another half dozen vessels were going over to
see it, and that meant more than three or four hundred able fishermen
going out. The men that were going to stay ashore would go up to those
that were going out and say, "Well, good-by, old man. If you don't
come back, why, you know your grave'll be kept green." And the men
going out would grin and say, "That's all right, boy, but if she goes,
she'll go with every rag on her," in a half-joking way, too, but it
was the belief that morning that there might be a whole lot of truth
in that kind of joking.

Before we reached the dock we knew that the whole town had learned
pretty much that half a dozen of the skippers had promised each other
in Mrs. Arkell's kitchen the night before, "No sail comes off except
what's blown off," and there promised to be some blown off. Men who
had only just heard their skippers speak of that were bragging of it
in the streets. "Why," said one of O'Donnell's crew as we were coming
down the dock, "if any crawly-spined crawfish loses his nerve and
jumps to our halyards, thinkin' the Colleen's going to capsize--why,
he'll get fooled--and why? Because our halyards are all housed
aloft--by the skipper's orders."

That sounded strong, but it was true. When we reached the end of our
dock we looked for ourselves, and there it was. The Colleen's crew had
hoisted their mains'l already and there she lay swayed up and all
ready, and men aloft were even then putting the seizing on. Tom
O'Donnell himself was pointing it out to Sam Hollis with a good deal
of glee, thinking, I suppose, to worry Hollis, who, to uphold his
reputation, would have to do the same and take the chances that went
with it. By this time everybody knew that Hollis had put his ballast
back during the night. One of Wesley Marrs's men jumped onto the
Withrow and below and had a look for himself. He couldn't get down by
way of the hatches--they were battened down--but he dropped into the
forec's'le and, before anybody knew what he was up to, he had slipped
through the forehold and into the mainhold and there he saw where they
had hurriedly put back the flooring, and he also saw extra barrels of
sand tiered low for further stiffening of the Withrow. He was
discovered before he got on deck and nearly beaten to a jelly before
he got up on the wharf again. It ended in a fine little riot with some
of our gang and O'Donnell's mixing in. Clancy came down the back-stay
like a man falling from the mas