ng for the double white light of Five
Fathom Bank lightship. The skipper was at the wheel. When he got in
the way of the cabin light, we could catch the shine from his dripping
oil-clothes, and the spark from his pipe--which he kept going through
it all--marked his position when he stepped back into the darkness.

Clancy noticed him. "There's a man for you, Joey. Think what it meant
to a young skipper with a new vessel--the loss of that school and the
seine on top of it the very first day he struck fish. If we'd got
that, he might have been the first vessel of the year into the New
York market. And think of the price the first fish fetch!--and the
honor of it--and he breaking his heart to make a reputation this year.
And yet not a yip out of him--not a cranky word to one of the gang all
night. A great man I call him--and a fisherman." I thought so, too.

Sometimes I imagined I could see the wink of red and green lights
abreast and astern, which I probably did, for there should have been
fifty sail or so of seiners inside and outside of us--there were sixty
sail of the fleet in sight that afternoon--and I knew that, barring a
possible few that had got fish and were driving for the New York
market, all the others were like ourselves, under lower sails and
boring into it, with extra lookout forward, the skipper at the wheel
or on the quarter and all ears and eyes for the surf and lights
inshore when we should get there.

"Something ahead! dead ahead! sa-ail!" came suddenly from forward.
There was a scraping of boot-heels at the wheel. "What d'y'make of
it?--all right, I see her!" In the shadow we saw the skipper pulling
the wheel down. Ahead I imagined I saw a dark patch, but to make sure
I squirmed up to the fore-rigging. Whoever she was, the light from her
cabin skylight was right there and I realized that we were pretty
close, but not really how close until a boat bobbed up under my jaws
almost. Right from under our bow it heaved. It was a seiner and that
was her seine-boat towing astern, and I could easily have heaved a
line to her helmsman as we swept by her. There was an awfully tall
shadow of sails--half up to the clouds I thought--and the black of the
hull looked as long as a dock. A voice was hurled to us, but we
couldn't quite make it out--but it was the watch, probably, saying a
word or two by way of easing his feelings.

We worked up to the windward of that one and slowly crowded past her
tumbling green lig