The Trawler | Page 9

stirred the fancies in me. It's the most wonderful thing will ever happen you, Simon."
"What is, skipper?"
"Why, the loving a woman and she loving you, and you neither knowing why, nor maybe caring."
"No woman loves me, skipper."
"She will, boy--never a fear."
He took to the hauling, and soon again to the singing:
"My lad comes running down the street, And what says he to me? Says he, 'O dadda, dadda, And you're back again from sea!
"'And did you ketch a great big fish And bring him home to me? O dadda, dadda, take me up And toss me high!' says he.
"My love looks out on the stormy morn, Her thoughts are on the sea. She says, ''Tis wild upon the Banks,' And kneels in prayer for me."
"'O Father, hold him safe!' she prays, 'And----'"
* * * * *
"There's one, Simon!" he called.
A bad sea he meant. They had been coming and going, coming and going, rolling under and past us, and so far no harm; but this was one more wicked to look at than its mates. So I dropped the coiling lines and, with the oar already to the becket in the stern, whirled the dory's bow head on. The sea carried us high and far and, passing, left the dory deep with water, but no harm in that so she was still right side up.
"A good job, Simon," said Hugh Glynn the while we were bailing. "Not too soon and not too late."
That was the first one. More followed in their turn; but always the oar was handy in the becket, and it was but to whirl bow or stern to it with the oar when it came, not too soon to waste time for the hauling but never, of course, too late to save capsizing; and bailing her out, if need be, when it was by.
Our trawl was in, our fish in the waist of the dory, and we lay to our roding line and second anchor, so we might not drift miles to loo'ard while waiting for the vessel to pick us up. We could see the vessel--to her hull, when to the top of a sea we rose together; but nothing of her at all when into the hollows we fell together.
She had picked up all but the dory next to wind'ard of us. We would be the last, but before long now she would be to us. "When you drop Simon and me, go to the other end of the line and work back. Pick Simon and me up last of all," Hugh Glynn had said to Saul, and I remember how Saul, standing to the wheel, looked down over the taffrail and said, "Simon and you last of all," and nodded his head as our dory fell away in the vessel's wake.
Tide and sea were such that there was no use trying to row against it, or we would not have waited at all; but we waited, and as we waited the wind, which had been southerly, went into the east and snow fell; but for not more than a half-hour, when it cleared. We stood up and looked about us. There was no vessel or other dory in sight.
We said no word to each other of it, but the while we waited further, all the while with a wind'ard eye to the bad little seas, we talked.
"Did you ever think of dying, Simon?" Hugh Glynn said after a time.
"Can a man follow the winter trawling long and not think of it at times?" I answered.
"And have you fear of it, Simon?"
"I know I have no love for it," I said. "But do you ever think of it, you?"
"I do--often. With the double tides working to draw me to it, it would be queer enough if now and again I did not think of it."
"And have you fear of it?"
"Of not going properly--I have, Simon." And after a little: "And I've often thought it a pity for a man to go and nothing come of his going. Would you like the sea for a grave, Simon?"
"I would not," I answered.
"Nor me, Simon. A grand, clean grave, the ocean, and there was a time I thought I would; but not now. The green grave ashore, with your own beside you--a man will feel less lonesome, or so I've often thought, Simon.
"I've often thought so," he went on, his eyes now on watch for the bad seas and again looking wistful-like at me. "I'd like to lie where my wife and boy lie, she to one side and the lad to the other, and rise with them on Judgment Day. I've a notion, Simon, that with them to bear me up I'd stand afore the Lord with greater courage. For if what some think is true--that it's