The Trawler | Page 9

and to thee.
"So blow, ye devils, and walk her home-- For she's the able Lucy
Foster. The woman I love is waiting me, So drive the Lucy home to
Gloucester. O ho ho for this heaven-sent breeze, Straight from the east
and all you please! Come along now, ye whistling gales, The harder ye
blow the faster she sails-- O my soul, there's a girl in Gloucester!"
He stopped to look over his shoulder at me. "Simon, boy, I mind the
days when there was no stopping the songs in me. Rolling to my lips o'
themselves they would come, like foam to the crests of high seas. The
days of a man's youth, Simon! All I knew of a gale of wind was that it
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."