Coming on to dark that night a gig put off from the schooner-yacht and rowed over to us. On the way she was hailed and passed a few words with a steam-yacht anchored in between. The man in the stern of the gig was not satisfied until he had been rowed three times around the Johnnie. When he had looked his fill he came alongside.

He mistook Clancy for the skipper. I suppose he couldn’t imagine a man of Clancy’s figure and bearing to be an ordinary hand on a fisherman. So to Clancy he said, “Captain, you’ve got a wonderful vessel here. Put a single stick in her and she’ll beat the world.”

“Yes,” said Clancy, “and she’d be a hell of a fine fisherman then, wouldn’t she?”

The rest of us had to roar at that. We at once pictured the Johnnie rigged up as a sloop out on the Grand Banks, trawling or hand-lining, with the crew trying to handle her in some of the winter gales that struck in there. And a great chance 160 she would have rigged as a sloop and her one big sail, making a winter passage home eight or nine or ten hundred miles, when as it was, with the sail split up to schooner rig, men found it bad enough.

The master of the yacht had a message for our captain, he said, and Clancy told him the skipper was below. There they talked for a while and after the yachtsman had gone Maurice, inviting four or five of us along, dressed up, called for the seine-boat, got in and was rowed over to a steam-yacht that we now remembered had hailed the schooner-yacht’s gig. All brass and varnish and white paint and gold she would be in the daytime, but now she was all lit up with electric lights below and Japanese lanterns on deck.

When we came alongside, who should come to the gangway of the yacht and welcome Maurice but Minnie Arkell––Mrs. Miner. She greeted all of us for that matter––she never pretended not to see people––and invited us all below for refreshments. There was a good lay-out there and we pitched into it. Seiners are great people at table or in a bunk. They can turn to and eat, or turn in and sleep any minute, day or night. So now we turned to. Clancy did great things to the wine. Generally he took whiskey, but he did not object to good wine now and then. He and one fellow 161 in a blue coat, white duck trousers, and a blue cap that never left his head, had a great chat.

“I callate that if he didn’t have that cap with the button on front nobody’d know he was a real yachtsman, would they?” Eddie Parsons whispered in my ear.

The owner of the steam-yacht was trying to convince Tommie that yachting would be more in his line than fishing, but Tommie couldn’t see it.

“But why not?” he asked at last. “Why not, Mr. Clancy? Is it a matter of money? If it is, I’ll make that right. I pay ordinary hands twenty-five and thirty dollars a month and found, but I’ll pay you fifty––sixty––seventy dollars a month to go with me. I’m going to race this steamer this summer and I want a quartermaster––a man like you that can steer to a hair-line. Seventy dollars a month now––what do you say?”

“Come now, my good man, what do you say?” Clancy got that off without so much as a smile. “But you couldn’t make it seventy-five now, could you? No, I didn’t mean that quite, though I’ve been out the dock in Gloucester of a Saturday noon and back again to the dock of a Tuesday noon––three days––and shared two hundred dollars––not as skipper, mind you, but just as hand. There now, I hope you’re not going to get angry. Hadn’t we better have another little touch? But I can see 162 myself in a suit of white duck, touching my cap, and saying, ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ to some slob––no reference to you, mind you––but some slob in a uniform that’s got a yacht, not because he loves the sea, but because he wants to butt in somewhere––who lives aboard his yacht just the same as he does in his house ashore––electric bells, baths, servants, barber and all––and hugs the shore so close that he gets the morning paper as regularly as when he’s at home. When that kind go yachting all they miss are the tables on the lawn and the automobiles going by the door. They even have canary-birds––some of them––in cages. Yes, and wouldn’t be caught twenty miles off shore––no, not even in a summer’s breeze for––And where would he be in a winter’s gale? I can see myself rowing a gig with somebody like that in the stern giving orders and fooling––well, some simple-minded women folks, maybe, who know as much of the sea as they do of the next world––most of them––fooling them into believing that he’s a devil––yes, a clean devil on the water. Seventy a month for that?––couldn’t you make it seventy-five?”

“You don’t mean to say that–––”

“Yes,” said Clancy, “I do. I’d rather stick to fishing than––but here’s a shoot and let’s call the quartermaster’s job off.”

Minnie Arkell chimed in here. “A real fisherman, 163 you must remember, Mr. Keith, doesn’t care much for yachting because––leaving out the question of wages, for he does make more at fishing––he can remain a fisherman and yet be independent.”

“You mean they don’t have to take orders as if they were on a yacht, Mrs. Miner?”

“No, no––don’t make any mistake there. The discipline of a yacht, so far as I know it, is baby play to what they have on a good fisherman. The discipline aboard a warship is nothing to that aboard a fisherman, like Captain Blake’s vessel say, when there is anything to be done. Fishermen, it’s true, don’t have to touch their caps and say, ‘Very good, sir,’ to a man who may be no more of a real man than themselves. On your yacht I suppose you’d discharge a man who didn’t do what he was told, and on a warship he would be sent to the brig, I suppose. On a fisherman he’d be put ashore. On a fisherman they not only obey orders, but they carry them out on the jump. And why? Because they’ve always done it. Why, deep-sea fishermen are always getting into places where only the best of seamanship can save them, and they very early get in the way of doing things up quick and right. When a Gloucester skipper orders in the sail, say in a gale of wind, and more than apt to be in the middle of the night––you don’t see 164 men trying to see how long it will take them to get into oilskins––or filling another pipe before they climb on deck. No, sir––the first man out on the bowsprit, if it’s the jib to come in––or out on the foot-ropes, if it’s the mainsail to be tied up––he’s the man that will have a right to hold his head high next day aboard that vessel. And so the crew of a fisherman jump to their work––if they didn’t there’d be a lot more of them lost than there are.”

“Dear me,” said Mr. Keith, “that never occurred to me before. But how is it, Mrs. Miner, that you have it down so fine?”

“My father was a Gloucester skipper, and since I was that high”––she put her hand on a level with her knee––“I’ve been listening to fishermen. And yachting life does tend to spoil a fisherman,” she went on to explain. “After a summer of yachting a fisherman will begin to think that a winter of fishing is going to be a serious thing.” She was warmed up then and went on talking at a great rate. And listening to her I could understand better why men took to her. She had warm blood in her. If it were not for her weakness to be admired by men, she would have been a great woman. “And they get so, that what seems extraordinary work to you is only an every-day matter to them. Do you remember that last schooner-yacht race 165 across the Atlantic?––when two or three reporters went along, and after they got back wrote all kinds of stories of what a desperate trip it was––how rough it was and dangerous! Well, that time there were three or four Gloucestermen making the run to Iceland. Now, they were not as big as the racing yachts and they were loaded down with all the stores for a long salt trip––their holds full of salt, for one thing––and yet they made about as good time to Iceland as that yachtsman made to Queenstown. And they weren’t driving their vessels either––they don’t drive on the way out. It’s only coming home that they try to make passages. Now, they must have got the same weather and yet nobody ever heard them in their letters home report a word of bad weather, or ever afterward, either. And yet––but were you to Iceland that time, Maurice?”

“No,” said the skipper, “but you were, Tommie?”

“Yes,” answered Clancy, “in the Lucy Foster. We made Rik-ie-vik inside of fourteen days, carrying both tops’ls all the way. Wesley––Wesley Marrs––wasn’t hurrying her, of course. As Mrs. Miner says, the vessels going to the east’ard don’t hurry, except now and then when two of them with records get together. And the Lucy was logy, of course, with the three hundred and odd hogsheads 166 of salt and other stuff in her. If we’d been driving her going to Iceland that time we’d have had the stays’l and balloon to her––and she’d have gone right along with them, too.”

Mrs. Miner looked around at her yachting friends to see if they were getting all that.

“There was one day that passage it blew a bit,” exclaimed Clancy. “And that was the day we thought we saw a fellow to the east’ard. We had men by the halyards all that day with splitting knives.”

“Why?” asked Keith.

“Why, to cut before she could capsize.”

“Oh!” said Keith and said it with a little click.

“But that’s nothing. I’ve seen the gang with Tom O’Donnell standing watch by the halyards for days with axes when he was making a passage.”

Minnie Arkell filled another glass of champagne for Clancy, and Clancy didn’t give the fizz too much time to melt away either.

“These men are the real things,” she said, but Clancy, for fear we were getting too much credit, broke in, “Not us seiners. It’s the winter fishermen––trawlers and hand-liners––that are the real things. Of course, we lose men now and then seining, but it’s in winter up on the shoal water 167 on the Banks that––there’s where you have some seas to buck against,” and he went on to tell of a battle with a gale on a winter’s night on the Grand Banks. Clancy could tell a story as well as anybody I ever met. He could make the blood jump to your heart, or the tears to your eyes––or he could chill you till the blood froze. When he got through you could hear them all breathing––men and women both, like people who had just run a race. “Two hundred and odd men sailing out of Gloucester,” he said, “went down that night. There weren’t too many came safe out of that blow. The father of this boy here was lost––the Mary Buckley warn’t it, Joe?––named for your mother?”

“And my father, too, was lost soon after,” said Minnie Arkell, and the glance she gave me melted a lot of prejudice I had felt for her. That was the good human side to her.

“No better man ever sailed out of Gloucester, Mrs. Miner,” said Clancy.

She flushed up. “Thank you, Tommie, for that, though I know he was a reckless man.” And, she might have added, he left some of his recklessness in the blood of the Arkells.

The skipper told them a lot about sea life that night. Some of the stories he told, though long known in Gloucester, they took to be yarns at first. 168 They could not believe that men went through such things and lived. And then the skipper had such an easy way of telling them. After a man has been through a lot of unusual things––had them years behind him and almost forgotten them––I suppose they don’t surprise him any more.

The skipper looked well that night. When he warmed up and his eyes took on a fresh shine and his mouth softened like a woman’s, I tell you he was a winner. I could not help comparing him with the steam-yacht owner, who was a good-looking man, too, but in a different way. Both of them, to look at, were of the same size. Both had their clothes made by tailors who knew their business and took pains with the fitting, though it was easy to fit men like Clancy and the skipper, such fine level shoulders and flat broad backs they had. Now the skipper, as I say, when he warmed up began to look something like what he ought––like he did when walking the quarter and the vessel going out to sea. Only then it would be in a blue flannel shirt open at the throat and in jack-boots. But now, in the cabin of that yacht, dressed as he was in black clothes like anybody else and in good-fitting shoes, you had to take a second look at him to get his measure. The yachtsman thought that he and the skipper were of about the same size, and barring that the skipper’s shoulders were a shade 169 wider there wasn’t so much difference to look at. But there was a difference, just the same. The yachtsman weighed a hundred and seventy-five pounds. He asked what Maurice weighed. “Oh, about the same,” said Maurice. But I and Clancy knew that he weighed a hundred and ninety-five, and Minnie Arkell, who knew too, finally had to tell it, and then they all took another look at the two men and could see where the difference lay. There was no padding to Maurice, and when you put your hand where his shoulders and back muscles ought to be you found something there.

When we were leaving that night, Mrs. Miner stopped Maurice on the gangway to say, “And when they have the fishermen’s race this fall, you must sail the Johnnie Duncan, Maurice, as you’ve never sailed a vessel yet. With you on the quarter and Clancy to the wheel she ought to do great things.”

“Oh, we’ll race her as well as we know how if we’re around, but Tom O’Donnell and Wesley Marrs and Tommie Ohlsen and Sam Hollis and the rest––they’ll have something to say about it, I’m afraid.”

“What of it? You’ve got the vessel and you must win––I’ll bet all the loose money I have in the world on her. Remember I own a third of 170 her. Mr. Duncan sold me a third just before I left Gloucester.”

That was a surprise to us––that Mrs. Miner owned a part of the Johnnie Duncan. It set Clancy to figuring, and turning in that night, he said––he was full of fizzy wine, but clear-headed enough––“Well, what do you make of that? The Foster girl a third and Minnie Arkell a third of this one. I’m just wise to it that it wasn’t old Duncan alone that wanted Maurice for skipper. Lord, Lord, down at the Delaware Breakwater do you remember that when we heard that the Foster girl owned a part of this one, I said, like the wise guy I thought I was, ‘Ha, ha,’ I said, ‘so Miss Foster owns a third? That’s it, eh?’ And now it’s Minnie Arkell a third. Where does Withrow come in? And did you hear her when she invited Maurice to the time they’re going to have on that same steam-yacht to-morrow night?––that was when she whispered to him at the gangway, when we were leaving. She tried to get him to promise to come, and at last he said he would if he was in the harbor. ‘Then be sure to be in the harbor––you’re skipper and can do as you please. Do come,’ she said at the last, good and loud, ‘and tell them how to sail a vessel in heavy weather. They only play at it, so do come and tell them.’ And then in a low voice––‘But I want you to come for yourself.’ 171 That’s what she says––‘For yourself,’ she says––in a whisper almost. ‘Take a run into the harbor to-morrow night if you can, Maurice,’ she says. O Lord, women––women––they don’t know a thing––no,” and Clancy turned in.