ove old Ocean's frowning--
My love's for Ocean all the while,
My prayer's for death by drowning."

The devil was in him then. "Did you call me, skipper?" I sang out.

"Did I? Did I? Lord, Joe, I don't know. Maybe I did. I feel like
calling from here to Gloucester, and if I did I bet they'd hear me.
God, Joe, but it's good to be alive, isn't it?--just to be alive.
Whew! but I wish I had a few more sou'westers--just to see 'em scale.
But what was it I wanted--but is the cook there?"

"He is--I c'n hear him talking."

"Then go below and tell him, Joe--tell him to mouse his pots and
kettles, for with sail alow and sail aloft, with her helmsman lashed
and her house awash, in a living gale and the devil's own sea, the
Johnnie Duncan's going to the west'ard."

And she certainly went.

XXXIX

THE HEART OF CLANCY

That trip ended seining for the Duncan that year. Everything went well
with our friends, after we got home. It was late in the season, and
Maurice Blake was to stay ashore to get married, for one thing. He had
made a great season of it and could afford to. So the Johnnie Duncan
was fitted out for fresh halibuting and Clancy took her.

I went with him. I remember very well that I had no idea of going
winter fishing when the seining season ended, but, somehow or other
when Clancy came to get a crew together I was looking for a chance.

So we put out, and on the rocks of Cape Ann, near Eastern Point
lighthouse, on the day we sailed on our first halibuting trip, were
Maurice Blake and Alice Foster, my cousin Nell and Will Somers, to
wave us good luck. Clancy hauled the vessel close in to get a better
look and they waved us until I suppose they could see us no longer. Of
course they should have been able to make us out long after we had
lost sight of them, we being a tall-sparred, white-sailed vessel; and
Clancy must have had that in mind, for long after all signs of them
had been lost to us he kept the glasses pointed to the rocks. He
turned at last with a "Well, I suppose they're all happy now, Joe?"

"They ought to be," I said.

"Yes, they ought to be," he repeated, and then again, "they ought to
be," and went for'ard.

He stayed for'ard a long time, saying no word, but leaning over the
windlass and looking out ahead. Nobody disturbed him. Once or twice
when the sheets needed trimming--and in a deep sleep I think Clancy
would know that--he turned and gave the word, but the bare word an