We picked up our nearest buoy, with its white-and-black flag floating
high to mark it, and as we did, to wind'ard of us we could see, for five
miles it might be, the twisted lines of the dories stretching. Rising to
the top of a sea we could see them, sometimes one and sometimes
another, lifting and falling, and the vessel lifting and falling to
wind'ard of them all.
Hugh Glynn took the bow to do the hauling and myself the waist for
coiling, and it was a grand sight to see him heave in on that heavy gear
on that December morning. Many men follow the sea, but not many are born
to it. Hugh Glynn was. Through the gurdy he hauled the heavy lines,
swinging forward his shoulders, first one and then the other, swaying
from his waist and all in time to the heave of the sea beneath him, and
singing, as he heaved, the little snatches of songs that I believe he
made up as he went along.
As he warmed to his work he stopped to draw off the heavy sweater that
he wore over his woollen shirt, and made as if to throw it in the bow of
the dory. "But no," he said, "it will get wet there. You put it on you,
Simon, and keep it dry for me." He was a full size bigger than me in
every way, and I put it on, over my cardigan jacket and under my oil
jacket, and it felt fine and comfortable on me.
It came time for me to spell him on the hauling, but he waved me back.
"Let be, let be, Simon," he said, "it's fine, light exercise for a man
of a brisk morning. It's reminding me of my hauling of my first trawl on
the Banks. Looking back on it, now, Simon, I mind how the bravest sight
I thought I ever saw was our string of dories racing afore the tide in
the sea of that sunny winter's morning, and the vessel, like a mother
to her little boats, standing off and on to see that nothing happened
the while we hauled and coiled and gaffed inboard the broad-backed
halibut. All out of myself with pride I was--I that was no more than a
lad, but hauling halibut trawls with full-grown Gloucester men on the
Grand Banks! And the passage home that trip, Simon! Oh, boy, that
passage home!"
Without even a halt in his heaving in of the trawls, he took to singing:
"It came one day, as it had to come--
I said to you 'Good-by.'
'Good luck,' said you, 'and a fair, fair wind'--
Though you cried as if to die;
Was all there was ahead of you
When we put out to sea;
But now, sweetheart, we're headed home
To the west'ard and to thee.
"So blow, ye devils, and walk her home--
For she's the able _Lucy Foster_.
The woman I love is waiting me,
So drive the _Lucy_ home to Gloucester.
O ho ho for this heaven-sent breeze,
Straight from the east and all you please!
Come along now, ye whistling gales,
The harder ye blow the faster she sails--
O my soul, there's a girl in Gloucester!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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