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Title: The Garotters

Author: William D. Howells

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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 deli 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 checker-board 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 apologise,
Harvey."

"Who's apologising?

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.

Pif! 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 grown-up 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 skelped the boom off a Frenchman since noon,
an'
that's close sailin',
ye may say."

"You like my cigar,
eh?"
the German asked,
for Harvey's eyes were full of tears.

"Fine,
full flavour,"
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 flagpole.

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,
grey 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 stateroom 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
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 grey 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 woolen 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 flavour 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.

"Is n'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 ef 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 fo'c'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 grey 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 around,
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 thet 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,
drily.

"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 the 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 abaout 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 ag'in."

"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 dollrs,
young feller?"
"It was part of my pocket-money -
for a month."

This Harvey thought would be a knockdown 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 ag'in'
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,
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,
an'
you kin tell us all abaout your dad an'
your ma n'
your money efterwards."

"She's on the steamer,"
said Harvey,
his eyes fill-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,
ez I said,
an',
o'
course,
all f'und,
same ez 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,
anyway."

"Ha-ow?"
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 feller,
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 f'und - 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 ag'in'
this young feller 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 ag'in'
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 hey 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 lying."

"Of course,"
said Harvey.

"Thet ain't
'nuff.

Say,
'Hope I may die if I ain't speakin'
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."

o
"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'
thet'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 comin'
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,
ain't 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 f'und 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 be 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 gives us
'O Captain'
it's toppin'
full."

The bellow continued:

"And naow
to thee,
O Capting,
Most earnestly I pray That they shall never bury me In church or cloister grey."

"Double game
for Tom Platt.

He'll tell you all about the old Ohio to-morrow.

'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 ag'in'
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.

Punkins,
sometimes,
an'
sometimes lemons an'
cucumbers.

Yes,
he's stung up from his elbows down.

That man's luck's perfectly paralysin'.

Naow we'll take a-holt o'
the tackles an'
h'ist
'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 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 slantways 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.

"Git 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 over-side,
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 tubly little man.

"You're comin'
down on me ag'in.

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 fo'c'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.

Sniff! She smells good to-night.

Dad ships a good cook ef he do suffer
with his brother.

It's a full catch today,
ain't 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 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;
and they're mean an'
humpy,
an'
their stummicks has
to be humoured;
so they come first,
which they don't deserve.

Ain't that so,
doctor?"
The cook nodded.

"Can't he talk?"
said Harvey,
in a whisper.

"'Nough
to git along.

Not much o'
anything we know.

His natural tongue's kinder curious.

Comes from the in'ards of Cape Breton,
he does,
where the farmers speak home-made Scotch.

Cape Breton's full o'
niggers whose folk run in there durin'
aour war,
an'
they talk like the 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 eye.

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 - a steady undertune
to the
"click-nick"
of the knives in the pen;
the wrench and schloop of torn heads,
dropped liver,
and flying offal;
the
"caraaah"
of Uncle Salters's knife scooping away backbones;
and the flap of wet,
opened 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 a 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 every single time sence 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 fo'c'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 43
"CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS"
'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 thet 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 thet 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 fo'c'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 topgallantsails,
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 mainmast-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 comin'
up one by one,
lookin'
fer nothin'
in particular,
o'
course,
but scrowgin'
on us all the time?

There's the Prince Leboa;
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 on less 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 catch-in'
weather."

"Not in that cherry-coloured rig ner them ha'afbaked 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 flippers,
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.

Ef 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 ladylike fashion,
on the Adirondack ponds;
but there is a difference between squeaking pins and well-balanced rowlocks - 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 whale-boat
"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 backward.

"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 dough-boys.

Bait same's I do,
Harve,
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.

"Naow ye know what strawberry-bottom means.

Nothin'
'cep'
fish should be teched
with the naked fingers,
dad says.

Slat
'em off ag'in'
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
"flippers,"
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 grey-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 arc 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 manoeuvre his dory swung round and snubbed herself on her rope.

"We'll hey
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 fish-in',
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 story-books.

"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 indeed 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 ijjit.

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 Boller 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 Johnstown.

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 bu'st 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 ag'in'
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-mould 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
'twuz a cow's bag.

He's thet much farmer.

Well,
Penn an'
he they ran the farm - up Exeter way,
'twuz.

Uncle Salters he sold it this spring
to a jay from Boston as wanted
to build a summerhaouse,
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
'piscopalian mostly - but he jest let
'em hev it both sides o'
the bow,
'sif 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 Boller.

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's not,
he'll die,
dad sez.

Don't yer talk about 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 mould.

"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 yander'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 frum home.

'Guess we'll see the
'Abbie M.

Deering'
to- morrer,
dad,
won't we?

They're all slippin'
over from the shoal o'
'Queereau."

"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 fore-boom 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 all 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 bin 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',1 outside Beaufort 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,
and 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 fo'c'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.

1 The Gemsbok,
U.

S.

N.?

"'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 l'arn 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 emphasised 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 fo'c'sle stovepipe,
and the gurry-butts by the fo'c'sle-hatch
to hold the fish-livers.

Aft of these the fore-boom 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 lengthwise,
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 foretop 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 l'arnin',
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 l'arn.

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 l'arned 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 more ropes,
and Harvey danced over the deck like an eel at ebb-tide,
one eye on Tom Platt.

"Ver'
good.

Ver'
good done,"
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 upping 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 bu'st 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 head-sail 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.

Boat-fishin'
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 free-board 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 fo'c'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.

"Urn!
'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 barehanded 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 tonight.

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 jest 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 a-hold 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 drily 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! cling! 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 oilskinned 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 hours struck clear in the cabin;
the nosing bows slapped and scuffled
with the seas;
the fo'c'sle stovepipe hissed and sputtered as the spray caught it;
and the boys slept on,
while Disko,
Long Jack,
Tom Plait,
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 fo'c'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 fo'c'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 buck-shot.

Followed the woolly sound of the cable in the hawse-hole;
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 git jest about what's goin',
candles or kerosene,
fer that matter."

"Tis a mighty good thing,"
said Long Jack,
"to have a fri'nd 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 Salem 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 striped 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 Plait,
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 fo'c'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 nachette.

"'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 - Swallow-tail 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 tugboat
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 an'
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 hundreth 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 f'und the Active o'
Portland,
an'
Gibbons o'
that town he was her skipper;
they f'und 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'! 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 folk 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,
seem'
public feelin'
ag'in'
'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,
an'
Ireson he told
'em they'd be sorry
for it some day.

Well,
the facts came 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 time Whittier ever slipped up,
an'
'tweren't fair.

I whaled Dan good when he brought that piece back from school.

Tots 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 nachette
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 Plait
"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 Plait.

"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 make no differ
to her driftin'.

Jimmy Christmas! She'll etch loose in a flat ca'am."

"We're well dear 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 fo'c'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 grey hills,
while the wind hooted through her rigging as she zigzagged down the slopes.

Far away a sea would burst in 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 greys.

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 fo'c'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 crosstrees,
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 sails 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 quarter-deck was some four 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,
-"
scandalised,"
they call it,
- and her fore-boom 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 blowzy,
frousy,
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 thrashed up,
wore round
with a clatter and rattle,
and lay head
to wind within ear-shot.

A greybeard 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! Abishai!"
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.

Yah! 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 greyhead yelled something about a dance at the Bay of Bulls and a dead man in the fo'c'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 quarter-decks 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 crisscross!"
The dishevelled
"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 hass 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 realise that he had seen death on the open waters,
but he felt very sick.

Then Dan went up the crosstrees,
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
for 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 tonight."

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 dressdaown 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 tonight,
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 stung 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 h'istin'
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 ag'in'
'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 his 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 fo'c'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 recognised 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 green-crusted 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 hand 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 stay-sail,
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 Torn 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 - every 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 log-book.

"'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."

"Y'ever 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 chuckle:

"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 gipsies 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'
Johnstown 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-sore 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 fo'c'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 harbour 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 portieres.

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 the 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 change
for the sailing-ships);
of gales and cold - 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 specially 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-grey kenches of well-pressed fish mounted higher and higher in the hold.

No one day's work was out of the 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 unrecognised leader.

"Let the two Jeraulds lead
'em,"
said Disko.

"We're baound
to lay among
'em fer 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.

"Squarerigger bellowin'
fer his latitude,"
said Long Jack.

The dripping red headsails 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 vouz - backez vouz! 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 unneighbourly
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 calm'
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 recognised 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 I'amčnerait ici?

Je donnerai Québec,
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 chock-full 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 perhaps 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,
tbat'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 lulisikin'
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 ag'in'
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 c'u'd ha'
met a tramp an',
over an'
above givin'
her her reckonin',
- over an'
above that,
I say,
- c'u'd 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 Manila D.

Kuhn,
instid o'
Cap.

Newton that was took
with inflam't'ry 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 towboat 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 c'u'd ha'
floated the Manila,
insurance and 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 c'u'd only tell the tale as he told ut!)
All that whoile the wind blew like ould glory,
an'
the Manila -
'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 Manila 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 been out a matter o'
fourteen days,
and they mistrusted the Bank had 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 too 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 Manila she'd struck her gait,
and she hild ut,
an'
prisintly along come a tramp,
an'
Counahan spoke her.

"'Hey 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 ez 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 Manila 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.

Disko 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 a 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 unsavoury 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 stock in'!"
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 gittin'
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 headgear,
"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,"
said 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;
"Johnna 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 fisherman'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 state-room
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!"
"Aoooo - whoooo - whupp!"
went the siren.

"Wingle - tingle - tink,"
went the bell.

"Graaa - ouch!"
went the conch,
while sea and sky were all milled 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 grey-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 f'und one,
though.

'Run acrost him snarled up in a mess o'
lumber thet might ha'
bin a fo'c'sle.

His head's cut some."

"Who is he?"
The
"We're Heres'"
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 ag'in'
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 you 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 -"
"He - we 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 ag'in.

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 Bollerin'.

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 jest as sot,"
said Disko.

"That's dif'runt,"
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 fo'c'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 dreary 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 fo'c'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-grey,
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 neatly 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 grey-black 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 an organ chant.

"Who stole the lamp-wicks?"
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 - on 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 fire-cracker chorus:

"Jim! 0 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 messmate?

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,
Salters'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 south-ward,
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 your 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,
'less 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 talk in'
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 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 the 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;
Québec,
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 awhile 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 frum off of a dead man,
so
to speak.

'See them Arichat Frenchmen step back when I bid?"
"But an auction ain't taking anything 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.

"Holibut'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 mile
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."

"Do-on't,
Dan! We're right on top of him now.

'Wish I was safe aboard,
bein'
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 drownded a boy alongside in a drunk fit;
an'
ever after,
that boy he'd row alongside 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 overside 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
to 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 sides 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 fo'c'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 accommodate 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 womenfolk and owners,
while the
"We're Here"
finished the musical ride through the Fleet,
her head-sails quivering like a man's hand when he raises it
to say good-bye.

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 coaxing her steadfast way through grey,
grey-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 grey 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 flourishing 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 Harbour,
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 full 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
to 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,
bungful 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 back-yard,
ready
to leap the fence if the enemy advanced.

"Dad,
you're welcome
to your own jedgment,
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 ploughed 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 frum
'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 grey 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 realised 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 tea-ships;
the wife was 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 verandah-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?

'Maybe 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 war-path.

Tell
'em we don't feel like fighting just now,
Milsom.

Tell
'em what we're going for.

I guess you and Miss Kinzey 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 roads 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 round-houses;
Barstow passed the word
to the Atlantic and Pacific;
the Albuquerque flung it the whole length of the Atchison,
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;
despatches 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 o'
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 drought 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 shirt- sleeves,
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 out"
from Flagstaff
to Winslow,
till a division superintendent protested.

But Mrs. Cheyne,
in the boudoir state-room,
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 China-man,
the clink-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 scaur 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 sympathised
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 Atchison,
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 the marks of gurry- sores;
and a fine full flavour of cod-fish 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.

Best 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 Portugee.

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 state-room,
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 paralyse
'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 to-morrow.

Wouverman takes our fish.

You see,
we're 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 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 a 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'
bein'
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 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 anyways in order,
but you're quite welcome
to look around.

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,
especially 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 tould 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,
Mister 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 outstretched 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 fo'c'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 it as if she'd made a cathedral av ut all."

"Cathedral!"
sneered Tom Platt.

"Oh,
ef it had bin even the Fish C'mmission boat instid o'
this bally-hoo o'
blazes.

Ef 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!"
said 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 it 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 ef 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
to 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 table- 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 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 bin 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 José 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."

"Ef I'd only known! Ef 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 José 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,
ef 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 a 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."

"Ef 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 over
to Troop's eighteen-hundred-dollar,
blue-trimmed white house,
with a retired dory full of nasturtiums in the front yard and a shuttered parlor 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).

Ef 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 sympathise
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,
un- slaked 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 rare-bits 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 we - that 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 highstrungness 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 samey,
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 Vitré 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 over-side,"
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 when 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,
boardinghouse keeper,
journalist,
engineer,
drummer,
real-estate agent,
politician,
dead-beat,
rumseller,
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 opened 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 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 men 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-ships.

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 asked not 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 waterfront - 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 a 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's 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's 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-licence 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 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 grandam'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 theater - 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 an 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 honour 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 replied.

"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
with 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 Stanberg,
single,
25,
Sweden.

"Carl Stanberg,
single,
28,
Main Street,
City.

"Pedro,
supposed Madeira,
single,
Keene's boarding-house,
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 i4th.

- Schooner
"Harry Randolph"
dismasted on the way home from Newfoundland;
Asa Musie,
married,
32,
Main Street,
City,
lost overboard.

"February a 3d.

- 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 hail.

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,
Alf;
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!"
she 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.

"Psha',
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 o'
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 an able packet,
and one way an'
another I owe her a heap - her and dad."

"Me too,"
quoth Harvey Cheyne.

End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Captains Courageous,
by Kipling