The master of the yacht had a message for our captain, he said, and Clancy told him the skipper was below. There they talked for a while and after the yachtsman had gone Maurice, inviting four or five of us along, dressed up, called for the seine-boat, got in and was rowed over to a steam-yacht that we now remembered had hailed the schooner-yacht’s gig. All brass and varnish and white paint and gold she would be in the daytime, but now she was all lit up with electric lights below and Japanese lanterns on deck.
When we came alongside, who should come to the gangway of the yacht and welcome Maurice but Minnie Arkell––Mrs. Miner. She greeted all of us for that matter––she never pretended not to see people––and invited us all below for refreshments. There was a good lay-out there and we pitched into it. Seiners are great people at table or in a bunk. They can turn to and eat, or turn in and sleep any minute, day or night. So now we turned to. Clancy did great things to the wine. Generally he took whiskey, but he did not object to good wine now and then. He and one fellow 161 in a blue coat, white duck trousers, and a blue cap that never left his head, had a great chat.
“I callate that if he didn’t have that cap with the button on front nobody’d know he was a real yachtsman, would they?” Eddie Parsons whispered in my ear.
The owner of the steam-yacht was trying to convince Tommie that yachting would be more in his line than fishing, but Tommie couldn’t see it.
“But why not?” he asked at last. “Why not, Mr. Clancy? Is it a matter of money? If it is, I’ll make that right. I pay ordinary hands twenty-five and thirty dollars a month and found, but I’ll pay you fifty––sixty––seventy dollars a month to go with me. I’m going to race this steamer this summer and I want a quartermaster––a man like you that can steer to a hair-line. Seventy dollars a month now––what do you say?”
“Come now, my good man, what do you say?” Clancy got that off without so much as a smile. “But you couldn’t make it seventy-five now, could you? No, I didn’t mean that quite, though I’ve been out the dock in Gloucester of a Saturday noon and back again to the dock of a Tuesday noon––three days––and shared two hundred dollars––not as skipper, mind you, but just as hand. There now, I hope you’re not going to get angry. Hadn’t we better have another little touch? But I can see 162 myself in a suit of white duck, touching my cap, and saying, ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ to some slob––no reference to you, mind you––but some slob in a uniform that’s got a yacht, not because he loves the sea, but because he wants to butt in somewhere––who lives aboard his yacht just the same as he does in his house ashore––electric bells, baths, servants, barber and all––and hugs the shore so close that he gets the morning paper as regularly as when he’s at home. When that kind go yachting all they miss are the tables on the lawn and the automobiles going by the door. They even have canary-birds––some of them––in cages. Yes, and wouldn’t be caught twenty miles off shore––no, not even in a summer’s breeze for––And where would he be in a winter’s gale? I can see myself rowing a gig with somebody like that in the stern giving orders and fooling––well, some simple-minded women folks, maybe, who know as much of the sea as they do of the next world––most of them––fooling them into believing that he’s a devil––yes, a clean devil on the water. Seventy a month for that?––couldn’t you make it seventy-five?”
“You don’t mean to say that–––”
“Yes,” said Clancy, “I do. I’d rather stick to fishing than––but here’s a shoot and let’s call the quartermaster’s job off.”
Minnie Arkell chimed in here. “A real fisherman, 163 you must remember, Mr. Keith, doesn’t care much for yachting because––leaving out the question of wages, for he does make more at fishing––he can remain a fisherman and yet be independent.”
“You mean they don’t have to take orders as if they were on a yacht, Mrs. Miner?”