and among the
fleet again, we had lost a week. Our hold was still to fill up, and
only two weeks and a day to the race. Wesley Marrs, Tom O'Donnell, Sam
Hollis, and the rest were then talking of going home and making ready
for the race. Bottoms would have to be scrubbed, extra gear put
ashore--a whole lot of things done--and a few try-outs in the Bay by
way of tuning up.

The race was the talk of all the fleet. Half the crews on the Cape
shore wanted to be in Gloucester when the race came off, and some of
the skippers of the slower vessels, which would not enter because they
had no show to win, were already scheming to be home just before the
race so that they could be on hand to follow it.

The morning after we were back among the fleet we got a small school
right from under the eyes of the Lynx, one of the English cutters
which were patrolling the coast to see that we didn't get any fish
within the three-mile limit. I remember that while we were satisfied
at the time that we were outside the line, we did not know what the
revenue-cutter might say, and particularly the Lynx, whose captain had
a hard name among our fleet for his readiness to suspect law-breaking
when there wasn't any. The cutter people generally seemed to want to
be fair toward us, but this Lynx's captain was certainly a vindictive
cuss. Anything hailing from Gloucester was an abomination in his eyes.
And so this morning, when, after we had decided that we were outside
the limit, and made ready to set, it was hard to have to take the
order of the Lynx and sheer off. Our judgment of distance ought to
have been as good as his--better, really, we thought it, because we
were always judging distances at sea, and more at home upon the sea,
too. But that made no difference--what the cutter people said had to
be law for us.

So this time he ordered us not to set where we were or he'd seize our
vessel. Several Gloucester vessels had been confiscated just before
this and the owners had to pay the fine to recover them. One owner
disputed the judgment and his case was then waiting settlement.
Another who refused to pay saw his vessel turned into a lightship and
placed down Miramichi way in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where it is
yet. This day the commander of the Lynx might have some reason to
think that his order ended that for us--and we could almost see him
chuckling--but it didn't. A fog was creeping up at the time and in ten
minutes it was on us, and under c