that well all this summer. Well, that was the morning after the last
Fourth of July--I mind the sun was coming up over the rocks of Cape
Ann when I was done. And that was July, and now the last of
September--three months ago. A while ago in the dark and a howling
gale--you all see me come in with it, didn't you? Yes, if you go out
quick, you c'n see the well just where I left it--I goes out and digs
it up--and here it is--and now it's here, we'll all have a little
touch in honor of to-morrow, for it's a great day when the wind blows
fifty or sixty miles an hour so that fishermen can have good weather
for a race."

And they all had a little touch. Clancy sat on the table with the
crock between his feet and bailed it out while they all agreed it was
the smoothest stuff that ever slid down their throats. There was not a
man in the gang who was not sure he could put away a barrel of it.

"Put away a barrel of it?" whispered Clancy--"yes. Let's get out
of here, Joe. In an hour they'll be going into the air like
firecrackers."

XXVIII

IN THE ARKELL KITCHEN

We left Clancy's boarding house and went over to old Mrs. Arkell's
place, where most of the skippers who were going to race next day had
gathered. Clancy at once started in to mix milk-punches. And he sang
his latest favorite, with the gang supping his mixture between the
stanzas:

"Oh, hove flat down on Quero Banks
Was the Bounding Billow, Captain Hanks,
And the way she was a-settlin' was an awful sight to see"--

Then Wesley Marrs sang a song and after him Patsie Oddie followed with
a roarer.

The punch-mixing, singing and story-telling went on and in the middle
of it Tom O'Donnell came driving in. He was like a whiff of a
no'the-easter out to sea. "Whoo!" he said. "Hulloh, Wesley-boy--and
Patsie Oddie--and Tommie Ohlsen--and, by my soul, Tommie Clancy again.
Lord, what a night to come beating down from Boston! What's that,
Wesley?--did the Colleen outfoot the cutter down the Cape shore way?
Indeed and she did, and could do it over again in the same breeze to
half their logy old battleships. Into Boston I was Monday morning, and
the fish out of her the same morning. Tuesday I took her across to
Cape Cod, tuning her up, and into Provincetown that night. Next day it
was blowing pretty hard. A fine day for a run across the Bay, I
thinks, and waits for maybe a Boston vessel, one of the T Wharf fleet.
For I'll go to Boston, I thinks, to put