“‘Well,’ I said, ‘I can’t say. Some people remember things a long time, but you go a trip with Tom O’Donnell, and you’ll stand a pretty good chance ’specially ’bout this time o’ year,’ I says. ‘And maybe it’ll teach people a lesson,’ I insinuates. And just then down the dock comes the Skipper, with big Jerry Sullivan. Ain’t he a whale though—big Jerry?”
“Yes, and gettin’ bigger every day.”
“Yes. Well, the Skipper was layin’ down the law to big Jerry, and you could hear him the length of the dock. He was sayin’, ‘I told him we’d leave at nine o’clock, and it’s quarter-past now, and I told him above all the others, knowin’ his failin’. He knows me, and he oughter know that when I say nine o’clock that ’tis nine o’clock I mean, and not ten, or eleven, or two in the afternoon; and we’ve been in two nights now, and he’s had plenty o’ time to loosen up since.”
“‘That’s right enough, Skipper,’ says Jerry. ‘I heard you myself, and I said myself, “Now, mind, Bartley, what the Skipper’s tellin’ you.” But you see, Skipper, it was a weddin’ last night, and a wake the night before——’
“‘A wake and a weddin’! And whose weddin’—his?’ roars the Skipper.
“‘Why, no,’ says Jerry.
“‘Was it his wake, then?’
“‘Why, Skipper, don’t you know it couldn’t been his wake?’
“‘Not his wake and not his weddin’? Then what the divil reason has he?’
“‘Why,’ said Jerry, ‘I ain’t sayin’ he’s got any good reason. But you know what he thinks of you and of the vessel. He’s been in the Colleen ever since she was built, and he’s a fisherman—a fisherman, Skipper, stem to stern a fisherman—and he knows your ways and the vessel’s ways,’ says Jerry.