which, after a battle, he grabbed and towed back to the dory. It was a hard fight, and he would have liked well to rest a while—but there was Johnnie. So in he hauled, many a long fathom of slack ground-line, with gangings and hooks, and after that the buoy-line. He sorrowfully regarded the fine fat fish that he passed along—every hook seemed to have a fish on it. “Man, man, but ’twas only last night I baited up for ye in the cold hold of the vessel—baited with the cold frozen squid, and my fingers nigh frost-bitten.” But every hook was bringing him nearer to his dory-mate.
He felt the line tauten at last. “Have a care now, Johnnie, whilst I draw you to me,” and hauled in till Johnnie was alongside.
But “Good-by,” said Johnnie ere yet Martin had him safe.
“Not yet, Johnnie-boy,” said Martin, and reached for him and held him up and lashed him to the buoy. “You can rest your arms now, lad,” he said, and Johnnie gratefully let go.
“ ’Tis made of iron a man should be that goes winter trawling,” said Martin, and up on the bottom of the dory he climbed again, this time with infinite difficulty.
They had had the leeward berth and now were farthest from the vessel, and by this time it was dark. But Martin knew the skipper would not give them up in a hurry, as he explained to John. And by and by they saw the torches flare up.
“Wait you, John,” said Martin then, “and save your strength. I’ll hail when I think they’re near enough to hear”; which he did, in a voice that obeyed the iron will and carried far across the waters.
Then the vessel saw them and bore down, the skipper to the wheel and the men lining the rail.
“Be easy with John,” said Martin to the man who first stretched his arms out and remarked, “I’m thinking he’s nigh gone.” Martin said, “Nigh gone? He is gone,” as they lifted John aboard.
“But all right with him now,” they said as they passed him along the deck. “And how is it with yourself, Martin?” they asked him as he was about to step over the rail.
“Fine and daisy,” said Martin. “How is it yourself, boy?” stepping jauntily up, and then, unable longer to stand, fell flat on the deck.
Seeing how it had been with him, they made him go below also, which he, with shipmates helping, did; and also, later, put on the dry shift of clothes they made ready. In the middle of it all he asked, “Where’s Johnnie?”
“In his bunk—and full of hot coffee—where you’ll be in a minute.”
“The hell I will—there’s my dory yet to be hoisted in.”
“Your dory, Martin? Why, she’s in, drained dry and griped long ago.”
“What! and me below? And dory in already? What was it? Did I fall asleep or what? Lord! but it’s an old man I must be getting. I wouldn’t ’ve believed it. In all my time to sea that’s the first time ever I warn’t able to lift hand to tackles and my own dory hoisting in.” He made for the companion-way, but so weak was he that he fell back down the companion-way when he tried to make the deck.
But a really strong man recuperates rapidly. An hour later Martin was enjoying a fine hot supper, while the crew sat around and hove questions at him. They asked for details and he gave them, or at least such of them as had become impressed on his mind; particularly did he condemn, in crisp phrases, the botheration of boots that leaked and the need of a second plug-strap on the bottom of a dory. “There ought to be a new law about plug-straps,” said Martin.
“Did ever a man yet come off the bottom of a dory and not speak about the plug straps?” commented one.
“And leaky boots is the devil,” affirmed another—a notorious talker this one, who bunked up in the peak, where he could be dimly seen now—his head out of his bunk that his voice might carry the better. “I bought a pair of boots in Boston once—a Jew up on Atlantic Avenue”
“In Heaven’s name, will you shut up—you and your Atlantic Avenue boots? We’ll never hear the end of those boots.”
The man in the peak subsided, and he who had quelled him, near to the stove and smoking a pipe, went on for himself, “And what were you thinkin’ of, Martin, when you thought you were goin’?”
“Or did you think any time that you was goin’?” asked somebody else.
