The Trawler | Page 8

will
bring new light to a darkening world."
The dawn was rolling up to us and the next on watch was on deck to
relieve me; and the cook, too, with his head above the fo'c's'le hatch,
was calling that breakfast was ready, and we said no more of that.
"Go for'ard, Simon," said Captain Glynn, "and have your breakfast.
After breakfast we'll break out her anchor, and out dories and get that
gear aboard afore it's too late. I'll go below and see how Saul's getting
on."
With that he went into the cabin; but soon was back to take his seat at
the breakfast table; but no word of Saul until we had done eating, and
he standing to go up on deck. Then he said: "Saul says he is still too
sick to go in the dory with you, Simon."
And to that I said: "Well, I've hauled a halibut trawl single-handed
before, Captain Glynn, and I can do it again if need be."
He put on his woollen cap, and across the table he looked at me, and I
looked hard at him.
"This will be no morning to go single-handed in a dory, Simon. Saul is
not too sick, he says, to stand to the wheel and handle the vessel in my
place. I will take his place along with you in the dory."
What he was thinking I could not say. His head was thrown back and
his eyes looking out and down at me, as from the top of a far-away hill,
and no more knowing what thoughts lay behind them than what ships
lay beyond the horizon.

IV
It was a blood-red sunrise and a sea that was making when we left the
vessel, but nothing to worry over in that. It might grow into a
dory-killing day later, but so far it was only what all winter trawlers
face more days than they can remember.
We picked up our nearest buoy, with its white-and-black flag floating
high to mark it, and as we did, to wind'ard of us we could see, for five
miles it might be, the twisted lines of the dories stretching. Rising to
the top of a sea we could see them, sometimes one and sometimes
another, lifting and falling, and the vessel lifting and falling to wind'ard
of them all.
Hugh Glynn took the bow to do the hauling and myself the waist for
coiling, and it was a grand sight to see him heave in on that heavy gear
on that December morning. Many men follow the sea, but not many are
born to it. Hugh Glynn was. Through the gurdy he hauled the heavy
lines, swinging forward his shoulders, first one and then the other,
swaying from his waist and all in time to the heave of the sea beneath
him, and singing, as he heaved, the little snatches of songs that I
believe he made up as he went along.
As he warmed to his work he stopped to draw off the heavy sweater
that he wore over his woollen shirt, and made as if to throw it in the
bow of the dory. "But no," he said, "it will get wet there. You put it on
you, Simon, and keep it dry for me." He was a full size bigger than me
in every way, and I put it on, over my cardigan jacket and under my oil
jacket, and it felt fine and comfortable on me.
It came time for me to spell him on the hauling, but he waved me back.
"Let be, let be, Simon," he said, "it's fine, light exercise for a man of a
brisk morning. It's reminding me of my hauling of my first trawl on the
Banks. Looking back on it, now, Simon, I mind how the bravest sight I
thought I ever saw was our string of dories racing afore the tide in the
sea of that sunny winter's morning, and the vessel, like a mother to her

little boats, standing off and on to see that nothing happened the while
we hauled and coiled and gaffed inboard the broad-backed halibut. All
out of myself with pride I was--I that was no more than a lad, but
hauling halibut trawls with full-grown Gloucester men on the Grand
Banks! And the passage home that trip, Simon! Oh, boy, that passage
home!"
Without even a halt in his heaving in of the trawls, he took to singing:
"It came one day, as it had to come-- I said to you 'Good-by.' 'Good
luck,' said you, 'and a fair, fair wind'-- Though you cried as if to die;
Was all there was ahead of you When we put out to sea; But now,
sweetheart, we're headed home To the west'ard