# The Education of Billy Stream

   Billy Stream was young and unexperienced, but he was a scrapper; and when he jumped into the fight to control the fishing markets of Canada, things had to happen. He faced a Winter on the Newfoundland Banks and the wrath of his own father, because he believed himself right.
THE EDUCATION OF BILLY STREAM
A COMPLETE NOVELETTE by Frederick William Wallace
Author of “In the Bank Fog,” “Winter Fishing,” etc.
BILLY STREAM had arrived home in Anchorville after two years at college, and Captain William Stream, senior, fish merchant, vessel owner, and proprietor of the plant which turned out Stream's famous “Morning-Glory Finnan-Haddies and Fillets—the Nation's Breakfast,” was reviewing his son's university career in language which caused the young man to squirm.
“Yer ma was foolish to imagine that the likes o' you 'ud ever be anything,” raved the old man. “She had an idea that ye'd git yer degree an' be an engineer or some thin', an' what hev ye done for th' last two years? Ye've wasted yer time an' my money boozin' an' card-playin' an' hellin' around town with yer good-for-nawthin' pals. About all ye learnt was to write home for money. Ye got scrappin' with waiters in resturongs an' I had to pay yer fines; ye were tourin' around the country playin' football an' hockey when ye sh'd have bin studyin' yer books, an' now ye've come home with nawthin' but a bad reputation an' dressed up with yer —— fancy clothes like a blasted picter post-card!”
Billy attempted to speak, but his father checked him.
“Gimme none o' yer guff!” he stormed. “I'm talkin' and you'll listen. I've lost fifteen hundred dollars over your eddication, an' I'll have it out o' yer hide. I was a fool to ha' sent ye to college. I sh'd ha' sent ye to sea. Ye'd ha' learnt more useful knowledge out on th' Banks haulin' trawls.
“I've had enough o' you at college. Ye'll git them fancy duds off an' git down to th' fish-house. Ye'll work there from seven in th' mornin' to six at night at whatever th' foreman likes to put you at, an' you'll git three dollars a week an' your board at home here. Ef ye git sassy an' sojer yer work, I'll kick ye out an' ye'll never darken my doors again.”
“Won't you give me something better than that, dad?” pleaded Billy. “Put me in the office or let me take the little vessel and pick up the fish down the shore ports——”
“Put ye in the office?” sneered the elder Stream. “A white-collar job a-slingin' ink! That 'ud suit ye nicely, wouldn't it, but it won't suit me. Ye'd soon be struttin' around town as the young boss, and as for lettin' ye have the little vessel—why, I wouldn't let ye take charge of a dory. You'll go to work in the fish-house or git out o' this.”
The old man gave his son a contemptuous glance and stamped out of the room.
Young Billy Stream, a husky, broad-shouldered, handsome fellow of twenty-two, sat silent for a while and felt that he deserved all he got. He had become a star football player, a crackerjack cover-point at hockey, but his college accomplishments ended there. In his studies he was a laggard, but in his social life he was a shining light. He could dance—such fantastics as are common to the all-night cabarets of a college city—and he could drink, smoke and play cards.
He was a noted scrapper, not a bully, but a hard-hitting young demon when aroused, and among the college crowd he was known as an “Indian,” a reputation which was well enough in college fights and differences with authorities, but detrimental to his prospects with the faculty.
“Well,” murmured Billy after a mental retrospect, “there's no use kicking, for 'that's all shoved behind me—long ago an' far away,' as Kipling says. I'll simply have to knuckle down to the old man or get out.”
NEXT morning at seven he report ed to the foreman at the Stream Fish Company's plant, and the latter gave the young fellow a contemptuous look and set him to work loading fish-gurry into a scow. Billy pitched in, and being a powerful young buck did the work well, but evidently not well enough for Jack Hemsley, the foreman, who nagged at him all the time. Jack had his orders from the elder Stream, and having no use for Billy rather exceeded his orders.
In the afternoon two young ladies came down the wharf to fish. One of the girls was a particular pal of Billy's, and she stopped to talk to him while he shoveled the gurry off the dock to the scow below.
“Daddy mad, Billy?” she said, smiling.
“Some mad, Ethel,” he answered, knocking off for the moment to speak with her. “I've got a fine job here now.”
“Oh, but you'll do something better than that, I hope. You must buck up——”
The eagle-eyed foreman spied him resting from his task, and strode over, bawling:
“Now, then, git to work, you! What th' —— d'ye think ye are? None o' yer sojerin'!”
Billy turned very red and faced the big foreman with his eyes blazing. Hemsley was a rough fellow and did not choose his language before ladies, but Stream resented the hectoring tone and the words.
“Be careful how you speak, Hemsley. There are ladies present!”
“I don't care a cuss ef thar were fifty ladies present!” roared Hemsley. “Don't you imagine because there is a skirt on the dock that you kin hev a spell-oh to yarn with them. Git on with yer work, you blasted college dandy!”
This was too much for Billy. Forgetting everything, he hove the shovel down and went for the foreman and socked him one on the jaw.
Hemsley cursed and put up his hands. He was a big fellow and as tough as iron, but while he had the strength, yet he lacked science, and a beautiful fight soon brought all the fish-workers from the sheds to form an appreciative audience.
The scrap was hot and heavy while it lasted. Some of Hemsley's sledge-hammer blows got home and Billy lost a tooth and had one of his eyes bunged up. It served to cool him off, however, and he fought more scientifically. Getting a straight right to Hemsley's jaw, he hit in with his left, and while the man was dazed for a second, gave him the right again smash on the nose.
The foreman saw stars and Billy gave him a crack which knocked him down into the gurry-heap. The foreman was tough and jumped to his feet and grabbed Billy around the waist, and both men wrestled and struggled around the slimy dock.
For a moment they clinched in a deadlock, and Stream remembered the wrestling tricks of the college gym. He made a rapid movement and hove his opponent from him into the gurry-heap again. As he went down, Hemsley swung his rubber-booted foot up and caught Billy a staggering smack on the side of the head.
The young man saw red and hurled himself on the prostrate foreman. Grabbing him by the collar o his shirt, he yanked him to the cap-log of the wharf and hove him down into the scow-load of gurry, in the midst of which he landed with a gurgling plunk.
Panting and sweating, he stood up and became aware of the fact that the spectators had vanished. A savage kick from a rubber-booted foot caused him to jump around and look into the angry face of his father. The foot rose again and Billy grappled with his enraged parent.
“Don't you try that again, dad!” he panted. “I only gave Hemsley what he deserved.”
“—— you!” yelled the old man. “Keep your hands off me, you beach-comber. Git away out o' this. Git out now! You're a disgrace to the town! Clear out, or by Godfrey I'll have you thrown out by the men!”
Billy released his hold.
“Father,” he pleaded, “listen to me a minute——”
“Not a word!” roared his parent. “Clear out!”
The young fellow saw the look on his father's face, and having a certain amount of pride, did not feel like doing any cringing before the interested eyes peeping out from the windows of the plant. He turned shortly on his heel, picked up his coat from a spile and strode away. As he walked down the wharf he could hear his father talking to the discomfited Hemsley.
“Why didn't ye hit him with a billet o' wood—the infernal young sculpin.”
Feeling sick at heart, Billy Stream left the water-front and walked up the fields.
“Give a dog a bad name and hang him,” he muttered, and threw himself down on the grass to think.
“I won't go home,” decided he after a mental survey of the case. “Dad is mad and he'll nurse his temper for months. He thinks I'm no good—and, by Jove, I don't blame him for thinking so! I haven't been fair to him or mother. It's up to me to retrieve myself.”
He lay for a while looking up at the sky and thinking. The thoughts were not pleasant. He realized that for the past two years he had idled and wasted his time without a thought for the future.
Billy wasn't a bad fellow. He was like a young colt—a little wild, but strong and full of life. The college crowd idolized him for his prowess in athletics, and he liked their admiration. It took away his individuality, however, and he became too much of a good fellow.
The little poker parties and shines which he gave in his rooms brought him popularity, but it was only transient and would not help him in his life-work. He was beginning to realize that now. The commendation, “Billy Stream is a good scout!” would not fetch him any money, and here he was, twenty-two years of age and only worth laborer's hire—twenty cents an hour.
“I've got to buck up,” he resolved. “I'll cut out drinking and fooling and get down to solid work. I'm no good for an office, but I might be some good aboard a vessel. Dad won't have me, but maybe Uncle Ben will. I'll go over to Port Anthony and see him. He'll put me up for a few days any how.”
Rising to his feet, he cleaned some of the signs of conflict from his person and swung out on the road to Port Anthony and Uncle Ben Anthony.
II
“SO WILL kicked you out?” repeated Ben Anthony, with a smile creasing his bronzed visage.
Uncle Ben ran a small fish-plant in the village of Port Anthony, but unlike his brother-in-law, who was energetic and ambitious, Ben was good-humored and easygoing.
William Stream began as a fisherman and built up an immense plant by dint of sheer hard work. The toil of his early days had ingrained itself into his nature, and he was a hard man, though kind enough at heart. Between him and Ben Anthony there was no love lost, as they were rivals in business. Both men packed and smoked fish for market, and when any of the inland dealers came down to Anchorville, William Stream would show them over his fine plant and draw odious comparisons between it and the establishment of Ben Anthony's at Port Anthony.
“Ye've seen our modern sanitary plant,” Stream would say; “now ef you want to look over a wrack of a place go to Port Anthony an' see whar' them Excelsior Brand fish are put up. A dirtier, lousier hole ye never saw, sir. It's fair failin' to pieces an' sh'd be condemned. I wouldn't eat a fish put up by Ben Anthony for fear I'd be poisoned.”
As Port Anthony was a little out of the way, the visitors seldom went there, and it was just as well that they did not, or Stream's words would have been confirmed. Dealers, however, are human and understand the libels of rivals, which understanding allowed Ben Anthony to keep a certain amount of trade from the Stream Fish Company—a trade he would not have kept were the dealers to take the trouble to visit Port Anthony.
“So the old man cut up rough an' hoofed ye?” reiterated Ben Anthony again. “An' ye trimmed Jack Hemsley an' hove him inter th' gurry-scow? Ha! ha! I kin imagine it. Ho! ho! Well, well, boy, I'd give ye a place for that alone. Now, what d'ye want to do—go in the office an' keep th' books?”
“No, uncle,” replied Billy. “I think I'll go to sea. I have a fancy that I might make good as a fisherman and take a vessel out as skipper after a while. I've been in the dory before I went to college. I put in a whole Summer with Arthur Thomson in the Leonora shacking, and I can rig gear, bait up and haul a trawl fairly good.”
Uncle Ben laughed.
“Fishin's hard work, boy. Summertime's not bad, but the Winter haddockin' is a tough proposition. However, ef ye'd like to try it, why, go ahead. My vessel, the Jennie Anthony, will be in any day now an' ye kin go in her. Make yer home here with me. I'll do anythin' for ye jest to put one over on Will. Tell me about that scrap ye had with Bully Hemsley!”
A week later, William Stream, senior, heard the news that his son had gone to sea in the Jennie Anthony as a fisherman, and he laughed grimly:
“Ha! ha! Gone as a fisherman—th' lazy, good-for-nawthin' sculpin. God help th' man as goes dory-mates with him. He'll hev to do his own work an' Will's as well. A college-eddicated fisherman! Huh!”
He felt exceedingly bitter, the more because Ben Anthony had taken his son to his home, and he said to his wife:
“Don't you go a-writin' to that young whelp, May. Let him work out his own traverse with Ben. We'll see what kind o' stuff's in him, though I cal'late he's too much of an Anthony to amount to much.”
Noting the dangerous look in his wife's eyes, he added:
“Th' womenfolk o' that family are the best o' the breed.”
Mrs. Stream said nothing, but felt all a mother's sympathy for her son, just then beginning his apprenticeship in the toughest and hardest college in the world—that of the deep-sea fishing fleet.
It was a hard school and Billy Stream cursed the endless monotony of it. The life he had lived in a university town with its pleasures, the dances, theaters and social life; the excitement of the football gridiron and the hockey rink; the fraternal bonhomie of a college crowd—it was all gone, and here he was, overhauling endless hooks on apparently endless trawls, baiting the same hooks with herring, pulling a pair of oars in a heavy dory, hauling the gear, pitching out and gutting cod, haddock and hake, and doing the same work all over again from daylight to dark, day after day.
Waking and sleeping, he lived in a world which swung and pitched with the restless heave of the ocean. He herded in an odoriferous forecastle with a crowd of rough-spoken, though kindly, men, and with them, toiled and fought the ceaseless menace of the sea. Though not at all enamored of a fisherman's life, yet he made up his mind to stick to it, and, knowing how his father would be keeping track of his work, he toiled the harder just to spite the “old man.”
After his third trip to the Banks, Johnny Wilson, his dory-mate came aboard one night after visiting Anchorville.
“Saw your old man, Billy,” he said.
“Did he speak to you?” queried Stream.
“Sure thing. Came up to me an' says, 'You're Will's dory-mate, ain't you?' I says I was, an' he asks me ef I wasn't tired o' havin' a blasted college guy to look after as well as my own work?”
“What did you say?”
“I ups an' tells him that Billy Stream needed no man to look arter him, an' that you was jest as smart a fisherman as any what shipped out o' the bay.”
Billy slapped his dory-mate on the back.
“You're a good sort, old man,” he murmured feelingly, “and I won't forget it.”
HATING the monotonous toil of the dory, Billy read up on navigation and perfected himself in the art of handling a vessel, with the fixed idea of going out as skipper as soon as possible. To that end, he studied the Bank charts, noted the best fishing bottoms, watched the set of the tides on the various grounds and picked up a vast store of knowledge from his shipmates, men who had fished all over the western ocean. The little learning he had assimilated in science during his two years at college, helped him wonderfully—especially in navigation and weather lore.
The Jennie Anthony was a poor vessel for Winter fishing and Ben Anthony usually hauled her up for the Winter months. She was a bad sea-boat and rather cranky, and the skippers who had ventured out in her in Wintertime usually made but one voyage. Fish prices were high during the Fall that Stream fished in her, and Ben Anthony induced her skipper to keep her fishing as long as possible.
This he did until they took a November snifter in the bay and swept the decks clean of dories, cable and gurry-kid. It was Billy's first experience of a breeze and it failed to frighten him, though it scared the skipper and some of the gang.
While the gale was at its height, Stream, oil-skinned and sea-booted, sat astride of the furled-up mainsail and watched the schooner's behavior. The water came aboard very heavily and the vessel lay-to like a log with no lift in her. The skipper watched her apprehensively and spoke to Billy.
“Reg'lar barge, ain't she?” he growled. “Heaves-to like an' old bucket. Look at her diving!”
“I'd like to try her on the other tack,” shouted Billy above the roar of wind and sea. “Let me make an experiment, skipper!”
The other laughed.
“Go ahead, son,” he said. “Ef you kin make her lie easier, you're a wonder.”
Billy got the gang up. and, taking the wheel, wore the ship around.
“Now slack off that jumbo an' the foresheet!” he cried. “So! That'll do!”
He took the wheel and watched the compass, putting the helm down slowly. Scanning the run of the sea, he kept a careful eye on the motions of the vessel and finally lashed the wheel.
“We'll try her at that, skipper,” he said, and went below.
Half an hour later, the watch came below.
“She's lyin' nicely sence Billy fixed her. She ain't makin' near as bad weather of it as she did afore an' it's blowin' jest as hard.”
Billy, in his bunk, felt a thrill of pleasure at the words. The men would remember the incident, he knew, and it made him feel strangely confident.
“She's a —— barge in a breeze, anyway,” growled the skipper, “an' I'm a-goin' to knock off soon's we git in. She's no vessel for Winter fishin' an' never was.”
Stream, however, thought otherwise.
The bulk of the business carried on by Ben Anthony was in dried salt fish. He owned the ninety-five-ton Bank schooner Jennie Anthony and two shore-fishing motor-boats, each run by two men. The haddock caught by these craft were smoked and packed for market under the Excelsior Brand, and Ben Anthony shipped them up to various jobbers in the inland cities who disposed of them. The other fish—cod, hake, pollock and cusk—were salted and dried and sold to traveling buyers, who ex ported them to the West Indies and South America.
The Stream Fish Company was a large organization owning three Banking schooners, the Leonora, Eugenora, and Astronora, fine modern semi-knockabout vessels, each carrying ten dories. In addition they owned a pick-up gasoline schooner which plied between the fishing villages on the bay buying fresh fish, and the company also bought the fares of the motor-boat fishermen running out of Anchorville. The fish handled by them was shipped to market fresh and in a cured state; the mainstay of the business being the marketing of the famous “Morning-Glory Brand of Finnan-Haddies and Fillets, Kippered Herring and Bloaters.” To market their products, the company had sales agencies throughout the country.
The bête noire of the sales agents was the Excelsior Brand. Every time Ben Anthony procured a stock of fresh haddock, he smoked the fish and his jobbers undersold the products of the Stream Fish Company and played havoc with the market. William Stream, senior, tried many times to put his brother-in-law Ben out of business, but could not manage it, and as Ben had no regular and steady trade in his products, Stream considered that he was an interloper and disorganizer.
When the Jennie Anthony tied up to her dock in Port Anthony, the skipper resigned and Ben made preparations to haul her up above high water for the Winter months. Billy then broached his ideas to his uncle.
“Look here, Uncle Ben,” he said, “if you could keep the Jennie fishing all Winter wouldn't it pay you well?”
“Sure it would,” replied Ben, “but who'll go a-fishin' in her? She's cranky an' wet an' no skipper'll take her out Winter fishin'.”
“You let me have her,” said Billy. “I'll take her out.”
Ben Anthony looked hard at the young fellow and then he laughed.
“Waal, by heck, you hev a nerve, son! Three months a-fishin' an' ye want to go skipper on that cranky barge in Wintertime. Ha! ha!”
“Uncle Ben,” said the other seriously, “I mean what I say. I put in three months aboard of her just to get the hang of things so's I could take charge of a vessel. Did you think I meant to stick at the grubby drag of work in the dory? Not on your life! I've been keeping my eyes open and learning, and I'm confident of my ability to skipper the Jennie Anthony. With ordinary luck, I'll catch fish, too.”
“Even supposin' ye can sail an' navigate her,” demurred his unde, “that won't alter the fact that she ain't a Winter fishin' vessel. She's too cranky for heavy weather, an' ye'll never git a gang to sail in her.”
“That schooner can be made seaworthy, uncle,” replied Billy decisively. “I've been watching her. She's badly ballasted, and if you'll agree, I'll draw off her lines and reballast her properly. With a little money spent on her I can fix her up.”
The other waved his hand.
“We've tried that,” he said. “We've overhauled her ballast lots of times——”
“Yes,” interrupted Billy, “you have. That's just the trouble with you fishermen. You get monkeying about with a vessel and, instead of ballasting her the way the designer meant her to be ballasted, you go ahead on your own ideas.
“That's what you did in the Jennie. You've got a big pen of sand placed in her fore-hold—a regular dead-weight in the fore-end of her—that takes all the life out of the vessel. No wonder she's cranky. I'll make a safe bet that her pig-iron and stone ballast was dumped in under her floors and leveled off anyhow. I've done a little yacht sailing up West and I know how much ballast affects a vessel's trim and sailing qualities.”
At last, with many misgivings, Ben Anthony gave his consent, and for several days Billy spent his time measuring the schooner and drawing off her lines, a piece of work he credited to the little knowledge he picked up during his two years at college. Procuring the plans of a similar vessel—the original designs of the Jennie were lost—he figured out displacements with certain loads, and with his plan of the Jennie's lines and a small wooden half-model, he calculated the centers of buoyancy, gravity and lateral resistance.
When the designs were finished to his satisfaction, he got men to work unloading the schooner's ballast, and personally supervised its replacing. Uncle Ben, as an interested looker-on, felt impressed with the careful manner in which his nephew restowed the ballast in a cigar-shaped form along the keelson fore and aft.
“Now, uncle,” said Billy when the ballasting was finished, “we'll alter her sail plan a little. She's got too much headsail. We'll cut the jib, jumbo and foresail down a little and get another reef-band in the foresail. In lying to, I think it will come in useful. After a little painting and overhauling of the rigging, she'll be ready for fishing——”
“Ef you kin git a gang to go in her,” interrupted the uncle pessimistically.
“Don't worry. I'll get a gang.”
III
WHEN the Anchorville trawlers heard that young Billy Stream intended taking the Jennie Anthony out Winter haddocking, there was much doubtful comment. The fishermen all liked Billy—especially after he thrashed Jack Hemsley—but to their unsophisticated ideas, Billy was a “wrong 'un” and full of the crazy notions which comes to those who have been up to a college and absorbed some sort of education.
The fishermen knew the breed of old. They had listened many times to be-spectacled ichthyological professors who had lectured them on fish and fishery subjects, but because these gentlemen had never stood in the bow of a dory and hauled a trawl, they were of no account and not convincing. It is thus with fishermen the world over. They resent ideas propounded to them by men who “read them out of a book.”
Billy had not visited his home since the row with his father. He had seen his mother and sister once or twice when the latter drove over to Uncle Ben's, but his parent had evinced no desire to see him. The fact of his linking up with Ben Anthony embittered the harsh old man. When the latter heard that his son was going to skipper the Jennie Anthony he laughed grimly and issued an edict, orally of course, that any man who shipped on the schooner would never get a “sight” on the Stream Company's vessels again. This was an error of judgment on Captain Stream's part. Fishermen are singularly independent and refuse to be coerced or restrained from following their inclinations.
Billy Stream found it hard work getting men. His old dory-mate, Johnny Wilson, promised to go with him, and he secured Jim Cline, a half-witted fellow, as cook. When Billy approached the Anchorville and Port Anthony trawlers about shipping with him, they laughed and refused to go. At the end of a week Billy was desperate.
There was a big political meeting held in the Anchorville Hall one night at which many fishermen were present. Just as the conclave adjourned, Billy jumped up on the platform and addressed the crowd.
“Boys,” he said, “I want a gang for the Jennie Anthony. She's been overhauled and reballasted and is now a fit and able vessel for Winter fishing. I'm a green skipper, I know, but I'll learn, and I'm willing to learn. Anybody that will take a chance, let him come down to Johnny Morrison's pool-room tonight and sign up. Thank you, gentlemen!”
“Anybody that goes with that young fool is crazy!” roared a voice which Billy recognized as his father's. “He's no good an' never will be any good. He's double-crossed his father and will double-cross any man that's fool enough to go with him in that crazy tub o' Ben Anthony's. What does that feller know about sailin' a vessel or ketchin' fish? Take my advice an' keep away from him, boys. Ef he don't drown ye, that crazy cook of his'll pizen ye!”
There was a general laugh at Captain Stream's indictment of his son, but Billy jumped on the platform again, flaming.
“Any man that thinks I'll double-cross him, poison him or drown him, I'll knock the stuffing out of him,” he bawled defiantly. “I'll fight any man in the crowd and if I lick him he'll ship with me. Come on, now, who'll take me up?”
Some one did take Billy up. It was the two town policemen who at a sign from the mayor grabbed William and ejected him from the hall as a disturber of the peace. Billy went out quietly and strode off to Morrison's pool-room feeling angry with himself for being such a fool.
At the pool-room, Patrick Clancy sought him out. Mr. Clancy was the town's sporting promoter and owned the local skating-rink.
“Looky-here, Billy,” he said. “You play hockey, don't ye? Yes? Well, I've a proposition. Anchorville has always bin licked by the Cobtown boys. Now, ef you'll play for us on Saturday and help lick that Cobtown crowd, ye'll have all the boys with ye. Fishermen are good sports and they'll ship with ye, I'm sure, ef ye help win that game.”
Stream laughed.
“I haven't had any practise this season; but go ahead, I'll try.”
Clancy turned around to the crowd in the pool-room.
“Boys,” said he. “Cap'en Billy Stream is a-goin' to play in the big hockey match against the Cobtown fellers at the Anchorville Rink on Christmas Eve. I told him ef we won, that some o' youse fellers would make up his gang. He's playin' on them conditions, an' I hope ye'll be sports enough to help him out. —— me, ef I could only haul a trawl I'd go mesilf. Now, give him a chance.”
Billy came in from Port Anthony on the morning of December twenty-fourth. He had his skates and old college hockey gear with him, but somehow or other he did not feel at all enthusiastic about Clancy's proposition. The idea of getting a fishing crew by prowess at hockey was so absurd that he thought little of it. However, when he arrived in town, he found there was more of a furore over the game than he imagined.
The ingenious Clancy had billed the whole county about the event and, being a skilful press-agent, did not fail to advertise the fact that a college-bred fishing-skipper was going to play a star game in order to get a crew. As a result, fishermen from all up and down the coast came into Anchorville to see the game, and at 7 p.m. the rink was crowded.
The Cobtown men came in on a special train, and a husky crowd they were—hard-muscled young fellows who played a rough, slashing game when science failed to give them victory.
“They're a dirty crowd, Stream,” said an Anchorville man to Billy as they climbed into their clothes at the rink. “Most of them are mechanics from the Cobtown Engine Works and they rough it up in the second half. Our fellows are lighter than they are, most of us being bank-clerks and store-keepers, so we'll look to you at cover-point to help us out.”
“I'll do my best,” answered Stream, “but remember, boys, combination is everything. Don't hog the puck and play lone-hand games. Pass every time you're tackled, and let your forward men keep in a line across the rink ready to take a pass. Remember that—combination's the thing.”
The Cobtown men in black-and-yellow jerseys and stockings were already on the ice and shooting the puck around. When the red-and-white arrayed Anchorville boys appeared, a great cheer greeted them.
“Now, then, Billy Stream!” shouted a man. “The Jennie gits a gang ef you play the game!”
Billy took up his position as cover-point when the whistle blew and the referee faced the puck off. The ice was hard, and from the outset the game was fast—too fast for Billy, who lacked practise.
With dull skates on the hard ice, Stream made a poor showing during the first half of the game. Several times the Cobtown men got past him and the Anchorville goal was bombarded with shots which only the skilful goal-tender saved. Once, with the puck at his feet, he fell down on the ice, and a smart Cobtown forward got it and shot a clean goal from the wings. The roar of approval from the Cobtown fans made Billy feel badly, and he cursed his dull skates and lack of practise.
“If the ice only softens up a bit,” he murmured, “I'll be able to do something.”
The first half had a minute to go, with the score 1—0 in favor of the visitors, when Billy got the puck and the Cobtown men had their goal undefended. With an eye to an off-side play, Stream cautiously carried the puck up the rink, dodged a Cobtown forward, passed to center, received the puck again, dodged the Cobtown point, and saw the goal clear.
“Shoot! Shoot!” roared the Anchorville spectators.
He glanced at the direction of the goal, stiffened up on his stick for the drive to goal, and then ignominiously slipped and fell down on the ice amid the angry howls of the home crowd. The half-time bell rang, and Billy went to the dressing-room with shouts of “Take Stream to the morgue—he's a dead one!” ringing in his ears. One thing alone served to alleviate his chagrin—the ice was getting softer.
In the dressing-room, Clancy hunted around for a new pair of skates, but failed to find any.
“Never mind,” said Stream. “I'll do better this next half—the ice is getting softer.”
“For Heaven's sake, man, wake up!” almost pleaded Clancy. “If we git trimmed I stand to lose a pile of money. I betted on you—you being a college man and a good hockey player.”
The second half of a hockey game is usually the fastest and most exciting. The men have gotten into their stride by then and the deciding goals are won or lost. Stream noted with satisfaction that the ice was softer and that his dull skates cut in better. He took his place with an air of grim determination and stood, a strapping, handsome figure of a man, strong and agile.
The puck was faced off and a Cobtown man got it and came down the rink like a streak of lightning. He passed the Anchor ville forwards, the rover, and made a stick play in front of Billy.
To the Cobtown man's surprise, Billy got the puck and started up the ice as quick as a cat. He dodged the Cobtown forwards and their cover-point and then passed to center. The center man, relying on Stream no more after spoiling the last shoot for goal, shot himself and missed. Four times Stream got the puck and went up the ice with it and on passing, the shot was spoiled by his own men.
“I'll play my own game after this,” muttered Billy, and he did.
At the Anchorville goal, he got the puck and made a splendid single-handed run through all the Cobtown forwards. The cover-point tried to block him but was easily eluded, and Billy shot—a wonderful unerring drive—which sent the rubber into the Cobtown nets, and the cheers which follow ed showed how his play was appreciated.
The score stood an even one to one with fifteen minutes to play.
With another goal to get in order to beat their opponents, the Cobtown team started roughing the play and body-checked the Anchorville men heavily. The pace was telling on the home team, and Stream noticed that his men were getting fagged and failed to follow up the puck. Andy Kelly, a bank-clerk, playing as rover for Anchorville, was their best man, and Stream skated up to him.
“How're you feeling?” he asked.
“Pretty fit,” replied the other.
“Well then, you follow me and stand by for passes. Our team's breaking up.”
“Right-oh! I'm with you!”
A heavily built Cobtown player literally bodied his way down the rink with the puck and knocked his opponents off their feet with his strength and weight. Like a wild horse he came speeding down toward Stream, and it looked as if nothing could stop him.
Billy skated for him. The two bodies met with a clink of steel and the clash of hockey sticks. There was a sullen thud as the Cobtown man drove into the side boards and sprawled headlong, and Billy came racing up the rink with the rubber disk before him. Glancing around, he noticed Kelly pacing him. He dodged numerous black-and-yellow figures, who slashed at the puck and his stick savagely, and made a lightning pass to Kelly on the right wing.
“Shoot! shoot! Kelly!” screamed the crowd.
The Cobtown point tackled him just as he was about to make a drive for the goal and amid the disappointed roars of the Anchorville fans, the point player secured the puck and started to run the rubber down the rink again.
Like a red-and-white streak, Billy went for him; sticks clashed, and before the Cobtown goal-minder knew what happened, the puck came at him like a shot from a gun and clattered into the net. The spectators yelled with delight and Clancy shouted himself hoarse.
“Good boy, Billy! Only ten minutes more an' we've got them trimmed!”
The puck was faced off again, and Stream found himself the objective of all the Cobtown players. He had the rubber again and was running up the rink when the big fellow, whom he sent sprawling previously, deliberately slashed him over the head with his stick.
Stream fell to the ice like a pole-axed ox and lay prone while shrieks of rage went up from the crowd. The referee blew his whistle; the Cobtown player was sent off the ice for the balance of the game, and Billy was carried into the dressing-room bleeding profusely from a nasty cut on the side of the head.
He revived a minute later and in a daze allowed his head to be bandaged. While he was being attended to, Clancy came bustling in.
“We're trimmed! We're trimmed!” he wailed. “Kelly's the only man on the ice that can stand on his feet—the rest's gone to pieces, and Cobtown hev evened up the score—three to three!”
Stream struggled to his feet.
“Let me out!” he growled savagely, and he staggered out of the room and on to the ice in time to check a rush of the Cobtown forwards.
His head swam with the crack he had received; he could see nothing but the Cobtown goal ahead of him and the puck. He had to get the rubber into their goal once more and he summoned all his strength and energy.
“Another goal and I'll trim them and get my gang!” he murmured subconsciously.
Feeling horribly weak, he sped up the rink, bodying his opponents, leaping over swinging sticks, but keeping the little black disk forever before him.
The opposing team sped after him, but he dodged, doubled and outdistanced them all. They slashed at his stick, but the wrists that held it were wrists of steel—the puck seemed to be contained within an impregnable curve of rock-elm and they failed to get it.
It was a spectacular ran from one end of the rink to the other—a gantlet in which five men were eluded as a hare might elude a pack of snarling hounds. And at last he found himself before the Cobtown goal with the tender awaiting his shot as watchful as a cat.
“Shoot! Shoot!” shrieked the excited crowd, and summoning all his strength, Billy shot, and collapsed just as the closing bell rang.
He woke up to find himself lying on his back on a bench in the dressing-room. Clancy was bending over him and forcing brandy between his lips.
“God, boy!” he shouted ecstatically. “What a game! We've trimmed them—th' swabs! Four to three an' you're th' lad what done it. That last bit o' play was a blame marvel. Run through th' hull crowd o' them single-handed an' shot—Lord Harry, what a shot! It was like a bullet an' actually bust th' cussed net. If it had hit that goal-tender it 'ud ha' killed him sure.”
“Where's that guy that clipped me?” growled Billy ominously.
“Oh, never mind him,” said Clancy. “He's gone.”
The door burst open and Ben Anthony and a crowd of Anchorville fishermen swarmed in.
“When ye shippin' yer gang, skip?” shouted one of them.
“Sail on th' second or third of January,” replied Stream.
“Give me a sight, by Judas! I'll go jest for th' fun o' th' thing!”
Other voices shouted:
“Me too, by Godfrey! Count me in, Billy! I'll go, even ef the ol' Jennie rolls over!”
IV
IT WAS a rare bunch of terriers that sailed to the Banks with Billy Stream—a young, harum-scarum gang, imbued with the sporting instinct, afraid of nothing and ready to take a chance on anything. Through the hockey match, the young skipper secured seven teen men, an eight-dory gang and a spare hand, and two days after the New Year holiday, the Jennie Anthony, in Winter rig of four lowers, swung out to sea with the Winter haddocking fleet and made her first fishing set on the northeastern edge of Brown's Bank.
Billy soon realized that commanding a fishing-vessel entailed numerous responsibilities and anxieties: The selection of the fishing-ground; the direction and number of tubs of trawl the men had to set from the dories called for an intimate knowledge of the bottom and the rim of the tides; the schooner had to be maneuvered by the skipper and the spare hand when the dories were strung out over four miles of sea, and the former must keep an eye on them all, and attend to them should their gear part or they need help in any way.
Sail-handling and the navigation of the vessel was in the skipper's hands entirely. The men merely obeyed orders, and in that it was absolutely necessary that he gain their confidence and give his commands without hesitation. Stream, with but three months' experience in fishing-vessels, felt that he had a lot to learn.
While the fleet were in sight, Billy felt easy. He would watch them and do what they did. Unfortunately for him, the wind came away heavy one night, and when morning dawned, there wasn't a sail in sight.
“Scattered, I guess,” said Billy. “Well, we'll take a sound and fish where we are.”
During two gray days, they fished and brought aboard a handsome fare with the ground all to themselves. With sixty thousand pounds of haddock and other ground fish below on ice in the holds, Billy was for swinging off for Port Anthony, but he listened to the men who urged him to hang on a day or two longer and make a “high-line” trip of it. The appearance of the sky, the oily run of the sea and the falling barometer caused him some apprehension, but some of the men averred that such signs did not always mean bad weather.
“Ef you're for swingin' her off every time th' glass falls or th' sky looks greasy, ye'll be in and out o' shelter harbors all th' time,” they said, and Billy, allowing for their experience in such things, kept the vessel on the grounds.
It ended in his having to pick the dories up in a moderate gale of rain and sleet. He had just time to get them and the fish aboard when a savage squall struck the schooner and hove her down with the four lowers still on her.
“Haul down yer jib!” he roared from the wheel. “Aft here and sheet in yer mains'l! Now, fellers, get ready to tie the mains'l up. Get your crotch tackles hooked in. Ready? Settle away yer halyards! Roll her up! We'll heave-to under fores'l and jumbo till this blows over.”
They dressed the fish down while the Jennie bucked and jumped a steep breaking sea, and Stream noted with satisfaction that the schooner rode like a duck.
“She's doin' fine, Skip, sence you ballasted her properly,” remarked his old dory-mate Wilson. “The ol' Jennie's a different craft altogether.”
It was blowing hard, but the vessel was lying comfortably, and after giving instructions to the two men on watch to put the vessel about on the other tack at the end of their watch, he went below and turned in. He did not sleep, however, but lay awake listening to the conversation of the men hugging the stove in the cabin.
“Skipper sh'd be puttin' it to her,” growled one man. “No use lyin' out here with a trip below.”
“Yes,” remarked another. “'Tain't blowin' noways hard. She'd drive along under ridin' sail, fores'l an' jumbo.” And so it continued, regular fisherman's gabble which no experienced skipper ever listens to. Billy Stream was green, and he astonished the crowd by tumbling out of his bunk and singing out for all hands to set the riding sail and get the vessel under way.
The Jennie made heavy weather of it, and the talkers began to regret their outspoken opinions when the watches came around. The wind hauled northwest and freezing cold, while the spray which whirled over the schooner froze on her decks, sails and rigging. During the night it was “ice-mallets and belaying-pin drill,” pounding the ice away.
It froze harder during the day, and the ice made so fast that all hands were unable to clear it. The decks were filmed in ice a foot thick and ropes and standing rigging were encased to the thickness of a man's thigh. The deck-houses, dories, windlass and cables were indistinguishable in the shroud of ice which covered them, and Billy ordered life-lines to be rigged fore-and-aft and ashes scattered upon the slippery decks to prevent the men from sliding overboard.
“This is getting tough,” muttered the skipper. “If it makes much more, she'll capsize with the weight of it. Um! Let me see! Cobtown Harbor is thirty miles away. It'll take us seven or eight hours—maybe more—to make it. We can't do it if it keeps cold like this.”
The men were getting unusually nervous and frightened and were throwing anxious glances in Stream's direction. The vessel was looking like an iceberg, and the tons of frozen water on her superstructure caused her to roll dangerously.
The men came aft.
“We can't clear her, Skip,” they said. “What are you goin' to do? We'll sink soon.”
“What do you usually do in a case like this?” asked Billy anxiously.
“How in —— do we know?” growled a man. “We ain't bin out like this afore. You're skipper here an' you ought to know.”
“All right,” snapped Stream. “Stand by to wear ship! Slack off yer foresheet! Git that riding sail down and the mains'l hoisted. Put a single reef in it!”
“What are ye goin' to do?”
“Go ahead an' do as I tell you!” he replied grimly. “Pound that sail clear and get it hoisted.”
Setting the reefed mainsail was a terrible job. The great piece of canvas was frozen solid on the sixty-foot boom, and the men pounded it clear, tied the wire-like reef-points, and, after knocking the ice off the halyards, hauled the sail up with lurid oaths.
“There, —— ye,” they growled. “Drive the barge for whatever port yer eddicated skipper kin fetch!”
“Now, get busy with those ice-mallets and keep pounding!” bawled Billy, taking no notice of the remarks.
RUNNING before a heavy sea with the reefed mainsail on her caused the ice-laden craft to perform some hair-curling antics, and the men pounding ice glanced apprehensively every now and again at Stream, who had the wheel. It was ticklish work steering the logy schooner, but Stream was equal to it and held her steady.
“Where are we goin', Billy?” asked Wilson. “Ye ain't headin' for an American port on that course.”
“No,” replied the skipper. “She's heading right for the open sea.”
“Where in blazes for?”
“The Gulf Stream, Johnny.”
“Th' Gulf Stream!” echoed the other in amazement. “What's the idear?”
“Warmer weather, Johnny,” replied the skipper. “In a few hours we'll get into it and this ice'll melt.”
When the gang heard the news they laughed the idea to scorn.
“Who ever heard of sich a crazy notion?” said a man. “This is some o' his noo-fangled college idears. Here we are runnin' away to blaze-an'-gone offshore. Let's make him fetch her up an' run for Portland or Boston.”
They went aft in a body and suggested it.
“That's no use,” replied Billy grimly. “This area of low temperature will prevail all down the New England coast as far south as New York. Just as soon as we run west again we'll strike it. We'll keep to the sou'-southeast until the wind shifts from the northerly board——”
“Aw, that be hanged, Skip!” exclaimed a man. “Ye read that in a book. Fetch her up an' head inshore.”
“You go ahead and pound ice,” retorted Stream. “I'm master of this craft and I know what I'm doing.” The men began to murmur among themselves and Billy recognized the fact that he must assert his authority.
“Here, Johnny Wilson,” he cried. “Take the wheel and hold her! Now, fellers, get busy with your ice-mallets and no more guff.”
A young fisherman stepped forward.
“Say,” he growled. “Who d'ye think ye're talkin' to?”
Stream answered him by a well-directed punch on the jaw and the man fell to the deck. Billy stood over him as he rose to his feet.
“Want another crack?” he snapped.
“Naw!”
“Then don't question my doings. Get to work, the gang of you, and clear that ice away. Refuse, and I'll sail in and lick the lot of you!”
It was a bold speech, and Billy knew it. There were men among his gang who could have eaten him if they were so disposed, but the circumstances were too serious then for men to commence brawling. Besides that, Stream's confident manner impressed them and they went back to their work of ice-pounding without any more words.
Toward evening the temperature rose and the ice began to melt. The wind still breezed hard, but the air became perceptibly warmer and no more ice made on the schooner.
“Aft here, boys, and take in your mains'l,” shouted Stream. “We'll heave her to here!”
At midnight the red light of a sailing-vessel appeared on their weather quarter and an ice-coated schooner stormed past.
“What vessel's that?” hailed Billy.
“Regina of Gloucester! Who's that?”
“Jennie Anthony of Anchorville!”
“Hard weather,” shouted a voice. “Had to run off here to git clear of ice!”
“By Jupiter!” exclaimed one of Stream's gang. “That's Ansel Watson's vessel. He's a high-line Gloucesterman and I cal'late he knows what he's doing when he runs off here. Skip, ol' dog, I'm sorry I doubted yer idear. You knew what was best, arter all.”
Stream said nothing, but when morning broke and showed five fishing-schooners around them hove-to on the edge of the Gulf Stream, he felt that the sight was sufficient testimony to his good judgment. When the wind hauled to the west'ard and they made sail again, Stream had graduated as an able man in the opinion of his gang.
For three days they “warmed it to her” as the saying is, and came storming up the bay and into Port Anthony in fine style. Uncle Ben was over the rail ere the schooner was anchored.
“Thought ye were lost in that breeze,” he cried. “H'ard nawthin' of ye sence th' fleet came home. Jupiter! I'm glad t' see ye. How much fish have ye got? Eighty thousand! Good work! There's none to be got now. Nary a vessel or boat out for th' last ten days. Th' fleet jest went out yesterday mornin' an' yer ol' man's crazy to git some fresh stock.”
“Is he?” said Billy. “Then sell him our trip.”
“At the market price?”
“What was it last?”
“Two and a half cents a pound for haddock.”
“Ask him five. If he really needs it to fill his orders, he'll have to pay.”
“Wait a second and I'll telephone him,” said Uncle Ben. In a minute he came back. “He says it's a hold-up, but he'll take it. That'll make a dandy stock for your gang—over eighty dollars apiece for a three weeks' trip. Billy, you're a high-liner, but ye sh'd ha' heard yer old man cuss at the price. Ye've put one over on him this time, an' what'll make him feel worse is the fact that ye've made good as a skipper and fixed the Jennie Anthony up as an able vessel again. Now git acrost to Anchorville with yer trip an' make the old man mad.”
Feeling good at the price they were getting, the gang hoisted sail again and the Jennie Anthony sailed in to the Stream Fish Company's wharf. Captain Billy went up to his father's office to ratify the sale of the fish and found his parent chuckling to himself over the telephone. When Billy entered, Stream, senior, glanced up, shouted “All right, send them up!” to some one on the other end of the line, and turned to his son with a face stern and saturnine in its expression.
“Hullo, Dad!” exclaimed Billy. “I've just brought the vessel over with the fish. Five cents for the haddock, you told Uncle Ben, eh?”
“Five cents be ——!” snarled the elder Stream. “D'ye think I'm crazy? I wouldn't give more'n a cent and a half for any fish you'd bring in.”
“Didn't you tell Uncle Ben over the 'phone that you'd take our trip at five cents?”
“I might have, but I've changed my mind since.”
“You're going back on your word, Dad!” said Billy slowly.
“Am I? Waal, I reckon that's my lookout. A pretty fool I'd be to pay five cents for fish that I kin buy for half the price.”
“Yes, but you can't get it now.”
“Can't I?” snapped the other. “Don't you worry. I've got all I want. My vessels have jest run in to Cobtown harbor with fifty thousand among them, an' I'm having it shipped up by rail now. Ef you want to sell your trip to me, I'll take it at a cent and a half.”
“Why, Dad, that's a cent less than the last market price.”
“Take it or leave it then. I'm not anxious to buy!”
Billy was boiling with disgust and rage—so much so that he could hardly speak. His father was enjoying his discomfiture.
“Well, by Godfrey!” said Billy at last. “I always thought my father was an honorable man, but I find his word is worth nothing!”
“You infernal young pup!” shouted Captain Stream, rising. “Git out o' here! I wouldn't take yer fish ef it was given to me. You 'n' Ben thought ye c'd put it all over me, didn't ye? Git aboard that hooker o' yours an' away from my dock or I'll cast yer lines adrift!”
The young skipper turned to go. With his hand on the door, he said:
“You've welshed on this, Dad, but mark my words, I'll pay you back some day.” And he went out, inwardly raging.
At the dock he communicated the interview to the gang, and amid the jeers of the shore workers, they cursefully hoisted sail and headed the vessel back to Port Anthony again. When Uncle Ben heard the reason of their return, he swore softly.
“He got me that time, but it was a mean game to play on the men. Never mind, Billy. I'll buy the trip at three cents and smoke them. Git yer hatches off.”
That night the premises of the Anthony Fish Company burnt down and morning revealed a heap of smoldering ruins.
V
“MY PLACE was set afire!” said Ben Anthony finally. “It never started in the smoke-house, 'cause the wind was west last night and the smoke house 'ud be to loo'ard. The fire was set in th' wind'ard buildin' which held nawthin' but three hundred quintal o' dried fish, an' nobody's bin in it fur a week. It was set afire, Billy, an' I believe yer old man had a hand in it to put me out o' business!”
“I don't believe that Dad would do that,” dissented Billy. “What'll we do with the Jennie's trip of fish? We can't handle it now.”
“Um! The only thing I can think of is to telephone Will an' ask him to take it off our hands at his own price,” said Uncle Ben dismally. “I'll go 'n' do that now.”
Ten minutes later he came down to the vessel almost white with passion.
“Told me he wouldn't take it off my hands to make glue with,” stormed Anthony. “Said he was glad that a fire had cleaned my old shacks from off Port Anthony beach and he hoped I'd retire on the insurance money and keep out of the fish business.”
“That was cruel,” remarked Billy. “Did you telephone any one else about the fish?”
“Yes, I got the Cobtown people on the wire. They wouldn't take them. Your father must have fixed them.”
Billy looked serious.
“Um!” he exclaimed. “This is war to the knife! Well, I guess we'll show the old man that we're not dead yet, uncle. You get those ruins cleared up and I'll run this fish across to Bayport. When I come back, we'll hold a council of war.”
He got some of the men together and hoisted sail on the schooner for the fifty-mile run to Bayport. Two days later, the Jennie shot into port again with her fish still aboard.
“Not a buyer over there would look at our fish,” said Billy bitterly. “They've all been fixed by the Stream Fish Company. I couldn't give them away. The old man seems determined to put you and me out of business, but we'll best him. I'll get the gang together to split and salt them and then we'll have a talk.”
While the men were discharging the schooner's fare and dressing it for salting, Billy outlined a scheme of future operations.
“Uncle Ben, why not go to work and build a modern fish-plant with smoke-houses, packing-rooms and everything just the same as father's place? You had the name of putting up a better finnan-haddie than the Stream Company.”
“To be sure I did,” interrupted Ben proudly. “Yer dad could never touch me in smokin' fish. I l'arnt th' proper way from an old Scotchman that used to fish for me. My Excelsior Brand will sell quicker than Morning Glory, 'Th' Nation's Breakfast,' as he calls it.”
“Then why don't you develop that business?”
“Too much bother. Salt fish is easier. It don't spile and it kin allus find a market.”
“Could you sell all the finnan-haddies you could turn out?”
“Easy. I git piles of orders fur them. Come to the office an' I'll show you letters from jobbers.”
Billy went up to the combination store and gear shed in which was the tiny cubicle that Uncle Ben dignified by the name of “office.” It contained a base-burner stove, an ancient desk and a safe. The whole place was littered with papers filed upon nails driven into the walls and the desk was jammed full of miscellaneous correspondence. Uncle Ben was clearly no business man and his educated nephew's sense of neatness revolted at the disorder.
Ben's great hands groped among the papers on the desk and he selected some letters from large inland wholesalers offering to purchase considerable quantities of his Excelsior Brand.
“I can see by these that we can build up a good business if it is handled properly,” said Stream. “Fix your wharves up; build a good fish-house on it and erect a first-class smoke-house with concrete floors and sides. The other buildings should be well built and nicely painted so as to look good to anybody taking the notion to visit the plant. Let's get out nice boxes; pack the fish in parchment paper and place a little booklet in each box giving hints on how to cook finnan-haddie. Build a new office; get a proper bookkeeper and stenographer in it; have filing cabinets to take care of your papers; procure neatly printed letter paper and bill-heads and write your correspondence by typewriter.
“You keep out of the office and look after the smoking and the outside work. Buy a small gasoline schooner and use her for buying fish down the bay ports; have a good outfitting store and keep gasoline and gear. There's lots of fishermen in Port Anthony but there's nothing to keep them here—they all go over to Anchorville and fish out of that place. I'll take a trip up west and see some of the wholesalers and get them to act as our agents. Let us put up finnan-haddies, smoked fillets, kippers and bloaters. Let's cut in to the Stream Fish Company's trade. We can get it, uncle, if we go after it.”
Uncle Ben gasped.
“That's all very well, Billy, but to do what you want'll cost more money than I've got. What's all this a-goin' to cost?”
“I can't say,” replied the young skipper, “but I'll soon figure it out. I'll turn to and draw out plans for a new plant and make an estimate of the cost. If you can't finance it all, I'll get you to pay my expenses to go west and get some one with money to invest it in our scheme. Come! Let's dope this thing out.”
Overcome by the arguments of his enterprising nephew, and with a strong desire to get back at his brother-in-law whom he believed to have had something to do with the destruction of his plant, Ben Anthony entered into the scheme enthusiastically, and after Stream had seen the Jennie Anthony's former skipper and induced him to take the vessel out fishing again now that she was seaworthy, the young fellow took train and left for Montreal without breathing a word to any one of his intentions. Ben Anthony intended to do nothing until he heard from his nephew.
Captain William Stream, senior, heard in due course that Ben was doing nothing in the way of rebuilding his burnt-out premises. He also heard that the Jennie Anthony was fishing again under her old skipper and running her trips into another port, and that his son had gone west.
“Got tired of it—th' young cub,” mused he contentedly. “I cal'late he had enough o' fishin'. I knew he wouldn't stick—it ain't in him. Waal, th' fire's put Ben out o' business. Th' Stream Fish Company'll hev things its own way now. We'll put th' prices up a cent a pound an' hold them. Ef dealers want my fish they kin pay for them. Ben's junk ain't on th' market to cut prices.”
The hard old man felt so good over the news that he allowed his daughter to cajole him into buying an automobile.
BUOYED up with optimism and an enthusiastic faith in the future, Billy Stream landed in Montreal and called on several of the large wholesale fish distributors. They all knew the Excelsior Brand and liked them. The finnan-haddies put up by Ben Anthony had a peculiarly piquant and tasty flavor which was absent in the Stream Company's product, and customers preferred them. There was a good market for all they could supply and any one of the firms he visited would take up an agency and push the sale of the goods.
After looking up their various commercial ratings and a few other things, Billy appointed an up-to-date concern as his dis tributing agent and promised to let them know when he would be ready to start shipping the fish.
“Get to work as soon as possible, Captain Stream,” said the wholesaler. “Your namesake's concern has jacked the price up on us and, as they have no opposition to amount to anything, they've got the market.”
Getting an agent was an easier matter than getting money, however, and Billy spent an arduous week interviewing capitalists and exhibiting his plans and outlining the possibilities of his proposition. If he were engaged in promoting an oil-well, a silver mine or a real-estate option, he could have got the money, but a fish business—alas! It was too far away and visionary for the men he interviewed to invest in.
Stream haunted offices, raced around hotels to keep appointments, worked all his college chums for letters of introduction to moneyed men, and got thin and pale with his unavailing efforts. It was fruitless. Ten thousand dollars were as hard to get as ten million.
A trip to Toronto on the money-raising errand took nearly all his money, and when he returned to Montreal after an unsuccessful visit, he had to crave the hospitality of an old college chum and sell his watch in order to procure enough money to take him to Boston. He did not feel like wiring his uncle for funds, and once in Boston he felt sure that he would get a lift over to Nova Scotia upon a coaster or a fisherman.
Feeling decidedly blue, he decided to leave Montreal, and with Jack Anstruther, his college friend, he walked down-town to the railroad depot. It was a cold February evening, the streets were slippery and walking was difficult.
At a busy crossing an old gentleman, dressed rather meanly, attempted to cross the street, and slipped and fell in front of an electric-car which was coming down-hill at a fair rate of speed. The motorman attempted to apply his air- and hand-brakes, but the wheels failed to grip on the slippery rails and the heavy vehicle went charging down the slope with unabated speed.
Spectators shouted in horror; a policeman made a rush, but while he hesitated in fright Stream leaped in front of the car, grabbed a bar with his left hand, and, as it drove down on top of the prostrate man, he reached down and grasped the old gentleman by the coat-collar and held him in a grip of iron.
Before the car could be brought to a standstill, both were dragged several yards in front of the car with their legs trailing under it, but, except for the hurts incidental to scraping along an icy street, neither was injured.
Stream swung the old gentleman to his feet.
“—— you, sir!” shrieked the old fellow. “You've choked me. What the devil do you mean?”
Billy gasped in surprise. After saving the man's life, such a greeting was incomprehensible, and he spluttered:
“—— you! What d'ye mean by goin' to sleep on the car-tracks? Tired of life, or what?”
A crowd had gathered and Anstruther elbowed his way to Stream's side.
“You'll have to hurry, Billy,” he said. “Your train goes in two minutes. Golly! That was a nervy thing you did! You must be an awful strong man——”
“Tend to that scurvy old gink and see him home,” said Stream hurriedly. “I'll have to run for my train. So long, Jack, and many thanks for your kindness in putting me up. I'll write you.”
He gave a glance at the old gentleman, who was surrounded by the crowd, and he struggled through the onlookers and commenced to run for the depot. Some one shouted after him, but as he had only a minute to catch the Boston train, he did not stop.
He swung aboard just as the train was going out of the station, and when he took his seat in the smoker, he had time to survey himself.
“My good boots and the bottoms of my pants all ripped to Hades,” he growled, “and my coat torn. Saved the old swab's life and he cussed me for choking him. What d'ye know about that?”
He spent the night in the smoker thinking over the future and his prospects. Things were decidedly blue.
Arriving in Boston, he went down and had breakfast in a “quick lunch” on Atlantic Avenue. He did not sit up at the counter, but entered a partitioned-off compartment. While he was eating he could hear the slurring conversation of two drunken men in the next cubicle, but probably would have taken no notice of it had he not heard the name “Anthony” mentioned. Pausing to listen, he heard a familiar voice speaking in the egotistical bragging manner of “boozy” men.
“Yesh, Tom,” it was saying. “I got even with him, see? He licked me, an' made a fool o' me afore th' men, an' you know I ain't th' man any one kin lick an' git away with it, see? He hove me down inter a scow-load o' gurry an' made a proper mug o' me, but I got even with him, tho' he don't know it. You know how?”
“Naw! How d'ye git him, Jack?”
“He was runnin' fish to Ben Anthony after his old man kicked him out fer lickin' me. The old man an' him don't pull, ye see? I owe Ben Anthony one fer gittin' me pinched one time an' I owed this college cub one fer lickin' me, so I jest went over to Port Anthony one night in a dory an' hove a handful o' lighted waste inter Ben Anthony's dried-fish house——”
“Sh!” cautioned the other man, who was evidently more sober. “Be careful how ye talk. That's a jail job.”
“Aw, ——!” growled the other. “Nobody kin hear me. I ain't shoutin'. So, as I was tellin' ye, th' cussed place burnt down. Ben Anthony's bin put out o' business an' that young swab had t' give up th' vessel. He's gone west——”
“Waal,” interrupted the other. “What's yer plan? Ol' man Stream fired ye fer drinkin'. How're ye a-goin' to bleed him?”
“Lissen, son. You were in th' fish-shed that time when ol' man Stream was cussin' Ben Anthony. Remember what he said?”
“Only wished his buildin's 'ud burn down an' git him out o' business. That what ye mean?”
“Sure thing! An' thar were lots h'ard him. Now, I'm goin' over to ol' man Stream an' I'm goin' to say that he hired me to burn Ben Anthony's buildin's down. I'll tell him that you' n' others h'ard him say he wished some one 'ud burn 'em for him——”
“Sh!” interjected the other man. “You're talkin' too loud! Here, finish yer cawfee an' let's git out an' aboard th' Jennie May.”
Stream listened almost breathless at the disclosures he had overheard in this chance conversation. He knew the voices—one was Jack Hemsley's, the foreman he had thrashed—and the other was of a man who used to work around his father's place. Both men were rising to their feet. Stream placed his head drunkenly on the table and snored stertoriously. As the two shambled out, he was conscious that Hemsley's companion glanced in at him.
“Who th' —— is that?” growled Hemsley.
“Another souse—dead to th' world. He h'ard nawthin'.” And they passed out.
Stream finished his coffee.
“So they're going over on the Jennie May. She'll be going to Anchorville with a load o' hard coal, I guess. Stanley Collins is skipper of her, and I guess he'll give me a lift over as well. I must go down and see him. Even though I'm not friendly disposed to my dad, I won't allow those beachcombers to put a game like that over him, and I'll jug Mister Fire-bug Hemsley for burning Uncle Ben's place.”
As he strode down to the coal dock, he felt that his excursion had not proved altogether fruitless.
VI
CAPTAIN COLLINS of the Jennie May laughed heartily when Stream explained his wants.
“Lord Harry! My old packet sh'd git inter th' passenger business. You're the third guy that wants a lift to Anchorville. Waal, I'm glad t' hev ye, Billy. A coaster, kin allus do with a few extry hands in Win tertime. Pick yer bunk an' make yerself to home. We'll go out at noon with the ebb tide.”
In the forecastle Billy found Hemsley and his companion, a man named Jones. The former jumped to his feet on seeing Stream and ground out an oath.
“Hullo, Hemsley!” exclaimed Billy heartily. “Going across?”
The man growled an affirmative.
“Well, well,” said Billy, “we'll make a regular family party. How's everything at Anchorville?”
“Same's usual,” grunted Hemsley sullenly.
Stream could see by the man's demeanor that he was still sore over the thrashing he had got, but Billy treated him as if it had never happened.
They hoisted sail and put to sea, and for two days the weather held fine and they romped up the coast. When they made Matinicus Rock, the weather turned colder and a heavy frost-vapor shrouded the sea, settling down so thickly that it was impossible to see the end of the jib-boom from the windlass. Billy had the wheel from midnight to four, and when relieved by Captain Collins he went down into the cabin and turned into the latter's bunk.
For a while he lay dozing and listening to the drone of the mechanical fog-horn which Hemsley was pumping for'ard, and then turning over in the warm blankets, he went into the deep slumber of sailormen. He was awakened an hour later by a terrific crash which hove him out on the cabin floor.
Grabbing his boots, he hauled them on while a medley of shouts sounded from the deck. The cabin was dark, but he could hear Captain Collins shouting:
“For God's sake, stand by us. We're sinking!”
Another voice, Hemsley's, cried:
“Git th' yawl over. She's cut th' bows off us clean to the forehatch!”
Sea-booted feet tramped overhead, and amid the shouting Billy heard Collins bawling:
“Open th' cabin door, Hemsley! Billy Stream's below in my bunk.”
Stream leaped for the gangway ladder and clambered up the steps as Hemsley shoved the hatch back.
“That you, Stream?” he hissed.
“Yep! What's——”
Before he could articulate the question something heavy smashed him on the top of the head and he toppled back into the cabin, senseless, just as the schooner settled in the water to her scuppers.
“He ain't below!” bawled Hemsley. “Must sleep like th' Seven Sleepers.”
“——!” ejaculated the coaster's captain. “She's settling. Into the yawl with you. We can't save him now!” And the five members of the coaster's crew tumbled into the boat and shoved off just as the schooner hove her stern up preparatory to going down by the head.
“Lay to your oars, men!” shouted Collins. “I hear that cursed steamer whistlin' down to loo'ard. Git down to him or we'll be swamped. Poor Billy Stream!”
With a heavy sea running, there was no time for regrets, and the crowd in the yawl pulled hurriedly in the direction of the steamer which had run them down. With in ten minutes they sighted her in the mist and rounded up alongside. A Jacob's ladder was thrown down her steep sides and a voice shouted:
“All saved?”
“Naw, blast ye!” shouted Collins. “Thar's one man gone down in her!”
THE rescued crew were landed next morning in Cobtown Harbor and arrived in Anchorville that night. Captain Stream heard the news of his son's death with genuine emotion and cursed himself bitterly for his harshness toward the boy. Ben Anthony evinced more grief than did Billy's parent, and both were present when Collins told his story.
“Billy came to me in Boston to git a passage acrost,” he explained. “I took him as well as Hemsley an' Jones an' let two o' my crew go ashore while th' three o' them 'ud help work th' vessel acrost. Billy was below in my bunk when th' steamer struck us for'ard, an' he went down in her. Hemsley opened th' cabin door an' called to him, but he couldn't ha' heard him. We had only time to git inter th' boat afore she settled.”
“Did ye see her go under?” inquired Ben.
“She was awash to her rails when we left her. A vessel with a dead-weight cargo o' coal in her an' her bows shore off don't take long to sink. She must ha' gone down like a stone thirty seconds after we shoved off.”
Hemsley was also questioned.
“He couldn't ha' bin in th' cabin,” he said, “or else he slept mighty sound. I shouted down to him but got no reply. He might ha' bin for'ard when she was struck. Anyways, he's gone, poor chap. A fine feller, your son, Cap'en Stream. Had th' makin's o' a fine man in him.”
Ben Anthony returned home and gave up all idea of rebuilding his plant again, now that his nephew was gone. He was a widower with no children and he had come to look upon Billy in the light of a son. His sorrow was real.
Over at Anchorville strange things were happening. Jack Hemsley—formerly dock foreman of the Stream Fish Company, and discharged for drunkenness—was reinstated in his old berth again and was more or less drunk all the time. The man Jones was placed in charge of the shipping-room and he, like his crony, seldom drew a sober breath.
The office-manager fired them both one day, but to his consternation, Captain Stream told him to leave them alone. The manager wondered, but thought the old man's behavior in the matter was due to the fact that both men were shipmates with his son when he was drowned.
Like many uneducated men, Captain Stream had a horror of the law. The ingenious yarn spun by Hemsley made the old man appear in a damaging light, and the blackmailer assured him that any court would find him guilty of incendiarism.
“It's true enough that I fired th' place,” said Hemsley, “but you'd be th' one to gain by it. Burnin' down Ben Anthony's place was good business fur your firm. Ye said out loud right afore th' lot of us on th' wharf that ye wished some one 'ud burn down Ben Anthony's shacks.”
Captain Stream winced. He had made these rash remarks to many people.
“And even ef ye had me up in court fur settin' fire to th' buildin's I'd swear you ast me to, an' I kin git Jones t' swear as well. You'd be convicted fur incitin' me to do th' job an' ye'd git ten years in th' penitentiary fur it.”
So Hemsley had reasoned, and the old man capitulated. This accounted for his queer actions in employing two worthless characters and placing them in responsible positions.
Three weeks after the foundering of the Jennie May, a man, dressed in seamen's dungaree clothes, opened the door of the house where Ben Anthony lived, and entered. Anthony was reading a newspaper in the sitting-room; the housekeeper was engaged in the kitchen, and as it was dark, none saw the stranger approach the house.
“Uncle Ben!”
The old man started at the voice and paled under his tan. Turning fearfully around he gazed with evident horror at the sight of his nephew, Billy Stream. Not the Billy Stream he knew, but an ill-dressed grimy individual with Billy's face, voice and figure.
“Sufferin' codfish!” ejaculated Anthony in an awed tone. “What d'ye want, Billy? Ye ain't come to ha'nt me?”
The apparition laughed and strode across to him.
“Don't be scared, uncle. It's me, all right, alive and well, but awfully hungry and awfully dirty!”
Ben slowly grasped the proffered hand, fully expecting it to vanish, but the feel of solid flesh reassured him that it was real, and that Billy, alive and well, stood before him.
“Waal, I be eternally gosh-swizzled!” cried the uncle, recovering from his fright and shaking the hand heartily. “Lord! but ye scar't me! How in th' name o' all that's sacred did you git here? I thought ye was drownded.”
“Sh!” cautioned Billy. “I very nearly was, Uncle. What happened to me will never happen again in a thousand years.”
“Tell me quick!”
“I was lying in the skipper's bunk aft when the steamer cut the bows off the schooner. I got up after I was hove out on the floor and pulled my boots on. Then I made for the ladder just as Hemsley slid back the hatch. 'That you, Stream?' says he, and when I answered him, he gave me a clip on the head with an iron belaying-pin or something and knocked me back into the cabin, dead to the world. I came to myself when the water poured in and I knew the schooner was sinking, so I swam to the companion-hatch and hung there. The whole vessel must have been under water and I just managed to haul myself through, ready to swim for the surface when she came up again and I found myself above water and jammed in the cabin slide.”
“How in blazes c'd she come up an' her loaded with coal?”
“I'll tell you. When the steamer hit her she cut the fore-end clean off the vessel as far aft as the fore-hatch. When she settled, her head went down first and the cargo of coal simply ran out of her. As soon as she dumped it, being a wooden vessel and having no ballast, she came up and floated. I hung to her until daylight and was picked up by a big four-master bound for Philadelphia. I left her there and came up to Cobtown as a fireman in a coal tramp. And here I am.”
“And, boy, oh, boy, I'm glad to see ye!” cried his uncle heartily. “Ain't you th' divil for gittin' into scrapes an' out o' them again. Now tell me all what's happened sence I saw ye last. Ye didn't manage to gitny' money up west?”
Stream related the details of his trip until the time he went aboard the Jennie May. He did not say anything about the conversation he overheard in Boston, reserving that for a later occasion.
“Why didn't ye wire me for money?” inquired his uncle when he finished. “I'd ha' sent ye all ye wanted. Now, what d'ye plan to do?”
“I can't do much,” answered Billy. “There's no use in us attempting to put finnan-haddies on the market unless we can keep up a steady supply and we haven't got the money to do that.”
“I've got eight thousand dollars.”
“Not enough to do business with, uncle. There's buildings to be erected, men to be employed, boxes to buy, and cash must be paid the fishermen for their fish. Eight thousand dollars won't go very far.”
“Then what do you plan to do yourself, Billy?”
The young man hesitated.
“Well, I don't know. I guess I'll go to sea, fishing—coasting or deep-water. I'll wait a day or so.”
“Son,” said Uncle Ben emphatically, “sooner'n see you do that I'll start business again in a small way an' let you run it. That's what I'll do now, so say no more about it.”
After supper, which the startled housekeeper served, Anthony spoke:
“You said Hemsley hit you aboard that vessel?”
“Yes. Where is he now?”
“Waal, it's a funny thing about this Hemsley feller. He's a rum-hound and always was, yet your old man has put him back as foreman again—him an' that sweep Jones—an' both o' them are never sober. Th' manager has sacked them several times, but Will allus puts them on to their jobs again.”
Billy laughed.
“Uncle, I must tell you something. It'll explain a lot.”
He thereupon related the conversation he had overheard in the Boston “quick lunch.”
Anthony's face grew black.
“So he's th' hound, is he? I'll jail him for that, by Godfrey!”
“Can you, though?” said Billy thoughtfully. “It might be hard to prove. I have a bone to pick with him, too. He tried to kill me.”
“What'll you do?”
“Uncle, I think if you let me give that man the worst hammering he ever had, it would be the best. He'll skip out mighty quick afterward.”
“Your old man won't be sorry, but ef ye're goin' to git Hemsley ye'll need to git him quick. Ef he hears you're back, he'll skip out.”
“We'll drive into Anchorville tonight. I'll take a lot of pleasure in beating up that scum—more satisfaction than seeing him jailed.”
“I'll go with you, son.”
VII
CAPTAIN BILLY STREAM made history in Anchorville that night. People talk about it yet and fishermen relate the incident with gusto in the fo'c'sle o' nights when the vessel is making a passage or lying-to on the Banks.
Jack Hemsley and Jones, half-drunk as usual, were down in Morrison's pool-room with a crowd of fishermen and others when the door opened and Billy Stream and his uncle walked in. The crowd remained spellbound with horror at the sight of a supposedly drowned man walking in to the pool-room, and in their fright they remained transfixed and speechless.
Hemsley, his eyes almost starting from his head, hung on to a table to save himself from falling, and Jones, being the weaker-minded of the two, incontinently fainted and rolled under a bench.
For a moment, Stream stood looking around the room and then he fixed his eyes on the shrinking, apprehensive Hemsley. At the sight of the man, all the ferocious combativeness of his nature rose and he advanced on him like a tiger that has corraled his prey.
“So you thought you had got rid of me, Hemsley?” he rasped. “Answer me, you hound!”
His fist shot out and smashed the fellow full in the face and the blood spurted from his nose.
“Don't hit him in here, Billy,” remonstrated Ben Anthony. “Get him into the stable at the back.”
Hemsley was standing stupid-like and making no attempt to put up his hands.
“Boys,” said Ben, turning to the wondering mob of men, “this feller Hemsley was shipmates with Billy on that schooner. When she was sinking, Hemsley hit my nevvy on th' head with a belayin'-pin an' left him to drown. He didn't drown, an' he's come back to settle up old scores. 'Sides that, he's payin' a bill o' mine, fur Hemsley is th' man what set my place afire, so drag th' hound outside, boys, an' we'll hev fair play!”
It was a terrible fight. In fact, it couldn't be called a fight—it was a frightful beating at the strong hands of a relentless and powerful man. Hemsley was bigger and stronger than Stream, but in his composition he had a yellow streak a yard wide. True, he made a strenuous resistance, but Billy smashed him unmercifully with cold and calculating blows. When at last the man dropped to his knees, whimpering and whining, gasping for breath and with his face a pulp of blood-stained, bruised flesh, Ben Anthony mercifully pulled his nephew away.
“Let him be, Billy. He's had enough— Hullo, Will!”
Old Captain Stream pushed himself to the front.
“What th' devil's this? Who's that? Hemsley? Who's been hittin' him, eh? Who is it?”
Billy turned around to his amazed father.
“Only me, dad! I've been paying off some old scores,” he said calmly. “You can go home and rest easy. Neither he nor Jones will trouble you any more!”
And as he spoke, he pulled on his coat and in company with his uncle climbed into their team and drove away.
“Billy,” said Ben after a pause. “I think ye sh'd ha' spoken to yer dad a while.”
“No! I didn't feel like it. He's treated us rotten and I won't court his favor. Mother and sis are the only ones I'd like to see and I'll probably see them tomorrow. They'll drive over as soon as they hear I'm back. If they don't, I'll telephone them.”
After a clean-up, Billy was handed two letters by his uncle.
“I was jest a-goin' to send them back yesterday. They're from Montreal and addressed to you here.”
Billy opened the first one leisurely, and as he did so a slip of paper fell out on the floor. He let it lie for a moment while he read the letter and then he gasped:
“Holy jumping, cod-eyed Christopher Columbus!” he ejaculated. “What d'ye know about that!”
“What's the matter?”
“Remember that old guy I told you about that damned me for pulling him from under a street-car in Montreal? Well, this is from him. Listen: 'Mr. William Stream, Port Anthony, N. S. Dear Mr. Stream: Kindly accept the enclosed with my compliments. My life is worth more to my relations than it is to me, but I consider it is worth at least the amount I am enclosing. I consider it sufficient to compensate you for your trouble in rousing me when “I went to sleep on the car-tracks.” Will be glad to see you whenever you happen to be in this city, and thanking you for my life, I remain, yours sincerely, Alvin H. Gardiner.'”
“Where's th' check? What's the amount?” cried Uncle Ben.
Billy picked it up and hastily scanned it.
“Holy sailor! Ten thousand dollars!”
Ben jumped up.
“Are ye sure? It might only be one hundred dollars. They's four noughts in that when they put th' cents in. No, by Godfrey, you're right! It reads 'Pay to William Stream or order, the sum of Ten Thousand Dollars.' Waal, ef that ain't luck. Jupiter! I'm glad for you, son!”
The other letter was from Anstruther.
“Dear Billy,” it ran. “You will no doubt be surprised to learn that it was old Senator Gardiner you rescued from under the street-car that night you went away. He is a millionaire flour-mill owner but as mean as Hades. He asked for my card after you ran for your train and next day telephoned for me to come down to his office. I went and he asked all kinds of questions about you and the reason for your visit to Montreal. I told him you wanted to raise ten thousand bones to start a codfish-ball factory or something of that nature, but you couldn't get it. I put it up strong to him as I thought he might lend you the money. He wouldn't give it to you, that's a cinch, for they say he couldn't be pried loose from a dollar with a crowbar. He'll want his old six per cent. if he loans it, but maybe that'll help you out. I may add that he gave me a rotten five-cent cigar when I left him. I'm having it put in a glass case to hang in the Frat House. Best wishes. Your pal, Jack Anstruther.”
“Jack's wrong, anyway, uncle. The old man's come across handsomely. I never expected anything.”
“Now you'd better bank that money, Billy,” said his uncle solemnly. “It's a useful wad to have as a sheet anchor to wind'ard sh'd you git jammed on a lee shore. Ye'll be gittin' married some day——”
“You funny old scout!” cried Billy joyfully. “This ten thousand is what we need for the business. Let's get busy now and make our plans. The Port Anthony Fish Company is going to operate again, and like the Phœnix, it will arise anew, greater than ever, from the ashes of the old.”
VIII
CAPTAIN WILLIAM STREAM, senior, was holding a board meeting of the Stream Fish Company. The president, general manager and board of directors were present in the person of himself, for he constituted them all, and the only other member of the board present was his office-manager acting as secretary, ex-officio.
“Ben Anthony is playin' the devil with our business!” reported the president in terse but unparliamentary language.
The secretary nodded dismally.
“Our smoked-fish business is fading away. Nobody seems to order the Morning-Glory Brand now since the Excelsior has been put on the market.”
“What d'ye know about them?” growled the old man.
“They've got a fine plant with everything up to date and modern,” reported the secretary. “Their smoke-houses are built of concrete and they've got all the latest devices for smoking fish. Their fish-sheds and packing-rooms are splendid. They've a good wharf and handle fish quickly. Their gasoline schooner is faster than ours, and they've got all the best fishermen along the shore selling to them. They've secured the best sales agency in central Canada for distributing their goods, and they've got the railroads and express company lined up to give their stuff preferred treatment and quick despatch.
“I hear they've just contracted for thirty carloads of Excelsior Finnan-Haddies to be delivered to a western dealer. They put up a fine fish and in nice style. Ben Anthony always could smoke a haddie better'n any one I knew. He's looking after that end while your son looks after the general management of the plant. We're dropping out of the finnan-haddie business, and we're likely to lose the fillet, kipper and bloater trade as well. They——”
“Heave-to, you raven!” growled Captain Stream. “One 'ud think by th' way you talk that you're sellin' the Anthony Company's fish. We ain't ruined—not by a long way. Our fresh-fish trade is good an' so's our dried-fish business. An' th' vessels are payin' well. Ben's not touchin' th' fresh fish——”
“I'm not so sure of that,” interrupted the secretary. “I heard that your son plans on getting an English steam-trawler out.”
“What?” shrieked the old man. “A steam-trawler! He can't buy one. He hasn't the money.”
“He won't. He'll charter it and buy the fish.”
“He mustn't attempt it. He'll have all the fishermen up in arms. 'Sides that, he'll spile our market. These craft'll bring in' fish when we can't, an' ef he gits to supplyin' the inland dealers regularly, they'll cut us out.”
“There's only one thing to do.”
“What's that?”
“Get one yourself!”
The president shook his head.
“I can't.”
“Why?”
“'Cos when there was talk o' fetchin' one o' them craft out here afore, I fought it an' made a report that they destroyed th' fishin'-grounds. Ef I was to go back on that, th' fishermen 'ud hang me.”
The secretary mused for a minute.
“I have an idea,” he said at last.
“Spit it out!”
“Amalgamate!”
“With Ben Anthony an' that young cub? Never!”
The other smiled.
“Captain. Ben's your wife's brother and Billy's your son. He's a smart lad and he's made good. His college training did that. It gave him a broader insight into things. It gave him a pull with people. He can talk intelligently. He understands conditions up west. He's scientific in his methods. Look how he fixed up the old Jennie Anthony! By shifting her ballast he made a new vessel out of her. He's a smart sailorman and can lick his weight in wildcats. The fishermen all love him. He's a good sport.”
The old man grunted.
“You're getting old, captain. You should be knocking off now and taking it easy. Who's to take your place when you go? Nobody but Billy. You might as well be sensible and live happily with your family for the rest of your life. Billy's a good lad. He licked Hemsley and chased him out of the place. Hemsley——”
“Yes, yes,” growled Captain Stream. “Never mind about Hemsley.” Then almost plaintively he said. “D'ye think Ben an' Billy will come in with me?”
“I think they may, captain,” said the secretary thoughtfully. “I'll try them anyway.”
“Don't let on that I sent ye, Jim,” cautioned the old man. “I won't knuckle under to either Ben or Billy.”
“No, no,” answered the other. “Leave it to me. I'll fix it.”
The old fisherman lit up a cigar.
“Jim,” he said. “You fix up this amalgamation an' I'll give ye a small share in th' business, but, mind ye, don't let on to Ben or Billy that I sent ye.”
The meeting then adjourned.
THAT evening, the secretary and manager of the Stream Fish Company sat in Ben Anthony's parlor. Ben and Billy were present and all three smoked cigars and laughed.
“So you talked the dad around, Jim?” said Billy. “Ain't he the proud old joker though? He wouldn't give in to me even if he were dying. Well, well, he's my dad, and I don't think ill of him, though he was a trifle severe on both Ben and me for a time. I'm glad you managed to talk him around. We don't want to be in competition if we can get along together, so you tell dad that we're willing to amalgamate.”
The meeting was held on the morrow. Captain Stream, senior, was rather frigid at first, but the evident friendliness evinced by Ben and his son soon had him feeling good. The business was rapidly consummated.
Ben Anthony was given full charge of the smoked-fish business and would manufacture in both smoke-houses as demand dictated. Billy was to take over both plants as general manager. Mr. James Dawson, the secretary, was given a share in the business and supervision over the books and accounting with the title of secretary-treasurer. Captain Stream would retain his position as president, but would take no active part in the concern.
When the deal was concluded satisfactorily, Captain Stream puffed hard on his cigar. He cleared his throat.
“Ahem—Ben—Billy—me—er, th' wife proposed ye come an' hev dinner with us tonight. Maybe ye'll come?”
“Sure we will!” cried Ben Anthony and Billy at once.
“Good! Jim! S'pose ye fetch out that bottle o' champagney water what's in th' safe. We.'ll hev a little touch to th' health o' th' noo Stream-Anthony Fish Company, Limited!”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1958, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 65 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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