There was a long story to the Eliza Jane, but Clancy did not finish it. Maybe he felt that it was not in harmony with that lowering sky or that flashing sea. Maybe, too, in the waters that rolled and the wake that smoked was the inspiration for something more stirring. At any rate he began, in a voice that carried far, an old ballad of the war of 1812. Two or three more stanzas to warm up, and the fight was on. And you would think Clancy was in it. He laid every mast and yard of the enemy over the side of her, he made her decks run with blood, and at the last, in a noble effort, he caused her to strike her flag. By the time he had finished that, it happened that we were running before the wind, and, going so, it was very quiet aboard the vessel. There was none of the close-hauled wash through her scuppers, nor was there much play of wind through stays and halyards. It was in fact unusually quiet, and it needed only that to set Clancy off on a more melancholy tack. So in a subdued voice he began the recitation of one of the incidents that have helped to make orphans of Gloucester children: "Twelve good vessels fighting through the night Fighting, fighting, that no'the-east gale; Every man, be sure, did his might, But never a sign of a single sail Was there in the morning when the sun shone red, But a hundred and seventy fine men--dead-- Were settling somewhere into the sand On Georges shoals, which is Drowned Men's Land. "Seventy widows kneeling----" A long hail came over the water and a torch was raised and lowered. "Hi-i--" hallooed the voice. "Hi-i-i--" hallooed back Clancy as he pulled down his wheel. You might have thought he intended to run over them. But no, for at the very last second he threw her up cleverly and let her settle beside the boat, from which most of the men came tumbling immediately over the side of the vessel. Of those who stayed, one shackled the boat's bow onto the iron that hung from the boom at the fore-rigging, and having done that, braced an oar between himself and the vessel's run to hold the boat away and steady while another in the stern of the boat did the same thing with his oar. In the boat's waist two men hung onto the seine. A section of the cork edge of the seine was then gathered inboard and clamped down over the vessel's rail, with the mackerel crowded into the middle part, and the bunt of the seine thus held safely between boat and vessel. Into this space the sea swashed and slapped after a manner that kept all in the boat completely drenched and made it pretty hard for the men in bow and stern to fend off and retain their balance at the same time.