CHAPTER III
It was the
forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends you to
breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin dish of juicy fragments of fish—the
blood-ends the cook had collected overnight. They cleaned up the plates and
pans of the elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal,
swabbed down the foc'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook,
and investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores were stacked. It was
another perfect day—soft, mild, and clear; and Harvey breathed to the very
bottom of his lungs.
More schooners
had crept up in the night, and the long blue seas were full of sails and
dories. Far away on the horizon, the smoke of some liner, her hull invisible,
smudged the blue, and to eastward a big ship's top-gallant sails, just lifting,
made a square nick in it. Disko Troop was smoking by the roof of the cabin—one
eye on the craft around, and the other on the little fly at the main-mast-head.
"When Dad
kerflummoxes that way," said Dan in a whisper, "he's doin' some
high-line thinkin' fer all hands. I'll lay my wage an' share we'll make berth
soon. Dad he knows the cod, an' the Fleet they know Dad knows. 'See 'em comm'
up one by one, lookin' fer nothin' in particular, o' course, but scrowgin' on
us all the time? There's the Prince Leboo; she's a Chat-ham boat. She's crep'
up sence last night. An' see that big one with a patch in her foresail an' a
new jib? She's the Carrie Pitman from West Chat-ham. She won't keep her canvas
long onless her luck's changed since last season. She don't do much 'cep'
drift. There ain't an anchor made 'll hold her. . . . When the smoke puffs up
in little rings like that, Dad's studyin' the fish. Ef we speak to him now,
he'll git mad. Las' time I did, he jest took an' hove a boot at me."
Disko Troop
stared forward, the pipe between his teeth, with eyes that saw nothing. As his
son said, he was studying the fish—pitting his knowledge and experience on the
Banks against the roving cod in his own sea. He accepted the presence of the
inquisitive schooners on the horizon as a compliment to his powers. But now
that it was paid, he wished to draw away and make his berth alone, till it was
time to go up to the Virgin and fish in the streets of that roaring town upon
the waters. So Disko Troop thought of recent weather, and gales, currents,
food-supplies, and other domestic arrangements, from the point of view of a
twenty-pound cod; was, in fact, for an hour a cod himself, and looked
remarkably like one. Then he removed the pipe from his teeth.
"Dad,"
said Dan, "we've done our chores. Can't we go overside a piece? It's good
catchin' weather."
"Not in that
cherry-coloured rig ner them ha'af baked brown shoes. Give him suthin' fit to
wear."
"Dad's
pleased—that settles it," said Dan, delightedly, dragging Harvey into the
cabin, while Troop pitched a key down the steps. "Dad keeps my spare rig
where he kin overhaul it, 'cause Ma sez I'm keerless." He rummaged through
a locker, and in less than three minutes Harvey was adorned with fisherman's
rubber boots that came half up his thigh, a heavy blue jersey well darned at
the elbows, a pair of nippers, and a sou'wester.
"Naow ye
look somethin' like," said Dan. "Hurry!"
"Keep nigh
an' handy," said Troop "an' don't go visitin' raound the Fleet. If
any one asks you what I'm cal'latin' to do, speak the truth—fer ye don't
know."
A little red
dory, labelled Hattie S., lay astern of the schooner. Dan hauled in the
painter, and dropped lightly on to the bottom boards, while Harvey tumbled
clumsily after.
"That's no
way o' gettin' into a boat," said Dan. "Ef there was any sea you'd go
to the bottom, sure. You got to learn to meet her."
Dan fitted the
thole-pins, took the forward thwart and watched Harvey's work. The boy had
rowed, in a lady-like fashion, on the Adirondack ponds; but there is a
difference between squeaking pins and well-balanced ruflocks—light sculls and
stubby, eight-foot sea-oars. They stuck in the gentle swell, and Harvey
grunted.
"Short! Row
short!" said Dan. "Ef you cramp your oar in any kind o' sea you're
liable to turn her over. Ain't she a daisy? Mine, too."
The little dory
was specklessly clean. In her bows lay a tiny anchor, two jugs of water, and
some seventy fathoms of thin, brown dory-roding. A tin dinner-horn rested in
cleats just under Harvey's right hand, beside an ugly-looking maul, a short
gaff, and a shorter wooden stick. A couple of lines, with very heavy leads and
double cod-hooks, all neatly coiled on square reels, were stuck in their place
by the gunwale.
"Where's the
sail and mast?" said Harvey, for his hands were beginning to blister.
Dan chuckled.
"Ye don't sail fishin'-dories much. Ye pull; but ye needn't pull so hard.
Don't you wish you owned her?"
"Well, I
guess my father might give me one or two if I asked 'em," Harvey replied.
He had been too busy to think much of his family till then.
"That's so.
I forgot your dad's a millionaire. You don't act millionary any, naow. But a
dory an' craft an' gear"—Dan spoke as though she were a
whaleboat—"costs a heap. Think your dad 'u'd give you one fer—fer a pet
like?"
"Shouldn't
wonder. It would be 'most the only thing I haven't stuck him for yet."
"Must be an
expensive kinder kid to home. Don't slitheroo thet way, Harve. Short's the
trick, because no sea's ever dead still, an' the swells 'll—"
Crack! The loom
of the oar kicked Harvey under the chin and knocked him backwards.
"That was
what I was goin' to say. I hed to learn too, but I wasn't more than eight years
old when I got my schoolin'."
Harvey regained
his seat with aching jaws and a frown.
"No good
gettin' mad at things, Dad says. It's our own fault ef we can't handle 'em, he
says. Le's try here. Manuel 'll give us the water."
The "Portugee"
was rocking fully a mile away, but when Dan up-ended an oar he waved his left
arm three times.
"Thirty
fathom," said Dan, stringing a salt clam on to the hook. "Over with
the doughboys. Bait same's I do, Harvey, an' don't snarl your reel."
Dan's line was
out long before Harvey had mastered the mystery of baiting and heaving out the
leads. The dory drifted along easily. It was not worth while to anchor till
they were sure of good ground.
"Here we
come!" Dan shouted, and a shower of spray rattled on Harvey's shoulders as
a big cod flapped and kicked alongside. "Muckle, Harvey, muckle! Under
your hand! Quick!"
Evidently
"muckle" could not be the dinner-horn, so Harvey passed over the
maul, and Dan scientifically stunned the fish before he pulled it inboard, and
wrenched out the hook with the short wooden stick he called a
"gob-stick." Then Harvey felt a tug, and pulled up zealously.
"Why, these
are strawberries!" he shouted. "Look!"
The hook had
fouled among a bunch of strawberries, red on one side and white on the
other—perfect reproductions of the land fruit, except that there were no
leaves, and the stem was all pipy and slimy.
"Don't tech
'em. Slat 'em off. Don't—"
The warning came
too late. Harvey had picked them from the hook, and was admiring them.
"Ouch!"
he cried, for his fingers throbbed as though he had grasped many nettles.
"Now ye know
what strawberry-bottom means. Nothin' 'cep' fish should be teched with the
naked fingers, Dad says. Slat 'em off agin the gunnel, an' bait up, Harve. Lookin'
won't help any. It's all in the wages."
Harvey smiled at
the thought of his ten and a half dollars a month, and wondered what his mother
would say if she could see him hanging over the edge of a fishing-dory in
mid-ocean. She suffered agonies whenever he went out on Saranac Lake; and, by
the way, Harvey remembered distinctly that he used to laugh at her anxieties.
Suddenly the line flashed through his hand, stinging even through the
"nippers," the woolen circlets supposed to protect it.
"He's a logy.
Give him room accordin' to his strength," cried Dan. "I'll help
ye."
"No, you
won't," Harvey snapped, as he hung on to the line. "It's my first
fish. Is—is it a whale?"
"Halibut,
mebbe." Dan peered down into the water alongside, and flourished the big
"muckle," ready for all chances. Something white and oval flickered
and fluttered through the green. "I'll lay my wage an' share he's over a
hundred. Are you so everlastin' anxious to land him alone?"
Harvey's knuckles
were raw and bleeding where they had been banged against the gunwale; his face
was purple-blue between excitement and exertion; he dripped with sweat, and was
half-blinded from staring at the circling sunlit ripples about the swiftly
moving line. The boys were tired long ere the halibut, who took charge of them
and the dory for the next twenty minutes. But the big flat fish was gaffed and
hauled in at last.
"Beginner's
luck," said Dan, wiping his forehead. "He's all of a hundred."
Harvey looked at
the huge gray-and-mottled creature with unspeakable pride. He had seen halibut
many times on marble slabs ashore, but it had never occurred to him to ask how
they came inland. Now he knew; and every inch of his body ached with fatigue.
"Ef Dad was
along," said Dan, hauling up, "he'd read the signs plain's print. The
fish are runnin' smaller an' smaller, an' you've took 'baout as logy a
halibut's we're apt to find this trip. Yesterday's catch—did ye notice it?—was
all big fish an' no halibut. Dad he'd read them signs right off. Dad says
everythin' on the Banks is signs, an' can be read wrong er right. Dad's
deeper'n the Whale-hole."
Even as he spoke
some one fired a pistol on the We're Here, and a potato-basket was run up in
the fore-rigging.
"What did I
say, naow? That's the call fer the whole crowd. Dad's onter something, er he'd
never break fishin' this time o' day. Reel up, Harve, an' we'll pull
back."
They were to
windward of the schooner, just ready to flirt the dory over the still sea, when
sounds of woe half a mile off led them to Penn, who was careering around a
fixed point for all the world like a gigantic water-bug. The little man backed
away and came down again with enormous energy, but at the end of each maneuver
his dory swung round and snubbed herself on her rope.
"We'll hev
to help him, else he'll root an' seed here," said Dan.
"What's the
matter?" said Harvey. This was a new world, where he could not lay down
the law to his elders, but had to ask questions humbly. And the sea was
horribly big and unexcited.
"Anchor's
fouled. Penn's always losing 'em. Lost two this trip a'ready—on sandy bottom
too—an' Dad says next one he loses, sure's fishin', he'll give him the kelleg.
That 'u'd break Penn's heart."
"What's a
'kelleg'?" said Harvey, who had a vague idea it might be some kind of
marine torture, like keel-hauling in the storybooks.
"Big stone
instid of an anchor. You kin see a kelleg ridin' in the bows fur's you can see
a dory, an' all the fleet knows what it means. They'd guy him dreadful. Penn
couldn't stand that no more'n a dog with a dipper to his tail. He's so
everlastin' sensitive. Hello, Penn! Stuck again? Don't try any more o' your
patents. Come up on her, and keep your rodin' straight up an' down."
"It doesn't
move," said the little man, panting. "It doesn't move at all, and
instead I tried everything."
"What's all
this hurrah's-nest for'ard?" said Dan, pointing to a wild tangle of spare
oars and dory-roding, all matted together by the hand of inexperience.
"Oh,
that," said Penn proudly, "is a Spanish windlass. Mr. Salters showed
me how to make it; but even that doesn't move her."
Dan bent low over
the gunwale to hide a smile, twitched once or twice on the roding, and, behold,
the anchor drew at once.
"Haul up,
Penn," he said laughing, "er she'll git stuck again."
They left him
regarding the weed-hung flukes of the little anchor with big, pathetic blue
eyes, and thanking them profusely.
"Oh, say,
while I think of it, Harve," said Dan when they were out of ear-shot,
"Penn ain't quite all caulked. He ain't nowise dangerous, but his mind's
give out. See?"
"Is that so,
or is it one of your father's judgments?"
Harvey asked as
he bent to his oars. He felt he was learning to handle them more easily.
"Dad ain't
mistook this time. Penn's a sure 'nuff loony."
"No, he
ain't thet exactly, so much ez a harmless ijut. It was this way (you're rowin'
quite so, Harve), an' I tell you 'cause it's right you orter know. He was a
Moravian preacher once. Jacob Boiler wuz his name, Dad told me, an' he lived
with his wife an' four children somewheres out Pennsylvania way. Well, Penn he
took his folks along to a Moravian meetin'—camp-meetin' most like—an' they
stayed over jest one night in Johns-town. You've heered talk o'
Johnstown?"
Harvey
considered. "Yes, I have. But I don't know why. It sticks in my head same
as Ashtabula."
"Both was
big accidents—thet's why, Harve. Well, that one single night Penn and his folks
was to the hotel Johnstown was wiped out. 'Dam bust an' flooded her, an' the
houses struck adrift an' bumped into each other an' sunk. I've seen the
pictures, an' they're dretful. Penn he saw his folk drowned all'n a heap 'fore
he rightly knew what was comin'. His mind give out from that on. He mistrusted
somethin' hed happened up to Johnstown, but for the poor life of him he
couldn't remember what, an' he jest drifted araound smilin' an' wonderin'. He
didn't know what he was, nor yit what he hed bin, an' thet way he run agin
Uncle Salters, who was visitin' 'n Allegheny City. Ha'af my mother's folks they
live scattered inside o' Pennsylvania, an' Uncle Salters he visits araound
winters. Uncle Salters he kinder adopted Penn, well knowin' what his trouble
wuz; an' he brought him East, an' he give him work on his farm."
"Why, I
heard him calling Penn a farmer last night when the boats bumped. Is your Uncle
Salters a farmer?"
"Farmer!"
shouted Dan. "There ain't water enough 'tween here an' Hatt'rus to wash
the furrer-mold off'n his boots. He's jest everlastin' farmer. Why, Harve, I've
seen thet man hitch up a bucket, long towards sundown, an' set twiddlin' the
spigot to the scuttle-butt same's ef 'twas a cow's bag. He's thet much farmer.
Well, Penn an' he they ran the farm—up Exeter way 'twur. Uncle Salters he sold
it this spring to a jay from Boston as wanted to build a summer-haouse, an' he
got a heap for it. Well, them two loonies scratched along till, one day, Penn's
church—he'd belonged to the Moravians—found out where he wuz drifted an'
layin', an' wrote to Uncle Salters. 'Never heerd what they said exactly; but
Uncle Salters was mad. He's a 'piscopolian mostly—but he jest let 'em hev it
both sides o' the bow, 's if he was a Baptist; an' sez he warn't goin' to give
up Penn to any blame Moravian connection in Pennsylvania or anywheres else.
Then he come to Dad, towin' Penn,—thet was two trips back,—an' sez he an' Penn
must fish a trip fer their health. 'Guess he thought the Moravians wouldn't
hunt the Banks fer Jacob Boiler. Dad was agreeable, fer Uncle Salters he'd been
fishin' off an' on fer thirty years, when he warn't inventin' patent manures,
an' he took quarter-share in the We're Here; an' the trip done Penn so much
good, Dad made a habit o' takin' him. Some day, Dad sez, he'll remember his
wife an' kids an' Johnstown, an' then, like as not, he'll die, Dad sez. Don't
ye talk abaout Johnstown ner such things to Penn, 'r Uncle Salters he'll heave
ye overboard."
"Poor
Penn!" murmured Harvey. "I shouldn't ever have thought Uncle Salters
cared for him by the look of 'em together."
"I like
Penn, though; we all do," said Dan. "We ought to ha' give him a tow,
but I wanted to tell ye first."
They were close
to the schooner now, the other boats a little behind them.
"You needn't
heave in the dories till after dinner," said Troop from the deck.
"We'll dress daown right off. Fix table, boys!"
"Deeper'n
the Whale-deep," said Dan, with a wink, as he set the gear for dressing
down. "Look at them boats that hev edged up sence mornin'. They're all
waitin' on Dad. See 'em, Harve?"
"They are
all alike to me." And indeed to a landsman, the nodding schooners around
seemed run from the same mold.
"They ain't,
though. That yaller, dirty packet with her bowsprit steeved that way, she's the
Hope of Prague. Nick Brady's her skipper, the meanest man on the Banks. We'll
tell him so when we strike the Main Ledge. 'Way off yonder's the Day's Eye. The
two Jeraulds own her. She's from Harwich; fastish, too, an' hez good luck; but
Dad he'd find fish in a graveyard. Them other three, side along, they're the
Margie Smith, Rose, and Edith S. Walen, all from home. 'Guess we'll see the
Abbie M. Deering to-morrer, Dad, won't we? They're all slippin' over from the
shaol o' 'Oueereau."
"You won't
see many boats to-morrow, Danny." When Troop called his son Danny, it was
a sign that the old man was pleased. "Boys, we're too crowded," he
went on, addressing the crew as they clambered inboard. "We'll leave 'em
to bait big an' catch small." He looked at the catch in the pen, and it
was curious to see how little and level the fish ran. Save for Harvey's
halibut, there was nothing over fifteen pounds on deck.
"I'm waitin'
on the weather," he added.
"Ye'll have
to make it yourself, Disko, for there's no sign I can see," said Long
Jack, sweeping the clear horizon.
And yet, half an
hour later, as they were dressing down, the Bank fog dropped on them,
"between fish and fish," as they say. It drove steadily and in
wreaths, curling and smoking along the colourless water. The men stopped
dressing-down without a word. Long Jack and Uncle Salters slipped the windlass
brakes into their sockets, and began to heave up the anchor; the windlass
jarring as the wet hempen cable strained on the barrel. Manuel and Tom Platt
gave a hand at the last. The anchor came up with a sob, and the riding-sail
bellied as Troop steadied her at the wheel. "Up jib and foresail,"
said he.
"Slip 'em in
the smother," shouted Long Jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the others
raised the clacking, rattling rings of the foresail; and the foreboom creaked
as the We're Here looked up into the wind and dived off into blank, whirling
white.
"There's
wind behind this fog," said Troop.
It was wonderful
beyond words to Harvey; and the most wonderful part was that he heard no orders
except an occasional grunt from Troop, ending with, "That's good, my
son!"
"Never seen
anchor weighed before?" said Tom Platt, to Harvey gaping at the damp
canvas of the foresail.
"No. Where
are we going?"
"Fish and
make berth, as you'll find out 'fore you've been a week aboard. It's all new to
you, but we never know what may come to us. Now, take me—Tom Platt—I'd never
ha' thought—"
"It's better
than fourteen dollars a month an' a bullet in your belly," said Troop,
from the wheel. "Ease your jumbo a grind."
"Dollars an'
cents better," returned the man-o'-war's man, doing something to a big jib
with a wooden spar tied to it. "But we didn't think o' that when we manned
the windlass-brakes on the Miss Jim Buck, I outside Beau-fort Harbor, with Fort
Macon heavin' hot shot at our stern, an' a livin' gale atop of all. Where was
you then, Disko?"
"Jest here,
or hereabouts," Disko replied, "earnin' my bread on the deep waters,
an' dodgin' Reb privateers. Sorry I can't accommodate you with red-hot shot,
Tom Platt; but I guess we'll come aout all right on wind 'fore we see Eastern
Point."
There was an
incessant slapping and chatter at the bows now, varied by a solid thud and a
little spout of spray that clattered down on the foc'sle. The rigging dripped
clammy drops, and the men lounged along the lee of the house—all save Uncle
Salters, who sat stiffly on the main-hatch nursing his stung hands.
"Guess she'd
carry stays'l," said Disko, rolling one eye at his brother.
"Guess she
wouldn't to any sorter profit. What's the sense o' wastin' canvas?" the
farmer-sailor replied.
The wheel
twitched almost imperceptibly in Disko's hands. A few seconds later a hissing
wave-top slashed diagonally across the boat, smote Uncle Salters between the
shoulders, and drenched him from head to foot. He rose sputtering, and went
forward only to catch another.
"See Dad
chase him all around the deck," said Dan. "Uncle Salters he thinks
his quarter share's our canvas. Dad's put this duckin' act up on him two trips
runnin'. Hi! That found him where he feeds." Uncle Salters had taken
refuge by the foremast, but a wave slapped him over the knees. Disko's face was
as blank as the circle of the wheel.
"Guess she'd
lie easier under stays'l, Salters," said Disko, as though he had seen
nothing.
"Set your
old kite, then," roared the victim through a cloud of spray; "only
don't lay it to me if anything happens. Penn, you go below right off an' git
your coffee. You ought to hev more sense than to bum araound on deck this
weather."
"Now they'll
swill coffee an' play checkers till the cows come home," said Dan, as
Uncle Salters hustled Penn into the fore-cabin. "'Looks to me like's if
we'd all be doin' so fer a spell. There's nothin' in creation
deader-limpsey-idler'n a Banker when she ain't on fish."
"I'm glad ye
spoke, Danny," cried Long Jack, who had been casting round in search of
amusement. "I'd clean forgot we'd a passenger under that T-wharf hat.
There's no idleness for thim that don't know their ropes. Pass him along, Tom
Platt, an' we'll larn him."
"'Tain't my
trick this time," grinned Dan. "You've got to go it alone. Dad
learned me with a rope's end."
For an hour Long
Jack walked his prey up and down, teaching, as he said, "things at the sea
that ivry man must know, blind, dhrunk, or asleep." There is not much gear
to a seventy-ton schooner with a stump-foremast, but Long Jack had a gift of
expression. When he wished to draw Harvey's attention to the peak-halyards, he
dug his knuckles into the back of the boy's neck and kept him at gaze for half a
minute. He emphasized the difference between fore and aft generally by rubbing
Harvey's nose along a few feet of the boom, and the lead of each rope was fixed
in Harvey's mind by the end of the rope itself.
The lesson would
have been easier had the deck been at all free; but there appeared to be a
place on it for everything and anything except a man. Forward lay the windlass
and its tackle, with the chain and hemp cables, all very unpleasant to trip
over; the foc'sle stovepipe, and the gurry-butts by the foc'sle hatch to hold
the fish-livers. Aft of these the foreboom and booby of the main-hatch took all
the space that was not needed for the pumps and dressing-pens. Then came the
nests of dories lashed to ring-bolts by the quarter-deck; the house, with tubs
and oddments lashed all around it; and, last, the sixty-foot main-boom in its
crutch, splitting things length-wise, to duck and dodge under every time.
Tom Platt, of
course, could not keep his oar out of the business, but ranged alongside with
enormous and unnecessary descriptions of sails and spars on the old Ohio.
"Niver mind
fwhat he says; attind to me, Innocince. Tom Platt, this bally-hoo's not the
Ohio, an' you're mixing the bhoy bad."
"He'll be
ruined for life, beginnin' on a fore-an'-after this way," Tom Platt
pleaded. "Give him a chance to know a few leadin' principles. Sailin's an
art, Harvey, as I'd show you if I had ye in the fore-top o' the—"
"I know ut.
Ye'd talk him dead an' cowld. Silince, Tom Platt! Now, after all I've said,
how'd you reef the foresail, Harve? Take your time answerin'."
"Haul that
in," said Harvey, pointing to leeward.
"Fwhat? The
North Atlantuc?"
"No, the
boom. Then run that rope you showed me back there—"
"That's no
way," Tom Platt burst in.
"Quiet! He's
larnin', an' has not the names good yet. Go on, Harve."
"Oh, it's
the reef-pennant. I'd hook the tackle on to the reef-pennant, and then let
down—"
"Lower the
sail, child! Lower!" said Tom Platt, in a professional agony.
"Lower the
throat and peak halyards," Harvey went on. Those names stuck in his head.
"Lay your
hand on thim," said Long Jack.
Harvey obeyed.
"Lower till that rope-loop—on the after-leach-kris—no, it's cringle—till
the cringle was down on the boom. Then I'd tie her up the way you said, and
then I'd hoist up the peak and throat halyards again."
"You've
forgot to pass the tack-earing, but wid time and help ye'll larn. There's good
and just reason for ivry rope aboard, or else 'twould be overboard. D'ye follow
me? 'Tis dollars an' cents I'm puttin' into your pocket, ye skinny little
supercargo, so that fwhin ye've filled out ye can ship from Boston to Cuba an'
tell thim Long Jack larned you. Now I'll chase ye around a piece, callin' the
ropes, an' you'll lay your hand on thim as I call."
He began, and
Harvey, who was feeling rather tired, walked slowly to the rope named. A rope's
end licked round his ribs, and nearly knocked the breath out of him.
"When you
own a boat," said Tom Platt, with severe eyes, "you can walk. Till
then, take all orders at the run. Once more—to make sure!"
Harvey was in a
glow with the exercise, and this last cut warmed him thoroughly. Now he was a
singularly smart boy, the son of a very clever man and a very sensitive woman,
with a fine resolute temper that systematic spoiling had nearly turned to
mulish obstinacy. He looked at the other men, and saw that even Dan did not
smile. It was evidently all in the day's work, though it hurt abominably; so he
swallowed the hint with a gulp and a gasp and a grin. The same smartness that
led him to take such advantage of his mother made him very sure that no one on
the boat, except, maybe, Penn, would stand the least nonsense. One learns a
great deal from a mere tone. Long Jack called over half a dozen ropes, and
Harvey danced over the deck like an eel at ebb-tide, one eye on Tom Platt.
"Ver' good.
Ver' good don," said Manuel. "After supper I show you a little
schooner I make, with all her ropes. So we shall learn."
"Fust-class
fer—a passenger," said Dan. "Dad he's jest allowed you'll be wuth
your salt maybe 'fore you're draownded. Thet's a heap fer Dad. I'll learn you
more our next watch together."
"Taller!"
grunted Disko, peering through the fog as it smoked over the bows. There was
nothing to be seen ten feet beyond the surging jib-boom, while alongside rolled
the endless procession of solemn, pale waves whispering and lipping one to the
other.
"Now I'll
learn you something Long Jack can't," shouted Tom Platt, as from a locker
by the stern he produced a battered deep-sea lead hollowed at one end, smeared
the hollow from a saucer full of mutton tallow, and went forward. "I'll
learn you how to fly the Blue Pigeon. Shooo!"
Disko did
something to the wheel that checked the schooner's way, while Manuel, with
Harvey to help (and a proud boy was Harvey), let down the jib in a lump on the
boom. The lead sung a deep droning song as Tom Platt whirled it round and
round.
"Go ahead,
man," said Long Jack, impatiently. "We're not drawin' twenty-five fut
off Fire Island in a fog. There's no trick to ut."
"Don't be
jealous, Galway." The released lead plopped into the sea far ahead as the
schooner surged slowly forward.
"Soundin' is
a trick, though," said Dan, "when your dipsey lead's all the eye
you're like to hev for a week. What d'you make it, Dad?"
Disko's face
relaxed. His skill and honour were involved in the march he had stolen on the
rest of the Fleet, and he had his reputation as a master artist who knew the
Banks blindfold. "Sixty, mebbe—ef I'm any judge," he replied, with a
glance at the tiny compass in the window of the house.
"Sixty,"
sung out Tom Platt, hauling in great wet coils.
The schooner
gathered way once more. "Heave!" said Disko, after a quarter of an
hour.
"What d'you
make it?" Dan whispered, and he looked at Harvey proudly. But Harvey was
too proud of his own performances to be impressed just then.
"Fifty,"
said the father. "I mistrust we're right over the nick o' Green Bank on
old Sixty-Fifty."
"Fifty!"
roared Tom Platt. They could scarcely see him through the fog. "She's bust
within a yard—like the shells at Fort Macon."
"Bait up,
Harve," said Dan, diving for a line on the reel.
The schooner
seemed to be straying promiscuously through the smother, her headsail banging
wildly. The men waited and looked at the boys who began fishing.
"Heugh!"
Dan's lines twitched on the scored and scarred rail. "Now haow in thunder
did Dad know? Help us here, Harve. It's a big un. Poke-hooked, too." They
hauled together, and landed a goggle-eyed twenty-pound cod. He had taken the
bait right into his stomach.
"Why, he's
all covered with little crabs," cried Harvey, turning him over.
"By the
great hook-block, they're lousy already," said Long Jack. "Disko, ye
kape your spare eyes under the keel."
Splash went the
anchor, and they all heaved over the lines, each man taking his own place at
the bulwarks.
"Are they
good to eat?" Harvey panted, as he lugged in another crab-covered cod.
"Sure. When
they're lousy it's a sign they've all been herdin' together by the thousand,
and when they take the bait that way they're hungry. Never mind how the bait
sets. They'll bite on the bare hook."
"Say, this
is great!" Harvey cried, as the fish came in gasping and splashing—nearly
all poke-hooked, as Dan had said. "Why can't we always fish from the boat
instead of from the dories?"
"Allus can,
till we begin to dress daown. Efter thet, the heads and offals 'u'd scare the
fish to Fundy. Boatfishin' ain't reckoned progressive, though, unless ye know
as much as dad knows. Guess we'll run aout aour trawl to-night. Harder on the
back, this, than frum the dory, ain't it?"
It was rather
back-breaking work, for in a dory the weight of a cod is water-borne till the
last minute, and you are, so to speak, abreast of him; but the few feet of a
schooner's freeboard make so much extra dead-hauling, and stooping over the
bulwarks cramps the stomach. But it was wild and furious sport so long as it
lasted; and a big pile lay aboard when the fish ceased biting.
"Where's Penn
and Uncle Salters?" Harvey asked, slapping the slime off his oilskins, and
reeling up the line in careful imitation of the others.
"Git 's
coffee and see."
Under the yellow
glare of the lamp on the pawl-post, the foc'sle table down and opened, utterly
unconscious of fish or weather, sat the two men, a checker-board between them,
Uncle Salters snarling at Penn's every move.
"What's the
matter naow?" said the former, as Harvey, one hand in the leather loop at
the head of the ladder, hung shouting to the cook.
"Big fish
and lousy—heaps and heaps," Harvey replied, quoting Long Jack. "How's
the game?"
Little Penn's jaw
dropped. "'Tweren't none o' his fault," snapped Uncle Salters.
"Penn's deef."
"Checkers,
weren't it?" said Dan, as Harvey staggered aft with the steaming coffee in
a tin pail. "That lets us out o' cleanin' up to-night. Dad's a jest man.
They'll have to do it."
"An' two
young fellers I know'll bait up a tub or so o' trawl, while they're
cleanin'," said Disko, lashing the wheel to his taste.
"Um! Guess
I'd ruther clean up, Dad."
"Don't doubt
it. Ye wun't, though. Dress daown! Dress daown! Penn'll pitch while you two
bait up."
"Why in
thunder didn't them blame boys tell us you'd struck on?" said Uncle
Salters, shuffling to his place at the table. "This knife's gum-blunt,
Dan."
"Ef stickin'
out cable don't wake ye, guess you'd better hire a boy o' your own," said
Dan, muddling about in the dusk over the tubs full of trawl-line lashed to
windward of the house. "Oh, Harve, don't ye want to slip down an' git 's
bait?"
"Bait ez we
are," said Disko. "I mistrust shag-fishin' will pay better, ez things
go."
That meant the
boys would bait with selected offal of the cod as the fish were cleaned—an
improvement on paddling bare-handed in the little bait-barrels below. The tubs
were full of neatly coiled line carrying a big hook each few feet; and the
testing and baiting of every single hook, with the stowage of the baited line
so that it should run clear when shot from the dory, was a scientific business.
Dan managed it in the dark, without looking, while Harvey caught his fingers on
the barbs and bewailed his fate. But the hooks flew through Dan's fingers like
tatting on an old maid's lap. "I helped bait up trawl ashore 'fore I could
well walk," he said. "But it's a putterin' job all the same. Oh,
Dad!" This shouted towards the hatch, where Disko and Tom Platt were
salting. "How many skates you reckon we'll need?"
"'Baout
three. Hurry!"
"There's
three hundred fathom to each tub," Dan explained; "more'n enough to
lay out to-night. Ouch! 'Slipped up there, I did." He stuck his finger in
his mouth. "I tell you, Harve, there ain't money in Gloucester 'u'd hire
me to ship on a reg'lar trawler. It may be progressive, but, barrin' that, it's
the putterin'est, slimjammest business top of earth."
"I don't
know what this is, if 'tisn't regular trawling," said Harvey sulkily.
"My fingers are all cut to frazzles."
"Pshaw! This
is just one o' Dad's blame experiments. He don't trawl 'less there's mighty
good reason fer it. Dad knows. Thet's why he's baitin' ez he is. We'll hev her
saggin' full when we take her up er we won't see a fin."
Penn and Uncle
Salters cleaned up as Disko had ordained, but the boys profited little. No
sooner were the tubs furnished than Tom Platt and Long Jack, who had been
exploring the inside of a dory with a lantern, snatched them away, loaded up
the tubs and some small, painted trawl-buoys, and hove the boat overboard into
what Harvey regarded as an exceedingly rough sea. "They'll be drowned.
Why, the dory's loaded like a freight-car," he cried.
"We'll be
back," said Long Jack, "an' in case you'll not be lookin' for us,
we'll lay into you both if the trawl's snarled."
The dory surged
up on the crest of a wave, and just when it seemed impossible that she could
avoid smashing against the schooner's side, slid over the ridge, and was
swallowed up in the damp dusk.
"Take ahold
here, an' keep ringin' steady," said Dan, passing Harvey the lanyard of a
bell that hung just behind the windlass.
Harvey rang
lustily, for he felt two lives depended on him. But Disko in the cabin,
scrawling in the log-book, did not look like a murderer, and when he went to
supper he even smiled dryly at the anxious Harvey.
"This ain't
no weather," said Dan. "Why, you an' me could set thet trawl! They've
only gone out jest far 'nough so's not to foul our cable. They don't need no
bell reelly."
"Clang!
clang! clang!" Harvey kept it up, varied with occasional rub-a-dubs, for
another half-hour. There was a bellow and a bump alongside. Manuel and Dan
raced to the hooks of the dory-tackle; Long Jack and Tom Platt arrived on deck
together, it seemed, one half the North Atlantic at their backs, and the dory
followed them in the air, landing with a clatter.
"Nary
snarl," said Tom Platt as he dripped. "Danny, you'll do yet."
"The
pleasure av your comp'ny to the banquit," said Long Jack, squelching the
water from his boots as he capered like an elephant and stuck an oil-skinned
arm into Harvey's face. "We do be condescending to honour the second half
wid our presence." And off they all four rolled to supper, where Harvey
stuffed himself to the brim on fish-chowder and fried pies, and fell fast
asleep just as Manuel produced from a locker a lovely two-foot model of the
Lucy Holmes, his first boat, and was going to show Harvey the ropes. Harvey
never even twiddled his fingers as Penn pushed him into his bunk.
"It must be
a sad thing—a very sad thing," said Penn, watching the boy's face,
"for his mother and his father, who think he is dead. To lose a child—to
lose a man-child!"
"Git out o'
this, Penn," said Dan. "Go aft and finish your game with Uncle
Salters. Tell Dad I'll stand Harve's watch ef he don't keer. He's played
aout."
"Ver' good
boy," said Manuel, slipping out of his boots and disappearing into the
black shadows of the lower bunk. "Expec' he make good man, Danny. I no see
he is any so mad as your parpa he says. Eh, wha-at?"
Dan chuckled, but
the chuckle ended in a snore.
It was thick
weather outside, with a rising wind, and the elder men stretched their watches.
The hour struck clear in the cabin; the nosing bows slapped and scuffed with
the seas; the foc'sle stove-pipe hissed and sputtered as the spray caught it;
and the boys slept on, while Disko, Long Jack, Tom Platt, and Uncle Salters,
each in turn, stumped aft to look at the wheel, forward to see that the anchor
held, or to veer out a little more cable against chafing, with a glance at the
dim anchor-light between each round.
