“All right, daddy dear,” laughed the girl; “I know you’ll be just the finest captain I ever sailed with.” She kissed him impulsively and ran up-stairs to tell her mother the good news.
The departure of the fleet from Grande Mignon was a sad day in the history of the island.
The sun had hardly shown red and dripping from the sea when all the inhabitants were astir. Men from as far south as Seal Cove and Great Harbor clattered up the King’s Road in rickety vehicles, accompanied by their families and their dunnage.
In Freekirk Head alone less than ten men would be left ashore. Of these, one was Bill Boughton, the storekeeper, who was to arrange for the disposal of the catch; but the others were either incapacitated, sick, or old. The five aged fishermen, who subsisted 112 on the charity of the town, formed a delegation on one stringpiece to wave the fleet farewell.
Altogether there were fifteen boats, ten schooners, and five sloops, carrying in all more than a hundred and twenty-five men. The whole resource of the island had been expended to provide tubs of bait and barrels of salt enough for all these, let alone the provisions.
The men either shipped on shares or, if they were fearful of chance, at a fixed monthly wage “and all found,” to be paid after the proceeds of the voyage were realized.
There was not a cent of Grande Mignon credit left in the world, and there was no child too small to realize that on the outcome of this venture hung the fate and future of the island.
It was a brilliant day, with a glorious blue sky overhead and a bracing breeze out of the east. Just beyond Long Island a low stratum of miasmic gray was the only shred of the usual fog to be seen on the whole horizon. In the little roadstead the vessels, black-hulled or white, rode eagerly and gracefully at their moorings, the bright sun bringing out the red, yellow, green, blue, and brown of the dories nested amidships.
At seven o’clock the steamer Grande Mignon blew a great blast of her whistle, cast off her lines, and cleared for St. Andrew’s and St. Stephens. Tooting 113 a long, last salute, she rolled out into Fundy and out of sight around the point.
For these men breakfast was long past, but there were the myriad last details that could not be left undone; and it was fully eight o’clock before the last dory was swung aboard and the last barrel stowed.