“I’ve been bragging about this one––what she could do. I told the old man only the last time we were in that he could go broke that I’d beat Sam Hollis, and here the first time we come together he makes her look like a wood-carrier. The best thing I can do, I guess, is to keep out of the race; maybe it will save the old man some money. I expected he’d beat us, the trim we were in––but to beat us the way he did!”
Nothing the crew could say seemed to make him think otherwise, and that night it was not nearly so joyful below in the Johnnie Duncan. The talk was that she would not go home for the race. Only Clancy seemed to be as cheerful as ever. “Don’t any of you get to worrying,” he said. “I know the skipper––the Johnnie Duncan’ll be there when the time comes.”
Yet next morning when Wesley Marrs went by us with the Lucy Foster bound for home and sang out, “Come along, Maurice, and get ready for the race––we’ll have a brush on the way,” our skipper only waved his hand and said, “No––this old plug can’t sail.” Wesley looked mighty puzzled at that, but kept on his way.
XXV
TROUBLE WITH THE DOMINION CUTTERS
Next day after, in a calm, Clancy and I had to take the dory and row out among the fleet for some salt. The skipper thought it likely that some of the vessels that were going home might have salt to spare. He doubted if he himself would have enough in case we struck another good school. So we rowed out. We went from one vessel to another without any luck, until we found ourselves aboard Tom O’Donnell––the Colleen Bawn. And just as we got aboard a school showed near by her, and they made a dash for it. The Colleen was pretty well inshore then, and yet safe outside the three-mile limit in our judgment. Even in the judgment of one of the Canadian revenue cutters, the Mink, she was outside the limit. “You’re all right, go ahead,” her commander sang out from the bridge.
Yet trouble came of it. The Colleen’s gang were making a set when along came the Lynx, the same cutter that had ordered our own skipper not to set two or three days back in the fog, and we had set in spite of him. I think I said that he had a 207 bad reputation among our fleet. In this case some said afterwards that he had been watching the Duncan since that time, and having seen a dory put out from her and go aboard Tom O’Donnell, that he then had a special watch for O’Donnell. Anyway, we know that as the Colleen Bawn’s crew were pursing in the seine he came along and ordered them to cast loose the fish. “You’re inside the limit,” said this fellow now.