All the long winter the “Polly J.” had slept snugly in Gloucester Harbor,
rigging unrove and everything snug aloft that the wind could freeze or
the ice could chafe. Careful eyes had watched her as she swung at her
moorings, and rugged hands had gripped the familiar gear as the skipper
or some of the men had made their periodical visits. But however gray
and desolate she loomed, with her topmasts housed and the black lines of
ratline and stay across the brightening sky, nothing could hide the saucy
cut-under of the bow and the long, free sweep of the rail.
The afternoon sun of March melted the snow on the south slopes of the
fish-sheds, and great gray-and-green patches came out here and there
against the endless white.
A brisk breeze, with a touch of the spring, blew up from the south, and
the “Polly,” heedless of the tide, turned her head to it, sniffing and
breathing it, bobbing and jerking nervously at her anchor, impatient to
be dressed in her cloud of canvas, and away where the wind blows free and
the curl dashes high under the forefoot.