all thinking, talking, and, I suppose, dreaming of the
season's work ahead--m-m--there was life for a man! Who'd want to work
in a store after that?

I stopped at Duncan's wharf and looked at Wesley Marrs's vessel, the
Lucy Foster, and then the Colleen Bawn.

And O'Donnell drove the Colleen like a ghost through all that
gale,
And around 'twas roaring mountains and above 'twas blinding hail,

and so on. And the Nannie O, another vessel that fishermen sang songs
about.

Oh, the lovely Nannie O,
The able Nannie O,
The Nannie O a-drivin' through the gale.

They were lying there, tied to the docks. They were all dreams, so
long and clean, with the beautiful sheer fore and aft, and the
overhang of the racers they were meant to be--the gold run, with the
grain of the varnished oak rails shining above the night-black of
their topsides, and varnished spars. They had the look of vessels that
could sail--and they could, and live out a gale--nothing like them
afloat I'd heard people say that ought to know.

I walked along another stretch and at Withrow's dock I saw again the
new one that had been built for Maurice Blake but given to Sam Hollis,
who was a boon companion of Withrow's ashore, as I may have said
already. Hollis's gang were bragging even now that she'd trim anything
that ever sailed--the Lucy Foster, the Nannie O, the Colleen Bawn, and
all the rest of them. And there were some old sharks, too, upon the
docks who said they didn't know but she looked as if she could. But a
lot of other people didn't think it--she was all right as a vessel,
but Sam Hollis wasn't a Wesley Marrs, nor a Tom O'Donnell, nor a
Tommie Ohlsen, nor even a Maurice Blake, who was a much younger man
and a less experienced fisherman than any of the others.

All that, with the vessels anchored in the stream and the little
dories running up and down and in and out--it all brought back again
the trips I'd made with my father, clear back to the time when I was a
little boy, so small that in heavy weather he wouldn't trust me to go
forward or aft myself, but would carry me in his arms himself--it all
made me so long for the sea that my head went round and I found myself
staggering like a drunken man as I tried to walk away from it.

III

MINNIE ARKELL

There was nothing for it. For a thousand dollars a month I could not
stay ashore. Somebody or other would give me a chance to go seining,
some good skipper I