The rest of us had to roar at that. We at once pictured the Johnnie rigged up as a sloop out on the Grand Banks, trawling or hand-lining, with the crew trying to handle her in some of the winter gales that struck in there. And a great chance she would have rigged as a sloop and her one big sail, making a winter passage home eight or nine or ten hundred miles, when as it was, with the sail split up to schooner rig, men found it bad enough. The master of the yacht had a message for our captain, he said, and Clancy told him the skipper was below. There they talked for a while and after the yachtsman had gone Maurice, inviting four or five of us along, dressed up, called for the seine-boat, got in and was rowed over to a steam-yacht that we now remembered had hailed the schooner-yacht's gig. All brass and varnish and white paint and gold she would be in the daytime, but now she was all lit up with electric lights below and Japanese lanterns on deck. When we came alongside, who should come to the gangway of the yacht and welcome Maurice but Minnie Arkell--Mrs. Miner. She greeted all of us for that matter--she never pretended not to see people--and invited us all below for refreshments. There was a good lay-out there and we pitched into it. Seiners are great people at table or in a bunk. They can turn to and eat, or turn in and sleep any minute, day or night. So now we turned to. Clancy did great things to the wine. Generally he took whiskey, but he did not object to good wine now and then. He and one fellow in a blue coat, white duck trousers, and a blue cap that never left his head, had a great chat. "I callate that if he didn't have that cap with the button on front nobody'd know he was a real yachtsman, would they?" Eddie Parsons whispered in my ear. The owner of the steam-yacht was trying to convince Tommie that yachting would be more in his line than fishing, but Tommie couldn't see it. "But why not?" he asked at last. "Why not, Mr. Clancy? Is it a matter of money? If it is, I'll make that right. I pay ordinary hands twenty-five and thirty dollars a month and found, but I'll pay you fifty--sixty--seventy dollars a month to go with me. I'm going to race this steamer this summer and I want a quartermaster--a man like you that can steer to a hair-line. Seventy dollars a month now--what do you say?"