“It’s Burton!” he cried, after a short scrutiny. “I’d know his old hooker’s small fores’l and long bowsprit anywheres.” He paced the quarter, whistling softly to himself—a curious whistle, as though he were calling a dog—and ever and anon he would murmur, “Come wind! Come wind! Come wind!” The gang stared at the schooners to leeward and one of their number pulled a bait-knife from a cleat. “I’ll raise something,” he said with a laugh. “I’ll stick this in th’ forem’st. That’ll raise a breeze, by Jupiter! Never knew it to fail yet!”
The wind was light and variable under the lee of the Cape Breton mountains, towering a thousand feet high to port, but when they glided past Cape St. Lawrence, it came away in fresh gusts from the south’ard. The sky was overcast and there was a rainy haze around the horizon.
“It’s agoin’ to blow right enough,” said Nickerson, taking over the wheel from Donald. “We’ll get aour breeze afore long ... all we want of it!” And he sniffed the air and looked to leeward. The other schooners had caught the draught flowing over St. Lawrence’s high head-land and were bowling off for the Magdalen Islands and rapidly leaving the West Wind astern.
“Jig up everything, boys!” bawled the skipper. “An’ get yer sheets aft. We’ll have a little shoot of fifty miles with those jokers ahead, and I be damned if we’re agoin’ to be the last. Th’ Lunenburger might trim us, but I’ll be cussed if Burton does. They’re mayn’t be much herring at the Islands, but we want to get what there is an’ get it quick!” The breeze caught the West Wind as the gang sweated up and sheeted-in, and she tore after the other vessels under four lowers, main-topsail, main-staysail and balloon jib. Nickerson himself took the wheel and held her to a N.W. by W. course for Amherst Harbor on Amherst Island of the Magdalen group.
The barometer had dropped to 29.6, and with the southerly came a cold, rainy mist. Within a half-hour of its commencement, the wind stiffened into a squally blow and a short, violent chop arose, which had the schooner plunging and rolling and driving sprays over her bows. But through it all, she was running along like a hound, with the white-water racing aft and the wake abroiling.
“It kicks up nasty here,” remarked the skipper from the wheel. “There’s a surface current of the water from the melting ice up the River St. Lawrence streaming down the Gulf this time of year, and it sets hard to the east’ard. With this southerly blowing across it and the tide arunning up the Gulf and only twenty fathom under our bottom, it makes a dirty jobble of sea hereabouts.”
When the ice moves out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the spring, the migrating herring “strike in” around the shores of the Magdalen Islands in countless swarms. They have done so for many years, and the inhabitants of those bleak and isolated islets trap them in nets as they seek the shores to deposit their spawn, and while some are pickled and barrelled for use as food, a considerable quantity is sold to the fishing schooners for use as bait. In May and June, a large fleet of Canadian, American, Newfoundland and French fishing craft repair to the Magdalens to secure fresh bait, and the rule is “first come, first served.” Nickerson knew this, and the skippers of the other schooners knew it, too, and all three drove their vessels as hard as they would go. A further incentive to speed lay in the fact that there would be a fleet of a hundred sail storming out from Canso Straits with the southerly driving the ice barrier away. With so many vessels hunting for bait, the demand would be greater than the supply.
Within an hour the breeze had freshened into half a gale, and the three schooners were laying down to it with their lee scuppers awash and their decks, gear and canvas drenched with spray and rain. On the West Wind, which was slightly astern of the other two, the gang were all on deck and lounging aft with sou’westers and oilskins and sea-boots on, and the skipper, seated astride of the wheel-box, gripped the spokes in his strong hands and glanced, ever and anon, at sails, compass and the schooners ahead and to leeward.
There is nothing a Bank fisherman loves more than a race. Not one of your summer jaunts of a few miles on a measured course in a ladies’ wind, but a genuine thrash to windward in a scupper breeze with all the “muslin” hung. A race of fifty, or a hundred miles, or even more, which gives the contestants a chance to show what they can do, is fishermen’s sport, and Donald got an opportunity, in this fifty-mile “shoot” to the Magdalens, to see the Banksmen on their mettle.
With faces wet and reddened with the wind and slashing rain and spray, oilskins glistening and dripping water, the men lolled on the cabin house, laughing and joking, singing and smoking, and when she rolled down in the puffs, they howled with hilarious delight and prayed for a breeze “to tear a patch off’n her!”