A true tale of Cape Cod, written for the New York World by Lillian May Small, only official woman marine observer in the United States.
Fishing schooner Polly, Capt. Peter Rider, weighed anchor one spring morning in 1800 and sailed away from Provincetown. She was a staunch craft of eighty tons, bound on a fishing voyage to Chaleurs Bay.
Besides the captain there were on board Jot Rider, the captain’s son; Ben Smith, broad-shouldered and strong as an ox; the two Larkin boys, ready to furl a gafftopsail in any weather; George Barnes, Tom Olsen, the Swede; Nick Adams, Bob Atwood, the cook, and Ned, the “boy,” a bright lad of ten years, Capt. Peter’s nephew.
This was Ned’s first trip, and he thought himself quite a man until the Polly had rounded Race Point and began to roll about in the great green swell of the turbulent ocean; then he wished himself back in Granny Rider’s kitchen, where the open fireplace kept a fellow dry, where the dishes didn’t roll off the table, where things smelled good and clean, not like the nasty bilge water that washed about in the Polly’s run, but where a boy could take off his boots when he went to bed, you know.
But he couldn’t go back, so, with a quiet cry now and then, all by himself up in the bow of the Polly, where the men wouldn’t see him, he managed to brace up and help the cook down in the fo’cas’tle, and pull on the main sheet and reef an furl, anything except steer; discipline aboard a “codder” was as strict as on a man-of-war and boys were not allowed to handle the tiller. Favoring winds wafted the boat eastward along the northern coast, past jutting, rocky headlands and surf-washed spits, to an anchorage on the fishing banks. Three months the Polly swung at her anchors, at times idly upon the smooth waters, at times pitching wildly with a savage pull at the cable when the tempest beat down upon the stormy waters of that desolate coast.
But now the low-set hull told the story of a successful catch. The last basketful of salt had been “wet,” the fishing lines were snugly coiled upon the reels. It was Sunday morning. Capt. Peter was no autocrat, and it was his custom to have “all hands” down to breakfast in the cabin on Sabbath mornings.
“Well, boys,” said Capt. Peter, when all were gathered around the rough table, “we’ve got a putty good trip under hatches, so arter breakfuss I guess we’ll get the hook aboard and head the Polly for home.”
If there was any one in that ship’s company who felt his heart give a sudden bound of joyous anticipation it was Ned. Every day of all those long weeks Ned had scored the mental calculation, “one day nearer home.”
From his thoughts of home he was startled by a human cry.
Again he heard it coming faintly across the smooth water.