For a breeze to whip the bitts from aout th’ Mary L. MacKay.
We slammed her to Matinicus, an’ th’ skipper hauled th’ log:
‘Sixteen knots an hour, by gum! Ain’t she th’ gal to slog!’
An’ th’ wheelsman he jest shouted as he swung her on her way,
‘You watch me tear the mains’l off th’ Mary L. MacKay!’
To the wheel was lashed th’ steersman as he soaked her thro’ th’ gloom,
And a big sea hove his dory-mate clean over th’ main-boom,
It ripped the oil-pants off his legs an’ we could hear him say:
‘There’s a power o’ water flyin’ o’er th’ Mary L. MacKay!’”
Captain Nickerson leaned over the taff-rail and glanced at the log dials. “Ten knots, Donny-boy,” he murmured happily. “She can travel this one! Sock it to her, son!” And he jumped back to assist in the baiting up. When supper was announced, the work was finished and the watches were set. McKenzie lazied the evening away stretched out on a cabin locker listening to the yarns of his ship-mates. Some of their quiet relations were the very heart of adventure and hazard. “You’ll mind th’ time, skipper, when the Annie Crosby was hove down and came up with a dory hangin’ to her fore spreader!” or “Was you around in that bad blow when Harry Winslow soaked his vessel over th’ Cape ledges an’ smashed th’ skeg off her bangin’ over the rocks! He was a haound, that Winslow!” Aye, they know thrills who fish the Banks—the thrills of “Breakers ahead!” and the desperate clawing off a lee-shore; the scares of the smoking mists, sinister with the raucous bellowings of driving liners; the exhilarating drives for port in a brave wind, and the lying-to in piling seas, blinding snows and savage gales! Donald lolled with sparkling eyes and open ears drinking it all in until the last yarner had knocked out his pipe and rolled into his bunk.