"Bank" fishing about three years before his father
sold his vessels. During those last three years Captain Silas Doane had
spent all the money he had to keep things going, refusing to believe
that the way of handling fish had changed and that the fishing between
Cape's End and the Grand Banks would no longer be what it had been. When
he sold he kept one vessel, and the next Winter she went ashore right
across there on the northeast arm of the Cape. Joe Doane was aboard her
that night. Myrtie was a baby then. It was of little Myrtie he thought
when it seemed the vessel would pound herself to pieces before they
could get off. _He_ couldn't be lost! He had to live and work so his
little girl could have everything she wanted--After that the Doanes were
without a vessel--and Doanes without a vessel were fish out of sea. They
had never been folks to work on another man's boat. He supposed he had
never started any big new thing because it had always seemed he was just
filling in between trips. A good many years had slipped by and he was
still just putting in time. And it began to look as if there wasn't
going to be another trip.

Suddenly he had to laugh. Some _joke_ on Joe Cadara! He could see him
going down the Front street--broad, slow, _dumb_. Why, Joe Cadara
thought his family _needed_ him. He thought they got along because he
made those trips. But had Joe Cadara ever been able to give his wife a
fireless cooker? Had the government presented a goat to the Cadaras when
Joe was there? Joe Doane sat out on the breakwater and laughed at the
joke on Joe Cadara. When Agnes Cadara was a little girl she would run to
meet her father when he came in from a trip. Joe Doane used to like to
see the dash she made. But Agnes was just tickled to death with her
mourning!

He sat there a long time--sat there until he didn't know whether it was
a joke or not. But he got two haddock and more whiting than he wanted to
carry home. So he felt better. A man sometimes needed to get off by
himself.

As he was turning in at home he saw Ignace Silva about to start out on a
trip with Captain Gorspie. Silva thought he _had_ to go. But Silva had
been saved--and had _his_ wife a fireless cooker? Suddenly Joe Doane
called.

"Hey! Silva! You're the government goat!"

The way Doane laughed made Silva know this was a joke; not having a joke
of his own he just turned this one around and sent it back. "Government
goat yourself!"

"Shouldn't wonder," r