"Gets drunk? Who gets drunk? Clancy? That's news to me. As long as I've known him I never saw him drunk yet. He gets mellow and loose--but drunk! Clancy drunk? Why, Nell!" "Oh, well, all right, he's an apostle of temperance then. But Captain Blake--where is he?" "I couldn't say--why?" "I have a message for him." "Did you try his boarding-house?" "Yes. That is, Will did, and he wasn't there, hadn't been there at all, they said, since the afternoon before." "That so? Where else did you try? Duncan's office?" "We did, and no word of him there." "Try Clancy's boarding-house?" "Yes, and no word." "Try--h-m--the Anchorage?" "Oh, Joe, you don't think he's been loafing there since?" "No, I don't. And yet after the way he got turned down yesterday, you know--there's no telling what a man might do." "Well, Will looked in there, too." "You fat little fox! Why didn't you say that at first? And no word?" "No." "Well, I don't know where he'd be then." "Nor I, except--did you notice the wind has hauled to the northwest?" "I did." "Well. Do you know that old vessel that Mr. Withrow's been trying to get a crew for--the Flamingo?" "M-h-h." "Well, this morning early she went out--on a hand-lining trip to the east'ard, it is said. And Will says that he thinks--he doesn't know, mind you, because they won't tell him anything down to Withrow's--but he thinks that Maurice Blake's shipped in her." "Wow! She won't last out one good breeze on the Banks." "That is just what Will said. And it's too bad, for I had a message for him--a message that would make everything all right. I suppose you can guess?" "Guess? H-m-m--I don't know as I want to." "Well, don't get mad about it, anyway. How would you feel if you saw that horrid Minnie Arkell rush up and--Oh, you know what I mean. However, I've been pleading with Alice since yesterday afternoon. For two hours I was up in her room last evening, and poor Will walking the veranda down below. I put Captain Blake's case as I thought a friend of his would put it--as you would put it, say--perhaps better in some ways--for I could not forget that he sailed the Johnnie Duncan yesterday, and her winning meant so much to Will. Yes, and I'm not forgetting Clancy and the rest of her crew--indeed, I'm not--I felt as though I could kiss every one of them." "Well, here's one of them." "Don't get saucy because your mother is standing by. Go and find Maurice Blake. Go ahead, won't you, Joe? Tell him that everything is all right. She is proud." "That's a nice sounding word for it--pride. Stuck on herself is what I'd say." "No, she isn't. You must allow a woman self-respect, you know." "I guess so. And it must be her long suit, seeing she's always leading from it." "Oh, keep your fishermen's jokes for the mugging-up times on your vessel. You go and get Maurice Blake--or find Mr. Clancy and have him get him--if he hasn't gone on the Flamingo."