 CHAPTER VIII. To the end of his days Harvey will never forget that sight. The sun was just clearer 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 curtsying one to the other. From every boat dories were dropped away like bees from a crowded hive, and a clamor 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 colors, black, pearly gray and white, as the sun mounted, and more boats swung up through the mist 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. "'Disco was right. It's a town.' "'I've seen smaller,' said Disco. "'There's about a thousand men here, and yonder's the Virgin.' He pointed to a vacant space of greenish sea where there were no dories. The weir here skirted round the northern squadron, Disco waving his hand to friend after friend, and anchored as neatly as a racing-yacht at the end of the season. The bank fleet passed good seamanship in silence, but a bungler is jeered all along the line. "'Just in time for the Kaplan!' cried the merry Chilton. "'Salt most wet!' asked the King Philip. "'Hey, Tom Platt, come to supper tonight!' said the Henry Clay. And so questions and answers flew back and forth. Man 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 youngblood suggested with Dan, who had a lively tongue of his own, and inquired after their health by the town nicknames they least liked. Manuel's countryman jabbered at him in his 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 round 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 shouting 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 weir-hears, 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 freeze against the skyline, and then their men pointed and hailed. At this 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 capital of school any time from now on. Where'll we lay, Tom Platt?' Among 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 weir-hears. But a yell of laughter went up as a dory shot from her station with exceeding speed, its occupant pulling madly on the roading. "'Give her slack!' roared twenty voices. Let him shake it out!' "'What's the matter?' asked Harvey, as the boat flashed away to the southward. "'He's anchored, isn't he?' "'Anchored? Sure enough, but his ground tackles kinder shifty!' said Dan, laughing. "'Wales found it. Dip, Harve! Here they come!' The sea round them clouded and darkened, and then frizzed up in showers of tiny silver fish, and over a space of five or six acres the cod began to leap like trout in May, while behind the cod three or four broad gray 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 neighbor'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, sent 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 Kaplan moved off, and five minutes later there was no sound except the splash of the sinkers over side, 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, heading as steadily as they swam. Banked law strictly forbids more than one hook on one line when the dories are on the virgin, or the eastern shoals, but so closely 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 neighbors. To cut another's rodings is crime unspeakable on the banks, yet it was done, and done without detection three or four times that day. Tom Platt caught a main man in the black act and knocked him over the gunnel 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 weir here as the dories filled. The Kaplan schooled once more at twilight, when the mad clamor was repeated, and at dusk they rode back to dress down by the light of kerosene lamps on the edge of the Penn. 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 version, 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 a question, "'Who's the meanest man in the fleet?' Three hundred voices answered cheerily, "'Nick Brady!' It sounded an organ chant. "'Who stole the lamp-wicks?' That was Dan's contribution. "'Nick Brady!' sank the boats. "'Who boiled the salt-bait for 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 Truo boat, whose six years before had been convicted of using a tackle with five or six hooks, a Scrouger, they call it, on the shoals. Naturally he had been christened, Scrouger Jim, and though he had hidden himself on the Georges ever since, he found his honors waiting for him full blown. They took it up in a sort of firecracker chorus. Jim! Oh Jim! Jim! Oh Jim! Scrouger Jim!' That pleased everybody. Then when a poetical Beverly-man, he had been making it up all day, and talked about it for weeks, sang, "'The Carrie Pipman's anchor doesn't hold her for a cent!' The Dory's 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 Dory sang about him and his food. Was a schooner badly found? The fleet was told at full length. Had a man hooked tobacco from a mess-mate. He was named in meeting. The name tossed from roller to roller. Disco's infallible judgements. Long Jack's market-boat that he had sold years ago. Dan's sweetheart. Oh! But Dan was an angry boy. Dan's bad luck with Dory anchors. Salter's views on manure. Manuel's little slips from virtue ashore. And Harvey's ladylike handling of the oar. All were laid before the public, and as the fog fell around them in silvery sheets beneath the sun, the voices sound like a bench of invisible judges pronouncing sentence. The Dory's roved and fished and squabbled till a swell underran the sea. Then they drew more apart to save their sides, and someone called that if the swell continued the virgin would break. A reckless Galway man with his nephew denied this, hauled up anchor, and rode over the very rock itself. Many voices called them to come away, while others dared them to hold on. As the smooth-backed rollers passed to the southward, they hoved 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 rode up behind his countrymen and quietly cut their roading. Can't you hear it knocking? 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. Aided elegant? said Dan, bobbing like a young seal at home. She'll break about once every half hour now, lest the swell piles up good. What's a regular time when she's at work, Tom Platt? Once every fifteen minutes to the tick. Hire of you seen the greatest thing on the banks, and but for long Jack you've 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 nose cautiously out of the mist, and was received with shouts and cries of, come along, darling, from the Irishry. Another Frenchman, said Harvey. Ain't you eyes? She's a Baltimore boat, going in fear and trembling, said Dan. We'll guide the very sticks out of her. Guess it's the first 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 top-sail 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 neighborhood 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 Dorees. The Virgin! What are you talking of? This is Le Havre on a Sunday morning. Go home and sober up. Go home, you Tyrepen. Go home and tell them we're coming. Half a dozen voices together, in a most tuneful chorus, as a stern went down with a roll and a bubble into the troughs. There she strikes! Hard up! Hard up for your life! You're on top of her now! Down! Hard down! Let go of everything! All hands to the pumps! Down jib and 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 at her next port of call. They asked him if he were insured, and once he had stolen his anchor, because they said it belonged to the Kerry Pittman. 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, Get it, buck! Cook emptied a pan of ashes on him, and he replied with cod-heads. The bark's crew fired a small coal from the galley, and the Dory's threatened to come aboard and raise-ee her. They would have warned her at once had she been in real peril, but seeing her well clear of the version they made the most of their chances. The fun was spoiled 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 Dory's 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 geralds 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 cockley swells, but troop kept the weir-hears 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 foregap 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 weird heroes. 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 disco's spy-glass. It was only an oblong bundle slid over side. 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, making something that sounded like a hymn. It went to a very slow tune. La briquantine qui va tourner, roule et s'encline pour m'entrainer, en fierge m'arri, pour mon prière 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 portfellow over the heel of the bow-spread 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 Samalot or Michelin, and everything was spread out on the top of the house, from his red-knitted cap to the leather belt with the sheaf-knife at the back. Dan and Harvey were out on twenty-fathom water in the Hatties, and naturally rode 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 over side 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. Guests won't hurt us any to be warmed up, said Dan, shivering under his oil-skins, and they rode on into the heart of a white fog, which as usual dropped on them without warning. There's too much blame tied here abouts to trust to your instincts, 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 roading 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 terrace for him now. They fished a while in silence, and found the cod struck on well. Then Dan drew the sheaf-knife and tested the edge of it on the gunnel. That's a daisy, said Harvey. How did you get it so cheap? On account of their blame Catholic superstitions, said Dan, jab him with a bright blade, they don't fancy taking iron from off of a dead man, so to speak. See that Arachat Frenchman stepped 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 going in the teeth of superstition. That's one of the advantages of living in a progressive country. And Dan began whistling. Oh, double thatcher, how are you? Now Eastern Point comes interview. The girls and boys we soon shall see at anchor off Cape Anne. Why didn't that Eastport man bid then? He bought his boots. Ain't Maine progressive? Maine? Pasha! They don't know enough, or they ain't got money enough to paint their houses in Maine. I've seen them. 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? He was the muckle. Harvey hauled in his fish, rebaited and threw over. Killed him. Of course, when I heard that I was keener never 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? Do you like it as much as all that? Said Dan, flushing. Well, to tell the truth, I kind of 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 dorymates, and so on and so forth, and so following. Watch a halt. He held it out, belt and all. But look at here, Dan, I don't see. Take it. Ain't no use to me. I wish you to have 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, herein', said Dan, with a pleasant laugh, and then anxious to change the subject. Looks as if your line was fast as something. Fowled, 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. Concerned the thing, he cried. She asked as though she was on Strawberry Bottom. It's all sand here, ain't it? Dan reached over and gave a judgematic tweak. All a bottle acts that way if he's sulky. That's no Strawberry Bottom. Yanker wants her twice. She gives, sure. Guess we'd better haul up and 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! grown 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—but buckle! Quick, Harvey'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 flugged the belt far over side. 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. To know as that would have made any differ were both scared out of ten years' growth. Oh, Harve, did you see his head? Did I? I'll never forget it. Oh, look at here, Dan. It couldn't have been met. He was only the tide. Tide. He come for it, Harve. Why, they sunk him six miles to southward of the fleet, and we're two miles from where she's lying now. They told me he was weighted with a fathom and a half of 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. And so— What are you doing with the fish? I'm overboard, said Harve. What for? We shan't eat him. I don't care. I had to look at his face while I was taking 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 it last. I'd give a month's pay if this fog had lift. Things go about in a fog that you don't see in clear weather. Yo-hoes and hollerers and such like. I'm so too relieved to come the way he did instead of walking. He might have walked. Don't, Dan. We're right on top of him now. Wish I was safe aboard, being pounded by Uncle Salters. They'll be looking for us in a little. Give me the tutor. Question took the ten dinner horn, but paused before he blew. Go on, said Harve. I don't want to stay here all night. Question is how he'd take it. There was a man from down the coast who told me once he was in a schooner where their darsen't ever blow a horn to the doories, because the skipper, not the man he was with, but a captain that had run her five years before, he'd drowned at a boy alongside in a drunk fit, and ever after that boy he'd rode alongside 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 Harve. It's the cook. Don't know what made me think of that full tale, either, said Dan. It's the doctor, sure enough. Dan, Danny! Oh, Dan! Harve! Harvey! Oh, Harvey! We're here!" sung both boys together. They heard oars, but could see nothing till the cook, shining and dripping, rode into them. What has happened? said he. You will be beaten at home. That's what we want. That's what we're suffering for, said Dan. Having homeies good enough for us, we've had counter-depressing company. As the cook passed them a line, Dan told him the tale. Yes, he come for his knife, was all he said at the end. Never had the little rocking we're here look so deliciously home like as when the cook, born and bred in fogs, rode 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 disco 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 pumped round the counter how Harvey was the mascot to destroy any possible bad luck. So the boys came over side as rather uncanny heroes, and everyone 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 favor 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 a stern 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 Samuel O. Deckhand scaring a couple of poor boys stiff for the sake of a thirty-cent knife, why then the cook can take hold for all of me. I mistrust ferners, living 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 weir here was racing neck and neck for her last few loads against the Perry Norman, and so close was the struggle that the fleet took sides embedded 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 hole to pass salt while Dan helped to dress down. Luckily a Perry Norman man sprained his ankle falling down the folksle, and the weir here's gained. Harvey could not see how one more fish could be crammed into her, but Disco and Tom Platt stowed and stowed, and planked the mast down with big stones from the ballast, and there was always just another day's work. Disco 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 topso were up by noon, and Dory's came alongside with letters for home. The riding sail was down, and the main and topso were up by noon, and Dory's came alongside with letters for home, envying their good fortune. At last she cleared decks, hoisted her flag, as is the ride of the first boat off the banks, up, anchored, and began to move. Disco 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. Hi, Iyoh, send your letters round. All our salt is wetted and the anchor's off the ground. Bend, O bend your mainsail, we're back to Yankee land. We're fifteen hundred quintal, and fifteen hundred quintal, ten hundred top and quintal, Twixle, Quiru, and Grand. The last letters pitched on deck wrapped round pieces of coal, and the Gloucester men shouted messages to their wives and women-folk and owners, while the Weir Heer finished the musical ride through the fleet, her head-sols quivering like a man's hand when he raises it to say goodbye. Harpy very soon discovered that the Weir Heer, with her riding-sail strolling from birth to birth, and the Weir Heer, headed west by south under home canvas, were two very different boats. There was a bite and kick to the wheel, even in boys' 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. Disco kept them busy fiddling with the sails, and when those were flattened like erasing-yachts, Dan had to wait on the big top-soul, 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, Harpy had time to look at the sea from another point of view. The low-sided schooner was naturally a 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 to gray, gray-blue, or black hollows laced across and across with streaks of shivering foam, or rubbing herself caressingly along the flank of some bigger water-hill. It was as if she said, You wouldn't hurt me, surely. I'm only the little we're here." Then she would slide away, chuckling softly to herself, till she was brought up by some fresh obstacle. The dullest of folk cannot see this kind of thing hour after hour through long days without noticing it, and Harpy, being anything but dull, began to comprehend and enjoy the dry chorus of wavetops, turning over with the 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 waters, 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-boon solemnly poked at the low stars, and Harpy 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 with inhale, and she cuddled her lee-rail down to the crashing blue, and kept a little home-bound rainbow arching unbroken over her windlass. Then the jaws of the booms whined against the masts, and the sheets creaked, and the sails filled with roaring, and when she slid into a hollow she trampled like a woman tripped in her own silk dress, and came out, her jib wet half-way up, yearning and peering for the tall twin-lights of Thatcher's Island. They left the cold gray of the bank's sea, saw the lumber-ships making for Quebec by the Straits of St. Lawrence, with the Jersey salt-briggs from Spain and Sicily, found a friendly northeaster off Artamon Bank that drove them within view of the east-light of Sable Island. A site disco did not linger over, and stayed with them past Western and L'Havve to the northern fringe of Georges. From there they picked up the deeper water and let her go merrily. "'Hattie's pullin' on the string,' Dan confided to Harvey. "'Hattie and Ma. Next Sunday you'll be hiring a boy to throw water on the windows to make you 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' a night-shirt's ever since we've bent our mainsail. You can wiggle your toes, then. Ma'll have a new one for me. All washed soft. It's home, Harve. It's home. You can sense it in the air. We're runnin' into the edge of a hot wave now, and I can smell the bayberries. Wonder if we'll get in for supper.' Poured 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 bow-sprit, 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. "'Wolverman's waitin' for ya, Disco. What's the news of the fleet?' Disco 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 a 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 weir 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 Disco suddenly, pointing upward. "'What is it?' said Longjack. "'Auto, half-mast. They can see us from shore now.' "'I'd clean forgot. He's no folk to Gloucester, has he?' Girlie was going to be married to this fall. "'Marry pity her,' said Longjack, and lowered the little flag half-mast for the sake of Otto, swept overboard in a gale off Lahav three months before. Disco wiped the wet from his eyes, and led the weir here to Wooverman's Wharf, giving his orders in whispers, while she swung round moored tugs and night-watchmen held 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 in 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 glimbered on either side. They 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 waist-gale dropped down into the schooner, and kissed Dan once on the cheek, for she was his mother, and she had seen the weir here by the lightning flashes. She took no notice of Harvey till he had recovered himself a little, and Disco had told her his story. Then they went to Disco's house together as the dawn was breaking, and until the telegraph office was open and he could wire to his folk, Harvey Chain was perhaps the loneliest boy in all America. But the curious thing was that Disco and Dan seemed to think none the worse of him for crying. Dan was not ready for Disco's prices till Disco, sure that the weir 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-necked trolley on principle, as he said, till the conductor let him ride free. But Dan went about with his freckled nose in the air, bung full of mystery and most haughty to his family. "'Dan, I'll have to lay into you, if you act this way,' said Troop, pensively. "'Since we come ashore this time you've been a heap too fresh.' "'I'd lay into him now, if he was mine,' said Uncle Salter, sourly. He and Penn boarded with the Troops. "'Aha!' said Dan, shuffling with the accordion round the backyard, ready to leap the fence if the enemy advanced. "'Dad, you're welcome to your own judgment, but remember I've warned you. Your own flesh and blood have warned you. Taint any of my fault if you're mistook, but I'll be on deck to watch ya. It is for you, Uncle Salter's, Pharaoh's chief butler ain't in it longside of you. You watch out and wait. You'll be ploughed under like your own blame clover. But me, Dan Troop, I'll flourish like a green bay-tree, as I warn't stuck on my own opinion.' Disco was smoking in all his shore dignity in a pair of beautiful carpet slippers. "'You're gettin' as crazy as poor Harve. You two go round Giggling and squinchin' and kickin' each other under the table till there's no peace in the house,' said he. "'There's gonna be a heap less for some folks,' Dan replied. "'You wait and see.' He and Harve 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. Harve 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. Are we to her from him by now? His pop keeps a kind of store out west. He'll give you as much as five dollars, Dad.' "'What did I tell you?' said Solders. "'Don't sputter over your vitals, Dan.' End of chapter. CHAPTER IX OF CAPTAIN'S CORRAGIOUS. This recording is by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. Americans Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling. CHAPTER IX. Whatever his private sorrows may be, a multi-millionaire, like any other working man, should keep abreast of his business. Harvey Shane, Sr., 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. Shane lay still and moaned, or talked of her boy by the hour together to any one who would listen. Hope she had none, and who could offer it. All she needed was assurance that drowning did not hurt, and her husband watched to guard lest she should make the experiment. Of his own sorrow, he spoke little, hardly realized the depth of it till he caught himself asking the calendar on his writing desk, what's the use of going on? There had always lain a pleasant notion at the back of his head that, some day, when he had rounded off everything and the boy had left college, he would take his son to his heart and lead him into his possessions. Then that boy, he argued, as busy fathers do, would instantly become his companion, partner, and ally, and there would follow splendid years of great works carried out together, the old head backing the young fire. Now his boy was dead, lost at sea, as it might have been a sweet sailor from one of Shane'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 in 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 Shane in a veranda room between a secretary and a typewriter, who was also a telegraphist, toiled along wearily from day to day. There was a war of rates among four western railroads in which he was supposed to be interested. A devastating strike had developed in his lumber camps in Oregon, and the legislature of the State of California, which has no love for its makers, was preparing open war against him. Ordinarily he would have accepted battle ere it was offered, and have waged a pleasant and unscrupulous campaign. But now he sat limply, his soft black hat pushed forward onto 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. Shane 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 Shane a telegram repeated from San Francisco. End up by fishing schooner, we're here, having fallen off boat. Great times on banks fishing, all well, waiting bluster mass. Care disco troop, for money or order is wire. What shall do, and how is mama? Harvey and Shane. The father let it fall. Layed his head down on the roller-top of the shut desk, and breathed heavily. The secretary ran for Mrs. Shane's doctor, who found Shane pacing to and fro. Well, what do 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 Shane'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 Cooley. 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. Shane, she say you must come at once. What do you think you are seeking? The master of thirty millions bowed his head meekly and followed Suzanne, and a thin, high voice on the upper landing of the great Whitewood 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. That's all right, said the doctor serenely to the typewriter. About the only medical statement and novels with any truth to it, is that joy don't kill, Miss Kinsey. I know it, but we've a heap to do first. Miss Kinsey was from Milwaukee, somewhat direct of speech, and as her fancy leaned towards the secretary, she'd divine 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 Cart, straight through! Boston, fix the connections! shouted Shane 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 Kinsey's white fingers called up the Continent of America. K. H. Wade, Los Angeles. The Constance is at Los Angeles, isn't she, Miss Kinsey? Yep. Miss Kinsey nodded between clicks as the secretary looked at his watch. Ready? Send Constance, Private Cart, here, and a range for special to leave here Sunday in time to connect with New York Limited at 16th Street, Chicago, Tuesday next. Click, click, click. Couldn't you better that? Not on those grades. That gives them sixty hours from here to Chicago. They won't gain anything by taking a special east of that. Ready? Also a range with Lakeshore and Michigan Southern to take Constance on New York Central and Hudson River Buffalo to Albany, and B&A the same Albany to Boston. Indispensable I should reach Boston Wednesday evening. Be sure nothing prevents. Have also wired Kenneth, Tussie, and Barnes. Sign, Shane. Miss Kinsey nodded, and the secretary went on. Now that. Kenneth, Tussie, and Barnes, of course. Ready? Kenneth, Chicago. Please take my Private Cart, Constance, from Santa Fe at 16th Street next Tuesday PM on New York Limited through to Buffalo and deliver New York Central for Albany. Ever been to New York, Miss Kinsey? We'll go some day. Ready? Take Car Buffalo to Albany on Limited Tuesday PM. That's for Tussie. Haven't been to New York, but I've known that, with a toss at the head. Beg pardon. Now, Boston and Albany, Barnes. Same instructions from Albany through to Boston. Leave three-five PM. You needn't wire that. Arrive nine-five PM Wednesday. That covers everything Wade will do, but it pays to shake up the managers. It's great," said Miss Kinsey, with a look of admiration. This was the kind of man she understood and appreciated. It isn'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 New York Limited. Chauncey Depew himself couldn't hitch his car to her. Miss Kinsey suggested recovering herself. Yes, but this isn't Chauncey. It's Shane Lightning. It goes. Even so. Yes, we'd better wire the boy. You'd 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 Kinsey laughing over the keys. Then Milsom left 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 Kinsey in these words. If crime of sentry 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. Shane smiled grimly at the consternation of his enemies when the telegrams were laid before him. They think we're on the war-path. Tell them we don't feel like fighting, just now, Milsom. Tell them what we're going for. I guess you and Miss Kinsey had better come along, though it isn't likely I shall do any business on the road. Tell them the truth. For once. So the truth was told. Miss Kinsey 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 breathe more freely. Shane 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 Godspeed, 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 Shane buried the hatchet. It was a busy weekend among the wires, for, now that their anxiety was removed, men in cities hastened to accommodate. Los Angeles called to San Diego and Barstow that the southern California engineers might know and be ready in their lonely roundhouses. Barstow passed the word to the Atlantic and Pacific. The Albuquerque flung at 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. Dispatches 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. Warned the men, and arranged tanks and chutes accordingly, for Harvey Shane 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 16th Street, Chicago, let the magic carpet be laid down. Hurry, oh hurry! It will be hot," said Shane as they rolled out of San Diego in the dawn of Sunday. We're going to hurry, Mama, just as fast as ever we can. But I really don't think there's any good of your putting on your bonnet and gloves yet. You'd much better lie down and take your medicine. I'd play you a game of dominoes, but it's Sunday. I'll be good. Oh, I will be good. Only taking off my bonnet makes me feel as if we'd never get there. Try to sleep a little, Mama, and we'll be in Chicago before you know. Let its Boston father tell them to hurry. The six-foot drivers were hammering their way to San Bernardino and the Mojave 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. Shane's neck, and toiled up the long, long grades past Ashfork 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 whirring wheels. The crew of the combination sat on their bunks, panting in their shirt-sleeves, and Shane 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 Shane thought she could. Accordingly the great fire-horse was let out from Flagstaff to Winslow, till a division superintendent protested. But Mrs. Shane, in the Boudoir state-room, where the French-made, 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 to the crash of the couplings and the wheeze of the brake-hose, told them they were at coolage 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 Arkansas, and tore down the long slope to Dodge City, where Shane 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 tie as crowded back behind them. And it is believed making notes of the scenery. Shane moved nervously between his own extravagant gorgeousness and the naked necessity of the combination, an unlit cigar in his teeth, till the pitying cruise forgot that he was their tribal enemy, and did their best to entertain him. At night the bunched electrics lit up that distressful palace of all the luxuries, and they fared sumptuously, swinging on through the emptiness of abject desolation. Now they heard the swish of a water-tank and the guttural voice of a Chinaman, the clink-clink of hammers that tested the crump steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear platform. Now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender, and now a beating back of noises as they flew past a waiting train. Now they looked out into great abysses, a trestle purring beneath their tread, or up to rocks that barred out half the stars. Now scour and ravine changed and rolled back to jagged mountains on the horizon's edge, and now broken to 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. Shane 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. Shane 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. Shane, 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, Shane passed over to the amalgamated brotherhood of locomotive engineers an endowment sufficient to enable them to fight him and his fellows on equal terms for evermore. He paid his obligations to engineers and firemen as he believed they deserved, and only his bank knows what he gave the crews who had sympathized with him. It is on record that the last crew took entire charge of switching operations at 16th Street, because she was in a dose at last, and heaven was to help any one who bumped her. Now the highly-paid specialist who conveys the Lakeshore 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. Nonetheless, he handled the Constance as she might have been a load of dynamite, and when the crew rebuked him they did it in Whispers and Dumb Show. Pasha said the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe men discussing life later. We weren't running for a record. Harvey Shane's wife, she were sick back, and we didn't want a jouncer. Come to think of it, our running time from San Diego to Chicago was fifty-seven hours, fifty-four minutes. You can tell that to them Easter way-trains. When we're trying 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 world the Constance into Buffalo and the arms of the New York Central and Hudson River, illustrious magnets with white whiskers and gold charms on their watch-chains bordered her here to talk a little business to Shane, 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. The eight 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 gurey sores, and a fine full flavor of codfish hung round rubber boots in 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. Someone's been coercing him, thought Shane. 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. Disco, Troop, dear, the best man that ever walked to 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 him by the flagstaff that—that night! Sobbed Mrs. Shane. 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. Shane 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. Hey! 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 Shane. That's 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 fiddles. It's great to have a trimmed-up meal again. We were well-fed, though. Best mug on the banks. Disco 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, and he reads Josephus. He's sure I'm crazy yet. And there's poor little pen, and he is crazy. You mustn't talk to him about Johnstown because—oh! You must know Tom Platt and Long Jack and Manuel. Manuel saved my life. I'm sorry he's a Portuguese. He can't talk much, but he's an everlasting musician. He found me stuck adrift and drifting and hauled me in. I wonder your nervous system isn't completely wrecked, said Mrs. Shane. 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. Shane, who began to think of her visions of a corpse rocking on the salty seas. She went to her stateroom, and Harvey curled up beside his father, explaining his indebtedness. You can depend upon me to do everything I can for the crowd, Harve. They seem to be good men on your showing. Best in the fleet, sir. Ask at Gloucester, said Harvey. But Disco believes still he's cured me of being crazy. He's the only one I've led on to about you and our private cars and all the rest of it, and I'm not quite sure Dan believes. I want to paralyze him to-morrow. Say, can't we run the Constance over to Gloucester? Mama don't look fit to be moved anyway, and we're bound to finish cleaning out by tomorrow. Wooverman takes our fish. You see, we're first off the banks this season, and it's 425 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. The substitute suggested Shane to see what Harvey would say. Can't, sir. I'm tally-man for the schooner. Troop says I have a better head for figures than Dan. Troop's a mighty just man. Well, suppose I don't move the Constance tonight. How will 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'll 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. Shane sat watching the young face under the shadow of the arm thrown over his 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 even 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 sidetracked 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 on more 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 fisherman's oil-skins to Wooverman's Wharf, where the weir here rode high, her bank flag still flying, all hands busy as beavers in the glorious morning light. Disco 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 interest before the clerk of the scales on the salt-sprinkled wharf edge. "'Ready,' cried the voices below. "'Hall,' cried Disco. "'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 rat-line, as the shortest way to hand Disco the tally, shouting, "'297 and an empty hold!' "'What's total, Harvey?' said Disco. "'865, $3,676.25. Wish I'd share as well as wage.' "'Well, I won't go so far as to say you haven't deserved it, Harvey. Don't you want to slip up to Wooverman's office and take him our tallies?' "'Who's that boy?' said Shane to Dan, well used to all manner of questions from those idle imbeciles called summer-borders. "'Well, he's a kind of super-cargo,' was the answer. We picked him up, stuck a drift on the banks. Fell overboard from a liner, he says. He was a passenger. He's by way of being a fisherman now.' "'Is he worth his keep?' "'Yep. Dad, this man wants to know if Harvey's worth his keep. Say, would you like to go aboard? We'll fix a ladder for her.' "'I should very much, indeed. Don'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 any ways interested in Harve?' said Disco. "'Well, yes.' "'He's a good boy, and catches right hold just as he's bid. You've heard how we found him. He was suffering from nervous prostration, I guess. Or else his head had hit something when we hauled him aboard. He's all over that now. Yes, this is the cabin. Taint any ways in order, but you're quite welcome to look around. Those are his figures on the stove-pipe where we keep the wreck in him, mostly.' "'Did he sleep here?' said Mrs. Shane, sitting on a yellow locker and surveying the disorderly bunks. "'No. He birthed forward, madam, and only for him and my boy hooking fried pies and mugging up when they ought to have been asleep. I don't know as I've had any special fault to find with him.' "'There warn't nothing wrong with Harve,' said Uncle Salters, sending the steps. He hung my boots on the main-truck, and he ain't over and above respectful to such as knows more than he do, especially about Farman. But he were mostly misled by Dan.' Dan in the meantime, profiting by dark hints from Harve early that morning, was executing a war-dance on deck. "'Tom, Tom!' he whispered down the hatch. His folks has come, and Dad ain't caught on yet. And they're pow-owin' in the cabin. She's a daisy, and he's all Harve claimed he was by the looks of him.' "'Holy smoke!' said Long Jack, climbing out covered with salt and fish-skin. Do you believe his tale of the kid in the little four-horse rig was true?' "'I knew it all along,' said Dan. Come and see Dad mistook in his judgments.' They came delightedly, just in time to hear Shane say, "'I'm glad he has a good character, because he's my son.' Disco'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 you might.' "'In a private car, of course.' Shane looked at his father with a hurricane of irreverent winks. "'There was a tale he told us of driving four little ponies in a rig of his own,' said Long Jack. "'Was that true now?' "'Very likely,' said Shane. "'Was it, Mama?' "'He had a little drag when we were in Toledo, I think,' said the mother. Long Jack whistled. "'Oh, Disco!' said he, and that was all. I was, I am, mistook in my judgements, worsened the men of Marblehead,' said Disco, as though the words were being windlessed out of him. "'I don't mind owning to you, Mr. Shane, as I mistrusted the boy to be crazy. He talked kinder odd about money.' "'So he told me.' "'Did he tell you anything else? Because I pounded him once. This was a somewhat anxious glance at Mrs. Shane.' "'Oh, yes,' Shane replied. "'I should say it probably did him more good than anything else in the world. I judged was necessary or wouldn't have 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. Shane had been looking at the faces. Disco's ivory-yellow, hairless, iron countenance. Marble 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 hundred times,' said Long Jack. Disco introduced them all in due form. The captain of an old-time Chinaman could have done no better, and Mrs. Shane 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 dreafed?' said poor Manuel. "'What do you yourself, if you find him so, eh, what?' "'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. Shane kissed him on both cheeks before the assembly. Then they led her forward to show her the folksal, 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 someone 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 paw-post, her gloved hands on the greasy table, laughing with trembling lips and crying with dancing eyes. "'And who's ever to use the weir here after this?' said long Jack to Tom Platt. "'I feel it as if she'd made a cathedral of it all.' "'Cathedral?' sneered Tom Platt. "'Oh, if it had ever been the fish-commissioned boat instead of this ballyhoo of blazes. If we only had some decency in order and side-boys when she goes over. She'll have to climb that ladder like a hen, and we ought to be men in the yards.' "'Then Harvey was not mad,' said Penn slowly to Shane. "'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 was mistook, Harvey. I was mistook,' said Disco, swiftly, holding up a hand. "'I was mistook in my judgments. You needn't rub it in any more.' "'Yes, I'll take care of that,' said Dan under his breath. "'You'll be going off now, won't you?' "'Well, not without the balance of my wages, lest you want to have the weir here attached.' "'That's so, I'd clean forgot.' And he counted out the remaining dollars. "'You've done all your contracted to do hard, and you've done it about as well as if you've been brought up.'" Here Disco 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. Shane stayed to talk to Disco, but the others made a procession to the depot, with Mrs. Shane at the head. The French mage 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 crowding revenge, and a most ample one. Mrs. Shane 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 were accustomed to eat at tiny tables and howling gales have curiously neat and finished table manners, but Mrs. Shane, 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 deity 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 Weirhears cabin the Fathers took stock of each other behind their cigars. Shane 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 Disco had done. He kept his own counsel, and waited for an opening. "'I haven't done anything to your boy, or for your boy, except making work a piece and learning how to handle the hog-yoke,' said Disco. He is twice my boy's head for figures. "'By the way,' Shane answered casually, what do you calculate to make of your boy?' Disco removed his cigar and waved it comprehensively round the cabin. "'Den's just plain boy, and he don't allow me to do any of his thinking. He'll have this able little packet when I'm laid by. He ain't no wise anxious to quit the business. I know that.' "'Hmmm. Ever been west, Mr. Troop?' Been as far as New York wants in a boat. I've no use for railroads. No more has Dan. Salt water's good enough for the troops. I've been most everywhere, in the natural way, of course. I can give him all the salt water he's likely to need, till he's a skipper. "'How's that? I thought you was a kinder, railroad king. Barb told me so when I was mistook in my judgements.' "'We're all apt to be mistaken. I fancy perhaps you might know I own a line of tea-clippers. San Francisco to Yokohama, six of them, iron-built, about seventeen-hundred and eighty tons apiece.' "'Blame that boy!' He never told. I'd have listened to that, instead of his truck about railroads and pony-carriages. He didn't know.' "'Little thing like that slipped his mind, I guess.' "'No, I only capped up. Took hold of the blue-em freighters. Morgan and McQuade's all blind. The summer.' Disco collapsed where he sat, beside the stove. "'Great Caesar Almighty! I mistrust I've been fooled from one end to the other. Why, Phil Earhart, he went from this very town six years back. No. Seven. And he's made on the San Jose now. Twenty-six days was her time out. His sister, she's living here yet, and she reads his letters to my woman. And you own the blue-em freighters?' Shane nodded. "'If I'd have known that, I'd have jerked the we're here back to Port All-Standed on the word.' "'Perhaps that wouldn't have been so good for Harvey.' "'If I'd only known. If he'd only said about the cussed line, I'd have understood. I'd never stand on my own judgments again, never. They're well-found packets, Phil Earhart. He says so.' "'I'm glad to have a recommend from that quarter. Earhart's skipper of the San Jose now. What I was getting at is to know whether you'd lend me Dan for a year or two, and we'll see if we can't make a mate of him. Would you trust him to Earhart?' "'It's a risk taking a raw boy. I know a man who did more for me.' "'That's different. Look at here now. I ain't recommending Dan's special because he's my own flesh and blood. I know bankways ain't clipperways, but he ain't much to learn. Steer he can. No boy better, if I say it, and the rest is in our blood and get. But I wish he weren't so cussed weak on navigation.' "'Earhart 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. Shaw! Ha! We troops, living and dead, are all around the earth and 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. It won't cost you a cent.' "'If you'll walk a piece with me, we'll go to my house and talk this to my woman. I've been so crazy mistook in all my judgments, it don't seem to me this was like to be real.' They went over to troops' eighteen hundred dollar blue-trimmed White House, with a retired dory full of nestershims in the front yard, and a shuttered parlor that was a museum of oversea plunder. There sat a large woman, silent and grave, with the dim eyes of those who looked long to see for the return of their beloved. Shane addressed himself to her, and she gave consent wearily. "'We lose one hundred a year from Gloucester only, Mr. Shane,' she said. "'One hundred boys and men, and I've come so as to hate the sea as if it was alive and listening. I've never made it for humans to anchor on. These packets of yours they go straight out, I take it, and straight home again. As straight as the winds let them, and I give a bonus for record passages, tea don't improve by being at sea.' When he was little he used to play at keeping store, and I had hopes he might follow that up. But soon as he could paddle a dory I knew that were going to be denied me. Mr. Square-Riggers' mother, I am billed and well-found. Remember what Phil's sister reads you when she gets his letters? I've never known as Phil told lies, but he's too venturesome, like most of them that use the sea. If Dan sees fit, Mr. Shane, he can go, for all of me.' She just despises the ocean, Disco explained, and I—I don't know how to act polite, I guess, or I'd thank you better. My father, my own eldest brother, two nephews, and my second sister's man, she said, dropping her head on her hand. Would you care for any one that took all those? Shane 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 faraway harbours. Mrs. Shane had spoken privately to the unaccountable man well 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 give us some if I like or know, eh, what? Then you shall give me money, but not that way. You shall give 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. Shane could not sympathize with the creed, but she ended by respecting the brown, viable little man. Manuel, faithful son of the church, appropriated all the blessings showered on her for her charity. That led a me out, said he. I have now very 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. This 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'll be adopted by rich folk, Penn,' he said in the cars, or I'll take and break this checkerboard or your head. If you forget your name again, which is Pratt, you remember you belong with Salter's troop, and set down right where you are till I come for you. Don't go tagging around after them, whose eyes bung out with fatness, according to scripture.