Out came Clancy’s orders then––rapid fire––and as he ripped them out, no whistling wind could smother his voice, no swash of the sea could drown it. In boat, dory and on deck, every brain glowed to understand and every heart pumped to obey.
“Up with your wheel, George, and let her swing by. Stea-dy. Ready in the boat. Steady your wheel. Are you ready in the boat? Let her swing off a little more, George. Steady––hold her there. Stand by in the boat. Now then––now! Cast off 135 your painter, cast off and pull to the west’ard. And drive her! Up with the wheel. More yet––that’s good. Drive her, I say, skipper. Where’s that dory?––I don’t see the dory. The dory, the dory––where in hell’s the dory?––show that lantern in the dory. All right, the dory. Hold her up, George. Don’t let her swing off another inch now. Drive her, boys, drive her! Look out now! Stand by the seine! Stand by––the twine––do you hear, Steve! The twine! Drive her––drive her––blessed Lord! drive her. That’s the stuff, skipper, drive her! Let her come up, George. Down with your wheel––down with you wheel––ste-a-dy. Drive her, skipper, drive her! Turn in now––in––shorter yet. Drive her now––where’s that dory!––hold her up!––not you, George! you’re all right––ste-a-dy. Hold that dory up to the wind!––that’s it, boys––you’re all right––straight ahead now! That’s the stuff. Turn her in now again, skipper. In the dory there––show your lantern in the dory and be ready for the seine-boat. Good enough. Now cover your lantern in the dory and haul away when you’re ready.”
To have experienced the strain and drive of that rush, to have held an oar in the boat during that and to have shared with the men in the confidence they gathered––ours was a skipper to steer a boat around a school––and the soul that rang in Clancy’s 136 voice!––why, just to stand on deck, as I did, and listen to it––it was like living.
During this dash we could make out neither boat nor dory from deck, but the flashes of light raised by the oars at every stroke were plainly to be seen in that phosphorescent sea. Certainly they were making that boat hop along! Ten good men, with every man a long, broad blade, and double banked, so that every man might encourage his mate and be himself spurred on by desperate effort. Legs, arms, shoulders, back, all went into it and their wake alive with smoke and fire to tell them they were moving! To be in that?––The middle of a black night on the Atlantic was this, and the big seine-heaver was throwing the seine in great armfuls. And Hurd and Parsons in the little dory tossing behind and gamely trying to keep up! They were glad enough to be in the dory, I know, to get hold of the buoy, and you can be sure there was some lively action aboard of her when Clancy called so fiercely to them to hold the buoy up to the wind, so that the efforts of the crew of the seine-boat, racing to get their two hundred odd fathoms of twine fence around the flying school, might not go for naught.
XVI
WE GET A FINE SCHOOL
With his “Haul away now when you’re ready,” Clancy came down from aloft. He was sliding down evidently by way of the jib halyards, for there was the sound of a chafing whiz that could be nothing else than the friction of oilskins against taut manila rope, a sudden check, as of a block met on the way, an impatient, soft, little forgivable oath, and then a plump! that meant that he must have dropped the last twelve or fifteen feet to the deck. Immediately came the scurry of his boot-heels as he hurried aft. In another moment he stood in the glow of the binnacle light, and reaching back toward the shadow of the cook, but never turning his head from that spot out in the dark where he had last seen the boat, he took the wheel.
“All right, George, I’ve got you. A good-sized school, by the looks, if they got them, and I think they have. Did you see that boat ahead we near ran into?––the last time we put the wheel down? Man, but for a second I thought they were gone. 138 I hope no blessed vessel comes as near to our fellows. And they were so busy rowing and heaving twine they never saw us, and myself nearly cross-eyed trying to watch them and our own boat and the fish all the time. Go below, George, she’s all right now, and tell Joe––where is he?––to go below, too, and have a mug-up for himself. He must be soaked through taking the swash that must’ve come over her bow for the last hour. But tell him to come right up so’s to keep watch out ahead.”