am. The crew of this one knows more in a
minute than they know in a week about fishing in that steamer, and
we'd be carrying our summer kites when that gang, if they were in a
sailing vessel, would be laying to an anchor; and with our boat out
and their boat out and a school in sight they'd have to take our
leavings. But here's one of the times when they have the best of it."

There wasn't much wind stirring then, but it promised to breeze up, or
so the skipper thought, and I'm sure I was glad to hear him say it,
for the harder it blew the sooner we would get to New York and the
better our chance to beat the porgyman. First in to market got the
cream.

It was pretty well on to daybreak when the porgy steamer got up
abreast of us and after a while worked by. One of them took the
trouble to sing out to us when they went by, "Well, you got a school
before us, but we'll be tied up and into the dock and spending our
money ashore whilst you're still along the Jersey coast somewhere."

And we supposed they would, but Hurd, who was then to our wheel, had
to call back to them, "Oh, I dunno. I dunno about that--it's a good
run to Fulton Market dock yet." And, turning to us, "I hope the bloody
old boiler explodes so nobody'll be able to find a mackerel of 'em
this side the Bay of Fundy. Of course I wouldn't want to see the men
come to any harm, but wouldn't it jar you--them scrubs?"

The skipper wasn't saying anything. And it meant a lot to him, too. He
was looking after the steamer and, I know, praying for wind. We could
see it in his eyes.

And sometimes things come as we like to have them. At full dawn it was
a nice breeze with the Johnnie Duncan washing her face in plenty of
good spray and the fine sun shining warm on a fresh sea-way. Another
hour, the wind hauling and still making, the Johnnie was down to her
rail, and awhile after that she was getting all the wind she needed.

"We may have a chance to try her out on this run, who knows?" said the
skipper. We were coming up on the porgy steamer then and you should
have seen his eyes when they looked from the rail to the deck of his
vessel and from the deck again to aloft. On the steamer the gang were
in the waist watching us coming and they must have been piling the
coal into her below and giving her the jet steadily, for out of her
funnel was coming the smoke in clouds mixed with steam.

"But their firemen can stoke till they're black in the face and they
won't get m