he gang said they had ever
seen them travel before, and what was worse, not staying up long.
There were boats out from three or four vessels before we pushed off
with ours. I remember the porgy steamer had cut in ahead and given
their boat a long start for a school. However, that school did not
stay up long enough and they had their row for nothing. But then their
steamer picked them up again and dropped them on the way to the same
school that we were trying for. How some of our gang did swear at
them! And all because they were steam power.

It promised to be a pretty little race, but that school, too, went
down before either of us could head it, and so it was another row for
nothing. We lay on our oars then, both boats ready for another row,
with the skipper and seine-heaver in each standing on top of the seine
and watching for the fish to show again. Of course both gangs were
sizing each other up, too. I think myself that the Duncan's crowd were
a huskier lot of men than the steamer's. Our fellows looked more like
fishermen, as was to be expected, because in Gloucester good fishermen
are so common that naturally, a man hailing from there gets so that he
wants to be a good fisherman, too, and of course the men coming there
are all pretty good to begin with, leaving out the fellows who are
born and brought up around Gloucester and who have it in their blood.
A man doesn't leave Newfoundland or Cape Breton or even Nova Scotia or
Maine and the islands along the coast, or give up any safe, steady
work he may have, to come to Gloucester to fish unless he feels that
he can come pretty near to holding his end up. That's not saying that
a whole lot of fine fishermen do not stay at home, with never any
desire to fish out of Gloucester, in spite of the good money that a
fisherman with a good skipper can make from there, but just the same
they're a pretty smart and able lot that do come. And so, while our
gang was half made up of men that were born far away from Gloucester,
yet they had the Gloucester spirit, which is everything in deep-sea
fishing, when nerve and strength and skill count for so much. And this
other crowd--the porgy steamer's--did not have that look.

"Look at what we're coming to," somebody called. "All steam boys soon,
and on wages--wages!" he repeated, "and going around the deck, with a
blue guernsey with letters on the chest of it--A.D.Q.--or some other
damn company."

"Well, that would not be bad either,