Three days after Johnnie Duncan fell out of Crow’s Nest the new Duncan vessel designed by Will Somers was towed around from Essex. She had been named the Johnnie Duncan. I spent the best part of the next three days watching the sparmakers and riggers at work on her. And when they had done with her and she fit to go to sea, she did look handsome. She had not quite the length of the new vessel of Sam Hollis’s, which lay at Withrow’s dock just below her, and that probably helped to give her a more powerful look to people that compared them. Too able-looking altogether to be real fast, some thought, to hold the Withrow vessel in anything short of a gale, but I didn’t feel so sure she wouldn’t sail in a moderate breeze, too. I had seen her on the stocks, and knew the beautiful lines below the water-mark. And she was going to carry the sail to drive her. I took particular pains to get the measurements of her mainmast while it lay on the dock under the shears. It was eighty-seven feet––and she only a hundred and ten feet over all––and 44 it stepped plumb in the middle of her, further forward than a mainmast was generally put in a fisherman. To that was shackled a seventy-five foot boom, and eighty-odd tons of pig-iron were cemented close down to her keel, and that floored over and stanchioned snug. For the rest, she was very narrow forward, as I think I said––everybody said she’d never stand the strain of her fore-rigging when they got to driving her on a long passage. And she carried an ungodly bowsprit––thirty-seven feet outboard––easily the longest bowsprit out of Gloucester. Topmasts to match, and there was some sail to drive a vessel. But she had the hull for it, full and yet easy, with the greatest beam pretty well aft of the mainmast, and she drew fifteen and a half feet of water.

I was still looking her over, her third day in the riggers’ and sailmakers’ hands, when Clancy came along.

“Handsome, ain’t she, and only needing a skipper and crew to be off on the Southern cruise, eh, Joe?”

“That’s all. And according to the talk, you’re to be the skipper.”

“Well, talk has another according coming to it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But what happened at Mrs. Arkell’s the other day?”

“What happened? Joe, but I was glad you 45 didn’t come with me. You’d have felt as I did about it, I know. There they were––the two of them––Hollis and Withrow––yes, Withrow there––when I broke in on them, and Maurice between them––drunk. Yes, sir, drunk and helpless. They called it a wine-party, as though a man couldn’t get as good and drunk on wine in a private residence as ever he could on whiskey or rum in the back room of a saloon. Well, sir, I asked a question or two, and they tried to face me out, but out they went––first Hollis, and then Withrow, one after the other, and both good and lively. And then Minnie Arkell popped in from her own house by way of the backyard. She didn’t expect to see me––I know she didn’t. Had gone over to her house when the men began to drink, she said, and had just come over to see granny.

“Well, I told her what I thought. ‘It means nothing to you,’ I said, ‘to see a man make a fool of himself––that’s been a good part of your business in life for some time, now––to see men make fools of themselves for you. Withrow had reasons for wanting him disgraced––never mind why. Sam Hollis, maybe, has his reasons too. And the two of them are being helped along by you. You could have stopped this thing here to-day, but you didn’t.’ ‘No, no, Tommie,’ she says. ‘Yes, yes,’ I went on, ‘and don’t try to tell me different. 46 If I didn’t know you since you were a little girl you might be able to convince me, but I know you. Maurice, when he was himself, passed you by. You were bound to have him. You know a real man, more’s the pity, when you see one, and you know that Maurice, young and green and soft as he is, has more life and dash than a dozen of the kind you’ve been mixing with lately.’

“Oh, but I laid it on, Joe. Yes. A shame to have to talk like that to a woman, but I just had to. I didn’t stop there. ‘You’re handsome, and you’re rich, Minnie Arkell; got a lot of life left in you yet, and go off travelling with people who get their names regularly in the Boston papers; but just the same, Minnie Arkell, there are women in jail not half so bad as you––women doing time who’ve done less mischief in the world than you have.’”

“Wasn’t that pretty rough, Tommie?”

“Rough? Lord, yes––but true, Joe, true. And if you’d only see poor Maurice lying there! Cried? I could’ve cried, Joe––not since my mother died did I come so near to it. But it was done.

“Well, I made Minnie go and get her grandmother. And, Joe, if you’d seen that fine old lady––oh, but she’s got a heart in her––stoop and put Maurice’s head on her bosom as if he 47 was a little child. ‘The poor, poor boy. No mother here,’ she said, ‘and the best man on earth might come to it. Leave him to me, Tommie.’ Lord, I could have knelt down at her feet––the heart in her, Joe.”

“And how has Maurice been since?”

“All right. That was the first time in his life that he was drunk. I think it will be his last. But let’s go aboard the Johnnie.”

After looking over the Johnnie Duncan and admiring her to our hearts’ content, we sat down in her cabin and began to talk of the seining season to come. Others came down and joined in––George Moore, Eddie Parsons among others––and they asked Clancy what he was going to do. Was he going to see about a chance to go seining, or what? Moore said he’s been waiting to see what Maurice Blake was going to do; but as it was beginning to look as though Maurice was done for, he guessed he’d take a look around. He asked Clancy what he thought, and Clancy said he didn’t know––time enough yet.

Maurice Blake himself dropped down then. He was looking better, and everybody was glad to see it. He’d quit drinking––that was certain; and now he was a picture of a man––not pretty, but strong-looking, with his eyes glowing and his skin flushing with the good blood inside him. He took 48 a seat on the lockers and began to whittle a block of soft pine into a model of a hull, and after a while, with a squint along the sheer of his little model, he asked if anybody had seen Tom O’Donnell or Wesley Marrs. Several said yes, they had, and he asked where, and when they told him he got up and said he guessed he’d go along––as he couldn’t get a vessel himself, he might as well see about a chance to go hand. “And as we’ve been together so much in times gone by, Tommie, and you, Eddie and George, what do you say if we go together now?”

“All right,” said Clancy, “but wait a minute––who’s that in the gangway?”

It turned out to be Johnnie Duncan. He had a fat bundle under his arm, and bundle and all Clancy took him up, tossed him into the air, said “All right again, Johnnie-boy?” and kissed him when he caught him down.

Johnnie started to undo his bundle. “I tell you it’s great to be out again––the way they kept me cooped up the last few days,” and then, cutting the string to hurry matters, opened the bundle and spread a handsome set of colors on the lockers. “The Johnnie Duncan’s,” said he. “I picked out the kind they were to be, but mummer worked the monograms herself. See, red and blue. And see that for an ensign! and the firm’s flag––and the 49 highs––look!––the J. A. D. twisted up the same as on the handkerchiefs we strained the coffee through last week. And the burgee––the letters on the burgee––my cousin Alice worked them. And these stars––see, on the ensign––mummer and my cousin both worked them. Gran’pa said the vessel ought to be sure a lucky one, and all she needs is an able master, he says, and if Captain Blake will take her he’ll be proud to have him sail the Johnnie Duncan–––”

Maurice Blake stood up. “Me?”

“Yes,” said Johnnie. “Gran’pa says that you can have her just as soon as you go to the Custom House and get your papers. There, I think I remembered it all, except of course that the colors are from me and mummer and my cousin Alice, and will you fly them for us?”

Maurice laid down his model and picked up the colors. Then he looked at Johnnie and said, “Thank you, Johnnie; and tell your mother, Johnnie, and your cousin, that I’ll fly the Johnnie Duncan’s colors––and stand by them––if ever it comes to standing by––till she goes under. Tell your grandfather that I’ll be proud to be master of his vessel and I’ll sail her the best I know how.”

“That’s you, Maurice,” said Clancy.

Maurice drew his hand across his eyes and sat down again. And as soon as they decently could, 50 Clancy, George Moore, and Eddie Parsons asked him if they might ship with him for the Southern cruise. Maurice said they very well knew that he’d be glad to have them. He asked me, too, he felt so good, and of course I jumped at the chance.