It was fine summer weather, and John asked me how about a swordfishing
trip for a change. I said all right, and we got a chance in the
_Henriette_, and went down that same morning to Duncan's Wharf to go
aboard.
The _Henriette_ lay ready to go to sea, and John and I stood on the
string-piece and looked down on her deck and up at her mastheads. A
lumper hanging around Duncan's was standing near us.
I never knew a dock lumper that couldn't tell you all about everything.
"She is weak-built and pretty deep--I don't like to see them so deep,"
said this lumper. "And down by the head, too."
"Maybe you'd be deep if you were on'y thirteen tons net register an'
thirty tons of ice in you," said John.
And a proper answer. A man should always have a good word--even if he
don't more than half believe it himself--for the craft he's going to
sea in. At the same time I was thinking that I was having an eye to a
new, able fresh-halibuter--a big ninety-ton vessel--across the slip.