The Trawler | Page 6

the weather signs; but he made no answer to the crew, to
that or any other word they had this evening--except to Saul Haverick,
and to him only when he came up from supper complaining of not
feeling well.
He was one could drive his crew till they could not see for very
weariness; but he was one could nurse them, too. "Go below and turn
in," was his word to Saul, "and stay there till you feel better. Call me,
Simon, if I'm not up," he then said to me. "I'll stand Saul's watch with
you, if Saul is no better."
It was yet black night when I was called to go on watch, and, Saul
Haverick still complaining, I went to call the skipper. But he was
already up and had been, the watch before me said, for the better part of

the night. I found him leaning over the gunnels of the wind'ard nest of
dories when I went on deck, gazing out on a sea that was no longer
oily-smooth, though smooth enough, too, what was to be seen of it,
under the stars of a winter night.
I stood on the break and likewise looked about me. To anchor, and
alone, lay the vessel, with but her riding-light to mark her in the dark;
alone and quiet, with never a neighbor to hail us, nor a sound from any
living thing whatever. The very gulls themselves were asleep; only the
fores'l, swaying to a short sheet, would roll part way to wind'ard and
back to loo'ard, but quiet as could be even then, except for the little
tapping noises of the reef-points when in and out the belly of the
canvas would puff full up and let down again to what little wind was
stirring.
It was a perfect, calm night, but no calm day was to follow. "Wicked
weather ahead," said Hugh Glynn, and came and stood beside me on
the break. "A wicked day coming, but no help for it now till daylight
comes to see our trawls to haul 'em." And, as one who had settled that
in his mind, he said no more of it, but from mainm'st to weather rail he
paced, and back again, and I took to pacing beside him.
A wonderful time, the night-watches at sea, for men to reveal
themselves. Night and sky overhead and the wide ocean to your
elbow--it drives men to thought of higher things. The wickedest of
men--I have known them, with all manner of blasphemies befouling
their lips by day, to become holy as little children in the watches of the
night.
No blasphemer was Hugh Glynn, nor did the night hold terror for him;
only as we paced the break together he spoke of matters that but
himself and his God could know. It was hard to listen and be patient,
though maybe it was as much of wonder as of impatience was taking
hold of me as I listened.
"Do you never fear what men might come to think of you, Captain
Glynn," I said, "confessing your very soul?"

"Ho, ho, that's it, is it?" He came to a sudden stop in our walking. "I
should only confess the body--is that it, Simon Kippen? And, of course,
when a man confesses to one thing of his own free will, you know there
must be something worse behind? Is that it, Simon?" He chuckled
beside me and, as if only to scandalize me, let his tongue run wilder
yet.
His tales were of violations of laws such as it had been my religion to
observe since I was a boy, and little except of the comic, ridiculous side
of them all. The serious matters of life, if 'twas to judge by what he
spoke to me that night, had small interest for him. But the queer power
of the man! Had it been light where he could see me, I would have
choked before ever I would let him hear me laugh; but he caught me
smiling and straightened up, chuckling, to say: "Many other things you
would smile at, too, Simon, if your bringing up would but allow the
frost to thaw from your soul."
"And are reckless carryings-on and desperate chancing things to smile
at?"
"O Simon, Simon, what a righteous man you're to be that never expects
to see the day when no harbor this side of God's eternal sea will offer
you the only safe and quiet mooring!"
Again I saw Mary Snow sitting at the window and looking down the
street, and remembering how she had spoken of his lonely home, I said:
"No doubt a man, like a vessel, Captain Glynn, should have always a
mooring somewhere. A wonder you never thought of marrying again?"
"I