 CHAPTER IV Harvey waked to find the first half at breakfast, the folksle 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 and the pierced wooden board before it jarred and racketed to each plunge. Up and up the folksle climbed, yearning and surging and quivering, and then, with a clear, sickle-like swoop, came down into the seas. He could hear the flaring boughs cut and squelch, and there was a pause ere the divided waters came down on the deck above, like a volley of buckshot. Followed the woolly sound of the cable in the haw's-hole, a grunt and squeal of the windlass, a yaw, a punt, and a kick, and the weir here gathered herself together to repeat the motions. Now, ashore, he heard Long Jack saying, he of chores, and you must do them in any weather. Here we're well clear of the fleet, and we've no chores, and that's a blessing. 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 pen, 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, crouched 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, guilt-stopped accordion, whose tunes went up and down with the pitching of the weir 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 roll to trawl. Perhaps to-night. Perhaps two days more. You do not like, eh, what? 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 a 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 Portuguese men ever are drowned. You're a Roman Catholic, then? I am a Madera man. I am not a Puerto Rico boy. Shall I be Baptist then? Eh, what? 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 is the sea, and you'll get just about what's going, candles or kerosene, for that matter. Tis a mighty good thing, said Long Jack. To have a friend at court, though. I'm a Manuel's way of thinking. About ten years back I was crewed to a South Boston market boat. We was off Minot's ledge with a northeaster, but first atop of us, thicker in burgu. The old man was drunk. His chin was wagging on the tiller, and I seized myself. If ever I stick my boat-hook into T-warf again, I'll show the Saints what matter of craft they save me out of. Now I'm here, as you can well see, and the model of the dirty old Kathleen that took me a month to make. I give it to the priest, and he hung it up up for its the altar. There's more sense in giving a model this by way of being a work of art than any candle. You can buy candles at store, but a model shows the good Saints you have took trouble and are grateful. Do you believe that, Irish? said Tom Platt, turning on his elbow. Would I do it if I did not, Ohio? Well, Ennick Fuller, he made a model of the old Ohio, and she's to Salem Museum now. Mighty pretty model, too, but I guess, Ennick, he never done it for no sacrifice. And 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 macro with his stripe back, reefed in the main sale and hauled on the tack for its windy weather. Here Long Jack joined in. And its blowy weather, when the winds begin to blow, pipe all hands together! Then went on, with a cautious look at Tom Platt, holding the accordion low in the bunk. Up jumped the cod with his chuckle head, went to the main chains to heave at the lead, for its windy weather, et cetera. 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 you sound! Tom Platt's huge rubber boot whirred across the folksal 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 ya,' said Dan, returning the gift with precision. "'If you don't like my music, get out your fiddle. I ain't gonna lie here all day and listen to you and Long Jack arguing about candles. Tiddle Tom Platt, or I'll learn hard 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 paw-post he drew out a tiny guitar-like thing with wire strings, which he called a natchette. "'Tis a concert,' said Long Jack, beaming through the smoke, a regular busting concert. There was a burst of spray as the hatch opened, and disco and yellow oil-skins descended. "'You're just in time, disco. Whatcha doin' outside?' "'Just this,' he dropped on to the lockers with the push and heave of the we're here. "'We're singing to keep our breakfast down. You lead, of course, disco,' said Long Jack. "'Guess there ain't more than about two old songs I know, and you've heard them both.' His excuses were cut short by Tom Platt, launching into a most dolerous tune, like unto the moaning of winds and the creaking of masts. With his eyes fixed on the beams above, disco began this ancient, ancient ditty, Tom Platt flourishing all around him to make the tune and words fit a little. "'There is a crack-packet, crack-packet of fame. She hails from New York, and the dreadnoughts her name. You may talk of your flyers, swallowtail in black ball, but the dreadnoughts the packet that can beat them all. Now the dreadnought she lies in the river Mercy, because of the tugboat to take her to sea. But when she's off soundings, you'll shortly know—' "'Course.' "'She's the Liverpool Packet. Oh, Lord, let her go!' Now the dreadnought she's hailing crossed the banks of Newfoundland, where the water's all shallow and the bottom's all sand, says all the little fishes that swim to and fro. "'Course. She's the Liverpool Packet. Oh, 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 Irison'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 Disco brought down one foot with a bang, and cried, "'Don't go on, young feller. That's a mistaken judgment—one of the worst kind, too, because it's catchin' to the ear.' "'I order of warn' ya,' said Dan, that all is fetch's dad.' "'What's wrong?' said Harvey, surprised and a little angry. "'All you're going to say,' said Disco. "'All dead wrong, from start to finish, and wittier he's to blame. I have no special call to write any marble-head man, but warn't no fault of Irison's. My father he told me the tale time and again, and this is the way it was.' "'For the one-hundredth time,' put in Long Jack under his breath. Ben Ierson he was Skipper of the Betty, young feller, coming home from the banks—that was before the war of 1812—but justice is justice at all times. They found the act of a Portland, and Gibbons of that town he was their Skipper, that found her leakin' off kick-cod light. There was a terrible gale on, and they was gettin' the Betty home as fast as they could crowd her. Well, Ierson he said there warn't any sense to riskin' a boat in that sea. The men they wouldn't have it, and he laid it before them to stay by the active till the sea run down apiece. They wouldn't have that either, hangin' round the cape and any such weather, leak or no leak. They just upstays and quit, naturally takin' Ierson with them. Folks to Marblehead was mad at him not runnin' the risk, and because next day, when the sea was calm, they never stopped to think of that. Some of the act as folk was took off by a true old man. They comin' to Marblehead with their own tale to tell, sayin' how Ierson had shamed his town, and so forth, and so on, and Ierson's men they was scared, seein' public feelin' again' em, and they went back on Ierson, and swore he was responsible for the hull act. Twernt the women neither that tarred and feathered him, Marblehead women don't act that way. It was a parcel of men and boys, and they carted him around town in an old dory till the bottom fell out, and Ierson he told him they'd be sorry for it some day. Well, the facts come out later, same as they usually do. Too late to be any ways useful to an honest man, and Whittier he come along and picked up the slack end of a lyin' tale, and tarred and feathered Ben Ierson all over once more after he was dead. It was the only time Whittier ever slipped up, and Twernt fair. I wailed Dan good when he brought that piece back from school. Tots don't know no better, of course, but I'd give you the facts, hereafter and ever more to be remembered. Ben Ierson Weren't no such kind of man as Whittier makes him out. My father, he knew him well, before and after that business, and you beware a hasty judgment, young feller. Next Harvey had never heard Disco 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 natchette 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 Disco obliged, with his second song, to an old-fashioned creaky tune, and all joined in the chorus. This is one stanza. Now April is over, and melted to snow, and out of New Bedford we shortly must tow. Yes out of New Bedford we shortly must clear, were the whalers that never see wheat in the air. Here the fiddle went very softly for a while by itself, and then, Wheat in the air, my true love's posy blowin', Wheat in the air, we're goin' off to sea, Wheat in the air, I left you fit for soin', when I come back a loaf of bread you'll be. That made Harvey almost weep, so 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 lamp-light. 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's surf and a blind fog, till it ended with a wail. "'Jimmy Christmas, that gives me the blue crevies,' said Dan. "'What a thunder is it!' "'This song of Finn McCool,' said the cook, when he was going to Norway. His English was not thick, but all clear-cut as though it came from a phonograph. "'Athe, I've been to Norway, but I didn't make that unwholesome noise. Tis like some of the old songs, though,' said Long Jack, sighing. "'Don't let's have another without something between,' said Dan, when the accordion struck up a rattling catchy tune that ended. "'It's six-inch weddy Sundays since last we saw the land with fifteen-hundred quintal, and fifteen-hundred quintal, ten-hundred top and quintal, twix-dull quiru and grand.' "'Hold on,' roared Tom Platt. "'Do you want to nail the trip, Dan? That's Jonah sure, lest you sing it after all our salts wet.' "'No, Tate. Is it dead? Not lest you sing the very last verse. You can't learn me anything on Jonah's.' "'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 split-knife Jonah two trips till we was on to her,' said Tom Platt. "'There's all sorts of Jonah's. Jim Bork was one till he was drowned on Georgia's. I'd never ship with Jim Bork, not if I was starving. There was a green dory on the Ezra flood. That was a Jonah, too, the worst sort of Jonah. Drowned four men, she did, and used to shine fiery of knights 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 served?' A mutter of dissent ran around the bunks. "'Outboard, yes. Inboard, things can happen,' said Disko. "'Don't you go making a mock of Jonah's, young feller?' "'Well, Harvey ain't no Jonah. Day after we catched him,' Dan cut in, we had a top-and-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 it.' "'What's wrong?' said Dan. "'Ain't he our mascot? And didn't they strike on good after we'd struck him?' "'Oh, yes,' said the cook. "'I know that, but the catch is not finished yet.' "'He ain't going to do us any harm,' said Dan hotly. "'Where are you hinting an edge into? He's all right.' "'No harm, no. But one day he will be your master, Denny.' "'That all,' said Dan placidly. "'He won't, not by a jugful.' "'Master,' said the cook, pointing to Harvey. "'Man,' and he pointed to Dan.' "'That's news. How soon?' said Dan, with a laugh. "'In some years, and I shall see it. "'Master and man, man and master.' "'How, when thundered, did you work that out?' said Tom Platt. "'In my head, where I can see.' "'How?' 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 of things I have to come about "'for harv's any master of mine. "'But I'm glad the doctor ain't choosin' to mark him for a Jonah. "'Now I mistrust Uncle Salters for the Jonahist Jonah "'and the fleet, regarding his own special luck. "'Don't know if it's spreadin' the same as smallpox. "'He ought to be on the Kerry Pipman. "'That boat's her own Jonah, sure. "'Cruise and gear make no differ to her driftin.' "'Jimmy Christmas. "'She'll etch loose in a flat calm.' "'Well, well clear of the fleet, anyway,' said Disco. "'Cary Pipman and all.' There was a wrapping on the deck. "'Uncle Salters has catched his luck,' said Dan, as his father departed. "'It's blown clear,' Disco cried, and all the folks all tumbled up for a bit of fresh air. The fog had gone, but a sullen sea ran in great rollers behind it. The weir here slid, as it were, into long sunk avenues and ditches which felt quite sheltered and home-like if they would only stay still. But they changed without rest or mercy, and flung up the schooner to crown one peak of a thousand gray hills, while the wind hooded 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 a vision of interlacing whites and grays. Four or five mother-carries chickens stormed round in circles, shrieking as they swept past the boughs. A rain squall or two strayed aimlessly over the hopeless waste, ran down wind and back again, and melted away. "'Sames to me I saw something flicker just now over yonder,' said Uncle Salters, pointing to the northeast. "'Can't be any of the fleet,' said Disco, peering under his eyebrows, a hand on the folksal gangway as the solid boughs hatcheted into the troughs. "'Seas oiling over, dreadful fast. Danny, don't you want to skip up a piece and see how our troll buoy lays?' Danny and his big boots trotted rather than climbed up the main rigging, this consumed Harvey with envy, hitched himself around the reeling cross-trees and let his eye rove till it caught the tiny black buoy flag on the shoulder of a mile away swell. "'She's all right,' he hailed. "'Say hello, dead to the northward, coming down like smoke. Scooner she be, too.' They waited another half-hour, the sky clearing in patches, with a flicker of sickly sun from time to time that made patches the vol of green water. Then a stump-formass lifted, ducked, and disappeared, to be followed on the next wave by a high stern with old-fashioned wooden snails horned davits. The sails were red-tanned. "'Frenchmen!' shouted Dan. "'No, taint neither. Dad!' "'That's no French,' said Disco. "'Solders, your blame-luck holds tighter than a screw and a keghead.' "'I've eyes, it's Uncle Abishay.' "'You can't no wise tell, for sure.' "'The head-king of all Jonah's,' groaned Tom Platt. "'Oh, Solders, Solders, why wasn't you a bed and a sleep?' "'How could I tell?' said poor Solders, as the Scooner 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 stay-cell let down to act as a sort of extra-forsal—scandalized, they call it—and her fore-boom guide out over the side. Her bowspring cocked up like an old-fashioned frigate's. Her jib-boon 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 blowsy, frowsy, bad old woman sneering at a decent girl. "'That's Abishai,' said Salters, full of Jen and Judic men, and the judgments of Providence, layin' for him and never takin' good holt. He's run in debate, Mikkel and Wei.' "'He'd run her under,' said Long Jack. "'That's no rig for this weather.' "'Not he, or he'd had done it long ago,' Disco replied. "'Looks as if he's calculated to run us under. Ain't she down by the head more natural, Tom Platt?' "'If it's his style of loadin' her, she ain't safe,' said the sailor slowly. "'If she's spewed her oakum, he'd better get to his pumps mighty quick.' The creature thrashed up, wore round with a clatter and rattle, and lay head to wind within earshot. A gray beard wagged over the bulwark, and a thick voice yelled something Harvey could not understand. But Disco's face darkened. "'He'd risk every stick he has to carry bad news. Says we're in for a shift of wind. He's in for worse.' "'Abashai!' "'Abashai!' He waved his arm up and down with a gesture of a man at the pumps, and pointed forward. The crew mocked him and laughed. "'Jown she had strip ye, and trip ye!' yelled Uncle Abashai. "'A livin' gale! A livin' gale! Yeah! Cast up for your last trip! Oh, you glouster hadics! You won't see glouster no more, no more!' Crazy full, as usual, said Tom Platt. Wish he hadn't spied us, though. She drifted out of hearing while the gray head yelled something about a dance at the Bay of Bulls, and a dead man in the focsel. Harvey shuddered. He had seen the sloven till decks and the savagied crew. "'And that's a fine little floatin' hill for a draft,' said Longjack. I wonder what mischief she's been at ashore.' "'He's a trawler,' Dan explained to Harvey, and he runs her for bait all along the coast. Oh, no! Not home. He don't go. He deals along the south and 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. And Abashai's the toughest. You saw his boat?' "'Well, she's nice seventy-year-old,' they say, the last of the old marble-head heel-tappers. They don't make them quarter-decks any more. Abashai don't use marble-head, though. He ain't wanted there. He just drifts around in debt. Trawlin' and cussin' like you've heard. Been a Jonah for years and years,' he says. "'Gets liquor from the free-camp boats for makin' spells and sellin' winds in such truck. See, 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 give my wage and share to see him at the gangway of the old Ohio before we quit floggin. Just about six dozen and Sam Mokata layin' among crisscross.' The disheveled heel-tapper danced drunkenly downwind, and all eyes followed her. Suddenly the cook cried in his phonograph voice. "'It was his own death, made him speak so. He is Faye. Faye, 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 hawk-block!' shouted Disko, jumping aft. "'Drunk or sober, we've got to help him. Heave short and break her out. Smart!' Harvey was thrown on the deck by the shock that followed the setting of the jib and foresole, for they hoved 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 complain 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 him go,' said Disko, though no one had hinted at picking them up. "'I wouldn't have a match that belonged to Abishai aboard. Guess she run clear under. Must have been spewing her oak'em for a week, and they never thought to pump her. Ah, that's one more boat gone along a leave-and-port all hands drunk.' "'Glory be!' said Long Jack. We'd have been obliged to help him if they were top of water.' "'Thinking of that, myself,' said Tom Platt. "'Fay! Fay!' said the cook, rolling his eyes. He has taken his own luck with him. "'Very good thing, I think, to tell the feet when we see.' "'Eh, what?' said Manuel. "'If you runna that way before the wind, and she work open her seams,' he threw out his hands with an indescribable gesture, while Penn sat down on the house, and sobbed at the sheer horror and pity of it all. Harvey could not realize that he had seen death on the open waters. But he felt very sick.' And Dan went up the cross-trees, and Disco steered them back to within sight of their own trawl-booies, just before the fog blanketed the sea once again. "'We go mighty quick here, Bouts, 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. "'Abbish I surely took his luck with him,' said Salters. "'The wind ain't back, nor is, nor nothing. How about 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 is in two pieces. You will find it so when you look. I know.' This so tickled Long Jack that he overboard 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 an 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 now to thee, O' Captain!' 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 just pumpkins, Tom Platt wanted to haul her and had done with it. But I said, I'll back the doctor that has the second sight, and the other half come up second full of biggons. Hurry, Manny, and bring a tub of bait. There's luck afloat to-night!' The fish bid 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 call pumpkins, slatting off the fresh-caught cod against the gunnel, rebating and loading Manuel's dory till dusk. "'I'll take no risks,' said Disco, then, not with him floating around so near. Abishai won't sink for a week. Heave in the dories, and we'll dress down after supper.' That was a mighty dressing down, attended by three or four blowing grampuses. It lasted till nine o'clock, and Disco was thrice-herd to chuckle as Harvey pitched the split fish into the hold. "'Say, you're hauling ahead dreadful fast,' said Dan, when they ground the knives after the men had turned in. "'There's something of a sea to-night, and I hate herds you made 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 gambling all around her anchor among the silver-tipped waves, backing with a start of affected surprise at the side of the strained cable. She pounced on it like a kitten, while the spray of her descent burst through the haws-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. And I was just going to observe,' she would begin as gravely as a drunken man addressing a lamppost. The rest of the sentence, she acted her words in dumb-show, of course, was lost in a fit of fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy chewin' 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 now," said Dan. She swung sideways on a roller and gesticulated with her chib-boon from port to starboard. "'But, as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!' "'Wop!' she sat down in the moon-path on the water, curtsing with a flourish of pride, impressive enough, had not the wheel-gear sniggered mockingly in its box. She laughed aloud. "'Why, it's just as if she was alive,' he said. "'She's as steady as a house and dry as a heron,' said Dan enthusiastically as he was stung across the deck in a batter of spray. "'Fends him off and fends him off, and don't you come nigh me,' she says. "'Look at her. Just look at her. Sakes! You should see one of them toothpicks heistin' up her anchor on her spike over fifteen fathom water.' "'What's a toothpick, Dan?' Them new haddockers and heron-boats, fine as a yacht forward, with yacht sterns to them, and spike-bowsprints, and a house that'd take our hold. I've heard that Burgess himself he made the models for three or four of them. Dad's set against them on account of their pitching and jolting, but there heaps of money in them. Dad can find fish, but he ain't no ways progressive. He don't go with the march of the times. They're chock-full of labor-saving jigs and such-all. Ever see'd the elector a-gloucester? She's a daisy, if she is a toothpick. What do they cost, Dan? Hills of dollars—fifteen thousand, perhaps. More, maybe. There's gold leaf in every thing you can 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-modeled Hattaker. Harvey heard a good deal more 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, clemerous sea. Once of course, as the boys came to know each other, there was a fight, which raged from bow to stern till pen came up and separated them, but promised not to tell Disco, 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 oil skins cut into the flesh. The salt water stung them unpleasantly, but when they were ripe, Dan treated them with Disco's razor, and assured Harvey that now he was a blooded banker, the affliction of Gurisora's being the mark of the cast 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 wander too much how she was bearing the shock of his supposed death. But one day, as he stood on the folksal ladder, guying the cook, who had accused him of Dan of hooking fried pies, it occurred to him that this was a vast improvement on being snubbed by strangers in the smoking room of a hired liner. He was a recognized part of the scheme of things on the We're Here, had his place at the table and among the box, 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 fairytales 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 dragon to Leto, 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. Soldiers 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 Longjack had christened the crazy kid, the gild-edged baby, the second vendor-poop, and other pet-names, and with his sea-booted feet cocked up on the table would even invent histories about soaked pajamas and specially imported neck-wear 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 Disco kept the old green-crusted quadrant that they called the hog-yoke under the bag-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 Disco of the quadrant. There is an etiquette in all these things. The said hog-yoke, an eldritch chart, the farming almanac, Blunt's coast pilot, and Boditch's navigator, were all the weapons Disco needed to guide him, except the deep sea lead that was his spare eye. Harvey nearly slew pen 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 Disco used him freely. As Dan said, "'Taint sound and dad wants. It samples. Greaser up good, Harve!' Harvey would tallow the cup at the end and carefully bring the sand, shell, sludge, or whatever it might be, to Disco, who fingered and smelt it and gave a judgment. As has been said, when Disco thought of cod he thought Azacod, and by some long-tested mixture of instinct and experience moved the weir here from birth to birth, always with the fish, as a blindfolded chess-player moves on the unseen board. But Disco's board was the grand bank, a triangle two hundred and fifty miles on each side, a waste of wallowing sea cloaked with stank 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 in the gaff or gobb-stick as Tom Platt called for them, and they rode 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 roading ran out, and still the anchor found nothing, and Harvey grew mortally afraid, for that his last touch with earth was lost. "'Wail-hole!' said Manuel, hauling in. "'That is good joke on disco. Come!' And he rode 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 left. There were days, though, clear and soft and warm, when it seemed to 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 scythe back and forth against the blue sky. That was magnificent, in spite of disco 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 a stasel, 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 foregap stabbed and ripped through the stasel, which was, of course, prevented from going over by the mainstay. They lowered the wreck in awful silence, and Harvey spent his leisure hours for the next few days under Tom Platt's lee, learning to use a needle and palm. Dan hooded 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 disco's peculiar stoop at the wheel, long jack's swinging overhand when the lines were hauled, Manuel's round-shouldered but effective stroke and a dory, and Tom Platt's generous Ohio stride along the deck. It is beautiful to see how he takes to it. Said Long Jack, when Harvey was looking out by the windless one thick noon, I lay my wage and share to his more-and-half-play actant to him, and he conceits himself he's a bold mariner. Watch his little bit of 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 themselves into being men, and so till they die, pretending and pretending. I'd done it on the old Ohio, I know. Stood my first watch, harbour watch, feelin' finer and ferrigate, Dan's full of the same kind of notions. See him now, actin' to be genuine moss-backs. Every hair a rope-yarn and blood-stock-home tar. He spoke down the cabin stairs. Guess you're mistook in your judgements for once, Disco. What in Rome made you tell us all here the kid was crazy? He was, Disco replied. Crazy as a loon when he come aboard, but I'll say he's sobered up considerable sense. I cured him. He yarns good, said Tom Platt. The other night he told us about a kid of his own size, steerin' a con and little rig and four ponies up and down to Leto, Ohio, I think it was, and givin' suppers to a crowd of similar kids. Curious kind of fairytale, but blame-interesting. He knows scores of him. Guess he strikes him out of his own head, Disco called from the cabin, where he was busy with the log-book. That's the reason that sort is all made up. It don't take in no one but Dan, and he laughs at it. I've heard him behind my back. You ever hear what Simon Peter Calhoun said when they whacked up a match, twixed his sister Hitty and Lauren Girald, and the boys put up that joke on him down to George's? Drawled Uncle Salters, who was dripping peaceably under the lee of the starboard dory nest. Some plat puffed at his pipe in scornful silence. He was a caped cod man, and had not known that tale more than twenty years. Uncle Salters went on with a rasping chuckle. Simon Peter Calhoun, he said, and he was just right, about Lauren, half on the town, he said, and the other half blamed fool, and they told me she's married a rich man. Simon Peter Calhoun, he'd needin' no roof to his mouth and talk that way. He didn't talk any Pennsylvania Dutch, Tom Platt replied. You'd better leave a caped man to tell that tale. The Calhouns were gypsies from way back. Well, I don't profess to be any allocutionist, Salters said. I'm coming to the moral of things, as just about what our harve be, half on the town, and the other half blame fool, and there's some'll believe he's a rich man, yeah! Did you ever think how sweet would be to say what a full crew of Salters is, said Long Jack, half in the fur, and the other half in the muck heap, as Calhoun did not say, and makes out he's a fisherman? A little laugh went around at Salters' expense. Disco 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 birth 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 northeast and fine weather, made a birth 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? 3478. 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 at 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 have him remembering Johnstown next, Salters explained, and 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 unneberly, 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 forget 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 at 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 at his duty to hang Salters' big sea-boots up there, a sign of shame and derision to the nearest schooner. With this go, 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 better. And so forth. There was something about the clean-shaven lips in the puckered corners of the eyes that was mightily sobering to young blood. Disco 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 birth to birth over the whole string of banks, Le Havre, Western, Banqueraux, Saint-Pierre, Green, and Grand, talking cod mean time, 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's son appealed to all his keen wits. For other see-matters his age handicapped him. As Disco 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, humoring the weir 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 folk-soul or sat on the carbon-lockers, while spare eye-bolts, leds, and rings rolled and rattled in the pauses of the talk. Disco spoke of wailing 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 seventy-one 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 taste ran more to the supernatural. He held them silent with ghastly stories of the yo-hoes on the 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 kids' men, of ships that sailed in the fog straight over trod township, of that harbor in Maine where no one but a stranger will lie at anchor twice in a certain place, because of a dead crew who row alongside at midnight with the anchor in the bow of their old-fashioned boat whistling, not calling but whistling, for the soul of the man who broke their rest. We had a notion that the east coast of his native land, from Mont Desert South, was populated chiefly by people who took their houses there in the summer and entertained in country houses with hardwood floors and van-teen portiers. 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. He told tales of blockade, long weeks of swaying at anchor, buried 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 coal, coal 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 shot, and men drank cocoa by the bucket. Some plat 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 Madera 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 libelous about phosphates. He dragged greasy orange-judge 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' 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. 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 male-carrying in the winter up Cape Breton Way, of the dog-train that goes to Coudre, 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. Even 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 poor and hard health with every gulp of the good air, the weir here went her ways and did her business on the bank, and the silvery-gray kentches 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 Disco's reputation was closely watched, scrouched upon, Dan called it, by his neighbors, but he had a very pretty knack of giving them the slip through the curdling, glidy fog-banks. Disco 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 main ports, but the crews drew from goodness-nose-ware. Risk breeds recklessness, and when greed is added there are fine chances for every kind of accident in the crowded fleet, which, like a mob of sheep, is huddled round some unrecognized leader. Let the two Girolds lead them! Said Disco, we're bound to lay among them for a spell on the eastern shoals, though if luck holds we won't have to lay long. Where we are now, Harve, ain't considered no way as good ground. 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 mine strike in some poor ground for a change, then? All the ground I want to see, don't want a striker, is eastern point, said Dan. Say, Dad, it looks as if we wouldn't have to wait more than two weeks on the shoals. You'll meet all the company you want, then, Harve. That's the time we begin to work. No regular meals for no one, then. Mug up when you're hungry, and sleep when you can't keep awake. Good job you wasn't picked up a month later than you was, or we'd never have you dressed in shape for the old Virgin. Harvey understood from the eldritch chart that the old Virgin and a nest of curiously named shoals were the turning point of the crews, 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'd 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 until, after some blinding thick days, they heard the unmolodious tooting of a foot-power foghorn, a machine whose note is as that of a consumptive elephant. They were making a short berth, towing the anchor under their foot to save trouble. "'Square-rigger, bellowin, for his latitude,' said Longjack. The dripping red-head-sills of a bark glided out of the fog, and the weir here rang her belch thrice, using sea shorthand. The larger boat backed her topsoil with shrieks and shoutings. Frenchman,' said Uncle Salters, scornfully. "'Micklin' boat, from Samaloh.' The farmer had a weatherly sea-eye. I'm most out of backie, too, Disko.' "'Same here,' said Tom Platt. "'Hi. Bacquet-vous? Bacquet-vous. Stande-a-waye. You butt-ended mucho bono? Where you from, Samaloh, eh?' Ah! Mucho bono! Oui, oui! Clopoulé! Samaloh! Sampier et Micklin!' cried the other crowd, waving woollen caps and laughing. Then all together, "'Bore! Bore!' "'Bring up the board, Danny. Beats me how them Frenchmen fetch anywheres, except in America's ferrish broadly. Forty-six, forty-nines good enough for them, and I guess it's about right, too.' Then chocked the figures on the board, and they hung it in the main-rigging to a course of Mercedes from the bark. Seems kind of un-neighborly to let them swedge off like this,' Salter suggested, feeling in his pockets. "'Have you learned French, then, since last trip?' said Disko. "'I don't want no more stone-ballast Hovatus, long of your calm Micklin boats, footy kuchins, same as you did off Le Hav.' Harman Rush, he said, that was the way to Rhizom. Plain United States is good enough for me. We're all dreadful short on tobacco. Young feller, don't you speak French?' "'Oh, yes,' said Harvey valiantly, and he bawled. "'Hi! Say! Arrete-vous! Attendez! Nous sommes venus pour tobacco.' "'Ah! Tobac! Tobac!' Harman laughed again. "'That hit him! 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, and 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 colored prints of the Virgin, the Virgin of Newfoundland, they called her. They found his French of no recognized bank-brand, and his conversation was limited to nods and grins. But Tom Platt waved his arms and got along swimmingly. The captain gave him a drink of unspeakable gin, and the opera-corny 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 rode back to a range with a cook and disco, 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. Part derrière chez ma tante, il y a un bois joli, et la Rossignol y chante, et le jour et le nuit. Que donnerait-vous belle, qui l'amenacherait ici? Je donnerai Québec, serait-le Saint-Denis. How was it my French didn't go, and your Sintalk did? Harvey demanded when the barter had been distributed among the weird-hears. Saint-Talk, Platt-Gaffaud, well, yes, Twas-Saintalk, but a heap older in your French, Harvey. Then French boats are chock-full of freemasons, and 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 in the broad Atlantic. Fishing boats, as Dan said, were naturally dependent on the courtesy and wisdom of their neighbors, 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 smelled like a thousand cattle-pens. A very excited officer yelled at them through a speaking trumpet, and she lay and lolliped helplessly on the water while Disco ran the We're Here under her lee and gave the skipper a piece of his mind. Where might you be, eh? You don't deserve to be anywheres. You barnyard tramps go hogging the road on the high seas with no blame consideration for your neighbors, and your eyes in your coffee-cups instead of your silly heads. At this the skipper danced on the bridge and said something about Disco's own eyes. "'We haven't had an observation for three days. Do you suppose we can run her blind?' he shouted. "'Well, I can,' Disco retorted. "'What's come to your lead? Edit! Can't you smell bottom, or are them cattle too rank?' "'What do you feed them?' asked Uncle Salters with intense seriousness, for the smell of the pens woke all the farmer in them. They say they fall off dreadful on a voyage. Don't know as is any of my business, but I have a kind of notion that oil-cake broke small and sprinkled—'Thunder!' said a cattleman and 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 you, for we go any further that I—' 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 I may perhaps condescend to enlighten us.' "'Now you have made a show of me, Salters,' said Disco angrily. He could not stand up to that particular sort of talk and snapped out the latitude and longitude without more lectures. "'Well, that's a boatload of lunatic, sure,' said the skipper as he rang up the engine-room and tossed a bundle of newspapers into the schooner. "'Of all the plain fools next to you, Salters, him and his crowd are about the likeliest I've ever seen,' said Disco as the weir hear slid away. "'I was just giving him my judgment on loolies sick and round these waters like a lost child, and you must cut in with your full pharmen. Can't you never keep things separate?' Harvey, Dan, and the others stood back, winking one to the other in full of joy, but Disco and Salters wrangled seriously till evening, Salters arguing that a cattle-boat was practically a barn on blue water, and Disco insisting that, even if this were the case, decency and fisher-pride demanded that he should have kept things separate. Long Jack stood in silence for a time, an angry skipper makes an unhappy crew, and then he spoke across the table after supper. "'For what's the good about her and what to say?' said he. "'They'll tell that tale again us for years, that's all,' said Disco. "'Oil cake sprinkled!' "'With salt, of course,' said Salters, impenitent, reading the farming reports from a weak old New York paper. "'It's plum mortifying to all my feelings,' the skipper went on. "'Can't see it that way,' said Long Jack, the peacemaker. "'Look at here, Disco. Is there another packet of float this day, and this weather could have met a tramp, and over above, given her reckoning? Over and above that, I say, could have discoursed with her quite intelligent on the management of steers, and such at sea? Forget it. Of course they will not. It was the most compenitious conversation that I've ever accrued. Double game, and twice running, 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 itch was any business of mine, for I spoke.' "'And right there,' said Tom Platt, experienced in discipline and etiquette. "'Right there. I take it, Disco, you should have asked him to stop if the conversation was likely, in your judgment, to be any ways what it shouldn't.' "'Don't know, but that's so,' said Disco, who saw his way to an honourable retreat from a fit of the dignities. "'Why, of course it was so,' said Salters. "'You bein' skipper here, and I'd cheerful have stopped on a hint, not from any leadin' or conviction, but for the sake of bein' an example to these two blame-boys of ours. "'Didn't I tell you, Harv, to come round to us for we'd done? Always those blame-boys. But I wouldn't have missed the show for a half-sheer and a halibutter!' Dan whispered.' "'Still, things should have been kept separate,' said Disco, and the light of new argument lit in Salters's eye as he crumbled cut plug into his pipe. "'There's a power of varchew and keepin' things separate,' said Long Jack, intent on stilling the storm. "'That's what staining of staining-and-hares fund when he sent Kunahan for skipper on the Manila-Ticoon, instead of Captain Newton that was took with inflammatory rheumatism and couldn't go. Kunahan the navigator, we called him.' "'Nick Kunahan, he never went aboard for a night, thought a pond of rum somewheres in the manifest,' said Tom Platt, playing up to the lead. He used to burn round the commission houses to Boston, lookin' for the Lord to makin' Captain of a towboat on his merits. Sam Coy, up to Atlantic Avenue, gave him his board free for a year or more, on account of his stories. Kunahan the navigator.' "'Dead these fifteen year, ain't he?' "'Seventeen, I guess. He died the year the Casper McVeigh was spilt, but he could never keep things separate. King took him for the reason the thief took the hot stove, because there was nothing else that season. The men was all to the banks, and Kunahan he wacked up in everlasten hard crowd for crew. Rum! You could have floated the Manila, insurance and all, in what they stored aboard her. They left Boston Harbour for the great-grand bank with Aurora Northwester behind him, in all hands full to the bung. And the heavens looked after him. For devil-a-watch did they sit, and devil-a-rope did they lay hand to, till they'd seen the bottom of a fifteen-gallon cask of bug-juice. That was about one week, so far as Kunahan remembered, if I could only tell the tale as he told it. All that while the wind blew like old glory, and the Manila, it was summer, and they'd give her a foretap-mast, struck her gate and kept it. Then Kunahan took the hog-york, and trembled over it for a while, and made out, patricks that in the chart, and the singing in his head, that they was to the south of the Sable Island, get along glorious, but speak a nothing. Then they broached another keg, and quit speculating about anything for another spell. The Manila she lay down when she dropped Boston Light, and she never left her lee-rail up to that time. Hussanon on one of the same slant. But they saw no weed, nor gulls, nor schooners. Imprisonately they observed they'd been out on a matter of fourteen days, and they mistrusted the bank had suspended payment. So they sounded, and got sixty-fathom. That's me, says Kunahan, that's me every time. I've run her sled on the bank for you, and when we get thirty fathom we'll turn in like little men. Kunahan is the boy, says he, Kunahan the navigator. Next cast they got ninety, says Kunahan, either the led-lines took distraction, or else the bank sunk. They hauled it up, being just about in that state when it seemed right and reasonable, and sat down on the deck counting the knots, and getting her snarled up, hedges. The Manila she'd struck her gate, and she held it. Imprisonately along come a tramp, and Kunahan spoke her. Have you seen any fishing boats now, says he, quite casual. There's lashens of them off the Irish coast, says the tramp. Go shake yourself, says Kunahan, for what have I to do with the Irish coast? For what are you doing here, says the tramp? Suffering Christianity, says Kunahan. He always said that when his pump sucked and he was not feeling good. Suffering Christianity, he says, where am I at? Thirty-five miles west south-west of Cape Clear, says the tramp, if that's any consolation to you. Kunahan factched one jump, four feet seven inches measured by the cook. Consolation, says he, bold as brass, do you take me for a dialect? Thirty-five miles from Cape Clear, and fourteen days from Boston Light. Suffering Christianity, tis our record, and by the same token I have a mother to skibberine. Think of it, the gall of them. But you see, you can never keep things separate. The crew was mostly cork and carrymen. There in one Marylander they wanted to go back, but they called him a mutineer, and they ran the old manella into skibberine, and they had an illicant time visioned round with friends on the old sod for a week. Then they went it, and it cost them two and thirty days to beat to the banks again. It was getting on towards fall, and grub was low, so Kunahan ran her back to Boston with no more bones to it. And what did the firm say? Harvey demanded. For what could they? The fish was on the banks, and Kunahan was at T. Wharf talking and his record your beast. They took the satisfaction out of that, and it all came if not keeping the crew in the room separate in the first place, and confusing skibberine with Khiru in the second. Kunahan, the navigator, rust his soul. He was an impromptu citizen. Once I was in the loosey homes, said Manuel in his gentle voice. They not want any of her fish in Gluster. Eh, what? Give us no price, so we go across the water, and think to sell to some fail-man. Then it blow fresh, and we cannot see well. Eh, what? Then it blow some more fresh, and we go down below and drive very fast. No one nowhere. By and by we see a land, and it gets some hot. Then come two, three nigger in a brick. Eh, what? We ask where we are, and they say, now what you all think? Gran Canary, said Disco, after a moment, Manuel shook his head, smiling. Blanco, said Tom Platt. No, worse than that. We was below Bizagos, and the brick she was from Liberia. So we sell our fish there. Not bad, so. Eh, what? Can a schooner like Disco right across to Africa, said Harvey? Go round the horn if there was anything worth going for, and the grub holds out, said Disco. My father he run his packet, and she was a kind of pinky, about fifty ton, I guess. The Rupert. He run her over to Greenland's icy mountains, the year half our fleet was trying after cod there, and once more he took my mother along with him, to show her how the money was earned, I presume, and they was all iced up, and I was born at Disco. Don't remember nothing about it, of course. We come back when the ice eased in the spring, but they name me for the place. Kind of mean trick to put up on a baby, but we're all bound to make mistakes in our lives. Sure, sure, said Salters, wagging his head, all bound to make mistakes, and I tell you two boys here that you've made a mistake, you don't make fewer than a hundred a day, the next best things to own up to it like men. Long Jack winked one tremendous wink that embraced all hands except Disco and Salters, and the incident was closed. Then they made birth after birth to the Northward. The Dory's 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 was one of the best cod baits, but uncertain in his moods. They were waked out of their bunks one black night by yells of "'Squiddo!' 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 around this thing, and his hauled-up airy 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 Pipman, to whom they shouted their luck, and she wanted to trade seven cod for one fair-sized squid. But Disco would not agree at the price, and the Carrie dropped sullenly to Leeward and anchored half a mile away in the hope of striking on to some for herself. Disco said nothing till after supper, when he sent Dan and Manuel off 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 says he wouldn't trust a ferry-boat within five miles of you, Dan held cheerfully. Well, why don't he get out then? Who's hindering? says the other. Because you'd just the same as Lee bowed him, and he don't take that from any boat, not to speak of such a drifting, gory butt as you be. She ain't driftin' any this trip, said the man angrily, for the Carrie Pippman had an unsavory reputation for breaking her ground tackle. Then how do you make births? said Dan. It's her best point of sailin', and if she's quit driftin' what in thunder are you doin' with a new jib-boom? That shot went home. Hey, you Portugese Oregon grinder, take your monkey back to Gloucester. Go back to school, Dan Troop, was the answer. Overalls! Overalls! yelled Dan, who knew that one of the Carrie's crew had worked in an overall factory the winter before. Shrimp! Gloucester Shrimp! Get out, you novie! To call a Gloucester man a Nova Scotian is not well received, Dan answered in kind. Novie yourself, you scrabble-towners, you chatham-wreckers! Get out with your brick and your stockin'! And the forces separated, but Chatham had the worst of it. I knew how itch would be, said Disco. She's draw'd the wind round already. Someone ought to put a desist on that packet. She'll snore till midnight, and just when we're gettin' our sleep she'll strike a drift. Good job we ain't crowded with craft hero ways, but I ain't going to up anchor for 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 carry-pipman 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! But in first, walkin' in her sleep, same as she'd done on Quero! Had she been any other boat Disco would have taken his chances, but now he cut the cable as the carry-pipman, with all the North Atlantic to play in, lurched down directly upon them. The weir here, under jib and riding-sail, gave her no more room than was absolutely necessary. Disco did not wish to spend a week hunting for his cable, but scuttled up into the wind as the carry passed with an easy hail, a silent and angry boat, at the mercy of a raking broadside of banked chaff. Good evening, said Disco, raisin' his headgear, and how does your garden grow? Go to Ohio and hire a mule, said Uncle Salters. We don't want no farmers here. We'll all end you, my dolery-anchor, cried Long Jack. Unship your rudder and stick it in the mud, said Tom Platt. Say, Dan's voice rose shrill and high, as he stood on the wheel-box. Say! Is there a strike in the overall factory, or have they hired girls, your Shacka-Maxons? Veer out the tiller-lines, cried Harvey, and nail him to the bottom. That was a salt-flavored jest he had just been put up to by Tom Platt. Manuel leaned over the stern and yelled, "'John, a morgan, play the organ, ha-ha-ha!' He flourished his broad thumb with a gesture of unspeakable contempt and derision, while Little Penn covered himself with glory by piping up, "'Gee, ya little, hish, come here, ha!' 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 disconfident carry. 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 disco at the bell, which he handed over to Harvey. "'Keep her going,' said he. "'I mistrust I hear something. If it's anything, I'm best where I am so as 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-colored 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-edge to bill a fare, and that same boy—no, his very much older brother—was up at four of the dim dawn and streaming crackling oil-skins, 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 stern 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 slowed down one turn of their blame propeller, said Dan, applying himself to Manuel's conch, for to keep inside the law—and it's consoling when we're all at the bottom. Hark to her! She's a humper! Ooooo! went the siren. Dingle, dingle, ding! went the bell. Grrrrr! 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-colored gleaming side. He tilted forward and downward with a heart stilling—XX, the ladder disappeared, a line of brass-rimmed portholes 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 faraway telephone-voice, drawing, "'Have, too! You've sunk us!' "'Is it us?' he gassed. "'No! Boat out yonder! Ring! We're going to look!' said Dan, running out of Dory. In half a minute all except Harvey, Penn, and the cook were over side and away. Presently a schooner's stump-formast, snapped clean across, drifted past the boughs. 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 color, and caught his breath with a click. Harvey pounded despairingly at the bell, for a fear they might be sunk at any minute, and he jumped at Dan's hail as the crew came back. "'The Jenny Cushman!' said Dan hysterically. "'Cut clean in half! Ground up and trampled on it that! Not a quarter of a mile away. Dad's got the old man. There ain't any one else, and there was a son, too. Oh, Harvey! Harvey! I can't stand it! I've seen—' He dropped his head on his arms and sobbed, while the others dragged a gray-headed man aboard. "'What did you pick me up for?' the stranger groaned. "'Disco! What did you pick me up for?' Disco 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 McVitie 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 and a thousand quintal of fish. If you'd let me alone, my widow could have gone on to the provident and worked for her board, and never known, and never known. Now I'll have to tell her.' "'There ain't nothing to say,' said Disco. "'Better lie down to peace, Jason Olly.' 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 man wasn't they?' said Tom Platt, fiddling helplessly with a dory-becket. "'Oh, that don't make no odds,' said Jason, ringing in the wet from his beard. "'I'll be rowing summer-borders around East Gloucester this fall.' He rolled heavily to the rails, singing. "'Happy birds that sing and fly round thine altars almost 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 don't know who you be. But I'll come,' said Jason, submissive. "'Maybe I'll get back some of 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, and he's remembered Johnstown. "'I never see'd such eyes in any living man's head. "'What's to do now? What'll I do now?' 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,' Salter groaned. "'It's all to do over again, checkers, and everything, and 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. Will 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. "'Shaw, Penn, you warn'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 was that?' "'I can't stand it, I can't stand it,' cried Dan, and Harvey whimpered in sympathy. "'Oh, about five years,' said Disco, in a shaking voice. Then I have been a charge on someone for every day of that time. Who was the man?' Disco pointed to Salters. "'You ain't—you ain't,' cried the sea-farmer, twisting his hands together. "'You've mourn, earn, you keep, twice told, and there's money, oh, in you, Penn, besides half of my quarter-share in the boat, which is yours for value received. You are good men. I can see that in your faces, but—' "'Mother have mercy,' whispered Long Jack, and he's been with its all these trips. He's clean bewitched.' A schooner's bell struck up alongside, and a voice hailed through the fog. "'Oh, Disco, heard about the Jenny Cushman?' "'They have found his son,' cried Penn. "'Stand you still and see the salvation of the Lord.' "'Got Jason aboard here,' Disco answered, but his voice quavered. "'There, warn't anyone else?' "'We've found one, though. Run across them, snarled up in a mess of lumber that might have been a foxel. His head's cut some.' "'Who is he?' The Weir Heer's heartbeats answered one another. "'Guess it's Young Ollie,' 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. "'Say, you fellers guide us considerably other night.' "'We don't feel a guy in any now,' said Disco. "'I know it, but tell the honest truth. We were kinder driftin' when we run again, Young Ollie.' It was the irrepressible Carrie Pittman, and a roar of unsteady laughter went up from the deck of the Weir Heer. "'Hand you about well send the old man aboard? We're runnin' in for more bait and groutin' tackle. Guess you won't want him any way. This blame-winless work makes us shorthanded. We'll take care of him. He's married my woman's aunt.' "'I'll give you anything in the boat,' said Troop. "'Don't want nothin'—less may be an anchor that'll hold. Say, Young Ollie's gettin' kinder balky and excited. Send the old man along.' Penn waked him from his stupor of despair, and Tom Platt rode 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 it were about to preach, and now the erect body sank like a sword driven home into the scabbard. The light faded from the over-bright 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 going to say myself,' cried Salters promptly. "'It beats all, Penn, how you get on to what's in a man's mind!' The little fellow blushed and meekly followed Salters forward. "'A banker! Hurry! Let's quit these crazy waters!' shouted Disco, and never was he more swiftly obeyed. "'Now, what in creation do you suppose is a meaning of that all?' said Long Jack, when they were working through the fog once more, damp, dripping, and bewildered. "'The way I sense it,' said Disco, at the wheel, is this—the Jenny Cushman business coming on an empty stomach. "'He—we saw one of them go by!' sobbed Harvey.' "'And that, of course, kind of hove him out of water. Jullock running a craft ashore, hove him right out, I take it, to remember in Johnstown and Jacob Boiler and such like reminiscences. Well, Consol and Jason there held him up a piece, same as shoring up a boat. Then, being weak, them props slipped, and slipped, and he slided down the ways, and now he's water-borne again. That's how I sense it.' They decided that Disco was entirely correct. "'Twitterbrook, Salters, all up!' said Long Jack. "'If Penn had stayed, Jacob Boilerin, did you see his face when Penn asked who'd he'd been charged on all these years? How is it, Salters?' "'A sleep, dead asleep. Turned in like a child,' Salters replied, tiptoeing aft. There won't be no grub till he wakes, natural. Did you ever see such a gift in prayer? He everlastingly hiked young Olly out of the ocean. That's my belief. Jason was terrible proud of his boy, and I mistrusted all along, twas a judgment on worship and vain idols.' "'There's others just as sought,' said Disco. "'That's different,' Salters retorted quickly. This is not all cocked, and 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. Disco worked all hands mercilessly for the next three or four days, and when they could not go out, turn them into the hole to stack the ship's doors into smaller compass, to make more room for the fish. The packed mass ran from the cabin partition to the sliding door behind the folksal stove, and Disco 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 Behan, as the Galway man said. Sorrowful is a sick cat over what 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 had-a-yes 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 Blyman's Bluff in the fog, there came a morning when Disco