"Hard?" Peter smiled. "Often enough I think of those fellows out on the Banks turning out on a good, cold, blizzardy day in winter, Mrs. Pentle—turning out at four o'clock in the mornin' and goin' into a cold hold with the ice and baitin' up, so's to be ready to go over the side in the dory by the first o' the daylight. And then all day long it's heave and haul trawls, with maybe a sea that they don't know what minute'll get 'em. An' dressin' down a deck-load o' fish on top o' that afore they turn in of a night—an' maybe standin' watch in the night again, standin' to the wheel beatin' home in a nor'wester, when it's so cold you have to wear a woollen mask over your face with two holes to see through and another to breathe through, and your watch-mates have to relieve you—and you them—every six or eight minutes to keep from freezin' to death!
"Hard work, Mrs. Pentle!" It was too ridiculous—Peter laughed aloud this time.
"I live with my married sister, Mrs. Pentle, and goin' home these cold winter nights I sit down to supper, and after supper I slip into my slipshods, an' I get out my pipe, an' I spread my feet out before a nice, hot fire, in a rockin'-chair, an' the sister's six children they climb up all over me and we have one good time together. Some nights I take one or two of the oldest of 'em to the movies."
"You like children, then, captain?"
"The man, Mrs. Pentle, that ain't got children is bein' cheated out o' something," said Peter. "An' sittin' there after the children are put to bed, I say to myself: 'Well, Peter Crudden, you're cert'nly one lucky dog. Here's you into your warm, dry bed every night, an' work that there's about enough of to exercise you, an' no matter how the weather is—no matter about sea and wind so rough you can't fish—there's your pay-envelope every week with the same old reg'lar amount in it.'"
"I'm glad you like it here, captain, and—I'm partners with Mr. Duncan in a new vessel to be named after me."
"I hope," said Peter earnestly, "that she won't shame her name—that she'll be fast an' weatherly—and always find her way back home."
"I hope so, captain. And now—if there is anything about your work you do not like, let me know." There was a tramping of girls hurrying through the passageway. Two or three were gazing curiously in from the doorway.
"Closing-up time, is it?" Mrs. Pentle had suddenly become nervous. "Good-by." She passed out with Henston.
Old Flaxley looked kindly at Peter. "No airs to her, Peter; all men look alike to her," said old Flaxley.