The Seiners Part 10

"Where's the steam trawler, the porgy boat, we saw yesterday?"

"Put into Chincoteague most likely--nearer than here."

"That's what we'll have to come to yet--steamers, and go on wages like a waiter in a hotel."

"Yes," said Clancy, "I s'pose so, but with vessels like we got and the seamen sailing out of Gloucester we'll stave 'em off a long time yet, and even as it is, give me a breeze and a vessel like this one under us and we'll beat out all the steam fishermen that ever turned a screw."

One of the latest experiments in a fishermen's model reached in then and her coming started a chorus. They were always trying new models in Gloucester, everybody was so anxious to have a winner. This one's sails were still white and pretty and her hull still s.h.i.+ny in fresh black paint. The red stripe along her rail and the gold stripe along her run set off her lines; her gear didn't have a speck on it, her spars were yellow as could be and to leeward we thought we could still smell the patent varnish. For that matter there were several there as new-looking as she was, our own vessel for one; but there had been a lot of talk about this one. She was going to clean out the fleet. She had been pretending to a lot, and as she hadn't yet made good, of course she got a great raking.

"She's here at last, boys--the yacht, the wonderful, marvellous Victory! Ain't she a bird? Built to beat the fleet! Look at the knockabout bow of her!"

"Knockabout googleums--h-yah! Scoop shovel snout and a stern ugly as a battle-s.h.i.+p's, and the Lord knows there was overhang and to spare to tail her out decent. Cut out the yellow and the red and the whole lot of gold decorations and she's as homely as a Newf'undland jack."

"Just the same, she c'n sail," said somebody who wanted to start an argument.

"Sail! Yah! might beat a Rockport granite sloop. Ever hear of the Henry Clay Parker, Mister Billie Simms, and the little licking she gave this winner of yours? No? Well, you want to go around and have a drink or two with the boys next time you're ash.o.r.e and get the news.

It was like a dogfish and a mackerel--the Henry just eat her up. And there's the others. Why, this one underneath us'd make a holy show of her, I'll bet. And there's half a dozen others. There's the--oh, what's the use?"

"Oh, Eddie Parsons, a perfect lady and coming in like a high-stepper and yet you must malign her beauty and make light of her virtue," and Clancy jammed Parsons's sou'wester down over his eyes--"hush up, Eddie."

Into the harbor and after the Victory heaved another one. And she was the real thing--handsome, fast and able. And she had a record for bringing the fish home--an able vessel and well-known for it. She could carry whole sails when some of the others were double-reefed and thinking of dragging trysails out of the hold. And her skipper was a wonder.

"You c'n cut all the others out--here comes the real thing. Here's the old dog himself. Did he ever miss a blow? And look at him. Every man comes in here to-day under four lowers, no more, and some under reefed mains'l, or trys'l, but four whole lowers ain't enough for this gentleman--not for Wesley. He must carry that gaff-tops'l if he pulls the planks out of her. He always brings her home, but if some of the underwriters'd see him out here they'd soon blacklist him till he mended his ways. It's a blessed wonder he ain't found bottom before this. Look at her now skating on her ear. There she goes--if they'd just lower a man over the weather rail with a line on him he could write his name on her keel!"

And she certainly was something to make a man's eyes stick out. There had been a vessel or two that staggered before, but the Lucy fairly rolled down into it, and there was no earthly reason why she should do it except that it pleased her skipper to sport that extra kite.

She boiled up from the end of the jetty, and her wake was the wake of a screw steamer. She had come from home, we knew, and so it happened she was one of the last to get in. The harbor was crowded as she straightened out. We knew she would not have too much leeway coming on, and what berth she was after kept everybody guessing.

"If she goes where's she pointing--and most vessels do--she'll find a berth down on the beach on that course, down about where the wreck is.

It'll be dry enough walking when she gets there. If she keeps on the gait she's going now, she ought to be able to fetch good and high and dry up on the mud. They'd cert'nly be able to step ash.o.r.e--when they get there. Ah-h-h, but that's more like it."

She was taking it over the quarter then. She cleared the stern of the most leeward of the fleet and then kicked off, heading over to where the Johnnie Duncan and the Victory lay. The betting was that she would round to and drop in between us two. There was room there, but only just room. It would be a close fit, but there was room.

But she didn't round to. She held straight on without the sign of a swerve. On the Johnnie, the gang being almost in her path picked out a course for her. Between the outer end of our seine-boat and the end of the bowsprit of the Mary Grace Adams was a pa.s.sage that may have been the width of a vessel. But the s.p.a.ce seemed too narrow. Our crew were wondering if he would try it. Even the skipper, standing in the companionway, stepped up on deck to have a better look.

"He's got to take it quarterin', and it ain't wide enough," said Eddie Parsons.

"Quartering--yes, but with everything hauled inboard," said the skipper. "He'll try it, I guess. I was with him for two years, and if he feels like trying it he'll try it."

"And s'pose he does try it, Skipper?"

"Oh, he'll come pretty near making it, though he stands a good chance to sc.r.a.pe the paint off our seine-boat going by. No, don't touch the seine-boat--let her be as she is. We'll fool 'em if they think they c'n jar anybody here coming on like that. There's room enough if nothing slips, and if they hit it's their lookout."

It looked like a narrow s.p.a.ce for a vessel of her beam to go through, but she hopped along, and the eyes of all the harbor followed her to the point where she must turn tail or make the pa.s.sage.

She held on--her chance to go back was gone.

"Watch her, boys. Now she's whooping--look at her come!"

And she was coming. Her windward side was lifted so high that her bottom planks could be seen. Her oil-skinned crew were crowded forward. There were men at the fore-halyards, at jib-halyards, at the down-hauls, and a group were standing by the anchor. Two men were at the wheel.

She bit into it. There was froth at her mouth. She was so near now that we could read the faces of her crew; and wide awake to this fine seamans.h.i.+p we all leaned over the rail, the better to see how she'd make out. The crews of half the vessels inside the Breakwater were watching her.

She was a length away and jumping to it. It was yet in doubt, but she was certainly rus.h.i.+ng to some sort of a finish. She rushed on, and w-r-r-rp! her weather bow came down on the Johnnie's seine-boat. But it didn't quite hit it. Her quarter to leeward just cut under the Adams' bowsprit and the leech of her mainsail seemed to flatten past.

For a moment we were not certain, but no jolt or lurch came and our seine-boat seemed all right. Another jump and she was clear by. And then we felt like cheering her, and her skipper Wesley Marrs, too, as he stood to the wheel and sung out, "Couldn't scare you, could I, Maurice. I thought you'd haul your seine-boat in. I've got your extra seine," and swept by.

From our deck and from the deck of the Adams, and from the decks of half a dozen others, could be heard murmurs, and there was a general pointing out of the redoubtable skipper himself to the green hands that knew him only by reputation. "That's him, Wesley himself--the stocky little man of the two at the wheel."

If the stocky little man heard the hails that were sent after him, he made no sign, unless a faint dipping of his sou'wester back over his windward shoulder was his way of showing it.

He had business yet, had Wesley Marrs. There was a tug and a barge and another big seiner in his course. He clipped the tug, sc.r.a.ped the barge, and set the seiner's boat a-dancing, and two lengths more he put down the wheel and threw her gracefully into the wind. Down came jib, down came jumbo, over splashed the anchor. She ran forward a little, rattled back a link or two, steadied herself, and there she was. Her big mainsail was yet shaking in the wind, her gaff-topsail yet fluttering aloft, but she herself, the Lucy Foster of Gloucester, was at your service. "And what do you think of her, people?" might just as well have been shot off her deck through a megaphone, for that was what her bearing and the unnatural smartness of her crew plainly were saying.

We all drew breath again. Clancy unbent from the rail and shook his head in high approval. He took off his sou'wester, slatted it over the after-bitt to clear the brim of water, and spoke his mind. "You'll see nothing cleaner than that in this harbor to-day, fellows, and you'll see some pretty fair work at that. That fellow--he's an able seaman."

"Yes, sir--an able seaman," said the skipper also.

And Clancy and the skipper were something in the line of able seamen themselves.

XIII

WESLEY MARRS BRINGS A MESSAGE

Generally a day in harbor is a day of loafing for the crew of a seiner; but it was not so altogether with us that day. Within two hours of the time that Wesley Marrs came in to the Breakwater in such slas.h.i.+ng style the skipper had us into the seine-boat and on the way to the Lucy Foster. By his orders we took along ten empty mackerel barrels. "We'll go over to the beach first and fill these barrels up with sand." We all knew what the sand was for--the Johnnie Duncan was going to be put in trim to do her best sailing. Coming down the coast the skipper and Clancy decided that she was down by the stern a trifle.

So we attended to the sand, and on the way back hauled our second seine out of the hold of the Lucy Foster, and piled it into the seine-boat. With the last of the twine into the seine-boat and just as we were about to push off from the Lucy, Wesley Marrs put a foot on the rail of his vessel and spoke to Maurice.

"And when I was taking the last of that aboard in the dock in Gloucester, you wouldn't believe who it was stepped onto the cap-log and looking down on the deck of the Lucy says, 'And you'll take good care of that seine for Captain Blake, won't you, Captain Marrs?' Could you guess now, Maurice?"

"No," said Maurice.

"No, I'll bet you can't. It isn't often she comes down the dock. Miss Foster no less. 'And what makes you think I won't?' I asks her. 'Oh, of course I know you will,' she says, 'and deliver it to him in good order, too.' 'I'll try,' I says, as though it was a desp'rate job I had on hand--to put a seine in the hold and turn it over to another vessel when I met her. 'But what makes you worry about this partic'lar seine, Miss Foster?' I asks."

"Which Miss Foster was it, Wesley--the one your vessel is named after?" broke in our skipper.

"No--no--but the younger one--Alice. 'But what makes you worry?' I asks her, and she didn't say anything, but that one that's with her all the time--the one that goes with the lad that designed the Johnnie Duncan----"

"Joe's cousin here----"

"That's it--the fat little Buckley girl--a fine girl too. And if I was a younger man and looking for a wife, there's the kind for me--but anyway she up and says, 'Alice is worried, Captain Marrs, because she owns a third of Captain Blake's vessel--a good part of her little fortune's in the Duncan--and if anything happens to the seine one-third of it, of course, comes out of her. And it cost a good many hundred dollars. So you must be careful.' 'Oh, that's it?' says I.

'Then it'll be shortened sail and extra careful watches on the Lucy till I meet Maurice, for I mustn't lose any property of Miss Foster's.'"

We rowed away from the Lucy Foster, and I supposed that was the end of it. But that night going on deck to take a last look at the stars before turning in, there was the skipper and Clancy walking the break and talking.

"And did you know, Tommie, that Miss Foster owned any of this one?"

the skipper was saying.