The schooner glided down the harbor with a light air filling her sails. The men had gone below to the fore-castle and cabin awaiting breakfast, and were filling in the time by working on their lines and hooks. Donald, shipped as spare hand, was supposed to work under the captain’s orders and to look after the vessel’s gear. Fishermen do no work on the schooner’s hull or gear when at sea. All overhauling must be done in port. The fishing crew ship only to fish, handle sail, steer and keep watch. The spare hand is supposed to make all repairs to the vessel’s rigging while at sea, and to look after the stops, reefing and furling gear. When the men are out in the dories fishing, or when they are dressing fish, he must assist the skipper in sailing the schooner, in getting dories hoisted in or out, and wherever he can be of use.
Donald busied himself coiling up halliards and picking up gaskets, and as he worked, he whistled a song to himself and thought of Ruth Nickerson. He had seen her that morning. She had come down in slippers and a pink silk kimono, and he thought that she looked ravishingly pretty in such a garb. While he and the skipper were drinking a cup of coffee which she had prepared, he wondered how she could look so dainty and fresh at four o’clock in the morning. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks had a healthy bloom in them like the Okanagan apples he had seen out in British Columbia, and she teased both of them about the bet with Ira Burton. “If you lose,” she said, with a laugh, “Juddy and you will have to go to Halifax and go on the stage. You play the piano and sing, and Juddy will take the money. I’m sure he can look so fierce sometimes that people will be glad to give you something.” And they all had laughed heartily at the thought.
How he envied brother Juddy when she threw her arms around his neck and hugged and kissed him! A young fellow of seventeen is at the susceptible age, and Donald was not blind to the charms of the fair sex, even though he had had but little opportunity to tread the primrose path of dalliance with fascinating young ladies. How he blessed his mother for keeping him to his piano, singing and dancing lessons! He had looked upon these accomplishments with scorn in his Glasgow days, and had carefully hidden them from Joak and his other school-boy chums. “A lassie’s wurrk,” they would have jeered. “Ye sh’d take knittin’ an’ croshay lessons as weel!” Aye! he appreciated such culture now!
She said “Good-bye!” with a simple clasp of the hand, and the memory of the soft, warm pressure of her small fingers in his roughened fist thrilled him yet. “I hope to see you when you come back,” she added, and he had stumbled away in the dark of the morning with a pang of regret at leaving. He did not know why he should have felt that way, but the fact remained that he did, and he was glad when he saw her again waving from the window.
When the Lower Eastville Head came abeam, the cook sang out, “Breakfast!” and Donald went down into the fo’c’sle. Nine fishermen were already seated, and when he came below they shouted, “Make room for Scotty McKenzie—an’ ol’ Cape Horner but a noo trawler! Sit ye daown son, an’ eat hearty an’ give th’ ship a good name!” They were a merry crowd, and Donald compared them with the all-nation scrubs of the Kelvinhaugh and the wretched provender which they had to eat aboard the barque. It was vastly different here! There was a blue checkered tablecloth spread over the triangular table, and upon it were heaped enamelware pots of first-class porridge, sausages, fried eggs, new white bread, doughnuts, biscuits and cheese. Each man ate off white graniteware plates and drank steaming coffee out of china-clay mugs—no tin pannikins and cups on a Bank fisherman! As they “scoffed” the good victuals, they joked boisterously over the wager with Ira Burton, and “cal’lated when they got agoin’ they’d trim him daown to his boot-straps, by Judas!” There were no sullen faces or growling oaths from this crowd. Every man wore a contented smile, and they talked and joked and chaffed, but managed to get away with the food in spite of the conversational interruptions.
“This minds me o’ the time I wuz cookin’ on a Behring Sea sealer,” remarked Joak to Donald. “They were a’ like these chaps—a verra jolly bunch.” McGlashan, as cook on a fisherman, held an exalted position. Everybody tried to “stand in” with him, and on a Banker, the cook and the skipper are the two officers whose word is law and whose commands must be obeyed.
They ran into South-east Harbor that afternoon and dropped anchor off the Cold Storage Company’s wharf. Nickerson went ashore to procure a quantity of frozen herring for use as bait, but found that he could only purchase a few barrels, as several salt Bankers had already spoken for the available supply. Captain Ira Burton had left for the fishing grounds that morning with a full baiting, and this fact caused Nickerson to hustle aboard what he could get. “Hang the patch on her!” he shouted. “Burton’s off and he’s got plenty bait. We’ll have to start with what we have and run in for more later.”
Under four lowers, they sped out of the harbor to a freshening sou’-west breeze, and the skipper set the watches. “Number One dory will take first wheel and look-out,” he said, “and the other seven will follow. It’ll be one hour and a half to a watch, but Donald and I will look after her this afternoon while you fellers bait yer gear. Draw for baiting places now!”
Hardwood planks were fixed around the cabin house and the gurry-kid—a huge box for’ard of the house and used for stowing fish-offal while in port or odd gear at sea—and a man went around with a piece of chalk and marked and numbered off certain spaces on the planks. Upon these planks or “bait boards,” the fishermen cut their bait, and certain spots were more desirable than others—hence the drawing for places. When this was accomplished, the skipper sung out for the stays’l to be hoisted, and told Donald to stream the taff-rail log. “Four miles off Salvage Island and four o’clock,” remarked the captain. “A hundred an’ thirty miles to make to the sou’-west edge of the Western Bank. Take the wheel, Donald, and let her go east by south half south. I’ll help the boys bait up!”
Seated on the wheel-box, he steered the able little schooner and listened to the conversation of the fishermen. The breeze was blowing fresh and there was a short sea running and the vessel was laying down to it with the water squirting in through the lee scuppers, and she was pulling over the rollers as gracefully as a steeple-chaser at a low hurdle. The well-made sails were full with the wind, and it thrummed in the rigging and under the booms, while the foam from the sharp bows hissed and bubbled to loo’ard and raced aft to mingle with the wake astern. A myriad of gulls, attracted by the herring offal which was being whisked overboard every now and again, wheeled and squawked around them, and their graceful winging, with the buoyancy and gentle pitching and rolling of the flying schooner, combined to make a picture symbolical of the poetry of sea motion. Wing and sail were closely allied in this exhilarating off-shore flight, and McKenzie was thrilled with it to a degree which he had never felt before.