“‘’Tis Tommie I’m after,’ hollers back the Skipper and gets out of hearing.
“I don’t know whether we gained or lost on the Nannie O, but we carried our stays’l every foot of the way from Cape Cod to Eastern Point and we carried into the harbor just the same’s we came across the bay. Did you see her beatin’ in? No? Well, it was a scandal. Her deck was slidin’ back and forth under our feet—we could feel it, and you’ve seen a soap-box with the top and bottom gone floatin’ about in the tide? Yes? And how it lengthens out sometimes when a sea hits it broadside? Well, that’s the way the Colleen was shiftin’ back and forth comin’ in the harbor. She was that loose ’twas immoral. ‘She’s ten feet longer when she stretches herself real well,’ says Jerry. ‘She is a bit loose,’ says the Skipper, ‘but she sails better loose. When she lengthens out like that, she’s doin’ her best reachin’.’
“And that’s the way she came in. When we came to anchor the Skipper went into her peak with a lantern, tryin’ to find out what it was. ‘I think she’s a little more loose than ordinary this trip,’ he says—‘it must be the calkin’. But before he got through he discovered that it was her iron band had dropped off altogether. And then it was he told me to go ashore to see about a place for her on the railway. And I guess I’d better hurry along. But afore we go, Peter, just a little touch to the Colleen Bawn, for God bless her, loose as she is, there’s nothing like her out the port.”
“And are you goin’ to stay on her and she like that?”
“And she that way? And why not? He’s going to put four-inch joists in her fore and aft this time on the railway, and then she’ll be all right. She’ll leak a little maybe, but what’s a little leak? And anyway I’d rather be lost in her with Tom O’Donnell than live a thousand years with some. And so here’s to her, Peter-boy. One thing, you know you’re alive on her—and here’s to the Colleen Bawn.”
“To the Colleen Bawn, Tommie, and I don’t know but what you’re right.”
When Peter came out of the Anchorage again, the atmosphere had cleared. The blush of the sky was a marvellous thing for March. Peter could not remember when he had ever seen so rosy a morning for that time of year. And it was a fair wind, too—so fair that Peter could not but remark it. “If we was comin’ home in the Colleen Bawn, or the Nannie O, in this breeze, our wake’d be fair boilin’. The Colleen Bawn with the Irishman aboard, or the Nannie O with Tommie Ohlsen—they’d be loggin’ fifteen knots—yes, and sixteen maybe.” He looked over his shoulder, and for twenty fathoms back he could see the smooth, white log-line and the brass-bound log whirling like mad. It was a rosy morning, and Peter rolled along for Crow’s Nest.
Along the road he overhauled Dexter Warren, who seemed to be out taking the air.
“Seen Jimmie Johnson yet, Dexter?” asked Peter.
Dexter took a hand out of one pocket to gesture. “Jimmie? Yes, and he’s crazy. He came up the wharf like a ghost. ‘Hulloh, what kind of a trip’d you have, Jimmie?’ I asked, ‘and how do you like Captain O’Donnell?’