The Seiners Part 5

Maurice drew his hand across his eyes and sat down again. And as soon as they decently could, Clancy, George Moore, and Eddie Parsons asked him if they might s.h.i.+p 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.

VII

CLANCY CROSSES MINNIE ARKELL

The Johnnie Duncan only needed to have her stores taken aboard to go to sea. And that was attended to next morning, and she was out for her trial trip the same afternoon. Everybody said she looked as handsome as a photograph going out, though all the old sharks, when they saw her mainsail hoisted for the first time, said she'd certainly have need of her quarter and draught to stand up under it.

It was a great day for sailing, though--the finest kind of a breeze, and smooth water. We early carried away our foretopmast, which had a flaw in it. It was just as well to discover it then. Without topsail and balloon we had it out with the Eastern Point on her way back from Boston. She was not much of a steamer for speed, but her schedule called for twelve knots and she generally made pretty near it--eleven or eleven and a half, according to how her stokers felt, I guess. We headed her off after a while, and that was doing pretty well for that breeze, with a new vessel not yet loosened up.

"But the balloon was too much for her," said Mr. Duncan, as we shot into the dock after beating the Eastern Point.

"No, the balloon was all right--'twas the topm'st was a bit light,"

answered Maurice.

Old Mr. Duncan smiled at that. "But what do you think of her, Captain Blake?"

"Oh, she's like all the rest of them when she's alone--sails like the devil," the skipper answered to that, but he smiled with it and we all knew he was satisfied with her.

That night was the Master Mariners' Ball, and I waited up till late to talk with my cousin Nell, who had gone there with Will Somers. Finally they came along past my house and I hailed them.

Nell broke right in as usual with what was uppermost in her mind. "I don't suppose you saw me and Alice, but we were in Mr. Duncan's office when you and Mr. Clancy and Captain Blake were coming up the dock to-day after the trial trip. Mr. Duncan told us what Captain Blake said of the Johnnie Duncan, but now tell me, what did the rest of you think of her? What does your friend Clancy say? He knows a vessel."

"Clancy," I answered, "thought what we all thought, I guess--that she's a fast vessel any way you take her, but he won't say she's the fastest vessel out of Gloucester, even after she's put in trim and loosened up. But in a sea-going way and with wind enough--with wind enough, mind--he thinks she'll do pretty well."

"With wind enough and in a sea-way?" repeated Nell. "Then I hope that when the fishermen's race is sailed next fall it's a howling gale and seas clear to your mast-head. Yes, and you needn't laugh--don't you know what it means to Will?"

And I did realize. Somers, a fine fellow, was just then beginning to get a chance at designing fishermen. So far he had done pretty well, but it was on the Johnnie Duncan, I knew, he had pinned his faith. For his own sake, I hoped that the Johnnie would do great things, but for Nell's sake I prayed she would. Nell thought a lot of Will and wasn't ashamed to show her liking, and thinking of that set me to thinking of other things.

"Was Miss Foster to the ball?" I asked her.

"She was," said Nell.

"And with whom?"

"Mr. Withrow."

"Oh-h, Lord!"

"Oh-h!--and why Oh-h-h?"

"I wish she'd gone with Maurice."

"H-m--that was drunk the other day?"

"Yes, I suppose that queers him forever. And the other fellow does ten times as bad, only under cover. Who told you?"

"Never mind. Wasn't he?"

"Was Maurice to the ball?"

"He was."

"And who with?"

"With n.o.body."

"Good. Was Mrs. Miner there?"

"Mrs. Miner?"--and such a sniff!--"yes, she was there."

"With Sam Hollis?"

"Yes, and flirted with half the men in the hall and with your Maurice Blake outrageously."

"That so? Could Maurice help that much? But I wish, just the same, that Miss Foster had gone with Maurice."

"Well, there was one very good reason."

"What?"

"He didn't ask her. And Mr. Withrow made a handsome cavalier anyway."

"A handsome"--I was going to say lobster, but I didn't. Instead I told her why Maurice didn't ask Miss Foster--that he didn't think enough of himself, probably. And that led up to a talk about Maurice Blake and Clancy. Before I got through I had Nell won over. Indeed, I think she was won over before I began at all.

"There's a whole lot you don't know yet," she said at last. "Get Captain Blake to make a name for himself seining, and for sailing his vessel as she ought to be sailed, and I'll get down on my knees to Alice for him--sail her as she ought to be sailed, remember. And make a good stock with her, and you'll see."

So, as I walked down the street with Nell and Will Somers a part of the way, the talk was in that strain, and when I left them, after pa.s.sing Sam Hollis bound home, it was with the hope of things coming out all right. I was feeling happy until I got near Minnie Arkell's door, where my worrying began again, for there on the steps and in the glare of the electric light was Minnie Arkell herself, as though she were waiting for somebody. And not wanting to have her know that I saw her waiting at her door steps at that time of night, I stepped in the shadows until she should go in. It was then that Maurice came along, and she called him up. And he went up and stood on the step below her and she bent over him as if she wanted to lift him up. And it was less than five minutes since Sam Hollis left her.

"Come around by way of the side door of grandma's house, Maurice, and through her yard and into my house, and n.o.body will see you. And then no old grannies will talk and we'll have a little supper all to ourselves. Hurry now." She was talking as if she owned him. I did not hear what Maurice said, nor I did not want to hear; but making for the corner, he went by me like a shot, and "O Lord!" I heard him groan as he pa.s.sed me, not recognizing me--not even seeing me, I believe.

I did not know what to make of it and let him go by. But after he had turned the corner and Minnie Arkell had shut her door--and she watched him till he disappeared around the corner--I ran after him. In my hurrying after him I heard the voice of Clancy coming down the street.

He was singing. I had heard from Nell of Clancy being at the ball, where he was as usual in charge of the commissary. I could imagine how they must have drove things around the punch-bowl with Clancy to the wheel. He was coming along now and for blocks anybody that was not dead could hear him. And getting nearer I had to admire him. He was magnificent, even with a list to port. Not often, I imagined, did men of Clancy's lace and figure get into evening dress. The height and breadth of him!--and spreading enough linen on his s.h.i.+rt front to make a sail for quite a little vessel. He was almost on top of me, with

"Oh, hove flat down on th' Western Banks Was the Bounding Billow, Captain Hanks-- And----"

when I hailed him.

"Hulloh, if it ain't Joe Buckley. Why, Joey, but aren't you out pretty late to-night? But maybe you're only standing watch for somebody?

Three o'clock, Joey, and no excuse for you, for you didn't have to stand by the supplies--" But then I rushed him around the corner, and down the street to the side door of Mrs. Arkell's and just in time to head off Maurice, bound as I knew for Minnie Arkell's house across the yard. I didn't have a chance to say a word to Tommie, but he didn't have to be told. If I'd been explaining for a week he couldn't have picked things up any better than he did.

"Maurice--hi, Maurice! Oh, 'tis you, isn't it. Well, Maurice-boy, all the night I waited for a chance to have a word with you, but ne'er a chance could I get. Early in the evening--when I was fit for ladies'

company--Miss Foster said how proud she was to know me--me, who had saved her cousin Johnnie's life. And then she asked me about the vessel, and I told her, Maurice, that nothing like the Duncan ever pushed salt water from out of her way before. 'Nothing with two sticks in her,' says I, and I laid it on thick; 'and Maurice Blake,' says I--and there, Maurice, I only spoke true catechism. 'Maurice Blake,'

says I, 'is the man to sail her.' She was glad, she said, to know that, because her chum, Miss Buckley--Joe's cousin there--wanted that particular vessel to be a success. And she herself was interested in it. Never mind the reasons, she said. And she always did believe--and, Maurice, listen now--she knew that Captain Blake would do the Johnnie Duncan justice. And I said to her--well, Maurice, what I said you can guess well enough. No, come to think, you can't guess, but I won't tell you to your face. But thinking of it now, I mind, Maurice, the time when we were dory-mates--you and me, Maurice--and the cold winter's day our dory was capsized. And dark coming on and nothing in sight, and I could see you beginning to get tired. But tired as you were, Maurice, tired as you were and the gray look beginning to creep over you, you says, 'Tommie, take the plug strap for a while, you.'"

"But you didn't take it, Tommie."