The Trawler | Page 4

feel the steps
beneath me heaving with it.

III
All that night I walked the streets and roads of Cape Ann, walking
where my eyes would lose no sight of that sea to which I had been born,
and thinking, thinking, thinking always to the surge and roar of it; and
in the morning I went down to where Hugh Glynn's vessel lay in dock;
and Hugh Glynn himself I found standing on the string-piece, holding
by the hand and feeding candy to the little son of one of his crew, the
while half a dozen men were asking him, one after the other, for what I,
too, had come to ask.
My turn came. "I never met you to speak to before, Captain Glynn," I
began, "but I was a friend of Arthur Snow's, and I was hopeful for the
chance to ship with you in Arthur's place."
"My name is Simon Kippen," I went on, when he made no answer. "I
was in John Snow's kitchen when you came in last night."
"I know"--he waved the hand that wasn't holding the little boy--"I know.
And"--he almost smiled--"you're not afraid to come to sea with me?"
"Why more afraid," I said, "than you to take me with you?"
"You were a great friend of Arthur's?"
"A friend to Arthur--and more if I could," I answered.
He had a way of throwing his head back and letting his eyes look out,
as from a distance, or as if he would take the measure of a man. 'Twas
so he looked out at me now.
"He's a hard case of a man, shouldn't you say, Simon Kippen, who

would play a shipmate foul?"
I said nothing to that.
"And, master or hand, we're surely all shipmates," he added; to which
again I said nothing.
"Will you take Saul Haverick for dory mate?" he said again.
"I bear Saul Haverick no great love," I said; "but I have never heard he
wasn't a good fisherman, and who should ask more than that of his
mate in a dory?"
He looked out at me once more from the eyes that seemed so far back
in his head; and from me he looked to the flag that was still to the
half-mast of his vessel for the loss of Arthur Snow.
"We might ask something more in a dory mate at times, but he is a
good fisherman," he answered at last. "A good hand to the wheel of a
vessel, too, a cool head in danger, and one of the best judges of weather
ever I sailed with. We're putting out in the morning. You can have the
chance."
As to what was in my heart when I chose to ship with Hugh Glynn, I
cannot say. There are those who tell us how they can explain every
heart-beat, quick or slow, when aught ails them. I never could. I only
know that standing on the steps of Mary Snow's house the night before,
all my thought was of Mary Snow sitting at the window and looking
down the street after Hugh Glynn. And "God help you, Simon Kippen!"
I found myself saying--"it's not you, nor Saul Haverick, nor any other
living man will marry Mary Snow while Hugh Glynn lives, for there is
no striving against the strength of the sea, and the strength of Hugh
Glynn is the strength of the sea." But of what lay beyond that in my
heart I could not say.
And now I was to sea with Hugh Glynn, and we not four days out of
Gloucester when, as if but to show me the manner of man he was, he
runs clear to the head of Placentia Bay, in Newfoundland, for a baiting

on our way to the banks; and whoever knows Placentia Bay knows
what that means, with the steam-cutters of the Crown patrolling, and
their sleepless watches night and day aloft, to trap whoever would try
to buy a baiting there against the law.
No harm fell to Hugh Glynn that time. No harm ever fell to him,
fishermen said. Before ever the cutters could get sight of him he had
sight of them; and his bait stowed below, safe away he came, driving
wild-like past the islands of the bay, with never a side-light showing in
the night, and not the first time he had done so.
"What d'y' say to that, Simon? Didn't we fool 'em good?" he asked,
when once more we were on the high seas and laying a free course for
the western banks.
"I'm grateful you did not ask me to go in any dory to bring the bait off,"
I answered.
"Why is that, Simon?" he asked, as one who has no suspicion.
"It was against the