The Trawler | Page 5

law, Captain Glynn."
"But a bad law, Simon?"
"Law is law," I answered to that.
He walked from the wheel, where I was, twice to the break of the
vessel and back again and said, in a voice no louder than was needful to
be heard above what loose water was splashing over her quarter to my
feet: "Don't be put out with me for what I'll tell you now, Simon.
You're a good lad, Simon, and come of good people, but of people that
for hundreds o' years have thought but one way in the great matters of
life. And when men have lived with their minds set in the one way so
long, Simon, it comes hard for them to understand any other way. Such
unfrequent ones as differed from your people, Simon, them they cast
out from among them. I know, I know, Simon, because I come from
people something like to them, only I escaped before it was too late to
understand that people who split tacks with you do not always do it to

fetch up on a lee shore."
"And from those other people, no doubt, Captain Glynn, you learned it
was right to break a country's laws?"
"It wasn't breaking our country's law, Simon, nor any good man's law,
to get a baiting last night. There are a lot of poor fishermen, Simon--as
none know better than yourself--in Placentia Bay who have bait to sell,
and there is a law which says they must not. But whose law? An
American law? No. God's law? No. The law of those poor people in
Placentia Bay? No. Some traders who have the making of the laws?
Yes. And there you have it. If the Placentia Bay fishermen aren't
allowed to sell bait to me, or the like of me, they will have to sell it to
the traders themselves, but have to take their one dollar, where we of
Gloucester would pay them five, and, paying it, would give some of
them and their families a chance to live."
He stood there in his rubber boots to his hips and his long greatcoat to
his ankles--he was one who never wore oilskins aboard ship--swinging
with the swing of the plunging vessel as if he was built into her, and
with his head thrown back and a smile, it may be, that was not a smile
at all, and kept looking at me from out of eyes that were changeable as
the sea itself.
"Don't you be getting mad with me, Simon, because we don't think
alike in some things. To the devil with what people think of you--I've
said that often enough, Simon, but not when they're good people. If
some people don't like us, Simon, there will come no nourishment to
our souls. Some day you're going to come to my way o' thinking,
Simon, because we two are alike underneath."
"Alike!" I smiled to myself.
"Ay, alike at heart, Simon. We may look to be sailing wide apart
courses now, but maybe if our papers were examined 'twould be found
we'd cleared for the same last port of call, Simon."
And no more talk of anything like that between us until the night before

we were to leave the fishing grounds for home. In the afternoon we had
set our trawls, and, leaving the vessel, the skipper had said, "Our last
set, boys. Let 'em lay to-night, and in the morning we'll haul;" and,
returning aboard after setting, we had our supper and were making
ready, such as had no watch to stand, to turn in for a good, long sleep
against the labor of the morrow.
It was an oily sea that evening--a black, oily-smooth surface, lifting
heavy and slow to a long swell. A smooth, oily sea--there is never any
good comes out of it; but a beautiful sea notwithstanding, with more
curious patterns of shifting colors than a man could count in a year
playing atop of it. The colors coming and going and rolling and
squirming--no women's shop ashore ever held such colors under the
bright nightlights as under the low sun we saw this night on the western
banks. It was a most beautiful and a most wicked sea to stop and look
at.
And the sun went down that evening on a banking of clouds no less
beautiful; a copper-red sun, and after 'twas gone, in lovely massy forms
and splendid colors, were piled the clouds in all the western quarter.
Such of the crew as stopped to speak of it did not like at all the look of
that sea and sky, and some stopped beside the skipper to say it, he
leaning against the main rigging in the way he had the while he would
be studying