ong about eight o'clock,
I remember, I came off watch and dropped into the forec's'le to fix up
my arm, which was still badly strained from hanging onto the
seine-boat's painter when I was washed overboard. The skipper, taking
a look, told me not to go into the dory that night, but to let Billie
Hurd, who was spare hand, take my place, and for me to stay aboard. I
would rather have gone into the dory, of course, but was not able to
pull an oar--that is, pull it as I'd have to pull when driving for a
school--and knowing I would be no more than so much freight in the
dory there was nothing else to do. "And if we see fish, Clancy'll stay
to the mast-head to-night--as good a seine-master as sails out of
Gloucester is Tommie--better than me," he said. "I'm going in the
seine-boat, and Eddie Parsons, you'll take Clancy's place in the
dory." And buttoning his oil-jacket up tight, he put on his mitts and
went on deck.

That evening the forward gang were doing about as much work as seiners
at leisure usually do. It was in the air that we would strike fish,
but the men had not yet been told to get ready. So four of them were
playing whist at the table under the lamp and two were lying half in
and half out of opposite upper bunks, trying to get more of the light
on the pages of the books they were reading. Long Steve, in a lower
port bunk nearer the gangway, was humming something sentimental, and
two were in a knot on the lockers, arguing fiercely over nothing in
particular. There was a fellow in the peak roaring out, "Scots wha hae
wi' Wallace bled." Only the cook, just done with mixing bread, seemed
to have ever done a lick of work in his life, and he was now standing
by the galley fire rolling the dough off his fingers. The cook on a
fisherman is always a busy man.

Down the companionway and into the thick of this dropped Clancy, oiled
up and all ready to go aloft. To the mast-head of a vessel, even on an
April night in southern waters, it is cold enough, especially when,
like a seiner, she is nearly always by the wind; and Clancy was
wrapped up. "I think," said Clancy, as his boot-heels hit the floor,
"I'll have a mug-up." From the boiler on the galley-stove he poured
out a mug of coffee and from the grub-locker he took a slice of bread
and two thick slices of cold beef. He buried the bread among the beef
and leaned against the foremast while he ate.

Once when Clancy was a skipper he did a fine bit of rescuing out to
sea,