The Seiners Part 8

Some of us hollered--we were afraid that it was all up with both of them--that they would be thrown toward the inside and tangled up in the seine. But both of them bobbed up, the skipper saying nothing, but Clancy sputtering like a crazy man. The dories coming loose gave a few of us a chance to climb up on the bottom of them, and when the seine-boat came bobbing up most of the others climbed up on the bottom of that. And there was some swearing done then, you may be sure! The gang would have been all right then, waiting to be picked up by the cook from the vessel, which was then pretty handy; but the seine-boat started to go under again and then came the slap of a little sea, and overboard went seven or eight of us. Clancy was one of those thrown into the water. We all remembered it afterwards because he called out for Andie Howe.

"Where's Andie?"

"Here," said Andie.

"Where?"

"Hanging onto the bow of the seine-boat."

"Well, hang on a while longer," said Clancy and struck out for the vessel, and made it too, oilskins, big boots and all. He threw two or three lines out at once--one especially to Thad Simpson, the other man of the crew besides Andie Howe who it was known couldn't swim. So Clancy hauled him in. The third man he hauled in was Billie Hurd.

"Good Lord, Tommie," said Billie, "you hove a line over my head to Andie Howe."

"You pop-eyed Spanish mackerel!" roared Clancy at him, "you ought to know by this time that Andie can't swim."

"I know, but he was all oiled up, and look at me----"

"Go to h.e.l.l," said Clancy.

We all got aboard after a while, but our fine new seine was gone, and the big school of fish too. After a hard grapple we got the dories and a little later the seine-boat, and after a lot more work we got them right side up. The dories we pulled the plugs out of to let them drain and then took them on deck, but the seine-boat we had to pump out. By then it was pretty well on in the night and I remember how the moon rose just as we had it fairly well dried out and dropped astern--rose as big as a barrel-head and threw a yellow light over it, and then went out of sight, for a breeze was on us.

And "Oh, Lord! that thousand-barrel school!" groaned everybody.

XI

AN OVER-NIGHT BREEZE

It wasn't bad enough that we came near losing a few men and our boat, and our seine altogether, but it must come on to breeze up on top of that and drive us off the grounds. After putting everything to rights, we were having a mug-up forward and wondering if the skipper would take sail off her or what, when we heard the call that settled it.

"On deck everybody!" we heard. And when we got there, came from the skipper, "Take in the balloon, tie it up and put it below. Haul down your stays'l too--and go aloft a couple of you, fore and aft, and put the tops'ls in gaskets."

We attended to that--a gang out on the bowsprit, half a dozen aloft and so on--with the skipper to the wheel while it was being done. When we had finished it was, "Haul the seine-boat alongside--pump out what water's left." Then, "Shift that painter and hook on the big painter.

Drop her astern and give her plenty of line. Where's the dorymen?

Where's Tommie and Joe? Haul the dories into the hatch, Tommie, and make 'em fast. Gripe 'em good while you're at it. Clear the deck of all loose gear--put it below, all of it--keelers, everything. Maybe 'twon't be much of a blow, but there's no telling--it may. She mayn't be the kind that washes everything over, but put it all safe anyway."

The skipper watched all this until he had seen everything cleared up and heard "All fast the dory," from the waist. Then he looked up and took note of sky and wind. "Don't feel any too good. Maybe 'twill blow off, but we might's well run in. We'll have to wait for our other seine anyway and Wesley will be sure to put into the Breakwater for news on his way down, especially if it comes to blow."

He dropped below then to light his pipe. Seeing me and Parsons, with me trying to fix up Parsons's leg where it had been gashed--Eddie never knew how--in the mix-up of the evening, the skipper said, "There's some liniment in the chest and some linen in one of the drawers under my bunk. Get it. And some of you might's well turn in and have a nap. She'll be all right--the watch and myself can look after her now," and he went on deck again, puffing like an engine to keep his pipe going.

Most of them did turn in and were soon asleep. Some of the older men had a smoke and an overhauling of their wet clothes, while a few joined in a little game of draw before turning in. One or two were deploring the loss of the seine. The nearness to losing lives didn't seem to be worrying anybody. For myself, I was somewhat worked up.

There was one time in the water when I thought I was gone. So I went on deck after the skipper. It was a black night and breezing all the time and I wanted to see how the vessel behaved. The Johnnie was close-hauled at this time and swashing under, and I knew without asking further that the skipper intended to make Delaware Breakwater.

While hurrying forward, after lending a hand to batten down the main hatch--the Johnnie plunging along all the time--and my head perhaps a little too high in the air, I stumbled off the break and plump over a man under the windward rail. I thought I was going to leeward and maybe overboard, but somebody hooked onto the full in the back of my oil-jacket, hauled me up the inclined deck again, and in a roaring whisper said, "Get a hold here, Joey--here's a ring-bolt for you.

Don't let go on your life! Isn't it fine?" It was Clancy. He had nights, I know, when he couldn't sleep, and like me, I suppose, he wanted to watch the sea, which just then was firing grandly. Into this sea the vessel was diving--nose first--bringing her bowsprit down, down, down, and then up, up, up, until her thirty-seven-foot bowsprit would be pointing to where the North star should be. Whenever she heaved like that I could feel her deck swelling under me. I remember when I used to play foot-ball at the high school at home and it was getting handy to a touch-down, with perhaps only a few yards to gain and the other side braced to stop it, that a fellow playing back had to buck like that from under a line when he had to scatter tons, or what he thought was tons, of people on top of him. The vessel was that way now, only with every dive she had hundreds of tons to lift from under. At a time like that you can feel the ribs of a vessel brace within her just as if she was human. Now I could almost feel her heart pumping and her lungs pounding somewhere inside. I could feel her brace to meet it, feel her shiver, as if she was scared half to death, and almost hear her screech like a winner every time she cleared it and threw it over her head.

Now down she went--the Johnnie Duncan--down and forward, for she wouldn't be held back--shoulders and breast slap into it. Clear to her waist she went, fighting the sea from her. To either side were tumbling the broken waves, curling away like beach combers. The hollow of each was a curved sheet of electric white, and the top--the crest--was a heavier, hotter white. The crests would rise above our rail and break, and back into the hollows would fall a shower of shooting stars that almost sizzled. There wasn't a star above, but millions on the water!

"Ever see anything like that ash.o.r.e, Joey-boy?" said Clancy, and I had to roar a whisper that I never had.

Through this play of fire the Johnnie leaped with great bounds. She boiled her way, and astern she left a wake in which the seine-boat was rearing and diving with a fine little independent trail of its own.

Two men forward--the watch--were leaning over the windla.s.s and peering into the night. They were there for whatever they might see, but particularly were they looking for the double white light of Five Fathom Bank lightship. The skipper was at the wheel. When he got in the way of the cabin light, we could catch the shine from his dripping oil-clothes, and the spark from his pipe--which he kept going through it all--marked his position when he stepped back into the darkness.

Clancy noticed him. "There's a man for you, Joey. Think what it meant to a young skipper with a new vessel--the loss of that school and the seine on top of it the very first day he struck fish. If we'd got that, he might have been the first vessel of the year into the New York market. And think of the price the first fish fetch!--and the honor of it--and he breaking his heart to make a reputation this year.

And yet not a yip out of him--not a cranky word to one of the gang all night. A great man I call him--and a fisherman." I thought so, too.

Sometimes I imagined I could see the wink of red and green lights abreast and astern, which I probably did, for there should have been fifty sail or so of seiners inside and outside of us--there were sixty sail of the fleet in sight that afternoon--and I knew that, barring a possible few that had got fish and were driving for the New York market, all the others were like ourselves, under lower sails and boring into it, with extra lookout forward, the skipper at the wheel or on the quarter and all ears and eyes for the surf and lights insh.o.r.e when we should get there.

"Something ahead! dead ahead! sa-ail!" came suddenly from forward.

There was a sc.r.a.ping of boot-heels at the wheel. "What d'y'make of it?--all right, I see her!" In the shadow we saw the skipper pulling the wheel down. Ahead I imagined I saw a dark patch, but to make sure I squirmed up to the fore-rigging. Whoever she was, the light from her cabin skylight was right there and I realized that we were pretty close, but not really how close until a boat bobbed up under my jaws almost. Right from under our bow it heaved. It was a seiner and that was her seine-boat towing astern, and I could easily have heaved a line to her helmsman as we swept by her. There was an awfully tall shadow of sails--half up to the clouds I thought--and the black of the hull looked as long as a dock. A voice was hurled to us, but we couldn't quite make it out--but it was the watch, probably, saying a word or two by way of easing his feelings.

We worked up to the windward of that one and slowly crowded past her tumbling green light. Then the skipper let the wheel fly up and we shot ahead and soon we had her directly astern, with her one green and one red eye looking after us. "That's one fellow we outsail," thought I to myself, and I knew I was beginning to love the Johnnie Duncan.

All through that night it went on like that.

At four o'clock or so in the morning the cook stuck his head out of the slit in the forec's'le companionway and spoke his welcome little piece. "Can't have any reg'lar sit-down this morning, boys. Have to leave the china in the becket for a while yet, but all that wants can make a mug-up, and when we get inside--if we do in anything like a decent hour--we'll have breakfast."

At five o'clock the sky began to brighten to the eastward, but there was no let-up to the wind or sea. If anything it was breezing up. At six o'clock, when the short blasts of the lightship split the air abreast of us, things were good and lively, but there was no daylight to go by then. The wash that in the night only buried her bow good was then coming over her to the foremast and filling the gangway between the house and rail as it raced aft. The beauty of double-lashing the dories began to appear, and all hands might have been towing astern all night by the look of them. But the Johnnie Duncan was doing well and the opinion of the crew generally was that the skipper could slap every rag to her and she'd carry it--that is, if she had to. The skipper put her more westerly after we had pa.s.sed the lightship and on we went.

We had the company of a couple of coasters in this part of the drive; and by that, if nothing else, a man might know we were insh.o.r.e. Some Gloucester men were in sight, too, though most of the fleet, we guessed, were still outside of us. The coasters were colliers, three-masters both, and reefed down, wallowing in the sea. One had her foretopmast snapped short off, and such patched sails as she had on looked lonesome. The gang, of course, had to make fun of her.

"There's one way to house a topm'st!"

"Broke your clothes-pole, old girl!"

"Better take in your washing there--looks like rain!"

"Go it, you beauty! I only wish I had my cameraw. If y'only suspected how lovely you look!"

Two big ocean tugs, one clear white and one all black, offered a change in looks, though in nothing else, for each one, with two barges of coal, was making desperate hauling of it, and the Breakwater yet a good bit away.

"Hustle 'em, you husky coal-jammers!" roared Parsons at them, as if he could be heard beyond the rail. "I wouldn't be aboard of you for my share of the Southern trip--and mackerel away up in G, too. Would you, Billie?"

"Then? Naw!" said Hurd, with a wrinkling of his little nose.

"No, nor me neither," said Long Steve. "Hi--ever hear the cook--ever hear George Moore's song:--

'If ever you go to sea, my boy, Don't ever you ship on a steamer; There's stacks to sc.r.a.pe and rails to paint-- It's always work to clean her.

When the wind is wrong and the sh.o.r.e is by, They'll keep you clear of leeway, But they roll and they jolt and they're never dry-- They're the devil's own in a sea-way!'"

Steve, trying to sing that, had one hand hooked into a ring-bolt under the rail and he was slowly pickling--we were all pickling--like a salted mackerel in a barrel.

An hour past Five Fathom and the tall white tower of Cape Henlopen could be made out ahead, as well as the gray tower of Cape May through the mists to the northward. The wind was coming faster and it felt heavier. We could judge best of how we were looking ourselves by watching all our fellows near by. We could see to the bottom planks of two to leeward of us, while on the sloping deck of one to windward it was plain that only what was lashed or bolted was still there. When they reared they almost stood up straight, and when they scooped into it the wonder was that all the water taken aboard didn't hold her until the next comber could have a fair whack at her.

The men--that is, a few of them--might joke, but were all glad to be getting in. There's no fun staying wet and getting wetter all night long. If it wasn't for the wetness of a fellow it would have been great, for it was the finest kind of excitement, our running to harbor--that night--especially in the morning when we were pa.s.sing three or four and n.o.body pa.s.sing us. We went by one fellow--the Martinet she was--a fair enough sailer--pa.s.sed her to windward of course, our gang looking across at their gang and n.o.body saying a word, but everybody thinking a lot, you may be sure. It was worth a square meal that.