THE HEART OF CLANCY
That trip ended seining for the Duncan that year. Everything went well with our friends, after we got home. It was late in the season, and Maurice Blake was to stay ashore to get married, for one thing. He had made a great season of it and could afford to. So the Johnnie Duncan was fitted out for fresh halibuting and Clancy took her.
I went with him. I remember very well that I had no idea of going winter fishing when the seining season ended, but, somehow or other when Clancy came to get a crew together I was looking for a chance.
So we put out, and on the rocks of Cape Ann, near Eastern Point lighthouse, on the day we sailed on our first halibuting trip, were Maurice Blake and Alice Foster, my cousin Nell and Will Somers, to wave us good luck. Clancy hauled the vessel close in to get a better look and they waved us until I suppose they could see us no longer. Of course they should have been able to make us out long 310 after we had lost sight of them, we being a tall-sparred, white-sailed vessel; and Clancy must have had that in mind, for long after all signs of them had been lost to us he kept the glasses pointed to the rocks. He turned at last with a “Well, I suppose they’re all happy now, Joe?”
“They ought to be,” I said.
“Yes, they ought to be,” he repeated, and then again, “they ought to be,” and went for’ard.
He stayed for’ard a long time, saying no word, but leaning over the windlass and looking out ahead. Nobody disturbed him. Once or twice when the sheets needed trimming––and in a deep sleep I think Clancy would know that––he turned and gave the word, but the bare word and no more. He had his spells we all knew, when he didn’t want anybody near him, and so he wanted to be alone, I suppose. And there he stayed, with what spray came over the bow splashing him, but he paying no attention.
At supper call he moved, but not to go below and eat––only to shift to walking the quarter, and walking the quarter he stayed until near midnight. He went below then after giving a few words of instruction to the watch––went below and got out his pipe. From my bunk, the middle port bunk in the cabin, I watched him rummaging for tobacco in his stateroom and then his coming out with his 311 pipe and his filling and lighting it slowly and thoughtfully, and then his sitting and smoking under the cabin lamp.
Looking over when he had finished that pipeful––I had not drawn my curtain––he caught my eyes on him. He smiled, but said nothing––only lit another pipeful, and kept on smoking.
I fell asleep watching him––fell asleep and woke again. He must have been watching me, for his eyes were on mine when I looked for him again. He smiled and shook his pipe out, and made as though to turn in.