive she had hundreds of tons to lift from
under. At a time like that you can feel the ribs of a vessel brace
within her just as if she was human. Now I could almost feel her heart
pumping and her lungs pounding somewhere inside. I could feel her
brace to meet it, feel her shiver, as if she was scared half to death,
and almost hear her screech like a winner every time she cleared it
and threw it over her head.
Now down she went--the Johnnie Duncan--down and forward, for she
wouldn't be held back--shoulders and breast slap into it. Clear to her
waist she went, fighting the sea from her. To either side were
tumbling the broken waves, curling away like beach combers. The hollow
of each was a curved sheet of electric white, and the top--the
crest--was a heavier, hotter white. The crests would rise above our
rail and break, and back into the hollows would fall a shower of
shooting stars that almost sizzled. There wasn't a star above, but
millions on the water!
"Ever see anything like that ashore, Joey-boy?" said Clancy, and I had
to roar a whisper that I never had.
Through this play of fire the Johnnie leaped with great bounds. She
boiled her way, and astern she left a wake in which the seine-boat was
rearing and diving with a fine little independent trail of its own.
Two men forward--the watch--were leaning over the windlass and peering
into the night. They were there for whatever they might see, but
particularly were they looking for the double white light of Five
Fathom Bank lightship. The skipper was at the wheel. When he got in
the way of the cabin light, we could catch the shine from his dripping
oil-clothes, and the spark from his pipe--which he kept going through
it all--marked his position when he stepped back into the darkness.
Clancy noticed him. "There's a man for you, Joey. Think what it meant
to a young skipper with a new vessel--the loss of that school and the
seine on top of it the very first day he struck fish. If we'd got
that, he might have been the first vessel of the year into the New
York market. And think of the price the first fish fetch!--and the
honor of it--and he breaking his heart to make a reputation this year.
And yet not a yip out of him--not a cranky word to one of the gang all
night. A great man I call him--and a fisherman." I thought so, too.
Sometimes I imagined I could see the wink of red and green lights
abreast and astern, which I probably did, for there should have been
fifty sail or so of seiners inside and outside of us--there were sixty
sail of the fleet in sight that afternoon--and I knew that, barring a
possible few that had got fish and were driving for the New York
market, all the others were like ourselves, under lower sails and
boring into it, with extra lookout forward, the skipper at the wheel
or on the quarter and all ears and eyes for the surf and lights
inshore when we should get there.
"Something ahead! dead ahead! sa-ail!" came suddenly from forward.
There was a scraping of boot-heels at the wheel. "What d'y'make of
it?--all right, I see her!" In the shadow we saw the skipper pulling
the wheel down. Ahead I imagined I saw a dark patch, but to make sure
I squirmed up to the fore-rigging. Whoever she was, the light from her
cabin skylight was right there and I realized that we were pretty
close, but not really how close until a boat bobbed up under my jaws
almost. Right from under our bow it heaved. It was a seiner and that
was her seine-boat towing astern, and I could easily have heaved a
line to her helmsman as we swept by her. There was an awfully tall
shadow of sails--half up to the clouds I thought--and the black of the
hull looked as long as a dock. A voice was hurled to us, but we
couldn't quite make it out--but it was the watch, probably, saying a
word or two by way of easing his feelings.
We worked up to the windward of that one and slowly crowded past her
tumbling green light. Then the skipper let the wheel fly up and we
shot ahead and soon we had her directly astern, with her one green and
one red eye looking after us. "That's one fellow we outsail," thought
I to myself, and I knew I was beginning to love the Johnnie Duncan.
All through that night it went on like that.
At four o'clock or so in the morning the cook stuck his head out of
the slit in the forec's'le companionway and spoke his welcome little
piece. "Can't have any reg'lar sit-down this morning, boys. Have to
leave the china in the becket for a while yet, but all that wants can
make a mug-up, and when we get inside--if we do in anything like a
decent hour--we'll have breakfast."
At five o'clock the sky began to brighten to the eastward, but there
was no let-up to the wind or sea. If anything it was breezing up. At
six o'clock, when the short blasts of the lightship split the air
abreast of us, things were good and lively, but there was no daylight
to go by then. The wash that in the night only buried her bow good was
then coming over her to the foremast and filling the gangway between
the house and rail as it raced aft. The beauty of double-lashing the
dories began to appear, and all hands might have been towing astern
all night by the look of them. But the Johnnie Duncan was doing well
and the opinion of the crew generally was that the skipper could slap
every rag to her and she'd carry it--that is, if she had to. The
skipper put her more westerly after we had passed the lightship and on
we went.
We had the company of a couple of coasters in this part of the drive;
and by that, if nothing else, a man might know we were inshore. Some
Gloucester men were in sight, too, though most of the fleet, we
guessed, were still outside of us. The coasters were colliers,
three-masters both, and reefed down, wallowing in the sea. One had her
foretopmast snapped short off, and such patched sails as she had on
looked lonesome. The gang, of course, had to make fun of her.
"There's one way to house a topm'st!"
"Broke your clothes-pole, old girl!"
"Better take in your washing there--looks like rain!"
"Go it, you beauty! I only wish I had my cameraw. If y'only suspected
how lovely you look!"
Two big ocean tugs, one clear white and one all black, offered a
change in looks, though in nothing else, for each one, with two barges
of coal, was making desperate hauling of it, and the Breakwater yet a
good bit away.
"Hustle 'em, you husky coal-jammers!" roared Parsons at them, as if he
could be heard beyond the rail. "I wouldn't be aboard of you for my
share of the Southern trip--and mackerel away up in G, too. Would you,
Billie?"
"Then? Naw!" said Hurd, with a wrinkling of his little nose.
"No, nor me neither," said Long Steve. "Hi--ever hear the cook--ever
hear George Moore's song:--
'If ever you go to sea, my boy,
Don't ever you ship on a steamer;
There's stacks to scrape and rails to paint--
It's always work to clean her.
When the wind is wrong and the shore is by,
They'll keep you clear of leeway,
But they roll and they jolt and they're never dry--
They're the devil's own in a sea-way!'"
Steve, trying to sing that, had one hand hooked into a ring-bolt under
the rail and he was slowly pickling--we were all pickling--like a
salted mackerel in a barrel.
An hour past Five Fathom and the tall white tower of Cape Henlopen
could be made out ahead, as well as the gray tower of Cape May through
the mists to the northward. The wind was coming faster and it felt
heavier. We could judge best of how we were looking ourselves by
watching all our fellows near by. We could see to the bottom planks of
two to leeward of us, while on the sloping deck of one to windward it
was plain that only what was lashed or bolted was still there. When
they reared they almost stood up straight, and when they scooped into
it the wonder was that all the water taken aboard didn't hold her
until the next comber could have a fair whack at her.
The men--that is, a few of them--might joke, but were all glad to be
getting in. There's no fun staying wet and getting wetter all night
long. If it wasn't for the wetness of a fellow it would have been
great, for it was the finest kind of excitement, our running to
harbor--that night--especially in the morning when we were passing
three or four and nobody passing us. We went by one fellow--the
Martinet she was--a fair enough sailer--passed her to windward of
course, our gang looking across at their gang and nobody saying a
word, but everybody thinking a lot, you may be sure. It was worth a
square meal that.
With the Martinet astern, the skipper let her pay off and run for the
end of the Breakwater. For a while he let the wind take her fair
abeam, with sheets in, and the way she sizzled through the water was a
caution. There was a moment that an extra good blast hit her that my
heart sank, but I reflected that the skipper knew his business, and so
tried to take it unconcernedly. Everybody around me was joking and
laughing--to think, I suppose, that we would soon be in.
A moment after that I went down to leeward. The sea was bubbling in
over her rail at the fore-rigging and I wanted to get the feel of it.
I got it. It is pretty shoal water on the bar at the mouth of the
Delaware River and quite a little sea on when it blows. One sea came
aboard. Somebody yelled and I saw it--but too late--and slap! over I
went--over the rail--big boots and oilskins I went down into the
roaring. For a second my head came up and I saw the vessel. Everybody
aboard was standing by. The skipper was whirling the spokes and the
vessel was coming around like a top. I never saw a vessel roll down so
far in all my life. I went under again and coming up heard a dull
shout. There was a line beside me. "Grab hold!" yelled somebody. No
need to tell me--I grabbed hold. It was the seine-boat's painter. The
Johnnie was still shooting and when the line tautened it came as near
to pulling my arms out of my shoulders as ever I want to have them
again. But I hung on. Then she came up, and they hauled the painter in
and gaffed me over the rail.
"You blankety blank fool!" roared Clancy, as soon as I stood
up--"don't you know any better? A fine thing we'd have to be
telegraphing home, wouldn't it? Are you all right now?"
"All right," I said, and felt pretty cheap.
While being hauled in, knowing that I was safe, I had been thinking
what a fine little adventure I'd have to tell when we got back to
Gloucester, but after Clancy got through with me I saw that there were
two ways to look at it. So I took my old place under the windward rail
and didn't move from there again till it was time to take sail off
her.