ead from that spot out in the dark where
he had last seen the boat, he took the wheel.

"All right, George, I've got you. A good-sized school, by the looks,
if they got them, and I think they have. Did you see that boat ahead
we near ran into?--the last time we put the wheel down? Man, but for a
second I thought they were gone. I hope no blessed vessel comes as
near to our fellows. And they were so busy rowing and heaving twine
they never saw us, and myself nearly cross-eyed trying to watch them
and our own boat and the fish all the time. Go below, George, she's
all right now, and tell Joe--where is he?--to go below, too, and have
a mug-up for himself. He must be soaked through taking the swash that
must've come over her bow for the last hour. But tell him to come
right up so's to keep watch out ahead."

I didn't go below, however, but standing by the fore-rigging kept an
eye out ahead. Clancy himself stood to the wheel with his head ever
turned over one shoulder, until he saw the flare of a torch from the
seine-boat. "Good!" he exclaimed. "What there is is safe now,
anyway."

After that his work was easy. He had only to dodge the lights of other
vessels now, the old red and green lights that had been our neighbors
all that evening, and a few new yellow flares that came from other
seine-boats. So his eyes ranged the blackness and in rings about his
own seine-boat he sailed the Johnnie Duncan. That the crew were quite
a little while pursing up only gave him satisfaction. "A nice school,
Joe, if they got it all," he said, "a nice school of 'em." And after a
pause, "I think I'll stand down and have a look."

He ran down, luffed, and hailed, "Hi--skipper, what's it like?"

From the row of figures that were seen to be crowding gunnel and
thwarts and hauling on the seine, one shadow straightened up beside
the smoky torch and spoke. "Can't be sure yet, Tommie, but things look
all right so far. A fair-sized school if we don't lose 'em."

"Lord, don't lose 'em, skipper, though I think you've got 'em fast
enough now. Sounds natural to hear 'em flipping inside the corks,
don't it? Ought to be hurrying 'em up, skipper--it's getting along in
the night."

Clancy, very well satisfied, stood away again and continued to sail
triangles around boat and dory. Being now clear of the greater part of
the mental strain his spirits began to lighten. Merely by way of being
sociable with himself he hummed some old ditties. There was that