"A big, able brute—yes, boy. But that big brute—Lard Gard, she'd look sweet, wouldn't she, chasin' swordfish in the shoal water south o' Georges. She's a good little boat, the Henriette—and a pretty name," said John.
It was a fresh southwesterly, and a day to make a man over, as we passed on by Eastern Point. Just to look at the young blue seas was life, and the soft salt air was a cure for whatever blue feeling a man might have had hooked into himself ashore.
A great morning. We passed two big salt fishermen bound in. From the Western Banks they were, or from Flemish Cap, half across the ocean, maybe; and the brown rocks of Cape Ann must have looked to them like mother's johnny-cake on the kitchen table that sunny morning. Swinging by like a pair of twins they went, flying both topsails the pair of them, but neither of them much more than flushing their scuppers to the fine fresh breeze. Whoo-o-sh! fifteen hundred miles we've come from the east'ard! In the name o' heaven—we could almost hear them saying it—don't stop us!
The sea was more than swishing through the little Henriette's scuppers. Our rail was good and wet as we belted across the bay, and rounding Cape Cod we rolled down till the solid water began to fill her lee gangway; rolled lower and lower, 'till it was solid between her lee rail and house; and those of us on her wind'ard quarter had our feet braced so we wouldn't take a slide down her high-slanting deck and overboard.
Our skipper was a driver. By and by we were rolling low enough for a buoy keg to go floating off our house and overboard astern. A fine half-barrel of a buoy keg it was—black and white painted, smooth and tight as a drum; a beauty of a buoy which by and by, at the end of a fifty-fathom warp, ought by rights to be towing after a fat swordfish; and so the skipper said. But now she was dancing atop of the swirling seas astern, and the skipper, looking astern after it and then at us, also said: "To hell with it now! Buy a new one out your share—and next time some o' you'll learn to lash 'em, maybe!"
It was a day to see pictures. From astern of us came bowling up one of the biggest and stiffest knockabouts sailing out o' Gloucester. She had a bow like a bulldog's jaw; and she sent that bow smashing through the white-collared seas as if she had come out for no more than to give her ugly face a wash. Stiff? She was a church on a rock.
"There's the able lady!" said Shorty. "No water sloshin' solid through her lee gangway an' washin' buoy kegs off her house—hah, John?"
John was a Newfoundlander. He told me that the earliest thing he remembered was helping bait his father's trawls on a Grand Banks fisherman.
With his arms folded over the corner of the house, his chin resting on his arms, and his eyes like two razor-edges peering out between his eyelids, there wasn't much happening up to wind'ard—or leeward either—that John wasn't seeing. And it was a great day to see things; for it was a gale o' wind blowing, the sky was still clear blue, and the air was the kind to make a man over.
A quick-acting, quick-talking, wiry little fellow was John. Big Bill couldn't keep up with him at all. Bill's right name was not Bill. Nobody knew what it was; nor cared. Bill was probably a better name, anyway. One peek at him as the big fellow hove himself aboard was enough for John. "Will ye look at Big Bill!" cried John; after that no other name would fit him. "Lard, Lard," said John, "but I be wantin' to see the look o' that bulk of a man when he jams hisself into a bosun's chair to the masthead!"