Even when they were jogging that night it looked bad; but they knew they might do it and live. They had to keep an eye out, of course, and stand ready to stand off in a hurry, for should it come too bad it would mean lively work to get out.
Safe away to the eastward of them, watch after watch of the Delia stamping about deck could make out the riding light of the other vessel to anchor.
“In the mornin’, whoever he is, he’ll be gettin’ his courage up, and maybe he’ll drop down,” said the Delia’s crew.
They were in great good-humor. And well they might be, with twenty-five thousand of halibut and fifteen thousand of fine cod after two days’ fishing. Yes, well they might be—halibut sixteen and eighteen cents a pound when they left Gloucester.
It was worth taking chances to get fish like that; and with a skipper who knew the bar as most men know their own kitchens, who could foretell the weather better than all the glasses in the country, who could keep run of a vessel and tell you where you were any time of the day or night out of his head—no need for him to be everlastingly digging out charts and taking sights—they were safe. Yes, sir, they were safe with this man. Fishing in twenty fathoms of water in that kind of weather looked bad—very bad—and they would not care to try it with everybody in heavy weather, but with a short scope and with Patsie Oddie on the quarter—why, that was a different matter altogether.
In the morning it was so thick that they could not see a length ahead; so the skipper, to be safe, kept the lead going. That afternoon it cleared, and they saw to anchor, but now inside of them, their neighbor of the day before.
Patsie Oddie looked her over. “What do you call her?” he asked finally of Martin Carr.
“The Eldorado or the Alhambra— I wouldn’t want to say which, they bein’ alike as two herrin’.”
“That’s right—they do look alike, Martin. But she’s the Eldorado— Fred Watson. But what’s got into him this trip? Generally he fishes farther off. But ’tis Watson’s vessel, anyway, and the blessed fool’s got his dories out. He must be drunk—if he isn’t foolish. But he don’t drink—not gen’rally. What ails him at all? She’ll be draggin’ soon, if she isn’t already. He don’t seem to know too much about that swell in there with an easterly wind— I misdoubt he ever fished in so close before—and if he don’t let go his other anchor he’ll soon be where a hundred anchors won’t do him any good. And look at where some of his dories are now!”
Getting nervous under the strain, Oddie stood down and hailed the two men in the dory farthest from the Eldorado. They said they did not know quite what to do—no signal to haul had yet been hoisted on the vessel. They guessed, though, they would hang on a while longer.