When the eight dories delivered their catch, there were five thousand pounds of cod, pollock and large haddock in the pens. Donald had never seen so many fish in his life before. “Is that a good catch, skipper?” he asked. The other pursed his lips. “Only fair,” he replied. “I’ve seen th’ whole quarter full o’ fish on two tubs, but it ain’t a good sign to strike fish right away. We’ll get a deck later.”
They anchored the schooner on the Bank and after furling sail, the gang bent and hoisted the trysail or riding sail, had a “mug up” of tea and cold victuals, and pulled away in their dories to set and haul their lines again. They were “on fish,” and when they left their buoyed trawls at nightfall, there was fifteen thousand pounds in the deck pens. After supper, the work of “dressing down,” splitting and salting the catch began.
Several kerosene torches with huge wicks were set alight on the cabin house; dressing tables were rigged, and the men, armed with sharp knives, commenced gutting and beheading and splitting open the fish. They were adepts at the work, and Donald watched them with wonder. “Slop!” a large cod would be slapped on to the table; a fisherman would seize it in his gloved hand and give it a slash with a knife across the throat and up the belly; his neighbour would scoop the viscera and gills out with one motion and snap the head off with another, and, when passed around the board, the beheaded and disemboweled fish would be whisked into a huge tub of salt water, split from nape to tail and scraped free from blood and adhering viscera. After a sousing in the tub, it would be hove out to drain in a pen alongside the fish room hatch, and finally it would be shot below, where the “salters” in the hold would pile it neatly in a pen, skin down, and cover it liberally with coarse salt.
The men worked like Trojans in the glare of the torches—gossiping and singing—and the low hum of their talk would be punctuated by a shout for a fresh knife, a drink of water, or a pipe or a chew of tobacco. The skipper seemed to be everywhere. One minute he would be pitching fish down into the hold; another time he would be slapping fish on to the dressing tables. He jumped around whetting knives, lighting torches, and occasionally gutted fish. “You ain’t forgot haow to split ’em, Cap!” remarked a man, complimenting his dexterity with the knife. Nickerson laughed. “When a feller has spent three years of his boyhood days doin’ this, he ain’t likely to forget—even though he has been deep-waterin’ since. I was two seasons with old Abner Westhaver in the Carrie Watson, and he kep’ a boy ahumpin’—believe me! I’ve split ten thousand pounds hand-runnin’ many a time with that ol’ Turk, an’ he wouldn’t let ye straighten yer back ’til the work was done.”
In the spells between assisting the men, Donald sat on the wheel-box and surveyed the scene. The schooner, with all canvas furled, except the try-sail on the main, rolled gently to the swell—her shining spars and new running gear outlined in the glare from the flaming torches. These flickering flares limned the rugged faces of the fishermen at work and illuminated the objects within their effulgent radius in the manner of Rembrandt. Decks gleamed wet like a city street on a rainy night; the slimy bodies of the fish and the oilskins of the men stood out vivid against the darkness where the light caught them. All around was the night—opaque, impalpable, and only definable when a heavier swell lifted its crest above the low quarter and caught the torch glow. Sea birds squawked in the blackness—quarrelling over the choice scraps of viscera dumped overside—and occasionally flying into the circle of light, so near that Donald could discern their unwinking, bead-like eyes as they poised for a moment above the rail. There were myriads of gulls around while they were dressing fish; when the work was done, they vanished. “Them beggars knows,” observed a fisherman to McKenzie. “They’ll keep away ontil they sees you begin to rig th’ dressing keelers, then they’re round in hundreds. Winter time’s th’ time for gulls ... don’t see ’em so much in summer. Stinkin’ Carey Chickens then ... hundreds of ’em. Fly agin yer face when dressin’ daown fish by torches an’ ’most choke ye with th’ carrion smell of ’em. Deep-water sailors think Carey Chickens are sacred. We fishermen take no ’count of ’em ... snip their heads off with th’ dress-knife when they flops in front of ye.”
When the last fish was below and in the salt, Donald cleaned up the decks and the men proceeded to bait up their gear and prepare bait for taking out with them on the morrow. Then, with draw-buckets of clean salt water, they washed their oilskins free of fish slime, wrung out their gloves and mittens, and went below to fo’c’sle and cabin for a mug-up, a smoke, and a long, satisfying “kink” in a warm, comfortable bunk. “Breakfast at two, boys,” Captain Nickerson said. “We’ll get the gear ’bout three an’ set an’ haul all day to-morrow. We’ve got to hustle day an’ night to trim Ira Burton.” And to McKenzie, he said, “Go’n turn into your pew, Don. I’ll keep watch ’til midnight, then I’ll give you a hail. We’ll catch up on sleep when the boys are out in the dories to-morrow.”
Donald rolled into his berth in the cabin after a “mug-up” of molasses cake and coffee from the “shack locker” or quick lunch cupboard in the forecastle. He felt tired but happy, and soon closed his eyes, lulled to slumber by the steady ticking of the cabin clock, the regular snores of his shipmates, and the gentle rolling of the vessel. As he slept he dreamed that he was skipper of a fishing schooner as big as the Kelvinhaugh, running a hundred dories, and that he had brought her in full of fish and had won Ira Burton’s money. Ruth Nickerson met him on the dock as he landed and threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. With a satisfied “Um-hum!” he rolled his back to the light of the lamp and “sounded for forty fathoms,” while Nickerson paced the weather quarter, smoking and planning how he, a green fishing skipper, would “get to wind’ard” of an old fish-killer like Ira Burton.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
