“Captain Clancy–––”
“Captain once, but–––”
“I know, I know, but not from lack of ability, at any rate. Let me thank you. His mother will thank you herself later, and make you feel, I know, her sense of what she owes to you. And his cousin Alice––she thinks the world of him. There, I know you don’t want to hear any more, but you shall––maybe later––though it may come up in another way. But tell me––wait, come inside a minute. Come in you, too, Joe,” he said, turning to me, but I said I’d rather wait outside. I wanted to have a smoke to get my nerves steady again, I guess.
So Clancy and Mr. Duncan went inside, and through the window, whenever I looked up, I could see them. As their talk went on I could see 41 that they were getting very much interested about something or other. Clancy particularly was laying down the law with a clenched fist and an arm that swung through the air like a jibing boom. Somebody, I knew, was getting it.
When they came out Mr. Duncan stopped at the door, and said, as if by way of a parting word, “And so you think that’s the cause of Withrow’s picking a quarrel with Maurice? Well, I never thought of that before, but maybe you’re right. And now, what do you say to a vessel for yourself?”
“Me take a vessel? No, sir––not for me. But when you’ve got vessels to hand around, Mr. Duncan, bear Maurice in mind––he’s a fisherman.”
We left Mr. Duncan then, he making ready to telephone to learn how Johnnie was getting along. Clancy said his clothes were beginning to feel so dry that he did not know as he would go to his boarding-house. “I think we’d better go up to the Anchorage and have a little touch. But I forgot––you don’t drink, Joe? No? So I thought, but don’t you care––you’re young yet. Come along, anyway, and have a smoke.”
And so we went along to the Anchorage, and while we were there, I smoking one of those barroom cigars and Clancy nursing the after-taste of his drink and declaring that a touch of good liquor 42 was equal to a warm stove for drying wet clothes, I told him what I would have told him in Crow’s Nest if there had not been so many around––about Minnie Arkell calling Maurice back into her grandmother’s house, and then Sam Hollis coming along and going in after him.
“What!” and stopped dead. Suddenly he brought his fist through the air. “I’ll”––and as suddenly stopped it midway. “No, I won’t, either. But I’ll put Maurice wise to them. What should he know at his age and with his up-bringing of what’s in the heads of people like them. And if I don’t have something further to say to old Mr. Duncan! But now let’s go back to Arkell’s––come on, Joe.”
But I didn’t go back with him. I didn’t think that I could do Maurice any good then, and I might be in the way if Clancy wanted to speak his mind out to anybody. I went home instead, where I expected to have troubles of my own, for I knew that my mother wouldn’t like the idea of my going seining.