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The wind and sea-way together were too much for the cutter. The Colleen left her behind, and she at last drew off after bunching a few farewell shots. O'Donnell then hove-to and took his seine-boat on deck. He had been towing it the wrong end foremost for the whole forty miles, and he was worried over it. "It's strained her maybe and she almost a new boat," he lamented. "For the rest I don't care.
No bit of twine ever made to be handled from a seine-boat was big enough to hold that school of fish when they began to go down. The skipper was awake to it early and signalled for the vessel to come alongside. So the Johnnie stood over to us, and Hurd, pushing the spare dory over with Moore's help, came jumping with it to the side of the seine where I was alone in the first dory.
Whoever she was, the light from her cabin skylight was right there and I realized that we were pretty close, but not really how close until a boat bobbed up under my jaws almost. Right from under our bow it heaved. It was a seiner and that was her seine-boat towing astern, and I could easily have heaved a line to her helmsman as we swept by her.
Even so, the chances were in his favor, but as he touched the water the ship crashed into the seine-boat, and a piece of the wreckage hit him on the head. It all happened in a flash, but at the instant that he was struck, Colin, still in his oilskins and sea-boots, dived into the water. Fortunately, he cleared the vortex. In a few seconds Roote came up, and Colin grabbed him by the hair.
'I'm usin' my hat, I hollers, 'and Joe's using his sou'wester, thinkin' that would fetch him all right. 'Well, we're usin' ten sou'westers here, says Andie, 'and one or two of 'em leaks, and that was all the satisfaction I got." "Yes," said Eddie Parsons, "the seine-boat was sure wallerin' then. The skipper had only just told Jimmie Gunn to quit his growling.
"Ever see anything like that ashore, Joey-boy?" said Clancy, and I had to roar a whisper that I never had. Through this play of fire the Johnnie leaped with great bounds. She boiled her way, and astern she left a wake in which the seine-boat was rearing and diving with a fine little independent trail of its own. Two men forward the watch were leaning over the windlass and peering into the night.
To get aboard the Johnnie again was almost as bad as to get into the seine-boat from the Flamingo. But we managed it. Long Steve was swept over while we were at it, but we got him back with the help of Maurice Blake and another of the Flamingo's crowd. By smart clever work they grabbed Steve before he could go down and hauled him into the seine-boat.
Parsons didn't have the chance to talk back when the word came from aloft to put the seine-boat over the side, and after that to overhaul the seine and pile it in the boat. Vessels ahead had seen mackerel, the skipper called out. We got into oilskins and boots and made ready.
And Clancy and the skipper were something in the line of able seamen themselves. Generally a day in harbor is a day of loafing for the crew of a seiner; but it was not so altogether with us that day. Within two hours of the time that Wesley Marrs came in to the Breakwater in such slashing style the skipper had us into the seine-boat and on the way to the Lucy Foster.
She rushed on, and w-r-r-rp! her weather bow came down on the Johnnie's seine-boat. But it didn't quite hit it. Her quarter to leeward just cut under the Adams' bowsprit and the leech of her mainsail seemed to flatten past. For a moment we were not certain, but no jolt or lurch came and our seine-boat seemed all right. Another jump and she was clear by.
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