Ha, Joey-boy?” and gave me a slap on the shoulder that sent me half-way to the break.
That was all right, but I went aloft so I could see the rocks of Cape Ann a mite sooner. I was just beginning to discover that I had been almost homesick.
XXI
SEINERS’ WORK
We were high line of the seining fleet when we got home from the Southern cruise and we felt pretty proud of ourselves. It was something to stand on the corner on one of the days when the Johnnie was fitting out again, and have other fellows come up to you and say, “What’s that they say you fellows shared on the Southern trip?” And when we’d tell them, and we trying not to throw out our chests too much, it was fine to hear them say, “That so? Lord, but that’s great. Well, if Maurice only holds out he’ll make a great season of it, won’t he?”
“Oh, he’ll hold out,” we’d say, and lead the way down to the Anchorage or some other place for a drink or a cigar, for of course, with the money we’d made, we naturally felt like spending some of it on those who were not doing so well. And of course, too, no seiner could ever resist anybody who talks to him in a nice friendly way like that.
The skipper’s doings ashore interested all of his crew, of course, although me, perhaps, more than 176 anybody else, unless it was Clancy. I got pretty regular bulletins from my cousin Nell. She was for the skipper, first, last and all the time.
“I like him,” she said to me more than a dozen times. “I do like him, but I never imagined that a man who does so well at sea could shrink into himself as he does. Why, you almost have to haul him out by the ears ashore. If it weren’t for me I really believe––” and she stopped.