It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart,
and sends you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin dish of
juicy fragments of fish--the blood-ends the cook had collected
overnight. They cleaned up the plates and pans of the elder mess, who
were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal, swabbed down the
fo'c'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook, and
investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores were stacked. It
was another perfect day--soft, mild, and clear; and Harvey breathed to
the very bottom of his lungs.
More schooners had crept up in the night, and the long blue seas were
full of sails and dories. Far away on the horizon, the smoke of some
liner, her hull invisible, smudged the blue, and to eastward a big
ship's topgallantsails, just lifting, made a square nick in it. Disko
Troop was smoking by the roof of the cabin--one eye on the craft
around, and the other on the little fly at the mainmast-head.
"When dad kerflummoxes that way," said Dan, in a whisper, "he's doin'
some high-line thinkin' fer all hands. I'll lay my wage an' share we'll
make berth soon. Dad he knows the cod, an' the fleet they know dad
knows. 'See 'em comin' up one by one, lookin' fer nothin' in
particular, o' course, but scrowgin' on us all the time? There's the
Prince Leboa; she's a Chat-ham boat. She's crep' up sence last night.
An' see that big one with a patch in her foresail an' a new jib? She's
the Carrie Pitman from West Chatham. She won't keep her canvas long on
less her luck's changed since last season. She don't do much 'cep'
drift. There ain't an anchor made'll hold her. . . . When the smoke
puffs up in little rings like that, dad's studyin' the fish. Ef we
speak to him now, he'll git mad. Las' time I did, he jest took an' hove
a boot at me."
Disko Troop stared forward, the pipe between his teeth, with eyes that
saw nothing. As his son said, he was studying the fish--pitting his
knowledge and experience on the Banks against the roving cod in his own
sea. He accepted the presence of the inquisitive schooners on the
horizon as a compliment to his powers. But now that it was paid, he
wished to draw away and make his berth alone, till it was time to go up
to the Virgin and fish in the streets of that roaring town upon the
waters. So Disko Troop thought of recent weather, and gales, currents,
food-supplies, and other domestic arrangements, from the point of view
of a twenty-pound cod; was, in fact, for an hour a cod himself, and
looked remarkably like one. Then he removed the pipe from his teeth.
"Dad," said Dan, "we've done our chores. Can't we go overside a piece?
It's good catch-in' weather."
"Not in that cherry-coloured rig ner them ha'afbaked brown shoes. Give
him suthin' fit to wear."
"Dad's pleased--that settles it," said Dan, delightedly, dragging
Harvey into the cabin, while Troop pitched a key down the steps. "Dad
keeps my spare rig where he kin overhaul it, 'cause ma sez I'm
keerless." He rummaged through a locker, and in less than three minutes
Harvey was adorned with fisherman's rubber boots that came half up his
thigh, a heavy blue jersey well darned at the elbows, a pair of
flippers, and a sou'wester.
"Naow ye look somethin' like," said Dan. "Hurry!"
"Keep nigh an' handy," said Troop, "an' don't go visitin' raound the
fleet. Ef any one asks you what I'm cal'latin' to do, speak the
truth--fer ye don't know."
A little red dory, labelled Hattie S., lay astern of the schooner. Dan
hauled in the painter, and dropped lightly on to the bottom boards,
while Harvey tumbled clumsily after.
"That's no way o' gettin' into a boat," said Dan. "Ef there was any sea
you'd go to the bottom, sure. You got to learn to meet her."
Dan fitted the thole-pins, took the forward thwart, and watched
Harvey's work. The boy had rowed, in a ladylike fashion, on the
Adirondack ponds; but there is a difference between squeaking pins and
well-balanced rowlocks--light sculls and stubby, eight-foot sea-oars.
They stuck in the gentle swell, and Harvey grunted.
"Short! Row short!" said Dan. "Ef you cramp your oar in any kind o' sea
you're liable to turn her over. Ain't she a daisy? Mine, too."
The little dory was specklessly clean. In her bows lay a tiny anchor,
two jugs of water, and some seventy fathoms of thin, brown dory-roding.
A tin dinner-horn rested in cleats just under Harvey's right hand,
beside an ugly-looking maul, a short gaff, and a shorter wooden stick.
A couple of lines, with very heavy leads and double cod-hooks, all
neatly coiled on square reels, were stuck in their place by the gunwale.
"Where's the sail and mast?" said Harvey, for his hands were beginning
to blister.
Dan chuckled. "Ye don't sail fishin'-dories much. Ye pull; but ye
needn't pull so hard. Don't you wish you owned her?"
"Well, I guess my father might give me one or two if I asked 'em,"
Harvey replied. He had been too busy to think much of his family till
then.
"That's so. I forgot your dad's a millionaire. You don't act millionary
any, naow. But a dory an' craft an' gear"--Dan spoke as though she were
a whale-boat "costs a heap. Think your dad 'u'd give you one fer--fer a
pet like?"
"Shouldn't wonder. It would be 'most the only thing I haven't stuck him
for yet."
"Must be an expensive kinder kid to home. Don't slitheroo thet way,
Harve. Short's the trick, because no sea's ever dead still, an' the
swells'll--"
Crack! The loom of the oar kicked Harvey under the chin and knocked him
backward.
"That was what I was goin' to say. I hed to learn too, but I wasn't
more than eight years old when I got my schoolin'."
Harvey regained his seat with aching jaws and a frown.
"No good gettin' mad at things, dad says. It's our own fault ef we
can't handle 'em, he says. Le's try here. Manuel'll give us the water."
The "Portugee" was rocking fully a mile away, but when Dan up-ended an
oar he waved his left arm three times.
"Thirty fathom," said Dan, stringing a salt clam on to the hook. "Over
with the dough-boys. Bait same's I do, Harve, an' don't snarl your
reel."
Dan's line was out long before Harvey had mastered the mystery of
baiting and heaving out the leads. The dory drifted along easily. It
was not worth while to anchor till they were sure of good ground.
"Here we come!" Dan shouted, and a shower of spray rattled on Harvey's
shoulders as a big cod flapped and kicked alongside. "Muckle, Harvey,
muckle! Under your hand! Quick!"
Evidently "muckle" could not be the dinner-horn, so Harvey passed over
the maul, and Dan scientifically stunned the fish before he pulled it
inboard, and wrenched out the hook with the short wooden stick he
called a "gob-stick." Then Harvey felt a tug, and pulled up zealously.
"Why, these are strawberries!" he shouted. "Look!"
The hook had fouled among a bunch of strawberries, red on one side and
white on the other--perfect reproductions of the land fruit, except
that there were no leaves, and the stem was all pipy and slimy.
"Don't tech 'em! Slat 'em off. Don't--"
The warning came too late. Harvey had picked them from the hook, and
was admiring them.
"Ouch!" he cried, for his fingers throbbed as though he had grasped
many nettles.
"Naow ye know what strawberry-bottom means. Nothin' 'cep' fish should
be teched with the naked fingers, dad says. Slat 'em off ag'in' the
gunnel, an' bait up, Harve. Lookin' won't help any. It's all in the
wages."
Harvey smiled at the thought of his ten and a half dollars a month, and
wondered what his mother would say if she could see him hanging over
the edge of a fishing-dory in mid-ocean. She suffered agonies whenever
he went out on Saranac Lake; and, by the way, Harvey remembered
distinctly that he used to laugh at her anxieties. Suddenly the line
flashed through his hand, stinging even through the "flippers," the
woolen circlets supposed to protect it.
"He's a logy. Give him room accordin' to his strength," cried Dan.
"I'll help ye."
"No, you won't," Harvey snapped, as he hung on to the line. "It's my
first fish. Is--is it a whale?"
"Halibut, mebbe." Dan peered down into the water alongside, and
flourished the big "muckle," ready for all chances. Something white and
oval flickered and fluttered through the green. "I'll lay my wage an'
share he's over a hundred. Are you so everlastin' anxious to land him
alone?" Harvey's knuckles were raw and bleeding where they had been
banged against the gunwale; his face was purple-blue between excitement
and exertion; he dripped with sweat, and was half blinded from staring
at the circling sunlit ripples about the swiftly moving line. The boys
were tired long ere the halibut, who took charge of them and the dory
for the next twenty minutes. But the big flat fish was gaffed and
hauled in at last.
"Beginner's luck," said Dan, wiping his forehead. "He's all of a
hundred."
Harvey looked at the huge grey-and-mottled creature with unspeakable
pride. He had seen halibut many times on marble slabs ashore, but it
had never occurred to him to ask how they came inland. Now he knew; and
every inch of his body ached with fatigue.
"Ef dad was along," said Dan, hauling up, "he'd read the signs plain's
print. The fish 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 manoeuvre his dory swung round
and snubbed herself on her rope.
"We'll hey to help him, else he'll root an' seed here," said Dan.
"What's the matter?" said Harvey. This was a new world, where he could
not lay down the law to his elders, but had to ask questions humbly.
And the sea was horribly big and unexcited.
"Anchor's fouled. Penn's always losing 'em. Lost two this trip
a'ready,--on sandy bottom, too,--an' dad says next one he loses, sure's
fish-in', he'll give him the kelleg. That 'u'd break Penn's heart."
"What's a 'kelleg'?" said Harvey, who had a vague idea it might be some
kind of marine torture, like keel-hauling in the story-books.
"Big stone instid of an anchor. You kin see a kelleg ridin' in the bows
fur's you can see a dory, an' all the fleet knows what it means. They'd
guy him dreadful. Penn couldn't stand that no more'n a dog with a
dipper to his tail. He's so everlastin' sensitive. Hello, Penn! Stuck
again? Don't try any more o' your patents. Come up on her, and keep
your rodin' straight up an' down."
"It doesn't move," said the little man, panting. "It doesn't move at
all, and indeed I tried everything."
"What's all this hurrah's-nest for'ard?" said Dan, pointing to a wild
tangle of spare oars and dory-roding, all matted together by the hand of
inexperience.
"Oh, that," said Penn, proudly, "is a Spanish windlass. Mr. Salters
showed me how to make it; but even that doesn't move her."
Dan bent low over the gunwale to hide a smile, twitched once or twice
on the roding, and, behold, the anchor drew at once.
"Haul up, Penn," he said, laughing, "er she 'll git stuck again."
They left him regarding the weed-hung flukes of the little anchor with
big, pathetic blue eyes, and thanking them profusely.
"Oh, say, while I think of it, Harve," said Dan, when they were out of
ear-shot, "Penn ain't quite all caulked. He ain't nowise dangerous, but
his mind's give out. See?"
"Is that so, or is it one of your father's judgments?" Harvey asked, as
he bent to his oars. He felt he was learning to handle them more easily.
"Dad ain't mistook this time. Penn's a sure'nuff loony. No, he ain't
thet, exactly, so much ez a harmless ijjit. It was this way (you're
rowin' quite so, Harve), an' I tell you 'cause it's right you orter
know. He was a Moravian preacher once. Jacob Boller wuz his name, dad
told me, an' he lived with his wife an' four children somewheres out
Pennsylvania way. Well, Penn he took his folks along to a Moravian
meetin',--camp-meetin', most like,--an' they stayed over jest one night
in Johnstown. You've heered talk o' Johnstown?"
Harvey considered. "Yes, I have. But I don't know why. It sticks in my
head same as Ashtabula."
"Both was big accidents--thet's why, Harve. Well, that one single night
Penn and his folks was to the hotel Johnstown was wiped out. 'Dam bu'st
an' flooded her, an' the houses struck adrift an' bumped into each
other an' sunk. I've seen the pictures, an' they're dretful. Penn he
saw his folk drowned all 'n a heap 'fore he rightly knew what was
comin'. His mind give out from that on. He mistrusted somethin' hed
happened up to Johnstown, but for the poor life of him he couldn't
remember what, an' he jest drifted araound smilin' an' wonderin'. He
didn't know what he was, nor yit what he hed bin, an' thet way he run
ag'in' Uncle Salters, who was visitin' 'n Allegheny City. Ha'af my
mother's folks they live scattered inside o' Pennsylvania, an' Uncle
Salters he visits araound winters. Uncle Salters he kinder adopted
Penn, well knowin' what his trouble wuz; an' he brought him East, an'
he give him work on his farm."
"Why, I heard him calling Penn a farmer last night when the boats
bumped. Is your Uncle Salters a farmer?"
"Farmer!" shouted Dan. "There ain't water enough 'tween here an'
Hatt'rus to wash the furrer-mould off'n his boots. He's Jest
everlastin' farmer. Why, Harve, I've seen thet man hitch up a bucket,
long towards sundown, an' set twiddlin' the spigot to the scuttle-butt
same's ef 'twuz a cow's bag. He's thet much farmer. Well, Penn an' he
they ran the farm--up Exeter way, 'twuz. Uncle Salters he sold it this
spring to a jay from Boston as wanted to build a summerhaouse, an' he
got a heap for it. Well, them two loonies scratched along till, one
day, Penn's church he'd belonged to--the Moravians--found out where he
wuz drifted an' layin', an' wrote to Uncle Salters. 'Never heerd what
they said exactly; but Uncle Salters was mad. He's a 'piscopalian
mostly--but he jest let 'em hev it both sides o' the bow, 'sif he was a
Baptist, an' sez he warn't goin' to give up Penn to any blame Moravian
connection in Pennsylvania or anywheres else. Then he come to dad,
towin' Penn,--thet was two trips back,--an' sez he an' Penn must fish a
trip fer their health. 'Guess he thought the Moravians wouldn't hunt
the Banks fer Jacob Boller. Dad was agreeable, fer Uncle Salters he'd
been fishin' off an' on fer thirty years, when he warn't inventin'
patent manures, an' he took quarter-share in the 'We're Here'; an' the
trip done Penn so much good, dad made a habit o' takin' him. Some day,
dad sez, he'll remember his wife an' kids an' Johnstown, an' then,
like's not, he'll die, dad sez. Don't yer talk about Johnstown ner such
things to Penn, 'r Uncle Salters he'll heave ye overboard."
"Poor Penn!" murmured Harvey. "I shouldn't ever have thought Uncle
Salters cared for him by the look of 'em together."
"I like Penn, though; we all do," said Dan. "We ought to ha' give him a
tow, but I wanted to tell ye first."
They were close to the schooner now, the other boats a little behind
them.
"You needn't heave in the dories till after dinner," said Troop, from
the deck. "We'll dress-daown right off. Fix table, boys!"
"Deeper'n the Whale-deep," said Dan, with a wink, as he set the gear
for dressing-down. "Look at them boats that hev edged up sence mornin'.
They're all waitin' on dad. See 'em, Harve?"
"They are all alike to me." And, indeed, to a landsman the nodding
schooners around seemed run from the same mould.
"They ain't, though. That yaller, dirty packet with her bowsprit
steeved that way, she's the 'Hope of Prague'. Nick Brady's her skipper,
the meanest man on the Banks. We'll tell him so when we strike the Main
Ledge. 'Way off yander's the 'Day's Eye'. The two Jeraulds own her.
She's from Harwich; fastish, too, an' hez good luck; but dad he'd find
fish in a graveyard. Them other three, side along, they're the 'Margie
Smith', 'Rose', and 'Edith S. Walen', all frum home. 'Guess we'll see
the 'Abbie M. Deering' to-morrer, dad, won't we? They're all slippin'
over from the shoal o' 'Queereau."
"You won't see many boats to-morrow, Danny." When Troop called his son
Danny, it was a sign that the old man was pleased. "Boys, we're too
crowded," he went on, addressing the crew as they clambered inboard.
"We'll leave 'em to bait big an' catch small." He looked at the catch
in the pen, and it was curious to see how little and level the fish
ran. Save for Harvey's halibut, there was nothing over fifteen pounds
on deck.
"I'm waitin' on the weather," he added.
"Ye'll have to make it yourself, Disko, for there's no sign I can see,"
said Long Jack, sweeping the clear horizon.
And yet, half an hour later, as they were dressing-down, the Bank fog
dropped on them, "between fish and fish," as they say. It drove
steadily and in wreaths, curling and smoking along the colourless
water. The men stopped dressing-down without a word. Long Jack and
Uncle Salters slipped the windlass-brakes into their sockets, and began
to heave up the anchor, the windlass jarring as the wet hempen cable
strained on the barrel. Manuel and Tom Platt gave a hand at the last.
The anchor came up with a sob, and the riding-sail bellied as Troop
steadied her at the wheel. "Up jib and foresail," said he.
"Slip 'em in the smother," shouted Long Jack, making fast the
jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the
foresail; and the fore-boom creaked as the "We're Here" looked up into
the wind and dived off into blank, whirling white.
"There's wind behind this fog," said Troop.
It was all wonderful beyond words to Harvey; and the most wonderful
part was that he heard no orders except an occasional grunt from Troop,
ending with, "That's good, my son!"
"'Never seen anchor weighed before?" said Tom Platt, to Harvey gaping
at the damp canvas of the foresail.
"No. Where are we going?"
"Fish and make berth, as you'll find out 'fore you've bin a week
aboard. It's all new to you, but we never know what may come to us.
Now, take me--Tom Platt--I'd never ha' thought--"
"It's better than fourteen dollars a month an' a bullet in your belly,"
said Troop, from the wheel. "Ease your jumbo a grind."
"Dollars an' cents better," returned the man-o'-war's man, doing
something to a big jib with a wooden spar tied to it. "But we didn't
think o' that when we manned the windlass-brakes on the 'Miss Jim
Buck',[1] outside Beaufort Harbor, with Fort Macon heavin' hot shot at
our stern, an' a livin' gale atop of all. Where was you then, Disko?"
"Jest here, or hereabouts," Disko replied, "earnin' my bread on the
deep waters, and dodgin' Reb privateers. 'Sorry I can't accommodate you
with red-hot shot, Tom Platt; but I guess we'll come aout all right on
wind 'fore we see Eastern Point."
There was an incessant slapping and chatter at the bows now, varied by
a solid thud and a little spout of spray that clattered down on the
fo'c'sle. The rigging dripped clammy drops, and the men lounged along
the lee of the house--all save Uncle Salters, who sat stiffly on the
main-hatch nursing his stung hands.
[1] The Gemsbok, U. S. N.?
"'Guess she'd carry stays'l," said Disko, rolling one eye at his
brother.
"Guess she wouldn't to any sorter profit. What's the sense o' wastin'
canvas?" the farmer-sailor replied.
The wheel twitched almost imperceptibly in Disko's hands. A few seconds
later a hissing wave-top slashed diagonally across the boat, smote
Uncle Salters between the shoulders, and drenched him from head to
foot. He rose sputtering, and went forward, only to catch another.
"See dad chase him, all around the deck," said Dan. "Uncle Salters he
thinks his quarter-share's our canvas. Dad's put this duckin' act up on
him two trips runnin'. Hi! That found him where he feeds." Uncle
Salters had taken refuge by the foremast, but a wave slapped him over
the knees. Disko's face was as blank as the circle of the wheel.
"'Guess she'd lie easier under stays'l, Salters," said Disko, as though
he had seen nothing.
"Set your old kite, then," roared the victim, through a cloud of spray;
"only don't lay it to me if anything happens. Penn, you go below right
off an' git your coffee. You ought to hev more sense than to bum
araound on deck this weather."
"Now they'll swill coffee an' play checkers till the cows come home,"
said Dan, as Uncle Salters hustled Penn into the fore-cabin. "'Looks to
me like's if we'd all be doin' so fer a spell. There's nothin' in
creation deader-limpsey-idler'n a Banker when she ain't on fish."
"I'm glad ye spoke, Danny," cried Long Jack, who had been casting round
in search of amusement. "I'd clean forgot we'd a passenger under that
T-wharf hat. There's no idleness for thim that don't know their ropes.
Pass him along, Tom Platt, an' we'll l'arn him."
"'Tain't my trick this time," grinned Dan. "You've got to go it alone.
Dad learned me with a rope's end."
For an hour Long Jack walked his prey up and down, teaching, as he
said, "things at the sea that ivry man must know, blind, dhrunk, or
asleep." There is not much gear to a seventy-ton schooner with a
stump-foremast, but Long Jack had a gift of expression. When he wished
to draw Harvey's attention to the peak-halyards, he dug his knuckles
into the back of the boy's neck and kept him at gaze for half a minute.
He emphasised the difference between fore and aft generally by rubbing
Harvey's nose along a few feet of the boom, and the lead of each rope
was fixed in Harvey's mind by the end of the rope itself.
The lesson would have been easier had the deck been at all free; but
there appeared to be a place on it for everything and anything except a
man. Forward lay the windlass and its tackle, with the chain and hemp
cables, all very unpleasant to trip over; the fo'c'sle stovepipe, and
the gurry-butts by the fo'c'sle-hatch to hold the fish-livers. Aft of
these the fore-boom and booby of the main-hatch took all the space that
was not needed for the pumps and dressing-pens. Then came the nests of
dories lashed to ring-bolts by the quarter-deck; the house, with tubs
and oddments lashed all around it; and, last, the sixty-foot main-boom
in its crutch, splitting things lengthwise, to duck and dodge under
every time.
Tom Platt, of course, could not keep his oar out of the business, but
ranged alongside with enormous and unnecessary descriptions of sails
and spars on the old Ohio.
"Niver mind fwhat he says; attind to me, Innocince. Tom Platt, this
bally-hoo's not the Ohio, an' you're mixing the bhoy bad."
"He'll be ruined for life, beginnin' on a fore-an'-after this way," Tom
Platt pleaded. "Give him a chance to know a few leadin' principles.
Sailin's an art, Harvey, as I'd show you if I had ye in the foretop o'
the--"
"I know ut. Ye'd talk him dead an' cowld. Silince, Tom Platt! Now,
after all I've said, how'd you reef the foresail, Harve'? Take your
time answerin'."
"Haul that in," said Harvey, pointing to leeward.
"Fwhat? The North Atlantuc?"
"No, the boom. Then run that rope you showed me back there--"
"That's no way," Tom Platt burst in.
"Quiet! He's l'arnin', an' has not the names good yet. Go on, Harve."
"Oh, it's the reef-pennant. I'd hook the tackle on to the reef-pennant,
and then let down--"
"Lower the sail, child! Lower!" said Tom Platt, in a professional agony.
"Lower the throat-and peak-halyards," Harvey went on. Those names stuck
in his head.
"Lay your hand on thim," said Long Jack.
Harvey obeyed. "Lower till that rope-loop--on the
after-leach--kris--no, it's cringle--till the cringle was down on the
boom. Then I'd tie her up the way you said, and then I'd hoist up the
peak-and throat-halyards again."
"You've forgot to pass the tack-earing, but wid time and help ye'll
l'arn. There's good and just reason for ivry rope aboard, or else
'twould be overboard. D'ye follow me? 'Tis dollars an' cents I'm
puttin' into your pocket, ye skinny little supercargo, so that fwhin
ye've filled out ye can ship from Boston to Cuba an' tell thim Long
Jack l'arned you. Now I'll chase ye around a piece, callin' the ropes,
an' you'll lay your hand on thim as I call."
He began, and Harvey, who was feeling rather tired, walked slowly to
the rope named. A rope's end licked round his ribs, and nearly knocked
the breath out of him.
"When you own a boat," said Tom Platt, with severe eyes, "you can walk.
Till then, take all orders at the run. Once more--to make sure!"
Harvey was in a glow with the exercise, and this last cut warmed him
thoroughly. Now, he was a singularly smart boy, the son of a very
clever man and a very sensitive woman, with a fine resolute temper that
systematic spoiling had nearly turned to mulish obstinacy. He looked at
the other men, and saw that even Dan did not smile. It was evidently
all in the day's work, though it hurt abominably; so he swallowed the
hint with a gulp and a gasp and a grin. The same smartness that led him
to take such advantage of his mother made him very sure that no one on
the boat, except, maybe, Penn, would stand the least nonsense. One
learns a great deal from a mere tone. Long Jack called over half a
dozen more ropes, and Harvey danced over the deck like an eel at
ebb-tide, one eye on Tom Platt.
"Ver' good. Ver' good done," said Manuel. "After supper I show you a
little schooner I make, with all her ropes. So we shall learn."
"Fust-class fer--a passenger," said Dan. "Dad he's jest allowed you'll
be wuth your salt maybe 'fore you're draownded. Thet's a heap fer dad.
I'll learn you more our next watch together."
"Taller!" grunted Disko, peering through the fog as it smoked over the
bows. There was nothing to be seen ten feet beyond the surging
jib-boom, while alongside rolled the endless procession of solemn, pale
waves whispering and upping one to the other.
"Now I'll learn you something Long Jack can't," shouted Tom Platt, as
from a locker by the stern he produced a battered deep-sea lead
hollowed at one end, smeared the hollow from a saucer full of mutton
tallow, and went forward. "I'll learn you how to fly the Blue Pigeon.
Shooo!"
Disko did something to the wheel that checked the schooner's way, while
Manuel, with Harvey to help (and a proud boy was Harvey), let down the
jib in a lump on the boom. The lead sung a deep droning song as Tom
Platt whirled it round and round.
"Go ahead, man," said Long Jack, impatiently. "We're not drawin'
twenty-five fut off Fire Island in a fog. There's no trick to ut."
"Don't be jealous, Galway." The released lead plopped into the sea far
ahead as the schooner surged slowly forward.
"Soundin' is a trick, though," said Dan, "when your dipsey lead's all
the eye you're like to hev for a week. What d'you make it, dad?"
Disko's face relaxed. His skill and honour were involved in the march
he had stolen on the rest of the fleet, and he had his reputation as a
master artist who knew the Banks blindfold. "Sixty, mebbe--ef I'm any
judge," he replied, with a glance at the tiny compass in the window of
the house.
"Sixty," sung out Tom Platt, hauling in great wet coils.
The schooner gathered way once more. "Heave!" said Disko, after a
quarter of an hour.
"What d'you make it?" Dan whispered, and he looked at Harvey proudly.
But Harvey was too proud of his own performances to be impressed just
then.
"Fifty," said the father. "I mistrust we're right over the nick o'
Green Bank on old Sixty-Fifty."
"Fifty!" roared Tom Platt. They could scarcely see him through the fog.
"She's bu'st within a yard--like the shells at Fort Macon."
"Bait up, Harve," said Dan, diving for a line on the reel.
The schooner seemed to be straying promiscuously through the smother,
her head-sail banging wildly. The men waited and looked at the boys,
who began fishing.
"Heugh!" Dan's lines twitched on the scored and scarred rail. "Now haow
in thunder did dad know? Help us here, Harve. It's a big un.
Poke-hooked, too." They hauled together, and landed a goggle-eyed
twenty-pound cod. He had taken the bait right into his stomach.
"Why, he's all covered with little crabs," cried Harvey, turning him
over.
"By the great hook-block, they're lousy already," said Long Jack.
"Disko, ye kape your spare eyes under the keel."
Splash went the anchor, and they all heaved over the lines, each man
taking his own place at the bulwarks.
"Are they good to eat?" Harvey panted, as he lugged in another
crab-covered cod.
"Sure. When they're lousy it's a sign they've all been herdin' together
by the thousand, and when they take the bait that way they're hungry.
Never mind how the bait sets. They'll bite on the bare hook."
"Say, this is great!" Harvey cried, as the fish came in gasping and
splashing--nearly all poke-hooked, as Dan had said. "Why can't we
always fish from the boat instead of from the dories?"
"Allus can, till we begin to dress-daown. Efter thet, the heads and
offals 'u'd scare the fish to Fundy. Boat-fishin' ain't reckoned
progressive, though, unless ye know as much as dad knows. Guess we'll
run aout aour trawl to-night. Harder on the back, this, than frum the
dory, ain't it?"
It was rather back-breaking work, for in a dory the weight of a cod is
water-borne till the last minute, and you are, so to speak, abreast of
him; but the few feet of a schooner's free-board make so much extra
dead-hauling, and stooping over the bulwarks cramps the stomach. But it
was wild and furious sport so long as it lasted; and a big pile lay
aboard when the fish ceased biting.
"Where's Penn and Uncle Salters?" Harvey asked, slapping the slime off
his oilskins, and reeling up the line in careful imitation of the
others.
"Git's coffee and see."
Under the yellow glare of the lamp on the pawl-post, the fo'c'sle table
down and opened, utterly unconscious of fish or weather, sat the two
men, a checker-board between them, Uncle Salters snarling at Penn's
every move.
"What's the matter naow?" said the former, as Harvey, one hand in the
leather loop at the head of the ladder, hung shouting to the cook.
"Big fish and lousy-heaps and heaps," Harvey replied, quoting Long
Jack. "How's the game?"
Little Penn's jaw dropped. "Tweren't none o' his fault," snapped Uncle
Salters. "Penn's deef."
"Checkers, weren't it?" said Dan, as Harvey staggered aft with the
steaming coffee in a tin pail. "That lets us out o' cleanin' up
to-night. Dad's a jest man. They'll have to do it."
"An' two young fellers I know'll bait up a tub or so o' trawl, while
they're cleanin'," said Disko, lashing the wheel to his taste.
"Urn! 'Guess I'd ruther clean up, dad."
"Don't doubt it. Ye wun't, though. Dress-daown! Dress-daown! Penn'll
pitch while you two bait up."
"Why in thunder didn't them blame boys tell us you'd struck on?" said
Uncle Salters, shuffling to his place at the table. "This knife's
gum-blunt, Dan."
"Ef stickin' out cable don't wake ye, guess you'd better hire a boy o'
your own," said Dan, muddling about in the dusk over the tubs full of
trawl-line lashed to windward of the house. "Oh, Harve, don't ye want
to slip down an' git's bait?"
"Bait ez we are," said Disko. "I mistrust shag-fishin' will pay better,
ez things go."
That meant the boys would bait with selected offal of the cod as the
fish were cleaned--an improvement on paddling barehanded in the little
bait-barrels below. The tubs were full of neatly coiled line carrying a
big hook each few feet; and the testing and baiting of every single
hook, with the stowage of the baited line so that it should run clear
when shot from the dory, was a scientific business. Dan managed it in
the dark without looking, while Harvey caught his fingers on the barbs
and bewailed his fate. But the hooks flew through Dan's fingers like
tatting on an old maid's lap. "I helped bait up trawl ashore 'fore I
could well walk," he said. "But it's a putterin' job all the same. Oh,
dad!" This shouted towards the hatch, where Disko and Tom Platt were
salting. "How many skates you reckon we'll need?"
"Baout three. Hurry!"
"There's three hundred fathom to each tub," Dan explained; "more'n
enough to lay out tonight. Ouch! 'Slipped up there, I did." He stuck
his finger in his mouth. "I tell you, Harve, there ain't money in
Gloucester'u'd hire me to ship on a reg'lar trawler. It may be
progressive, but, barrin' that, it's the putterin'est, slimjammest
business top of earth."
"I don't know what this is, if 'tisn't regular trawling," said Harvey,
sulkily. "My fingers are all cut to frazzles."
"Pshaw! This is jest one o' dad's blame experiments. He don't trawl
'less there's mighty good reason fer it. Dad knows. Thet's why he's
baitin' ez he is. We'll hev her saggin' full when we take her up er we
won't see a fin."
Penn and Uncle Salters cleaned up as Disko had ordained, but the boys
profited little. No sooner were the tubs furnished than Tom Platt and
Long Jack, who had been exploring the inside of a dory with a lantern,
snatched them away, loaded up the tubs and some small, painted
trawl-buoys, and hove the boat overboard into what Harvey regarded as
an exceedingly rough sea. "They'll be drowned. Why, the dory's loaded
like a freight-car," he cried.
"We'll be back," said Long Jack, "an' in case you'll not be lookin' for
us, we'll lay into you both if the trawl's snarled."
The dory surged up on the crest of a wave, and just when it seemed
impossible that she could avoid smashing against the schooner's side,
slid over the ridge, and was swallowed up in the damp dusk.
"Take a-hold here, an' keep ringin' steady," said Dan, passing Harvey
the lanyard of a bell that hung just behind the windlass.
Harvey rang lustily, for he felt two lives depended on him. But Disko
in the cabin, scrawling in the log-book, did not look like a murderer,
and when he went to supper he even smiled drily at the anxious Harvey.
"This ain't no weather," said Dan. "Why, you an' me could set thet
trawl! They've only gone out jest far 'nough so's not to foul our
cable. They don't need no bell reelly."
"Clang! cling! clang!" Harvey kept it up, varied with occasional
rub-a-dubs, for another half-hour. There was a bellow and a bump
alongside. Manuel and Dan raced to the hooks of the dory-tackle; Long
Jack and Tom Platt arrived on deck together, it seemed, one half the
North Atlantic at their backs, and the dory followed them in the air,
landing with a clatter.
"Nary snarl," said Tom Platt, as he dripped. "Danny, you'll do yet."
"The pleasure av your comp'ny to the banquit," said Long Jack,
squelching the water from his boots as he capered like an elephant and
stuck an oilskinned arm into Harvey's face. "We do be condescending to
honour the second half wid our presence." And off they all four rolled
to supper, where Harvey stuffed himself to the brim on fish-chowder and
fried pies, and fell fast asleep just as Manuel produced from a locker
a lovely two-foot model of the Lucy Holmes, his first boat, and was
going to show Harvey the ropes. Harvey never even twiddled his fingers
as Penn pushed him into his bunk.
"It must be a sad thing--a very sad thing," said Penn, watching the
boy's face, "for his mother and his father, who think he is dead. To
lose a child--to lose a man-child!"
"Git out o' this, Penn," said Dan. "Go aft and finish your game with
Uncle Salters. Tell dad I'll stand Harve's watch ef he don't keer. He's
played aout."
"Ver' good boy," said Manuel, slipping out of his boots and
disappearing into the black shadows of the lower bunk. "Expec' he make
good man, Danny. I no see he is any so mad as your parpa he says. Eh,
wha-at?"
Dan chuckled, but the chuckle ended in a snore.
It was thick weather outside, with a rising wind, and the elder men
stretched their watches. The hours struck clear in the cabin; the
nosing bows slapped and scuffled with the seas; the fo'c'sle stovepipe
hissed and sputtered as the spray caught it; and the boys slept on,
while Disko, Long Jack, Tom Plait, and Uncle Salters, each in turn,
stumped aft to look at the wheel, forward to see that the anchor held,
or to veer out a little more cable against chafing, with a glance at
the dim anchor-light between each round.