The morning after the race I was eating breakfast at home and I could
not remember when I enjoyed a meal like that one. I had had a fine
long sleep and the sleep that comes to a man after he's been through a
long and exciting experience does make him feel like a world-beater. I
felt that I could go out and about leap the length of a seine-boat or
rip up a plank sidewalk. It was worth while to be alive, and
everything tasted so good.
I had put away six fried eggs and about fourteen of those little
slices of bacon before I even thought of slacking up (with my mother
piling them up as fast as I lifted them off)--and maybe I wouldn't
have slacked then only my cousin Nell came skipping in.
She kissed my mother half a dozen times, and danced around the room.
"Four vessels off the Johnnie Duncan's model have already been
ordered. Four, auntie--four. There will be a fleet of them yet, you'll
see. And how are you, Joe?"
"Fine," I said, and kept on eating.
Nell didn't like my not noticing how glad she was feeling, I suppose,
for all at once, as I was about to sugar another cup of coffee, she
ran her hands through my hair and yanked till I couldn't pretend any
longer.
"There, now, with your mind off your stomach, perhaps you'll look up
and converse when a lady deigns to notice you. How much money did Mr.
Withrow lose on the race?"
"I don't know, but it was a good pile; I know that."
"And how much did Mr. Duncan win?"
"I don't know that, either; but I hope it was a good roll, for he won
about all Withrow lost."
"M-m--but aren't you in love with your old employer? But let's not
mind common money matters. What do you think of the Johnnie Duncan for
a vessel?"
"She's a dog--a dog."
"Isn't she! And the fastest, able-est and the handsomest vessel that
ever sailed past Eastern Point, isn't she?"
"That's what she is."
"And who designed her?"
"Who? Let me see. Oh, yes, some local man."
"You don't know! Look up here. Who designed her!"
"Oh, yes. 'Twas a Gloucester man."
"A Gloucester man? Look up again.
Now--who--de--signed--the--John--nie--Dun--can!"
"Ouch, yes. A ver-y fine and a-ble--and handsome gen-tle-man--a
wonderful man."
"That's a little better. And his name?"
"William Somers--William the Illustrious--William the First--'First in
war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of Gloucestermen'--and if
you let me stand up, I'll do a break-down to show you how glad I am."
"Now you're showing something like appreciation. And now where do you
suppose your friend Clancy is and your skipper?"
"Clancy? Lord knows. Maybe in a circle of admiring friends, singing
whatever is his latest. 'Hove flat down' was the last I heard. If it
was earlier in the day--about three in the morning--it would be pretty
sure to be that."
"What a pity, and he such a fine man otherwise!"
"What's a pity?"
"Why, his getting drunk, as I hear he does very often."
"Gets drunk? Who gets drunk? Clancy? That's news to me. As long as
I've known him I never saw him drunk yet. He gets mellow and
loose--but drunk! Clancy drunk? Why, Nell!"
"Oh, well, all right, he's an apostle of temperance then. But Captain
Blake--where is he?"
"I couldn't say--why?"
"I have a message for him."
"Did you try his boarding-house?"
"Yes. That is, Will did, and he wasn't there, hadn't been there at
all, they said, since the afternoon before."
"That so? Where else did you try? Duncan's office?"
"We did, and no word of him there."
"Try Clancy's boarding-house?"
"Yes, and no word."
"Try--h-m--the Anchorage?"
"Oh, Joe, you don't think he's been loafing there since?"
"No, I don't. And yet after the way he got turned down yesterday, you
know--there's no telling what a man might do."
"Well, Will looked in there, too."
"You fat little fox! Why didn't you say that at first? And no word?"
"No."
"Well, I don't know where he'd be then."
"Nor I, except--did you notice the wind has hauled to the northwest?"
"I did."
"Well. Do you know that old vessel that Mr. Withrow's been trying to
get a crew for--the Flamingo?"
"M-h-h."
"Well, this morning early she went out--on a hand-lining trip to the
east'ard, it is said. And Will says that he thinks--he doesn't know,
mind you, because they won't tell him anything down to Withrow's--but
he thinks that Maurice Blake's shipped in her."
"Wow! She won't last out one good breeze on the Banks."
"That is just what Will said. And it's too bad, for I had a message
for him--a message that would make everything all right. I suppose you
can guess?"
"Guess? H-m-m--I don't know as I want to."
"Well, don't get mad about it, anyway. How would you feel if you saw
that horrid Minnie Arkell rush up and--Oh, you know what I mean.
However, I've been pleading with Alice since yesterday afternoon. For
two hours I was up in her room last evening, and poor Will walking the
veranda down below. I put Captain Blake's case as I thought a friend
of his would put it--as you would put it, say--perhaps better in some
ways--for I could not forget that he sailed the Johnnie Duncan
yesterday, and her winning meant so much to Will. Yes, and I'm not
forgetting Clancy and the rest of her crew--indeed, I'm not--I felt as
though I could kiss every one of them."
"Well, here's one of them."
"Don't get saucy because your mother is standing by. Go and find
Maurice Blake. Go ahead, won't you, Joe? Tell him that everything is
all right. She is proud."
"That's a nice sounding word for it--pride. Stuck on herself is what
I'd say."
"No, she isn't. You must allow a woman self-respect, you know."
"I guess so. And it must be her long suit, seeing she's always leading
from it."
"Oh, keep your fishermen's jokes for the mugging-up times on your
vessel. You go and get Maurice Blake--or find Mr. Clancy and have him
get him--if he hasn't gone on the Flamingo."
So I went out. On a cruise along the water front I found a whole
lot of people. I saw Wesley Marrs and Tommie Ohlsen--sorrowful and
neither saying much--looking after their vessels--Ohlsen seeing to a
new gaff. "I ought to've lost," said Ohlsen. "Look at that for a
rotten piece of wood." Sam Hollis was around, too, trying to explain
how it was he didn't win the race. But he couldn't explain to
anybody's satisfaction how his stays'l went nor why he hove-to when
that squall struck him--the same squall that shot the Johnnie
Duncan across the line. Tom O'Donnell was there, looking down on the
deck of the vessel in which he took so much pride. "Two holes in
her deck where her spars ought to be," he was saying when I came
along. I asked him if he had seen Maurice that morning, and it was
from him I learned for certain that Maurice had shipped on the
Flamingo. "I didn't see her leaving, boy, but Withrow himself told
me this morning. 'And I hope he'll never come back,' he said at the
same time. ''Tis you that takes a licking hard. But maybe 'tis the
insurance,' I says. 'If that's what you're thinking,' says he, 'she
isn't insured.' 'Then it must be the divil's own repair she's in
when no company at all will insure her,' I says. Sure, we had hard
words over it, but that won't bring back Maurice--he's gone in the
Flamingo, Joe."
I went after Clancy then, and after a long chase, that took me to
Boston and back, I caught up with him. He was full of repentance and
was gloomy. It was up in his boarding-house--in his room. He, looking
tired, was thinking of taking a kink of sleep.
"Hulloh, Joe! And I don't wonder you look surprised, Joe. I must be
getting old. Thursday morning I got up after as fine a night's sleep
as a man'd want. That was Thursday. Then Thursday night, Friday,
Friday night, Saturday--two nights and three days, and I'm sleepy
already. Sleepy, Joe, and I remember the time I could go a whole week,
and then, after a good night's sleep, wake up fine and daisy and be
ready for another week. Joe, there's a moral in that if you can only
work it out."
Clancy stayed silent after that, not inclined to talk, I could see,
until I told him about Maurice having shipped in the Flamingo and the
hard crew that had gone in her.
That stirred him. "Great Lord, gone in that shoe-box! Why, Joe, I'd as
soon put to sea in a market basket calked with butter. And the man
that's got her--Dave Warner! He's crazy, Joe, if ever a man was crazy.
Clean out of his head over a girl that he met in Gloucester once, but
now living in Halifax, and she won't have anything to do with him.
He's daffy over her. If she was drowning alongside you'd curse your
luck because you had to gaff her in. That is, you would only she's a
woman, of course. Wants to get lost, Joe, I believe--wants to! If this
was Boston or New York and in older days, I'd say that Dave and
Withrow must have shanghaied a crew to man the Flamingo's kind. But
you c'n get men here to go in anything sometimes. Wait a bit and I'll
be along with you. We'll see old Duncan and maybe we c'n head the
Flamingo off."