and so on to the further details, the fifteen hundred barrels of frozen herring in his hold, and a breeze that sang lullabies of home, when one of his crew had to fall sick.
“And of all times!” exploded his mates. “The first cargo of the season; and now Glover’ll beat us out—ready to sail when we left.”
But there was nothing for it but to put back to St. Mary’s and ship another man in his place.
The new man was but fairly over the rail—Man! but the jaunty chap he was!—when he had to break out with: “So this is the Tommie Clancy I’ve been hearing so much about? The great Tommie Clancy—Clancy the sail carrier! Well, I’ve yet to see the man that could carry sail enough for me.”
Of course that was too good for the crew to keep; and while they were getting under way again they started to tell the skipper of what the new man had said, thinking to touch his professional pride and sting him to one of his famous rejoinders, perhaps set him to teach the fellow a lesson. But they were grievously disappointed. He did not let them half finish. “To the devil with what he said!” exploded the irate Clancy. He had only himself just leaped aboard, after seeing the sick man attended to ashore. “Look now!” and held up a letter. “Ought to have been given me a week ago. Only I stepped into the post-office on the way down, I’d never got it at all. If I’d got it when I ought to, we’d been half-way home by now, with that sick man taking his chances out of the medicine-chest. And more than that,” and he held aloft a telegram, although, instead of telling them what that was about, he thrust it into an inside pocket.
“Hush!” warned one, a subtle one, a man who had essayed to report the new man’s words about sail-carrying. “Maybe he’s put out about Glover, who left for home last night,” meaning it to reach the skipper’s ears, which it did.
“To the devil with Glover!” said Clancy. “We won’t be home any later be he’s left before us.”
“But the market, skipper?”
“To hell with the market, too—what’s the matter with that anchor? Is that anchor cat-headed yet? No? Well, why isn’t it? And another heave or two on those throat-halyards. And, Lord in heaven! bend your backs. Some o’ you act as though you thought you were pulling on pack-threads.”
And in that spirit they left for home. At dark they had sunk the headlands of Cannargie, at dawn they raised the cliffs of Whitehead, which truly was going some, as Sam Leary put it when after an arduous trick to the wheel he dropped below, dodging, as he leaped from the lowest step, the heavy steel stays which held the Duncan together forward. “Them damn things—some day they’ll cut a man’s head off coming below in a hurry.”
“I cal’late by the way she’s hoppin’, Sammie, that it’s blowin’ some.”
This from the cook.
“Go up and have a look for yourself, cookie. Some water on her deck.”
“No need to go on deck to see loose water, Sam. I o’n get that here. I wish she was a little tighter. There’s blessed little comfort wearin’ rubber boots all the time below. Don’t you think she’s a bit loose for a winter passage, Sammie? Look at them things, now.”
He pointed to the heavy strengthening stays which Sam had dodged, and which stretched across the forec’s ’le just abaft the butt of the foremast.
These rods, to which Sam had already referred, and of an X form, extended from side to side of the vessel. If it were not for them the Duncan, a notoriously hard-driven vessel, would (or so common report had it) have long ago ended her career. To stiffen further the Duncan, it may be added that she was also hooped by iron bands outside her hull; the same extending from chain-plates to chain-plates forward. Even as the men gazed, the steel stays, which crossed at the foremast, were quivering under the impact which came of the vessel plunging into heavy seas before an immense press of canvas.
“Some day, Sammie, them rods’ll part, and then she’ll split in two like a Boston cracker and down she’ll go the farther from the cook.”
“If, instead of swearing at them so much, cook, you’d once in a while take a marlinspike to the turnbuckle and screw ’em a little tighter—” Sam followed his own advice. “There; that looks better.”
“But she is loose, Sammie.”
“Loose? Of course she’s loose. But that’s no fault of hers. Look back at the passages she’s made. Sure ’tisn’t in nature for a vessel to be driven as this man’s driven this one for years now and she not be loose. But that only affects a vessel’s comfort. For sailin’ ’tis no harm. Indeed, ’tis notorious that a loose vessel sails fastest.”
“H-m-m—then this one ought to be about the fastest thing that ever wiped her nose in a winter westerly.”
“And so she is. I’d hate to say what I think she’s logging now, for fear of what you’d call me. But what odds if she is loose, so she’s standin’ up well? And she’s standin’ up—well enough to carry her mains’l anyway, and all the vessels that’s carryin’ a whole mains’l here-away to-day c’n be counted on the thumbs of a one-armed man, I’ll bet.”
“And no slack now, Sammie, till he’s home, I s’pose?”
“Slack? Slack?” Leary looked into the cook’s face to assure himself no joke was meant. “This man slack on a passage home? Well, if—there goes another bunch of crockery, cookie. You ought to know better than leave them around so careless—and the way this vessel’s bein’ jolted. If I know him, he’s got a picture in his eye now of cradles and babies and a lone woman by the fire. No, sir, if it was blowin’ 16-inch guns out of the water he wouldn’t slack now.”
And never a slack did Clancy think of. Cruel it certainly seemed. Wind just forward of her beam then, and so allowing of sheet enough to keep all the bouncing life in her. And the sea? She was picking it up over her knightheads and passing it along deck, smothering hatches, house, and wheel-box, and over the taffrail roaring.
“Like an express train on the other track,” said the next man off watch after Leary. “Honest, I caught myself looking back at her wake to see if I couldn’t see the cars going out of sight around the curve. Man! if she don’t bust all the records this trip!”
And that started them to figuring out how long before she would be here, there, and finally into Gloucester, which is known of any old Gloucester fishermen to be the surest way to discount any good luck in store. It was only inevitable then, that the vengeful wind should jump to the westward. The skipper was the first to note the veering, and it was, “Blast your hoary old face!—can’t you stay with a man in a hurry for two days running?” And to the man at the wheel then, “Let her come about, and don’t trip her, either.”
Almost to Sable Island Northwest Light it was on that tack. Abreast of Cape Sable they hoped it would be on the inshore tack. But no; the wind headed them off again and developed into a westerly hurricane, of which, between one tack and the other, they got thirty hours, she reeling off her express speed under four lowers the meantime. It was then her planks first gave warning. Clancy was not deaf to the indications. “But no fear; she won’t give in. I never could make her give in. She’ll keep going, this one, till the planks are torn from her frame. That’s the spirit of her. But here’s this devil’s breeze heading us off again.”
It was on that next tack she showed herself the wonderful vessel altogether. And Clancy standing right there to see her.
“Did you ever see her like?” he asked, and so fired with admiration of her that—she was carrying her four lowers then—he thought to try her with the staysail. And did. And she stood up under that; not without some further creaking and groaning of her joints, it is true, but still right side up. “M-m!” murmured Clancy, in sheer admiration, and after that gave her the balloon. Blue times it was then, spume and foam and a clawing sea—a great occasion altogether. Grand, yes—life well worth living; and then—it was the forward watch who, thinking he heard an unusual gurgling overboard, stuck his head over her windward bow. And immediately hopped back with warning arms: “Skipper! oh, skipper, she’s all opened up for-ard!”
“Then slap it to her on the other tack,” said Clancy, and never even smiled, for the madness of making a passage was on him.
And while on that other tack came a glorious south-easterly, and riotous joy prevailed aboard the Duncan. A south-easterly gale for homebound vessels, especially in winter! It is a softening, albeit at times a howling influence. Particularly does it add to the joy of man when it follows a hard westerly, serving then to melt the ice. And straight down the Cape shore went the Duncan before it, while Tommie Clancy, standing on her quarter, smiled the smile of a boy with a slice of bread and molasses. To Sam Leary’s query, “Will you beat him out?” he asked, “Beat who out?”
“Why, Glover.”
“Oh, him! Twelve hours’ start? I don’t know. And what’s more, Sammie, I don’t know’s I care. We’re sailing now, that’s sure,” and the frequent seas threatening to overhaul and smother her, he took the wheel himself; and for fourteen hours stood to it, lifting a hand from the spokes only to gulp down the cups of hot coffee which were brought when chance offered. And sang little songs to himself the while—songs of home, and hearth, and wife, and children—songs the Celtic people sing as the mother rocks the babies, the fathers as they meditate on life, death, and what comes after.
In the milder spells of that run the water on her quarter piled to Clancy’s thighs, but later it came to his waist; and there was one inspiring stretch of four hours when the solid water came boiling to his breast. And a man of sweeping height was Clancy. She must have been a sight to please the gods; certainly she was a joy to all she met along the way. They breasted a fleet of outbound trawlers hove to inside La Have, under double-reefed foresails all. To the rail of one, the Buccaneer, stood Crump Taylor.
“What is it?” hailed Crump.
“I don’t know,” yelled back Tommie, “but I’ll know before a great while an’ this breeze holds out.”
“Well, what’s your hurry?” asked the master of the next one, which herself rocked to the sea’s surge till her fore-keel could be seen to the waist.
“Oh, no great hurry—just going to the west’ard,” retorted Clancy.
“Excuse me!” said that one.
“Drive her!” yelled the next. On the Duncan they couldn’t hear the words, so rapidly was she sweeping by; but they knew what he meant by the swishing sweep of his oil-clothed arm.
Not until they rounded Cape Sable and were getting the wind fair abeam did Clancy give over the wheel. After three days and nights on his feet he was beginning to feel the need of rest. It was three o’clock in the morning then.
“Keep her as she is—nothing to. If anything, keep her off. If I don’t wake before, call me at seven,” and turned in on the lockers.
But they didn’t have to call him, for in his sleep he felt the unusual motion. He rolled to his side and waited. A moment and she came up almost standing; another moment and she was tearing away. A minute or two and she was brought up again; another and she was off. Clancy stood up. The clock indicated a few minutes after six. Two or three of the crew, expecting the call to coffee—there had been no table since the beginning of the westerly—were already sitting around on the lockers. Again she fetched up, and again she was off again.
“How’s it above?” asked Clancy.
“’Bout the same; maybe a breath more wind, if anything.”
“Has it been going on for long, that luffing?”
“Since this man’s had the wheel.”
The unusual readiness to fix the blame arrested Clancy’s attention. Forgetfully he lowered his head to look up the companion-way to see who it was; but the boards which two days before had been set up to keep the deck water from the cabin were still there, and the man to the wheel could not be seen.
“And who is it?”
They were more than willing to tell him. “It’s the sail-carrier you shipped in Fortune Bay.”
“Oh-h—”
“And now that he’s to the wheel, his eyes are white with fear of the world to come.”
Clancy said nothing, but presently went on deck; and there stood by the wheel and casually observed the progress of things. No getting around it, ’twas a wild-looking morning for a vessel to be carrying all the sail she had in her locker.
With the master at his side the new man kept his nerve for perhaps five minutes, by which time he could stand it no more. In the face of a mountainous sea that looked as if it was surely going to engulf them, he hurriedly put down the wheel. Even while the wave was sweeping her decks, ere yet it had passed on, with its grand backwash receding musically down her sloping deck, Clancy was warning his helmsman.
“Don’t do that. Keep her to the course—nothing to. If anything, keep her off. A good full always to keep the life in her. That kind of work discourages a vessel; she’s going home, mind.”
“Yes, sir,” and on her course again was the Duncan put. And for perhaps another five minutes the new man held her to it; but the prospect proving too much for him, again he luffed her.
Clancy laid a gentle arm on the wheelsman’s shoulder and spoke softly.
“I told you not to do that, and you mustn’t. Don’t do it again. This one’s a little loose maybe, but she’ll take all you can give her. I know her better than you, mind, and I’m telling you to trust her. And even if she wasn’t reliable, which she is, mind—this is no time for jogging. We’re going home, going home, boy, and a good full’s what she wants.”
After that Clancy thought the man was cured. But no. Five minutes perhaps and again she was luffed.
Clancy laid a hand on the wheel. “You needn’t bother about steering any more. I’ll stand your watch out, and do you go below. And if you’ll take my advice, and no offence meant, when you get to Gloucester you’ll take to farming; for cert’nly the Lord never intended you for a fisherman.”
Be sure they heard that below—an ear to the binnacle-box assured it; and when he came below among them furtive glances stole around the company. But like gentlemen, they said never a word. Nor did he then; only sat down on a locker and drew off his oilskins, first his jacket and trousers, then followed his jack-boots, wearily, and got into his slipshods, after which he reached back and from under the mattress of his bunk drew out a plug of tobacco and rolled it in the palms of his hands, and filled his pipe, and stretched his feet then toward the stove.
In which position he smoked meditatively, and, after a while—puff—puff—and a great sigh: “Well, I’ve crossed the Bay of Fundy a hundred times, but this is the first time ever I crossed under water.”
The disrated helmsman’s mate was at that time forward, considering how foolish it was to attempt to stand watch at all. He was making no pretension to look out; simply curled up and waited for his hour to come to an end.
“And I might’s well been below for all the good I was doing,” he explained when he did get below. “Might as well lock her up forward and let her go her way, for it’s nothing but a solid ledge of clear white water ahead of her, and into that she’s everlastin’ly pilin’.”
“And how’s the skipper? Looking tired yet?”
“Him tired? And the vessel goin’ to the west’ard! Man! he’s just beginnin’ to beam!”
“Still singin’ the little songs to himself, rhymin’ as he goes along?”
“Ay, still singin’,
singin’ away, and his eyes shinin’ like Thacher’s after you’ve come a passage from Flemish Cap.”
The prospect by and by moved Sam Leary to ascend to the deck, where his eyes at once caught a faint column of smoke. “That the Yarmouth steamer, skipper, down to le’ward?”
“That’s the old lady, Sam. Raised her at seven o’clock this morning, and by twelve o’clock—the way we’re sliding along now—we’ll have rubbed even that blotch of smoke off the skyline, Sam.”
“And they say she averages her fourteen knots one year’s end to the other? Well, that’s tearin’ ’em off some.”
He took a fresh grip of the weather-rigging and gazed with yet more respectful interest at her deck. “Lord! Lord! loose as cinders and fair leapin’ for home. And—hullo, what! Thacher’s already? Lord! skipper, but she’s cert’nly been pushin’ the suds out of her way. I’ll bet you were glad to see ’em.” He nodded to the twin shafts ahead.
“I could kiss the whitewashed stones of ’em, Sammie. And here”—Clancy slipped the life-line from about his body—“here, Sam, and mind you keep her going.”
They kept her going with never a slack till she was safe to the dock; and up to the dock, ere yet her lines were fast or her lowering sails down, Clancy flew.
A dozen would have stopped him. By their smiles he knew that he had brought home the first load of frozen herring of the season; but small glory in that for him now. All along the coast when around his lashed body the green seas curled ’twas not of herring, or bonus, or anything with the mark of money on it that was holding thrall his fancy. The Duncan herself could hardly have taken longer leaps before the gale than did Clancy up the dock.
An empty buggy, with a sleepy-looking horse between the shafts, was standing before the door of an office at the head of the wharf. A boy was huddled on some steps near by.
“Whose gear?” asked Clancy, who by then was on the seat and reaching for a whip.
“Belongs to a runner selling fish-hooks inside.”
“Well, tell him I took it when he comes out. Chk-chk—get up, you fat loafer!”
“Oh, Captain—oh, Captain!” the owner called from the doorway of an office, but he called too late. Up the street a plump, astonished horse was flying with a rattling buggy, and a cloud of dust in his wake. Through the streets of Gloucester went Clancy; gybed a corner, then went for fair sailing on a straight stretch; another corner, a beat up an incline, one more corner and another fine straight stretch, and then fetched up all standing, with the sides of the poor beast shaking like a mainsail in the wind.
Fifty yards away was Clancy’s home. But he did not go clattering to that; the courage of him was now failing. He slacked down, halted even, and, leaning a hand against a tree before the door, drew a full breath or two. So much could happen in a week! At the door he tried to fit the key to the lock, but it would not turn. The cold sweat came over him. What did it mean? He tried again. Still no turn. He tried the knob then—and the door opened. It hadn’t been locked at all. And then he remembered: “There’ll be no lock on the door, Tommie, once I hear you are on the way home. Night or day you won’t have to stop to open the lock.”
Perhaps all was well after all. He stepped into the hall. Hearing a noise in the kitchen, he headed that way. Maybe—but no; it was the old helper. Before he could reach her he heard her, talking to herself, as was her habit.
“Tea and toast,” she was saying. “Mustn’t cut the slices too thick for toast—tea and toast for the poor creature!”
“And who’s the poor creature? How is she?”
The old woman started and turned at the sound of that hoarse voice.
“Oh, Captain Clancy!”
“And how is she?”
“Oh, but the lovely baby boy—the day after we sent the telegram.”
Clancy gripped the door-frame and came nigher to the old woman.
“But Ann?”
“Man alive, have no fear! Would I be standing with a quiet mind here and the poor girl not well? She’s sitting up to-day.”
He started to say something, but his tongue would not act.
“Upstairs—in her room?” he managed to whisper at length.
The old woman smiled and nodded.
“I must go up—but wait. I mustn’t make any noise, must I? Don’t tell her—don’t call. I want myself to bring the first word. She’ll like it better.”
“Yes, and more than the word, she’ll like the man that brings it. And go soon, Captain, for there’s that in your eyes would win queens from their thrones.”
Clancy removed his boots, the same great boots that till now had not been drawn from his feet since he had left Newfoundland. Upstairs he crept. A sound, well-built house it was, and the stairs did not creak under his weight. As he went up he heard her voice crooning softly. Changed it was, with new tones in it, but still her own voice always—no other voice like it. She was singing now; and on the landing, with the half-open door of her room no more than an arm’s length away, he stopped and listened. And, listening, waited, wondering curiously just why he waited. Night and day he had been driving—snow, ice, hail, gales of wind, and great seas—and during it all but one thought, to be where he was now. A hundred times he had pictured himself bounding up the stairs and into her arms. Yet now that he was here, he was waiting; now that he was so near, he lacked the courage to go in. And even while he hesitated the dear voice broke into a new song:
He waited no longer, and as through the door he had heard, so now in the doorway she saw him. And her face! He clasped her; mother and baby, he clasped them both, and pride as well as love rang in his voice.
“Ann, Ann, but where’s the man that wouldn’t carry sail for you!”
“Tommie—Tommie—home again!” and laid the baby in his arms and cried on his breast.
Harry Glover got home that night. His crew lost no time in getting ashore. It had been a notable passage, and they were wistful to ease the strain and to boast of some pretty fair work against a hard westerly along the way. And did boast, until they heard that Clancy was in before them.
“Well, I’m damned!” it was with them then—with all of them, that is, but Steve Clifford.
Clifford met Sam Leary along the way.
“I half expected it, Sam, as the rest of the crew’ll tell you. We were passing the fleet anchored on La Have. They hailed out something we couldn’t quite get. But the skipper thought it was something in praise of the sail he was carrying. He had her under four lowers then and was some proud. He called to me, knowing I’d been with Clancy a few trips. ‘Where’s your Johnnie Duncan?’ he says—‘where’s Tommie Clancy and your Johnnie Duncan at this writing, do you s’pose?”
“‘Where?’ says I. ‘Well, if I know Tommie Clancy and the Johnnie Duncan, she’s playin’ leap-frog across the Bay o’ Fundy by this time’—ho! ho! so help me, Sam—playing leap-frog across the Bay of Fundy—yes. And he’d liked to kill me then—yes.”
Later still Clancy met Glover—Glover the Diplomat, but with curious streaks of good nature in him. Clancy, with a package under one arm, was running like a little boy whose mother has sent him on an errand and told him to make haste. He had been to the drugstore, he explained, for a bottle of peptonised something or other.
“Tommie,” said Glover, “what d’ y’ say to a little touch?”
“No time, Harry now.”
“Oh, make time. You ought to after that passage. No? Not even one for the baby?”
“Who told you about him?”
“Oh, forty people. And I hear he’s a wonder, too.”
“Well, I don’t know but what I will have a little touch—just one. And, Harry, as God is my judge”—Clancy in a rapture held his free arm aloft—” he grips my moustache only just now, and d’ y’ think I could make him let go? Not him. Man! but what a grip he’ll have for a wheel if ever he lives to grow up and has to go fishing.”
“Let’s hope he’ll never have to go fishing.”
“There you said it, Harry.” Clancy laid the free arm on Glover’s.
“No, let’s hope he won’t. It’ll do for us, but not for our children. But if he does, and if ever he takes his mains’l in to any—”
“If he does he’ll be no boy of yours, Tommie. And so he’ll never take it in to any that’s afloat. And now, Tommie, before we drink the boy’s health—that bet I made with you just before we left on the passage—”
“That, Harry? And we drinking to the boy? Why, it’s the next thing to a christening! No, put your money back.”
“But what’ll I do with it?”
“Lord! I don’t care what you do with it. Heave it overboard, or buy bait with it, or give it to the foreign missions. I know I don’t want it, nor won’t take it. Here’s to the boy—and the mother—God bless her!—that bore him.”