Chapter Chapter 3 · Chapter III

It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart,

and sends you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin dish of

juicy fragments of fish--the blood-ends the cook had collected

overnight. They cleaned up the plates and pans of the elder mess, who

were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal, swabbed down the

foc'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook, and

investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores were stacked. It

was another perfect day--soft, mild, and clear; and Harvey breathed to

the very bottom of his lungs.

More schooners had crept up in the night, and the long blue seas were

full of sails and dories. Far away on the horizon, the smoke of some

liner, her hull invisible, smudged the blue, and to eastward a big

ship's top-gallant sails, just lifting, made a square nick in it. Disko

Troop was smoking by the roof of the cabin--one eye on the craft

around, and the other on the little fly at the main-mast-head.

"When Dad kerflummoxes that way," said Dan in a whisper, "he's doin'

some high-line thinkin' fer all hands. I'll lay my wage an' share we'll

make berth soon. Dad he knows the cod, an' the Fleet they know Dad

knows. 'See 'em comm' up one by one, lookin' fer nothin' in particular,

o' course, but scrowgin' on us all the time? There's the _Prince Leboo_;

she's a Chat-ham boat. She's crep' up sence last night. An' see that

big one with a patch in her foresail an' a new jib? She's the _Carrie

Pitman_ from West Chat-ham. She won't keep her canvas long onless her

luck's changed since last season. She don't do much 'cep' drift. There

ain't an anchor made 'll hold her. . . . When the smoke puffs up in

little rings like that, Dad's studyin' the fish. Ef we speak to him

now, he'll git mad. Las' time I did, he jest took an' hove a boot at

me."

Disko Troop stared forward, the pipe between his teeth, with eyes that

saw nothing. As his son said, he was studying the fish--pitting his

knowledge and experience on the Banks against the roving cod in his own

sea. He accepted the presence of the inquisitive schooners on the

horizon as a compliment to his powers. But now that it was paid, he

wished to draw away and make his berth alone, till it was time to go up

to the Virgin and fish in the streets of that roaring town upon the

waters. So Disko Troop thought of recent weather, and gales, currents,

food-supplies, and other domestic arrangements, from the point of view

of a twenty-pound cod; was, in fact, for an hour a cod himself, and

looked remarkably like one. Then he removed the pipe from his teeth.

"Dad," said Dan, "we've done our chores. Can't we go overside a piece?

It's good catchin' weather."

"Not in that cherry-coloured rig ner them ha'af baked brown shoes. Give

him suthin' fit to wear."

"Dad's pleased--that settles it," said Dan, delightedly, dragging

Harvey into the cabin, while Troop pitched a key down the steps. "Dad

keeps my spare rig where he kin overhaul it, 'cause Ma sez I'm

keerless." He rummaged through a locker, and in less than three minutes

Harvey was adorned with fisherman's rubber boots that came half up his

thigh, a heavy blue jersey well darned at the elbows, a pair of

nippers, and a sou'wester.

"Naow ye look somethin' like," said Dan. "Hurry!"

"Keep nigh an' handy," said Troop "an' don't go visitin' raound the

Fleet. If any one asks you what I'm cal'latin' to do, speak the

truth--fer ye don't know."

A little red dory, labelled Hattie S., lay astern of the schooner. Dan

hauled in the painter, and dropped lightly on to the bottom boards,

while Harvey tumbled clumsily after.

"That's no way o' gettin' into a boat," said Dan. "Ef there was any sea

you'd go to the bottom, sure. You got to learn to meet her."

Dan fitted the thole-pins, took the forward thwart and watched Harvey's

work. The boy had rowed, in a lady-like fashion, on the Adirondack

ponds; but there is a difference between squeaking pins and

well-balanced ruflocks--light sculls and stubby, eight-foot sea-oars.

They stuck in the gentle swell, and Harvey grunted.

"Short! Row short!" said Dan. "Ef you cramp your oar in any kind o' sea

you're liable to turn her over. Ain't she a daisy? Mine, too."

The little dory was specklessly clean. In her bows lay a tiny anchor,

two jugs of water, and some seventy fathoms of thin, brown dory-roding.

A tin dinner-horn rested in cleats just under Harvey's right hand,

beside an ugly-looking maul, a short gaff, and a shorter wooden stick.

A couple of lines, with very heavy leads and double cod-hooks, all

neatly coiled on square reels, were stuck in their place by the gunwale.

"Where's the sail and mast?" said Harvey, for his hands were beginning

to blister.

Dan chuckled. "Ye don't sail fishin'-dories much. Ye pull; but ye

needn't pull so hard. Don't you wish you owned her?"

"Well, I guess my father might give me one or two if I asked 'em,"

Harvey replied. He had been too busy to think much of his family till

then.

"That's so. I forgot your dad's a millionaire. You don't act millionary

any, naow. But a dory an' craft an' gear"--Dan spoke as though she were

a whaleboat--"costs a heap. Think your dad 'u'd give you one fer--fer a

pet like?"

"Shouldn't wonder. It would be 'most the only thing I haven't stuck him

for yet."

"Must be an expensive kinder kid to home. Don't slitheroo thet way,

Harve. Short's the trick, because no sea's ever dead still, an' the

swells 'll--"

Crack! The loom of the oar kicked Harvey under the chin and knocked him

backwards.

"That was what I was goin' to say. I hed to learn too, but I wasn't

more than eight years old when I got my schoolin'."

Harvey regained his seat with aching jaws and a frown.

"No good gettin' mad at things, Dad says. It's our own fault ef we

can't handle 'em, he says. Le's try here. Manuel 'll give us the water."

The "Portugee" was rocking fully a mile away, but when Dan up-ended an

oar he waved his left arm three times.

"Thirty fathom," said Dan, stringing a salt clam on to the hook. "Over

with the doughboys. Bait same's I do, Harvey, an' don't snarl your

reel."

Dan's line was out long before Harvey had mastered the mystery of

baiting and heaving out the leads. The dory drifted along easily. It

was not worth while to anchor till they were sure of good ground.

"Here we come!" Dan shouted, and a shower of spray rattled on Harvey's

shoulders as a big cod flapped and kicked alongside. "Muckle, Harvey,

muckle! Under your hand! Quick!"

Evidently "muckle" could not be the dinner-horn, so Harvey passed over

the maul, and Dan scientifically stunned the fish before he pulled it

inboard, and wrenched out the hook with the short wooden stick he

called a "gob-stick." Then Harvey felt a tug, and pulled up zealously.

"Why, these are strawberries!" he shouted. "Look!"

The hook had fouled among a bunch of strawberries, red on one side and

white on the other--perfect reproductions of the land fruit, except

that there were no leaves, and the stem was all pipy and slimy.

"Don't tech 'em. Slat 'em off. Don't--"

The warning came too late. Harvey had picked them from the hook, and

was admiring them.

"Ouch!" he cried, for his fingers throbbed as though he had grasped

many nettles.

"Now ye know what strawberry-bottom means. Nothin' 'cep' fish should be

teched with the naked fingers, Dad says. Slat 'em off agin the gunnel,

an' bait up, Harve. Lookin' won't help any. It's all in the wages."

Harvey smiled at the thought of his ten and a half dollars a month, and

wondered what his mother would say if she could see him hanging over

the edge of a fishing-dory in mid-ocean. She suffered agonies whenever

he went out on Saranac Lake; and, by the way, Harvey remembered

distinctly that he used to laugh at her anxieties. Suddenly the line

flashed through his hand, stinging even through the "nippers," the

woolen circlets supposed to protect it.

"He's a logy. Give him room accordin' to his strength," cried Dan.

"I'll help ye."

"No, you won't," Harvey snapped, as he hung on to the line. "It's my

first fish. Is--is it a whale?"

"Halibut, mebbe." Dan peered down into the water alongside, and

flourished the big "muckle," ready for all chances. Something white and

oval flickered and fluttered through the green. "I'll lay my wage an'

share he's over a hundred. Are you so everlastin' anxious to land him

alone?"

Harvey's knuckles were raw and bleeding where they had been banged

against the gunwale; his face was purple-blue between excitement and

exertion; he dripped with sweat, and was half-blinded from staring at

the circling sunlit ripples about the swiftly moving line. The boys

were tired long ere the halibut, who took charge of them and the dory

for the next twenty minutes. But the big flat fish was gaffed and

hauled in at last.

"Beginner's luck," said Dan, wiping his forehead. "He's all of a

hundred."

Harvey looked at the huge gray-and-mottled creature with unspeakable

pride. He had seen halibut many times on marble slabs ashore, but it

had never occurred to him to ask how they came inland. Now he knew; and

every inch of his body ached with fatigue.

"Ef Dad was along," said Dan, hauling up, "he'd read the signs plain's

print. The fish are runnin' smaller an' smaller, an' you've took 'baout

as logy a halibut's we're apt to find this trip. Yesterday's catch--did

ye notice it?--was all big fish an' no halibut. Dad he'd read them

signs right off. Dad says everythin' on the Banks is signs, an' can be

read wrong er right. Dad's deeper'n the Whale-hole."

Even as he spoke some one fired a pistol on the _We're Here_, and a

potato-basket was run up in the fore-rigging.

"What did I say, naow? That's the call fer the whole crowd. Dad's onter

something, er he'd never break fishin' this time o' day. Reel up,

Harve, an' we'll pull back."

They were to windward of the schooner, just ready to flirt the dory

over the still sea, when sounds of woe half a mile off led them to

Penn, who was careering around a fixed point for all the world like a

gigantic water-bug. The little man backed away and came down again with

enormous energy, but at the end of each maneuver his dory swung round

and snubbed herself on her rope.

"We'll hev to help him, else he'll root an' seed here," said Dan.

"What's the matter?" said Harvey. This was a new world, where he could

not lay down the law to his elders, but had to ask questions humbly.

And the sea was horribly big and unexcited.

"Anchor's fouled. Penn's always losing 'em. Lost two this trip

a'ready--on sandy bottom too--an' Dad says next one he loses, sure's

fishin', he'll give him the kelleg. That 'u'd break Penn's heart."

"What's a 'kelleg'?" said Harvey, who had a vague idea it might be some

kind of marine torture, like keel-hauling in the storybooks.

"Big stone instid of an anchor. You kin see a kelleg ridin' in the bows

fur's you can see a dory, an' all the fleet knows what it means. They'd

guy him dreadful. Penn couldn't stand that no more'n a dog with a

dipper to his tail. He's so everlastin' sensitive. Hello, Penn! Stuck

again? Don't try any more o' your patents. Come up on her, and keep

your rodin' straight up an' down."

"It doesn't move," said the little man, panting. "It doesn't move at

all, and instead I tried everything."

"What's all this hurrah's-nest for'ard?" said Dan, pointing to a wild

tangle of spare oars and dory-roding, all matted together by the hand

of inexperience.

"Oh, that," said Penn proudly, "is a Spanish windlass. Mr. Salters

showed me how to make it; but even that doesn't move her."

Dan bent low over the gunwale to hide a smile, twitched once or twice

on the roding, and, behold, the anchor drew at once.

"Haul up, Penn," he said laughing, "er she'll git stuck again."

They left him regarding the weed-hung flukes of the little anchor with

big, pathetic blue eyes, and thanking them profusely.

"Oh, say, while I think of it, Harve," said Dan when they were out of

ear-shot, "Penn ain't quite all caulked. He ain't nowise dangerous, but

his mind's give out. See?"

"Is that so, or is it one of your father's judgments?"

Harvey asked as he bent to his oars. He felt he was learning to handle

them more easily.

"Dad ain't mistook this time. Penn's a sure 'nuff loony."

"No, he ain't thet exactly, so much ez a harmless ijut. It was this way

(you're rowin' quite so, Harve), an' I tell you 'cause it's right you

orter know. He was a Moravian preacher once. Jacob Boiler wuz his name,

Dad told me, an' he lived with his wife an' four children somewheres

out Pennsylvania way. Well, Penn he took his folks along to a Moravian

meetin'--camp-meetin' most like--an' they stayed over jest one night in

Johns-town. You've heered talk o' Johnstown?"

Harvey considered. "Yes, I have. But I don't know why. It sticks in my

head same as Ashtabula."

"Both was big accidents--thet's why, Harve. Well, that one single night

Penn and his folks was to the hotel Johnstown was wiped out. 'Dam bust

an' flooded her, an' the houses struck adrift an' bumped into each

other an' sunk. I've seen the pictures, an' they're dretful. Penn he

saw his folk drowned all'n a heap 'fore he rightly knew what was

comin'. His mind give out from that on. He mistrusted somethin' hed

happened up to Johnstown, but for the poor life of him he couldn't

remember what, an' he jest drifted araound smilin' an' wonderin'. He

didn't know what he was, nor yit what he hed bin, an' thet way he run

agin Uncle Salters, who was visitin' 'n Allegheny City. Ha'af my

mother's folks they live scattered inside o' Pennsylvania, an' Uncle

Salters he visits araound winters. Uncle Salters he kinder adopted

Penn, well knowin' what his trouble wuz; an' he brought him East, an'

he give him work on his farm."

"Why, I heard him calling Penn a farmer last night when the boats

bumped. Is your Uncle Salters a farmer?"

"Farmer!" shouted Dan. "There ain't water enough 'tween here an'

Hatt'rus to wash the furrer-mold off'n his boots. He's jest everlastin'

farmer. Why, Harve, I've seen thet man hitch up a bucket, long towards

sundown, an' set twiddlin' the spigot to the scuttle-butt same's ef

'twas a cow's bag. He's thet much farmer. Well, Penn an' he they ran

the farm--up Exeter way 'twur. Uncle Salters he sold it this spring to

a jay from Boston as wanted to build a summer-haouse, an' he got a heap

for it. Well, them two loonies scratched along till, one day, Penn's

church--he'd belonged to the Moravians--found out where he wuz drifted

an' layin', an' wrote to Uncle Salters. 'Never heerd what they said

exactly; but Uncle Salters was mad. He's a 'piscopolian mostly--but he

jest let 'em hev it both sides o' the bow, 's if he was a Baptist; an'

sez he warn't goin' to give up Penn to any blame Moravian connection in

Pennsylvania or anywheres else. Then he come to Dad, towin' Penn,--thet

was two trips back,--an' sez he an' Penn must fish a trip fer their

health. 'Guess he thought the Moravians wouldn't hunt the Banks fer

Jacob Boiler. Dad was agreeable, fer Uncle Salters he'd been fishin'

off an' on fer thirty years, when he warn't inventin' patent manures,

an' he took quarter-share in the _We're Here_; an' the trip done Penn

so much good, Dad made a habit o' takin' him. Some day, Dad sez, he'll

remember his wife an' kids an' Johnstown, an' then, like as not, he'll

die, Dad sez. Don't ye talk abaout Johnstown ner such things to Penn,

'r Uncle Salters he'll heave ye overboard."

"Poor Penn!" murmured Harvey. "I shouldn't ever have thought Uncle

Salters cared for him by the look of 'em together."

"I like Penn, though; we all do," said Dan. "We ought to ha' give him a

tow, but I wanted to tell ye first."

They were close to the schooner now, the other boats a little behind

them.

"You needn't heave in the dories till after dinner," said Troop from

the deck. "We'll dress daown right off. Fix table, boys!"

"Deeper'n the Whale-deep," said Dan, with a wink, as he set the gear

for dressing down. "Look at them boats that hev edged up sence mornin'.

They're all waitin' on Dad. See 'em, Harve?"

"They are all alike to me." And indeed to a landsman, the nodding

schooners around seemed run from the same mold.

"They ain't, though. That yaller, dirty packet with her bowsprit

steeved that way, she's the Hope of Prague. Nick Brady's her skipper,

the meanest man on the Banks. We'll tell him so when we strike the Main

Ledge. 'Way off yonder's the Day's Eye. The two Jeraulds own her. She's

from Harwich; fastish, too, an' hez good luck; but Dad he'd find fish

in a graveyard. Them other three, side along, they're the Margie Smith,

Rose, and Edith S. Walen, all from home. 'Guess we'll see the Abbie M.

Deering to-morrer, Dad, won't we? They're all slippin' over from the

shaol o' 'Oueereau."

"You won't see many boats to-morrow, Danny." When Troop called his son

Danny, it was a sign that the old man was pleased. "Boys, we're too

crowded," he went on, addressing the crew as they clambered inboard.

"We'll leave 'em to bait big an' catch small." He looked at the catch

in the pen, and it was curious to see how little and level the fish

ran. Save for Harvey's halibut, there was nothing over fifteen pounds

on deck.

"I'm waitin' on the weather," he added.

"Ye'll have to make it yourself, Disko, for there's no sign I can see,"

said Long Jack, sweeping the clear horizon.

And yet, half an hour later, as they were dressing down, the Bank fog

dropped on them, "between fish and fish," as they say. It drove

steadily and in wreaths, curling and smoking along the colourless

water. The men stopped dressing-down without a word. Long Jack and

Uncle Salters slipped the windlass brakes into their sockets, and began

to heave up the anchor; the windlass jarring as the wet hempen cable

strained on the barrel. Manuel and Tom Platt gave a hand at the last.

The anchor came up with a sob, and the riding-sail bellied as Troop

steadied her at the wheel. "Up jib and foresail," said he.

"Slip 'em in the smother," shouted Long Jack, making fast the

jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the

foresail; and the foreboom creaked as the _We're Here_ looked up into

the wind and dived off into blank, whirling white.

"There's wind behind this fog," said Troop.

It was wonderful beyond words to Harvey; and the most wonderful part

was that he heard no orders except an occasional grunt from Troop,

ending with, "That's good, my son!"

"Never seen anchor weighed before?" said Tom Platt, to Harvey gaping at

the damp canvas of the foresail.

"No. Where are we going?"

"Fish and make berth, as you'll find out 'fore you've been a week

aboard. It's all new to you, but we never know what may come to us.

Now, take me--Tom Platt--I'd never ha' thought--"

"It's better than fourteen dollars a month an' a bullet in your belly,"

said Troop, from the wheel. "Ease your jumbo a grind."

"Dollars an' cents better," returned the man-o'-war's man, doing

something to a big jib with a wooden spar tied to it. "But we didn't

think o' that when we manned the windlass-brakes on the Miss Jim Buck,

I outside Beau-fort Harbor, with Fort Macon heavin' hot shot at our

stern, an' a livin' gale atop of all. Where was you then, Disko?"

"Jest here, or hereabouts," Disko replied, "earnin' my bread on the

deep waters, an' dodgin' Reb privateers. Sorry I can't accommodate you

with red-hot shot, Tom Platt; but I guess we'll come aout all right on

wind 'fore we see Eastern Point."

There was an incessant slapping and chatter at the bows now, varied by

a solid thud and a little spout of spray that clattered down on the

foc'sle. The rigging dripped clammy drops, and the men lounged along

the lee of the house--all save Uncle Salters, who sat stiffly on the

main-hatch nursing his stung hands.

"Guess she'd carry stays'l," said Disko, rolling one eye at his brother.

"Guess she wouldn't to any sorter profit. What's the sense o' wastin'

canvas?" the farmer-sailor replied.

The wheel twitched almost imperceptibly in Disko's hands. A few seconds

later a hissing wave-top slashed diagonally across the boat, smote

Uncle Salters between the shoulders, and drenched him from head to

foot. He rose sputtering, and went forward only to catch another.

"See Dad chase him all around the deck," said Dan. "Uncle Salters he

thinks his quarter share's our canvas. Dad's put this duckin' act up on

him two trips runnin'. Hi! That found him where he feeds." Uncle

Salters had taken refuge by the foremast, but a wave slapped him over

the knees. Disko's face was as blank as the circle of the wheel.

"Guess she'd lie easier under stays'l, Salters," said Disko, as though

he had seen nothing.

"Set your old kite, then," roared the victim through a cloud of spray;

"only don't lay it to me if anything happens. Penn, you go below right

off an' git your coffee. You ought to hev more sense than to bum

araound on deck this weather."

"Now they'll swill coffee an' play checkers till the cows come home,"

said Dan, as Uncle Salters hustled Penn into the fore-cabin. "'Looks to

me like's if we'd all be doin' so fer a spell. There's nothin' in

creation deader-limpsey-idler'n a Banker when she ain't on fish."

"I'm glad ye spoke, Danny," cried Long Jack, who had been casting round

in search of amusement. "I'd clean forgot we'd a passenger under that

T-wharf hat. There's no idleness for thim that don't know their ropes.

Pass him along, Tom Platt, an' we'll larn him."

"'Tain't my trick this time," grinned Dan. "You've got to go it alone.

Dad learned me with a rope's end."

For an hour Long Jack walked his prey up and down, teaching, as he

said, "things at the sea that ivry man must know, blind, dhrunk, or

asleep." There is not much gear to a seventy-ton schooner with a

stump-foremast, but Long Jack had a gift of expression. When he wished

to draw Harvey's attention to the peak-halyards, he dug his knuckles

into the back of the boy's neck and kept him at gaze for half a minute.

He emphasized the difference between fore and aft generally by rubbing

Harvey's nose along a few feet of the boom, and the lead of each rope

was fixed in Harvey's mind by the end of the rope itself.

The lesson would have been easier had the deck been at all free; but

there appeared to be a place on it for everything and anything except a

man. Forward lay the windlass and its tackle, with the chain and hemp

cables, all very unpleasant to trip over; the foc'sle stovepipe, and

the gurry-butts by the foc'sle hatch to hold the fish-livers. Aft of

these the foreboom and booby of the main-hatch took all the space that

was not needed for the pumps and dressing-pens. Then came the nests of

dories lashed to ring-bolts by the quarter-deck; the house, with tubs

and oddments lashed all around it; and, last, the sixty-foot main-boom

in its crutch, splitting things length-wise, to duck and dodge under

every time.

Tom Platt, of course, could not keep his oar out of the business, but

ranged alongside with enormous and unnecessary descriptions of sails

and spars on the old Ohio.

"Niver mind fwhat he says; attind to me, Innocince. Tom Platt, this

bally-hoo's not the Ohio, an' you're mixing the bhoy bad."

"He'll be ruined for life, beginnin' on a fore-an'-after this way," Tom

Platt pleaded. "Give him a chance to know a few leadin' principles.

Sailin's an art, Harvey, as I'd show you if I had ye in the fore-top o'

the--"

"I know ut. Ye'd talk him dead an' cowld. Silince, Tom Platt! Now,

after all I've said, how'd you reef the foresail, Harve? Take your time

answerin'."

"Haul that in," said Harvey, pointing to leeward.

"Fwhat? The North Atlantuc?"

"No, the boom. Then run that rope you showed me back there--"

"That's no way," Tom Platt burst in.

"Quiet! He's larnin', an' has not the names good yet. Go on, Harve."

"Oh, it's the reef-pennant. I'd hook the tackle on to the reef-pennant,

and then let down--"

"Lower the sail, child! Lower!" said Tom Platt, in a professional agony.

"Lower the throat and peak halyards," Harvey went on. Those names stuck

in his head.

"Lay your hand on thim," said Long Jack.

Harvey obeyed. "Lower till that rope-loop--on the after-leach-kris--no,

it's cringle--till the cringle was down on the boom. Then I'd tie her

up the way you said, and then I'd hoist up the peak and throat halyards

again."

"You've forgot to pass the tack-earing, but wid time and help ye'll

larn. There's good and just reason for ivry rope aboard, or else

'twould be overboard. D'ye follow me? 'Tis dollars an' cents I'm

puttin' into your pocket, ye skinny little supercargo, so that fwhin

ye've filled out ye can ship from Boston to Cuba an' tell thim Long

Jack larned you. Now I'll chase ye around a piece, callin' the ropes,

an' you'll lay your hand on thim as I call."

He began, and Harvey, who was feeling rather tired, walked slowly to

the rope named. A rope's end licked round his ribs, and nearly knocked

the breath out of him.

"When you own a boat," said Tom Platt, with severe eyes, "you can walk.

Till then, take all orders at the run. Once more--to make sure!"

Harvey was in a glow with the exercise, and this last cut warmed him

thoroughly. Now he was a singularly smart boy, the son of a very clever

man and a very sensitive woman, with a fine resolute temper that

systematic spoiling had nearly turned to mulish obstinacy. He looked at

the other men, and saw that even Dan did not smile. It was evidently

all in the day's work, though it hurt abominably; so he swallowed the

hint with a gulp and a gasp and a grin. The same smartness that led him

to take such advantage of his mother made him very sure that no one on

the boat, except, maybe, Penn, would stand the least nonsense. One

learns a great deal from a mere tone. Long Jack called over half a

dozen ropes, and Harvey danced over the deck like an eel at ebb-tide,

one eye on Tom Platt.

"Ver' good. Ver' good don," said Manuel. "After supper I show you a

little schooner I make, with all her ropes. So we shall learn."

"Fust-class fer--a passenger," said Dan. "Dad he's jest allowed you'll

be wuth your salt maybe 'fore you're draownded. Thet's a heap fer Dad.

I'll learn you more our next watch together."

"Taller!" grunted Disko, peering through the fog as it smoked over the

bows. There was nothing to be seen ten feet beyond the surging

jib-boom, while alongside rolled the endless procession of solemn, pale

waves whispering and lipping one to the other.

"Now I'll learn you something Long Jack can't," shouted Tom Platt, as

from a locker by the stern he produced a battered deep-sea lead

hollowed at one end, smeared the hollow from a saucer full of mutton

tallow, and went forward. "I'll learn you how to fly the Blue Pigeon.

Shooo!"

Disko did something to the wheel that checked the schooner's way, while

Manuel, with Harvey to help (and a proud boy was Harvey), let down the

jib in a lump on the boom. The lead sung a deep droning song as Tom

Platt whirled it round and round.

"Go ahead, man," said Long Jack, impatiently. "We're not drawin'

twenty-five fut off Fire Island in a fog. There's no trick to ut."

"Don't be jealous, Galway." The released lead plopped into the sea far

ahead as the schooner surged slowly forward.

"Soundin' is a trick, though," said Dan, "when your dipsey lead's all

the eye you're like to hev for a week. What d'you make it, Dad?"

Disko's face relaxed. His skill and honour were involved in the march

he had stolen on the rest of the Fleet, and he had his reputation as a

master artist who knew the Banks blindfold. "Sixty, mebbe--ef I'm any

judge," he replied, with a glance at the tiny compass in the window of

the house.

"Sixty," sung out Tom Platt, hauling in great wet coils.

The schooner gathered way once more. "Heave!" said Disko, after a

quarter of an hour.

"What d'you make it?" Dan whispered, and he looked at Harvey proudly.

But Harvey was too proud of his own performances to be impressed just

then.

"Fifty," said the father. "I mistrust we're right over the nick o'

Green Bank on old Sixty-Fifty."

"Fifty!" roared Tom Platt. They could scarcely see him through the fog.

"She's bust within a yard--like the shells at Fort Macon."

"Bait up, Harve," said Dan, diving for a line on the reel.

The schooner seemed to be straying promiscuously through the smother,

her headsail banging wildly. The men waited and looked at the boys who

began fishing.

"Heugh!" Dan's lines twitched on the scored and scarred rail. "Now haow

in thunder did Dad know? Help us here, Harve. It's a big un.

Poke-hooked, too." They hauled together, and landed a goggle-eyed

twenty-pound cod. He had taken the bait right into his stomach.

"Why, he's all covered with little crabs," cried Harvey, turning him

over.

"By the great hook-block, they're lousy already," said Long Jack.

"Disko, ye kape your spare eyes under the keel."

Splash went the anchor, and they all heaved over the lines, each man

taking his own place at the bulwarks.

"Are they good to eat?" Harvey panted, as he lugged in another

crab-covered cod.

"Sure. When they're lousy it's a sign they've all been herdin' together

by the thousand, and when they take the bait that way they're hungry.

Never mind how the bait sets. They'll bite on the bare hook."

"Say, this is great!" Harvey cried, as the fish came in gasping and

splashing--nearly all poke-hooked, as Dan had said. "Why can't we

always fish from the boat instead of from the dories?"

"Allus can, till we begin to dress daown. Efter thet, the heads and

offals 'u'd scare the fish to Fundy. Boatfishin' ain't reckoned

progressive, though, unless ye know as much as dad knows. Guess we'll

run aout aour trawl to-night. Harder on the back, this, than frum the

dory, ain't it?"

It was rather back-breaking work, for in a dory the weight of a cod is

water-borne till the last minute, and you are, so to speak, abreast of

him; but the few feet of a schooner's freeboard make so much extra

dead-hauling, and stooping over the bulwarks cramps the stomach. But it

was wild and furious sport so long as it lasted; and a big pile lay

aboard when the fish ceased biting.

"Where's Penn and Uncle Salters?" Harvey asked, slapping the slime off

his oilskins, and reeling up the line in careful imitation of the

others.

"Git 's coffee and see."

Under the yellow glare of the lamp on the pawl-post, the foc'sle table

down and opened, utterly unconscious of fish or weather, sat the two

men, a checker-board between them, Uncle Salters snarling at Penn's

every move.

"What's the matter naow?" said the former, as Harvey, one hand in the

leather loop at the head of the ladder, hung shouting to the cook.

"Big fish and lousy--heaps and heaps," Harvey replied, quoting Long

Jack. "How's the game?"

Little Penn's jaw dropped. "'Tweren't none o' his fault," snapped Uncle

Salters. "Penn's deef."

"Checkers, weren't it?" said Dan, as Harvey staggered aft with the

steaming coffee in a tin pail. "That lets us out o' cleanin' up

to-night. Dad's a jest man. They'll have to do it."

"An' two young fellers I know'll bait up a tub or so o' trawl, while

they're cleanin'," said Disko, lashing the wheel to his taste.

"Um! Guess I'd ruther clean up, Dad."

"Don't doubt it. Ye wun't, though. Dress daown! Dress daown! Penn'll

pitch while you two bait up."

"Why in thunder didn't them blame boys tell us you'd struck on?" said

Uncle Salters, shuffling to his place at the table. "This knife's

gum-blunt, Dan."

"Ef stickin' out cable don't wake ye, guess you'd better hire a boy o'

your own," said Dan, muddling about in the dusk over the tubs full of

trawl-line lashed to windward of the house. "Oh, Harve, don't ye want

to slip down an' git 's bait?"

"Bait ez we are," said Disko. "I mistrust shag-fishin' will pay better,

ez things go."

That meant the boys would bait with selected offal of the cod as the

fish were cleaned--an improvement on paddling bare-handed in the little

bait-barrels below. The tubs were full of neatly coiled line carrying a

big hook each few feet; and the testing and baiting of every single

hook, with the stowage of the baited line so that it should run clear

when shot from the dory, was a scientific business. Dan managed it in

the dark, without looking, while Harvey caught his fingers on the barbs

and bewailed his fate. But the hooks flew through Dan's fingers like

tatting on an old maid's lap. "I helped bait up trawl ashore 'fore I

could well walk," he said. "But it's a putterin' job all the same. Oh,

Dad!" This shouted towards the hatch, where Disko and Tom Platt were

salting. "How many skates you reckon we'll need?"

"'Baout three. Hurry!"

"There's three hundred fathom to each tub," Dan explained; "more'n

enough to lay out to-night. Ouch! 'Slipped up there, I did." He stuck

his finger in his mouth. "I tell you, Harve, there ain't money in

Gloucester 'u'd hire me to ship on a reg'lar trawler. It may be

progressive, but, barrin' that, it's the putterin'est, slimjammest

business top of earth."

"I don't know what this is, if 'tisn't regular trawling," said Harvey

sulkily. "My fingers are all cut to frazzles."

"Pshaw! This is just one o' Dad's blame experiments. He don't trawl

'less there's mighty good reason fer it. Dad knows. Thet's why he's

baitin' ez he is. We'll hev her saggin' full when we take her up er we

won't see a fin."

Penn and Uncle Salters cleaned up as Disko had ordained, but the boys

profited little. No sooner were the tubs furnished than Tom Platt and

Long Jack, who had been exploring the inside of a dory with a lantern,

snatched them away, loaded up the tubs and some small, painted

trawl-buoys, and hove the boat overboard into what Harvey regarded as

an exceedingly rough sea. "They'll be drowned. Why, the dory's loaded

like a freight-car," he cried.

"We'll be back," said Long Jack, "an' in case you'll not be lookin' for

us, we'll lay into you both if the trawl's snarled."

The dory surged up on the crest of a wave, and just when it seemed

impossible that she could avoid smashing against the schooner's side,

slid over the ridge, and was swallowed up in the damp dusk.

"Take ahold here, an' keep ringin' steady," said Dan, passing Harvey

the lanyard of a bell that hung just behind the windlass.

Harvey rang lustily, for he felt two lives depended on him. But Disko

in the cabin, scrawling in the log-book, did not look like a murderer,

and when he went to supper he even smiled dryly at the anxious Harvey.

"This ain't no weather," said Dan. "Why, you an' me could set thet

trawl! They've only gone out jest far 'nough so's not to foul our

cable. They don't need no bell reelly."

"Clang! clang! clang!" Harvey kept it up, varied with occasional

rub-a-dubs, for another half-hour. There was a bellow and a bump

alongside. Manuel and Dan raced to the hooks of the dory-tackle; Long

Jack and Tom Platt arrived on deck together, it seemed, one half the

North Atlantic at their backs, and the dory followed them in the air,

landing with a clatter.

"Nary snarl," said Tom Platt as he dripped. "Danny, you'll do yet."

"The pleasure av your comp'ny to the banquit," said Long Jack,

squelching the water from his boots as he capered like an elephant and

stuck an oil-skinned arm into Harvey's face. "We do be condescending to

honour the second half wid our presence." And off they all four rolled

to supper, where Harvey stuffed himself to the brim on fish-chowder and

fried pies, and fell fast asleep just as Manuel produced from a locker

a lovely two-foot model of the Lucy Holmes, his first boat, and was

going to show Harvey the ropes. Harvey never even twiddled his fingers

as Penn pushed him into his bunk.

"It must be a sad thing--a very sad thing," said Penn, watching the

boy's face, "for his mother and his father, who think he is dead. To

lose a child--to lose a man-child!"

"Git out o' this, Penn," said Dan. "Go aft and finish your game with

Uncle Salters. Tell Dad I'll stand Harve's watch ef he don't keer. He's

played aout."

"Ver' good boy," said Manuel, slipping out of his boots and

disappearing into the black shadows of the lower bunk. "Expec' he make

good man, Danny. I no see he is any so mad as your parpa he says. Eh,

wha-at?"

Dan chuckled, but the chuckle ended in a snore.

It was thick weather outside, with a rising wind, and the elder men

stretched their watches. The hour struck clear in the cabin; the nosing

bows slapped and scuffed with the seas; the foc'sle stove-pipe hissed

and sputtered as the spray caught it; and the boys slept on, while

Disko, Long Jack, Tom Platt, and Uncle Salters, each in turn, stumped

aft to look at the wheel, forward to see that the anchor held, or to

veer out a little more cable against chafing, with a glance at the dim

anchor-light between each round.