ve liked mighty well to take in the theatre, or a trip to the beach,
or some other little entertainment of a night. But no, it was in and
out--drive, drive, drive.

He was all ambition, the skipper. He was going to be up front or break
something. Miss Foster was one of the ambitious kind, too. If she was
going to have a fisherman, he would have to be a killer or she would
know why. And so I suppose that had a lot to do with the way the
skipper drove things.

We had our loafing spells, as I say, but mostly it was plenty of work.
That time when we stayed awake for five days and nights was not the
only one. Another time our legs swelled up and the blood came out of
the ends of our fingers with standing up to the keelers and dressing
fish without rest. But, Lord, nobody minded that. After we'd got
rested up we felt better than ever.

We had good luck generally. We lost neither men nor gear to amount to
anything that summer. That seine we lost trying for our first school
to the s'uth'ard in the spring was the only bit of misfortune that
came, and we had long ago made up for that. But others were not so
lucky. There was the loss of the Ruth Ripley, Pitt Ripley's vessel. I
think I have said that she was a fast vessel. She was fast--fast, but
of the cranky type. We were jogging along a little to windward of her
one fine afternoon--it had been a fine September day and now it was
coming on to evening. To the westward of Cape Sable, in the Bay of
Fundy, it was, and no hint of a blow up to within a few minutes of the
time when the squall struck the Ruth. I suppose it would have been
more prudent on Pitt's part if he had had less sail on, but like most
of the skippers in the fleet I guess he was not looking for any record
for prudence. Any minute he might have to be up and driving her, and
keeping sail on was the quickest way to have it when you needed it in
a hurry. The squall hit her--it hit us, too, but we saw it coming and
met it and beyond washing a few keelers overboard, when she rolled
down, no harm was done to the Johnnie. On the Ripley, I suppose, they
saw it too, but the Ripley and the Duncan were not the same class of
vessel by any means. She went over--hove down, with her foremast under
water to the cross-trees almost.

Most of her crew were below at the time, some in their bunks. Four or
five of those below never reached the deck at all--the water rushing
down the companionways cut them off. Some rushed aft where th