rld--most
of them--fooling them into believing that he's a devil--yes, a clean
devil on the water. Seventy a month for that?--couldn't you make it
seventy-five?"

"You don't mean to say that----"

"Yes," said Clancy, "I do. I'd rather stick to fishing than--but
here's a shoot and let's call the quartermaster's job off."

Minnie Arkell chimed in here. "A real fisherman, you must remember,
Mr. Keith, doesn't care much for yachting because--leaving out the
question of wages, for he does make more at fishing--he can remain a
fisherman and yet be independent."

"You mean they don't have to take orders as if they were on a yacht,
Mrs. Miner?"

"No, no--don't make any mistake there. The discipline of a yacht, so
far as I know it, is baby play to what they have on a good fisherman.
The discipline aboard a warship is nothing to that aboard a fisherman,
like Captain Blake's vessel say, when there is anything to be done.
Fishermen, it's true, don't have to touch their caps and say, 'Very
good, sir,' to a man who may be no more of a real man than themselves.
On your yacht I suppose you'd discharge a man who didn't do what he
was told, and on a warship he would be sent to the brig, I suppose. On
a fisherman he'd be put ashore. On a fisherman they not only obey
orders, but they carry them out on the jump. And why? Because they've
always done it. Why, deep-sea fishermen are always getting into places
where only the best of seamanship can save them, and they very early
get in the way of doing things up quick and right. When a Gloucester
skipper orders in the sail, say in a gale of wind, and more than apt
to be in the middle of the night--you don't see men trying to see how
long it will take them to get into oilskins--or filling another pipe
before they climb on deck. No, sir--the first man out on the bowsprit,
if it's the jib to come in--or out on the foot-ropes, if it's the
mainsail to be tied up--he's the man that will have a right to hold
his head high next day aboard that vessel. And so the crew of a
fisherman jump to their work--if they didn't there'd be a lot more of
them lost than there are."

"Dear me," said Mr. Keith, "that never occurred to me before. But how
is it, Mrs. Miner, that you have it down so fine?"

"My father was a Gloucester skipper, and since I was that high"--she
put her hand on a level with her knee--"I've been listening to
fishermen. And yachting life does tend to spoil a fisherman," she went
on to