Martin, with his head back, was gazing thoughtfully up at the deck-beams. A gentle leading question, and he resumed.
“We left Gloucester that trip with the Skipper’s— But to tell that story right a man ought to begin away back. But will you give me a match, somebody?”
He lit up again, and then settled himself snugly between the edge of the table and his bunk-board, after the manner of a man who is in for a long sitting-out. Once he really started there were but few interruptions. The loss of the Cromwell was a serious affair, and nobody broke in thoughtlessly; and only when Martin would stop to refill his pipe, or to light up again when he found he had let it go out, did he make any halt himself.
“What the Hoodleys of Cape Ann were, and are still,” began Martin, “of course all of you, or most all of you, anyway, know. Or maybe some of you don’t know. Well, they were a hard crowd—but didn’t know it—the kind of people that whenever they got to talking about their own kind, never had any tales to prove maybe that there was even the lightest bit of wit or grace or beauty among them; no, none of that for the Hoodleys of Cape Ann. But to show you what thrifty, hard-headed fore-people they had, they could spin off, any of ’em, a hundred little yarns, almost any day, as if anybody on earth that knew those of them that were alive would ever doubt what the dead-and-gone ones must’ve been. Hard they were—even neighbors that didn’t take life as a dream of poetry said that much of them. Hard they were—man, yes—the kind that little children never toddled up to and climbed on to their knees, nor a man in hard luck by any mistake ever asked the loan of a dollar of—the kind that never a man walked across the street to shake hands with. That’s the kind they were. Take ’em all in all, I guess that the Hoodleys were about as hard a tribe as you’d find in all Essex County—surely ’tisn’t possible there were any harder. And yet you couldn’t pick a flaw in ’em before the law. They were honest. Everybody had to say that for them—paying their debts, their just debts—as they put it themselves—and collecting their own dues, don’t fear, and a great respect for the letter of the law—for the letter of it. And I mind they used to boast that for generations their people had kept clear of the poorhouses, and that all had been church-members in good standing. Well, not exactly all; for, to be exact and truthful—they themselves used to put it that way—there was one here and there that had broken away. But such had been rare, as one of them—a strong church-member—used to put it, and the devil is ever active; and speaking of the devil, this particular member’d go on, there is always the blistering pit for the unrighteous. That last I s’pose he thought he ought to put in, because everybody knew that of all the people that fell from grace, the wickedest, the most blasphemous, the most evil of all evil livers had been those of the Hoodleys that had back-slided. Once they went to the bad they cert’nly went beyond all hope; and nobody did they curse out more furiously than their own people every time they did start in.
“Well, the Hoodleys weren’t a seafaring people originally. They moved over to Gloucester, y’see, at one particular time when everybody was expecting in some way to make money out of fishing. George Hoodley was a lad then—seventeen—with the hard kind of a face and the awkward body that everybody nat’rally looked for in one of his breed. And he had the kind of a mind, I cal’late, that his father would like a boy of his to have. Well, George signed right away for a boy’s wages with a prudent master—old Sol Tucker it was—that went in the Distant Shore so long. They used to say that Sol wore the same pair of jack-boots out of her that he had when he first went aboard, and there was eighteen years between his first and last trips in her. I mind the jack-boots—and they were cert’nly well patched when I saw them—though no more than twelve year old then. That’ll give you an idea of Sol. And George Hoodley put in thirteen years with Sol, and thirteen long hard drags of years they must’ve been. I misdoubt that any of us here could’ve stood those thirteen—no, sir, not for vessel’s, skipper’s, and hand’s share together. Well, George stood it, and I don’t b’lieve he ever knew he was missing anything in life. But he had something to show for it, as he’d say himself. When he left old Sol he was able to buy a half interest and go master of a good vessel. I went with him in her—the Harding—two trips—just two, no more.”
Martin halted to light up again, and somebody asked, “Warn’t it the Harding, Martin, that had the small cabin?”
“Yes, the smallest, they say, that ever was seen in a fisherman. Just about room to stand between the steps and the stove and between the stove and the bulkhead again; and not much better for’ard—a forec’s’le so small that the crew used to say they had to go on deck to haul on their oilskins. She was all hold. Well, while he was in the Harding George made a great reputation for all kinds of carefulness. Most men that went with him said he was altogether too careful for any mortal use; and maybe that was so. But his savings kept piling up, and there was plenty of other careful men to ship with him and abide by him.
“One thing that George and his people used to boast about was that he warn’t like a good many other fishermen. While a good many of them were putting in time ashore drinking, skylarking, or if it warn’t no more than to spend a quiet sociable evening with their friends or their own families—during all that George was attending to business, for business it was to him. He was talking one day of those who said fishing was a venture, or even adventure, and he’d been reading somewhere, he said, of the joy that somebody thought fine, strong men ought to get out of fishing. He almost smiled when he was telling it. The joy of fishing! If you had a good trip of fish and got a good price for it, why, yes, fishing was good fun then. But as far as he could see it was like any other kind of work. You put in about so much time at it and took good care of your money, and at the end of the year you had about so much to show for it. And as for the fun of fighting a breeze of wind that some of them talked about, seeing how long you could hang on to your canvas without losing your spars, or how far down you could let your vessel roll before she’d capsize—none of that for him. And it was all rot, their pretending they got any fun out of it. They had the same blood and nerve and senses as any other humans, and he knew that for himself he was content to stay hove-to when it blew one of the living gales they talked about, and satisfied, too, to shorten sail in time, even if he was bound home, when it blew hard enough. Gloucester would be there when he got there—it wouldn’t blow away. Cert’nly, he’d admit, the drivers’d outsail him on a passage and beat him out of the market once in a while; but in the long run his way paid best. He could name the foolish fellows that’d been lost, and the fingers of both hands wouldn’t begin to name them. Yes, and left families to starve, some of ’em. And he himself was alive and still bringing home the fish, and everybody in Gloucester knew what he had to show for it.
“Well, by that time everybody in Gloucester did know what he had to show for it, and everybody in Gloucester said it was about time he began to look around for a wife, though nobody expected George Hoodley to look around for a wife after the regular manner of fishermen, who don’t look around at all, so far as I c’n see. We ourselves, or most of us, anyway, liking the girl pretty well and she willing, gen’rally hurry up to get married ’bout as soon as we find ourselves with a couple of months’ rent ahead.
“But not that way with George Hoodley. It wasn’t until he was forty-five that he began to look around after the manner of his people for a wife. There was to be no rushing into the expenses of matrimony; but with two good vessels, and a house all clear, a man might well think of it—or leastways I imagine that’s the way he thought it out, if he wasted any time thinking of it at all.