“That’s just about the way I swore at the man to the wheel of the Withrow. Didn’t I, Joe? Yes, sir, I cert’nly swore at him good, but it no more jarred him than––but when their seine-boat came by, half of ’em smokin’, some half-breed 199 among ’em has to sing out, ‘Y’ought to hang up a riding light if your vessel’s hove-to,’ he says. What do you think of that, Tommie––‘if your vessel’s hove-to!’––and if the Johnnie was going one she was going ten knots an hour.”
“That’s right, Mel––I heard you to the mast-head,” said Clancy. Clancy heard it about as much as old Mr. Duncan back in Gloucester did, but he was always ready to help a man out.
“Did you? Well, I hove-to him. I hove the bailer at him, that’s what I did, and he ducked. But he ducked too late, I callate, for ‘Bam!’ it caught him––or somebody in the seine-boat with him. He swore some, or somebody swore, you c’n bet. ‘I don’t know who y’are,’ he hollers, ‘but if ever I meet you ashore,’ and he was so far away then I couldn’t ketch no more of it. ‘Don’t know who y’are, but if I ketch you ashore’––Lord–––”
“So, if a lad with a bump on the side of his head waltzes up to you on Main Street and whangs you, Mel, next time you’re ashore in Gloucester, what’ll you do?” asked Clancy.
“I’ll say, ‘Where’s that bailer, you loafer?’ but first I’ll whang him back. I had to finish the bailing out with my sou’wester. I sings out to Andie Howe in the boat here to hand me one of the bailers in the boat. ‘I’m usin’ my hat,’ I hollers, ‘and Joe’s using his sou’wester,’ thinkin’ that would 200 fetch him all right. ‘Well, we’re usin’ ten sou’westers here,’ says Andie, ‘and one or two of ’em leaks,’ and that was all the satisfaction I got.”
“Yes,” said Eddie Parsons, “the seine-boat was sure wallerin’ then. The skipper had only just told Jimmie Gunn to quit his growling. ‘You’ll be wanting hot-water bags to your feet next, I suppose,’ says the skipper.”
“I was thinking of the boat––afraid she’d be so logy with the water in her that we couldn’t drive her when the time came,” bristled up Jimmie Gunn to that.
“Y-yah!” snorted Eddie, “if you weren’t scared, then I never saw a man scared. Logy? I notice we made her hop along all right after we cast off from the vessel. Man, but she fair hurdled some of them seas––some of the little ones, I mean. Didn’t she, Steve? We thought we’d lost Joe and you, Mel, in the dory, didn’t we, fellows?”
“You did, hey? Well, you didn’t, nor nowheres near it,” broke in Mel. “We were right there with the goods when they hove the seine, warn’t we, Joey?”
And so it went on through all that day, while the men worked, dressing, salting, and putting all in pickle. It was a drive all through without any quitting by anybody, except when it was time to relieve lookouts at the mast-head. In the middle 201 of it all, had the call of “School-O!” been heard from aloft, we would have been only too glad to drop everything, jump into the boat and dory, get after the mackerel, and do the same thing over––split, gibb and pack away––for all of the next night, and the night after that––for a week if necessary.