So I went out. On a cruise along the water front I found a whole
lot of people. I saw Wesley Marrs and Tommie Ohlsen--sorrowful and
neither saying much--looking after their vessels--Ohlsen seeing to a
new gaff. "I ought to've lost," said Ohlsen. "Look at that for a
rotten piece of wood." Sam Hollis was around, too, trying to explain
how it was he didn't win the race. But he couldn't explain to
anybody's satisfaction how his stays'l went nor why he hove-to when
that squall struck him--the same squall that shot the Johnnie
Duncan across the line. Tom O'Donnell was there, looking down on the
deck of the vessel in which he took so much pride. "Two holes in
her deck where her spars ought to be," he was saying when I came
along. I asked him if he had seen Maurice that morning, and it was
from him I learned for certain that Maurice had shipped on the
Flamingo. "I didn't see her leaving, boy, but Withrow himself told
me this morning. 'And I hope he'll never come back,' he said at the
same time. ''Tis you that takes a licking hard. But maybe 'tis the
insurance,' I says. 'If that's what you're thinking,' says he, 'she
isn't insured.' 'Then it must be the divil's own repair she's in
when no company at all will insure her,' I says. Sure, we had hard
words over it, but that won't bring back Maurice--he's gone in the
Flamingo, Joe."
I went after Clancy then, and after a long chase, that took me to
Boston and back, I caught up with him. He was full of repentance and
was gloomy. It was up in his boarding-house--in his room. He, looking
tired, was thinking of taking a kink of sleep.
"Hulloh, Joe! And I don't wonder you look surprised, Joe. I must be
getting old. Thursday morning I got up after as fine a night's sleep
as a man'd want. That was Thursday. Then Thursday night, Friday,
Friday night, Saturday--two nights and three days, and I'm sleepy
already. Sleepy, Joe, and I remember the time I could go a whole week,
and then, after a good night's sleep, wake up fine and daisy and be
ready for another week. Joe, there's a moral in that if you can only
work it out."
Clancy stayed silent after that, not inclined to talk, I could see,
until I told him about Maurice having shipped in the Flamingo and the
hard crew that had gone in her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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