Her deck was pretty well filled with mackerel when "All dry," said
Long Steve, and drew the last of the seine into the boat.
"Then hurry aboard and drop that seine-boat astern. And--whose watch?
Take the wheel--wait till I give you the course--there. But don't
drive her awhile yet. Some of those fish might be washed over. But it
won't be for long."
"Ready with the ice?" he asked next.
"All ready," and the men who had been chopping ice and making ready
the pens in the hold stood by to take the mackerel as we passed them
down.
As soon as we had enough of them off the vessel's deck to make it safe
to drive her, the skipper gave her a little more sheet and let her go
for New York. We hustled the seine-boat aboard too. Some other vessels
must have got fish, too, and there was no time to waste.
It was a good-sized school and when we had them all iced and
below--more than thirty thousand count--it was time for all hands to
turn in--all but the two men on watch of course. I didn't turn in
myself, but after a mug-up and pipeful below came on deck again. It
was a pretty good sort of a night for a dark night, with a moderate
breeze that sang in your ears when you leaned against the halyards and
a sea that lapped bucketfuls of spray over her rail forward and that
tumbled away in a wide flat hump as our quarter slipped on and left it
behind.
I found the skipper leaning against the weather rigging and watching a
red light coming up on us. Noticing me he said, "There's that porgy
steamer that we beat out for that school the other day overhauling us
now. There's the beauty of steam. The crew of this one knows more in a
minute than they know in a week about fishing in that steamer, and
we'd be carrying our summer kites when that gang, if they were in a
sailing vessel, would be laying to an anchor; and with our boat out
and their boat out and a school in sight they'd have to take our
leavings. But here's one of the times when they have the best of it."
There wasn't much wind stirring then, but it promised to breeze up, or
so the skipper thought, and I'm sure I was glad to hear him say it,
for the harder it blew the sooner we would get to New York and the
better our chance to beat the porgyman. First in to market got the
cream.
It was pretty well on to daybreak when the porgy steamer got up
abreast of us and after a while worked by. One of them took the
trouble to sing out to us when they went by, "Well, you got a school
before us, but we'll be tied up and into the dock and spending our
money ashore whilst you're still along the Jersey coast somewhere."
And we supposed they would, but Hurd, who was then to our wheel, had
to call back to them, "Oh, I dunno. I dunno about that--it's a good
run to Fulton Market dock yet." And, turning to us, "I hope the bloody
old boiler explodes so nobody'll be able to find a mackerel of 'em
this side the Bay of Fundy. Of course I wouldn't want to see the men
come to any harm, but wouldn't it jar you--them scrubs?"
The skipper wasn't saying anything. And it meant a lot to him, too. He
was looking after the steamer and, I know, praying for wind. We could
see it in his eyes.
And sometimes things come as we like to have them. At full dawn it was
a nice breeze with the Johnnie Duncan washing her face in plenty of
good spray and the fine sun shining warm on a fresh sea-way. Another
hour, the wind hauling and still making, the Johnnie was down to her
rail, and awhile after that she was getting all the wind she needed.
"We may have a chance to try her out on this run, who knows?" said the
skipper. We were coming up on the porgy steamer then and you should
have seen his eyes when they looked from the rail to the deck of his
vessel and from the deck again to aloft. On the steamer the gang were
in the waist watching us coming and they must have been piling the
coal into her below and giving her the jet steadily, for out of her
funnel was coming the smoke in clouds mixed with steam.
"But their firemen can stoke till they're black in the face and they
won't get more than eleven or eleven and a half knots out of her,"
said Clancy. "I know her--the Nautilus--and if this one under us ain't
logging her fourteen good then I don't know. And she'll be doing
better yet before we see New York."
They were driving the porgyman then, but she was fated. Once we began
to get her she came back to us fast enough, and once she was astern
she troubled us no more. After the porgyman we passed a big white
yacht, evidently just up from the West Indies after a winter's cruise.
She looked a model for a good sailer, but there was no chance to try
her out, for they had her under shortened sail when we went by.
There was a New York blue-fisherman on our weather bow bound for New
York, too, and the way we went by her was a scandal. And farther on
we drove by a big bark--big enough, almost, to take us aboard. They
were plainly trying to make a passage on her, but we left her too.
Then we passed another yacht, but she wasn't carrying half our sail.
Her hull was as long as ours, but she didn't begin to be sparred as we
were. We must have had ten feet on her main-boom and ten feet more
bowsprit outboard, and yet under her four lower sails she seemed to be
making heavy going of it. It's a good yacht that can hold a fisherman
in a breeze and a sea-way. We beat this one about as bad as we beat
the blue-fisherman. As we went by we tried to look as though we had
beaten so many vessels that we'd lost all interest in racing, and at
the same time we were all dancing on our toes to think what a vessel
we had under us. It was that passage we held the north-bound Savannah
steamer for seven hours. Her passengers stood by the rail and watched
us, and when at last we crowded our bowsprit past her nose, they waved
their handkerchiefs and cheered us like mad.
"When we get this one loosened up a bit and down to her trim, she'll
sail some or I don't know," said our skipper. He stood in the cabin
gangway then and filled his boots with water, but he wouldn't take in
sail. Back behind us was another seiner. We could just make out that
they were soaking it to her too. The skipper nodded his head back at
her. Then, with one hand on the house and the other on the rail, he
looked out from under our main-boom and across at the steamer. "Not a
rag--let the spars come out of her."
One thing was sure--the Johnnie was a vessel that could stand driving.
She didn't crowd herself as she got going. No, sir! The harder we
drove her the faster she went. Laying down on her side made no
difference to her. In fact we were not sure that she wouldn't do her
best sailing on her side. But it hadn't come to that yet. She was
standing up under sail fine. Most of them, we knew, would have washed
everything off their deck before that. And certainly there would have
been no standing down by the lee rail on too many of them with that
breeze abeam.
Going up New York harbor, where we had to tack, the Savannah steamer
could have gone by if she had to, but big steamers slow down some
going into a harbor, and we holding on to everything made up for the
extra distance sailed. The wind, of course, was nothing to what it was
outside, and that made some difference. Anyway, we kept the Johnnie
going and held the steamer up to the Battery, where, as she had to go
up North River, she gave us three toots. The people on the Battery
must have had a good look at us. I guess it was not every day they saw
a schooner of the Johnnie's size carrying on like that. Billie Hurd
had to pay his respects to them. "Look, you loafers, look, and see a
real vessel sailing in."
There was a sassy little East River towboat that wanted to give us a
tow, but our skipper said it would be losing time to take sail off and
wait for a line then. The tug captain said, "Oh, no; and you can't
dock her anyway in this harbor without a tug."
"Oh, I can dock her all right, I guess," said our skipper.
"Maybe you think you can, but wait till you try it, and have a nice
little bill for damages besides."
"Well, the vessel's good for the damages, too."
That towboat tailed us just the same, but we had the satisfaction of
fooling him. The skipper kept the Johnnie going till the right time
and then, when the tugboat people thought it was too late, he shot her
about on her heel and into the dock with her mainsail coming down on
the run and jibs dead.
A couple of East Side loafers standing on the wharf cap-log were
nearly swept away by the end of our bowsprit, we came on so fast. Four
or five of us leaped ashore, and with lines out and made fast in no
time, we had her docked without so much as cracking a single shingle
of the house across the head of the dock.
We sold our mackerel for nineteen cents apiece. Fifty-seven hundred
and odd dollars was our stock, and about a hundred and forty dollars
each man's share. We felt a little bit chesty after that. We were not
the first to market that year, but we were the first since the early
flurry, and the biggest stock so far that spring was to our credit.
We stood on the deck and watched the porgy steamer come in and tie up,
too late for that day's market. Some of our fellows had to ask them
where they got their fish--to the s'uth'ard or where?--and two or
three fights came out of it, but no harm done. Then nearly everybody
drew some money off the skipper, and we smoked fifteen-cent cigars and
threw our chests out. We all went uptown, too, and took in the
theatres that night, and afterwards treated each other and pretty
nearly everybody else that we met along the East Side on the way back,
until the policemen began to notice us and ask if we didn't think we'd
better be getting back to our ships. One or two of the crew had to get
into fights with the toughs along the water front, but we were all
safely aboard by three o'clock in the morning.
All but Clancy. Some of us were trying to get some sleep along towards
morning when Clancy came aboard with a fine shore list. The cook, who
was up and stirring about for breakfast, noticed him first. "It's a
fine list you've got, Tommie."
"And why not?--and a fine beam wind coming down the street. I'm like a
lot of other deep-draught craft of good model, George--I sail best
with the wind abeam. A bit of a list gets you down to your lines." And
until we turned out for breakfast, after which it was time to be off
and away to the fleet again, he kept us all in a roar with the story
of his adventures.