We were high line of the seining fleet when we got home from the
Southern cruise and we felt pretty proud of ourselves. It was
something to stand on the corner on one of the days when the Johnnie
was fitting out again, and have other fellows come up to you and say,
"What's that they say you fellows shared on the Southern trip?" And
when we'd tell them, and we trying not to throw out our chests too
much, it was fine to hear them say, "That so? Lord, but that's great.
Well, if Maurice only holds out he'll make a great season of it, won't
he?"
"Oh, he'll hold out," we'd say, and lead the way down to the Anchorage
or some other place for a drink or a cigar, for of course, with the
money we'd made, we naturally felt like spending some of it on those
who were not doing so well. And of course, too, no seiner could ever
resist anybody who talks to him in a nice friendly way like that.
The skipper's doings ashore interested all of his crew, of course,
although me, perhaps, more than anybody else, unless it was Clancy. I
got pretty regular bulletins from my cousin Nell. She was for the
skipper, first, last and all the time.
"I like him," she said to me more than a dozen times. "I do like him,
but I never imagined that a man who does so well at sea could shrink
into himself as he does. Why, you almost have to haul him out by the
ears ashore. If it weren't for me I really believe--" and she
stopped.
But I thought I understood what she meant. "Meaning your chum, Alice
Foster?" I said.
"Yes, meaning my chum, Alice Foster. Why?"
"Oh, I don't know. Sometimes I think she's a kind of a frost."
"No, she isn't a frost, and don't you come around here again and tell
me so."
Nor did I, for I would not have an argument with Nell for all the
Alice Fosters in the world, for if Nell were anybody else but my first
cousin, I think I would have fallen in love with her myself.
And then we put out to sea and again we were living the life of
seiners, having it hard and easy in streaks. There were the times when
we went along for a week and did not do a tap but eat, sleep, stand a
trick at the wheel, a watch to the mast-head, and skylark around the
deck, and read, or have a quiet game of draw or whist or seven-up
below. But again there were times when we were on fish, and our
skipper being a driver, it was jump, jump, jump for a week on end.
There was that time in August when the fish were so plentiful on
Georges Bank, when, standing to the mast-head, you could see nothing
but mackerel schooling for fifteen or twenty miles either side of the
vessel. But, oh, they were wild! A dozen times we'd heave the
seine--put off from the vessel, put out that two hundred and odd
fathom of twine, drive seine-boat and dory to the limit, purse in--and
not so much as a single mackerel caught by the gills. That happened
fifteen or twenty times some days, maybe. We got our fill of sets that
month. But then again there was a week off Cape Cod and in the Bay of
Fundy and off the Maine coast when we ran them fresh to Boston market,
when we landed more mackerel it was said in a single week than was
ever landed before by one vessel. We were five days and five nights
that time without seeing our bunks. It was forever out and after them,
heave the seine, purse up and bail in, ice some, and dress the rest
along the way, and the vessel with everything on driving for Boston.
We stood to it that week, you may be sure, until coming on the fifth
day some of us fell asleep over the keelers as the Johnnie was coming
into T Wharf. I remember that I could just barely see in a kind of a
hazy way the row of people along the cap-log when we made fast. And
yet after that we had to hoist them out of the hold and onto the dock.
That day, going out again, the skipper made all but the watch and
himself turn in. That afternoon, when everybody had had a little kink,
the skipper himself, who had been under a heavier strain than any of
us, suddenly fell backward over the house and sound asleep. And there
he lay all the rest of that day and that night.
After ten or twelve hours of it we tried to wake him, but not a budge.
We tried again, but no use. At last he came to and without any help at
all. Sitting up, he asked where we were, and being told, he said
nothing for a moment or so, and then suddenly--"That so? How long was
I asleep?" We told him--seventeen hours. "Good Lord!" he groaned, and
after a mug-up scooted for the mast-head like a factory hand with the
seven o'clock whistle blowing. "He's a fisherman, the skipper," said
the gang as they watched him climb the rigging.
And he was a fisherman. All that summer he drove things with but
little time for us ashore. Twice he put into Gloucester with a day to
ourselves and another time we had a chance to run down after we had
put into Boston for market, and that we suspected was because the
skipper found he could not keep away himself any longer. Things, we
judged, were going pretty well with him in Gloucester. He did not
pretend any longer now that he was not interested in Miss Foster, and
from my cousin Nell I got occasional hints, most of which I confided
to Clancy, who explained them as if they were so many parables.
"It'll be all right," said Clancy, "if only Minnie Arkell stands
clear. I'm glad she's away for the summer, but she'll turn up in the
fall. You'll see her just before the race large as life, and some of
her swell-dressed friends, and a yacht, I'll bet."
Considering how deeply the skipper was interested in Miss Foster, some
of us thought he ought to be putting in a little time ashore between
trips. After a run into the Boston fresh fish market, say, we would
have liked mighty well to take in the theatre, or a trip to the beach,
or some other little entertainment of a night. But no, it was in and
out--drive, drive, drive.
He was all ambition, the skipper. He was going to be up front or break
something. Miss Foster was one of the ambitious kind, too. If she was
going to have a fisherman, he would have to be a killer or she would
know why. And so I suppose that had a lot to do with the way the
skipper drove things.
We had our loafing spells, as I say, but mostly it was plenty of work.
That time when we stayed awake for five days and nights was not the
only one. Another time our legs swelled up and the blood came out of
the ends of our fingers with standing up to the keelers and dressing
fish without rest. But, Lord, nobody minded that. After we'd got
rested up we felt better than ever.
We had good luck generally. We lost neither men nor gear to amount to
anything that summer. That seine we lost trying for our first school
to the s'uth'ard in the spring was the only bit of misfortune that
came, and we had long ago made up for that. But others were not so
lucky. There was the loss of the Ruth Ripley, Pitt Ripley's vessel. I
think I have said that she was a fast vessel. She was fast--fast, but
of the cranky type. We were jogging along a little to windward of her
one fine afternoon--it had been a fine September day and now it was
coming on to evening. To the westward of Cape Sable, in the Bay of
Fundy, it was, and no hint of a blow up to within a few minutes of the
time when the squall struck the Ruth. I suppose it would have been
more prudent on Pitt's part if he had had less sail on, but like most
of the skippers in the fleet I guess he was not looking for any record
for prudence. Any minute he might have to be up and driving her, and
keeping sail on was the quickest way to have it when you needed it in
a hurry. The squall hit her--it hit us, too, but we saw it coming and
met it and beyond washing a few keelers overboard, when she rolled
down, no harm was done to the Johnnie. On the Ripley, I suppose, they
saw it too, but the Ripley and the Duncan were not the same class of
vessel by any means. She went over--hove down, with her foremast under
water to the cross-trees almost.
Most of her crew were below at the time, some in their bunks. Four or
five of those below never reached the deck at all--the water rushing
down the companionways cut them off. Some rushed aft where the stern
was high out of water and some piled into the rigging. Some were
calling out and giving advice to others. We could hear them plainly.
Two jumped to the wheel and threw it up, but she would not right.
We had the Johnnie to keep right side up, but we saw the whole thing.
It could not have been more than two or three minutes from the time
the squall struck her when she was going down head-first. Those of her
crew who had gone to the stern were going with her, but those who had
taken to the rigging, by leaping wide came clear. Their seine-boat,
which had been towing astern, might have been of use to them, but
being fast to the vessel by the painter it was pretty well filled with
water before anybody had a chance to cut the painter. The man that
cut it went down with the vessel. He was all right, whoever he was.
Those in the water were looking about for the dory, and found that
half full of water, too. They were trying to bail the water out of the
dory, after hauling it across the bow of the submerged seine-boat,
when we got them in our seine-boat and picked up what was left of
them.
Nine of them were lost, her skipper among them. One of the men
saved--the cook--said that when the squall struck the vessel, Captain
Ripley had been seen to jump for the boom tackle, which he unhitched,
and then to spring for the lashings of the dory, which he cut with his
knife. The cook also said that he thought the skipper lost his life
because of the half-stunning blow that he must have received from the
fore-boom while he was on the rail trying to free the dory. The vessel
was sinking all the time and it being dark--or near it in the
squall--I suppose Captain Ripley could not watch everything. No doubt,
it was the fore-boom hit him and knocked him overboard. Certainly he
was knocked overboard, and the last seen of him he was swimming and
pushing an empty barrel before him to one of the crew. "Keep your
nerve up," he called to the cook, and after that he suddenly
disappeared. He got a man's death, anyway.
We rowed back to the Duncan with the survivors. Nine men gone--it was
a hard story to take home with us, but we had it to do. It was all a
part of fishing life, and so we put back for Gloucester.