The morning after the race I was eating breakfast at home and I could not remember when I enjoyed a meal like that one. I had had a fine long sleep and the sleep that comes to a man after he’s been through a long and exciting experience does make him feel like a world-beater. I felt that I could go out and about leap the length of a seine-boat or rip up a plank sidewalk. It was worth while to be alive, and everything tasted so good.

I had put away six fried eggs and about fourteen of those little slices of bacon before I even thought of slacking up (with my mother piling them up as fast as I lifted them off)––and maybe I wouldn’t have slacked then only my cousin Nell came skipping in.

She kissed my mother half a dozen times, and danced around the room. “Four vessels off the Johnnie Duncan’s model have already been ordered. Four, auntie––four. There will be a fleet of them yet, you’ll see. And how are you, Joe?”

“Fine,” I said, and kept on eating.

Nell didn’t like my not noticing how glad she was feeling, I suppose, for all at once, as I was about to sugar another cup of coffee, she ran her hands through my hair and yanked till I couldn’t pretend any longer.

“There, now, with your mind off your stomach, perhaps you’ll look up and converse when a lady deigns to notice you. How much money did Mr. Withrow lose on the race?”

“I don’t know, but it was a good pile; I know that.”

“And how much did Mr. Duncan win?”

“I don’t know that, either; but I hope it was a good roll, for he won about all Withrow lost.”

“M-m––but aren’t you in love with your old employer? But let’s not mind common money matters. What do you think of the Johnnie Duncan for a vessel?”

“She’s a dog––a dog.”

“Isn’t she! And the fastest, able-est and the handsomest vessel that ever sailed past Eastern Point, isn’t she?”

“That’s what she is.”

“And who designed her?”

“Who? Let me see. Oh, yes, some local man.”

“You don’t know! Look up here. Who designed her!”

“Oh, yes. ’Twas a Gloucester man.”

“A Gloucester man? Look up again. Now––who––de––signed––the––John––nie––Dun––can!”

“Ouch, yes. A ver-y fine and a-ble––and handsome gen-tle-man––a wonderful man.”

“That’s a little better. And his name?”

“William Somers––William the Illustrious––William the First––‘First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of Gloucestermen’––and if you let me stand up, I’ll do a break-down to show you how glad I am.”

“Now you’re showing something like appreciation. And now where do you suppose your friend Clancy is and your skipper?”

“Clancy? Lord knows. Maybe in a circle of admiring friends, singing whatever is his latest. ‘Hove flat down’ was the last I heard. If it was earlier in the day––about three in the morning––it would be pretty sure to be that.”

“What a pity, and he such a fine man otherwise!”

“What’s a pity?”

“Why, his getting drunk, as I hear he does very often.”

“Gets drunk? Who gets drunk? Clancy? That’s news to me. As long as I’ve known him I never saw him drunk yet. He gets mellow and loose––but drunk! Clancy drunk? Why, Nell!”

“Oh, well, all right, he’s an apostle of temperance then. But Captain Blake––where is he?”

“I couldn’t say––why?”

“I have a message for him.”

“Did you try his boarding-house?”

“Yes. That is, Will did, and he wasn’t there, hadn’t been there at all, they said, since the afternoon before.”

“That so? Where else did you try? Duncan’s office?”

“We did, and no word of him there.”

“Try Clancy’s boarding-house?”

“Yes, and no word.”

“Try––h-m––the Anchorage?”

“Oh, Joe, you don’t think he’s been loafing there since?”

“No, I don’t. And yet after the way he got turned down yesterday, you know––there’s no telling what a man might do.”

“Well, Will looked in there, too.”

“You fat little fox! Why didn’t you say that at first? And no word?”

“No.”

“Well, I don’t know where he’d be then.”

“Nor I, except––did you notice the wind has hauled to the northwest?”

“I did.”

“Well. Do you know that old vessel that Mr. 285 Withrow’s been trying to get a crew for––the Flamingo?”

“M-h-h.”

“Well, this morning early she went out––on a hand-lining trip to the east’ard, it is said. And Will says that he thinks––he doesn’t know, mind you, because they won’t tell him anything down to Withrow’s––but he thinks that Maurice Blake’s shipped in her.”

“Wow! She won’t last out one good breeze on the Banks.”

“That is just what Will said. And it’s too bad, for I had a message for him––a message that would make everything all right. I suppose you can guess?”

“Guess? H-m-m––I don’t know as I want to.”

“Well, don’t get mad about it, anyway. How would you feel if you saw that horrid Minnie Arkell rush up and––Oh, you know what I mean. However, I’ve been pleading with Alice since yesterday afternoon. For two hours I was up in her room last evening, and poor Will walking the veranda down below. I put Captain Blake’s case as I thought a friend of his would put it––as you would put it, say––perhaps better in some ways––for I could not forget that he sailed the Johnnie Duncan yesterday, and her winning meant so much 286 to Will. Yes, and I’m not forgetting Clancy and the rest of her crew––indeed, I’m not––I felt as though I could kiss every one of them.”

“Well, here’s one of them.”

“Don’t get saucy because your mother is standing by. Go and find Maurice Blake. Go ahead, won’t you, Joe? Tell him that everything is all right. She is proud.”

“That’s a nice sounding word for it––pride. Stuck on herself is what I’d say.”

“No, she isn’t. You must allow a woman self-respect, you know.”

“I guess so. And it must be her long suit, seeing she’s always leading from it.”

“Oh, keep your fishermen’s jokes for the mugging-up times on your vessel. You go and get Maurice Blake––or find Mr. Clancy and have him get him––if he hasn’t gone on the Flamingo.”

So I went out. On a cruise along the water front I found a whole lot of people. I saw Wesley Marrs and Tommie Ohlsen––sorrowful and neither saying much––looking after their vessels––Ohlsen seeing to a new gaff. “I ought to’ve lost,” said Ohlsen. “Look at that for a rotten piece of wood.” Sam Hollis was around, too, trying to explain how it was he didn’t win the race. But he couldn’t explain to anybody’s satisfaction how his stays’l went nor why he hove-to when that squall struck him––the 287 same squall that shot the Johnnie Duncan across the line. Tom O’Donnell was there, looking down on the deck of the vessel in which he took so much pride. “Two holes in her deck where her spars ought to be,” he was saying when I came along. I asked him if he had seen Maurice that morning, and it was from him I learned for certain that Maurice had shipped on the Flamingo. “I didn’t see her leaving, boy, but Withrow himself told me this morning. ‘And I hope he’ll never come back,’ he said at the same time. ‘’Tis you that takes a licking hard. But maybe ’tis the insurance,’ I says. ‘If that’s what you’re thinking,’ says he, ‘she isn’t insured.’ ‘Then it must be the divil’s own repair she’s in when no company at all will insure her,’ I says. Sure, we had hard words over it, but that won’t bring back Maurice––he’s gone in the Flamingo, Joe.”

I went after Clancy then, and after a long chase, that took me to Boston and back, I caught up with him. He was full of repentance and was gloomy. It was up in his boarding-house––in his room. He, looking tired, was thinking of taking a kink of sleep.

“Hulloh, Joe! And I don’t wonder you look surprised, Joe. I must be getting old. Thursday morning I got up after as fine a night’s sleep as a man’d want. That was Thursday. Then Thursday 288 night, Friday, Friday night, Saturday––two nights and three days, and I’m sleepy already. Sleepy, Joe, and I remember the time I could go a whole week, and then, after a good night’s sleep, wake up fine and daisy and be ready for another week. Joe, there’s a moral in that if you can only work it out.”

Clancy stayed silent after that, not inclined to talk, I could see, until I told him about Maurice having shipped in the Flamingo and the hard crew that had gone in her.

That stirred him. “Great Lord, gone in that shoe-box! Why, Joe, I’d as soon put to sea in a market basket calked with butter. And the man that’s got her––Dave Warner! He’s crazy, Joe, if ever a man was crazy. Clean out of his head over a girl that he met in Gloucester once, but now living in Halifax, and she won’t have anything to do with him. He’s daffy over her. If she was drowning alongside you’d curse your luck because you had to gaff her in. That is, you would only she’s a woman, of course. Wants to get lost, Joe, I believe––wants to! If this was Boston or New York and in older days, I’d say that Dave and Withrow must have shanghaied a crew to man the Flamingo’s kind. But you c’n get men here to go in anything sometimes. Wait a bit and I’ll be along with you. We’ll see old Duncan and maybe we c’n head the Flamingo off.”