Two men forward––the watch––were leaning over the windlass and peering into the night. They were there for whatever they might see, but particularly were they looking for the double white light of Five Fathom Bank lightship. The skipper was at the wheel. When he got in the way of the cabin light, we could catch the shine from his dripping oil-clothes, and the spark from his pipe––which he kept going through it all––marked his position when he stepped back into the darkness.
Clancy noticed him. “There’s a man for you, Joey. Think what it meant to a young skipper with a new vessel––the loss of that school and the seine on top of it the very first day he struck fish. If we’d got that, he might have been the first vessel 92 of the year into the New York market. And think of the price the first fish fetch!––and the honor of it––and he breaking his heart to make a reputation this year. And yet not a yip out of him––not a cranky word to one of the gang all night. A great man I call him––and a fisherman.” I thought so, too.
Sometimes I imagined I could see the wink of red and green lights abreast and astern, which I probably did, for there should have been fifty sail or so of seiners inside and outside of us––there were sixty sail of the fleet in sight that afternoon––and I knew that, barring a possible few that had got fish and were driving for the New York market, all the others were like ourselves, under lower sails and boring into it, with extra lookout forward, the skipper at the wheel or on the quarter and all ears and eyes for the surf and lights inshore when we should get there.
“Something ahead! dead ahead! sa-ail!” came suddenly from forward. There was a scraping of boot-heels at the wheel. “What d’y’make of it?––all right, I see her!” In the shadow we saw the skipper pulling the wheel down. Ahead I imagined I saw a dark patch, but to make sure I squirmed up to the fore-rigging. Whoever she was, the light from her cabin skylight was right there and I realized that we were pretty close, but 93 not really how close until a boat bobbed up under my jaws almost. Right from under our bow it heaved. It was a seiner and that was her seine-boat towing astern, and I could easily have heaved a line to her helmsman as we swept by her. There was an awfully tall shadow of sails––half up to the clouds I thought––and the black of the hull looked as long as a dock. A voice was hurled to us, but we couldn’t quite make it out––but it was the watch, probably, saying a word or two by way of easing his feelings.
We worked up to the windward of that one and slowly crowded past her tumbling green light. Then the skipper let the wheel fly up and we shot ahead and soon we had her directly astern, with her one green and one red eye looking after us. “That’s one fellow we outsail,” thought I to myself, and I knew I was beginning to love the Johnnie Duncan.
All through that night it went on like that.
At four o’clock or so in the morning the cook stuck his head out of the slit in the forec’s’le companionway and spoke his welcome little piece. “Can’t have any reg’lar sit-down this morning, boys. Have to leave the china in the becket for a while yet, but all that wants can make a mug-up, and when we get inside––if we do in anything like a decent hour––we’ll have breakfast.”
At five o’clock the sky began to brighten to the eastward, but there was no let-up to the wind or sea. If anything it was breezing up. At six o’clock, when the short blasts of the lightship split the air abreast of us, things were good and lively, but there was no daylight to go by then. The wash that in the night only buried her bow good was then coming over her to the foremast and filling the gangway between the house and rail as it raced aft. The beauty of double-lashing the dories began to appear, and all hands might have been towing astern all night by the look of them. But the Johnnie Duncan was doing well and the opinion of the crew generally was that the skipper could slap every rag to her and she’d carry it––that is, if she had to. The skipper put her more westerly after we had passed the lightship and on we went.
We had the company of a couple of coasters in this part of the drive; and by that, if nothing else, a man might know we were inshore. Some Gloucester men were in sight, too, though most of the fleet, we guessed, were still outside of us. The coasters were colliers, three-masters both, and reefed down, wallowing in the sea. One had her foretopmast snapped short off, and such patched sails as she had on looked lonesome. The gang, of course, had to make fun of her.