The rest of that morning, between leaving Clancy and getting back to the dock again, I spent in cleaning up and overhauling my home outfit. My mother couldn’t be made to believe that store bedding was of much use––and she was right, I guess––and so a warranted mattress and blankets and comforters and a pillow were made into a bundle and thrown onto a waiting wagon. Then it was good-by to all––good-by to my cousin Nell, who had come over from her house, good-by and a kiss for her little sister––late for school she was, but didn’t care she said––and then good-by to my mother. That took longer. Then it was into the wagon with my bedding and off to the dock.

At Duncan’s store I had charged up to me such other stuff as I needed: Two suits of oilskins, yellow and black, two sou’westers, heavy and light, two blue-gray flannel shirts, a black sweater, a pair of rubber boots, two pairs of woollen mitts and 62 four pairs of cotton mitts, five pounds of smoking tobacco, a new pipe, and so on. When I had all my stuff tied up, I swung up abreast of Clancy and together we headed for the end of Duncan’s dock, where the Johnnie Duncan lay.

Quite a fleet went out ahead of us that morning. Being a new vessel, there was a lot of things that were not ready until the last minute. And then there was the new foretopmast––promised at nine o’clock it was––not slung and stayed up until after ten. And then our second seine, which finally we had to leave for Wesley Marrs to take next morning. And there were the usual two or three men late. Clancy and Andie Howe went up to have a farewell drink and were gone so long that the skipper sent me after them. I found them both in the Anchorage, where Clancy had met a man he hadn’t seen for ten years––an old dory-mate––thought he was lost five years before in the West Indies. “But here he is, fine and handsome. Another little touch all around and a cigar for Joe, and we’re off for the Southern cruise.”

We left then and started for the dock, with Clancy full of poetry. There happened to be a young woman looking out of a window on the way down. Clancy did not know her, nor she him, so far as I knew, but something about him seemed to take her eye. She leaned far out and waved 63 her handkerchief at him. That was enough. Clancy broke out––

I didn’t wait any longer than that for Clancy, but ran ahead to the Duncan. I found her with jibs up and paying off. I was in time to get aboard without trouble, but Clancy and Howe coming later had to make a pier-head jump of it. Clancy, who could leap like a hound––drunk or sober––made it all right with his feet on the end of the bowsprit and his fingers on the balloon stay when he landed, but Howe fell short, and we had the liveliest kind of a time gaffing him in over the bow, he not being able 64 to swim. They must have heard us yelling clear to Eastern Point, I guess. Andie didn’t mind. “I must be with a lot of dogs––have to jump overboard to get aboard.” He spat out what water he had to, and started right in to winch up the mainsail with the gang. He had on a brand-new suit, good cloth and a fine fit.

“You’ll soon dry out in the sun, Andie-boy,” they all said to him.

“I s’pose so. But will my clothes ever fit me again like they did?––and my fine new patent-leather shoes!”

Drifting down by the dock next to Duncan’s our long bowsprit almost swept off a row of old fellows from the cap-log. They had to scramble, but didn’t mind. “Good luck, and I hope you fill her up,” they called out.

“Oh, we’ll try and get our share of ’em,” our fellows called back.

There was a young woman on the next dock––one of the kind that quite often come down to take snap-shots. A stranger to Gloucester she must have been, for not only that Gloucester girls don’t generally come down to the docks to see the fishermen off, but she said good-by to us. She meant all right, but she should never have said good-by to a fisherman. It’s unlucky. Too many of them don’t come back, and then the good-by comes true.

Andie Howe looked a funny sight when we were making sail. Clancy, who, once he got started, took a lot of stopping, was still going:

“Yes,” roared Andie,

with the salt water dripping from his fine new suit of clothes and the patent-leather shoes he was so fond of.

And Clancy again:

and Howe,

and Clancy,

and Howe––a little shy on the words––

And by that time the gang were joining in and sheeting flat the topsails with a great swing.

I don’t suppose that Gloucester Harbor will ever again look as beautiful to me as it did that morning when we sailed out. Forty sail of seiners leaving within two hours, and to see them going––to see them one after another loose sails and up with them, break out anchors, pay off, and away! It was the first day of April and the first fine day in a week, and those handsome vessels going out one after the other in their fresh paint and new sails––it was a sight to make a man’s heart thump.

“The Johnnie Duncan, seiner of Gloucester––watch her walk across the Bay to-day,” was George Moore’s little speech when he came on deck to heave his first bucket of scraps over the rail. George was cook.

And she did walk. We squared away with half a dozen others abreast of us and Eastern Point astern of us all. Among the forty sail of fishermen that were standing across the Bay that morning we knew we’d find some that could sail. There was the Ruth Ripley, Pitt Ripley’s vessel. He worked her clear of the bunch that came out of the harbor and came after us, and we had it with him across to Cape Cod. Forty miles before we beat him; but Pitt Ripley had a great sailer in the Ruth, and we would have been satisfied to hold 67 her even. “Only wait till by and by, when we get her in trim,” we kept saying.

“This one’ll smother some of them yet,” said Eddie Parsons, looking back at the Ruth. He felt pretty good, because he had the wheel when we finally crossed the Ruth’s bow.

“With good steering––yes,” said Clancy.

“Of course,” exclaimed Eddie to that, and filled his chest full, and then, looking around and catching everybody laughing, let his chest flatten again.

The skipper didn’t have much to say right away about her sailing. He was watching her, though. He’d look at her sails, have an eye on how they set and drew, take a look over her quarter, another look aloft, and then back at the Ruth, then a look for the vessels still ahead. “We’ll know more about it after we’ve tried her out with the Lucy Foster or the Colleen Bawn or Hollis’s new vessel,” he said, after a while.

One thing we soon found out, and that was that she was a stiff vessel. That was after a squall hit us off Cape Cod. We watched the rest of them then. Some luffed and others took in sail, and about them we could not tell. But those that took it full gave us an idea of how we were behaving. “Let her have it and see how she’ll do,” said the skipper, and Howe, who was at the wheel––with his clothes good and dry again––let her have it 68 full. With everything on and tearing through the water like a torpedo-boat, one puff rolled her down till she filled herself chock up between the house and rail, but she kept right on going. Some vessels can’t sail at all with decks under, but the Johnnie never stopped. “She’s all right, this one,” said everybody then. A second later she took a slap of it over her bow, nearly smothering the cook, who had just come up to dump some potato parings over the rail. The way he came up coughing and spitting and then his dive for the companionway––everybody had to roar.

“Did y’see the cook hop?––did y’see him hop?” called Andie, who was afraid somebody had missed it.

We passed the Marauder, Soudan McLeod, soon after. His mainmast had broken off eight or ten feet below the head. They were clearing away the wreckage. “I s’pose I oughter had more sense,” he called out as we went by.

“Oh, I don’t know––maybe the spar was rotten,” said Maurice, and that was a nice way to put it, too.

That night it came a flat calm, and with barely steerage way for us. There was a big four-masted coaster bound south, too, and light, and for the best part of the night we had a drifting match with her. Coasters as a rule are not great all-round 69 sailers, but some of them, with their flat bottoms and shoal draft, in a fair wind and going light, can run like ghosts, and this was one of that kind. We had our work cut out to hold this one while the wind was light and astern, but in the morning, when it hauled and came fresher, we went flying over the shoals. So far as the looks of it went the big coaster might as well have been anchored then.

All that day we held on. And it was a lesson in sailing to see the way some of those seiners were handled. Our skipper spent most of that day finding out how she sailed best and putting marks on her sheets for quick trimming by and by.

Trying each other out, measuring one vessel against another, the fleet went down the coast. We passed a few and were passed by none, and that was something. Ahead of us somewhere were a half-dozen flyers. If we could have beaten some of them we should have had something to brag about; but no telling, we might get our chance yet.