“I CAME TO YOU FROM THE SEA,” HE SAID, PATTING HER THIN CHEEKS.
“It was, doubtless, your own mother first placed it there, and I have a strong feeling that it will, somehow or other, have much to do with your future safety and happiness,” she said. “See, I have made a little pocket in the breast of each of your flannel shirts to hold it,” she added, as she clasped the chain about his neck and kissed him.
“Own mother, or not own mother, no boy ever had a better, or sweeter, or dearer, or more loving mother than you have been to me,” cried Breeze, throwing his arms about her neck, “and I would not exchange you for any other in the world, not even if she was a queen.”
Now that the time to go had really come, the boy found it a very hard thing to part from his home. After he had kissed his mother good-by, and started down the hill, with his canvas bag on his shoulder, he dared not look back, though he knew she was standing in front of the little cottage watching him.
He had barely time in town to make his few purchases before the Curlew should sail; for wind and tide were both favorable, and her skipper was impatient to take advantage of them and get started. His hurry was owing to the fact that several other schooners were getting ready for trips to the same waters. He was anxious to be the first on the ground, and, if possible, carry the first fresh mackerel of the season into New York.
Although everybody has seen and eaten mackerel either fresh or salted, and though they are caught in immense numbers off the Atlantic coast of the United States every year, there is but little really known about them. Where they come from and where they go to are still unsolved mysteries. Every spring, between the middle of March and the middle of April, they appear in great shoals in the waters just north of Cape Hatteras. At this time they are very thin, and hardly fit for food; but on the coast feeding-grounds they rapidly improve, until in the early summer, when they have worked their way northward to New England waters, they are in prime condition. They generally run as far north as the Gulf of St. Lawrence, from which, in the fall, they suddenly disappear, to be seen no more until the following spring.
All through the summer, but especially at the very first of the season, those that are caught near a port are packed in ice and carried in to the market fresh. The greater part of the year’s catch is, however, salted in barrels on board the schooners, and afterwards repacked on shore, in kits or boxes, marked according to the size and quality of the fish they contain, Nos. 1, 2, 3, or 4, and sent all over the world.
The cruise on which Breeze McCloud was about to start was to be made in search of the very first mackerel of the season, and the Curlew’s destination was therefore the waters off the Delaware coast, or between there and Cape Hatteras.
By ten o’clock everything was in readiness for the start. The skipper had come on board, and all hands were hard at work, making sail or breaking out and getting up the heavy anchor. Then it was “up jib and away.” As the lively craft slipped swiftly down the harbor, Breeze found time for one long last look at his home. At the cottage door he could just make out a waving handkerchief, that told him he was being watched and remembered.
Once outside, all hands were kept busy for a couple of hours, setting light sails, coiling lines, stowing odds and ends, and making everything snug. The course they were heading would carry them just clear of Cape Cod; and before a spanking breeze, under a press of canvas, the Curlew tore along as though sailing an ocean race that she was bound to win. Almost any fishing vessel but a mackereller going out at this stormy season would have left both top-masts and her jib-boom at home, being content with the safest of working sails. To the early mackerel catcher, however, every minute gained may mean many extra dollars in pocket; so his craft sails in racing trim, and carries her canvas to the extreme of recklessness.