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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of "Captains Courageous", by Rudyard Kipling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: "Captains Courageous"
+
+Author: Rudyard Kipling
+
+Posting Date: October 30, 2009 [EBook #2186]
+Release Date: May, 2000
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS" ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Reed and Bill Stoddard.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS"
+
+A STORY OF THE GRAND BANKS
+
+
+by
+
+Rudyard Kipling
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+  JAMES CONLAND, M.D.,
+  Brattleboro, Vermont
+
+
+  I ploughed the land with horses,
+  But my heart was ill at ease,
+  For the old sea-faring men
+  Came to me now and then,
+  With their sagas of the seas.
+
+  Longfellow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The weather door of the smoking-room had been left open to the North
+Atlantic fog, as the big liner rolled and lifted, whistling to warn the
+fishing-fleet.
+
+"That Cheyne boy's the biggest nuisance aboard," said a man in a frieze
+overcoat, shutting the door with a bang. "He isn't wanted here. He's
+too fresh."
+
+A white-haired German reached for a sandwich, and grunted between
+bites: "I know der breed. Ameriga is full of dot kind. I dell you you
+should imbort ropes' ends free under your dariff."
+
+"Pshaw! There isn't any real harm to him. He's more to be pitied than
+anything," a man from New York drawled, as he lay at full length along
+the cushions under the wet skylight. "They've dragged him around from
+hotel to hotel ever since he was a kid. I was talking to his mother
+this morning. She's a lovely lady, but she don't pretend to manage him.
+He's going to Europe to finish his education."
+
+"Education isn't begun yet." This was a Philadelphian, curled up in a
+corner. "That boy gets two hundred a month pocket-money, he told me. He
+isn't sixteen either."
+
+"Railroads, his father, aind't it?" said the German.
+
+"Yep. That and mines and lumber and shipping. Built one place at San
+Diego, the old man has; another at Los Angeles; owns half a dozen
+railroads, half the lumber on the Pacific slope, and lets his wife
+spend the money," the Philadelphian went on lazily. "The West don't
+suit her, she says. She just tracks around with the boy and her nerves,
+trying to find out what'll amuse him, I guess. Florida, Adirondacks,
+Lakewood, Hot Springs, New York, and round again. He isn't much more
+than a second-hand hotel clerk now. When he's finished in Europe he'll
+be a holy terror."
+
+"What's the matter with the old man attending to him personally?" said
+a voice from the frieze ulster.
+
+"Old man's piling up the rocks. 'Don't want to be disturbed, I guess.
+He'll find out his error a few years from now. 'Pity, because there's a
+heap of good in the boy if you could get at it."
+
+"Mit a rope's end; mit a rope's end!" growled the German.
+
+Once more the door banged, and a slight, slim-built boy perhaps fifteen
+years old, a half-smoked cigarette hanging from one corner of his
+mouth, leaned in over the high footway. His pasty yellow complexion did
+not show well on a person of his years, and his look was a mixture of
+irresolution, bravado, and very cheap smartness. He was dressed in a
+cherry-coloured blazer, knickerbockers, red stockings, and bicycle
+shoes, with a red flannel cap at the back of the head. After whistling
+between his teeth, as he eyed the company, he said in a loud, high
+voice: "Say, it's thick outside. You can hear the fish-boats squawking
+all around us. Say, wouldn't it be great if we ran down one?"
+
+"Shut the door, Harvey," said the New Yorker. "Shut the door and stay
+outside. You're not wanted here."
+
+"Who'll stop me?" he answered, deliberately. "Did you pay for my
+passage, Mister Martin? 'Guess I've as good right here as the next man."
+
+He picked up some dice from a checkerboard and began throwing, right
+hand against left.
+
+"Say, gen'elmen, this is deader'n mud. Can't we make a game of poker
+between us?"
+
+There was no answer, and he puffed his cigarette, swung his legs, and
+drummed on the table with rather dirty fingers. Then he pulled out a
+roll of bills as if to count them.
+
+"How's your mamma this afternoon?" a man said. "I didn't see her at
+lunch."
+
+"In her state-room, I guess. She's 'most always sick on the ocean. I'm
+going to give the stewardess fifteen dollars for looking after her. I
+don't go down more 'n I can avoid. It makes me feel mysterious to pass
+that butler's-pantry place. Say, this is the first time I've been on
+the ocean."
+
+"Oh, don't apologize, Harvey."
+
+"Who's apologizing? This is the first time I've crossed the ocean,
+gen'elmen, and, except the first day, I haven't been sick one little
+bit. No, sir!" He brought down his fist with a triumphant bang, wetted
+his finger, and went on counting the bills.
+
+"Oh, you're a high-grade machine, with the writing in plain sight," the
+Philadelphian yawned. "You'll blossom into a credit to your country if
+you don't take care."
+
+"I know it. I'm an American--first, last, and all the time. I'll show
+'em that when I strike Europe. Piff! My cig's out. I can't smoke the
+truck the steward sells. Any gen'elman got a real Turkish cig on him?"
+
+The chief engineer entered for a moment, red, smiling, and wet. "Say,
+Mac," cried Harvey cheerfully, "how are we hitting it?"
+
+"Vara much in the ordinary way," was the grave reply. "The young are as
+polite as ever to their elders, an' their elders are e'en tryin' to
+appreciate it."
+
+A low chuckle came from a corner. The German opened his cigar-case and
+handed a skinny black cigar to Harvey.
+
+"Dot is der broper apparatus to smoke, my young friendt," he said. "You
+vill dry it? Yes? Den you vill be efer so happy."
+
+Harvey lit the unlovely thing with a flourish: he felt that he was
+getting on in grownup society.
+
+"It would take more 'n this to keel me over," he said, ignorant that he
+was lighting that terrible article, a Wheeling "stogie".
+
+"Dot we shall bresently see," said the German. "Where are we now, Mr.
+Mactonal'?"
+
+"Just there or thereabouts, Mr. Schaefer," said the engineer. "We'll be
+on the Grand Bank to-night; but in a general way o' speakin', we're all
+among the fishing-fleet now. We've shaved three dories an' near scalped
+the boom off a Frenchman since noon, an' that's close sailing', ye may
+say."
+
+"You like my cigar, eh?" the German asked, for Harvey's eyes were full
+of tears.
+
+"Fine, full flavor," he answered through shut teeth. "Guess we've
+slowed down a little, haven't we? I'll skip out and see what the log
+says."
+
+"I might if I vhas you," said the German.
+
+Harvey staggered over the wet decks to the nearest rail. He was very
+unhappy; but he saw the deck-steward lashing chairs together, and,
+since he had boasted before the man that he was never seasick, his
+pride made him go aft to the second-saloon deck at the stern, which was
+finished in a turtle-back. The deck was deserted, and he crawled to the
+extreme end of it, near the flag-pole. There he doubled up in limp
+agony, for the Wheeling "stogie" joined with the surge and jar of the
+screw to sieve out his soul. His head swelled; sparks of fire danced
+before his eyes; his body seemed to lose weight, while his heels
+wavered in the breeze. He was fainting from seasickness, and a roll of
+the ship tilted him over the rail on to the smooth lip of the
+turtle-back. Then a low, gray mother-wave swung out of the fog, tucked
+Harvey under one arm, so to speak, and pulled him off and away to
+leeward; the great green closed over him, and he went quietly to sleep.
+
+He was roused by the sound of a dinner-horn such as they used to blow
+at a summer-school he had once attended in the Adirondacks. Slowly he
+remembered that he was Harvey Cheyne, drowned and dead in mid-ocean,
+but was too weak to fit things together. A new smell filled his
+nostrils; wet and clammy chills ran down his back, and he was
+helplessly full of salt water. When he opened his eyes, he perceived
+that he was still on the top of the sea, for it was running round him
+in silver-coloured hills, and he was lying on a pile of half-dead fish,
+looking at a broad human back clothed in a blue jersey.
+
+"It's no good," thought the boy. "I'm dead, sure enough, and this thing
+is in charge."
+
+He groaned, and the figure turned its head, showing a pair of little
+gold rings half hidden in curly black hair.
+
+"Aha! You feel some pretty well now?" it said. "Lie still so: we trim
+better."
+
+With a swift jerk he sculled the flickering boat-head on to a foamless
+sea that lifted her twenty full feet, only to slide her into a glassy
+pit beyond. But this mountain-climbing did not interrupt blue-jersey's
+talk. "Fine good job, I say, that I catch you. Eh, wha-at? Better good
+job, I say, your boat not catch me. How you come to fall out?"
+
+"I was sick," said Harvey; "sick, and couldn't help it."
+
+"Just in time I blow my horn, and your boat she yaw a little. Then I
+see you come all down. Eh, wha-at? I think you are cut into baits by
+the screw, but you dreeft--dreeft to me, and I make a big fish of you.
+So you shall not die this time."
+
+"Where am I?" said Harvey, who could not see that life was particularly
+safe where he lay.
+
+"You are with me in the dory--Manuel my name, and I come from schooner
+_We're Here_ of Gloucester. I live to Gloucester. By-and-by we get
+supper. Eh, wha-at?"
+
+He seemed to have two pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not
+content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs stand up
+to it, swaying with the sway of the flat-bottomed dory, and send a
+grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. How long this
+entertainment lasted, Harvey could not remember, for he lay back
+terrified at the sight of the smoking swells. He fancied he heard a gun
+and a horn and shouting. Something bigger than the dory, but quite as
+lively, loomed alongside. Several voices talked at once; he was dropped
+into a dark, heaving hole, where men in oilskins gave him a hot drink
+and took off his clothes, and he fell asleep.
+
+When he waked he listened for the first breakfast-bell on the steamer,
+wondering why his state-room had grown so small. Turning, he looked
+into a narrow, triangular cave, lit by a lamp hung against a huge
+square beam. A three-cornered table within arm's reach ran from the
+angle of the bows to the foremast. At the after end, behind a well-used
+Plymouth stove, sat a boy about his own age, with a flat red face and a
+pair of twinkling gray eyes. He was dressed in a blue jersey and high
+rubber boots. Several pairs of the same sort of foot-wear, an old cap,
+and some worn-out woollen socks lay on the floor, and black and yellow
+oilskins swayed to and fro beside the bunks. The place was packed as
+full of smells as a bale is of cotton. The oilskins had a peculiarly
+thick flavor of their own which made a sort of background to the smells
+of fried fish, burnt grease, paint, pepper, and stale tobacco; but
+these, again, were all hooped together by one encircling smell of ship
+and salt water. Harvey saw with disgust that there were no sheets on
+his bed-place. He was lying on a piece of dingy ticking full of lumps
+and nubbles. Then, too, the boat's motion was not that of a steamer.
+She was neither sliding nor rolling, but rather wriggling herself about
+in a silly, aimless way, like a colt at the end of a halter.
+Water-noises ran by close to his ear, and beams creaked and whined
+about him. All these things made him grunt despairingly and think of
+his mother.
+
+"Feelin' better?" said the boy, with a grin. "Hev some coffee?" He
+brought a tin cup full and sweetened it with molasses.
+
+"Isn't there milk?" said Harvey, looking round the dark double tier of
+bunks as if he expected to find a cow there.
+
+"Well, no," said the boy. "Ner there ain't likely to be till 'baout
+mid-September. 'Tain't bad coffee. I made it."
+
+Harvey drank in silence, and the boy handed him a plate full of pieces
+of crisp fried pork, which he ate ravenously.
+
+"I've dried your clothes. Guess they've shrunk some," said the boy.
+"They ain't our style much--none of 'em. Twist round an' see if you're
+hurt any."
+
+Harvey stretched himself in every direction, but could not report any
+injuries.
+
+"That's good," the boy said heartily. "Fix yerself an' go on deck. Dad
+wants to see you. I'm his son,--Dan, they call me,--an' I'm cook's
+helper an' everything else aboard that's too dirty for the men. There
+ain't no boy here 'cep' me sence Otto went overboard--an' he was only a
+Dutchy, an' twenty year old at that. How'd you come to fall off in a
+dead flat ca'am?"
+
+"'Twasn't a calm," said Harvey, sulkily. "It was a gale, and I was
+seasick. Guess I must have rolled over the rail."
+
+"There was a little common swell yes'day an' last night," said the boy.
+"But ef thet's your notion of a gale----" He whistled. "You'll know
+more 'fore you're through. Hurry! Dad's waitin'."
+
+Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all his
+life received a direct order--never, at least, without long, and
+sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the
+reasons for the request. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of breaking his
+spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself walked on the
+edge of nervous prostration. He could not see why he should be expected
+to hurry for any man's pleasure, and said so. "Your dad can come down
+here if he's so anxious to talk to me. I want him to take me to New
+York right away. It'll pay him."
+
+Dan opened his eyes as the size and beauty of this joke dawned on him.
+"Say, Dad!" he shouted up the foc'sle hatch, "he says you kin slip down
+an' see him ef you're anxious that way. 'Hear, Dad?"
+
+The answer came back in the deepest voice Harvey had ever heard from a
+human chest: "Quit foolin', Dan, and send him to me."
+
+Dan sniggered, and threw Harvey his warped bicycle shoes. There was
+something in the tones on the deck that made the boy dissemble his
+extreme rage and console himself with the thought of gradually
+unfolding the tale of his own and his father's wealth on the voyage
+home. This rescue would certainly make him a hero among his friends for
+life. He hoisted himself on deck up a perpendicular ladder, and
+stumbled aft, over a score of obstructions, to where a small,
+thick-set, clean-shaven man with gray eyebrows sat on a step that led
+up to the quarter-deck. The swell had passed in the night, leaving a
+long, oily sea, dotted round the horizon with the sails of a dozen
+fishing-boats. Between them lay little black specks, showing where the
+dories were out fishing. The schooner, with a triangular riding-sail on
+the mainmast, played easily at anchor, and except for the man by the
+cabin-roof--"house" they call it--she was deserted.
+
+"Mornin'--Good afternoon, I should say. You've nigh slep' the clock
+round, young feller," was the greeting.
+
+"Mornin'," said Harvey. He did not like being called "young feller";
+and, as one rescued from drowning, expected sympathy. His mother
+suffered agonies whenever he got his feet wet; but this mariner did not
+seem excited.
+
+"Naow let's hear all abaout it. It's quite providential, first an'
+last, fer all concerned. What might be your name? Where from (we
+mistrust it's Noo York), an' where baound (we mistrust it's Europe)?"
+
+Harvey gave his name, the name of the steamer, and a short history of
+the accident, winding up with a demand to be taken back immediately to
+New York, where his father would pay anything any one chose to name.
+
+"H'm," said the shaven man, quite unmoved by the end of Harvey's
+speech. "I can't say we think special of any man, or boy even, that
+falls overboard from that kind o' packet in a flat ca'am. Least of all
+when his excuse is that he's seasick."
+
+"Excuse!" cried Harvey. "D'you suppose I'd fall overboard into your
+dirty little boat for fun?"
+
+"Not knowin' what your notions o' fun may be, I can't rightly say,
+young feller. But if I was you, I wouldn't call the boat which, under
+Providence, was the means o' savin' ye, names. In the first place, it's
+blame irreligious. In the second, it's annoyin' to my feelin's--an' I'm
+Disko Troop o' the _We're Here_ o' Gloucester, which you don't seem
+rightly to know."
+
+"I don't know and I don't care," said Harvey. "I'm grateful enough for
+being saved and all that, of course! but I want you to understand that
+the sooner you take me back to New York the better it'll pay you."
+
+"Meanin'--haow?" Troop raised one shaggy eyebrow over a suspiciously
+mild blue eye.
+
+"Dollars and cents," said Harvey, delighted to think that he was making
+an impression. "Cold dollars and cents." He thrust a hand into a
+pocket, and threw out his stomach a little, which was his way of being
+grand. "You've done the best day's work you ever did in your life when
+you pulled me in. I'm all the son Harvey Cheyne has."
+
+"He's bin favoured," said Disko, dryly.
+
+"And if you don't know who Harvey Cheyne is, you don't know
+much--that's all. Now turn her around and let's hurry."
+
+Harvey had a notion that the greater part of America was filled with
+people discussing and envying his father's dollars.
+
+"Mebbe I do, an' mebbe I don't. Take a reef in your stummick, young
+feller. It's full o' my vittles."
+
+Harvey heard a chuckle from Dan, who was pretending to be busy by the
+stump-foremast, and blood rushed to his face. "We'll pay for that too,"
+he said. "When do you suppose we shall get to New York?"
+
+"I don't use Noo York any. Ner Boston. We may see Eastern Point about
+September; an' your pa--I'm real sorry I hain't heerd tell of him--may
+give me ten dollars efter all your talk. Then o' course he mayn't."
+
+"Ten dollars! Why, see here, I--" Harvey dived into his pocket for the
+wad of bills. All he brought up was a soggy packet of cigarettes.
+
+"Not lawful currency; an' bad for the lungs. Heave 'em overboard, young
+feller, and try agin."
+
+"It's been stolen!" cried Harvey, hotly.
+
+"You'll hev to wait till you see your pa to reward me, then?"
+
+"A hundred and thirty-four dollars--all stolen," said Harvey, hunting
+wildly through his pockets. "Give them back."
+
+A curious change flitted across old Troop's hard face. "What might you
+have been doin' at your time o' life with one hundred an' thirty-four
+dollars, young feller?"
+
+"It was part of my pocket-money--for a month." This Harvey thought
+would be a knock-down blow, and it was--indirectly.
+
+"Oh! One hundred and thirty-four dollars is only part of his
+pocket-money--for one month only! You don't remember hittin' anything
+when you fell over, do you? Crack agin a stanchion, le's say. Old man
+Hasken o' the East Wind"--Troop seemed to be talking to himself--"he
+tripped on a hatch an' butted the mainmast with his head--hardish.
+'Baout three weeks afterwards, old man Hasken he would hev it that the
+"East Wind" was a commerce-destroyin' man-o'-war,   an' so he declared
+war on Sable Island because it was Bridish, an' the shoals run aout too
+far. They sewed him up in a bed-bag, his head an' feet appearin', fer
+the rest o' the trip, an' now he's to home in Essex playin' with little
+rag dolls."
+
+Harvey choked with rage, but Troop went on consolingly: "We're sorry
+fer you. We're very sorry fer you--an' so young. We won't say no more
+abaout the money, I guess."
+
+"'Course you won't. You stole it."
+
+"Suit yourself. We stole it ef it's any comfort to you. Naow, abaout
+goin' back. Allowin' we could do it, which we can't, you ain't in no
+fit state to go back to your home, an' we've jest come on to the Banks,
+workin' fer our bread. We don't see the ha'af of a hundred dollars a
+month, let alone pocket-money; an' with good luck we'll be ashore again
+somewheres abaout the first weeks o' September."
+
+"But--but it's May now, and I can't stay here doin' nothing just
+because you want to fish. I can't, I tell you!"
+
+"Right an' jest; jest an' right. No one asks you to do nothin'. There's
+a heap as you can do, for Otto he went overboard on Le Have. I mistrust
+he lost his grip in a gale we f'und there. Anyways, he never come back
+to deny it. You've turned up, plain, plumb providential for all
+concerned. I mistrust, though, there's ruther few things you kin do.
+Ain't thet so?"
+
+"I can make it lively for you and your crowd when we get ashore," said
+Harvey, with a vicious nod, murmuring vague threats about "piracy," at
+which Troop almost--not quite--smiled.
+
+"Excep' talk. I'd forgot that. You ain't asked to talk more'n you've a
+mind to aboard the _We're Here_. Keep your eyes open, an' help Dan to
+do ez he's bid, an' sechlike, an' I'll give you--you ain't wuth it, but
+I'll give--ten an' a ha'af a month; say thirty-five at the end o' the
+trip. A little work will ease up your head, and you kin tell us all
+abaout your dad an' your ma an' your money afterwards."
+
+"She's on the steamer," said Harvey, his eyes filling with tears. "Take
+me to New York at once."
+
+"Poor woman--poor woman! When she has you back she'll forgit it all,
+though. There's eight of us on the _We're Here_, an' ef we went back
+naow--it's more'n a thousand mile--we'd lose the season. The men they
+wouldn't hev it, allowin' I was agreeable."
+
+"But my father would make it all right."
+
+"He'd try. I don't doubt he'd try," said Troop; "but a whole season's
+catch is eight men's bread; an' you'll be better in your health when
+you see him in the fall. Go forward an' help Dan. It's ten an' a ha'af
+a month, e I said, an' o' course, all f'und, same e the rest o' us."
+
+"Do you mean I'm to clean pots and pans and things?" said Harvey.
+
+"An' other things. You've no call to shout, young feller."
+
+"I won't! My father will give you enough to buy this dirty little
+fish-kettle"--Harvey stamped on the deck--"ten times over, if you take
+me to New York safe; and--and--you're in a hundred and thirty by me,
+anyhow."
+
+"Haow?" said Troop, the iron face darkening.
+
+"How? You know how, well enough. On top of all that, you want me to do
+menial work"--Harvey was very proud of that adjective--"till the Fall.
+I tell you I will not. You hear?"
+
+Troop regarded the top of the mainmast with deep interest for a while,
+as Harvey harangued fiercely all around him.
+
+"Hsh!" he said at last. "I'm figurin' out my responsibilities in my own
+mind. It's a matter o' jedgment."
+
+Dan stole up and plucked Harvey by the elbow. "Don't go to tamperin'
+with Dad any more," he pleaded. "You've called him a thief two or three
+times over, an' he don't take that from any livin' bein'."
+
+"I won't!" Harvey almost shrieked, disregarding the advice, and still
+Troop meditated.
+
+"Seems kinder unneighbourly," he said at last, his eye travelling down
+to Harvey. "I--don't blame you, not a mite, young feeler, nor you won't
+blame me when the bile's out o' your systim. Be sure you sense what I
+say? Ten an' a ha'af fer second boy on the schooner--an' all found--fer
+to teach you an' fer the sake o' your health. Yes or no?"
+
+"No!" said Harvey. "Take me back to New York or I'll see you--"
+
+He did not exactly remember what followed. He was lying in the
+scuppers, holding on to a nose that bled while Troop looked down on him
+serenely.
+
+"Dan," he said to his son, "I was sot agin this young feeler when I
+first saw him on account o' hasty jedgments. Never you be led astray by
+hasty jedgments, Dan. Naow I'm sorry for him, because he's clear
+distracted in his upper works. He ain't responsible fer the names he's
+give me, nor fer his other statements--nor fer jumpin' overboard, which
+I'm abaout ha'af convinced he did. You be gentle with him, Dan, 'r I'll
+give you twice what I've give him. Them hemmeridges clears the head.
+Let him sluice it off!"
+
+Troop went down solemnly into the cabin, where he and the older men
+bunked, leaving Dan to comfort the luckless heir to thirty millions.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"I warned ye," said Dan, as the drops fell thick and fast on the dark,
+oiled planking. "Dad ain't noways hasty, but you fair earned it. Pshaw!
+there's no sense takin' on so." Harvey's shoulders were rising and
+falling in spasms of dry sobbing. "I know the feelin'. First time Dad
+laid me out was the last--and that was my first trip. Makes ye feel
+sickish an' lonesome. I know."
+
+"It does," moaned Harvey. "That man's either crazy or drunk, and--and I
+can't do anything."
+
+"Don't say that to Dad," whispered Dan. "He's set agin all liquor,
+an'--well, he told me you was the madman. What in creation made you
+call him a thief? He's my dad."
+
+Harvey sat up, mopped his nose, and told the story of the missing wad
+of bills. "I'm not crazy," he wound up. "Only--your father has never
+seen more than a five-dollar bill at a time, and my father could buy up
+this boat once a week and never miss it."
+
+"You don't know what the _We're Here's_ worth. Your dad must hev a pile
+o' money. How did he git it? Dad sez loonies can't shake out a straight
+yarn. Go ahead."
+
+"In gold mines and things, West."
+
+"I've read o' that kind o' business. Out West, too? Does he go around
+with a pistol on a trick-pony, same ez the circus? They call that the
+Wild West, and I've heard that their spurs an' bridles was solid
+silver."
+
+"You are a chump!" said Harvey, amused in spite of himself. "My father
+hasn't any use for ponies. When he wants to ride he takes his car."
+
+"Haow? Lobster-car?"
+
+"No. His own private car, of course. You've seen a private car some
+time in your life?"
+
+"Slatin Beeman he hez one," said Dan, cautiously. "I saw her at the
+Union Depot in Boston, with three niggers hoggin' her run." (Dan meant
+cleaning the windows.) "But Slatin Beeman he owns 'baout every railroad
+on Long Island, they say, an' they say he's bought 'baout ha'af Noo
+Hampshire an' run a line fence around her, an' filled her up with lions
+an' tigers an' bears an' buffalo an' crocodiles an' such all. Slatin
+Beeman he's a millionaire. I've seen his car. Yes?"
+
+"Well, my father's what they call a multi-millionaire, and he has two
+private cars. One's named for me, the 'Harvey', and one for my mother,
+the 'Constance'."
+
+"Hold on," said Dan. "Dad don't ever let me swear, but I guess you can.
+'Fore we go ahead, I want you to say hope you may die if you're lyin'."
+
+"Of course," said Harvey.
+
+"The ain't 'niff. Say, 'Hope I may die if I ain't speaking' truth.'"
+
+"Hope I may die right here," said Harvey, "if every word I've spoken
+isn't the cold truth."
+
+"Hundred an' thirty-four dollars an' all?" said Dan. "I heard ye
+talkin' to Dad, an' I ha'af looked you'd be swallered up, same's Jonah."
+
+Harvey protested himself red in the face. Dan was a shrewd young person
+along his own lines, and ten minutes' questioning convinced him that
+Harvey was not lying--much. Besides, he had bound himself by the most
+terrible oath known to boyhood, and yet he sat, alive, with a red-ended
+nose, in the scuppers, recounting marvels upon marvels.
+
+"Gosh!" said Dan at last from the very bottom of his soul when Harvey
+had completed an inventory of the car named in his honour. Then a grin
+of mischievous delight overspread his broad face. "I believe you,
+Harvey. Dad's made a mistake fer once in his life."
+
+"He has, sure," said Harvey, who was meditating an early revenge.
+
+"He'll be mad clear through. Dad jest hates to be mistook in his
+jedgments." Dan lay back and slapped his thigh. "Oh, Harvey, don't you
+spile the catch by lettin' on."
+
+"I don't want to be knocked down again. I'll get even with him, though."
+
+"Never heard any man ever got even with dad. But he'd knock ye down
+again sure. The more he was mistook the more he'd do it. But gold-mines
+and pistols--"
+
+"I never said a word about pistols," Harvey cut in, for he was on his
+oath.
+
+"Thet's so; no more you did. Two private cars, then, one named fer you
+an' one fer her; an' two hundred dollars a month pocket-money, all
+knocked into the scuppers fer not workin' fer ten an' a ha'af a month!
+It's the top haul o' the season." He exploded with noiseless chuckles.
+
+"Then I was right?" said Harvey, who thought he had found a sympathiser.
+
+"You was wrong; the wrongest kind o' wrong! You take right hold an'
+pitch in 'longside o' me, or you'll catch it, an' I'll catch it fer
+backin' you up. Dad always gives me double helps 'cause I'm his son,
+an' he hates favourin' folk. 'Guess you're kinder mad at dad. I've been
+that way time an' again. But dad's a mighty jest man; all the fleet
+says so."
+
+"Looks like justice, this, don't it?" Harvey pointed to his outraged
+nose.
+
+"Thet's nothin'. Lets the shore blood outer you. Dad did it for yer
+health. Say, though, I can't have dealin's with a man that thinks me or
+dad or any one on the _We're Here's_ a thief.  We ain't any common
+wharf-end crowd by any manner o' means. We're fishermen, an' we've
+shipped together for six years an' more. Don't you make any mistake on
+that! I told ye dad don't let me swear. He calls 'em vain oaths, and
+pounds me; but ef I could say what you said 'baout your pap an' his
+fixin's, I'd say that 'baout your dollars. I dunno what was in your
+pockets when I dried your kit, fer I didn't look to see; but I'd say,
+using the very same words ez you used jest now, neither me nor dad--an'
+we was the only two that teched you after you was brought aboard--knows
+anythin' 'baout the money. Thet's my say. Naow?"
+
+The bloodletting had certainly cleared Harvey's brain, and maybe the
+loneliness of the sea had something to do with it. "That's all right,"
+he said. Then he looked down confusedly. "'Seems to me that for a
+fellow just saved from drowning I haven't been over and above grateful,
+Dan."
+
+"Well, you was shook up and silly," said Dan. "Anyway, there was only
+dad an' me aboard to see it. The cook he don't count."
+
+"I might have thought about losing the bills that way," Harvey said,
+half to himself, "instead of calling everybody in sight a thief.
+Where's your father?"
+
+"In the cabin. What d' you want o' him again?"
+
+"You'll see," said Harvey, and he stepped, rather groggily, for his
+head was still singing, to the cabin steps where the little ship's
+clock hung in plain sight of the wheel. Troop, in the
+chocolate-and-yellow painted cabin, was busy with a note-book and an
+enormous black pencil which he sucked hard from time to time.
+
+"I haven't acted quite right," said Harvey, surprised at his own
+meekness.
+
+"What's wrong naow?" said the skipper. "Walked into Dan, hev ye?"
+
+"No; it's about you."
+
+"I'm here to listen."
+
+"Well, I--I'm here to take things back," said Harvey very quickly.
+"When a man's saved from drowning--" he gulped.
+
+"Ey? You'll make a man yet ef you go on this way."
+
+"He oughtn't begin by calling people names."
+
+"Jest an' right--right an' jest," said Troop, with the ghost of a dry
+smile.
+
+"So I'm here to say I'm sorry." Another big gulp.
+
+Troop heaved himself slowly off the locker he was sitting on and held
+out an eleven-inch hand. "I mistrusted 'twould do you sights o' good;
+an' this shows I weren't mistook in my jedgments." A smothered chuckle
+on deck caught his ear. "I am very seldom mistook in my jedgments." The
+eleven-inch hand closed on Harvey's, numbing it to the elbow. "We'll
+put a little more gristle to that 'fore we've done with you, young
+feller; an' I don't think any worse of ye fer anythin' the's gone by.
+You wasn't fairly responsible. Go right abaout your business an' you
+won't take no hurt."
+
+"You're white," said Dan, as Harvey regained the deck, flushed to the
+tips of his ears.
+
+"I don't feel it," said he.
+
+"I didn't mean that way. I heard what Dad said. When Dad allows he
+don't think the worse of any man, Dad's give himself away. He hates to
+be mistook in his jedgments too. Ho! ho! Onct Dad has a jedgment, he'd
+sooner dip his colours to the British than change it. I'm glad it's
+settled right eend up. Dad's right when he says he can't take you back.
+It's all the livin' we make here--fishin'. The men'll be back like
+sharks after a dead whale in ha'af an hour."
+
+"What for?" said Harvey.
+
+"Supper, o' course. Don't your stummick tell you? You've a heap to
+learn."
+
+"Guess I have," said Harvey, dolefully, looking at the tangle of ropes
+and blocks overhead.
+
+"She's a daisy," said Dan, enthusiastically, misunderstanding the look.
+"Wait till our mainsail's bent, an' she walks home with all her salt
+wet. There's some work first, though." He pointed down into the
+darkness of the open main-hatch between the two masts.
+
+"What's that for? It's all empty," said Harvey.
+
+"You an' me an' a few more hev got to fill it," said Dan. "That's where
+the fish goes."
+
+"Alive?" said Harvey.
+
+"Well, no. They're so's to be ruther dead--an' flat--an' salt. There's
+a hundred hogshead o' salt in the bins, an' we hain't more'n covered
+our dunnage to now."
+
+"Where are the fish, though?"
+
+"'In the sea they say, in the boats we pray,'" said Dan, quoting a
+fisherman's proverb. "You come in last night with 'baout forty of 'em."
+
+He pointed to a sort of wooden pen just in front of the quarter-deck.
+
+"You an' me we'll sluice that out when they're through. 'Send we'll hev
+full pens to-night! I've seen her down ha'af a foot with fish waitin'
+to clean, an' we stood to the tables till we was splittin' ourselves
+instid o' them, we was so sleepy. Yes, they're comm' in naow." Dan
+looked over the low bulwarks at half a dozen dories rowing towards them
+over the shining, silky sea.
+
+"I've never seen the sea from so low down," said Harvey. "It's fine."
+
+The low sun made the water all purple and pinkish, with golden lights
+on the barrels of the long swells, and blue and green mackerel shades
+in the hollows. Each schooner in sight seemed to be pulling her dories
+towards her by invisible strings, and the little black figures in the
+tiny boats pulled like clockwork toys.
+
+"They've struck on good," said Dan, between his half-shut eyes. "Manuel
+hain't room fer another fish. Low ez a lily-pad in still water, Aeneid
+he?"
+
+"Which is Manuel? I don't see how you can tell 'em 'way off, as you do."
+
+"Last boat to the south'ard. He fund you last night," said Dan,
+pointing. "Manuel rows Portugoosey; ye can't mistake him. East o'
+him--he's a heap better'n he rows--is Pennsylvania. Loaded with
+saleratus, by the looks of him. East o' him--see how pretty they string
+out all along--with the humpy shoulders, is Long Jack. He's a Galway
+man inhabitin' South Boston, where they all live mostly, an' mostly
+them Galway men are good in a boat. North, away yonder--you'll hear him
+tune up in a minute is Tom Platt. Man-o'-war's man he was on the old
+Ohio first of our navy, he says, to go araound the Horn. He never talks
+of much else, 'cept when he sings, but he has fair fishin' luck. There!
+What did I tell you?"
+
+A melodious bellow stole across the water from the northern dory.
+Harvey heard something about somebody's hands and feet being cold, and
+then:
+
+  "Bring forth the chart, the doleful chart,
+  See where them mountings meet!
+  The clouds are thick around their heads,
+  The mists around their feet."
+
+"Full boat," said Dan, with a chuckle. "If he give us 'O Captain' it's
+topping' too!"
+
+The bellow continued:
+
+  "And naow to thee, O Capting,
+  Most earnestly I pray,
+  That they shall never bury me
+  In church or cloister gray."
+
+"Double game for Tom Platt. He'll tell you all about the old Ohio
+tomorrow. 'See that blue dory behind him? He's my uncle,--Dad's own
+brother,--an' ef there's any bad luck loose on the Banks she'll fetch
+up agin Uncle Salters, sure. Look how tender he's rowin'. I'll lay my
+wage and share he's the only man stung up to-day--an' he's stung up
+good."
+
+"What'll sting him?" said Harvey, getting interested.
+
+"Strawberries, mostly. Pumpkins, sometimes, an' sometimes lemons an'
+cucumbers. Yes, he's stung up from his elbows down. That man's luck's
+perfectly paralyzin'. Naow we'll take a-holt o' the tackles an' hist
+'em in. Is it true what you told me jest now, that you never done a
+hand's turn o' work in all your born life? Must feel kinder awful,
+don't it?"
+
+"I'm going to try to work, anyway," Harvey replied stoutly. "Only it's
+all dead new."
+
+"Lay a-holt o' that tackle, then. Behind ye!"
+
+Harvey grabbed at a rope and long iron hook dangling from one of the
+stays of the mainmast, while Dan pulled down another that ran from
+something he called a "topping-lift," as Manuel drew alongside in his
+loaded dory. The Portuguese smiled a brilliant smile that Harvey
+learned to know well later, and with a short-handled fork began to
+throw fish into the pen on deck. "Two hundred and thirty-one," he
+shouted.
+
+"Give him the hook," said Dan, and Harvey ran it into Manuel's hands.
+He slipped it through a loop of rope at the dory's bow, caught Dan's
+tackle, hooked it to the stern-becket, and clambered into the schooner.
+
+"Pull!" shouted Dan, and Harvey pulled, astonished to find how easily
+the dory rose.
+
+"Hold on, she don't nest in the crosstrees!" Dan laughed; and Harvey
+held on, for the boat lay in the air above his head.
+
+"Lower away," Dan shouted, and as Harvey lowered, Dan swayed the light
+boat with one hand till it landed softly just behind the mainmast.
+"They don't weigh nothin' empty. Thet was right smart fer a passenger.
+There's more trick to it in a sea-way."
+
+"Ah ha!" said Manuel, holding out a brown hand. "You are some pretty
+well now? This time last night the fish they fish for you. Now you fish
+for fish. Eh, wha-at?"
+
+"I'm--I'm ever so grateful," Harvey stammered, and his unfortunate hand
+stole to his pocket once more, but he remembered that he had no money
+to offer. When he knew Manuel better the mere thought of the mistake he
+might have made would cover him with hot, uneasy blushes in his bunk.
+
+"There is no to be thankful for to me!" said Manuel. "How shall I leave
+you dreeft, dreeft all around the Banks? Now you are a fisherman eh,
+wha-at? Ouh! Auh!" He bent backward and forward stiffly from the hips
+to get the kinks out of himself.
+
+"I have not cleaned boat to-day. Too busy. They struck on queek. Danny,
+my son, clean for me."
+
+Harvey moved forward at once. Here was something he could do for the
+man who had saved his life.
+
+Dan threw him a swab, and he leaned over the dory, mopping up the slime
+clumsily, but with great good-will. "Hike out the foot-boards; they
+slide in them grooves," said Dan. "Swab 'em an' lay 'em down. Never let
+a foot-board jam. Ye may want her bad some day. Here's Long Jack."
+
+A stream of glittering fish flew into the pen from a dory alongside.
+
+"Manuel, you take the tackle. I'll fix the tables. Harvey, clear
+Manuel's boat. Long Jack's nestin' on the top of her."
+
+Harvey looked up from his swabbing at the bottom of another dory just
+above his head.
+
+"Jest like the Injian puzzle-boxes, ain't they?" said Dan, as the one
+boat dropped into the other.
+
+"Takes to ut like a duck to water," said Long Jack, a grizzly-chinned,
+long-lipped Galway man, bending to and fro exactly as Manuel had done.
+Disko in the cabin growled up the hatchway, and they could hear him
+suck his pencil.
+
+"Wan hunder an' forty-nine an' a half-bad luck to ye, Discobolus!" said
+Long Jack. "I'm murderin' meself to fill your pockuts. Slate ut for a
+bad catch. The Portugee has bate me."
+
+Whack came another dory alongside, and more fish shot into the pen.
+
+"Two hundred and three. Let's look at the passenger!" The speaker was
+even larger than the Galway man, and his face was made curious by a
+purple cut running slant-ways from his left eye to the right corner of
+his mouth.
+
+Not knowing what else to do, Harvey swabbed each dory as it came down,
+pulled out the foot-boards, and laid them in the bottom of the boat.
+
+"He's caught on good," said the scarred man, who was Tom Platt,
+watching him critically. "There are two ways o' doin' everything. One's
+fisher-fashion--any end first an' a slippery hitch over all--an' the
+other's--"
+
+"What we did on the old Ohio!" Dan interrupted, brushing into the knot
+of men with a long board on legs. "Get out o' here, Tom Platt, an'
+leave me fix the tables."
+
+He jammed one end of the board into two nicks in the bulwarks, kicked
+out the leg, and ducked just in time to avoid a swinging blow from the
+man-o'-war's man.
+
+"An' they did that on the Ohio, too, Danny. See?" said Tom Platt,
+laughing.
+
+"Guess they was swivel-eyed, then, fer it didn't git home, and I know
+who'll find his boots on the main-truck ef he don't leave us alone.
+Haul ahead! I'm busy, can't ye see?"
+
+"Danny, ye lie on the cable an' sleep all day," said Long Jack. "You're
+the hoight av impidence, an' I'm persuaded ye'll corrupt our supercargo
+in a week."
+
+"His name's Harvey," said Dan, waving two strangely shaped knives, "an'
+he'll be worth five of any Sou' Boston clam-digger 'fore long." He laid
+the knives tastefully on the table, cocked his head on one side, and
+admired the effect.
+
+"I think it's forty-two," said a small voice overside, and there was a
+roar of laughter as another voice answered, "Then my luck's turned fer
+onct, 'caze I'm forty-five, though I be stung outer all shape."
+
+"Forty-two or forty-five. I've lost count," the small voice said.
+
+"It's Penn an' Uncle Salters caountin' catch. This beats the circus any
+day," said Dan. "Jest look at 'em!"
+
+"Come in--come in!" roared Long Jack. "It's wet out yondher, children."
+
+"Forty-two, ye said." This was Uncle Salters.
+
+"I'll count again, then," the voice replied meekly. The two dories
+swung together and bunted into the schooner's side.
+
+"Patience o' Jerusalem!" snapped Uncle Salters, backing water with a
+splash. "What possest a farmer like you to set foot in a boat beats me.
+You've nigh stove me all up."
+
+"I am sorry, Mr. Salters. I came to sea on account of nervous
+dyspepsia. You advised me, I think."
+
+"You an' your nervis dyspepsy be drowned in the Whale-hole," roared
+Uncle Salters, a fat and tubby little man. "You're comin' down on me
+agin. Did ye say forty-two or forty-five?"
+
+"I've forgotten, Mr. Salters. Let's count."
+
+"Don't see as it could be forty-five. I'm forty-five," said Uncle
+Salters. "You count keerful, Penn."
+
+Disko Troop came out of the cabin. "Salters, you pitch your fish in
+naow at once," he said in the tone of authority.
+
+"Don't spile the catch, Dad," Dan murmured. "Them two are on'y jest
+beginnin'."
+
+"Mother av delight! He's forkin' them wan by wan," howled Long Jack, as
+Uncle Salters got to work laboriously; the little man in the other dory
+counting a line of notches on the gunwale.
+
+"That was last week's catch," he said, looking up plaintively, his
+forefinger where he had left off.
+
+Manuel nudged Dan, who darted to the after-tackle, and, leaning far
+overside, slipped the hook into the stern-rope as Manuel made her fast
+forward. The others pulled gallantly and swung the boat in--man, fish,
+and all.
+
+"One, two, four-nine," said Tom Platt, counting with a practised eye.
+"Forty-seven. Penn, you're it!" Dan let the after-tackle run, and slid
+him out of the stern on to the deck amid a torrent of his own fish.
+
+"Hold on!" roared Uncle Salters, bobbing by the waist. "Hold on, I'm a
+bit mixed in my caount."
+
+He had no time to protest, but was hove inboard and treated like
+"Pennsylvania."
+
+"Forty-one," said Tom Platt. "Beat by a farmer, Salters. An' you sech a
+sailor, too!"
+
+"'Tweren't fair caount," said he, stumbling out of the pen; "an' I'm
+stung up all to pieces."
+
+His thick hands were puffy and mottled purply white.
+
+"Some folks will find strawberry-bottom," said Dan, addressing the
+newly risen moon, "ef they hev to dive fer it, seems to me."
+
+"An' others," said Uncle Salters, "eats the fat o' the land in sloth,
+an' mocks their own blood-kin."
+
+"Seat ye! Seat ye!" a voice Harvey had not heard called from the
+foc'sle. Disko Troop, Tom Platt, Long Jack, and Salters went forward on
+the word. Little Penn bent above his square deep-sea reel and the
+tangled cod-lines; Manuel lay down full length on the deck, and Dan
+dropped into the hold, where Harvey heard him banging casks with a
+hammer.
+
+"Salt," he said, returning. "Soon as we're through supper we git to
+dressing-down. You'll pitch to Dad. Tom Platt an' Dad they stow
+together, an' you'll hear 'em arguin'. We're second ha'af, you an' me
+an' Manuel an' Penn--the youth an' beauty o' the boat."
+
+"What's the good of that?" said Harvey. "I'm hungry."
+
+"They'll be through in a minute. Suff! She smells good to-night. Dad
+ships a good cook ef he do suffer with his brother. It's a full catch
+today, Aeneid it?" He pointed at the pens piled high with cod. "What
+water did ye hev, Manuel?"
+
+"Twenty-fife father," said the Portuguese, sleepily. "They strike on
+good an' queek. Some day I show you, Harvey."
+
+The moon was beginning to walk on the still sea before the elder men
+came aft. The cook had no need to cry "second half." Dan and Manuel
+were down the hatch and at table ere Tom Platt, last and most
+deliberate of the elders, had finished wiping his mouth with the back
+of his hand. Harvey followed Penn, and sat down before a tin pan of
+cod's tongues and sounds, mixed with scraps of pork and fried potato, a
+loaf of hot bread, and some black and powerful coffee. Hungry as they
+were, they waited while "Pennsylvania" solemnly asked a blessing. Then
+they stoked in silence till Dan drew a breath over his tin cup and
+demanded of Harvey how  he felt.
+
+"'Most full, but there's just room for another piece."
+
+The cook was a huge, jet-black negro, and, unlike all the negroes
+Harvey had met, did not talk, contenting himself with smiles and
+dumb-show invitations to eat more.
+
+"See, Harvey," said Dan, rapping with his fork on the table, "it's jest
+as I said. The young an' handsome men--like me an' Pennsy an' you an'
+Manuel--we're second ha'af, an' we eats when the first ha'af are
+through. They're the old fish; an' they're mean an' humpy, an' their
+stummicks has to be humoured; so they come first, which they don't
+deserve. Aeneid that so, doctor?"
+
+The cook nodded.
+
+"Can't he talk?" said Harvey in a whisper.
+
+"'Nough to get along. Not much o' anything we know. His natural
+tongue's kinder curious. Comes from the innards of Cape Breton, he
+does, where the farmers speak homemade Scotch. Cape Breton's full o'
+niggers whose folk run in there durin' aour war, an' they talk like
+farmers--all huffy-chuffy."
+
+"That is not Scotch," said "Pennsylvania." "That is Gaelic. So I read
+in a book."
+
+"Penn reads a heap. Most of what he says is so--'cep' when it comes to
+a caount o' fish--eh?"
+
+"Does your father just let them say how many they've caught without
+checking them?" said Harvey.
+
+"Why, yes. Where's the sense of a man lyin' fer a few old cod?"
+
+"Was a man once lied for his catch," Manuel put in. "Lied every day.
+Fife, ten, twenty-fife more fish than come he say there was."
+
+"Where was that?" said Dan. "None o' aour folk."
+
+"Frenchman of Anguille."
+
+"Ah! Them West Shore Frenchmen don't caount anyway. Stands to reason
+they can't caount. Ef you run acrost any of their soft hooks, Harvey,
+you'll know why," said Dan, with an awful contempt.
+
+    "Always more and never less,
+     Every time we come to dress,"
+
+Long Jack roared down the hatch, and the "second ha'af" scrambled up at
+once.
+
+The shadow of the masts and rigging, with the never-furled riding-sail,
+rolled to and fro on the heaving deck in the moonlight; and the pile of
+fish by the stern shone like a dump of fluid silver. In the hold there
+were tramplings and rumblings where Disko Troop and Tom Platt moved
+among the salt-bins. Dan passed Harvey a pitchfork, and led him to the
+inboard end of the rough table, where Uncle Salters was drumming
+impatiently with a knife-haft. A tub of salt water lay at his feet.
+
+"You pitch to dad an' Tom Platt down the hatch, an' take keer Uncle
+Salters don't cut yer eye out," said Dan, swinging himself into the
+hold. "I'll pass salt below."
+
+Penn and Manuel stood knee deep among cod in the pen, flourishing drawn
+knives. Long Jack, a basket at his feet and mittens on his hands, faced
+Uncle Salters at the table, and Harvey stared at the pitchfork and the
+tub.
+
+"Hi!" shouted Manuel, stooping to the fish, and bringing one up with a
+finger under its gill and a finger in its eyes. He laid it on the edge
+of the pen; the knife-blade glimmered with a sound of tearing, and the
+fish, slit from throat to vent, with a nick on either side of the neck,
+dropped at Long Jack's feet.
+
+"Hi!" said Long Jack, with a scoop of his mittened hand. The cod's
+liver dropped in the basket. Another wrench and scoop sent the head and
+offal flying, and the empty fish slid across to Uncle Salters, who
+snorted fiercely. There was another sound of tearing, the backbone flew
+over the bulwarks, and the fish, headless, gutted, and open, splashed
+in the tub, sending the salt water into Harvey's astonished mouth.
+After the first yell, the men were silent. The cod moved along as
+though they were alive, and long ere Harvey had ceased wondering at the
+miraculous dexterity of it all, his tub was full.
+
+"Pitch!" grunted Uncle Salters, without turning his head, and Harvey
+pitched the fish by twos and threes down the hatch.
+
+"Hi! Pitch 'em bunchy," shouted Dan. "Don't scatter! Uncle Salters is
+the best splitter in the fleet. Watch him mind his book!"
+
+Indeed, it looked a little as though the round uncle were cutting
+magazine pages against time. Manuel's body, cramped over from the hips,
+stayed like a statue; but his long arms grabbed the fish without
+ceasing. Little Penn toiled valiantly, but it was easy to see he was
+weak. Once or twice Manuel found time to help him without breaking the
+chain of supplies, and once Manuel howled because he had caught his
+finger in a Frenchman's hook. These hooks are made of soft metal, to be
+rebent after use; but the cod very often get away with them and are
+hooked again elsewhere; and that is one of the many reasons why the
+Gloucester boats despise the Frenchmen.
+
+Down below, the rasping sound of rough salt rubbed on rough flesh
+sounded like the whirring of a grindstone--steady undertune to the
+"click-nick" of knives in the pen; the wrench and shloop of torn heads,
+dropped liver, and flying offal; the "caraaah" of Uncle Salters's knife
+scooping away backbones; and the flap of wet, open bodies falling into
+the tub.
+
+At the end of an hour Harvey would have given the world to rest; for
+fresh, wet cod weigh more than you would think, and his back ached with
+the steady pitching. But he felt for the first time in his life that he
+was one of the working gang of men, took pride in the thought, and held
+on sullenly.
+
+"Knife oh!" shouted Uncle Salters at last. Penn doubled up, gasping
+among the fish, Manuel bowed back and forth to supple himself, and Long
+Jack leaned over the bulwarks. The cook appeared, noiseless as a black
+shadow, collected a mass of backbones and heads, and retreated.
+
+"Blood-ends for breakfast an' head-chowder," said Long Jack, smacking
+his lips.
+
+"Knife oh!" repeated Uncle Salters, waving the flat, curved splitter's
+weapon.
+
+"Look by your foot, Harve," cried Dan below.
+
+Harvey saw half a dozen knives stuck in a cleat in the hatch combing.
+He dealt these around, taking over the dulled ones.
+
+"Water!" said Disko Troop.
+
+"Scuttle-butt's for'ard an' the dipper's alongside. Hurry, Harve," said
+Dan.
+
+He was back in a minute with a big dipperful of stale brown water which
+tasted like nectar, and loosed the jaws of Disko and Tom Platt.
+
+"These are cod," said Disko. "They ain't Damarskus figs, Tom Platt, nor
+yet silver bars. I've told you that ever single time since we've sailed
+together."
+
+"A matter o' seven seasons," returned Tom Platt coolly. "Good stowin's
+good stowin' all the same, an' there's a right an' a wrong way o'
+stowin' ballast even. If you'd ever seen four hundred ton o' iron set
+into the--"
+
+"Hi!" With a yell from Manuel the work began again, and never stopped
+till the pen was empty. The instant the last fish was down, Disko Troop
+rolled aft to the cabin with his brother; Manuel and Long Jack went
+forward; Tom Platt only waited long enough to slide home the hatch ere
+he too disappeared. In half a minute Harvey heard deep snores in the
+cabin, and he was staring blankly at Dan and Penn.
+
+"I did a little better that time, Danny," said Penn, whose eyelids were
+heavy with sleep. "But I think it is my duty to help clean."
+
+"'Wouldn't hev your conscience fer a thousand quintal," said Dan. "Turn
+in, Penn. You've no call to do boy's work. Draw a bucket, Harvey. Oh,
+Penn, dump these in the gurry-butt 'fore you sleep. Kin you keep awake
+that long?"
+
+Penn took up the heavy basket of fish-livers, emptied them into a cask
+with a hinged top lashed by the foc'sle; then he too dropped out of
+sight in the cabin.
+
+"Boys clean up after dressin' down an' first watch in ca'am weather is
+boy's watch on the _We're Here_." Dan sluiced the pen energetically,
+unshipped the table, set it up to dry in the moonlight, ran the red
+knife-blades through a wad of oakum, and began to sharpen them on a
+tiny grindstone, as Harvey threw offal and backbones overboard under
+his direction.
+
+At the first splash a silvery-white ghost rose bolt upright from the
+oily water and sighed a weird whistling sigh. Harvey started back with
+a shout, but Dan only laughed.
+
+"Grampus," said he. "Beggin' fer fish-heads. They up-eend the way when
+they're hungry. Breath on him like the doleful tombs, hain't he?" A
+horrible stench of decayed fish filled the air as the pillar of white
+sank, and the water bubbled oilily. "Hain't ye never seen a grampus
+up-eend before? You'll see 'em by hundreds 'fore ye're through. Say,
+it's good to hev a boy aboard again. Otto was too old, an' a Dutchy at
+that. Him an' me we fought consid'ble. 'Wouldn't ha' keered fer that ef
+he'd hed a Christian tongue in his head. Sleepy?"
+
+"Dead sleepy," said Harvey, nodding forward.
+
+"Mustn't sleep on watch. Rouse up an' see ef our anchor-light's bright
+an' shinin'. You're on watch now, Harve."
+
+"Pshaw! What's to hurt us? Bright's day. Sn-orrr!"
+
+"Jest when things happen, Dad says. Fine weather's good sleepin', an'
+'fore you know, mebbe, you're cut in two by a liner, an' seventeen
+brass-bound officers, all gen'elmen, lift their hand to it that your
+lights was aout an' there was a thick fog. Harve, I've kinder took to
+you, but ef you nod onct more I'll lay into you with a rope's end."
+
+The moon, who sees many strange things on the Banks, looked down on a
+slim youth in knickerbockers and a red jersey, staggering around the
+cluttered decks of a seventy-ton schooner, while behind him, waving a
+knotted rope, walked, after the manner of an executioner, a boy who
+yawned and nodded between the blows he dealt.
+
+The lashed wheel groaned and kicked softly, the riding-sail slatted a
+little in the shifts of the light wind, the windlass creaked, and the
+miserable procession continued. Harvey expostulated, threatened,
+whimpered, and at last wept outright, while Dan, the words clotting on
+his tongue, spoke of the beauty of watchfulness and slashed away with
+the rope's end, punishing the dories as often as he hit Harvey. At last
+the clock in the cabin struck ten, and upon the tenth stroke little
+Penn crept on deck. He found two boys in two tumbled heaps side by side
+on the main hatch, so deeply asleep that he actually rolled them to
+their berths.
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Harvey waked to find the "first half" at breakfast, the foc'sle door
+drawn to a crack, and every square inch of the schooner singing its own
+tune. The black bulk of the cook balanced behind the tiny galley over
+the glare of the stove, and the pots and pans in the pierced wooden
+board before it jarred and racketed to each plunge. Up and up the
+foc'sle climbed, yearning and surging and quivering, and then, with a
+clear, sickle-like swoop, came down into the seas. He could hear the
+flaring bows cut and squelch, and there was a pause ere the divided
+waters came down on the deck above, like a volley of buckshot. Followed
+the woolly sound of the cable in the hawse-hole; and a grunt and squeal
+of the windlass; a yaw, a punt, and a kick, and the _We're Here_
+gathered herself together to repeat the motions.
+
+"Now, ashore," he heard Long Jack saying, "ye've chores, an' ye must do
+thim in any weather. Here we're well clear of the fleet, an' we've no
+chores--an' that's a blessin'. Good night, all." He passed like a big
+snake from the table to his bunk, and began to smoke. Tom Platt
+followed his example; Uncle Salters, with Penn, fought his way up the
+ladder to stand his watch, and the cook set for the "second half."
+
+It came out of its bunks as the others had entered theirs, with a shake
+and a yawn. It ate till it could eat no more; and then Manuel filled
+his pipe with some terrible tobacco, crotched himself between the
+pawl-post and a forward bunk, cocked his feet up on the table, and
+smiled tender and indolent smiles at the smoke. Dan lay at length in
+his bunk, wrestling with a gaudy, gilt-stopped accordion, whose tunes
+went up and down with the pitching of the _We're Here_. The cook, his
+shoulders against the locker where he kept the fried pies (Dan was fond
+of fried pies), peeled potatoes, with one eye on the stove in event of
+too much water finding its way down the pipe; and the general smell and
+smother were past all description.
+
+Harvey considered affairs, wondered that he was not deathly sick, and
+crawled into his bunk again, as the softest and safest place, while Dan
+struck up, "I don't want to play in your yard," as accurately as the
+wild jerks allowed.
+
+"How long is this for?" Harvey asked of Manuel.
+
+"Till she get a little quiet, and we can row to trawl. Perhaps
+to-night. Perhaps two days more. You do not like? Eh, wha-at?"
+
+"I should have been crazy sick a week ago, but it doesn't seem to upset
+me now--much."
+
+"That is because we make you fisherman, these days. If I was you, when
+I come to Gloucester I would give two, three big candles for my good
+luck."
+
+"Give who?"
+
+"To be sure--the Virgin of our Church on the Hill. She is very good to
+fishermen all the time. That is why so few of us Portugee men ever are
+drowned."
+
+"You're a Roman Catholic, then?"
+
+"I am a Madeira man. I am not a Porto Pico boy. Shall I be Baptist,
+then? Eh, wha-at? I always give candles--two, three more when I come to
+Gloucester. The good Virgin she never forgets me, Manuel."
+
+"I don't sense it that way," Tom Platt put in from his bunk, his
+scarred face lit up by the glare of a match as he sucked at his pipe.
+"It stands to reason the sea's the sea; and you'll get jest about
+what's goin', candles or kerosene, fer that matter."
+
+"'Tis a mighty good thing," said Long Jack, "to have a frind at coort,
+though. I'm o' Manuel's way o' thinkin'. About tin years back I was crew
+to a Sou' Boston market-boat. We was off Minot's Ledge wid a
+northeaster, butt first, atop of us, thicker'n burgoo. The ould man was
+dhrunk, his chin waggin' on the tiller, an' I sez to myself, 'If iver I
+stick my boat-huk into T-wharf again, I'll show the saints fwhat manner
+o' craft they saved me out av.' Now, I'm here, as ye can well see, an'
+the model of the dhirty ould Kathleen, that took me a month to make, I
+gave ut to the priest, an' he hung ut up forninst the altar. There's
+more sense in givin' a model that's by way o' bein' a work av art than
+any candle. Ye can buy candles at store, but a model shows the good
+saints ye've tuk trouble an' are grateful."
+
+"D'you believe that, Irish?" said Tom Platt, turning on his elbow.
+
+"Would I do ut if I did not, Ohio?"
+
+"Wa-al, Enoch Fuller he made a model o' the old Ohio, and she's to
+Calem museum now. Mighty pretty model, too, but I guess Enoch he never
+done it fer no sacrifice; an' the way I take it is--"
+
+There were the makings of an hour-long discussion of the kind that
+fishermen love, where the talk runs in shouting circles and no one
+proves anything at the end, had not Dan struck up this cheerful rhyme:
+
+  "Up jumped the mackerel with his stripe'd back.
+  Reef in the mainsail, and haul on the tack;
+  _For_ it's windy weather--"
+
+Here Long Jack joined in:
+
+    "_And_ it's blowy weather;
+    _When_ the winds begin to blow, pipe all hands together!"
+
+Dan went on, with a cautious look at Tom Platt, holding the accordion
+low in the bunk:
+
+    "Up jumped the cod with his chuckle-head,
+    Went to the main-chains to heave at the lead;
+    _For_ it's windy weather," etc.
+
+Tom Platt seemed to be hunting for something. Dan crouched lower, but
+sang louder:
+
+    "Up jumped the flounder that swims to the ground.
+    Chuckle-head! Chuckle-head! Mind where ye sound!"
+
+Tom Platt's huge rubber boot whirled across the foc'sle and caught
+Dan's uplifted arm. There was war between the man and the boy ever
+since Dan had discovered that the mere whistling of that tune would
+make him angry as he heaved the lead.
+
+"Thought I'd fetch yer," said Dan, returning the gift with precision.
+"Ef you don't like my music, git out your fiddle. I ain't goin' to lie
+here all day an' listen to you an' Long Jack arguin' 'baout candles.
+Fiddle, Tom Platt; or I'll learn Harve here the tune!"
+
+Tom Platt leaned down to a locker and brought up an old white fiddle.
+Manuel's eye glistened, and from somewhere behind the pawl-post he drew
+out a tiny, guitar-like thing with wire strings, which he called a
+machette.
+
+"'Tis a concert," said Long Jack, beaming through the smoke. "A reg'lar
+Boston concert."
+
+There was a burst of spray as the hatch opened, and Disko, in yellow
+oilskins, descended.
+
+"Ye're just in time, Disko. Fwhat's she doin' outside?"
+
+"Jest this!" He dropped on to the lockers with the push and heave of
+the _We're Here_.
+
+"We're singin' to kape our breakfasts down. Ye'll lead, av course,
+Disko," said Long Jack.
+
+"Guess there ain't more'n 'baout two old songs I know, an' ye've heerd
+them both."
+
+His excuses were cut short by Tom Platt launching into a most dolorous
+tune, like unto the moaning of winds and the creaking of masts. With
+his eyes fixed on the beams above, Disko began this ancient, ancient
+ditty, Tom Platt flourishing all round him to make the tune and words
+fit a little:
+
+    "There is a crack packet--crack packet o' fame,
+    She hails from Noo York, an' the _Dreadnought's_ her name.
+    You may talk o' your fliers--Swallowtail and Black Ball--
+    But the _Dreadnought's_ the packet that can beat them all.
+    "Now the _Dreadnought_ she lies in the River Mersey,
+    Because of the tug-boat to take her to sea;
+    But when she's off soundings you shortly will know
+
+(Chorus.)
+
+    She's the Liverpool packet--O Lord, let her go!
+
+    "Now the _Dreadnought_ she's howlin' crost the Banks o' Newfoundland,
+    Where the water's all shallow and the bottom's all sand.
+    Sez all the little fishes that swim to and fro:
+
+(Chorus.)
+
+    'She's the Liverpool packet--O Lord, let her go!'",
+
+There were scores of verses, for he worked the _Dreadnought_ every mile
+of the way between Liverpool and New York as conscientiously as though
+he were on her deck, and the accordion pumped and the fiddle squeaked
+beside him. Tom Platt followed with something about "the rough and
+tough McGinn, who would pilot the vessel in." Then they called on
+Harvey, who felt very flattered, to contribute to the entertainment;
+but all that he could remember were some pieces of "Skipper Ireson's
+Ride" that he had been taught at the camp-school in the Adirondacks. It
+seemed that they might be appropriate to the time and place, but he had
+no more than mentioned the title when Disko brought down one foot with
+a bang, and cried, "Don't go on, young feller. That's a mistaken
+jedgment--one o' the worst kind, too, becaze it's catchin' to the ear."
+
+"I orter ha' warned you," said Dan. "Thet allus fetches Dad."
+
+"What's wrong?" said Harvey, surprised and a little angry.
+
+"All you're goin' to say," said Disko. "All dead wrong from start to
+finish, an' Whittier he's to blame. I have no special call to right any
+Marblehead man, but 'tweren't no fault o' Ireson's. My father he told
+me the tale time an' again, an' this is the way 'twuz."
+
+"For the wan hundredth time," put in Long Jack under his breath
+
+"Ben Ireson he was skipper o' the Betty, young feller, comin' home frum
+the Banks--that was before the war of 1812, but jestice is jestice at
+all times. They fund the Active o' Portland, an' Gibbons o' that town
+he was her skipper; they fund her leakin' off Cape Cod Light. There was
+a terr'ble gale on, an' they was gettin' the Betty home 's fast as they
+could craowd her. Well, Ireson he said there warn't any sense to
+reskin' a boat in that sea; the men they wouldn't hev it; and he laid
+it before them to stay by the Active till the sea run daown a piece.
+They wouldn't hev that either, hangin' araound the Cape in any sech
+weather, leak or no leak. They jest up stays'l an' quit, nat'rally
+takin' Ireson with 'em. Folks to Marblehead was mad at him not runnin'
+the risk, and becaze nex' day, when the sea was ca'am (they never
+stopped to think o' that), some of the Active's folks was took off by a
+Truro man. They come into Marblehead with their own tale to tell,
+sayin' how Ireson had shamed his town, an' so forth an' so on, an'
+Ireson's men they was scared, seein' public feelin' agin' 'em, an' they
+went back on Ireson, an' swore he was respons'ble for the hull act.
+'Tweren't the women neither that tarred and feathered him--Marblehead
+women don't act that way--'twas a passel o' men an' boys, an' they
+carted him araound town in an old dory till the bottom fell aout, and
+Ireson he told 'em they'd be sorry for it some day. Well, the facts
+come aout later, same's they usually do, too late to be any ways useful
+to an honest man; an' Whittier he come along an' picked up the slack
+eend of a lyin' tale, an' tarred and feathered Ben Ireson all over onct
+more after he was dead. 'Twas the only tune Whittier ever slipped up,
+an' 'tweren't fair. I whaled Dan good when he brought that piece back
+from school. You don't know no better, o' course; but I've give you the
+facts, hereafter an' evermore to be remembered. Ben Ireson weren't no
+sech kind o' man as Whittier makes aout; my father he knew him well,
+before an' after that business, an' you beware o' hasty jedgments,
+young feller. Next!"
+
+Harvey had never heard Disko talk so long, and collapsed with burning
+cheeks; but, as Dan said promptly, a boy could only learn what he was
+taught at school, and life was too short to keep track of every lie
+along the coast.
+
+Then Manuel touched the jangling, jarring little machette to a queer
+tune, and sang something in Portuguese about "Nina, innocente!" ending
+with a full-handed sweep that brought the song up with a jerk. Then
+Disko obliged with his second song, to an old-fashioned creaky tune,
+and all joined in the chorus. This is one stanza:
+
+    "Now Aprile is over and melted the snow,
+    And outer Noo Bedford we shortly must tow;
+    Yes, out o' Noo Bedford we shortly must clear,
+    We're the whalers that never see wheat in the ear."
+
+Here the fiddle went very softly for a while by itself, and then:
+
+    "Wheat-in-the-ear, my true-love's posy blowin,
+    Wheat-in-the-ear, we're goin' off to sea;
+    Wheat-in-the-ear, I left you fit for sowin,
+    When I come back a loaf o' bread you'll be!"
+
+That made Harvey almost weep, though he could not tell why. But it was
+much worse when the cook dropped the potatoes and held out his hands
+for the fiddle. Still leaning against the locker door, he struck into a
+tune that was like something very bad but sure to happen whatever you
+did. After a little he sang, in an unknown tongue, his big chin down on
+the fiddle-tail, his white eyeballs glaring in the lamplight. Harvey
+swung out of his bunk to hear better; and amid the straining of the
+timbers and the wash of the waters the tune crooned and moaned on, like
+lee surf in a blind fog, till it ended with a wail.
+
+"Jimmy Christmas! Thet gives me the blue creevles," said Dan. "What in
+thunder is it?"
+
+"The song of Fin McCoul," said the cook, "when he wass going to
+Norway." His English was not thick, but all clear-cut, as though it
+came from a phonograph.
+
+"Faith, I've been to Norway, but I didn't make that unwholesim noise.
+'Tis like some of the old songs, though," said Long Jack, sighing.
+
+"Don't let's hev another 'thout somethin' between," said Dan; and the
+accordion struck up a rattling, catchy tune that ended:
+
+    "It's six an' twenty Sundays sence las' we saw the land,
+    With fifteen hunder quintal,
+    An' fifteen hunder quintal,
+    'Teen hunder toppin' quintal,
+    'Twix' old 'Queereau an' Grand!"
+
+"Hold on!" roared Tom Platt. "D'ye want to nail the trip, Dan? That's
+Jonah sure, 'less you sing it after all our salt's wet."
+
+"No, 'tain't, is it, Dad? Not unless you sing the very las' verse. You
+can't learn me anything on Jonahs!"
+
+"What's that?" said Harvey. "What's a Jonah?"
+
+"A Jonah's anything that spoils the luck. Sometimes it's a
+man--sometimes it's a boy--or a bucket. I've known a splittin'-knife
+Jonah two trips till we was on to her," said Tom Platt. "There's all
+sorts o' Jonahs. Jim Bourke was one till he was drowned on Georges. I'd
+never ship with Jim Bourke, not if I was starvin'. There wuz a green
+dory on the Ezra Flood. Thet was a Jonah, too, the worst sort o' Jonah.
+Drowned four men, she did, an' used to shine fiery O, nights in the
+nest."
+
+"And you believe that?" said Harvey, remembering what Tom Platt had
+said about candles and models. "Haven't we all got to take what's
+served?"
+
+A mutter of dissent ran round the bunks. "Outboard, yes; inboard,
+things can happen," said Disko. "Don't you go makin' a mock of Jonahs,
+young feller."
+
+"Well, Harve ain't no Jonah. Day after we catched him," Dan cut in, "we
+had a toppin' good catch."
+
+The cook threw up his head and laughed suddenly--a queer, thin laugh.
+He was a most disconcerting nigger.
+
+"Murder!" said Long Jack. "Don't do that again, doctor. We ain't used
+to ut."
+
+"What's wrong?" said Dan. "Ain't he our mascot, and didn't they strike
+on good after we'd struck him?"
+
+"Oh! yess," said the cook. "I know that, but the catch iss not finish
+yet."
+
+"He ain't goin' to do us any harm," said Dan, hotly. "Where are ye
+hintin' an' edgin' to? He's all right."
+
+"No harm. No. But one day he will be your master, Danny."
+
+"That all?" said Dan, placidly. "He wun't--not by a jugful."
+
+"Master!" said the cook, pointing to Harvey. "Man!" and he pointed to
+Dan.
+
+"That's news. Haow soon?" said Dan, with a laugh.
+
+"In some years, and I shall see it. Master and man--man and master."
+
+"How in thunder d'ye work that out?" said Tom Platt.
+
+"In my head, where I can see."
+
+"Haow?" This from all the others at once.
+
+"I do not know, but so it will be." He dropped his head, and went on
+peeling the potatoes, and not another word could they get out of him.
+
+"Well," said Dan, "a heap o' things'll hev to come abaout 'fore Harve's
+any master o' mine; but I'm glad the doctor ain't choosen to mark him
+for a Jonah. Now, I mistrust Uncle Salters fer the Jonerest Jonah in
+the Fleet regardin' his own special luck. Dunno ef it's spreadin'
+same's smallpox. He ought to be on the _Carrie Pitman_. That boat's her
+own Jonah, sure--crews an' gear made no differ to her driftin'. Jiminy
+Christmas! She'll etch loose in a flat ca'am."
+
+"We're well clear o' the Fleet, anyway," said Disko. "_Carrie Pitman_ an'
+all." There was a rapping on the deck.
+
+"Uncle Salters has catched his luck," said Dan as his father departed.
+
+"It's blown clear," Disko cried, and all the foc'sle tumbled up for a
+bit of fresh air. The fog had gone, but a sullen sea ran in great
+rollers behind it. The _We're Here_ slid, as it were, into long, sunk
+avenues and ditches which felt quite sheltered and homelike if they
+would only stay still; but they changed without rest or mercy, and
+flung up the schooner to crown one peak of a thousand gray hills, while
+the wind hooted through her rigging as she zigzagged down the slopes.
+Far away a sea would burst into a sheet of foam, and the others would
+follow suit as at a signal, till Harvey's eyes swam with the vision of
+interlacing whites and grays. Four or five Mother Carey's chickens
+stormed round in circles, shrieking as they swept past the bows. A
+rain-squall or two strayed aimlessly over the hopeless waste, ran down
+'wind and back again, and melted away.
+
+"Seems to me I saw somethin' flicker jest naow over yonder," said Uncle
+Salters, pointing to the northeast.
+
+"Can't be any of the fleet," said Disko, peering under his eyebrows, a
+hand on the foc'sle gangway as the solid bows hatcheted into the
+troughs. "Sea's oilin' over dretful fast. Danny, don't you want to skip
+up a piece an' see how aour trawl-buoy lays?"
+
+Danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than climbed up the main
+rigging (this consumed Harvey with envy), hitched himself around the
+reeling cross-trees, and let his eye rove till it caught the tiny black
+buoy-flag on the shoulder of a mile-away swell.
+
+"She's all right," he hailed. "Sail O! Dead to the no'th'ard, comin'
+down like smoke! Schooner she be, too."
+
+They waited yet another half-hour, the sky clearing in patches, with a
+flicker of sickly sun from time to time that made patches of
+olive-green water. Then a stump-foremast lifted, ducked, and
+disappeared, to be followed on the next wave by a high stern with
+old-fashioned wooden snail's-horn davits. The snails were red-tanned.
+
+"Frenchmen!" shouted Dan. "No, 'tain't, neither. Da-ad!"
+
+"That's no French," said Disko. "Salters, your blame luck holds
+tighter'n a screw in a keg-head."
+
+"I've eyes. It's Uncle Abishai."
+
+"You can't nowise tell fer sure."
+
+"The head-king of all Jonahs," groaned Tom Platt. "Oh, Salters,
+Salters, why wasn't you abed an' asleep?"
+
+"How could I tell?" said poor Salters, as the schooner swung up.
+
+She might have been the very Flying Dutchman, so foul, draggled, and
+unkempt was every rope and stick aboard. Her old-style quarterdeck was
+some or five feet high, and her rigging flew knotted and tangled like
+weed at a wharf-end. She was running before the wind--yawing
+frightfully--her staysail let down to act as a sort of extra
+foresail,--"scandalized," they call it,--and her foreboom guyed out
+over the side. Her bowsprit cocked up like an old-fashioned frigate's;
+her jib-boom had been fished and spliced and nailed and clamped beyond
+further repair; and as she hove herself forward, and sat down on her
+broad tail, she looked for all the world like a blouzy, frouzy, bad old
+woman sneering at a decent girl.
+
+"That's Abishai," said Salters. "Full o' gin an' Judique men, an' the
+judgments o' Providence layin' fer him an' never takin' good holt He's
+run in to bait, Miquelon way."
+
+"He'll run her under," said Long Jack. "That's no rig fer this weather."
+
+"Not he, 'r he'd'a done it long ago," Disko replied. "Looks 's if he
+cal'lated to run us under. Ain't she daown by the head more 'n natural,
+Tom Platt?"
+
+"Ef it's his style o' loadin' her she ain't safe," said the sailor
+slowly. "Ef she's spewed her oakum he'd better git to his pumps mighty
+quick."
+
+The creature threshed up, wore round with a clatter and raffle, and lay
+head to wind within ear-shot.
+
+A gray-beard wagged over the bulwark, and a thick voice yelled
+something Harvey could not understand. But Disko's face darkened. "He'd
+resk every stick he hez to carry bad news. Says we're in fer a shift o'
+wind. He's in fer worse. Abishai! Abi-shai!" He waved his arm up and
+down with the gesture of a man at the pumps, and pointed forward. The
+crew mocked him and laughed.
+
+"Jounce ye, an' strip ye an' trip ye!" yelled Uncle Abishai. "A livin'
+gale--a livin' gale. Yab! Cast up fer your last trip, all you
+Gloucester haddocks. You won't see Gloucester no more, no more!"
+
+"Crazy full--as usual," said Tom Platt. "Wish he hadn't spied us,
+though."
+
+She drifted out of hearing while the gray-head yelled something about a
+dance at the Bay of Bulls and a dead man in the foc'sle. Harvey
+shuddered. He had seen the sloven tilled decks and the savage-eyed crew.
+
+"An' that's a fine little floatin' hell fer her draught," said Long
+Jack. "I wondher what mischief he's been at ashore."
+
+"He's a trawler," Dan explained to Harvey, "an' he runs in fer bait all
+along the coast. Oh, no, not home, he don't go. He deals along the
+south an' east shore up yonder." He nodded in the direction of the
+pitiless Newfoundland beaches. "Dad won't never take me ashore there.
+They're a mighty tough crowd--an' Abishai's the toughest. You saw his
+boat? Well, she's nigh seventy year old, they say; the last o' the old
+Marblehead heel-tappers. They don't make them quarterdecks any more.
+Abishai don't use Marblehead, though. He ain't wanted there. He jes'
+drif's araound, in debt, trawlin' an' cussin' like you've heard. Bin a
+Jonah fer years an' years, he hez. 'Gits liquor frum the Feecamp boats
+fer makin' spells an' selling winds an' such truck. Crazy, I guess."
+
+"'Twon't be any use underrunnin' the trawl to-night," said Tom Platt,
+with quiet despair. "He come alongside special to cuss us. I'd give my
+wage an' share to see him at the gangway o' the old Ohio 'fore we quit
+floggin'. Jest abaout six dozen, an' Sam Mocatta layin' 'em on
+criss-cross!"
+
+The disheveled "heel-tapper" danced drunkenly down wind, and all eyes
+followed her. Suddenly the cook cried in his phonograph voice: "It wass
+his own death made him speak so! He iss fey--fey, I tell you! Look!"
+She sailed into a patch of watery sunshine three or four miles distant.
+The patch dulled and faded out, and even as the light passed so did the
+schooner. She dropped into a hollow and--was not.
+
+"Run under, by the Great Hook-Block!" shouted Disko, jumping aft.
+"Drunk or sober, we've got to help 'em. Heave short and break her out!
+Smart!"
+
+Harvey was thrown on the deck by the shock that followed the setting of
+the jib and foresail, for they hove short on the cable, and to save
+time, jerked the anchor bodily from the bottom, heaving in as they
+moved away. This is a bit of brute force seldom resorted to except in
+matters of life and death, and the little _We're Here_ complained like
+a human. They ran down to where Abishai's craft had vanished; found two
+or three trawl-tubs, a gin-bottle, and a stove-in dory, but nothing
+more. "Let 'em go," said Disko, though no one had hinted at picking
+them up. "I wouldn't hev a match that belonged to Abishai aboard. Guess
+she run clear under. Must ha' been spewin' her oakum fer a week, an'
+they never thought to pump her. That's one more boat gone along o'
+leavin' port all hands drunk."
+
+"Glory be!" said Long Jack. "We'd ha' been obliged to help 'em if they
+was top o' water."
+
+"'Thinkin' o' that myself," said Tom Platt.
+
+"Fey! Fey!" said the cook, rolling his eyes. "He haas taken his own
+luck with him."
+
+"Ver' good thing, I think, to tell the Fleet when we see. Eh, wha-at?"
+said Manuel. "If you runna that way before the 'wind, and she work open
+her seams--" He threw out his hands with an indescribable gesture,
+while Penn sat down on the house and sobbed at the sheer horror and
+pity of it all. Harvey could not realize that he had seen death on the
+open waters, but he felt very sick. Then Dan went up the cross-trees,
+and Disko steered them back to within sight of their own trawl-buoys
+just before the fog blanketed the sea once again.
+
+"We go mighty quick hereabouts when we do go," was all he said to
+Harvey. "You think on that fer a spell, young feller. That was liquor."
+
+"After dinner it was calm enough to fish from the decks,--Penn and
+Uncle Salters were very zealous this time,--and the catch was large and
+large fish.
+
+"Abishai has shorely took his luck with him," said Salters. "The wind
+hain't backed ner riz ner nothin'. How abaout the trawl? I despise
+superstition, anyway."
+
+Tom Platt insisted that they had much better haul the thing and make a
+new berth. But the cook said: "The luck iss in two pieces. You will
+find it so when you look. I know." This so tickled Long Jack that he
+overbore Tom Platt and the two went out together.
+
+Underrunning a trawl means pulling it in on one side of the dory,
+picking off the fish, rebaiting the hooks, and passing them back to the
+sea again--something like pinning and unpinning linen on a wash-line.
+It is a lengthy business and rather dangerous, for the long, sagging
+line may twitch a boat under in a flash. But when they heard, "And naow
+to thee, O Capting," booming out of the fog, the crew of the _We're
+Here_ took heart. The dory swirled alongside well loaded, Tom Platt
+yelling for Manuel to act as relief-boat.
+
+"The luck's cut square in two pieces," said Long Jack, forking in the
+fish, while Harvey stood open-mouthed at the skill with which the
+plunging dory was saved from destruction. "One half was jest punkins.
+Tom Platt wanted to haul her an' ha' done wid ut; but I said, "I'll
+back the doctor that has the second sight, an' the other half come up
+sagging full o' big uns. Hurry, Man'nle, an' bring's a tub o' bait.
+There's luck afloat to-night."
+
+The fish bit at the newly baited hooks from which their brethren had
+just been taken, and Tom Platt and Long Jack moved methodically up and
+down the length of the trawl, the boat's nose surging under the wet
+line of hooks, stripping the sea-cucumbers that they called pumpkins,
+slatting off the fresh-caught cod against the gunwale, rebaiting, and
+loading Manuel's dory till dusk.
+
+"I'll take no risks," said Disko then--"not with him floatin' around so
+near. Abishai won't sink fer a week. Heave in the dories an' we'll
+dress daown after supper."
+
+That was a mighty dressing-down, attended by three or four blowing
+grampuses. It lasted till nine o'clock, and Disko was thrice heard to
+chuckle as Harvey pitched the split fish into the hold.
+
+"Say, you're haulin' ahead dretful fast," said Dan, when they ground
+the knives after the men had turned in. "There's somethin' of a sea
+to-night, an' I hain't heard you make no remarks on it."
+
+"Too busy," Harvey replied, testing a blade's edge. "Come to think of
+it, she is a high-kicker."
+
+The little schooner was gambolling all around her anchor among the
+silver-tipped waves. Backing with a start of affected surprise at the
+sight of the strained cable, she pounced on it like a kitten, while the
+spray of her descent burst through the hawse-holes with the report of a
+gun. Shaking her head, she would say: "Well, I'm sorry I can't stay any
+longer with you. I'm going North," and would sidle off, halting
+suddenly with a dramatic rattle of her rigging. "As I was just going to
+observe," she would begin, as gravely as a drunken man addressing a
+lamp-post. The rest of the sentence (she acted her words in dumb-show,
+of course) was lost in a fit of the fidgets, when she behaved like a
+puppy chewing a string, a clumsy woman in a side-saddle, a hen with her
+head cut off, or a cow stung by a hornet, exactly as the whims of the
+sea took her.
+
+"See her sayin' her piece. She's Patrick Henry naow," said Dan.
+
+She swung sideways on a roller, and gesticulated with her jib-boom from
+port to starboard.
+
+"But-ez-fer me, give me liberty-er give me-death!"
+
+Wop! She sat down in the moon-path on the water, courtesying with a
+flourish of pride impressive enough had not the wheel-gear sniggered
+mockingly in its box.
+
+Harvey laughed aloud. "Why, it's just as if she was alive," he said.
+
+"She's as stiddy as a haouse an' as dry as a herrin'," said Dan
+enthusiastically, as he was slung across the deck in a batter of spray.
+"Fends 'em off an' fends 'em off, an' 'Don't ye come anigh me,' she
+sez. Look at her--jest look at her! Sakes! You should see one o' them
+toothpicks histin' up her anchor on her spike outer fifteen-fathom
+water."
+
+"What's a toothpick, Dan?"
+
+"Them new haddockers an' herrin'-boats. Fine's a yacht forward, with
+yacht sterns to 'em, an' spike bowsprits, an' a haouse that 'u'd take
+our hold. I've heard that Burgess himself he made the models fer three
+or four of 'em. Dad's sot agin 'em on account o' their pitchin' an'
+joltin', but there's heaps o' money in 'em. Dad can find fish, but he
+ain't no ways progressive--he don't go with the march o' the times.
+They're chock-full o' labour-savin' jigs an' sech all. 'Ever seed the
+Elector o' Gloucester? She's a daisy, ef she is a toothpick."
+
+"What do they cost, Dan?"
+
+"Hills o' dollars. Fifteen thousand, p'haps; more, mebbe. There's
+gold-leaf an' everything you kin think of." Then to himself, half under
+his breath, "Guess I'd call her Hattie S., too."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+That was the first of many talks with Dan, who told Harvey why he would
+transfer his dory's name to the imaginary Burgess-modelled haddocker.
+Harvey heard a good deal about the real Hattie at Gloucester; saw a
+lock of her hair--which Dan, finding fair words of no avail, had
+"hooked" as she sat in front of him at school that winter--and a
+photograph. Hattie was about fourteen years old, with an awful contempt
+for boys, and had been trampling on Dan's heart through the winter. All
+this was revealed under oath of solemn secrecy on moonlit decks, in the
+dead dark, or in choking fog; the whining wheel behind them, the
+climbing deck before, and without, the unresting, clamorous sea. Once,
+of course, as the boys came to know each other, there was a fight,
+which raged from bow to stern till Penn came up and separated them, but
+promised not to tell Disko, who thought fighting on watch rather worse
+than sleeping. Harvey was no match for Dan physically, but it says a
+great deal for his new training that he took his defeat and did not try
+to get even with his conqueror by underhand methods.
+
+That was after he had been cured of a string of boils between his
+elbows and wrists, where the wet jersey and oilskins cut into the
+flesh. The salt water stung them unpleasantly, but when they were ripe
+Dan treated them with Disko's razor, and assured Harvey that now he was
+a "blooded Banker"; the affliction of gurry-sores being the mark of the
+caste that claimed him.
+
+Since he was a boy and very busy, he did not bother his head with too
+much thinking. He was exceedingly sorry for his mother, and often
+longed to see her and above all to tell her of this wonderful new life,
+and how brilliantly he was acquitting himself in it. Otherwise he
+preferred not to wonder too much how she was bearing the shock of his
+supposed death. But one day, as he stood on the foc'sle ladder, guying
+the cook, who had accused him and Dan of hooking fried pies, it
+occurred to him that this was a vast improvement on being snubbed by
+strangers in the smoking-room of a hired liner.
+
+He was a recognized part of the scheme of things on the We're Here; had
+his place at the table and among the bunks; and could hold his own in
+the long talks on stormy days, when the others were always ready to
+listen to what they called his "fairy-tales" of his life ashore. It did
+not take him more than two days and a quarter to feel that if he spoke
+of his own life--it seemed very far away--no one except Dan (and even
+Dan's belief was sorely tried) credited him. So he invented a friend, a
+boy he had heard of, who drove a miniature four-pony drag in Toledo,
+Ohio, and ordered five suits of clothes at a time and led things called
+"germans" at parties where the oldest girl was not quite fifteen, but
+all the presents were solid silver. Salters protested that this kind of
+yarn was desperately wicked, if not indeed positively blasphemous, but
+he listened as greedily as the others; and their criticisms at the end
+gave Harvey entirely new notions on "germans," clothes, cigarettes with
+gold-leaf tips, rings, watches, scent, small dinner-parties, champagne,
+card-playing, and hotel accommodation. Little by little he changed his
+tone when speaking of his "friend," whom Long Jack had christened "the
+Crazy Kid," "the Gilt-edged Baby," "the Suckin' Vanderpoop," and other
+pet names; and with his sea-booted feet cocked up on the table would
+even invent histories about silk pajamas and specially imported
+neckwear, to the "friend's" discredit. Harvey was a very adaptable
+person, with a keen eye and ear for every face and tone about him.
+
+Before long he knew where Disko kept the old greencrusted quadrant that
+they called the "hog-yoke"--under the bed-bag in his bunk. When he took
+the sun, and with the help of "The Old Farmer's" almanac found the
+latitude, Harvey would jump down into the cabin and scratch the
+reckoning and date with a nail on the rust of the stove-pipe. Now, the
+chief engineer of the liner could have done no more, and no engineer of
+thirty years' service could have assumed one half of the
+ancient-mariner air with which Harvey, first careful to spit over the
+side, made public the schooner's position for that day, and then and
+not till then relieved Disko of the quadrant. There is an etiquette in
+all these things.
+
+The said "hog-yoke," an Eldridge chart, the farming almanac, Blunt's
+"Coast Pilot," and Bowditch's "Navigator" were all the weapons Disko
+needed to guide him, except the deep-sea lead that was his spare eye.
+Harvey nearly slew Penn with it when Tom Platt taught him first how to
+"fly the blue pigeon"; and, though his strength was not equal to
+continuous sounding in any sort of a sea, for calm weather with a
+seven-pound lead on shoal water Disko used him freely. As Dan said:
+
+"'Tain't soundin's dad wants. It's samples. Grease her up good, Harve."
+Harvey would tallow the cup at the end, and carefully bring the sand,
+shell, sludge, or whatever it might be, to Disko, who fingered and
+smelt it and gave judgment As has been said, when Disko thought of cod
+he thought as a cod; and by some long-tested mixture of instinct and
+experience, moved the We're Here from berth to berth, always with the
+fish, as a blindfolded chess-player moves on the unseen board.
+
+But Disko's board was the Grand Bank--a triangle two hundred and fifty
+miles on each side--a waste of wallowing sea, cloaked with dank fog,
+vexed with gales, harried with drifting ice, scored by the tracks of
+the reckless liners, and dotted with the sails of the fishing-fleet.
+
+For days they worked in fog--Harvey at the bell--till, grown familiar
+with the thick airs, he went out with Tom Platt, his heart rather in
+his mouth. But the fog would not lift, and the fish were biting, and no
+one can stay helplessly afraid for six hours at a time. Harvey devoted
+himself to his lines and the gaff or gob-stick as Tom Platt called for
+them; and they rowed back to the schooner guided by the bell and Tom's
+instinct; Manuel's conch sounding thin and faint beside them. But it
+was an unearthly experience, and, for the first time in a month, Harvey
+dreamed of the shifting, smoking floors of water round the dory, the
+lines that strayed away into nothing, and the air above that melted on
+the sea below ten feet from his straining eyes. A few days later he was
+out with Manuel on what should have been forty-fathom bottom, but the
+whole length of the roding ran out, and still the anchor found nothing,
+and Harvey grew mortally afraid, for that his last touch with earth was
+lost. "Whale-hole," said Manuel, hauling in. "That is good joke on
+Disko. Come!" and he rowed to the schooner to find Tom Platt and the
+others jeering at the skipper because, for once, he had led them to the
+edge of the barren Whale-deep, the blank hole of the Grand Bank. They
+made another berth through the fog, and that time the hair of Harvey's
+head stood up when he went out in Manuel's dory. A whiteness moved in
+the whiteness of the fog with a breath like the breath of the grave,
+and there was a roaring, a plunging, and spouting. It was his first
+introduction to the dread summer berg of the Banks, and he cowered in
+the bottom of the boat while Manuel laughed. There were days, though,
+clear and soft and warm, when it seemed a sin to do anything but loaf
+over the hand-lines and spank the drifting "sun-scalds" with an oar;
+and there were days of light airs, when Harvey was taught how to steer
+the schooner from one berth to another.
+
+It thrilled through him when he first felt the keel answer to his band
+on the spokes and slide over the long hollows as the foresail scythed
+back and forth against the blue sky. That was magnificent, in spite of
+Disko saying that it would break a snake's back to follow his wake.
+But, as usual, pride ran before a fall. They were sailing on the wind
+with the staysail--an old one, luckily--set, and Harvey jammed her
+right into it to show Dan how completely he had mastered the art. The
+foresail went over with a bang, and the foregaff stabbed and ripped
+through the staysail, which was, of course, prevented from going over
+by the mainstay. They lowered the wreck in awful silence, and Harvey
+spent his leisure hours for the next few days under Tom Platt's lee,
+learning to use a needle and palm. Dan hooted with joy, for, as he
+said, he had made the very same blunder himself in his early days.
+
+Boylike, Harvey imitated all the men by turns, till he had combined
+Disko's peculiar stoop at the wheel, Long Jack's swinging overhand when
+the lines were hauled, Manuel's round-shouldered but effective stroke
+in a dory, and Tom Platt's generous Ohio stride along the deck.
+
+"'Tis beautiful to see how he takes to ut," said Long Jack, when Harvey
+was looking out by the windlass one thick noon. "I'll lay my wage an'
+share 'tis more'n half play-actin' to him, an' he consates himself he's
+a bowld mariner. Watch his little bit av a back now!"
+
+"That's the way we all begin," said Tom Platt. "The boys they make
+believe all the time till they've cheated 'emselves into bein' men, an'
+so till they die--pretendin' an' pretendin'. I done it on the old Ohio,
+I know. Stood my first watch--harbor-watch--feelin' finer'n Farragut.
+Dan's full o' the same kind o' notions. See 'em now, actin' to be
+genewine moss-backs--very hair a rope-yarn an' blood Stockholm tar." He
+spoke down the cabin stairs. "Guess you're mistook in your judgments
+fer once, Disko. What in Rome made ye tell us all here the kid was
+crazy?"
+
+"He wuz," Disko replied. "Crazy ez a loon when he come aboard; but I'll
+say he's sobered up consid'ble sence. I cured him."
+
+"He yarns good," said Tom Platt. "T'other night he told us abaout a kid
+of his own size steerin' a cunnin' little rig an' four ponies up an'
+down Toledo, Ohio, I think 'twas, an' givin' suppers to a crowd o'
+sim'lar kids. Cur'us kind o' fairy-tale, but blame interestin'. He
+knows scores of 'em."
+
+"Guess he strikes 'em outen his own head," Disko called from the cabin,
+where he was busy with the logbook. "Stands to reason that sort is all
+made up. It don't take in no one but Dan, an' he laughs at it. I've
+heard him, behind my back."
+
+"Yever hear what Sim'on Peter Ca'houn said when they whacked up a match
+'twix' his sister Hitty an' Lorin' Jerauld, an' the boys put up that
+joke on him daown to Georges?" drawled Uncle Salters, who was dripping
+peaceably under the lee of the starboard dory-nest.
+
+Tom Platt puffed at his pipe in scornful silence: he was a Cape Cod
+man, and had not known that tale more than twenty years. Uncle Salters
+went on with a rasping chuckie:
+
+"Sim'on Peter Ca'houn he said, an' he was jest right, abaout Lorin',
+'Ha'af on the taown,' he said, 'an' t'other ha'af blame fool; an' they
+told me she's married a 'ich man.' Sim'on Peter Ca'houn he hedn't no
+roof to his mouth, an' talked that way."
+
+"He didn't talk any Pennsylvania Dutch," Tom Platt replied. "You'd
+better leave a Cape man to tell that tale. The Ca'houns was gypsies
+frum 'way back."
+
+"Wal, I don't profess to be any elocutionist," Salters said. "I'm
+comin' to the moral o' things. That's jest abaout what aour Harve be!
+Ha'af on the taown, an' t'other ha'af blame fool; an' there's some'll
+believe he's a rich man. Yah!"
+
+"Did ye ever think how sweet 'twould be to sail wid a full crew o'
+Salterses?" said Long Jack. "Ha'af in the furrer an' other ha'af in the
+muck-heap, as Ca'houn did not say, an' makes out he's a fisherman!"
+
+A little laugh went round at Salters's expense.
+
+Disko held his tongue, and wrought over the log-book that he kept in a
+hatchet-faced, square hand; this was the kind of thing that ran on,
+page after soiled page:
+
+"July 17. This day thick fog and few fish. Made berth to northward. So
+ends this day.
+
+"July 18. This day comes in with thick fog. Caught a few fish.
+
+"July 19. This day comes in with light breeze from N.E. and fine
+weather. Made a berth to eastward. Caught plenty fish.
+
+"July 20. This, the Sabbath, comes in with fog and light winds. So ends
+this day. Total fish caught this week, 3,478."
+
+They never worked on Sundays, but shaved, and washed themselves if it
+were fine, and Pennsylvania sang hymns. Once or twice he suggested
+that, if it was not an impertinence, he thought he could preach a
+little. Uncle Salters nearly jumped down his throat at the mere notion,
+reminding him that he was not a preacher and mustn't think of such
+things. "We'd hev him rememberin' Johns-town next," Salters explained,
+"an' what would happen then?" so they compromised on his reading aloud
+from a book called "Josephus." It was an old leather-bound volume,
+smelling of a hundred voyages, very solid and very like the Bible, but
+enlivened with accounts of battles and sieges; and they read it nearly
+from cover to cover. Otherwise Penn was a silent little body. He would
+not utter a word for three days on end sometimes, though he played
+checkers, listened to the songs, and laughed at the stories. When they
+tried to stir him up, he would answer: "I don't wish to seem
+unneighbourly, but it is because I have nothing to say. My head feels
+quite empty. I've almost forgotten my name." He would turn to Uncle
+Salters with an expectant smile.
+
+"Why, Pennsylvania Pratt," Salters would shout "You'll fergit me next!"
+
+"No--never," Penn would say, shutting his lips firmly. "Pennsylvania
+Pratt, of course," he would repeat over and over. Sometimes it was
+Uncle Salters who forgot, and told him he was Haskins or Rich or
+McVitty; but Penn was equally content--till next time.
+
+He was always very tender with Harvey, whom he pitied both as a lost
+child and as a lunatic; and when Salters saw that Penn liked the boy,
+he relaxed, too. Salters was not an amiable person (He esteemed it his
+business to keep the boys in order); and the first time Harvey, in fear
+and trembling, on a still day, managed to shin up to the main-truck
+(Dan was behind him ready to help), he esteemed it his duty to hang
+Salters's big sea-boots up there--a sight of shame and derision to the
+nearest schooner. With Disko, Harvey took no liberties; not even when
+the old man dropped direct orders, and treated him, like the rest of
+the crew, to "Don't you want to do so and so?" and "Guess you'd
+better," and so forth. There was something about the clean-shaven lips
+and the puckered corners of the eyes that was mightily sobering to
+young blood.
+
+Disko showed him the meaning of the thumbed and pricked chart, which,
+he said, laid over any government publication whatsoever; led him,
+pencil in hand, from berth to berth over the whole string of banks--Le
+Have, Western, Banquereau, St. Pierre, Green, and Grand--talking "cod"
+meantime. Taught him, too, the principle on which the "hog-yoke" was
+worked.
+
+In this Harvey excelled Dan, for he had inherited a head for figures,
+and the notion of stealing information from one glimpse of the sullen
+Bank sun appealed to all his keen wits. For other sea-matters his age
+handicapped him. As Disko said, he should have begun when he was ten.
+Dan could bait up trawl or lay his hand on any rope in the dark; and at
+a pinch, when Uncle Salters had a gurry-score on his palm, could dress
+down by sense of touch. He could steer in anything short of half a gale
+from the feel of the wind on his face, humouring the _We're Here_ just
+when she needed it. These things he did as automatically as he skipped
+about the rigging, or made his dory a part of his own will and body.
+But he could not communicate his knowledge to Harvey.
+
+Still there was a good deal of general information flying about the
+schooner on stormy days, when they lay up in the foc'sle or sat on the
+cabin lockers, while spare eye-bolts, leads, and rings rolled and
+rattled in the pauses of the talk. Disko spoke of whaling voyages in
+the Fifties; of great she-whales slain beside their young; of death
+agonies on the black tossing seas, and blood that spurted forty feet in
+the air; of boats smashed to splinters; of patent rockets that went off
+wrong-end-first and bombarded the trembling crews; of cutting-in and
+boiling-down, and that terrible "nip" of '71, when twelve hundred men
+were made homeless on the ice in three days--wonderful tales, all true.
+But more wonderful still were his stories of the cod, and how they
+argued and reasoned on their private businesses deep down below the
+keel.
+
+Long Jack's tastes ran more to the supernatural. He held them silent
+with ghastly stories of the "Yo-hoes" on Monomoy Beach, that mock and
+terrify lonely clam-diggers; of sand-walkers and dune-haunters who were
+never properly buried; of hidden treasure on Fire Island guarded by the
+spirits of Kidd's men; of ships that sailed in the fog straight over
+Truro township; of that harbor in Maine where no one but a stranger
+will lie at anchor twice in a certain place because of a dead crew who
+row alongside at midnight with the anchor in the bow of their
+old-fashioned boat, whistling--not calling, but whistling--for the soul
+of the man who broke their rest.
+
+Harvey had a notion that the east coast of his native land, from Mount
+Desert south, was populated chiefly by people who took their horses
+there in the summer and entertained in country-houses with hardwood
+floors and Vantine portires. He laughed at the ghost-tales,--not as
+much as he would have done a month before,--but ended by sitting still
+and shuddering.
+
+Tom Platt dealt with his interminable trip round the Horn on the old
+Ohio in flogging days, with a navy more extinct than the dodo--the navy
+that passed away in the great war. He told them how red-hot shot are
+dropped into a cannon, a wad of wet clay between them and the
+cartridge; how they sizzle and reek when they strike wood, and how the
+little ship-boys of the Miss Jim Buck hove water over them and shouted
+to the fort to try again. And he told tales of blockade--long weeks of
+swaying at anchor, varied only by the departure and return of steamers
+that had used up their coal (there was no chance for the
+sailing-ships); of gales and cold that kept two hundred men, night and
+day, pounding and chopping at the ice on cable, blocks, and rigging,
+when the galley was as red-hot as the fort's shot, and men drank cocoa
+by the bucket. Tom Platt had no use for steam. His service closed when
+that thing was comparatively new. He admitted that it was a specious
+invention in time of peace, but looked hopefully for the day when sails
+should come back again on ten-thousand-ton frigates with
+hundred-and-ninety-foot booms.
+
+Manuel's talk was slow and gentle--all about pretty girls in Madeira
+washing clothes in the dry beds of streams, by moonlight, under waving
+bananas; legends of saints, and tales of queer dances or fights away in
+the cold Newfoundland baiting-ports. Salters was mainly agricultural;
+for, though he read "Josephus" and expounded it, his mission in life
+was to prove the value of green manures, and specially of clover,
+against every form of phosphate whatsoever. He grew libellous about
+phosphates; he dragged greasy "Orange Judd" books from his bunk and
+intoned them, wagging his finger at Harvey, to whom it was all Greek.
+Little Penn was so genuinely pained when Harvey made fun of Salters's
+lectures that the boy gave it up, and suffered in polite silence. That
+was very good for Harvey.
+
+The cook naturally did not join in these conversations. As a rule, he
+spoke only when it was absolutely necessary; but at times a queer gift
+of speech descended on him, and he held forth, half in Gaelic, half in
+broken English, an hour at a time. He was especially communicative with
+the boys, and he never withdrew his prophecy that one day Harvey would
+be Dan's master, and that he would see it. He told them of
+mail-carrying in the winter up Cape Breton way, of the dog-train that
+goes to Coudray, and of the ram-steamer _Arctic_, that breaks the ice
+between the mainland and Prince Edward Island. Then he told them
+stories that his mother had told him, of life far to the southward,
+where water never froze; and he said that when he died his soul would
+go to lie down on a warm white beach of sand with palm-trees waving
+above. That seemed to the boys a very odd idea for a man who had never
+seen a palm in his life. Then, too, regularly at each meal, he would
+ask Harvey, and Harvey alone, whether the cooking was to his taste; and
+this always made the "second half" laugh. Yet they had a great respect
+for the cook's judgment, and in their hearts considered Harvey
+something of a mascot by consequence.
+
+And while Harvey was taking in knowledge of new things at each pore and
+hard health with every gulp of the good air, the We're Here went her
+ways and did her business on the Bank, and the silvery-gray kenches of
+well-pressed fish mounted higher and higher in the hold. No one day's
+work was out of common, but the average days were many and close
+together.
+
+Naturally, a man of Disko's reputation was closely watched--"scrowged
+upon," Dan called it--by his neighbours, but he had a very pretty knack
+of giving them the slip through the curdling, glidy fog-banks. Disko
+avoided company for two reasons. He wished to make his own
+experiments, in the first place; and in the second, he objected to the
+mixed gatherings of a fleet of all nations. The bulk of them were
+mainly Gloucester boats, with a scattering from Provincetown, Harwich,
+Chatham, and some of the Maine ports, but the crews drew from goodness
+knows where. Risk breeds recklessness, and when greed is added there
+are fine chances for every kind of accident in the crowded fleet,
+which, like a mob of sheep, is huddled round some unrecognized leader.
+"Let the two Jeraulds lead 'em," said Disko. "We're baound to lay among
+'em for a spell on the Eastern Shoals; though ef luck holds, we won't
+hev to lay long. Where we are naow, Harve, ain't considered noways good
+graound."
+
+"Ain't it?" said Harvey, who was drawing water (he had learned just how
+to wiggle the bucket), after an unusually long dressing-down.
+"Shouldn't mind striking some poor ground for a change, then."
+
+"All the graound I want to see--don't want to strike her--is Eastern
+Point," said Dan. "Say, Dad, it looks's if we wouldn't hev to lay
+more'n two weeks on the Shoals. You'll meet all the comp'ny you want
+then, Harve. That's the time we begin to work. No reg'lar meals fer no
+one then. 'Mug-up when ye're hungry, an' sleep when ye can't keep
+awake. Good job you wasn't picked up a month later than you was, or
+we'd never ha' had you dressed in shape fer the Old Virgin."
+
+Harvey understood from the Eldridge chart that the Old Virgin and a
+nest of curiously named shoals were the turning-point of the cruise,
+and that with good luck they would wet the balance of their salt there.
+But seeing the size of the Virgin (it was one tiny dot), he wondered
+how even Disko with the hog-yoke and the lead could find her. He
+learned later that Disko was entirely equal to that and any other
+business and could even help others. A big four-by-five blackboard hung
+in the cabin, and Harvey never understood the need of it till, after
+some blinding thick days, they heard the unmelodious tooting of a
+foot-power fog-horn--a machine whose note is as that of a consumptive
+elephant.
+
+They were making a short berth, towing the anchor under their foot to
+save trouble. "Square-rigger bellowin' fer his latitude," said Long
+Jack. The dripping red head-sails of a bark glided out of the fog, and
+the _We're Here_ rang her bell thrice, using sea shorthand.
+
+The larger boat backed her topsail with shrieks and shoutings.
+
+"Frenchman," said Uncle Salters, scornfully. "Miquelon boat from St.
+Malo." The farmer had a weatherly sea-eye. "I'm 'most outer 'baccy,
+too, Disko."
+
+"Same here," said Tom Platt. "Hi! Backez vous--backez vous! Standez
+awayez, you butt-ended mucho-bono! Where you from--St. Malo, eh?"
+
+"Ah, ha! Mucho bono! Oui! oui! Clos Poulet--St. Malo! St. Pierre et
+Miquelon," cried the other crowd, waving woollen caps and laughing.
+Then all together, "Bord! Bord!"
+
+"Bring up the board, Danny. Beats me how them Frenchmen fetch
+anywheres, exceptin' America's fairish broadly. Forty-six forty-nine's
+good enough fer them; an' I guess it's abaout right, too."
+
+Dan chalked the figures on the board, and they hung it in the
+main-rigging to a chorus of mercis from the bark.
+
+"Seems kinder uneighbourly to let 'em swedge off like this," Salters
+suggested, feeling in his pockets.
+
+"Hev ye learned French then sence last trip?" said Disko. "I don't want
+no more stone-ballast hove at us 'long o' your callin' Miquelon boats
+'footy cochins,' same's you did off Le Have."
+
+"Harmon Rush he said that was the way to rise 'em. Plain United States
+is good enough fer me. We're all dretful short on terbakker. Young
+feller, don't you speak French?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Harvey valiantly; and he bawled: "Hi! Say! Arretez
+vous! Attendez! Nous sommes venant pour tabac."
+
+"Ah, tabac, tabac!" they cried, and laughed again.
+
+"That hit 'em. Let's heave a dory over, anyway," said Tom Platt. "I
+don't exactly hold no certificates on French, but I know another lingo
+that goes, I guess. Come on, Harve, an' interpret."
+
+The raffle and confusion when he and Harvey were hauled up the bark's
+black side was indescribable. Her cabin was all stuck round with
+glaring coloured prints of the Virgin--the Virgin of Newfoundland, they
+called her. Harvey found his French of no recognized Bank brand, and
+his conversation was limited to nods and grins. But Tom Platt waved his
+arms and got along swimmingly. The captain gave him a drink of
+unspeakable gin, and the opera-comique crew, with their hairy throats,
+red caps, and long knives, greeted him as a brother. Then the trade
+began. They had tobacco, plenty of it--American, that had never paid
+duty to France. They wanted chocolate and crackers. Harvey rowed back
+to arrange with the cook and Disko, who owned the stores, and on his
+return the cocoa-tins and cracker-bags were counted out by the
+Frenchman's wheel. It looked like a piratical division of loot; but Tom
+Platt came out of it roped with black pigtail and stuffed with cakes of
+chewing and smoking tobacco. Then those jovial mariners swung off into
+the mist, and the last Harvey heard was a gay chorus:
+
+    "Par derriere chez ma tante,
+    Il'y a un bois joli,
+    Et le rossignol y chante
+    Et le jour et la nuit....
+
+    Que donneriez vous, belle,
+    Qui l'amenerait ici?
+    Je donnerai Quebec,
+    Sorel et Saint Denis."
+
+"How was it my French didn't go, and your sign-talk did?" Harvey
+demanded when the barter had been distributed among the We're Heres.
+
+"Sign-talk!" Platt guffawed. "Well, yes, 'twas sign-talk, but a heap
+older'n your French, Harve. Them French boats are chockfull o'
+Freemasons, an' that's why."
+
+"Are you a Freemason, then?"
+
+"Looks that way, don't it?" said the man-o'-war's man, stuffing his
+pipe; and Harvey had another mystery of the deep sea to brood upon.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+The thing that struck him most was the exceedingly casual way in which
+some craft loafed about the broad Atlantic. Fishing-boats, as Dan said,
+were naturally dependent on the courtesy and wisdom of their
+neighbours; but one expected better things of steamers. That was after
+another interesting interview, when they had been chased for three
+miles by a big lumbering old cattle-boat, all boarded over on the upper
+deck, that smelt like a thousand cattle-pens. A very excited officer
+yelled at them through a speaking-trumpet, and she lay and lollopped
+helplessly on the water while Disko ran the _We're Here_ under her lee
+and gave the skipper a piece of his mind. "Where might ye be--eh? Ye
+don't deserve to be anywheres. You barn-yard tramps go hoggin' the road
+on the high seas with no blame consideration fer your neighbours, an'
+your eyes in your coffee-cups instid o' in your silly heads."
+
+At this the skipper danced on the bridge and said something about
+Disko's own eyes. "We haven't had an observation for three days. D'you
+suppose we can run her blind?" he shouted.
+
+"Wa-al, I can," Disko retorted. "What's come to your lead? Et it? Can't
+ye smell bottom, or are them cattle too rank?"
+
+"What d' ye feed 'em?" said Uncle Salters with intense seriousness, for
+the smell of the pens woke all the farmer in him. "They say they fall
+off dretful on a v'yage. Dunno as it's any o' my business, but I've a
+kind o' notion that oil-cake broke small an' sprinkled--"
+
+"Thunder!" said a cattle-man in a red jersey as he looked over the
+side. "What asylum did they let His Whiskers out of?"
+
+"Young feller," Salters began, standing up in the fore-rigging, "let me
+tell yeou 'fore we go any further that I've--"
+
+The officer on the bridge took off his cap with immense politeness.
+"Excuse me," he said, "but I've asked for my reckoning. If the
+agricultural person with the hair will kindly shut his head, the
+sea-green barnacle with the wall-eye may per-haps condescend to
+enlighten us."
+
+"Naow you've made a show o' me, Salters," said Disko, angrily. He could
+not stand up to that particular sort of talk, and snapped out the
+latitude and longitude without more lectures.
+
+"Well, that's a boat-load of lunatics, sure," said the skipper, as he
+rang up the engine-room and tossed a bundle of newspapers into the
+schooner.
+
+"Of all the blamed fools, next to you, Salters, him an' his crowd are
+abaout the likeliest I've ever seen," said Disko as the _We're Here_
+slid away. "I was jest givin' him my jedgment on lullsikin' round these
+waters like a lost child, an' you must cut in with your fool farmin'.
+Can't ye never keep things sep'rate?"
+
+Harvey, Dan, and the others stood back, winking one to the other and
+full of joy; but Disko and Salters wrangled seriously till evening,
+Salters arguing that a cattle-boat was practically a barn on blue
+water, and Disko insisting that, even if this were the case, decency
+and fisher-pride demanded that he should have kept "things sep'rate."
+Long Jack stood it in silence for a time,--an angry skipper makes an
+unhappy crew,--and then he spoke across the table after supper:
+
+"Fwhat's the good o' bodderin' fwhat they'll say?" said he.
+
+"They'll tell that tale agin us fer years--that's all," said Disko.
+"Oil-cake sprinkled!"
+
+"With salt, o' course," said Salters, impenitent, reading the farming
+reports from a week-old New York paper.
+
+"It's plumb mortifyin' to all my feelin's," the skipper went on.
+
+"Can't see ut that way," said Long Jack, the peacemaker "Look at here,
+Disko! Is there another packet afloat this day in this weather cud ha'
+met a tramp an' over an' above givin' her her reckonin',--over an'
+above that, I say,--cud ha' discoorsed wid her quite intelligent on the
+management av steers an' such at sea? Forgit ut! Av coorse they will
+not. 'Twas the most compenjus conversation that iver accrued. Double
+game an' twice runnin'--all to us." Dan kicked Harvey under the table,
+and Harvey choked in his cup.
+
+"Well," said Salters, who felt that his honour had been somewhat
+plastered, "I said I didn't know as 'twuz any business o' mine, 'fore I
+spoke."
+
+"An' right there," said Tom Platt, experienced in discipline and
+etiquette--"right there, I take it, Disko, you should ha' asked him to
+stop ef the conversation wuz likely, in your jedgment, to be
+anyways--what it shouldn't."
+
+"Dunno but that's so," said Disko, who saw his way to an honourable
+retreat from a fit of the dignities.
+
+"Why, o' course it was so," said Salters, "you bein' skipper here; an'
+I'd cheerful hev stopped on a hint--not from any leadin' or conviction,
+but fer the sake o' bearin' an example to these two blame boys of
+aours."
+
+"Didn't I tell you, Harve, 'twould come araound to us 'fore we'd done?
+Always those blame boys. But I wouldn't have missed the show fer a
+half-share in a halibutter," Dan whispered.
+
+"Still, things should ha' been kep' sep'rate," said Disko, and the
+light of new argument lit in Salters's eye as he crumbled cut plug into
+his pipe.
+
+"There's a power av vartue in keepin' things sep'rate," said Long Jack,
+intent on stilling the storm. "That's fwhat Steyning of Steyning and
+Hare's f'und when he sent Counahan fer skipper on the _Marilla D. Kuhn_,
+instid o' Cap. Newton that was took with inflam'try rheumatism an'
+couldn't go. Counahan the Navigator we called him."
+
+"Nick Counahan he never went aboard fer a night 'thout a pond o' rum
+somewheres in the manifest," said Tom Platt, playing up to the lead.
+"He used to bum araound the c'mission houses to Boston lookin' fer the
+Lord to make him captain of a tow-boat on his merits. Sam Coy, up to
+Atlantic Avenoo, give him his board free fer a year or more on account
+of his stories.
+
+"Counahan the Navigator! Tck! Tck! Dead these fifteen year, ain't he?"
+
+"Seventeen, I guess. He died the year the _Caspar McVeagh_ was built; but
+he could niver keep things sep'rate. Steyning tuk him fer the reason
+the thief tuk the hot stove--bekaze there was nothin' else that season.
+The men was all to the Banks, and Counahan he whacked up an iverlastin'
+hard crowd fer crew. Rum! Ye cud ha' floated the _Marilla_, insurance an'
+all, in fwhat they stowed aboard her. They lef' Boston Harbour for the
+great Grand Bank wid a roarin' nor'wester behind 'em an' all hands full
+to the bung. An' the hivens looked after thim, for divil a watch did
+they set, an' divil a rope did they lay hand to, till they'd seen the
+bottom av a fifteen-gallon cask o' bug-juice. That was about wan week,
+so far as Counahan remembered. (If I cud only tell the tale as he told
+ut!) All that whoile the wind blew like ould glory, an' the
+_Marilla_--'twas summer, and they'd give her a foretopmast--struck her
+gait and kept ut. Then Counahan tuk the hog-yoke an' thrembled over it
+for a whoile, an' made out, betwix' that an' the chart an' the singin'
+in his head, that they was to the south'ard o' Sable Island, gettin'
+along glorious, but speakin' nothin'. Then they broached another keg,
+an' quit speculatin' about anythin' fer another spell. The _Marilla_ she
+lay down whin she dropped Boston Light, and she never lufted her
+lee-rail up to that time--hustlin' on one an' the same slant. But they
+saw no weed, nor gulls, nor schooners; an' prisintly they obsarved
+they'd bin out a matter o' fourteen days and they mis-trusted the Bank
+has suspinded payment. So they sounded, an' got sixty fathom. 'That's
+me,' sez Counahan. 'That's me iv'ry time! I've run her slat on the Bank
+fer you, an' when we get thirty fathom we'll turn in like little men.
+Counahan is the b'y,' sez he. 'Counahan the Navigator!'
+
+"Nex' cast they got ninety. Sez Counahan: 'Either the lead-line's tuk
+to stretchin' or else the Bank's sunk.'
+
+"They hauled ut up, bein' just about in that state when ut seemed right
+an' reasonable, and sat down on the deck countin' the knots, an'
+gettin' her snarled up hijjus. The _Marilla_ she'd struck her gait, an'
+she hild ut, an' prisintly along came a tramp, an' Counahan spoke her.
+
+"'Hev ye seen any fishin'-boats now?' sez he, quite casual.
+
+"'There's lashin's av them off the Irish coast,' sez the tramp.
+
+"'Aah! go shake yerself,' sez Counahan. 'Fwhat have I to do wid the
+Irish coast?'
+
+"'Then fwhat are ye doin' here?' sez the tramp.
+
+"'Sufferin' Christianity!' sez Counahan (he always said that whin his
+pumps sucked an' he was not feelin' good)--'Sufferin' Christianity!' he
+sez, 'where am I at?'
+
+"'Thirty-five mile west-sou'west o' Cape Clear,' sez the tramp, 'if
+that's any consolation to you.'
+
+"Counahan fetched wan jump, four feet sivin inches, measured by the
+cook.
+
+"'Consolation!' sez he, bould as brass. 'D'ye take me fer a dialect?
+Thirty-five mile from Cape Clear, an' fourteen days from Boston Light.
+Sufferin' Christianity, 'tis a record, an' by the same token I've a
+mother to Skibbereen!' Think av ut! The gall av um! But ye see he could
+niver keep things sep'rate.
+
+"The crew was mostly Cork an' Kerry men, barrin' one Marylander that
+wanted to go back, but they called him a mutineer, an' they ran the
+ould _Marilla_ into Skibbereen, an' they had an illigant time visitin'
+around with frinds on the ould sod fer a week. Thin they wint back, an'
+it cost 'em two an' thirty days to beat to the Banks again. 'Twas
+gettin' on towards fall, and grub was low, so Counahan ran her back to
+Boston, wid no more bones to ut."
+
+"And what did the firm say?" Harvey demanded.
+
+"Fwhat could they? The fish was on the Banks, an' Counahan was at
+T-wharf talkin' av his record trip east! They tuk their satisfaction
+out av that, an' ut all came av not keepin' the crew and the rum
+sep'rate in the first place; an' confusin' Skibbereen wid 'Queereau, in
+the second. Counahan the Navigator, rest his sowl! He was an imprompju
+citizen!"
+
+"Once I was in the Lucy Holmes," said Manuel, in his gentle voice.
+"They not want any of her feesh in Gloucester. Eh, wha-at? Give us no
+price. So we go across the water, and think to sell to some Fayal man.
+Then it blow fresh, and we cannot see well. Eh, wha-at? Then it blow
+some more fresh, and we go down below and drive very fast--no one know
+where. By and by we see a land, and it get some hot. Then come two,
+three nigger in a brick. Eh, wha-at? We ask where we are, and they
+say--now, what you all think?"
+
+"Grand Canary," said Disko, after a moment. Manuel shook his head,
+smiling.
+
+"Blanco," said Tom Platt.
+
+"No. Worse than that. We was below Bezagos, and the brick she was from
+Liberia! So we sell our feesh there! Not bad, so? Eh, wha-at?"
+
+"Can a schooner like this go right across to Africa?" said Harvey.
+
+"Go araound the Horn ef there's anythin' worth goin' fer, and the grub
+holds aout," said Disko. "My father he run his packet, an' she was a
+kind o' pinkey, abaout fifty ton, I guess,--the Rupert,--he run her
+over to Greenland's icy mountains the year ha'af our fleet was tryin'
+after cod there. An' what's more, he took my mother along with him,--to
+show her haow the money was earned, I presoom,--an' they was all iced
+up, an' I was born at Disko. Don't remember nothin' abaout it, o'
+course. We come back when the ice eased in the spring, but they named
+me fer the place. Kinder mean trick to put up on a baby, but we're all
+baound to make mistakes in aour lives."
+
+"Sure! Sure!" said Salters, wagging his head. "All baound to make
+mistakes, an' I tell you two boys here thet after you've made a
+mistake--ye don't make fewer'n a hundred a day--the next best thing's
+to own up to it like men."
+
+Long Jack winked one tremendous wink that embraced all hands except
+Disko and Salters, and the incident was closed.
+
+Then they made berth after berth to the northward, the dories out
+almost every day, running along the east edge of the Grand Bank in
+thirty- to forty-fathom water, and fishing steadily.
+
+It was here Harvey first met the squid, who is one of the best
+cod-baits, but uncertain in his moods. They were waked out of their
+bunks one black night by yells of "Squid O!" from Salters, and for an
+hour and a half every soul aboard hung over his squid-jig--a piece of
+lead painted red and armed at the lower end with a circle of pins bent
+backward like half-opened umbrella ribs. The squid--for some unknown
+reason--likes, and wraps himself round, this thing, and is hauled up
+ere he can escape from the pins. But as he leaves his home he squirts
+first water and next ink into his captor's face; and it was curious to
+see the men weaving their heads from side to side to dodge the shot.
+They were as black as sweeps when the flurry ended; but a pile of fresh
+squid lay on the deck, and the large cod thinks very well of a little
+shiny piece of squid tentacle at the tip of a clam-baited hook. Next
+day they caught many fish, and met the _Carrie Pitman_, to whom they
+shouted their luck, and she wanted to trade--seven cod for one
+fair-sized squid; but Disko would not agree at the price, and the
+_Carrie_ dropped sullenly to leeward and anchored half a mile away, in
+the hope of striking on to some for herself.
+
+Disco said nothing till after supper, when he sent Dan and Manuel out
+to buoy the _We're Here's_ cable and announced his intention of turning
+in with the broad-axe. Dan naturally repeated these remarks to the dory
+from the _Carrie_, who wanted to know why they were buoying their cable,
+since they were not on rocky bottom.
+
+"Dad sez he wouldn't trust a ferryboat within five mile o' you," Dan
+howled cheerfully.
+
+"Why don't he git out, then? Who's hinderin'?" said the other.
+
+"'Cause you've jest the same ez lee-bowed him, an' he don't take that
+from any boat, not to speak o' sech a driftin' gurry-butt as you be."
+
+"She ain't driftin' any this trip," said the man angrily, for the
+_Carrie Pitman_ had an unsavory reputation for breaking her ground-tackle.
+
+"Then haow d'you make berths?" said Dan. "It's her best p'int o'
+sailin'. An' ef she's quit driftin', what in thunder are you doin' with
+a new jib-boom?" That shot went home.
+
+"Hey, you Portugoosy organ-grinder, take your monkey back to
+Gloucester. Go back to school, Dan Troop," was the answer.
+
+"O-ver-alls! O-ver-alls!" yelled Dan, who knew that one of the _Carrie's_
+crew had worked in an overall factory the winter before.
+
+"Shrimp! Gloucester shrimp! Git aout, you Novy!"
+
+To call a Gloucester man a Nova Scotian is not well received. Dan
+answered in kind.
+
+"Novy yourself, ye Scrabble-towners! ye Chatham wreckers! Git aout with
+your brick in your stockin'!" And the forces separated, but Chatham
+had the worst of it.
+
+"I knew haow 'twould be," said Disko. "She's drawed the wind raound
+already. Some one oughter put a deesist on thet packet. She'll snore
+till midnight, an' jest when we're gettin' our sleep she'll strike
+adrift. Good job we ain't crowded with craft hereaways. But I ain't
+goin' to up anchor fer Chatham. She may hold."
+
+The wind, which had hauled round, rose at sundown and blew steadily.
+There was not enough sea, though, to disturb even a dory's tackle, but
+the _Carrie Pitman_ was a law unto herself. At the end of the boys' watch
+they heard the crack-crack-crack of a huge muzzle-loading revolver
+aboard her.
+
+"Glory, glory, hallelujah!" sung Dan. "Here she comes, Dad; butt-end
+first, walkin' in her sleep same's she done on 'Queereau."
+
+Had she been any other boat Disko would have taken his chances, but now
+he cut the cable as the _Carrie Pitman_, with all the North Atlantic to
+play in, lurched down directly upon them. The _We're Here_, under jib
+and riding-sail, gave her no more room than was absolutely
+necessary,--Disko did not wish to spend a week hunting for his
+cable,--but scuttled up into the wind as the _Carrie_ passed within easy
+hail, a silent and angry boat, at the mercy of a raking broadside of
+Bank chaff.
+
+"Good evenin'," said Disko, raising his head-gear, "an' haow does your
+garden grow?"
+
+"Go to Ohio an' hire a mule," said Uncle Salters. "We don't want no
+farmers here."
+
+"Will I lend YOU my dory-anchor?" cried Long Jack.
+
+"Unship your rudder an' stick it in the mud," bawled Tom Platt.
+
+"Say!" Dan's voice rose shrill and high, as he stood on the wheel-box.
+"Sa-ay! Is there a strike in the o-ver-all factory; or hev they hired
+girls, ye Shackamaxons?"
+
+"Veer out the tiller-lines," cried Harvey, "and nail 'em to the
+bottom!" That was a salt-flavoured jest he had been put up to by Tom
+Platt. Manuel leaned over the stern and yelled: "Johanna Morgan play
+the organ! Ahaaaa!" He flourished his broad thumb with a gesture of
+unspeakable contempt and derision, while little Penn covered himself
+with glory by piping up: "Gee a little! Hssh! Come here. Haw!"
+
+They rode on their chain for the rest of the night, a short, snappy,
+uneasy motion, as Harvey found, and wasted half the forenoon recovering
+the cable. But the boys agreed the trouble was cheap at the price of
+triumph and glory, and they thought with grief over all the beautiful
+things that they might have said to the discomfited _Carrie_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Next day they fell in with more sails, all circling slowly from the
+east northerly towards the west. But just when they expected to make
+the shoals by the Virgin the fog shut down, and they anchored,
+surrounded by the tinklings of invisible bells. There was not much
+fishing, but occasionally dory met dory in the fog and exchanged news.
+
+That night, a little before dawn, Dan and Harvey, who had been sleeping
+most of the day, tumbled out to "hook" fried pies. There was no reason
+why they should not have taken them openly; but they tasted better so,
+and it made the cook angry. The heat and smell below drove them on deck
+with their plunder, and they found Disko at the bell, which he handed
+over to Harvey.
+
+"Keep her goin'," said he. "I mistrust I hear somethin'. Ef it's
+anything, I'm best where I am so's to get at things."
+
+It was a forlorn little jingle; the thick air seemed to pinch it off,
+and in the pauses Harvey heard the muffled shriek of a liner's siren,
+and he knew enough of the Banks to know what that meant. It came to
+him, with horrible distinctness, how a boy in a cherry-coloured
+jersey--he despised fancy blazers now with all a fisher-man's
+contempt--how an ignorant, rowdy boy had once said it would be "great"
+if a steamer ran down a fishing-boat. That boy had a stateroom with a
+hot and cold bath, and spent ten minutes each morning picking over a
+gilt-edged bill of fare. And that same boy--no, his very much older
+brother--was up at four of the dim dawn in streaming, crackling
+oilskins, hammering, literally for the dear life, on a bell smaller
+than the steward's breakfast-bell, while somewhere close at hand a
+thirty-foot steel stem was storming along at twenty miles an hour! The
+bitterest thought of all was that there were folks asleep in dry,
+upholstered cabins who would never learn that they had massacred a boat
+before breakfast. So Harvey rang the bell.
+
+"Yes, they slow daown one turn o' their blame propeller," said Dan,
+applying himself to Manuel's conch, "fer to keep inside the law, an'
+that's consolin' when we're all at the bottom. Hark to her! She's a
+humper!"
+
+"Aooo-whoo-whupp!" went the siren. "Wingle-tingle-tink," went the bell.
+"Graaa-ouch!" went the conch, while sea and sky were all mired up in
+milky fog. Then Harvey felt that he was near a moving body, and found
+himself looking up and up at the wet edge of a cliff-like bow, leaping,
+it seemed, directly over the schooner. A jaunty little feather of water
+curled in front of it, and as it lifted it showed a long ladder of
+Roman numerals-XV., XVI., XVII., XVIII., and so forth--on a
+salmon-coloured gleaming side. It tilted forward and downward with a
+heart-stilling "Ssssooo"; the ladder disappeared; a line of
+brass-rimmed port-holes flashed past; a jet of steam puffed in Harvey's
+helplessly uplifted hands; a spout of hot water roared along the rail
+of the _We're Here_, and the little schooner staggered and shook in a
+rush of screw-torn water, as a liner's stern vanished in the fog.
+Harvey got ready to faint or be sick, or both, when he heard a crack
+like a trunk thrown on a sidewalk, and, all small in his ear, a
+far-away telephone voice drawling: "Heave to! You've sunk us!"
+
+"Is it us?" he gasped.
+
+"No! Boat out yonder. Ring! We're goin' to look," said Dan, running out
+a dory.
+
+In half a minute all except Harvey, Penn, and the cook were overside
+and away. Presently a schooner's stump-foremast, snapped clean across,
+drifted past the bows. Then an empty green dory came by, knocking on
+the _We're Here's_ side, as though she wished to be taken in. Then
+followed something, face down, in a blue jersey, but--it was not the
+whole of a man. Penn changed colour and caught his breath with a click.
+Harvey pounded despairingly at the bell, for he feared they might be
+sunk at any minute, and he jumped at Dan's hail as the crew came back.
+
+"The Jennie Cushman," said Dan, hysterically, "cut clean in
+half--graound up an' trompled on at that! Not a quarter of a mile away.
+Dad's got the old man. There ain't any one else, and--there was his
+son, too. Oh, Harve, Harve, I can't stand it! I've seen--" He dropped
+his head on his arms and sobbed while the others dragged a gray-headed
+man aboard.
+
+"What did you pick me up for?" the stranger groaned. "Disko, what did
+you pick me up for?"
+
+Disko dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder, for the man's eyes were
+wild and his lips trembled as he stared at the silent crew. Then up and
+spoke Pennsylvania Pratt, who was also Haskins or Rich or McVitty when
+Uncle Salters forgot; and his face was changed on him from the face of
+a fool to the countenance of an old, wise man, and he said in a strong
+voice: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the
+name of the Lord! I was--I am a minister of the Gospel. Leave him to
+me."
+
+"Oh, you be, be you?" said the man. "Then pray my son back to me! Pray
+back a nine-thousand-dollar boat an' a thousand quintal of fish. If
+you'd left me alone my widow could ha' gone on to the Provident an'
+worked fer her board, an' never known--an' never known. Now I'll hev to
+tell her."
+
+"There ain't nothin' to say," said Disko. "Better lie down a piece,
+Jason Olley."
+
+When a man has lost his only son, his summer's work, and his means of
+livelihood, in thirty counted seconds, it is hard to give consolation.
+
+"All Gloucester men, wasn't they?" said Tom Platt, fiddling helplessly
+with a dory-becket.
+
+"Oh, that don't make no odds," said Jason, wringing the wet from his
+beard. "I'll be rowin' summer boarders araound East Gloucester this
+fall." He rolled heavily to the rail, singing:
+
+  "Happy birds that sing and fly
+  Round thine altars, O Most High!"
+
+"Come with me. Come below!" said Penn, as though he had a right to give
+orders. Their eyes met and fought for a quarter of a minute.
+
+"I dunno who you be, but I'll come," said Jason submissively. "Mebbe
+I'll get back some o' the--some o' the-nine thousand dollars." Penn led
+him into the cabin and slid the door behind.
+
+"That ain't Penn," cried Uncle Salters. "It's Jacob Boiler, an'--he's
+remembered Johnstown! I never seed such eyes in any livin' man's head.
+What's to do naow? What'll I do naow?"
+
+They could hear Penn's voice and Jason's together. Then Penn's went on
+alone, and Salters slipped off his hat, for Penn was praying. Presently
+the little man came up the steps, huge drops of sweat on his face, and
+looked at the crew. Dan was still sobbing by the wheel.
+
+"He don't know us," Salters groaned. "It's all to do over again,
+checkers and everything--an' what'll he say to me?"
+
+Penn spoke; they could hear that it was to strangers. "I have prayed,"
+said he. "Our people believe in prayer. I have prayed for the life of
+this man's son. Mine were drowned before my eyes--she and my eldest
+and--the others. Shall a man be more wise than his Maker? I prayed
+never for their lives, but I have prayed for this man's son, and he
+will surely be sent him."
+
+Salters looked pleadingly at Penn to see if he remembered.
+
+"How long have I been mad?" Penn asked suddenly. His mouth was
+twitching.
+
+"Pshaw, Penn! You weren't never mad," Salters began "Only a little
+distracted like."
+
+"I saw the houses strike the bridge before the fires broke out. I do
+not remember any more. How long ago is that?"
+
+"I can't stand it! I can't stand it!" cried Dan, and Harvey whimpered
+in sympathy.
+
+"Abaout five year," said Disko, in a shaking voice.
+
+"Then I have been a charge on some one for every day of that time. Who
+was the man?"
+
+Disko pointed to Salters.
+
+"Ye hain't--ye hain't!" cried the sea-farmer, twisting his hands
+together. "Ye've more'n earned your keep twice-told; an' there's money
+owin' you, Penn, besides ha'af o' my quarter-share in the boat, which
+is yours fer value received."
+
+"You are good men. I can see that in your faces. But--"
+
+"Mother av Mercy," whispered Long Jack, "an' he's been wid us all these
+trips! He's clean bewitched."
+
+A schooner's bell struck up alongside, and a voice hailed through the
+fog: "O Disko! 'Heard abaout the Jennie Cushman?"
+
+"They have found his son," cried Penn. "Stand you still and see the
+salvation of the Lord!"
+
+"Got Jason aboard here," Disko answered, but his voice quavered.
+"There--warn't any one else?"
+
+"We've fund one, though. 'Run acrost him snarled up in a mess o' lumber
+thet might ha' bin a foc'sle. His head's cut some."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+The _We're Here's_ heart-beats answered one another.
+
+"Guess it's young Olley," the voice drawled.
+
+Penn raised his hands and said something in German. Harvey could have
+sworn that a bright sun was shining upon his lifted face; but the drawl
+went on: "Sa-ay! You fellers guyed us consid'rable t'other night."
+
+"We don't feel like guyin' any now," said Disko.
+
+"I know it; but to tell the honest truth we was kinder--kinder driftin'
+when we run agin young Olley."
+
+It was the irrepressible _Carrie Pitman_, and a roar of unsteady laughter
+went up from the deck of the _We're Here_.
+
+"Hedn't you 'baout's well send the old man aboard? We're runnin' in fer
+more bait an' graound-tackle. Guess you won't want him, anyway, an'
+this blame windlass work makes us short-handed. We'll take care of him.
+He married my woman's aunt."
+
+"I'll give you anything in the boat," said Troop.
+
+"Don't want nothin', 'less, mebbe, an anchor that'll hold. Say! Young
+Olley's gittin' kinder baulky an' excited. Send the old man along."
+
+Penn waked him from his stupor of despair, and Tom Platt rowed him
+over. He went away without a word of thanks, not knowing what was to
+come; and the fog closed over all.
+
+"And now," said Penn, drawing a deep breath as though about to preach.
+"And now"--the erect body sank like a sword driven home into the
+scabbard; the light faded from the overbright eyes; the voice returned
+to its usual pitiful little titter--"and now," said Pennsylvania Pratt,
+"do you think it's too early for a little game of checkers, Mr.
+Salters?"
+
+"The very thing--the very thing I was goin' to say myself," cried
+Salters promptly. "It beats all, Penn, how ye git on to what's in a
+man's mind."
+
+The little fellow blushed and meekly followed Salters forward.
+
+"Up anchor! Hurry! Let's quit these crazy waters," shouted Disko, and
+never was he more swiftly obeyed.
+
+"Now what in creation d'ye suppose is the meanin' o' that all?" said
+Long Jack, when they were working through the fog once more, damp,
+dripping, and bewildered.
+
+"The way I sense it," said Disko, at the wheel, "is this: The Jennie
+Cushman business comin' on an empty stummick--"
+
+"H-he saw one of them go by," sobbed Harvey.
+
+"An' that, o' course, kinder hove him outer water, julluk runnin' a
+craft ashore; hove him right aout, I take it, to rememberin' Johnstown
+an' Jacob Boiler an' such-like reminiscences. Well, consolin' Jason
+there held him up a piece, same's shorin' up a boat. Then, bein' weak,
+them props slipped an' slipped, an' he slided down the ways, an' naow
+he's water-borne agin. That's haow I sense it."
+
+They decided that Disko was entirely correct.
+
+"'Twould ha' bruk Salters all up," said Long Jack, "if Penn had stayed
+Jacob Boilerin'. Did ye see his face when Penn asked who he'd been
+charged on all these years? How is ut, Salters?"
+
+"Asleep--dead asleep. Turned in like a child," Salters replied,
+tiptoeing aft. "There won't be no grub till he wakes, natural. Did ye
+ever see sech a gift in prayer? He everlastin'ly hiked young Olley
+outer the ocean. Thet's my belief. Jason was tur'ble praoud of his boy,
+an' I mistrusted all along 'twas a jedgment on worshippin' vain idols."
+
+"There's others jes as sot," said Disko.
+
+"That's difrunt," Salters retorted quickly. "Penn's not all caulked,
+an' I ain't only but doin' my duty by him."
+
+They waited, those hungry men, three hours, till Penn reappeared with a
+smooth face and a blank mind. He said he believed that he had been
+dreaming. Then he wanted to know why they were so silent, and they
+could not tell him.
+
+
+Disko worked all hands mercilessly for the next three or four days; and
+when they could not go out, turned them into the hold to stack the
+ship's stores into smaller compass, to make more room for the fish. The
+packed mass ran from the cabin partition to the sliding door behind the
+foc'sle stove; and Disko showed how there is great art in stowing cargo
+so as to bring a schooner to her best draft. The crew were thus kept
+lively till they recovered their spirits; and Harvey was tickled with a
+rope's end by Long Jack for being, as the Galway man said, "sorrowful
+as a sick cat over fwhat couldn't be helped." He did a great deal of
+thinking in those weary days, and told Dan what he thought, and Dan
+agreed with him--even to the extent of asking for fried pies instead of
+hooking them.
+
+But a week later the two nearly upset the Hattie S. in a wild attempt
+to stab a shark with an old bayonet tied to a stick. The grim brute
+rubbed alongside the dory begging for small fish, and between the three
+of them it was a mercy they all got off alive.
+
+At last, after playing blindman's-buff in the fog, there came a morning
+when Disko shouted down the foc'sle: "Hurry, boys! We're in taown!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+To the end of his days, Harvey will never forget that sight. The sun
+was just clear of the horizon they had not seen for nearly a week, and
+his low red light struck into the riding-sails of three fleets of
+anchored schooners--one to the north, one to the westward, and one to
+the south. There must have been nearly a hundred of them, of every
+possible make and build, with, far away, a square-rigged Frenchman, all
+bowing and courtesying one to the other. From every boat dories were
+dropping away like bees from a crowded hive, and the clamour of voices,
+the rattling of ropes and blocks, and the splash of the oars carried
+for miles across the heaving water. The sails turned all colours,
+black, pearly-gray, and white, as the sun mounted; and more boats swung
+up through the mists to the southward.
+
+The dories gathered in clusters, separated, reformed, and broke again,
+all heading one way; while men hailed and whistled and cat-called and
+sang, and the water was speckled with rubbish thrown overboard.
+
+"It's a town," said Harvey. "Disko was right. It IS a town!"
+
+"I've seen smaller," said Disko. "There's about a thousand men here;
+an' yonder's the Virgin." He pointed to a vacant space of greenish sea,
+where there were no dories.
+
+The _We're Here_ skirted round the northern squadron, Disko waving his
+hand to friend after friend, and anchored as nearly as a racing yacht
+at the end of the season. The Bank fleet pass good seamanship in
+silence; but a bungler is jeered all along the line.
+
+"Jest in time fer the caplin," cried the Mary Chilton.
+
+"'Salt 'most wet?" asked the King Philip.
+
+"Hey, Tom Platt! Come t' supper to-night?" said the Henry Clay; and so
+questions and answers flew back and forth. Men had met one another
+before, dory-fishing in the fog, and there is no place for gossip like
+the Bank fleet. They all seemed to know about Harvey's rescue, and
+asked if he were worth his salt yet. The young bloods jested with Dan,
+who had a lively tongue of his own, and inquired after their health by
+the town-nicknames they least liked. Manuel's countrymen jabbered at
+him in their own language; and even the silent cook was seen riding the
+jib-boom and shouting Gaelic to a friend as black as himself. After
+they had buoyed the cable--all around the Virgin is rocky bottom, and
+carelessness means chafed ground-tackle and danger from drifting--after
+they had buoyed the cable, their dories went forth to join the mob of
+boats anchored about a mile away. The schooners rocked and dipped at a
+safe distance, like mother ducks watching their brood, while the dories
+behaved like mannerless ducklings.
+
+As they drove into the confusion, boat banging boat, Harvey's ears
+tingled at the comments on his rowing. Every dialect from Labrador to
+Long Island, with Portuguese, Neapolitan, Lingua Franca, French, and
+Gaelic, with songs and shoutings and new oaths, rattled round him, and
+he seemed to be the butt of it all. For the first time in his life he
+felt shy--perhaps that came from living so long with only the _We're
+Heres_--among the scores of wild faces that rose and fell with the
+reeling small craft. A gentle, breathing swell, three furlongs from
+trough to barrel, would quietly shoulder up a string of variously
+painted dories. They hung for an instant, a wonderful frieze against
+the sky-line, and their men pointed and hailed. Next moment the open
+mouths, waving arms, and bare chests disappeared, while on another
+swell came up an entirely new line of characters like paper figures in
+a toy theatre. So Harvey stared. "Watch out!" said Dan, flourishing a
+dip-net "When I tell you dip, you dip. The caplin'll school any time
+from naow on. Where'll we lay, Tom Platt?"
+
+Pushing, shoving, and hauling, greeting old friends here and warning
+old enemies there, Commodore Tom Platt led his little fleet well to
+leeward of the general crowd, and immediately three or four men began
+to haul on their anchors with intent to lee-bow the _We're Heres_. But
+a yell of laughter went up as a dory shot from her station with
+exceeding speed, its occupant pulling madly on the roding.
+
+"Give her slack!" roared twenty voices. "Let him shake it out."
+
+"What's the matter?" said Harvey, as the boat flashed away to the
+southward. "He's anchored, isn't he?"
+
+"Anchored, sure enough, but his graound-tackle's kinder shifty," said
+Dan, laughing. "Whale's fouled it. . . . Dip Harve! Here they come!"
+
+The sea round them clouded and darkened, and then frizzed up in showers
+of tiny silver fish, and over a space of five or six acres the cod
+began to leap like trout in May; while behind the cod three or four
+broad gray-backs broke the water into boils.
+
+Then everybody shouted and tried to haul up his anchor to get among the
+school, and fouled his neighbour's line and said what was in his heart,
+and dipped furiously with his dip-net, and shrieked cautions and advice
+to his companions, while the deep fizzed like freshly opened
+soda-water, and cod, men, and whales together flung in upon the
+luckless bait. Harvey was nearly knocked overboard by the handle of
+Dan's net. But in all the wild tumult he noticed, and never forgot, the
+wicked, set little eye--something like a circus elephant's eye--of a
+whale that drove along almost level with the water, and, so he said,
+winked at him. Three boats found their rodings fouled by these reckless
+mid-sea hunters, and were towed half a mile ere their horses shook the
+line free.
+
+Then the caplin moved off, and five minutes later there was no sound
+except the splash of the sinkers overside, the flapping of the cod, and
+the whack of the muckles as the men stunned them. It was wonderful
+fishing. Harvey could see the glimmering cod below, swimming slowly in
+droves, biting as steadily as they swam. Bank law strictly forbids more
+than one hook on one line when the dories are on the Virgin or the
+Eastern Shoals; but so close lay the boats that even single hooks
+snarled, and Harvey found himself in hot argument with a gentle, hairy
+Newfoundlander on one side and a howling Portuguese on the other.
+
+Worse than any tangle of fishing-lines was the confusion of the
+dory-rodings below water. Each man had anchored where it seemed good to
+him, drifting and rowing round his fixed point. As the fish struck on
+less quickly, each man wanted to haul up and get to better ground; but
+every third man found himself intimately connected with some four or
+five neighbours. To cut another's roding is crime unspeakable on the
+Banks; yet it was done, and done without detection, three or four times
+that day. Tom Platt caught a Maine man in the black act and knocked him
+over the gunwale with an oar, and Manuel served a fellow-countryman in
+the same way. But Harvey's anchor-line was cut, and so was Penn's, and
+they were turned into relief-boats to carry fish to the _We're Here_ as
+the dories filled. The caplin schooled once more at twilight, when the
+mad clamour was repeated; and at dusk they rowed back to dress down by
+the light of kerosene-lamps on the edge of the pen.
+
+It was a huge pile, and they went to sleep while they were dressing.
+Next day several boats fished right above the cap of the Virgin; and
+Harvey, with them, looked down on the very weed of that lonely rock,
+which rises to within twenty feet of the surface. The cod were there in
+legions, marching solemnly over the leathery kelp. When they bit, they
+bit all together; and so when they stopped. There was a slack time at
+noon, and the dories began to search for amusement. It was Dan who
+sighted the Hope Of Prague just coming up, and as her boats joined the
+company they were greeted with the question: "Who's the meanest man in
+the Fleet?"
+
+Three hundred voices answered cheerily: "Nick Bra-ady." It sounded like
+an organ chant.
+
+"Who stole the lampwicks?" That was Dan's contribution.
+
+"Nick Bra-ady," sang the boats.
+
+"Who biled the salt bait fer soup?" This was an unknown backbiter a
+quarter of a mile away.
+
+Again the joyful chorus. Now, Brady was not especially mean, but he had
+that reputation, and the Fleet made the most of it. Then they
+discovered a man from a Truro boat who, six years before, had been
+convicted of using a tackle with five or six hooks--a "scrowger," they
+call it--in the Shoals. Naturally, he had been christened "Scrowger
+Jim"; and though he had hidden himself on the Georges ever since, he
+found his honours waiting for him full blown. They took it up in a sort
+of firecracker chorus: "Jim! O Jim! Jim! O Jim! Sssscrowger Jim!" That
+pleased everybody. And when a poetical Beverly man--he had been making
+it up all day, and talked about it for weeks--sang, "The _Carrie
+Pitman's_ anchor doesn't hold her for a cent" the dories felt that they
+were indeed fortunate. Then they had to ask that Beverly man how he was
+off for beans, because even poets must not have things all their own
+way. Every schooner and nearly every man got it in turn. Was there a
+careless or dirty cook anywhere? The dories sang about him and his
+food. Was a schooner badly found? The Fleet was told at full length.
+Had a man hooked tobacco from a mess-mate? He was named in meeting; the
+name tossed from roller to roller. Disko's infallible judgments, Long
+Jack's market-boat that he had sold years ago, Dan's sweetheart (oh,
+but Dan was an angry boy!), Penn's bad luck with dory-anchors, Salter's
+views on manure, Manuel's little slips from virtue ashore, and Harvey's
+ladylike handling of the oar--all were laid before the public; and as
+the fog fell around them in silvery sheets beneath the sun, the voices
+sounded like a bench of invisible judges pronouncing sentence.
+
+The dories roved and fished and squabbled till a swell underran the
+sea. Then they drew more apart to save their sides, and some one called
+that if the swell continued the Virgin would break. A reckless Galway
+man with his nephew denied this, hauled up anchor, and rowed over the
+very rock itself. Many voices called them to come away, while others
+dared them to hold on. As the smooth-backed rollers passed to the
+southward, they hove the dory high and high into the mist, and dropped
+her in ugly, sucking, dimpled water, where she spun round her anchor,
+within a foot or two of the hidden rock. It was playing with death for
+mere bravado; and the boats looked on in uneasy silence till Long Jack
+rowed up behind his countrymen and quietly cut their roding.
+
+"Can't ye hear ut knockin'?" he cried. "Pull for you miserable lives!
+Pull!"
+
+The men swore and tried to argue as the boat drifted; but the next
+swell checked a little, like a man tripping on a carpet. There was a
+deep sob and a gathering roar, and the Virgin flung up a couple of
+acres of foaming water, white, furious, and ghastly over the shoal sea.
+Then all the boats greatly applauded Long Jack, and the Galway men held
+their tongue.
+
+"Ain't it elegant?" said Dan, bobbing like a young seal at home.
+"She'll break about once every ha'af hour now, 'les the swell piles up
+good. What's her reg'lar time when she's at work, Tom Platt?"
+
+"Once ivry fifteen minutes, to the tick. Harve, you've seen the
+greatest thing on the Banks; an' but for Long Jack you'd seen some dead
+men too."
+
+There came a sound of merriment where the fog lay thicker and the
+schooners were ringing their bells. A big bark nosed cautiously out of
+the mist, and was received with shouts and cries of, "Come along,
+darlin'," from the Irishry.
+
+"Another Frenchman?" said Harvey.
+
+"Hain't you eyes? She's a Baltimore boat; goin' in fear an' tremblin',"
+said Dan. "We'll guy the very sticks out of her. Guess it's the fust
+time her skipper ever met up with the Fleet this way."
+
+She was a black, buxom, eight-hundred-ton craft. Her mainsail was
+looped up, and her topsail flapped undecidedly in what little wind was
+moving. Now a bark is feminine beyond all other daughters of the sea,
+and this tall, hesitating creature, with her white and gilt figurehead,
+looked just like a bewildered woman half lifting her skirts to cross a
+muddy street under the jeers of bad little boys. That was very much her
+situation. She knew she was somewhere in the neighbourhood of the
+Virgin, had caught the roar of it, and was, therefore, asking her way.
+This is a small part of what she heard from the dancing dories:
+
+"The Virgin? Fwhat are you talkin' of? 'This is Le Have on a Sunday
+mornin'. Go home an' sober up."
+
+"Go home, ye tarrapin! Go home an' tell 'em we're comin'."
+
+Half a dozen voices together, in a most tuneful chorus, as her stern
+went down with a roll and a bubble into the troughs:
+"Thay-aah-she-strikes!"
+
+"Hard up! Hard up fer your life! You're on top of her now."
+
+"Daown! Hard daown! Let go everything!"
+
+"All hands to the pumps!"
+
+"Daown jib an' pole her!"
+
+Here the skipper lost his temper and said things. Instantly fishing was
+suspended to answer him, and he heard many curious facts about his boat
+and her next port of call. They asked him if he were insured; and
+whence he had stolen his anchor, because, they said, it belonged to the
+_Carrie Pitman_; they called his boat a mud-scow, and accused him of
+dumping garbage to frighten the fish; they offered to tow him and
+charge it to his wife; and one audacious youth slipped up almost under
+the counter, smacked it with his open palm, and yelled: "Gid up, Buck!"
+
+The cook emptied a pan of ashes on him, and he replied with cod-heads.
+The bark's crew fired small coal from the galley, and the dories
+threatened to come aboard and "razee" her. They would have warned her
+at once had she been in real peril; but, seeing her well clear of the
+Virgin, they made the most of their chances. The fun was spoilt when
+the rock spoke again, a half-mile to windward, and the tormented bark
+set everything that would draw and went her ways; but the dories felt
+that the honours lay with them.
+
+All that night the Virgin roared hoarsely; and next morning, over an
+angry, white-headed sea, Harvey saw the Fleet with flickering masts
+waiting for a lead. Not a dory was hove out till ten o'clock, when the
+two Jeraulds of the Day's Eye, imagining a lull which did not exist,
+set the example. In a minute half the boats were out and bobbing in the
+cockly swells, but Troop kept the _We're Heres_ at work dressing down.
+He saw no sense in "dares"; and as the storm grew that evening they had
+the pleasure of receiving wet strangers only too glad to make any
+refuge in the gale. The boys stood by the dory-tackles with lanterns,
+the men ready to haul, one eye cocked for the sweeping wave that would
+make them drop everything and hold on for dear life. Out of the dark
+would come a yell of "Dory, dory!" They would hook up and haul in a
+drenched man and a half-sunk boat, till their decks were littered down
+with nests of dories and the bunks were full. Five times in their watch
+did Harvey, with Dan, jump at the foregaff where it lay lashed on the
+boom, and cling with arms, legs, and teeth to rope and spar and sodden
+canvas as a big wave filled the decks. One dory was smashed to pieces,
+and the sea pitched the man head first on to the decks, cutting his
+forehead open; and about dawn, when the racing seas glimmered white all
+along their cold edges, another man, blue and ghastly, crawled in with
+a broken hand, asking news of his brother. Seven extra mouths sat down
+to breakfast: A Swede; a Chatham skipper; a boy from Hancock, Maine;
+one Duxbury, and three Provincetown men.
+
+There was a general sorting out among the Fleet next day; and though no
+one said anything, all ate with better appetites when boat after boat
+reported full crews aboard. Only a couple of Portuguese and an old man
+from Gloucester were drowned, but many were cut or bruised; and two
+schooners had parted their tackle and been blown to the southward,
+three days' sail. A man died on a Frenchman--it was the same bark that
+had traded tobacco with the _We're Heres_. She slipped away quite
+quietly one wet, white morning, moved to a patch of deep water, her
+sails all hanging anyhow, and Harvey saw the funeral through Disko's
+spy-glass. It was only an oblong bundle slid overside. They did not
+seem to have any form of service, but in the night, at anchor, Harvey
+heard them across the star-powdered black water, singing something that
+sounded like a hymn. It went to a very slow tune.
+
+    "La brigantine
+    Qui va tourner,
+    Roule et s'incline
+    Pour m'entrainer.
+    Oh, Vierge Marie,
+    Pour moi priez Dieu!
+    Adieu, patrie;
+    Quebec, adieu!"
+
+Tom Platt visited her, because, he said, the dead man was his brother
+as a Freemason. It came out that a wave had doubled the poor fellow
+over the heel of the bowsprit and broken his back. The news spread like
+a flash, for, contrary to general custom, the Frenchman held an auction
+of the dead man's kit,--he had no friends at St Malo or Miquelon,--and
+everything was spread out on the top of the house, from his red knitted
+cap to the leather belt with the sheath-knife at the back. Dan and
+Harvey were out on twenty-fathom water in the Hattie S., and naturally
+rowed over to join the crowd. It was a long pull, and they stayed some
+little time while Dan bought the knife, which had a curious brass
+handle. When they dropped overside and pushed off into a drizzle of
+rain and a lop of sea, it occurred to them that they might get into
+trouble for neglecting the lines.
+
+"Guess 'twon't hurt us any to be warmed up," said Dan, shivering under
+his oilskins, and they rowed on into the heart of a white fog, which,
+as usual, dropped on them without warning.
+
+"There's too much blame tide hereabouts to trust to your instinks," he
+said. "Heave over the anchor, Harve, and we'll fish a piece till the
+thing lifts. Bend on your biggest lead. Three pound ain't any too much
+in this water. See how she's tightened on her rodin' already."
+
+There was quite a little bubble at the bows, where some irresponsible
+Bank current held the dory full stretch on her rope; but they could not
+see a boat's length in any direction. Harvey turned up his collar and
+bunched himself over his reel with the air of a wearied navigator. Fog
+had no special terrors for him now. They fished a while in silence, and
+found the cod struck on well. Then Dan drew the sheath-knife and tested
+the edge of it on the gunwale.
+
+"That's a daisy," said Harvey. "How did you get it so cheap?"
+
+"On account o' their blame Cath'lic superstitions," said Dan, jabbing
+with the bright blade. "They don't fancy takin' iron from off a dead
+man, so to speak. 'See them Arichat Frenchmen step back when I bid?"
+
+"But an auction ain't taking anythink off a dead man. It's business."
+
+"We know it ain't, but there's no goin' in the teeth o' superstition.
+That's one o' the advantages o' livin' in a progressive country." And
+Dan began whistling:
+
+    "Oh, Double Thatcher, how are you?
+    Now Eastern Point comes inter view.
+    The girls an' boys we soon shall see,
+    At anchor off Cape Ann!"
+
+"Why didn't that Eastport man bid, then? He bought his boots. Ain't
+Maine progressive?"
+
+"Maine? Pshaw! They don't know enough, or they hain't got money enough,
+to paint their haouses in Maine. I've seen 'em. The Eastport man he
+told me that the knife had been used--so the French captain told
+him--used up on the French coast last year."
+
+"Cut a man? Heave 's the muckle." Harvey hauled in his fish, rebaited,
+and threw over.
+
+"Killed him! Course, when I heard that I was keener'n ever to get it."
+
+"Christmas! I didn't know it," said Harvey, turning round. "I'll give
+you a dollar for it when I--get my wages. Say, I'll give you two
+dollars."
+
+"Honest? D'you like it as much as all that?" said Dan, flushing. "Well,
+to tell the truth, I kinder got it for you--to give; but I didn't let
+on till I saw how you'd take it. It's yours and welcome, Harve, because
+we're dory-mates, and so on and so forth, an' so followin'. Catch
+a-holt!"
+
+He held it out, belt and all.
+
+"But look at here. Dan, I don't see--"
+
+"Take it. 'Tain't no use to me. I wish you to hev it." The temptation
+was irresistible. "Dan, you're a white man," said Harvey. "I'll keep it
+as long as I live."
+
+"That's good hearin'," said Dan, with a pleasant laugh; and then,
+anxious to change the subject: "'Look's if your line was fast to
+somethin'."
+
+"Fouled, I guess," said Harve, tugging. Before he pulled up he fastened
+the belt round him, and with deep delight heard the tip of the sheath
+click on the thwart. "Concern the thing!" he cried. "She acts as though
+she were on strawberry-bottom. It's all sand here, ain't it?"
+
+Dan reached over and gave a judgmatic tweak. "Hollbut'll act that way
+'f he's sulky. Thet's no strawberry-bottom. Yank her once or twice. She
+gives, sure. Guess we'd better haul up an' make certain."
+
+They pulled together, making fast at each turn on the cleats, and the
+hidden weight rose sluggishly.
+
+"Prize, oh! Haul!" shouted Dan, but the shout ended in a shrill, double
+shriek of horror, for out of the sea came the body of the dead
+Frenchman buried two days before! The hook had caught him under the
+right armpit, and he swayed, erect and horrible, head and shoulders
+above water. His arms were tied to his side, and--he had no face. The
+boys fell over each other in a heap at the bottom of the dory, and
+there they lay while the thing bobbed alongside, held on the shortened
+line.
+
+"The tide--the tide brought him!" said Harvey with quivering lips, as
+he fumbled at the clasp of the belt.
+
+"Oh, Lord! Oh, Harve!" groaned Dan, "be quick. He's come for it. Let
+him have it. Take it off."
+
+"I don't want it! I don't want it!" cried Harvey. "I can't find the
+bu-buckle."
+
+"Quick, Harve! He's on your line!"
+
+Harvey sat up to unfasten the belt, facing the head that had no face
+under its streaming hair. "He's fast still," he whispered to Dan, who
+slipped out his knife and cut the line, as Harvey flung the belt far
+overside. The body shot down with a plop, and Dan cautiously rose to
+his knees, whiter than the fog.
+
+"He come for it. He come for it. I've seen a stale one hauled up on a
+trawl and I didn't much care, but he come to us special."
+
+"I wish--I wish I hadn't taken the knife. Then he'd have come on your
+line."
+
+"Dunno as thet would ha' made any differ. We're both scared out o' ten
+years' growth. Oh, Harve, did ye see his head?"
+
+"Did I? I'll never forget it. But look at here, Dan; it couldn't have
+been meant. It was only the tide."
+
+"Tide! He come for it, Harve. Why, they sunk him six miles to south'ard
+o' the Fleet, an' we're two miles from where she's lyin' now. They told
+me he was weighted with a fathom an' a half o' chain-cable."
+
+"Wonder what he did with the knife--up on the French coast?"
+
+"Something bad. 'Guess he's bound to take it with him to the Judgment,
+an' so-- What are you doin' with the fish?"
+
+"Heaving 'em overboard," said Harvey.
+
+"What for? We sha'n't eat 'em."
+
+"I don't care. I had to look at his face while I was takin' the belt
+off. You can keep your catch if you like. I've no use for mine."
+
+Dan said nothing, but threw his fish over again.
+
+"Guess it's best to be on the safe side," he murmured at last. "I'd
+give a month's pay if this fog 'u'd lift. Things go abaout in a fog
+that ye don't see in clear weather--yo-hoes an' hollerers and such
+like. I'm sorter relieved he come the way he did instid o' walkin'. He
+might ha' walked."
+
+"Don't, Dan! We're right on top of him now. 'Wish I was safe aboard,
+hem' pounded by Uncle Salters."
+
+"They'll be lookin' fer us in a little. Gimme the tooter." Dan took the
+tin dinner-horn, but paused before he blew.
+
+"Go on," said Harvey. "I don't want to stay here all night"
+
+"Question is, haow he'd take it. There was a man frum down the coast
+told me once he was in a schooner where they darsen't ever blow a horn
+to the dories, becaze the skipper--not the man he was with, but a
+captain that had run her five years before--he'd drowned a boy
+alongside in a drunk fit; an' ever after, that boy he'd row along-side
+too and shout, 'Dory! dory!' with the rest."
+
+"Dory! dory!" a muffled voice cried through the fog. They cowered
+again, and the horn dropped from Dan's hand.
+
+"Hold on!" cried Harvey; "it's the cook."
+
+"Dunno what made me think o' thet fool tale, either," said Dan. "It's
+the doctor, sure enough."
+
+"Dan! Danny! Oooh, Dan! Harve! Harvey! Oooh, Haarveee!"
+
+"We're here," sung both boys together. They heard oars, but could see
+nothing till the cook, shining and dripping, rowed into them.
+
+"What iss happened?" said he. "You will be beaten at home."
+
+"Thet's what we want. Thet's what we're sufferin' for" said Dan.
+"Anything homey's good enough fer us. We've had kinder depressin'
+company." As the cook passed them a line, Dan told him the tale.
+
+"Yess! He come for hiss knife," was all he said at the end.
+
+Never had the little rocking _We're Here_ looked so deliciously
+home-like as when the cook, born and bred in fogs, rowed them back to
+her. There was a warm glow of light from the cabin and a satisfying
+smell of food forward, and it was heavenly to hear Disko and the
+others, all quite alive and solid, leaning over the rail and promising
+them a first-class pounding. But the cook was a black; master of
+strategy. He did not get the dories aboard till he had given the more
+striking points of the tale, explaining as he backed and bumped round
+the counter how Harvey was the mascot to destroy any possible bad luck.
+So the boys came override as rather uncanny heroes, and every one asked
+them questions instead of pounding them for making trouble. Little Penn
+delivered quite a speech on the folly of superstitions; but public
+opinion was against him and in favour of Long Jack, who told the most
+excruciating ghost-stories, till nearly midnight. Under that influence
+no one except Salters and Penn said anything about "idolatry," when the
+cook put a lighted candle, a cake of flour and water, and a pinch of
+salt on a shingle, and floated them out astern to keep the Frenchman
+quiet in case he was still restless. Dan lit the candle because he had
+bought the belt, and the cook grunted and muttered charms as long as he
+could see the ducking point of flame.
+
+Said Harvey to Dan, as they turned in after watch:
+
+"How about progress and Catholic superstitions?"
+
+"Huh! I guess I'm as enlightened and progressive as the next man, but
+when it comes to a dead St. Malo deck-hand scarin' a couple o' pore
+boys stiff fer the sake of a thirty-cent knife, why, then, the cook can
+take hold fer all o' me. I mistrust furriners, livin' or dead."
+
+Next morning all, except the cook, were rather ashamed of the
+ceremonies, and went to work double tides, speaking gruffly to one
+another.
+
+The _We're Here_ was racing neck and neck for her last few loads
+against the Parry Norman; and so close was the struggle that the Fleet
+took side and betted tobacco. All hands worked at the lines or
+dressing-down till they fell asleep where they stood--beginning before
+dawn and ending when it was too dark to see. They even used the cook as
+pitcher, and turned Harvey into the hold to pass salt, while Dan helped
+to dress down.  Luckily a Parry Norman man sprained his ankle falling
+down the foc'sle, and the _We're Heres_ gained. Harvey could not see
+how one more fish could be crammed into her, but Disko and Tom Platt
+stowed and stowed, and planked the mass down with big stones from the
+ballast, and there was always "jest another day's work." Disko did not
+tell them when all the salt was wetted. He rolled to the lazarette aft
+the cabin and began hauling out the big mainsail. This was at ten in
+the morning. The riding-sail was down and the main- and topsail were up
+by noon, and dories came alongside with letters for home, envying their
+good fortune. At last she cleared decks, hoisted her flag,--as is the
+right of the first boat off the Banks,--up-anchored, and began to move.
+Disko pretended that he wished to accomodate folk who had not sent in
+their mail, and so worked her gracefully in and out among the
+schooners. In reality, that was his little triumphant procession, and
+for the fifth year running it showed what kind of mariner he was. Dan's
+accordion and Tom Platt's fiddle supplied the music of the magic verse
+you must not sing till all the salt is wet:
+
+    "Hih! Yih! Yoho! Send your letters raound!
+    All our salt is wetted, an' the anchor's off the graound!
+    Bend, oh, bend your mains'l, we're back to Yankeeland--
+        With fifteen hunder' quintal,
+        An' fifteen hunder' quintal,
+        'Teen hunder' toppin' quintal,
+    'Twix' old 'Queereau an' Grand."
+
+
+The last letters pitched on deck wrapped round pieces of coal, and the
+Gloucester men shouted messages to their wives and womenfolks and
+owners, while the _We're Here_ finished the musical ride through the
+Fleet, her headsails quivering like a man's hand when he raises it to
+say good-by.
+
+Harvey very soon discovered that the _We're Here_, with her
+riding-sail, strolling from berth to berth, and the _We're Here_ headed
+west by south under home canvas, were two very different boats. There
+was a bite and kick to the wheel even in "boy's" weather; he could feel
+the dead weight in the hold flung forward mightily across the surges,
+and the streaming line of bubbles overside made his eyes dizzy.
+
+Disko kept them busy fiddling with the sails; and when those were
+flattened like a racing yacht's, Dan had to wait on the big topsail,
+which was put over by hand every time she went about. In spare moments
+they pumped, for the packed fish dripped brine, which does not improve
+a cargo. But since there was no fishing, Harvey had time to look at the
+sea from another point of view. The low-sided schooner was naturally on
+most intimate terms with her surroundings. They saw little of the
+horizon save when she topped a swell; and usually she was elbowing,
+fidgeting, and coasting her steadfast way through gray, gray-blue, or
+black hollows laced across and across with streaks of shivering foam;
+or rubbing herself caressingly along the flank of some bigger
+water-hill. It was as if she said: "You wouldn't hurt me, surely? I'm
+only the little _We're Here_." Then she would slide away chuckling
+softly to herself till she was brought up by some fresh obstacle. The
+dullest of folk cannot see this kind of thing hour after hour through
+long days without noticing it; and Harvey, being anything but dull,
+began to comprehend and enjoy the dry chorus of wave-tops turning over
+with a sound of incessant tearing; the hurry of the winds working
+across open spaces and herding the purple-blue cloud-shadows; the
+splendid upheaval of the red sunrise; the folding and packing away of
+the morning mists, wall after wall withdrawn across the white floors;
+the salty glare and blaze of noon; the kiss of rain falling over
+thousands of dead, flat square miles; the chilly blackening of
+everything at the day's end; and the million wrinkles of the sea under
+the moonlight, when the jib-boom solemnly poked at the low stars, and
+Harvey went down to get a doughnut from the cook.
+
+But the best fun was when the boys were put on the wheel together, Tom
+Platt within hail, and she cuddled her lee-rail down to the crashing
+blue, and kept a little home-made rainbow arching unbroken over her
+windlass. Then the jaws of the booms whined against the masts, and the
+sheets creaked, and the sails filled with roaring; and when she slid
+into a hollow she trampled like a woman tripped in her own silk dress,
+and came out, her jib wet half-way up, yearning and peering for the
+tall twin-lights of Thatcher's Island.
+
+They left the cold gray of the Bank sea, saw the lumber-ships making
+for Quebec by the Straits of St. Lawrence, with the Jersey salt-brigs
+from Spain and Sicily; found a friendly northeaster off Artimon Bank
+that drove them within view of the East light of Sable Island,--a sight
+Disko did not linger over,--and stayed with them past Western and Le
+Have, to the northern fringe of George's. From there they picked up the
+deeper water, and let her go merrily.
+
+"Hattie's pulling on the string," Dan confided to Harvey. "Hattie an'
+Ma. Next Sunday you'll be hirin' a boy to throw water on the windows to
+make ye go to sleep. 'Guess you'll keep with us till your folks come.
+Do you know the best of gettin' ashore again?"
+
+"Hot bath?" said Harvey. His eyebrows were all white with dried spray.
+
+"That's good, but a night-shirt's better. I've been dreamin' o'
+night-shirts ever since we bent our mainsail. Ye can wiggle your toes
+then. Ma'll hev a new one fer me, all washed soft. It's home, Harve.
+It's home! Ye can sense it in the air. We're runnin' into the aidge of
+a hot wave naow, an' I can smell the bayberries. Wonder if we'll get in
+fer supper. Port a trifle."
+
+The hesitating sails flapped and lurched in the close air as the deep
+smoothed out, blue and oily, round them. When they whistled for a wind
+only the rain came in spiky rods, bubbling and drumming, and behind the
+rain the thunder and the lightning of mid-August. They lay on the deck
+with bare feet and arms, telling one another what they would order at
+their first meal ashore; for now the land was in plain sight. A
+Gloucester swordfish-boat drifted alongside, a man in the little pulpit
+on the bowsprit flourished his harpoon, his bare head plastered down
+with the wet. "And all's well!" he sang cheerily, as though he were
+watch on a big liner. "Wouverman's waiting fer you, Disko. What's the
+news o' the Fleet?"
+
+Disko shouted it and passed on, while the wild summer storm pounded
+overhead and the lightning flickered along the capes from four
+different quarters at once. It gave the low circle of hills round
+Gloucester Harbor, Ten Pound Island, the fish-sheds, with the broken
+line of house-roofs, and each spar and buoy on the water, in blinding
+photographs that came and went a dozen times to the minute as the
+_We're Here_ crawled in on half-flood, and the whistling-buoy moaned
+and mourned behind her. Then the storm died out in long, separated,
+vicious dags of blue-white flame, followed by a single roar like the
+roar of a mortar-battery, and the shaken air tingled under the stars as
+it got back to silence.
+
+"The flag, the flag!" said Disko, suddenly, pointing upward.
+
+"What is ut?" said Long Jack.
+
+"Otto! Ha'af mast. They can see us frum shore now."
+
+"I'd clean forgot. He's no folk to Gloucester, has he?"
+
+"Girl he was goin' to be married to this fall."
+
+"Mary pity her!" said Long Jack, and lowered the little flag half-mast
+for the sake of Otto, swept overboard in a gale off Le Have three
+months before.
+
+Disko wiped the wet from his eyes and led the _We're Here_ to
+Wouverman's wharf, giving his orders in whispers, while she swung round
+moored tugs and night-watchmen hailed her from the ends of inky-black
+piers. Over and above the darkness and the mystery of the procession,
+Harvey could feel the land close round him once more, with all its
+thousands of people asleep, and the smell of earth after rain, and the
+familiar noise of a switching-engine coughing to herself in a
+freight-yard; and all those things made his heart beat and his throat
+dry up as he stood by the foresheet. They heard the anchor-watch
+snoring on a lighthouse-tug, nosed into a pocket of darkness where a
+lantern glimmered on either side; somebody waked with a grunt, threw
+them a rope, and they made fast to a silent wharf flanked with great
+iron-roofed sheds fall of warm emptiness, and lay there without a sound.
+
+Then Harvey sat down by the wheel, and sobbed and sobbed as though his
+heart would break, and a tall woman who had been sitting on a
+weigh-scale dropped down into the schooner and kissed Dan once on the
+cheek; for she was his mother, and she had seen the _We're Here_ by the
+lightning flashes. She took no notice of Harvey till he had recovered
+himself a little and Disko had told her his story. Then they went to
+Disko's house together as the dawn was breaking; and until the
+telegraph office was open and he could wire his folk, Harvey Cheyne was
+perhaps the loneliest boy in all America. But the curious thing was
+that Disko and Dan seemed to think none the worse of him for crying.
+
+Wouverman was not ready for Disko's prices till Disko, sure that the
+_We're Here_ was at least a week ahead of any other Gloucester boat,
+had given him a few days to swallow them; so all hands played about the
+streets, and Long Jack stopped the Rocky Neck trolley, on principle, as
+he said, till the conductor let him ride free. But Dan went about with
+his freckled nose in the air, bung-full of mystery and most haughty to
+his family.
+
+"Dan, I'll hev to lay inter you ef you act this way," said Troop,
+pensively. "Sence we've come ashore this time you've bin a heap too
+fresh."
+
+"I'd lay into him naow ef he was mine," said Uncle Salters, sourly. He
+and Penn boarded with the Troops.
+
+"Oho!" said Dan, shuffling with the accordion round the backyard, ready
+to leap the fence if the enemy advanced. "Dad, you're welcome to your
+own judgment, but remember I've warned ye. Your own flesh an' blood ha'
+warned ye! 'Tain't any o' my fault ef you're mistook, but I'll be on
+deck to watch ye. An' ez fer yeou, Uncle Salters, Pharaoh's chief
+butler ain't in it 'longside o' you! You watch aout an' wait. You'll be
+plowed under like your own blamed clover; but me--Dan Troop--I'll
+flourish like a green bay-tree because I warn't stuck on my own
+opinion."
+
+Disko was smoking in all his shore dignity and a pair of beautiful
+carpet-slippers. "You're gettin' ez crazy as poor Harve. You two go
+araound gigglin' an' squinchin' an' kickin' each other under the table
+till there's no peace in the haouse," said he.
+
+"There's goin' to be a heap less--fer some folks," Dan replied. "You
+wait an' see."
+
+He and Harvey went out on the trolley to East Gloucester, where they
+tramped through the bayberry bushes to the lighthouse, and lay down on
+the big red boulders and laughed themselves hungry. Harvey had shown
+Dan a telegram, and the two swore to keep silence till the shell burst.
+
+"Harve's folk?" said Dan, with an unruffled face after supper. "Well, I
+guess they don't amount to much of anything, or we'd ha' heard from 'em
+by naow. His pop keeps a kind o' store out West. Maybe he'll give you
+'s much as five dollars, Dad."
+
+"What did I tell ye?" said Salters. "Don't sputter over your vittles,
+Dan."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Whatever his private sorrows may be, a multimillionaire, like any other
+workingman, should keep abreast of his business. Harvey Cheyne, senior,
+had gone East late in June to meet a woman broken down, half mad, who
+dreamed day and night of her son drowning in the gray seas. He had
+surrounded her with doctors, trained nurses, massage-women, and even
+faith-cure companions, but they were useless. Mrs. Cheyne lay still and
+moaned, or talked of her boy by the hour together to any one who would
+listen. Hope she had none, and who could offer it? All she needed was
+assurance that drowning did not hurt; and her husband watched to guard
+lest she should make the experiment. Of his own sorrow he spoke
+little--hardly realized the depth of it till he caught himself asking
+the calendar on his writing-desk, "What's the use of going on?"
+
+There had always lain a pleasant notion at the back of his head that,
+some day, when he had rounded off everything and the boy had left
+college, he would take his son to his heart and lead him into his
+possessions. Then that boy, he argued, as busy fathers do, would
+instantly become his companion, partner, and ally, and there would
+follow splendid years of great works carried out together--the old head
+backing the young fire. Now his boy was dead--lost at sea, as it might
+have been a Swede sailor from one of Cheyne's big teaships; the wife
+dying, or worse; he himself was trodden down by platoons of women and
+doctors and maids and attendants; worried almost beyond endurance by
+the shift and change of her poor restless whims; hopeless, with no
+heart to meet his many enemies.
+
+He had taken the wife to his raw new palace in San Diego, where she and
+her people occupied a wing of great price, and Cheyne, in a
+veranda-room, between a secretary and a typewriter, who was also a
+telegraphist, toiled along wearily from day to day. There was a war of
+rates among four Western railroads in which he was supposed to be
+interested; a devastating strike had developed in his lumber camps in
+Oregon, and the legislature of the State of California, which has no
+love for its makers, was preparing open war against him.
+
+Ordinarily he would have accepted battle ere it was offered, and have
+waged a pleasant and unscrupulous campaign. But now he sat limply, his
+soft black hat pushed forward on to his nose, his big body shrunk
+inside his loose clothes, staring at his boots or the Chinese junks in
+the bay, and assenting absently to the secretary's questions as he
+opened the Saturday mail.
+
+Cheyne was wondering how much it would cost to drop everything and pull
+out. He carried huge insurances, could buy himself royal annuities, and
+between one of his places in Colorado and a little society (that would
+do the wife good), say in Washington and the South Carolina islands, a
+man might forget plans that had come to nothing. On the other hand--
+
+The click of the typewriter stopped; the girl was looking at the
+secretary, who had turned white.
+
+He passed Cheyne a telegram repeated from San Francisco:
+
+Picked up by fishing schooner _We're Here_ having fallen off boat great
+times on Banks fishing all well waiting Gloucester Mass care Disko
+Troop for money or orders wire what shall do and how is Mama Harvey N.
+Cheyne.
+
+The father let it fall, laid his head down on the roller-top of the
+shut desk, and breathed heavily. The secretary ran for Mrs. Cheyne's
+doctor who found Cheyne pacing to and fro.
+
+"What--what d' you think of it? Is it possible? Is there any meaning to
+it? I can't quite make it out," he cried.
+
+"I can," said the doctor. "I lose seven thousand a year--that's all."
+He thought of the struggling New York practice he had dropped at
+Cheyne's imperious bidding, and returned the telegram with a sigh.
+
+"You mean you'd tell her? 'May be a fraud?"
+
+"What's the motive?" said the doctor, coolly. "Detection's too certain.
+It's the boy sure enough."
+
+Enter a French maid, impudently, as an indispensable one who is kept on
+only by large wages.
+
+"Mrs. Cheyne she say you must come at once. She think you are seek."
+
+The master of thirty millions bowed his head meekly and followed
+Suzanne; and a thin, high voice on the upper landing of the great
+white-wood square staircase cried: "What is it? What has happened?"
+
+No doors could keep out the shriek that rang through the echoing house
+a moment later, when her husband blurted out the news.
+
+"And that's all right," said the doctor, serenely, to the typewriter.
+"About the only medical statement in novels with any truth to it is
+that joy don't kill, Miss Kinzey."
+
+"I know it; but we've a heap to do first." Miss Kinzey was from
+Milwaukee, somewhat direct of speech; and as her fancy leaned towards
+the secretary, she divined there was work in hand. He was looking
+earnestly at the vast roller-map of America on the wall.
+
+"Milsom, we're going right across. Private car--straight
+through--Boston. Fix the connections," shouted Cheyne down the
+staircase.
+
+"I thought so."
+
+The secretary turned to the typewriter, and their eyes met (out of that
+was born a story--nothing to do with this story). She looked
+inquiringly, doubtful of his resources. He signed to her to move to the
+Morse as a general brings brigades into action. Then he swept his hand
+musician-wise through his hair, regarded the ceiling, and set to work,
+while Miss Kinzey's white fingers called up the Continent of America.
+
+"_K. H. Wade, Los Angeles--_ The 'Constance' is at Los Angeles, isn't she,
+Miss Kinzey?"
+
+"Yep." Miss Kinzey nodded between clicks as the secretary looked at his
+watch.
+
+"Ready? _Send 'Constance,' private car, here, and arrange for special to
+leave here Sunday in time to connect with New York Limited at Sixteenth
+Street, Chicago, Tuesday next_."
+
+Click-click-click! "Couldn't you better that?"
+
+"Not on those grades. That gives 'em sixty hours from here to Chicago.
+They won't gain anything by taking a special east of that. Ready? _Also
+arrange with Lake Shore and Michigan Southern to take 'Constance' on
+New York Central and Hudson River Buffalo to Albany, and B. and A. the
+same Albany to Boston. Indispensable I should reach Boston Wednesday
+evening. Be sure nothing prevents. Have also wired Canniff, Toucey, and
+Barnes._--Sign, Cheyne."
+
+Miss Kinzey nodded, and the secretary went on.
+
+"Now then. Canniff, Toucey, and Barnes, of course. Ready? _Canniff,
+Chicago. Please take my private car 'Constance' from Santa Fe at
+Sixteenth Street next Tuesday p. m. on N. Y. Limited through to Buffalo
+and deliver N. Y. C. for Albany._--Ever bin to N' York, Miss Kinzey?
+We'll go some day.--Ready? _Take car Buffalo to Albany on Limited
+Tuesday p. m._ That's for Toucey."
+
+"Haven't bin to Noo York, but I know that!" with a toss of the head.
+
+"Beg pardon. Now, Boston and Albany, Barnes, same instructions from
+Albany through to Boston. Leave three-five P. M. (you needn't wire
+that); arrive nine-five P. M. Wednesday. That covers everything Wade
+will do, but it pays to shake up the managers."
+
+"It's great," said Miss Kinzey, with a look of admiration. This was the
+kind of man she understood and appreciated.
+
+"'Tisn't bad," said Milsom, modestly. "Now, any one but me would have
+lost thirty hours and spent a week working out the run, instead of
+handing him over to the Santa Fe straight through to Chicago."
+
+"But see here, about that Noo York Limited. Chauncey Depew himself
+couldn't hitch his car to her," Miss Kinzey suggested, recovering
+herself.
+
+"Yes, but this isn't Chauncey. It's Cheyne--lightning. It goes."
+
+"Even so. Guess we'd better wire the boy. You've forgotten that,
+anyhow."
+
+"I'll ask."
+
+When he returned with the father's message bidding Harvey meet them in
+Boston at an appointed hour, he found Miss Kinzey laughing over the
+keys. Then Milsom laughed too, for the frantic clicks from Los Angeles
+ran: "We want to know why-why-why? General uneasiness developed and
+spreading."
+
+Ten minutes later Chicago appealed to Miss Kinzey in these words: "If
+crime of century is maturing please warn friends in time. We are all
+getting to cover here."
+
+This was capped by a message from Topeka (and wherein Topeka was
+concerned even Milsom could not guess): "Don't shoot, Colonel. We'll
+come down."
+
+Cheyne smiled grimly at the consternation of his enemies when the
+telegrams were laid before him. "They think we're on the warpath. Tell
+'em we don't feel like fighting just now, Milsom. Tell 'em what we're
+going for. I guess you and Miss Kinsey had better come along, though it
+isn't likely I shall do any business on the road. Tell 'em the
+truth--for once."
+
+So the truth was told. Miss Kinzey clicked in the sentiment while the
+secretary added the memorable quotation, "Let us have peace," and in
+board rooms two thousand miles away the representatives of sixty-three
+million dollars' worth of variously manipulated railroad interests
+breathed more freely. Cheyne was flying to meet the only son, so
+miraculously restored to him. The bear was seeking his cub, not the
+bulls. Hard men who had their knives drawn to fight for their financial
+lives put away the weapons and wished him God-speed, while half a dozen
+panic-smitten tin-pot toads perked up their heads and spoke of the
+wonderful things they would have done had not Cheyne buried the hatchet.
+
+It was a busy week-end among the wires; for now that their anxiety was
+removed, men and cities hastened to accommodate. Los Angeles called to
+San Diego and Barstow that the Southern California engineers might know
+and be ready in their lonely roundhouses; Barstow passed the word to
+the Atlantic and Pacific; and Albuquerque flung it the whole length of
+the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe management, even into Chicago. An
+engine, combination-car with crew, and the great and gilded "Constance"
+private car were to be "expedited" over those two thousand three
+hundred and fifty miles. The train would take precedence of one hundred
+and seventy-seven others meeting and passing; despatchers and crews of
+every one of those said trains must be notified. Sixteen locomotives,
+sixteen engineers, and sixteen firemen would be needed--each and every
+one the best available. Two and one half minutes would be allowed for
+changing engines, three for watering, and two for coaling. "Warn the
+men, and arrange tanks and chutes accordingly; for Harvey Cheyne is in
+a hurry, a hurry, a hurry," sang the wires. "Forty miles an hour will
+be expected, and division superintendents will accompany this special
+over their respective divisions. From San Diego to Sixteenth Street,
+Chicago, let the magic carpet be laid down. Hurry! Oh, hurry!"
+
+"It will be hot," said Cheyne, as they rolled out of San Diego in the
+dawn of Sunday. "We're going to hurry, Mama, just as fast as ever we
+can; but I really don't think there's any good of your putting on your
+bonnet and gloves yet. You'd much better lie down and take your
+medicine. I'd play you a game of dominoes, but it's Sunday."
+
+"I'll be good. Oh, I will be good. Only--taking off my bonnet makes me
+feel as if we'd never get there."
+
+"Try to sleep a little, Mama, and we'll be in Chicago before you know."
+
+"But it's Boston, Father. Tell them to hurry."
+
+The six-foot drivers were hammering their way to San Bernardino and the
+Mohave wastes, but this was no grade for speed. That would come later.
+The heat of the desert followed the heat of the hills as they turned
+east to the Needles and the Colorado River. The car cracked in the
+utter drouth and glare, and they put crushed ice to Mrs. Cheyne's neck,
+and toiled up the long, long grades, past Ash Fork, towards Flagstaff,
+where the forests and quarries are, under the dry, remote skies. The
+needle of the speed-indicator flicked and wagged to and fro; the
+cinders rattled on the roof, and a whirl of dust sucked after the
+whirling wheels. The crew of the combination sat on their bunks,
+panting in their shirtsleeves, and Cheyne found himself among them
+shouting old, old stories of the railroad that every trainman knows,
+above the roar of the car. He told them about his son, and how the sea
+had given up its dead, and they nodded and spat and rejoiced with him;
+asked after "her, back there," and whether she could stand it if the
+engineer "let her out a piece," and Cheyne thought she could.
+Accordingly, the great fire-horse was "let 'ut" from Flagstaff to
+Winslow, till a division superintendent protested.
+
+But Mrs. Cheyne, in the boudoir stateroom, where the French maid,
+sallow-white with fear, clung to the silver door-handle, only moaned a
+little and begged her husband to bid them "hurry." And so they dropped
+the dry sands and moon-struck rocks of Arizona behind them, and grilled
+on till the crash of the couplings and the wheeze of the brake-hose
+told them they were at Coolidge by the Continental Divide.
+
+Three bold and experienced men--cool, confident, and dry when they
+began; white, quivering, and wet when they finished their trick at
+those terrible wheels--swung her over the great lift from Albuquerque
+to Glorietta and beyond Springer, up and up to the Raton Tunnel on the
+State line, whence they dropped rocking into La Junta, had sight of the
+Arkansaw, and tore down the long slope to Dodge City, where Cheyne took
+comfort once again from setting his watch an hour ahead.
+
+There was very little talk in the car. The secretary and typewriter sat
+together on the stamped Spanish-leather cushions by the plate-glass
+observation-window at the rear end, watching the surge and ripple of
+the ties crowded back behind them, and, it is believed, making notes of
+the scenery. Cheyne moved nervously between his own extravagant
+gorgeousness and the naked necessity of the combination, an unlit cigar
+in his teeth, till the pitying crews forgot that he was their tribal
+enemy, and did their best to entertain him.
+
+At night the bunched electrics lit up that distressful palace of all
+the luxuries, and they fared sumptuously, swinging on through the
+emptiness of abject desolation.
+
+Now they heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of a
+Chinaman, the click-clink of hammers that tested the Krupp steel
+wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear-platform; now the
+solid crash of coal shot into the tender; and now a beating back of
+noises as they flew past a waiting train. Now they looked out into
+great abysses, a trestle purring beneath their tread, or up to rocks
+that barred out half the stars. Now scour and ravine changed and rolled
+back to jagged mountains on the horizon's edge, and now broke into
+hills lower and lower, till at last came the true plains.
+
+At Dodge City an unknown hand threw in a copy of a Kansas paper
+containing some sort of an interview with Harvey, who had evidently
+fallen in with an enterprising reporter, telegraphed on from Boston.
+The joyful journalese revealed that it was beyond question their boy,
+and it soothed Mrs. Cheyne for a while. Her one word "hurry" was
+conveyed by the crews to the engineers at Nickerson, Topeka, and
+Marceline, where the grades are easy, and they brushed the Continent
+behind them. Towns and villages were close together now, and a man
+could feel here that he moved among people.
+
+"I can't see the dial, and my eyes ache so. What are we doing?"
+
+"The very best we can, Mama. There's no sense in getting in before the
+Limited. We'd only have to wait."
+
+"I don't care. I want to feel we're moving. Sit down and tell me the
+miles."
+
+Cheyne sat down and read the dial for her (there were some miles which
+stand for records to this day), but the seventy-foot car never changed
+its long steamer-like roll, moving through the heat with the hum of a
+giant bee. Yet the speed was not enough for Mrs. Cheyne; and the heat,
+the remorseless August heat, was making her giddy; the clock-hands
+would not move, and when, oh, when would they be in Chicago?
+
+It is not true that, as they changed engines at Fort Madison, Cheyne
+passed over to the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers an
+endowment sufficient to enable them to fight him and his fellows on
+equal terms for evermore. He paid his obligations to engineers and
+firemen as he believed they deserved, and only his bank knows what he
+gave the crews who had sympathized with him. It is on record that the
+last crew took entire charge of switching operations at Sixteenth
+Street, because "she" was in a doze at last, and Heaven was to help any
+one who bumped her.
+
+Now the highly paid specialist who conveys the Lake Shore and Michigan
+Southern Limited from Chicago to Elkhart is something of an autocrat,
+and he does not approve of being told how to back up to a car. None the
+less he handled the "Constance" as if she might have been a load of
+dynamite, and when the crew rebuked him, they did it in whispers and
+dumb show.
+
+"Pshaw!" said the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe men, discussing life
+later, "we weren't runnin' for a record. Harvey Cheyne's wife, she were
+sick back, an' we didn't want to jounce her. 'Come to think of it, our
+runnin' time from San Diego to Chicago was 57.54. You can tell that to
+them Eastern way-trains. When we're tryin' for a record, we'll let you
+know."
+
+To the Western man (though this would not please either city) Chicago
+and Boston are cheek by jowl, and some railroads encourage the
+delusion. The Limited whirled the "Constance" into Buffalo and the arms
+of the New York Central and Hudson River (illustrious magnates with
+white whiskers and gold charms on their watch-chains boarded her here
+to talk a little business to Cheyne), who slid her gracefully into
+Albany, where the Boston and Albany completed the run from tide-water
+to tide-water--total time, eighty-seven hours and thirty-five minutes,
+or three days, fifteen hours and one half. Harvey was waiting for them.
+
+After violent emotion most people and all boys demand food. They
+feasted the returned prodigal behind drawn curtains, cut off in their
+great happiness, while the trains roared in and out around them. Harvey
+ate, drank, and enlarged on his adventures all in one breath, and when
+he had a hand free his mother fondled it. His voice was thickened with
+living in the open, salt air; his palms were rough and hard, his wrists
+dotted with marks of gurrysores; and a fine full flavour of codfish
+hung round rubber boots and blue jersey.
+
+The father, well used to judging men, looked at him keenly. He did not
+know what enduring harm the boy might have taken. Indeed, he caught
+himself thinking that he knew very little whatever of his son; but he
+distinctly remembered an unsatisfied, dough-faced youth who took
+delight in "calling down the old man," and reducing his mother to
+tears--such a person as adds to the gaiety of public rooms and hotel
+piazzas, where the ingenuous young of the wealthy play with or revile
+the bell-boys. But this well set-up fisher-youth did not wriggle,
+looked at him with eyes steady, clear, and unflinching, and spoke in a
+tone distinctly, even startlingly, respectful. There was that in his
+voice, too, which seemed to promise that the change might be permanent,
+and that the new Harvey had come to stay.
+
+"Some one's been coercing him," thought Cheyne. "Now Constance would
+never have allowed that. Don't see as Europe could have done it any
+better."
+
+"But why didn't you tell this man, Troop, who you were?" the mother
+repeated, when Harvey had expanded his story at least twice.
+
+"Disko Troop, dear. The best man that ever walked a deck. I don't care
+who the next is."
+
+"Why didn't you tell him to put you ashore? You know Papa would have
+made it up to him ten times over."
+
+"I know it; but he thought I was crazy. I'm afraid I called him a thief
+because I couldn't find the bills in my pocket."
+
+"A sailor found them by the flagstaff that--that night," sobbed Mrs.
+Cheyne.
+
+"That explains it, then. I don't blame Troop any. I just said I
+wouldn't work--on a Banker, too--and of course he hit me on the nose,
+and oh! I bled like a stuck hog."
+
+"My poor darling! They must have abused you horribly."
+
+"Dunno quite. Well, after that, I saw a light."
+
+Cheyne slapped his leg and chuckled. This was going to be a boy after
+his own hungry heart. He had never seen precisely that twinkle in
+Harvey's eye before.
+
+"And the old man gave me ten and a half a month; he's paid me half now;
+and I took hold with Dan and pitched right in. I can't do a man's work
+yet. But I can handle a dory 'most as well as Dan, and I don't get
+rattled in a fog--much; and I can take my trick in light winds--that's
+steering, dear--and I can 'most bait up a trawl, and I know my ropes,
+of course; and I can pitch fish till the cows come home, and I'm great
+on old Josephus, and I'll show you how I can clear coffee with a piece
+of fish-skin, and--I think I'll have another cup, please. Say, you've
+no notion what a heap of work there is in ten and a half a month!"
+
+"I began with eight and a half, my son," said Cheyne.
+
+"That so? You never told me, sir."
+
+"You never asked, Harve. I'll tell you about it some day, if you care
+to listen. Try a stuffed olive."
+
+"Troop says the most interesting thing in the world is to find out how
+the next man gets his vittles. It's great to have a trimmed-up meal
+again. We were well fed, though. But mug on the Banks. Disko fed us
+first-class. He's a great man. And Dan--that's his son--Dan's my
+partner. And there's Uncle Salters and his manures, an' he reads
+Josephus. He's sure I'm crazy yet. And there's poor little Penn, and he
+is crazy. You mustn't talk to him about Johnstown, because--
+
+"And, oh, you must know Tom Platt and Long Jack and Manuel. Manuel
+saved my life. I'm sorry he's a Portuguee. He can't talk much, but he's
+an everlasting musician. He found me struck adrift and drifting, and
+hauled me in."
+
+"I wonder your nervous system isn't completely wrecked," said Mrs.
+Cheyne.
+
+"What for, Mama? I worked like a horse and I ate like a hog and I slept
+like a dead man."
+
+That was too much for Mrs. Cheyne, who began to think of her visions of
+a corpse rocking on the salty seas. She went to her stateroom, and
+Harvey curled up beside his father, explaining his indebtedness.
+
+"You can depend upon me to do everything I can for the crowd, Harve.
+They seem to be good men on your showing."
+
+"Best in the Fleet, sir. Ask at Gloucester," said Harvey. "But Disko
+believes still he's cured me of being crazy. Dan's the only one I've
+let on to about you, and our private cars and all the rest of it, and
+I'm not quite sure Dan believes. I want to paralyze 'em to-morrow. Say,
+can't they run the 'Constance' over to Gloucester? Mama don't look fit
+to be moved, anyway, and we're bound to finish cleaning out by
+tomorrow. Wouverman takes our fish. You see, we're the first off the
+Banks this season, and it's four twenty-five a quintal. We held out
+till he paid it. They want it quick."
+
+"You mean you'll have to work to-morrow, then?"
+
+"I told Troop I would. I'm on the scales. I've brought the tallies with
+me." He looked at the greasy notebook with an air of importance that
+made his father choke. "There isn't but three--no--two ninety-four or
+five quintal more by my reckoning."
+
+"Hire a substitute," suggested Cheyne, to see what Harvey would say.
+
+"Can't, sir. I'm tally-man for the schooner. Troop says I've a better
+head for figures than Dan. Troop's a mighty just man."
+
+"Well, suppose I don't move the 'Constance' to-night, how'll you fix
+it?"
+
+Harvey looked at the clock, which marked twenty past eleven.
+
+"Then I'll sleep here till three and catch the four o'clock freight.
+They let us men from the Fleet ride free as a rule."
+
+"That's a notion. But I think we can get the 'Constance' around about
+as soon as your men's freight. Better go to bed now."
+
+Harvey spread himself on the sofa, kicked off his boots, and was asleep
+before his father could shade the electrics. Cheyne sat watching the
+young face under the shadow of the arm thrown over the forehead, and
+among many things that occurred to him was the notion that he might
+perhaps have been neglectful as a father.
+
+"One never knows when one's taking one's biggest risks," he said. "It
+might have been worse than drowning; but I don't think it has--I don't
+think it has. If it hasn't, I haven't enough to pay Troop, that's all;
+and I don't think it has."
+
+Morning brought a fresh sea breeze through the windows, the "Constance"
+was side-tracked among freight-cars at Gloucester, and Harvey had gone
+to his business.
+
+"Then he'll fall overboard again and be drowned," the mother said
+bitterly.
+
+"We'll go and look, ready to throw him a rope in case. You've never
+seen him working for his bread," said the father.
+
+"What nonsense! As if any one expected--"
+
+"Well, the man that hired him did. He's about right, too."
+
+They went down between the stores full of fishermen's oilskins to
+Wouverman's wharf where the _We're Here_ rode high, her Bank flag still
+flying, all hands busy as beavers in the glorious morning light. Disko
+stood by the main hatch superintending Manuel, Penn, and Uncle Salters
+at the tackle. Dan was swinging the loaded baskets inboard as Long Jack
+and Tom Platt filled them, and Harvey, with a notebook, represented the
+skipper's interests before the clerk of the scales on the
+salt-sprinkled wharf-edge.
+
+"Ready!" cried the voices below. "Haul!" cried Disko. "Hi!" said
+Manuel. "Here!" said Dan, swinging the basket. Then they heard Harvey's
+voice, clear and fresh, checking the weights.
+
+The last of the fish had been whipped out, and Harvey leaped from the
+string-piece six feet to a ratline, as the shortest way to hand Disko
+the tally, shouting, "Two ninety-seven, and an empty hold!"
+
+"What's the total, Harve?" said Disko.
+
+"Eight sixty-five. Three thousand six hundred and seventy-six dollars
+and a quarter. 'Wish I'd share as well as wage."
+
+"Well, I won't go so far as to say you hevn't deserved it, Harve. Don't
+you want to slip up to Wouverman's office and take him our tallies?"
+
+"Who's that boy?" said Cheyne to Dan, well used to all manner of
+questions from those idle imbeciles called summer boarders.
+
+"Well, he's kind o' supercargo," was the answer. "We picked him up
+struck adrift on the Banks. Fell overboard from a liner, he sez. He was
+a passenger. He's by way o' hem' a fisherman now."
+
+"Is he worth his keep?"
+
+"Ye-ep. Dad, this man wants to know ef Harve's worth his keep. Say,
+would you like to go aboard? We'll fix up a ladder for her."
+
+"I should very much, indeed. 'Twon't hurt you, Mama, and you'll be able
+to see for yourself."
+
+The woman who could not lift her head a week ago scrambled down the
+ladder, and stood aghast amid the mess and tangle aft.
+
+"Be you anyways interested in Harve?" said Disko.
+
+"Well, ye-es."
+
+"He's a good boy, an' ketches right hold jest as he's bid. You've heard
+haow we found him? He was sufferin' from nervous prostration, I guess,
+'r else his head had hit somethin', when we hauled him aboard. He's all
+over that naow. Yes, this is the cabin. 'Tain't in order, but you're
+quite welcome to look araound. Those are his figures on the stove-pipe,
+where we keep the reckonin' mostly."
+
+"Did he sleep here?" said Mrs. Cheyne, sitting on a yellow locker and
+surveying the disorderly bunks.
+
+"No. He berthed forward, madam, an' only fer him an' my boy hookin'
+fried pies an muggin' up when they ought to ha' been asleep, I dunno as
+I've any special fault to find with him."
+
+"There weren't nothin' wrong with Harve," said Uncle Salters,
+descending the steps. "He hung my boots on the main-truck, and he ain't
+over an' above respectful to such as knows more'n he do, specially
+about farmin'; but he were mostly misled by Dan."
+
+Dan in the meantime, profiting by dark hints from Harvey early that
+morning, was executing a war-dance on deck. "Tom, Tom!" he whispered
+down the hatch. "His folks has come, an' Dad hain't caught on yet, an'
+they're pow-wowin' in the cabin. She's a daisy, an' he's all Harve
+claimed he was, by the looks of him."
+
+"Howly Smoke!" said Long Jack, climbing out covered with salt and
+fish-skin. "D'ye belave his tale av the kid an' the little four-horse
+rig was thrue?"
+
+"I knew it all along," said Dan. "Come an' see Dad mistook in his
+judgments."
+
+They came delightedly, just in time to hear Cheyne say: "I'm glad he
+has a good character, because--he's my son."
+
+Disko's jaw fell,--Long Jack always vowed that he heard the click of
+it,--and he stared alternately at the man and the woman.
+
+"I got his telegram in San Diego four days ago, and we came over."
+
+"In a private car?" said Dan. "He said ye might."
+
+"In a private car, of course."
+
+Dan looked at his father with a hurricane of irreverent winks.
+
+"There was a tale he told us av drivin' four little ponies in a rig av
+his own," said Long Jack. "Was that thrue now?"
+
+"Very likely," said Cheyne. "Was it, Mama?"
+
+"He had a little drag when we were in Toledo, I think," said the mother.
+
+Long Jack whistled. "Oh, Disko!" said he, and that was all.
+
+"I wuz--I am mistook in my jedgments--worse'n the men o' Marblehead,"
+said Disko, as though the words were being windlassed out of him. "I
+don't mind ownin' to you, Mr. Cheyne, as I mistrusted the boy to be
+crazy. He talked kinder odd about money."
+
+"So he told me."
+
+"Did he tell ye anything else? 'Cause I pounded him once." This with a
+somewhat anxious glance at Mrs. Cheyne.
+
+"Oh, yes," Cheyne replied. "I should say it probably did him more good
+than anything else in the world."
+
+"I jedged 'twuz necessary, er I wouldn't ha' done it. I don't want you
+to think we abuse our boys any on this packet."
+
+"I don't think you do, Mr. Troop."
+
+Mrs. Cheyne had been looking at the faces--Disko's ivory-yellow,
+hairless, iron countenance; Uncle Salters's, with its rim of
+agricultural hair; Penn's bewildered simplicity; Manuel's quiet smile;
+Long Jack's grin of delight, and Tom Platt's scar. Rough, by her
+standards, they certainly were; but she had a mother's wits in her
+eyes, and she rose with out-stretched hands.
+
+"Oh, tell me, which is who?" said she, half sobbing. "I want to thank
+you and bless you--all of you."
+
+"Faith, that pays me a hunder time," said Long Jack.
+
+Disko introduced them all in due form. The captain of an old-time
+Chinaman could have done no better, and Mrs. Cheyne babbled
+incoherently. She nearly threw herself into Manuel's arms when she
+understood that he had first found Harvey.
+
+"But how shall I leave him dreeft?" said poor Manuel. "What do you
+yourself if you find him so? Eh, wha-at? We are in one good boy, and I
+am ever so pleased he come to be your son."
+
+"And he told me Dan was his partner!" she cried. Dan was already
+sufficiently pink, but he turned a rich crimson when Mrs. Cheyne kissed
+him on both cheeks before the assembly. Then they led her forward to
+show her the foc'sle, at which she wept again, and must needs go down
+to see Harvey's identical bunk, and there she found the nigger cook
+cleaning up the stove, and he nodded as though she were some one he had
+expected to meet for years. They tried, two at a time, to explain the
+boat's daily life to her, and she sat by the pawl-post, her gloved
+hands on the greasy table, laughing with trembling lips and crying with
+dancing eyes.
+
+"And who's ever to use the _We're Here_ after this?" said Long Jack to
+Tom Platt. "I feel as if she'd made a cathedral av ut all."
+
+"Cathedral!" sneered Tom Platt. "Oh, if it had bin even the Fish
+C'mmission boat instid of this bally-hoo o' blazes. If we only hed some
+decency an' order an' side-boys when she goes over! She'll have to
+climb that ladder like a hen, an' we--we ought to be mannin' the yards!"
+
+"Then Harvey was not mad," said Penn, slowly, to Cheyne.
+
+"No, indeed--thank God," the big millionaire replied, stooping down
+tenderly.
+
+"It must be terrible to be mad. Except to lose your child, I do not
+know anything more terrible. But your child has come back? Let us thank
+God for that."
+
+"Hello!" cried Harvey, looking down upon them benignly from the wharf.
+
+"I wuz mistook, Harve. I wuz mistook," said Disko, swiftly, holding up
+a hand. "I wuz mistook in my jedgments. Ye needn't rub in any more."
+
+"Guess I'll take care o' that," said Dan, under his breath.
+
+"You'll be goin' off naow, won't ye?"
+
+"Well, not without the balance of my wages, 'less you want to have the
+_We're Here_ attached."
+
+"Thet's so; I'd clean forgot"; and he counted out the remaining
+dollars. "You done all you contracted to do, Harve; and you done it
+'baout's well as if you'd been brought up--" Here Disko brought himself
+up. He did not quite see where the sentence was going to end.
+
+"Outside of a private car?" suggested Dan, wickedly.
+
+"Come on, and I'll show her to you," said Harvey.
+
+Cheyne stayed to talk with Disko, but the others made a procession to
+the depot, with Mrs. Cheyne at the head. The French maid shrieked at
+the invasion; and Harvey laid the glories of the "Constance" before
+them without a word. They took them in in equal silence--stamped
+leather, silver door-handles and rails, cut velvet, plate-glass,
+nickel, bronze, hammered iron, and the rare woods of the continent
+inlaid.
+
+"I told you," said Harvey; "I told you." This was his crowning revenge,
+and a most ample one.
+
+Mrs. Cheyne decreed a meal, and that nothing might be lacking to the
+tale Long Jack told afterwards in his boarding-house, she waited on
+them herself. Men who are accustomed to eat at tiny tables in howling
+gales have curiously neat and finished manners; but Mrs. Cheyne, who
+did not know this, was surprised. She longed to have Manuel for a
+butler; so silently and easily did he comport himself among the frail
+glassware and dainty silver. Tom Platt remembered the great days on the
+Ohio and the manners of foreign potentates who dined with the officers;
+and Long Jack, being Irish, supplied the small talk till all were at
+their ease.
+
+In the _We're Here's_ cabin the fathers took stock of each other behind
+their cigars. Cheyne knew well enough when he dealt with a man to whom
+he could not offer money; equally well he knew that no money could pay
+for what Disko had done. He kept his own counsel and waited for an
+opening.
+
+"I hevn't done anything to your boy or fer your boy excep' make him
+work a piece an' learn him how to handle the hog-yoke," said Disko. "He
+has twice my boy's head for figgers."
+
+"By the way," Cheyne answered casually, "what d'you calculate to make
+of your boy?"
+
+Disko removed his cigar and waved it comprehensively round the cabin.
+"Dan's jest plain boy, an' he don't allow me to do any of his thinkin'.
+He'll hev this able little packet when I'm laid by. He ain't noways
+anxious to quit the business. I know that."
+
+"Mmm! 'Ever been West, Mr. Troop?"
+
+"'Bin's fer ez Noo York once in a boat. I've no use for railroads. No
+more hez Dan. Salt water's good enough fer the Troops. I've been 'most
+everywhere--in the nat'ral way, o' course."
+
+"I can give him all the salt water he's likely to need--till he's a
+skipper."
+
+"Haow's that? I thought you wuz a kinder railroad king. Harve told me
+so when--I was mistook in my jedgments."
+
+"We're all apt to be mistaken. I fancied perhaps you might know I own a
+line of tea-clippers--San Francisco to Yokohama--six of
+'em--iron-built, about seventeen hundred and eighty tons apiece.
+
+"Blame that boy! He never told. I'd ha' listened to that, instid o' his
+truck abaout railroads an' pony-carriages."
+
+"He didn't know."
+
+"'Little thing like that slipped his mind, I guess."
+
+"No, I only capt--took hold of the 'Blue M.' freighters--Morgan and
+McQuade's old line--this summer." Disko collapsed where he sat, beside
+the stove.
+
+"Great Caesar Almighty! I mistrust I've been fooled from one end to the
+other. Why, Phil Airheart he went from this very town six year
+back--no, seven--an' he's mate on the San Jose--now--twenty-six days
+was her time out. His sister she's livin' here yet, an' she reads his
+letters to my woman. An' you own the 'Blue M.' freighters?"
+
+Cheyne nodded.
+
+"If I'd known that I'd ha' jerked the _We're Here_ back to port all
+standin', on the word."
+
+"Perhaps that wouldn't have been so good for Harvey."
+
+"If I'd only known! If he'd only said about the cussed Line, I'd ha'
+understood! I'll never stand on my own jedgments again--never. They're
+well-found packets. Phil Airheart he says so."
+
+"I'm glad to have a recommend from that quarter. Airheart's skipper of
+the San Jose now. What I was getting at is to know whether you'd lend
+me Dan for a year or two, and we'll see if we can't make a mate of him.
+Would you trust him to Airheart?"
+
+"It's a resk taking a raw boy--"
+
+"I know a man who did more for me."
+
+"That's diff'runt. Look at here naow, I ain't recommendin' Dan special
+because he's my own flesh an' blood. I know Bank ways ain't clipper
+ways, but he hain't much to learn. Steer he can--no boy better, if I
+say it--an' the rest's in our blood an' get; but I could wish he warn't
+so cussed weak on navigation."
+
+"Airheart will attend to that. He'll ship as boy for a voyage or two,
+and then we can put him in the way of doing better. Suppose you take
+him in hand this winter, and I'll send for him early in the spring. I
+know the Pacific's a long ways off--"
+
+"Pshaw! We Troops, livin' an' dead, are all around the earth an' the
+seas thereof."
+
+"But I want you to understand--and I mean this--any time you think
+you'd like to see him, tell me, and I'll attend to the transportation.
+'Twon't cost you a cent."
+
+"If you'll walk a piece with me, we'll go to my house an' talk this to
+my woman. I've bin so crazy mistook in all my jedgments, it don't seem
+to me this was like to be real."
+
+They went blue-trimmed of nasturtiums over to Troop's
+eighteen-hundred-dollar, white house, with a retired dory full in the
+front yard and a shuttered parlour which was a museum of oversea
+plunder. There sat a large woman, silent and grave, with the dim eyes
+of those who look long to sea for the return of their beloved. Cheyne
+addressed himself to her, and she gave consent wearily.
+
+"We lose one hundred a year from Gloucester only, Mr. Cheyne," she
+said--"one hundred boys an' men; and I've come so's to hate the sea as
+if 'twuz alive an' listenin'. God never made it fer humans to anchor
+on. These packets o' yours they go straight out, I take it' and
+straight home again?"
+
+"As straight as the winds let 'em, and I give a bonus for record
+passages. Tea don't improve by being at sea."
+
+"When he wuz little he used to play at keeping store, an' I had hopes
+he might follow that up. But soon's he could paddle a dory I knew that
+were goin' to be denied me."
+
+"They're square-riggers, Mother; iron-built an' well found. Remember
+what Phil's sister reads you when she gits his letters."
+
+"I've never known as Phil told lies, but he's too venturesome (like
+most of 'em that use the sea). If Dan sees fit, Mr. Cheyne, he can
+go--fer all o' me."
+
+"She jest despises the ocean," Disko explained, "an' I--I dunno haow to
+act polite, I guess, er I'd thank you better."
+
+"My father--my own eldest brother--two nephews--an' my second sister's
+man," she said, dropping her head on her hand. "Would you care fer any
+one that took all those?"
+
+Cheyne was relieved when Dan turned up and accepted with more delight
+than he was able to put into words. Indeed, the offer meant a plain and
+sure road to all desirable things; but Dan thought most of commanding
+watch on broad decks, and looking into far-away harbours.
+
+Mrs. Cheyne had spoken privately to the unaccountable Manuel in the
+matter of Harvey's rescue. He seemed to have no desire for money.
+Pressed hard, he said that he would take five dollars, because he
+wanted to buy something for a girl. Otherwise--"How shall I take money
+when I make so easy my eats and smokes? You will giva some if I like or
+no? Eh, wha-at? Then you shall giva me money, but not that way. You
+shall giva all you can think." He introduced her to a snuffy Portuguese
+priest with a list of semi-destitute widows as long as his cassock. As
+a strict Unitarian, Mrs. Cheyne could not sympathize with the creed,
+but she ended by respecting the brown, voluble little man.
+
+Manuel, faithful son of the Church, appropriated all the blessings
+showered on her for her charity. "That letta me out," said he. "I have
+now ver' good absolutions for six months"; and he strolled forth to get
+a handkerchief for the girl of the hour and to break the hearts of all
+the others.
+
+Salters went West for a season with Penn, and left no address behind.
+He had a dread that these millionary people, with wasteful private
+cars, might take undue interest in his companion. It was better to
+visit inland relatives till the coast was clear. "Never you be adopted
+by rich folk, Penn," he said in the cars, "or I'll take 'n' break this
+checker-board over your head. Ef you forgit your name agin--which is
+Pratt--you remember you belong with Salters Troop, an' set down right
+where you are till I come fer you. Don't go taggin' araound after them
+whose eyes bung out with fatness, accordin' to Scripcher."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+But it was otherwise with the _We're Here's_ silent cook, for he came
+up, his kit in a handkerchief, and boarded the "Constance." Pay was no
+particular object, and he did not in the least care where he slept. His
+business, as revealed to him in dreams, was to follow Harvey for the
+rest of his days. They tried argument and, at last, persuasion; but
+there is a difference between one Cape Breton and two Alabama negroes,
+and the matter was referred to Cheyne by the cook and porter. The
+millionaire only laughed. He presumed Harvey might need a body-servant
+some day or other, and was sure that one volunteer was worth five
+hirelings. Let the man stay, therefore; even though he called himself
+MacDonald and swore in Gaelic. The car could go back to Boston, where,
+if he were still of the same mind, they would take him West.
+
+With the "Constance," which in his heart of hearts he loathed, departed
+the last remnant of Cheyne's millionairedom, and he gave himself up to
+an energetic idleness. This Gloucester was a new town in a new land,
+and he purposed to "take it in," as of old he had taken in all the
+cities from Snohomish to San Diego of that world whence he hailed. They
+made money along the crooked street which was half wharf and half
+ship's store: as a leading professional he wished to learn how the
+noble game was played. Men said that four out of every five fish-balls
+served at New England's Sunday breakfast came from Gloucester, and
+overwhelmed him with figures in proof--statistics of boats, gear,
+wharf-frontage, capital invested, salting, packing, factories,
+insurance, wages, repairs, and profits. He talked with the owners of
+the large fleets whose skippers were little more than hired men, and
+whose crews were almost all Swedes or Portuguese. Then he conferred
+with Disko, one of the few who owned their craft, and compared notes in
+his vast head. He coiled himself away on chain-cables in marine
+junk-shops, asking questions with cheerful, unslaked Western curiosity,
+till all the water-front wanted to know "what in thunder that man was
+after, anyhow." He prowled into the Mutual Insurance rooms, and
+demanded explanations of the mysterious remarks chalked up on the
+blackboard day by day; and that brought down upon him secretaries of
+every Fisherman's Widow and Orphan Aid Society within the city limits.
+They begged shamelessly, each man anxious to beat the other
+institution's record, and Cheyne tugged at his beard and handed them
+all over to Mrs. Cheyne.
+
+She was resting in a boarding-house near Eastern Point--a strange
+establishment, managed, apparently, by the boarders, where the
+table-cloths were red-and-white-checkered and the population, who
+seemed to have known one another intimately for years, rose up at
+midnight to make Welsh rarebits if it felt hungry. On the second
+morning of her stay Mrs. Cheyne put away her diamond solitaires before
+she came down to breakfast.
+
+"They're most delightful people," she confided to her husband; "so
+friendly and simple, too, though they are all Boston, nearly."
+
+"That isn't simpleness, Mama," he said, looking across the boulders
+behind the apple-trees where the hammocks were slung. "It's the other
+thing, that what I haven't got."
+
+"It can't be," said Mrs. Cheyne quietly. "There isn't a woman here owns
+a dress that cost a hundred dollars. Why, we--"
+
+"I know it, dear. We have--of course we have. I guess it's only the
+style they wear East. Are you having a good time?"
+
+"I don't see very much of Harvey; he's always with you; but I ain't
+near as nervous as I was."
+
+"I haven't had such a good time since Willie died. I never rightly
+understood that I had a son before this. Harve's got to be a great boy.
+'Anything I can fetch you, dear? 'Cushion under your head? Well, we'll
+go down to the wharf again and look around."
+
+Harvey was his father's shadow in those days, and the two strolled
+along side by side, Cheyne using the grades as an excuse for laying his
+hand on the boy's square shoulder. It was then that Harvey noticed and
+admired what had never struck him before--his father's curious power of
+getting at the heart of new matters as learned from men in the street.
+
+"How d'you make 'em tell you everything without opening your head?"
+demanded the son, as they came out of a rigger's loft.
+
+"I've dealt with quite a few men in my time, Harve, and one sizes 'em
+up somehow, I guess. I know something about myself, too." Then, after a
+pause, as they sat down on a wharf-edge: "Men can 'most always tell
+when a man has handled things for himself, and then they treat him as
+one of themselves."
+
+"Same as they treat me down at Wouverman's wharf. I'm one of the crowd
+now. Disko has told every one I've earned my pay." Harvey spread out
+his hands and rubbed the palms together. "They're all soft again," he
+said dolefully.
+
+"Keep 'em that way for the next few years, while you're getting your
+education. You can harden 'em up after."
+
+"Ye-es, I suppose so," was the reply, in no delighted voice.
+
+"It rests with you, Harve. You can take cover behind your mama, of
+course, and put her on to fussing about your nerves and your
+high-strungness and all that kind of poppycock."
+
+"Have I ever done that?" said Harvey, uneasily.
+
+His father turned where he sat and thrust out a long hand. "You know as
+well as I do that I can't make anything of you if you don't act
+straight by me. I can handle you alone if you'll stay alone, but I
+don't pretend to manage both you and Mama. Life's too short, anyway."
+
+"Don't make me out much of a fellow, does it?"
+
+"I guess it was my fault a good deal; but if you want the truth, you
+haven't been much of anything up to date. Now, have you?"
+
+"Umm! Disko thinks . . . Say, what d'you reckon it's cost you to raise
+me from the start--first, last and all over?"
+
+Cheyne smiled. "I've never kept track, but I should estimate, in
+dollars and cents, nearer fifty than forty thousand; maybe sixty. The
+young generation comes high. It has to have things, and it tires of
+'em, and--the old man foots the bill."
+
+Harvey whistled, but at heart he was rather pleased to think that his
+upbringing had cost so much. "And all that's sunk capital, isn't it?"
+
+"Invested, Harve. Invested, I hope."
+
+"Making it only thirty thousand, the thirty I've earned is about ten
+cents on the hundred. That's a mighty poor catch." Harvey wagged his
+head solemnly.
+
+Cheyne laughed till he nearly fell off the pile into the water.
+
+"Disko has got a heap more than that out of Dan since he was ten; and
+Dan's at school half the year, too."
+
+"Oh, that's what you're after, is it?"
+
+"No. I'm not after anything. I'm not stuck on myself any just
+now--that's all. . . . I ought to be kicked."
+
+"I can't do it, old man; or I would, I presume, if I'd been made that
+way."
+
+"Then I'd have remembered it to the last day I lived--and never
+forgiven you," said Harvey, his chin on his doubled fists.
+
+"Exactly. That's about what I'd do. You see?"
+
+"I see. The fault's with me and no one else. All the same, something's
+got to be done about it."
+
+Cheyne drew a cigar from his vest-pocket, bit off the end, and fell to
+smoking. Father and son were very much alike; for the beard hid
+Cheyne's mouth, and Harvey had his father's slightly aquiline nose,
+close-set black eyes, and narrow, high cheek-bones. With a touch of
+brown paint he would have made up very picturesquely as a Red Indian of
+the story-books.
+
+"Now you can go on from here," said Cheyne, slowly, "costing me between
+six or eight thousand a year till you're a voter. Well, we'll call you
+a man then. You can go right on from that, living on me to the tune of
+forty or fifty thousand, besides what your mother will give you, with a
+valet and a yacht or a fancy-ranch where you can pretend to raise
+trotting-stock and play cards with your own crowd."
+
+"Like Lorry Tuck?" Harvey put in.
+
+"Yep; or the two De Vitre boys or old man McQuade's son. California's
+full of 'em, and here's an Eastern sample while we're talking."
+
+A shiny black steam-yacht, with mahogany deck-house, nickel-plated
+binnacles, and pink-and-white-striped awnings puffed up the harbour,
+flying the burgee of some New York club. Two young men in what they
+conceived to be sea costumes were playing cards by the saloon skylight;
+and a couple of women with red and blue parasols looked on and laughed
+noisily.
+
+"Shouldn't care to be caught out in her in any sort of a breeze. No
+beam," said Harvey, critically, as the yacht slowed to pick up her
+mooring-buoy.
+
+"They're having what stands them for a good time. I can give you that,
+and twice as much as that, Harve. How'd you like it?"
+
+"Caesar! That's no way to get a dinghy overside," said Harvey, still
+intent on the yacht. "If I couldn't slip a tackle better than that I'd
+stay ashore. . . . What if I don't?"
+
+"Stay ashore--or what?"
+
+"Yacht and ranch and live on 'the old man,' and--get behind Mama where
+there's trouble," said Harvey, with a twinkle in his eye.
+
+"Why, in that case, you come right in with me, my son."
+
+"Ten dollars a month?" Another twinkle.
+
+"Not a cent more until you're worth it, and you won't begin to touch
+that for a few years."
+
+"I'd sooner begin sweeping out the office--isn't that how the big bugs
+start?--and touch something now than--"
+
+"I know it; we all feel that way. But I guess we can hire any sweeping
+we need. I made the same mistake myself of starting in too soon."
+
+"Thirty million dollars' worth o' mistake, wasn't it? I'd risk it for
+that."
+
+"I lost some; and I gained some. I'll tell you."
+
+Cheyne pulled his beard and smiled as he looked over the still water,
+and spoke away from Harvey, who presently began to be aware that his
+father was telling the story of his life. He talked in a low, even
+voice, without gesture and without expression; and it was a history for
+which a dozen leading journals would cheerfully have paid many
+dollars--the story of forty years that was at the same time the story
+of the New West, whose story is yet to be written.
+
+It began with a kinless boy turned loose in Texas, and went on
+fantastically through a hundred changes and chops of life, the scenes
+shifting from State after Western State, from cities that sprang up in
+a month and--in a season utterly withered away, to wild ventures in
+wilder camps that are now laborious, paved municipalities. It covered
+the building of three railroads and the deliberate wreck of a fourth.
+It told of steamers, townships, forests, and mines, and the men of
+every nation under heaven, manning, creating, hewing, and digging
+these. It touched on chances of gigantic wealth flung before eyes that
+could not see, or missed by the merest accident of time and travel; and
+through the mad shift of things, sometimes on horseback, more often
+afoot, now rich, now poor, in and out, and back and forth, deck-hand,
+train-hand, contractor, boarding-house keeper, journalist, engineer,
+drummer, real-estate agent, politician, dead-beat, rum-seller,
+mine-owner, speculator, cattle-man, or tramp, moved Harvey Cheyne,
+alert and quiet, seeking his own ends, and, so he said, the glory and
+advancement of his country.
+
+He told of the faith that never deserted him even when he hung on the
+ragged edge of despair--the faith that comes of knowing men and things.
+He enlarged, as though he were talking to himself, on his very great
+courage and resource at all times. The thing was so evident in the
+man's mind that he never even changed his tone. He described how he had
+bested his enemies, or forgiven them, exactly as they had bested or
+forgiven him in those careless days; how he had entreated, cajoled, and
+bullied towns, companies, and syndicates, all for their enduring good;
+crawled round, through, or under mountains and ravines, dragging a
+string and hoop-iron railroad after him, and in the end, how he had sat
+still while promiscuous communities tore the last fragments of his
+character to shreds.
+
+The tale held Harvey almost breathless, his head a little cocked to one
+side, his eyes fixed on his father's face, as the twilight deepened and
+the red cigar-end lit up the furrowed cheeks and heavy eyebrows. It
+seemed to him like watching a locomotive storming across country in the
+dark--a mile between each glare of the open fire-door: but this
+locomotive could talk, and the words shook and stirred the boy to the
+core of his soul. At last Cheyne pitched away the cigar-butt, and the
+two sat in the dark over the lapping water.
+
+"I've never told that to any one before," said the father.
+
+Harvey gasped. "It's just the greatest thing that ever was!" said he.
+
+"That's what I got. Now I'm coming to what I didn't get. It won't sound
+much of anything to you, but I don't wish you to be as old as I am
+before you find out. I can handle men, of course, and I'm no fool along
+my own lines, but--but--I can't compete with the man who has been
+taught! I've picked up as I went along, and I guess it sticks out all
+over me."
+
+"I've never seen it," said the son, indignantly.
+
+"You will, though, Harve. You will--just as soon as you're through
+college. Don't I know it? Don't I know the look on men's faces when
+they think me a--a 'mucker,' as they call it out here? I can break them
+to little pieces--yes--but I can't get back at 'em to hurt 'em where
+they live. I don't say they're 'way 'way up, but I feel I'm 'way, 'way,
+'way off, somehow. Now you've got your chance. You've got to soak up
+all the learning that's around, and you'll live with a crowd that are
+doing the same thing. They'll be doing it for a few thousand dollars a
+year at most; but remember you'll be doing it for millions. You'll
+learn law enough to look after your own property when I'm out o' the
+light, and you'll have to be solid with the best men in the market
+(they are useful later); and above all, you'll have to stow away the
+plain, common, sit-down-with-your chin-on your-elbows book-learning.
+Nothing pays like that, Harve, and it's bound to pay more and more each
+year in our country--in business and in politics. You'll see."
+
+"There's no sugar in my end of the deal," said Harvey. "Four years at
+college! 'Wish I'd chosen the valet and the yacht!"
+
+"Never mind, my son," Cheyne insisted. "You're investing your capital
+where it'll bring in the best returns; and I guess you won't find our
+property shrunk any when you're ready to take hold. Think it over, and
+let me know in the morning. Hurry! We'll be late for supper!"
+
+As this was a business talk, there was no need for Harvey to tell his
+mother about it; and Cheyne naturally took the same point of view. But
+Mrs. Cheyne saw and feared, and was a little jealous. Her boy, who rode
+rough-shod over her, was gone, and in his stead reigned a keen-faced
+youth, abnormally silent, who addressed most of his conversation to his
+father. She understood it was business, and therefore a matter beyond
+her premises. If she had any doubts, they were resolved when Cheyne
+went to Boston and brought back a new diamond marquise ring.
+
+"What have you two been doing now?" she said, with a weak little smile,
+as she turned it in the light.
+
+"Talking--just talking, Mama; there's nothing mean about Harvey."
+
+There was not. The boy had made a treaty on his own account. Railroads,
+he explained gravely, interested him as little as lumber, real estate,
+or mining. What his soul yearned after was control of his father's
+newly purchased sailing-ship. If that could be promised him within what
+he conceived to be a reasonable time, he, for his part, guaranteed
+diligence and sobriety at college for four or five years. In vacation
+he was to be allowed full access to all details connected with the
+line--he had not asked more than two thousand questions about it,--from
+his father's most private papers in the safe to the tug in San
+Francisco harbour.
+
+"It's a deal," said Cheyne at the last. "You'll alter your mind twenty
+times before you leave college, o' course; but if you take hold of it
+in proper shape, and if you don't tie it up before you're twenty-three,
+I'll make the thing over to you. How's that, Harve?"
+
+"Nope; never pays to split up a going concern. There's too much
+competition in the world anyway, and Disko says 'blood-kin hev to stick
+together.' His crowd never go back on him. That's one reason, he says,
+why they make such big fares. Say, the _We're Here_ goes off to the
+Georges on Monday. They don't stay long ashore, do they?"
+
+"Well, we ought to be going, too, I guess. I've left my business hung
+up at loose ends between two oceans, and it's time to connect again. I
+just hate to do it, though; haven't had a holiday like this for twenty
+years."
+
+"We can't go without seeing Disko off," said Harvey; "and Monday's
+Memorial Day. Let's stay over that, anyway."
+
+"What is this memorial business? They were talking about it at the
+boarding-house," said Cheyne weakly. He, too, was not anxious to spoil
+the golden days.
+
+"Well, as far as I can make out, this business is a sort of
+song-and-dance act, whacked up for the summer boarders. Disko don't
+think much of it, he says, because they take up a collection for the
+widows and orphans. Disko's independent. Haven't you noticed that?"
+
+"Well--yes. A little. In spots. Is it a town show, then?"
+
+"The summer convention is. They read out the names of the fellows
+drowned or gone astray since last time, and they make speeches, and
+recite, and all. Then, Disko says, the secretaries of the Aid Societies
+go into the back yard and fight over the catch. The real show, he says,
+is in the spring. The ministers all take a hand then, and there aren't
+any summer boarders around."
+
+"I see," said Cheyne, with the brilliant and perfect comprehension of
+one born into and bred up to city pride. "We'll stay over for Memorial
+Day, and get off in the afternoon."
+
+"Guess I'll go down to Disko's and make him bring his crowd up before
+they sail. I'll have to stand with them, of course."
+
+"Oh, that's it, is it," said Cheyne. "I'm only a poor summer boarder,
+and you're--"
+
+"A Banker--full-blooded Banker," Harvey called back as he boarded a
+trolley, and Cheyne went on with his blissful dreams for the future.
+
+Disko had no use for public functions where appeals were made for
+charity, but Harvey pleaded that the glory of the day would be lost, so
+far as he was concerned, if the _We're Heres_ absented themselves. Then
+Disko made conditions. He had heard--it was astonishing how all the
+world knew all the world's business along the water-front--he had heard
+that a "Philadelphia actress-woman" was going to take part in the
+exercises; and he mistrusted that she would deliver "Skipper Ireson's
+Ride." Personally, he had as little use for actresses as for summer
+boarders; but justice was justice, and though he himself (here Dan
+giggled) had once slipped up on a matter of judgment, this thing must
+not be. So Harvey came back to East Gloucester, and spent half a day
+explaining to an amused actress with a royal reputation on two
+seaboards the inwardness of the mistake she contemplated; and she
+admitted that it was justice, even as Disko had said.
+
+Cheyne knew by old experience what would happen; but anything of the
+nature of a public palaver was meat and drink to the man's soul. He saw
+the trolleys hurrying west, in the hot, hazy morning, full of women in
+light summer dresses, and white-faced straw-hatted men fresh from
+Boston desks; the stack of bicycles outside the post office; the
+come-and-go of busy officials, greeting one another; the slow flick and
+swash of bunting in the heavy air; and the important man with a hose
+sluicing the brick sidewalk.
+
+"Mother," he said suddenly, "don't you remember--after Seattle was
+burned out--and they got her going again?"
+
+Mrs. Cheyne nodded, and looked critically down the crooked street. Like
+her husband, she understood these gatherings, all the West over, and
+compared them one against another. The fishermen began to mingle with
+the crowd about the town-hall doors--blue-jowled Portuguese, their
+women bare-headed or shawled for the most part; clear-eyed Nova
+Scotians, and men of the Maritime Provinces; French, Italians, Swedes,
+and Danes, with outside crews of coasting schooners; and everywhere
+women in black, who saluted one another with gloomy pride, for this was
+their day of great days. And there were ministers of many
+creeds,--pastors of great, gilt-edged congregations, at the seaside for
+a rest, with shepherds of the regular work,--from the priests of the
+Church on the Hill to bush-bearded ex-sailor Lutherans, hail-fellow
+with the men of a score of boats. There were owners of lines of
+schooners, large contributors to the societies, and small men, their
+few craft pawned to the mastheads, with bankers and marine-insurance
+agents, captains of tugs and water-boats, riggers, fitters, lumpers,
+salters, boat-builders, and coopers, and all the mixed population of
+the water-front.
+
+They drifted along the line of seats made gay with the dresses of the
+summer boarders, and one of the town officials patrolled and perspired
+till he shone all over with pure civic pride. Cheyne had met him for
+five minutes a few days before, and between the two there was entire
+understanding.
+
+"Well, Mr. Cheyne, and what d'you think of our city?--Yes, madam, you
+can sit anywhere you please.--You have this kind of thing out West, I
+presume?"
+
+"Yes, but we aren't as old as you."
+
+"That's so, of course. You ought to have been at the exercises when we
+celebrated our two hundred and fiftieth birthday. I tell you, Mr.
+Cheyne, the old city did herself credit."
+
+"So I heard. It pays, too. What's the matter with the town that it
+don't have a first-class hotel, though?"
+
+"--Right over there to the left, Pedro. Heaps o' room for you and your
+crowd.--Why, that's what I tell 'em all the time, Mr. Cheyne. There's
+big money in it, but I presume that don't affect you any. What we want
+is--"
+
+A heavy hand fell on his broadcloth shoulder, and the flushed skipper
+of a Portland coal-and-ice coaster spun him half round. "What in
+thunder do you fellows mean by clappin' the law on the town when all
+decent men are at sea this way? Heh? Town's dry as a bone, an' smells a
+sight worse sence I quit. 'Might ha' left us one saloon for soft
+drinks, anyway."
+
+"Don't seem to have hindered your nourishment this morning, Carsen.
+I'll go into the politics of it later. Sit down by the door and think
+over your arguments till I come back."
+
+"What good is arguments to me? In Miquelon champagne's eighteen dollars
+a case and--" The skipper lurched into his seat as an organ-prelude
+silenced him.
+
+"Our new organ," said the official proudly to Cheyne. "Cost us four
+thousand dollars, too. We'll have to get back to high-license next year
+to pay for it. I wasn't going to let the ministers have all the
+religion at their convention. Those are some of our orphans standing up
+to sing. My wife taught 'em. See you again later, Mr. Cheyne. I'm
+wanted on the platform."
+
+High, clear, and true, children's voices bore down the last noise of
+those settling into their places.
+
+"O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify
+him for ever!"
+
+The women throughout the hall leaned forward to look as the reiterated
+cadences filled the air. Mrs. Cheyne, with some others, began to
+breathe short; she had hardly imagined there were so many widows in the
+world; and instinctively searched for Harvey. He had found the _We're
+Heres_ at the back of the audience, and was standing, as by right,
+between Dan and Disko. Uncle Salters, returned the night before with
+Penn, from Pamlico Sound, received him suspiciously.
+
+"Hain't your folk gone yet?" he grunted. "What are you doin' here,
+young feller?"
+
+"O ye Seas and Floods, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him
+for ever!"
+
+"Hain't he good right?" said Dan. "He's bin there, same as the rest of
+us."
+
+"Not in them clothes," Salters snarled.
+
+"Shut your head, Salters," said Disko. "Your bile's gone back on you.
+Stay right where ye are, Harve."
+
+Then up and spoke the orator of the occasion, another pillar of the
+municipality, bidding the world welcome to Gloucester, and incidentally
+pointing out wherein Gloucester excelled the rest of the world. Then he
+turned to the sea-wealth of the city, and spoke of the price that must
+be paid for the yearly harvest. They would hear later the names of
+their lost dead one hundred and seventeen of them. (The widows stared a
+little, and looked at one another here.) Gloucester could not boast any
+overwhelming mills or factories. Her sons worked for such wage as the
+sea gave; and they all knew that neither Georges nor the Banks were
+cow-pastures. The utmost that folk ashore could accomplish was to help
+the widows and the orphans, and after a few general remarks he took
+this opportunity of thanking, in the name of the city, those who had so
+public-spiritedly consented to participate in the exercises of the
+occasion.
+
+"I jest despise the beggin' pieces in it," growled Disko. "It don't
+give folk a fair notion of us."
+
+"Ef folk won't be fore-handed an' put by when they've the chance,"
+returned Salters, "it stands in the nature o' things they hev to be
+'shamed. You take warnin' by that, young feller. Riches endureth but
+for a season, ef you scatter them araound on lugsuries--"
+
+"But to lose everything, everything," said Penn. "What can you do then?
+Once I"--the watery blue eyes stared up and down as if looking for
+something to steady them--"once I read--in a book, I think--of a boat
+where every one was run down--except some one--and he said to me--"
+
+"Shucks!" said Salters, cutting in. "You read a little less an' take
+more int'rust in your vittles, and you'll come nearer earnin' your
+keep, Penn."
+
+Harvey, jammed among the fishermen, felt a creepy, crawly, tingling
+thrill that began in the back of his neck and ended at his boots. He
+was cold, too, though it was a stifling day.
+
+"That the actress from Philadelphia?" said Disko Troop, scowling at the
+platform. "You've fixed it about old man Ireson, hain't ye, Harve? Ye
+know why naow."
+
+It was not "Ireson's Ride" that the woman delivered, but some sort of
+poem about a fishing-port called Brixham and a fleet of trawlers
+beating in against storm by night, while the women made a guiding fire
+at the head of the quay with everything they could lay hands on.
+
+    "They took the grandma's blanket,
+    Who shivered and bade them go;
+    They took the baby's cradle,
+    Who could not say them no."
+
+"Whew!" said Dan, peering over Long Jack's shoulder. "That's great!
+Must ha' bin expensive, though."
+
+"Ground-hog case," said the Galway man. "Badly lighted port, Danny."
+
+    *     *     *     *     *     *
+    "And knew not all the while
+    If they were lighting a bonfire
+    Or only a funeral pile."
+
+The wonderful voice took hold of people by their heartstrings; and when
+she told how the drenched crews were flung ashore, living and dead, and
+they carried the bodies to the glare of the fires, asking: "Child, is
+this your father?" or "Wife, is this your man?" you could hear hard
+breathing all over the benches.
+
+
+    "And when the boats of Brixham
+    Go out to face the gales,
+    Think of the love that travels
+    Like light upon their sails!"
+
+There was very little applause when she finished. The women were
+looking for their handkerchiefs, and many of the men stared at the
+ceiling with shiny eyes.
+
+"H'm," said Salters; "that 'u'd cost ye a dollar to hear at any
+theatre--maybe two. Some folk, I presoom, can afford it. 'Seems
+downright waste to me. . . . Naow, how in Jerusalem did Cap. Bart
+Edwardes strike adrift here?"
+
+"No keepin' him under," said an Eastport man behind. "He's a poet, an'
+he's baound to say his piece. 'Comes from daown aour way, too."
+
+He did not say that Captain B. Edwardes had striven for five
+consecutive years to be allowed to recite a piece of his own
+composition on Gloucester Memorial Day. An amused and exhausted
+committee had at last given him his desire. The simplicity and utter
+happiness of the old man, as he stood up in his very best Sunday
+clothes, won the audience ere he opened his mouth. They sat unmurmuring
+through seven-and-thirty hatchet-made verses describing at fullest
+length the loss of the schooner _Joan Hasken_ off the Georges in the gale
+of 1867, and when he came to an end they shouted with one kindly throat.
+
+A far-sighted Boston reporter slid away for a full copy of the epic and
+an interview with the author; so that earth had nothing more to offer
+Captain Bart Edwardes, ex-whaler, shipwright, master-fisherman, and
+poet, in the seventy-third year of his age.
+
+"Naow, I call that sensible," said the Eastport man. "I've bin over
+that graound with his writin', jest as he read it, in my two hands, and
+I can testify that he's got it all in."
+
+"If Dan here couldn't do better'n that with one hand before breakfast,
+he ought to be switched," said Salters, upholding the honor of
+Massachusetts on general principles. "Not but what I'm free to own he's
+considerable litt'ery--fer Maine. Still--"
+
+"Guess Uncle Salters's goin' to die this trip. Fust compliment he's
+ever paid me," Dan sniggered. "What's wrong with you, Harve? You act
+all quiet and you look greenish. Feelin' sick?"
+
+"Don't know what's the matter with me," Harvey implied. "Seems if my
+insides were too big for my outsides. I'm all crowded up and shivery."
+
+"Dispepsy? Pshaw--too bad. We'll wait for the readin', an' then we'll
+quit, an' catch the tide."
+
+The widows--they were nearly all of that season's making--braced
+themselves rigidly like people going to be shot in cold blood, for they
+knew what was coming. The summer-boarder girls in pink and blue
+shirt-waists stopped tittering over Captain Edwardes's wonderful poem,
+and looked back to see why all was silent. The fishermen pressed
+forward as that town official who had talked to Cheyne bobbed up on the
+platform and began to read the year's list of losses, dividing them
+into months. Last September's casualties were mostly single men and
+strangers, but his voice rang very loud in the stillness of the hall.
+
+"September 9th. Schooner _Florrie Anderson_ lost, with all aboard, off
+the Georges.
+
+"Reuben Pitman, master, 50, single, Main Street, City.
+
+"Emil Olsen, 19, single, 329 Hammond Street, City. Denmark.
+
+"Oscar Standberg, single, 25. Sweden.
+
+"Carl Stanberg, single, 28, Main Street. City.
+
+"Pedro, supposed Madeira, single, Keene's boardinghouse. City.
+
+"Joseph Welsh, alias Joseph Wright, 30, St. John's, Newfoundland."
+
+"No--Augusty, Maine," a voice cried from the body of the hall.
+
+"He shipped from St. John's," said the reader, looking to see.
+
+"I know it. He belongs in Augusty. My nevvy."
+
+The reader made a pencilled correction on the margin of the list, and
+resumed.
+
+"Same schooner, Charlie Ritchie, Liverpool, Nova Scotia, 33, single.
+
+"Albert May, 267 Rogers Street, City, 27, single.
+
+"September 27th.--Orvin Dollard, 30, married, drowned in dory off
+Eastern Point."
+
+That shot went home, for one of the widows flinched where she sat,
+clasping and unclasping her hands. Mrs. Cheyne, who had been listening
+with wide-opened eyes, threw up her head and choked. Dan's mother, a
+few seats to the right, saw and heard and quickly moved to her side.
+The reading went on. By the time they reached the January and February
+wrecks the shots were falling thick and fast, and the widows drew
+breath between their teeth.
+
+"February 14th.--Schooner _Harry Randolph_ dismasted on the way home from
+Newfoundland; Asa Musie, married, 32, Main Street, City, lost overboard.
+
+"February 23d.--Schooner _Gilbert Hope_; went astray in dory, Robert
+Beavon, 29, married, native of Pubnico, Nova Scotia."
+
+But his wife was in the hall. They heard a low cry, as though a little
+animal had been hit. It was stifled at once, and a girl staggered out
+of the hall. She had been hoping against hope for months, because some
+who have gone adrift in dories have been miraculously picked up by
+deep-sea sailing-ships. Now she had her certainty, and Harvey could see
+the policeman on the sidewalk hailing a hack for her. "It's fifty cents
+to the depot"--the driver began, but the policeman held up his
+hand--"but I'm goin' there anyway. Jump right in. Look at here, Al; you
+don't pull me next time my lamps ain't lit. See?"
+
+The side-door closed on the patch of bright sunshine, and Harvey's eyes
+turned again to the reader and his endless list.
+
+"April 19th.--Schooner _Mamie Douglas_ lost on the Banks with all hands.
+
+"Edward Canton, 43, master, married, City.
+
+"D. Hawkins, alias Williams, 34, married, Shelbourne, Nova Scotia.
+
+"G. W. Clay, coloured, 28, married, City."
+
+And so on, and so on. Great lumps were rising in Harvey's throat, and
+his stomach reminded him of the day when he fell from the liner.
+
+"May 10th.--Schooner _We're Here_ [the blood tingled all over him] Otto
+Svendson, 20, single, City, lost overboard."
+
+Once more a low, tearing cry from somewhere at the back of the hall.
+
+"She shouldn't ha' come. She shouldn't ha' come," said Long Jack, with
+a cluck of pity.
+
+"Don't scrowge, Harve," grunted Dan. Harvey heard that much, but the
+rest was all darkness spotted with fiery wheels. Disko leaned forward
+and spoke to his wife, where she sat with one arm round Mrs. Cheyne,
+and the other holding down the snatching, catching, ringed hands.
+
+"Lean your head daown--right daown!" he whispered. "It'll go off in a
+minute."
+
+"I ca-an't! I do-don't! Oh, let me--" Mrs. Cheyne did not at all know
+what she said.
+
+"You must," Mrs. Troop repeated. "Your boy's jest fainted dead away.
+They do that some when they're gettin' their growth. 'Wish to tend to
+him? We can git aout this side. Quite quiet. You come right along with
+me. Psha', my dear, we're both women, I guess. We must tend to aour
+men-folk. Come!"
+
+The _We're Heres_ promptly went through the crowd as a body-guard, and
+it was a very white and shaken Harvey that they propped up on a bench
+in an anteroom.
+
+"Favours his ma," was Mrs. Troop's only comment, as the mother bent
+over her boy.
+
+"How d'you suppose he could ever stand it?" she cried indignantly to
+Cheyne, who had said nothing at all. "It was horrible--horrible! We
+shouldn't have come. It's wrong and wicked! It--it isn't right!
+Why--why couldn't they put these things in the papers, where they
+belong? Are you better, darling?"
+
+That made Harvey very properly ashamed. "Oh, I'm all right, I guess,"
+he said, struggling to his feet, with a broken giggle. "Must ha' been
+something I ate for breakfast."
+
+"Coffee, perhaps," said Cheyne, whose face was all in hard lines, as
+though it had been cut out of bronze. "We won't go back again."
+
+"Guess 'twould be 'baout's well to git daown to the wharf," said Disko.
+"It's close in along with them Dagoes, an' the fresh air will fresh
+Mrs. Cheyne up."
+
+Harvey announced that he never felt better in his life; but it was not
+till he saw the _We're Here_, fresh from the lumper's hands, at
+Wouverman's wharf, that he lost his all-overish feelings in a queer
+mixture of pride and sorrowfulness. Other people--summer boarders and
+such-like--played about in cat-boats or looked at the sea from
+pier-heads; but he understood things from the inside--more things than
+he could begin to think about. None the less, he could have sat down
+and howled because the little schooner was going off. Mrs. Cheyne
+simply cried and cried every step of the way and said most
+extraordinary things to Mrs. Troop, who "babied" her till Dan, who had
+not been "babied" since he was six, whistled aloud.
+
+And so the old crowd--Harvey felt like the most ancient of mariners
+dropped into the old schooner among the battered dories, while Harvey
+slipped the stern-fast from the pier-head, and they slid her along the
+wharf-side with their hands. Every one wanted to say so much that no
+one said anything in particular. Harvey bade Dan take care of Uncle
+Salters's sea-boots and Penn's dory-anchor, and Long Jack entreated
+Harvey to remember his lessons in seamanship; but the jokes fell flat
+in the presence of the two women, and it is hard to be funny with green
+harbour-water widening between good friends.
+
+"Up jib and fores'l!" shouted Disko, getting to the wheel, as the wind
+took her. "See you later, Harve. Dunno but I come near thinkin' a heap
+o' you an' your folks."
+
+Then she glided beyond ear-shot, and they sat down to watch her up the
+harbour, And still Mrs. Cheyne wept.
+
+"Pshaw, my dear," said Mrs. Troop: "we're both women, I guess. Like's
+not it'll ease your heart to hev your cry aout. God He knows it never
+done me a mite o' good, but then He knows I've had something to cry
+fer!"
+
+
+Now it was a few years later, and upon the other edge of America, that
+a young man came through the clammy sea fog up a windy street which is
+flanked with most expensive houses built of wood to imitate stone. To
+him, as he was standing by a hammered iron gate, entered on
+horseback--and the horse would have been cheap at a thousand
+dollars--another young man. And this is what they said:
+
+"Hello, Dan!"
+
+"Hello, Harve!"
+
+"What's the best with you?"
+
+"Well, I'm so's to be that kind o' animal called second mate this trip.
+Ain't you most through with that triple invoiced college of yours?"
+
+"Getting that way. I tell you, the Leland Stanford Junior, isn't a
+circumstance to the old _We're Here_; but I'm coming into the business
+for keeps next fall."
+
+"Meanin' aour packets?"
+
+"Nothing else. You just wait till I get my knife into you, Dan. I'm
+going to make the old line lie down and cry when I take hold."
+
+"I'll resk it," said Dan, with a brotherly grin, as Harvey dismounted
+and asked whether he were coming in.
+
+"That's what I took the cable fer; but, say, is the doctor anywheres
+araound? I'll draown that crazy nigger some day, his one cussed joke
+an' all."
+
+There was a low, triumphant chuckle, as the ex-cook of the _We're Here_
+came out of the fog to take the horse's bridle. He allowed no one but
+himself to attend to any of Harvey's wants.
+
+"Thick as the Banks, ain't it, doctor?" said Dan, propitiatingly.
+
+But the coal-black Celt with the second-sight did not see fit to reply
+till he had tapped Dan on the shoulder, and for the twentieth time
+croaked the old, old prophecy in his ear.
+
+"Master--man. Man--master," said he. "You remember, Dan Troop, what I
+said? On the _We're Here_?"
+
+"Well, I won't go so far as to deny that it do look like it as things
+stand at present," said Dan. "She was a noble packet, and one way an'
+another I owe her a heap--her and Dad."
+
+"Me too," quoth Harvey Cheyne.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's "Captains Courageous", by Rudyard Kipling
+
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