e wore over his woollen shirt, and made as if to throw it in the bow of
the dory. "But no," he said, "it will get wet there. You put it on you,
Simon, and keep it dry for me." He was a full size bigger than me in
every way, and I put it on, over my cardigan jacket and under my oil
jacket, and it felt fine and comfortable on me.

It came time for me to spell him on the hauling, but he waved me back.
"Let be, let be, Simon," he said, "it's fine, light exercise for a man
of a brisk morning. It's reminding me of my hauling of my first trawl on
the Banks. Looking back on it, now, Simon, I mind how the bravest sight
I thought I ever saw was our string of dories racing afore the tide in
the sea of that sunny winter's morning, and the vessel, like a mother
to her little boats, standing off and on to see that nothing happened
the while we hauled and coiled and gaffed inboard the broad-backed
halibut. All out of myself with pride I was--I that was no more than a
lad, but hauling halibut trawls with full-grown Gloucester men on the
Grand Banks! And the passage home that trip, Simon! Oh, boy, that
passage home!"

Without even a halt in his heaving in of the trawls, he took to singing:

"It came one day, as it had to come--
I said to you 'Good-by.'
'Good luck,' said you, 'and a fair, fair wind'--
Though you cried as if to die;
Was all there was ahead of you
When we put out to sea;
But now, sweetheart, we're headed home
To the west'ard and to thee.

"So blow, ye devils, and walk her home--
For she's the able _Lucy Foster_.
The woman I love is waiting me,
So drive the _Lucy_ home to Gloucester.
O ho ho for this heaven-sent breeze,
Straight from the east and all you please!
Come along now, ye whistling gales,
The harder ye blow the faster she sails--
O my soul, there's a girl in Gloucester!"

He stopped to look over his shoulder at me. "Simon, boy, I mind the days
when there was no stopping the songs in me. Rolling to my lips o'
themselves they would come, like foam to the crests of high seas. The
days of a man's youth, Simon! All I knew of a gale of wind was that it
stirred the fancies in me. It's the most wonderful thing will ever
happen you, Simon."

"What is, skipper?"

"Why, the loving a woman and she loving you, and you neither knowing
why, nor maybe caring."

"No woman loves me, skipper."

"She will, boy--never a fear."

He took to the hauling, and soon again to the singing: