"Me? Well, there's a wife and an old mother up to my house, and I never read anywhere the gover'ment was paying out money to the families of fishermen who didn't want to fish any more, did you?" said Oliver.
So I said all right I'd go along, too. "What's the use—we're sea-birds," I said. "It's our home and our living—where else should we go but to sea, at the last? But have you seen Big Bill?"
Yes, Shorty had seen Big Bill. He had hopes to get a job at the car-barn. "He's had two warnings, he says," said Shorty, "and not to wait for a third would be foolish. He's up on Main Street right now with people buying drinks for him, while he tells 'em how he managed to save himself off the Henriette."
Well, Big Bill's all right; but he's alive to-day because a better man—the same being John—shoved him into a dory when he might have gone himself instead. And Big Bill thinks of John only as an irresponsible young fellow who liked to play jokes with blueberry dumplings.
The best men don't always come back from sea. Four good men stayed aboard the Henriette, and two of them—the skipper and John—were certainly quicker and braver than any of the others of us. The skipper could have come away first, but he didn't.
Nor John. Six years I was shipmates with John and he was one good shipmate. Good shipmates—they make a long cruise short, a rough sea smooth. Good shipmates! You don't mind going with good shipmates alongside.
And the Antoinette, she's a sister ship to the Henriette—thirteen tons net and thirty tons of ice in the hold. And that same dock lumper who never left a vessel leave Duncan's without he sees her off—he says she's down by the head, too.
A fine joy-killer, that lad.
We're putting out in an hour. So fair wind, boy—I'm off.