After ten or twelve hours of it we tried to wake him, but not a budge. We tried again, but no use. At last he came to and without any help at all. Sitting up, he asked where we were, and being told, he said nothing for a moment or so, and then suddenly--"That so? How long was I asleep?" We told him--seventeen hours. "Good Lord!" he groaned, and after a mug-up scooted for the mast-head like a factory hand with the seven o'clock whistle blowing. "He's a fisherman, the skipper," said the gang as they watched him climb the rigging. And he was a fisherman. All that summer he drove things with but little time for us ashore. Twice he put into Gloucester with a day to ourselves and another time we had a chance to run down after we had put into Boston for market, and that we suspected was because the skipper found he could not keep away himself any longer. Things, we judged, were going pretty well with him in Gloucester. He did not pretend any longer now that he was not interested in Miss Foster, and from my cousin Nell I got occasional hints, most of which I confided to Clancy, who explained them as if they were so many parables. "It'll be all right," said Clancy, "if only Minnie Arkell stands clear. I'm glad she's away for the summer, but she'll turn up in the fall. You'll see her just before the race large as life, and some of her swell-dressed friends, and a yacht, I'll bet." Considering how deeply the skipper was interested in Miss Foster, some of us thought he ought to be putting in a little time ashore between trips. After a run into the Boston fresh fish market, say, we would have liked mighty well to take in the theatre, or a trip to the beach, or some other little entertainment of a night. But no, it was in and out--drive, drive, drive. He was all ambition, the skipper. He was going to be up front or break something. Miss Foster was one of the ambitious kind, too. If she was going to have a fisherman, he would have to be a killer or she would know why. And so I suppose that had a lot to do with the way the skipper drove things. We had our loafing spells, as I say, but mostly it was plenty of work. That time when we stayed awake for five days and nights was not the only one. Another time our legs swelled up and the blood came out of the ends of our fingers with standing up to the keelers and dressing fish without rest. But, Lord, nobody minded that. After we'd got rested up we felt better than ever.