d, too, but he didn't show it, only by his eyes
and talking more jerkily than usual. He paid no attention to two or
three schools that made me just crazy just to look at, but at last,
when he thought it was time, he began to move. Ten or a dozen
Gloucester vessels were bunched together, and one porgy steamer--that
is, built for porgy or menhaden fishing, but just now trying for
mackerel like the rest of us.

"There'll be plenty of them up soon, don't you think, Tommie?" the
skipper asked.

"Plenty," answered Tommie, "plenty," with his eyes ever on the fish.
"I think Sam Hollis has got his all right, but Pitt Ripley--I don't
know."

It was getting well along toward sunset then, with everybody worried,
the skipper still aloft, and one boat making ready to set about a mile
inside of us. "They'll dive," said our skipper, and they did. "There's
Pitt Ripley's school now," and he pointed to where a raft of mackerel
were rising and rippling the water black, and heading for the north.
"There's another gone down, too--they'll dive that fellow. Who is
it--Al McNeill?--yes. But they'll come up again, and when it does,
it's ours." And they did come up, and when they did the skipper made a
jump and roared, "Into the boat!" There was a scramble. "Stay up here,
you Billie, and watch the school," he said to Hurd, and "Go down,
you," to me. I slid down by the jib halyards. The skipper and Clancy
came down by the back-stay and beat me to the deck. They must have
tumbled down, they were down so quick.

"Hurry--the Aurora's going after it, too." The Aurora was one of
Withrow's fleet and we were bound to beat her. I had hardly time to
leap into the dory after Clancy, and we were off, with nobody left
aboard but Hurd to the mast-head and the cook, who was to stay on deck
and sail the vessel.

In the seine-boat it was double-banked oars, nine long blades and a
monstrous big one steering--good as another oar that--and all driving
for dear life, with Long Steve and a cork-passer standing by the seine
and the skipper on top of it, with his eyes fixed on the school
ahead--his only motions to open his mouth and to wave with his hands
to the steersman behind him. "Drive her--drive her," he called to the
crew. "More yet--more yet," to the steering oar. "There's the porgy
steamer's boat, too, after the same school. Drive her now, fellows!"

The mackerel were wild as could be, great rafts of them, and
travelling faster than the old seiners in t