MARTIN CARR’S dory-mate having just stepped on deck, the forec’s’le gang began to question Martin about him. In the fast run-off to the grounds, with everybody trying to catch up on sleep, there had been small time to get acquainted; but the general opinion seemed to be that ’twas rather a delicate-looking lad.
“That’s what,” summed up an unquestionably able-looking fisherman who was overhauling a tub of trawls. “He don’t look hardly rugged enough to go winter trawlin’. D’y’ think he do, yourself, Martin?”
’Twas put in all good-nature, as Martin himself well knew; but it was not in Martin to allow even moderate criticism of a friend pass without retort, and so his “I never knew before ’twas looks made a man” went flying back to the lee lockers.
The man on the lockers smoothed out a snarled ganging ere he came back with “Now, now, Martin, we all know ’tisn’t looks alone, but leave it to yourself—don’t looks go a great ways toward your judgment of a man? Afore ever you know what a man is, don’t the cut of his mouth or the set of his jaw, and the way he looks out of his eyes at you, have a lot to do with how far you’d trust him? Don’t it?”
“Sure, it does,” replied Martin. “But d’y’ mean to say this lad hasn’t good eyes and mouth and jaw?”
“Now, Martin”—and a broken, rusted hook was snipped off and replaced with a new shiny one—“now, Martin, nobody knows better than you what I think—you that c’n read a man’s mind ’most. The lad’s got as fine a face in a way as ever I looked at. Man, ’tis a beautiful face. But that’s the bother of it—’tis beauty, not strength in it. And comin’ down to facts, you know yourself, it’s no joke to be out in a dory with a man that can’t hold his end up. ’Tis thought of you we have, Martin. Did ever he haul a trawl or try to row a loaded dory agen a full tide out here?”
For answer, Martin continued calmly to blow his puffs of smoke toward the deck-beams.
“That means he never did, and I’m afraid, Martin, when it comes to it, that maybe he won’t be able to.”
“Well, maybe he won’t,” echoed Martin placidly; “but whether he does or no, ’tisn’t Martin Carr will be the first to tell him he’s fallin’ short.”
“But where did you pick him up, anyway, Martin?”