XV
CLANCY TO THE MAST-HEAD
The men below knew their skipper and Clancy too well to imagine that they were to be too long left in peace. And then, too, the next man off watch reported a proper night for mackerel. “Not a blessed star out––and black! It’s like digging a hole in the ground and looking into it. And the skipper’s getting nervous, I know. I could hear him stirrin’ ’round up there when I was for’ard just now, and he hollered to the wheel that up to the no’the’ard it looked like planty of fish. ‘And I callate we ain’t the only vessel got eyes for it,’ he said.”
“Yes,” said his watch-mate, who had just dropped down, “it’s nothing but side-lights all ’round and–––”
Just then came the skipper’s voice from aloft. “Tell the boys they might’s well oil up and be ready.” The watch did not have to repeat it––we all heard it below, and fore and aft, in cabin and forec’s’le, the gang made ready. Cards, novels, and all the hot arguments went by the board, 130 and then after a mug-up for nearly all we slid into oil-clothes, boots and sou’westers, and puffing at what was probably to be the last pipeful of the evening, we lay around on lockers and on the floor, backs to the butt of the mast and backs to the stove––wherever there was space for a broad back and a pair of stout legs our fellows dropped themselves, discussing all the while the things that interested them––fish, fishing, fast vessels, big shares, politics, Bob Fitzsimmons, John L. Sullivan, good stories, and just then particularly, because two of the crew were thinking of marrying, the awful price of real estate in Gloucester.
By and by, ringing as clear as if he himself stood at the companionway, came the skipper’s voice from the mast-head: “On deck everybody!” No more discussion, no more loafing––pipes were smothered into bosoms, and up the companionway crowded oilskins and jack-boots.
Then came: “It looks like fish ahead of us. Haul the boat alongside and drop the dory over.”
We jumped. Four laid hands on the dory in the waist and ten or a dozen heaved away on the stiff painter of the seine-boat that was towing astern. Into the air and over the starboard rail went the dory, while ploughing up to the vessel’s boom at the port fore-rigging came the bow of the seine-boat.