So when the crews are aboard, and the stores and salt are being hoisted in, there is a hurry to be among the first away. Chains and windlasses creak and clang, nimble feet fly aloft, hoarse voices ring across the rippling water, and many a cheerful song echoes from ship to shore and back again.
Willing hands, strangers for months to hemp and tar, lay on to the tackle, as spar and boom are run into place. The fish-bins below are cleaned and scrubbed to the very quick. Bright-work, if there be any, is polished, and sail-patching and dory-painting and caulking are the order of the day, and most of the night. The black cook, below in the mysterious blackness of the galley, potters with saucepan and kettle, and when the provisions are aboard serves the first meal. There is coffee, steaming hot in the early hours of the morning, and biscuit and meat,—plenty of it. There is not much variety, but, with the work to be done above and below decks, a full-blooded appetite leaves no chance for grumbling.
At last the bag and baggage of the crew are tossed aboard,—packs of tobacco innumerable, new rubber clothes, all yellow and shiny in the morning dampness, boots and woollens to keep out the cold of spring on the Bank Sea,—all bought on credit at the store, to be charged against “settling-day.”
WAVING GODSPEED TO THE FISHER-FOLK
It is morning, just before the dawn. The “Polly J.,” her new paint all silver in the early light, rides proudly at her anchor in the centre of the tideway. The nip of winter lingers in the air, but the snow is gone and the rigging is no longer stiff to the touch.
It is just daylight when the last dory is hoisted aboard into its nest. Three or four figures on the wharves, outlined against the purple sky and hills, stand waving Godspeed to their fisher-folk. Women’s voices ring out between the creakings of the blocks, “Good luck! Good luck! ‘Polly J.’; wet your salt first, ‘Polly J.’” It is the well-wishing from the hearts of women, who go back to weep in silence. Which one of them is to make her sacrifice to the god of winds and storms?
There is a cheerful answer from the “Polly,” drowned in the flapping of the sails and creaking of the windlass. The anchor, rusty and weed-hung, is broken out and comes to the surface with a rush, while sheets are hauled aft, and, catching the morning breeze, the head of the schooner pays off towards Norman’s Woe, the water rippling merrily along her sides.
The figures on the wharves are mere gray patches in the mass of town and hills. The big sails, looming dark in the gray mists of the morning, round out to the freshening wind, and push the light fabric through the opal waves with ever-increasing speed. By the time the first rays of the rising sun have gilded the quivering gaff of the main, Eastern Point is left far astern, and the nose of the vessel ploughs boldly out to sea, rising with her empty bins light as a feather to the big, heavy swell that comes rolling in, to break in a steady roar on the brown rocks to leeward.
There is man’s work and plenty of it during those sailing days past “George’s,” Sable Island, and the St. Lawrence. The provisions and salt are to be stowed and restowed, ballast is to be shifted, sails to be made stronger and more strong, fish-bins to be prepared, old dories to be made seaworthy, rigging to be tautened, and reels and lines to be cleared and hooked. Buoy-lines and dory-roding are to be spliced, and miscellaneous carpenter work takes up the time about the decks. For a skipper unprepared to take advantage of all that luck may throw in his way does an injustice to his owner and his crew. But, busy as the time is, the skipper has his weather-eye open for the “signs.” The feel of the air, the look and color of the cold, gray Bank Sea, tell him in so many words how and where the fish will be running. At last a hand takes the heavy sea-lead and moves forward where the line may run free. Deliberately the line is coiled in great turns around the left hand, and then, like a big pendulum, the weight begins to swing with the strong right arm.