We might have stayed in harbor another twenty-four hours and lost
nothing by it. It was dawn when we put out from the Delaware
Breakwater, and by dark of the same day we were back to where we had
met the big school and lost the seine two days before. And there we
hung about for another night and day waiting for the sea to flatten
out. Mackerel rarely show in rough weather, even if you could put out
a seine-boat and go after them. But I suppose that it did us no harm
to be on the ground and ready.
On the evening of the next day there was something doing. There was
still some sea on, but not enough to hurt. Along about eight o'clock,
I remember, I came off watch and dropped into the forec's'le to fix up
my arm, which was still badly strained from hanging onto the
seine-boat's painter when I was washed overboard. The skipper, taking
a look, told me not to go into the dory that night, but to let Billie
Hurd, who was spare hand, take my place, and for me to stay aboard. I
would rather have gone into the dory, of course, but was not able to
pull an oar--that is, pull it as I'd have to pull when driving for a
school--and knowing I would be no more than so much freight in the
dory there was nothing else to do. "And if we see fish, Clancy'll stay
to the mast-head to-night--as good a seine-master as sails out of
Gloucester is Tommie--better than me," he said. "I'm going in the
seine-boat, and Eddie Parsons, you'll take Clancy's place in the
dory." And buttoning his oil-jacket up tight, he put on his mitts and
went on deck.
That evening the forward gang were doing about as much work as seiners
at leisure usually do. It was in the air that we would strike fish,
but the men had not yet been told to get ready. So four of them were
playing whist at the table under the lamp and two were lying half in
and half out of opposite upper bunks, trying to get more of the light
on the pages of the books they were reading. Long Steve, in a lower
port bunk nearer the gangway, was humming something sentimental, and
two were in a knot on the lockers, arguing fiercely over nothing in
particular. There was a fellow in the peak roaring out, "Scots wha hae
wi' Wallace bled." Only the cook, just done with mixing bread, seemed
to have ever done a lick of work in his life, and he was now standing
by the galley fire rolling the dough off his fingers. The cook on a
fisherman is always a busy man.
Down the companionway and into the thick of this dropped Clancy, oiled
up and all ready to go aloft. To the mast-head of a vessel, even on an
April night in southern waters, it is cold enough, especially when,
like a seiner, she is nearly always by the wind; and Clancy was
wrapped up. "I think," said Clancy, as his boot-heels hit the floor,
"I'll have a mug-up." From the boiler on the galley-stove he poured
out a mug of coffee and from the grub-locker he took a slice of bread
and two thick slices of cold beef. He buried the bread among the beef
and leaned against the foremast while he ate.
Once when Clancy was a skipper he did a fine bit of rescuing out to
sea, and after he got home a newspaper man saw him and wrote him up. I
had the clipping stuck on the wall of Withrow's store for months and
had read it so often that I knew it by heart. "In heavy jack-boots and
summer sou'wester, with a black jersey of fine quality sticking up
above the neck of his oil-jacket, with a face that won you at sight;
cheeks a nice even pink; damp, storm-beaten, and healthful; with
mouth, eyes, and jaw bespeaking humor, sympathy, and courage;
shoulders that seemed made for butting to windward--an attractive,
inspiring, magnetic man altogether--that is Captain Tommie Clancy of
the Gloucester fisherman, the Mary Andrews." That, was how it read,
and certainly it fitted him now, as he stood there in the middle of
the thick curling smoke of the pipes, holding the mug of coffee in one
hand and the sandwich of bread and meat in the other, leaning easily
against the butt of the foremast, and between gulps and bites taking
notice of the crew.
"Give me," he said to the cook as the proper man for an audience, "a
seiner's crew when they're not on fish for real gentlemen of leisure.
Look at 'em now--you'd think they were all near-sighted, with their
cards up to their chins. And above them look--Kipling to starb'd and
the Duchess to port. Mulvaney, I'll bet, filled full of whiskey and
keeping the heathen on the jump, and Airy Fairy Lillian, or some other
daisy with winning ways, disturbing the peace of mind of half a dozen
dukes. Mulvaney's all right, but the Duchess! They'll be taking books
of that kind to the mast-head next. What d'y' s'pose I found aft the
other day? Now what d'y' s'pose? I'll bet you'd never guess. No, no.
Well, 'He Loved, but Was Lured Away.' Yes. Isn't that fine stuff for a
fisherman to be feeding on? But whoever was reading it, he was ashamed
of it. 'Well, who owns this thing?' says I, picking up the lured-away
lad. 'Nobody,' speaks up Sam there. Of course he didn't own it--O
no!
"Violet Vance," went on Clancy, and took another bite of his sandwich.
"Violet Vance and Wilful Winnie and a whole holdful of airy creatures
couldn't help a fisherman when there's anything stirring. I waded
through a whole bunch of 'em once,"--he reached over and took a wedge
of pie from the grub-locker. "Yes, I went through a whole bunch of 'em
once--pretty good pie this, cook, though gen'rally those artificial
apples that swings on strings ain't in it with the natural tree apples
for pie--once when we were laying somewhere to the east'ard of Sable
Island, in a blow and a thick fog--fresh halibuting--and right in the
way of the liners. And I expect I was going around like a man asleep,
because the skipper comes up and begins to talk to me. It was my first
trip with him and I was a young lad. 'Young fellow,' says the skipper,
Matt Dawson--this was in the Lorelei--'young fellow,' says Matt, 'you
look tired. Let me call up the crew and swing a hammock for you from
the fore-rigging to the jumbo boom. How'll that do for you? When the
jumbo slats it'll keep the hammock rocking. Let me,' he says.
'P'raps,' he goes on, 'you wouldn't mind waking up long enough to give
this music box a turn or two every now and then while the fog lasts.'
We had a patent fog-horn aboard, the first I ever saw, and I'd clear
forgot it--warn't used to patent horns. But just another little wedge
of pie, George.
"However, I suppose when there's nothing doing there's no very great
harm. But we'll try to keep some of you busy to-night. Praise the
Lord, the moon's out of the way and it's looking black already and the
sea ought to fire up fine later on. And there's a nice little breeze
to overhaul a good school when we see one. If any of you are beginning
to think of getting in a wink of sleep then you'd better turn in now,
for you're sure to be out before long. I'm going aloft."
Clancy climbed up the companionway. Then followed the scraping of his
boot-heels across the deck. Half a minute later, had anybody cared to
go up and have a look, I suppose he would have been discovered
astraddle of the highest block above the forethroat--he and the
skipper--watching out sharply for the lights of the many other vessels
about them, but more particularly straining their eyes for the
phosphorescent trails of mackerel.