Dorymates: A Tale of the Fishing BanksMunroe, Kirk
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Dorymates: A Tale of the Fishing Banks
Munroe, Kirk
Newfoundland and Labrador -- Fiction
Wolfe was even more excited than Breeze over the tale they had just
heard; the facts of which, if proved, would make such a difference in
the fortunes of his dorymate. The glittering prospects of the future
seemed to make but little impression upon Breeze; but they instantly
flashed across Wolfe’s mind in all their brilliancy, and he asked his
parents many questions concerning Tresmont. From them the boys learned
that it was situated in the northern part of Lincolnshire, and
overlooked the Humber with its broad fen-lands. They also learned that
much of the family property was invested in the fisheries of Grimsby,
which is the largest fishing port in the world.
“That alone would go a long way towards proving you the son of the
family, ‘Sir Breeze,’” laughed Wolfe, “for you have taken as naturally
to fishing as a dory to water. I told you that you were a prince in
disguise, and you promised to remember me when you came into your
kingdom. Now I claim the captaincy of your largest smack.”
“You shall be admiral of the whole fleet!” answered Breeze, with a
smile. “You know, old man, that no matter what might happen, I could
never forget the dorymate with whom I had drifted through the fogs of
the Newfoundland Banks. By-the-way, how did you manage to get the brig
into port after Nimbus and I left you in such a hurry?”
Wolfe told him of the cruise, of their safe arrival in Gloucester, of
the meeting between Captain McCloud and the loving wife who had never
given him up for lost, of the sadness occasioned by their boy’s absence,
and of how his adopted mother still watched for him with a firm faith
that he would yet return to her, of the salvage money received, and of
so many other things, that more than an hour was occupied in the telling
of them all.
Then Breeze had to narrate his adventures after tumbling overboard from
the brig, and tell of being picked up by the _Fish-hawk_, of the great
cuttle-fish, of finding the ambergris and losing the schooner, of
Iceland and its wonderful geysers, and, in fact, of all that had
happened to him since the dorymates had last seen each other on the deck
of the _Esmeralda_. “And to think, Wolfe,” he said, “that this meeting
is but the end of the cruise on which we started together so long ago,
against our will, in the old _Vixen!_”
“It only goes to prove,” said Wolfe, “how very much stranger truth is
than fiction. If all your adventures were written in a book, no one
would ever believe they had ever actually happened. Would they, father?”
“Well, no, my son,” replied the squire. “I can’t say that they would,
and I don’t know that anybody could be blamed for the doubting of them.
Sir Wolfe used frequent to tell of the remarkable adventures of a
gentleman of the name of Polo; but to my mind, these here of Mr.
Breeze--begging his pardon, I mean Sir Tristram--beats them away out of
sight.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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