shutting the door with a bang. "He isn't
wanted here. He's too fresh."

A white-haired German reached for a
sandwich, and grunted between bites: "I
know der breed. Ameriga is full of dot kind. I
dell you you should imbort ropes' ends free
under your dariff."

"Pshaw! There isn't any real harm to him.
He's more to be pitied than anything," a
man from New York drawled, as he lay at
full length along the cushions under the wet
skylight. "They've dragged him around from
hotel to hotel ever since he was a kid. I was
talking to his mother this morning. She's a
lovely lady, but she don't pretend to manage
him. He's going to Europe to finish his
education."

"Education isn't begun yet." This was a
Philadelphian, curled up in a corner. "That
boy gets two hundred a month pocket-
money, he told me. He isn't sixteen either."

"Railroads, his father, aind't it?" said the
German.

"Yep. That and mines and lumber and
shipping. Built one place at San Diego, the
old man has; another at Los Angeles; owns
half a dozen railroads, half the lumber on the
Pacific slope, and lets his wife spend the
money," the Philadelphian went on lazily.
"The West don't suit her, she says. She just

-1-

here as the next man."

He picked up some dice from a
checkerboard and began throwing, right
hand against left.

"Say, gen'elmen, this is deader'n mud.
Can't we make a game of poker between
us?"

There was no answer, and he puffed his
cigarette, swung his legs, and drummed on
the table with rather dirty fingers. Then he
pulled out a roll of bills as if to count them.

"How's your mama this afternoon?" a man
said. "I didn't see her at lunch."

"In her state-room, I guess. She's 'most
always sick on the ocean. I'm going to give
the stewardess fifteen dollars for looking
after her. I don't go down more 'n I can
avoid. It makes me feel mysterious to pass
that butler's-pantry place. Say, this is the
first time I've been on the ocean."

"Oh, don't apologize, Harvey."

"Who's apologizing? This is the first time
I've crossed the ocean, gen'elmen, and,
except the first day, I haven't been sick one
little bit. No, sir!" He brought down his fist
with a triumphant bang, wetted his finger,
and went on counting the bills.

"Oh, you're a high-grade machine, with the
writing in plain sight," the Philadelphian
yawned. "You'll blossom into a credit to your
country if you don't take care."

"I know it. I'm an American-first, last, and all
the time. I'll show 'em that when I strike
Europe. Piff! My cig's out. I can't smoke the
truck the steward sells. Any gen'elman got a
real Turkish cig on him?"

-2-

"I might if I has you," said the German.

Harvey staggered over the wet decks to the
nearest rail. He was very unhappy; but he
saw the deck-steward lashing chairs
together, and, since he had boasted before
the man that he was never seasick, his
pride made him go aft to the second-saloon
deck at the stern, which was finished in a
turtle-back. The deck was deserted, and he
crawled to the extreme end of it, near the
flag-pole. There he doubled up in limp
agony, for the Wheeling "stag" joined with
the surge and jar of the screw to sieve out
his soul. His head swelled; sparks of fire
danced before his eyes; his body seemed
to lose weight, while his heels wavered in
the breeze. He was fainting from
seasickness, and a roll of the ship tilted him
over the rail on to the smooth lip of the turtle-
back. Then a low, gray mother-wave swung
out of the fog, tucked Harvey under one
arm, so to speak, and pulled him off and
away to leeward; the great green closed
over him, and he went quietly to sleep.

He was roused by the sound of a dinner-
horn such as they used to blow at a summer-
school he had once attended in the
Adirondacks. Slowly he remembered that
he was Harvey Cheyne, drowned and dead
in mid-ocean, but was too weak to fit things
together. A new smell filled his nostrils; wet
and clammy chills ran down his back, and
he was helplessly full of salt water. When he
opened his eyes, he perceived that he was
still on the top of the sea, for it was running
round him in silver-coloured hills, and he
was lying on a pile of half-dead fish,
looking at a broad human back clothed in a
blue jersey.

"It's no good," thought the boy. "I'm dead,
sure enough, and this thing is in charge."

He groaned, and the figure turned its head,

-3-

Several voices talked at once; he was
dropped into a dark, heaving hole, where
men in oilskins gave him a hot drink and
took off his clothes, and he fell asleep.

When he waked he listened for the first
breakfast-bell on the steamer, wondering
why his state-room had grown so small.
Turning, he looked into a narrow, triangular
cave, lit by a lamp hung against a huge
square beam. A three-cornered table within
arm's reach ran from the angle of the bows
to the foremast. At the after end, behind a
well-used Plymouth stove, sat a boy about
his own age, with a flat red face and a pair
of twinkling gray eyes. He was dressed in a
blue jersey and high rubber boots. Several
pairs of the same sort of foot-wear, an old
cap, and some worn-out woollen socks lay
on the floor, and black and yellow oilskins
swayed to and fro beside the bunks. The
place was packed as full of smells as a bale
is of cotton. The oilskins had a peculiarly
thick flavor of their own which made a sort
of background to the smells of fried fish,
burnt grease, paint, pepper, and stale
tobacco; but these, again, were all hooped
together by one encircling smell of ship and
salt water. Harvey saw with disgust that
there were no sheets on his bed-place. He
was lying on a piece of dingy ticking full of
lumps and nubbles. Then, too, the boat's
motion was not that of a steamer. She was
neither sliding nor rolling, but rather
wriggling herself about in a silly, aimless
way, like a colt at the end of a halter. Water-
noises ran by close to his ear, and beams
creaked and whined about him. All these
things made him grunt despairingly and
think of his mother.

"Feelin' better?" said the boy, with a grin.
".Hev some coffee?" He brought a tin cup
full and sweetened it with molasses.

"Isn't there milk?" said Harvey, looking

-4-

reason that she herself walked on the edge
of nervous prostration. He could not see
why he should be expected to hurry for any
man's pleasure, and said so. "Your dad can
come down here. if he's so anxious to talk
to me. I want him to take me to New York
right away. It'll pay him."

Dan opened his eyes as the size and beauty
of this joke dawned on him. "Say, Dad!" he
shouted up the foc'sle hatch, "he says you
kin slip down an' see him ef you're anxious
that way. 'Hear, Dad?"

The answer came back in the deepest
voice Harvey had ever heard from a human
chest: "Quit foolin', Dan, and send him to
me."

Dan sniggered, and threw Harvey his
warped bicycle shoes. There was
something in the tones on the deck that
made the boy dissemble his extreme rage
and console himself with the thought of
gradually unfolding the tale of his own and
his father's wealth on the voyage home.
This rescue would certainly make him a
hero among his friends for life. He hoisted
himself on deck up a perpendicular ladder,
and stumbled aft, over a score of
obstructions, to where a small, thick-set,
clean-shaven man with gray eyebrows sat
on a step that led up to the quarter-deck.
The swell had passed in the night, leaving a
long, oily sea, dotted round the horizon with
the sails of a dozen fishing-boats. Between
them lay little black specks, showing where
the dories were out fishing. The schooner,
with a triangular riding-sail on the
mainmast, played easily at anchor, and
except for the man by the cabin-roof -
"house" they call. it-she was deserted.

"Mornin'--Good afternoon, I should say.
You've nigh slep' the clock round, young
feller," was the greeting.

-5-

"Meanin'-haow?" Troop raised one shaggy
eyebrow over a suspiciously mild blue eye.

"Dollars and cents," said Harvey, delighted
to think that he was making an impression.
"Cold dollars and cents." He thrust a hand
into a pocket, and threw out his stomach a
little, which was his way of being grand.
"You've done the best day's work you ever
did in your life when you pulled me in. I'm all
the son Harvey Cheyne has."

"He's bin favoured," said Disko, dryly.

"And if you don't know who Harvey Cheyne
is, you don't know much-that's all. Now turn
her around and let's hurry."

Harvey had a notion that the greater part of
America was filled with people discussing
and envying his father's dollars.

"Mebbe I do, an' mebbe I don't. Take a reef
in your stummick, young feller. It's full o' my
vittles."

Harvey heard a chuckle from Dan, who was
pretending to be busy by the stump-
foremast, and blood rushed to his face.
"We'll pay for that too," he said. "When do
you suppose we shall get to New York?"

"I don't use Noo York any. Ner Boston. We
may see Eastern Point about September;
an' your pa-I'm real sorry I hain't heerd tell
of him-may give me ten dollars efter all your
talk. Then o' course he mayn't."

"Ten dollars! Why, see here, I-" Harvey
dived into his pocket for the wad of bills. All
he brought up was a soggy packet of
cigarettes.

"Not lawful currency; an' bad for the lungs.
Heave 'em overboard, young feller, and try
agin."

-6-

no fit state to go back to your home, an'
we've jest come on to the Banks, workin'
fer our bread. We don't see the ha'af of a
hundred dollars a month, let alone pocket-
money; an' with good luck we'll be ashore
again somewheres abaout the first weeks
o' September."

"But-but it's May now, and I can't stay here
doin' nothing just because you want to fish. I
can't, I tell you!"

"Right an' jest; jest an' right. No one asks
you to do nothin'. There's a heap as you can
do, for Otto he went overboard on Le Have. I
mistrust he lost his grip in a gale we fund
there. Anyways, he never come back to
deny it. You've turned up, plain, plumb
providential for all concerned. I mistrust,
though, there's ruther few things you kin do.
Ain't thet so?"

"I can make it lively for you and your crowd
when we get ashore," said Harvey, with a
vicious nod, murmuring vague threats about
"piracy," at which Troop almost -not quit--
smiled.

"Excep' talk. I'd forgot that. You ain't asked
to talk more'n you've a mind to aboard the
We're Here. Keep your eyes open, an' help
Dan to do ez he's bid, an' sechlike, an' I'll
give you-you ain't wuth it, but I'll give--ten
an' a ha'af a month; say thirty-five at the
end o' the trip. A little work will ease up your
head, and you kin tell us all abaout your dad
an' your ma an' your money afterwards."

"She's on the steamer," said Harvey, his
eyes flling with tears. "Take me to New York
at once."

"Poor woman--poor woman! When she has
you back she'll forgit it all, though. There's
eight of us on the! We're Here, an' ef we
went back naow-it's more'n a thousand

-7-

"I won't!" Harvey almost shrieked,
disregarding the advice, and still Troop
meditated.

"Seems kinder unneighbourly," he said at
last, his eye travelling down to Harvey. "I
don't blame you, not a mite, young feeler,
nor you won't blame me when the bile's out
o' your systim. Be sure you sense what I
say? Ten an' a ha'af fer second boy on the
schooner-an' all found-fer to teach you an'
fer the sake o' your health. Yes or no?"

"No!" said Harvey. "Take me back to New
York or I'll see you "

He did not exactly remember what followed.
He was lying in the scuppers, holding on to
a nose that bled while Troop looked down
on him serenely.

"Dan," he said to his son, "I was sot agin this
young feeler when I first saw him on account
o' hasty jedgments. Never you be led astray
by hasty jedgments, Dan. Naow I'm sorry
for him, because he's clear distracted in his
upper works. He ain't responsible fer the
names he's give me, nor fer his other
statements--nor fer jumpin' overboard,
which I'm abaout ha'af convinced he did.
You he gentle with him, Dan, 'r I'll give you
twice what I've give him. Them
hemmeridges clears the head. Let him
sluice it off!"

Troop went down solemnly into the cabin,
where he and the older men bunked,
leaving Dan to comfort the luckless heir to
thirty millions.

Chapter II

"I warned ye," said Dan, as the drops fell
thick and fast on the dark, oiled planking.
"Dad ain't noways hasty, but you fair earned
it. Pshaw! there's no sense takin' on so."

-8-

cautiously. "I saw her at the Union Depot in
Boston, with three niggers hoggin' her run.',
(Dan meant cleaning the windows.) "But
Slatin Beeman he owns 'baout every
railroad on Long Island, they say, an' they
say he's bought 'baout ha'af Noo
Hampshire an' run a line fence around her,
an' filled her up with lions an' tigers an'
bears an' buffalo an' crocodiles an' such
all. Slatin Beeman he's a millionaire. I've
seen his car. Yes?"

"Well, my father's what they call a multi-
millionaire, and he has two private cars.
One's named for me, the Harvey, and one
for my mother, the Constance."

"Hold on," said Dan. "Dad don't ever let me
swear, but I guess you can. 'Fore we go
ahead, I want you to say hope you may die if
you're lyin'."

"Of course," said Harvey.

"The ain't 'niff. Say, 'Hope I may die if I ain't
speaking' truth."'

"Hope I may die right here," said Harvey, "if
every word I've spoken isn't the cold truth."

"Hundred an' thirty-four dollars an' all?"
said Dan. "I heard ye talkin' to Dad, an' I
ha'af looked you'd be swallered up,
same's Jonah."

Harvey protested himself red in the face.
Dan was a shrewd young person along his
own lines, and ten minutes' questioning
convinced him that Harvey was not lying-
much. Besides, he had hound himself by the
most terrible oath known to boyhood, and
yet he sat, alive, with a red-ended nose, in
the scuppers, recounting marvels upon
marvels.

"Gosh!" said Dan at last from the very

-9-

"No; it's about you."

"I'm here to listen."

"Well, I-I'm here to take things back," said
Harvey very quickly. "When a man's saved
from drowning---" he gulped.

"Eye? You'll make a man yet ef you go on
this way."

"He oughtn't begin by calling people
names."

"Jest an' right-right an' jest," said Troop,
with the ghost of a dry smile.

"So I'm here to say I'm sorry." Another big
gulp.

Troop heaved himself slowly off the locker
he was sitting on and held out an eleven-
inch hand. "I mistrusted 'twould do you
sights o' good; an' this shows I weren't
mistook in my jedgments." A smothered
chuckle on deck caught his ear. "I am very
seldom mistook in my jedgments." The
eleven-inch hand closed on Harvey's,
numbing it to the elbow. "We'll put a little
more gristle to that 'fore we've done with
you, young feller; an' I don't think any worse
of ye fer anythin' the's gone by. You wasn't
fairly responsible. Go right abaout your
business an' you won't take no hurt."

"You're white," said Dan, as Harvey
regained the deck, flushed to the tips of his
ears.

"I don't feel it," said he.

"I didn't mean that way. I heard what Dad
said. When Dad allows he don't think the
worse of any man, Dad's give himself
away. He hates to be mistook in his
jedgments too. Ho! ho! Onct Dad has a

-10-

"You an' me we'll sluice that out when
they're through. 'Send we'll hev full pens to-
night! I've seen her down ha'af a foot with
fish waitin' to clean, an' we stood to the
tables till we was splittin' ourselves instid o'
them, we was so sleepy. Yes, they're
comm' in naow." Dan looked over the low
bulwarks at half a dozen dories rowing
towards them over the shining, silky sea.

"I've never seen the sea from so low down,"
said Harvey. "It's fine."

The low sun made the water all purple and
pinkish, with golden lights on the barrels of
the long swells, and blue and green
mackerel shades in the hollows. Each
schooner in sight seemed to be pulling her
dories towards her by invisible strings, and
the little black figures in the tiny boats pulled
like clockwork toys. "They've struck on
good," said Dan, between his half-shut
eyes. "Manuel hain't room fer another fish.
Low ez a lily-pad in still water, Aeneid he?"

"Which is Manuel? I don't see how you can
tell 'em 'way off, as you do."

"Last boat to the south'ard. He fund you last
night," said Dan, pointing. "Manuel rows
Portugoosey; ye can't mistake him. East o'
him-he's a heap better'n he rows-is
Pennsylvania. Loaded with saleratus, by the
looks of him. East o' him-see how pretty
they string out all along-with the humpy
shoulders, is Long Jack. He's a Galway
man inhabitin' South Boston, where they all
live mostly, an' mostly them Galway men
are good in a boat. North, away yonder-
you'll hear him tune up in a minute is Tom
Platt. Man o'-war's man he was on the old
Ohio first of our navy, he says, to go
araound the Horn. He never talks of much
else, 'cept when he sings, but he has fair
fishin' luck. There! What did I tell you?"

-11-

Harvey grabbed at a rope and long iron
hook dangling from one of the stays of the
mainmast, while Dan pulled down another
that ran from something he called a
'topping-lift," as Manuel drew alongside in
his loaded dory. The Portuguese smiled a
brilliant smile that Harvey learned to know
well later, and with a short-handled fork
began to throw fish into the pen on deck.
"Two hundred and thirty-one," he shouted.

"Give him the hook," said Dan, and Harvey
ran it into Manuel's hands. He slipped it
through a loop of rope at the dory's bow,
caught Dan's tackle, hooked it to the stern-
becket, and clambered into the schooner.

"Pull!" shouted Dan, and Harvey pulled,
astonished to find how easily the dory rose.

"Hold on, she don't nest in the crosstrees!"
Dan laughed; and Harvey held on, for the
boat lay in the air above his head.

"Lower away," Dan shouted, and as Harvey
lowered, Dan swayed the light boat with
one hand till it landed softly just behind the
mainmast. "They don't weigh nothin' empty.
The was right smart fer a passenger.

There's more trick to it in a sea-way."

"Ah ha!" said Manuel, holding out a brown
hand. "You are some pretty well now? This
time last night the fish they fish for you. Now
you fish for fish.. Eh, wha-at?"

"I'm-I'm ever so grateful," Harvey
stammered, and his unfortunate hand stole
to his pocket once more, but he
remembered that he had no money to offer.
When he knew Manuel better the mere
thought of the mistake he might have made
would cover him with hot, uneasy blushes in
his bunk.

-12-

"I'm murderin' meself to fill your pockuts.
Slate ut for a bad catch. The Portugee has
bate me."

Whack came another dory alongside, and
more fish shot into the pen.

"Two hundred and three. let's look at the
passenger!" The speaker was even larger
than the Galway man, and his face was
made curious by a purple Cut running slant-
ways from his left eye to the right corner of
his mouth.

Not knowing what else to do, Harvey
swabbed each dory as it came down,
pulled out the foot-boards, and laid them in
the bottom of the boat.

"He's caught on good," said the scarred
man, who was Toni Platt, watching him
critically. "There are two ways o' doin'
everything. One's fisher-fashion-any end
first an, a slippery hitch over all-an' the
other's

"What we did on the old Ohio!" Dan
interrupted, brushing into the knot of men
with a long board on legs. "Get out o' here,
Tom Platt, an' leave me fix the tables."

He jammed one end of the board into two
nicks in the bulwarks, kicked out the leg,
and ducked just in time to avoid a swinging
blow from the man-o'-war's man.

"An' they did that on the Ohio, too, Danny.
See?" said Tom Platt, laughing.

"Guess they was swivel-eyed, then, fer it
didn't git home, and I know who'll find his
boots on the main-truck ef he don't leave us
alone. Haul ahead! I'm busy, can't ye see?"

"Danny, ye lie on the cable an' sleep all
day," said Long Jack. "You're the hoight av

-13-

forty-five?"

"I've forgotten, Mr. Salters. let's count."

"Don't see as it could be forty-five. I'm forty-
five," said Uncle Salters. "You count keerful,
Penn."

Disko Troop came out of the cabin.
"Salters, you pitch your fish in naow at
once," he said in the tone of authority.

"Don't spile the catch, Dad," Dan
murmured. "Them two are on'y jest
beginnin'."

"Mother av delight! He's forkin' them wan by
wan," howled Long Jack, as Uncle Salters
got to work laboriously; the little man in the
other dory counting a line of notches on the
gunwale.

"That was last week's catch," he said,
looking up plaintively, his forefinger where
he had left off.

Manuel nudged Dan, who darted to the
after-tackle, and, leaning far overside,
slipped the hook into the stern-rope as
Manuel made her fast forward. The others
pulled gallantly and swung the boat in-man,
fish, and all.

"One, two, four-nine," said Tom Platt,
counting with a practised eye. "Forty-seven.
Penn, you're it!" Dan let the after-tackle run,
and slid him out of the stern on to the deck
amid a torrent of his own fish.

"Hold on!" roared Uncle Salters, bobbing by
the waist. "Hold on, I'm a bit mixed in my
caount."

He had no time to protest, but was hove
inboard and treated like "Pennsylvania."

-14-

"Twenty-fife father," said the Portuguese,
sleepily. "They strike on good an' queek.
Some day I show you, Harvey."

The moon was beginning to walk on the still
sea before the elder men came aft. The
cook had no need to cry "second half." Dan
and Manuel were down the hatch and at
table ere Tom Platt, last and most
deliberate of the elders, had finished
wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Harvey followed Penn, and sat down before
a tin pan of cod's tongues and sounds,
mixed with scraps of pork and fried potato,
a loaf of hot bread, and some black and
powerful coffee. Hungry as they were, they
waited while "Pennsylvania" solemnly
asked a blessing. Then they stoked in
silence till Dan drew a breath over his tin
cup and demanded of Harvey how he felt.

"'Most full, but there's just room for another
piece."

The cook was a huge, jet-black negro,
and, unlike all the negroes Harvey had met,
did not talk, contenting himself with smiles
and dumb-show invitations to eat more.

"See, Harvey," said Dan, rapping with his
fork on the table, "it's jest as I said. The
young an' handsome men-like me an'
Pennsy an' you an' Manuel-we're second
ha'af, an' we eats when the first ha'af are
through. They're the old fish; an' they're
mean an' humpy, an' their stummicks has to
be humoured; so they come first, which they
don't deserve. Aeneid that so, doctor?"

The cook nodded.

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

"'Nough to get along. Not much o' anything
we know. His natural tongue's kinder
curious. Comes from the innards of Cape

-15-

tramplings and rumblings where Disko
Troop and Tom Platt moved among the salt-
bins. Dan passed Harvey a pitchfork, and
led him to the inboard end of the rough
table, where Uncle Salters was drumming
impatiently with a knife-haft. A tub of salt
water lay at his feet.

"You pitch to Dan an' Tom Platt down the
hatch, an' take keer Uncle Salters don't cut
yer eye out," said Dan, swinging himself
into the hold. "I'll pass salt below."

Penn and Manuel stood knee deep among
cod in the pen, flourishing drawn knives.
Long Jack, a basket at his feet and mittens
on his hands, faced Uncle Salters at the
table, and Harvey stared at the pitchfork
and the tub.

"Hi!" shouted Manuel, stooping to the fish,
and bringing one up with a finger under its
gill and a finger in its eyes. He laid it on the
edge of the pen; the knife-blade glimmered
with a sound of tearing, and the fish, slit
from throat to vent, with a nick on either side
of the neck, dropped at Long Jack's feet.

"Hi!" said Long Jack, with a scoop of his
mittened hand. The cod's liver dropped in
the basket. Another wrench and scoop sent
the head and offal flying, and the empty fish
slid across to Uncle Salters, who snorted
fiercely. There was another sound of
tearing, the backbone flew over the
bulwarks, and the fish, headless, gutted,
and open, splashed in the tub, sending the
salt water into Harvey's astonished mouth.
After the first yell, the men were silent. The
cod moved along as though they were alive,
and long ere Harvey had ceased wondering
at the miraculous dexterity of it all, his tub
was full.

"Pitch!" grunted Uncle Salters, without
turning his head, and Harvey pitched the

-16-

himself, and Long Jack leaned over the
bulwarks. The cook appeared, noiseless as
a black shadow, collected a mass of
backbones and heads, and retreated.

"Blood-ends for breakfast an' head-
chowder," said Long Jack, smacking his
lips.

"Knife oh!" repeated Uncle Salters, waving
the flat, curved splitter's weapon.

"Look by your foot, Harve," cried Dan
below.

Harvey saw half a dozen knives stuck in a
cleat in the hatch combing. He dealt these
around, taking over the dulled ones.

"Water!" said Disko Troop.

"Scuffle-butt's for'ard an' the dipper's
alongside. Hurry, Harve," said Dan.

He was back in a minute with a big dipperful
of stale brown water which tasted like
nectar, and loosed the jaws of Disko and
Tom Platt.

"These are cod," said Disko. "They ain't
Damarskus figs, Tom Platt, nor yet silver
bars. I've told you that ever single time since
we've sailed together."

"A matter o' seven seasons," returned Tom
Platt coolly. "Good stowin's good stowin' all
the same, an' there's a right an' a wrong
way o' stowin' ballast even. If you'd ever
seen four hundred ton o' iron set into the~"

"Hi!" With a yell from Manuel the work began
again, and never stopped till the pen was
empty. The instant the last fish was down,
Disko Troop rolled alt to the cabin with his
brother; Manuel and Long Jack went
forward; Tom Platt only waited long enough

-17-

an' me we fought consid'ble. 'Wouldn't ha'
keered fer that ef he'd hed a Christian
tongue in his head. Sleepy?"

"Dead sleepy," said Harvey, nodding
forward.

"Mustn't sleep on watch. Rouse up an' see
ef our anchor-light's bright an' shinin'.
You're on watch now, Harve."

"Pshaw! What's to hurt us? 'Bright's day.
Sn-orrr!"

"Jest when things happen, Dad says. Fine
weather's good sleepin', an' 'fore you
know, mebbe, you're cut in two by a liner,
an' seventeen brass-bound officers, all
gen'elmen, lift their hand to it that your lights
was aout an' there was a thick fog. Harve,
I've kinder took to you, but ef you nod onet
more I'll lay into you with a rope's end."

The moon, who sees many strange things
on the Banks, looked down on a slim youth
in knickerbockers and a red jersey,
staggering around the cluttered decks of a
seventy-ton schooner, while behind him,
waving a knotted rope, walked, after the
manner of an executioner, a boy who
yawned and nodded between the blows he
dealt.

The lashed wheel groaned and kicked
softly, the riding-sail slatted a little in the
shifts of the light wind, the windlass
creaked, and the miserable procession
continued. Harvey expostulated,
threatened, whimpered, and at last wept
outright, while Dan, the words clotting on his
tongue, spoke of the beauty of
watchfulness and slashed away with the
rope's end, punishing the dories as often as
he hit Harvey. At last the clock in the cabin
struck ten, and upon the tenth stroke little
Penn crept on deck. He found two boys in

-18-

season. She don't do much 'cep' drift.
There ain't an anchor made 'II 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.

-19-

Don't you wish you owned her?"

"Well, I gtiess 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 rnillionary 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
ouly 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 'il~"

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."

-20-

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
annieties. Suddenly the line flashed through
his hand, stinging even through the
"nippers," the woolen cirdets 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. I~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 hanged 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'~ 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

-21-

'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.

-22-

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 t~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."

-23-

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
dec~

"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 for~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 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

-24-

1 The Gemsbok, U.S.N.?

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 lf 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 dean 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."

-25-

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."

-26-

"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

-27-

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.

-28-

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 P1att 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
experirnents. He don't trawl 'less there's

-29-

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

-30-

It came out of its bunks as the others had
entered theirs, with a shake and a yawn. It
ate till it could eat no more; and then Manuel
filled his pipe with some terrible tobacco,
crotched himself between the pawl-post
and a forward bunk, cocked his feet up on
the table, and smiled tender and indolent
smiles at the smoke. Dan lay at length in his
bunk, wrestling with a gaudy, gilt-stopped
accordion, whose tunes went up and down
with the pitching of the We're Here. The
cook, his shoulders against the locker
where he kept the fried pies ([)an was fond
of fried pies), peeled potatoes, with one
eye on the stove in event of too much water
finding its way down the pipe; and the
general smell and smother were past all
description.

Harvey considered affairs, wondered that
he was not deathly sick, and crawled into
his bunk again, as the softest and safest
place, while Dan struck up, "I don't want to
play in your yard," as accurately as the wild
jerks allowed.

"How long is this for?" Harvey asked of
Manuel.

"Till she get a little quiet, and we can row to
trawl. Perhaps to-night. Perhaps two days
more. You do not like? Eh, wha-at?"

"I should have been crazy sick a week ago,
but it doesn't seem to upset me now-much."

"That is because we make you fisherman,
these days. If I was you, when I come to
Gloucester I would give two, three big
candles for my good luck."

"Give who?"

"To be sure-the Virgin of our Church on the
Hill. She is very good to fishermen all the
time. That is why so few of us Portugee men

-31-

the way I take it is~"

There were the makings of an hour-long
discussion of the kind that fishermen love,
where the talk runs in shouting circles and
no one proves anything at the end, had not
Dan struck up this cheerful rhyme:

"Up jumped the mackerel with his stripe'd
back. Reef in the mainsail, and haul on the
tack; For it's windy weather--"

Here Long Jack joined in:

And it's blowy weather; When the winds
begin to blow, pipe all hands together!"

Dan went on, with a cautious look at Tom
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 it's windy weather," etc.

Tom Platt seemed to be hunting for
sometliing. Dan crouched lower, but sang
louder:

"Up jumped the flounder that swims to the
ground. Chuckle-head! Chuckle-head!
Mind where ye sound!"

Tom Platt's huge rubber boot whirled
across the foc'sle and caught Dan's
uplifted arm. There was war between the
man and the boy ever since Dan had
discovered that the mere whistling of that
tune would make him angry as he heaved
the lead.

"Thought I'd fetch yer," said Dan, returning
the gift with precision. "Ef you don't like my
music, git out your fiddle. I ain't goin' to lie
here all day an' listen to you an' Long Jack
arguin' 'baout candles. Fiddle, Tom Platt;
or I'll learn Harve here the tune!"

-32-

her to sea;

But when she's off soundings you shortly
will know

(Chorus.)

She's the Liverpool packet~ Lord, let her go!

"Now the Dreadnought she's howlin' crost
the Banks o' Newfoundland,

Where the water's all shallow and the
bottom's all sand. Sez all the little fishes that
swim to and fro:

(Chorus.)

'She's the Liverpool packet Lord, let her
go!'',

There were scores of verses, for he worked
the Dreadnought every mile of the way
between Liverpool and New York as
conscientiously as though he were on her
deck, and the accordion pumped and the
fiddle squeaked beside him. Tom Platt
followed with something about "the rough
and tough McGinn, who would pilot the
vessel in." Then they called on Harvey, who
felt very flattered, to contribute to the
entertainment; but all that he could
remember were some pieces of "Skipper
Ireson's Ride" that he had been taught at the
camp-school in the Adirondacks. It seemed
that they might be appropriate to the time
and place, but he had no more than
mentioned the title when Disko brought
down one foot with a bang, and cried,
"Don't go on, young feller. That's a
mistaken jedgment-one o' the worst kind,
too, becaze it's catchin' to the ear."

"I orter ha' warned you," said Dan. "Thet
allus fetches Dad."

-33-

some day. Well, the facts come aout later,
same's they usually do, too late to be any
ways useful to an honest man; an' Whittier
he come along an' picked up the slack eend
of a lyin' tale, an' tarred and feathered Ben
Ireson all over onct more after he was dead.
'Twas the only tune Whittier ever slipped up,
an' 'tweren't fair. I whaled Dan good when
he brought that piece back from school. You
don't know no better, o' course; but I've
give you the facts, hereafter an' evermore
to be remembered. Ben Ireson weren't no
sech kind o' man as Whittier makes aout;
my father he knew him well, before an' after
that business, an' you beware o' hasty
jedgments, young feller. Next!"

Harvey had never heard Disko talk so long,
and collapsed with burning cheeks; but, as
Dan said promptly, a boy could ouly 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 machette to a queer tune, and sang
something in Portuguese about "Nina,
innocente!" ending with a full-handed
sweep that brought the song up with a jerk.
Then Disko obliged with his second song,
to an old-fashioned creaky tune, and all
joined in the chorus. This is one stanza:

"Now Aprile is over and melted the snow,
And outer Noo Bedford we shortly must
tow; Yes, out o' Noo Bedford we shortly
must clear, We're the whalers that never see
wheat in the ear.'t

Here the fiddle went very softly for a while
by itself, and then:

"Wheat-in-the-ear, my true-love's posy
blowin, Wheat-in-the-ear, we're goin' off
to sea; Wheat-in-the-ear, I left you fit for
sowin, When I come back a loaf o' bread

-34-

anything on Jonahs!"

"What's that?" said Harvey. "What's a
Jonah?"

"A Jonah's anything that spoils the luck.
Sometimes it's a man-sometimes it's a
boy-or a bucket. I've known a splittin'-knife
Jonah two trips till we was on to her," said
Tom Platt. "There's all sorts o' Jonahs. Jim
Bourke was one till he was drowned on
Georges. I'd never ship with Jim Bourke,
not if I was starin'. There wuz a green dory
on the Ezra Flood. Thet was a Jonah, too,
the worst sort o' Jonah. Drowned four men,
she did, an' used to shine fiery 0, nights in
the nest"

"And you believe that?" said Harvey,
remembering what Tom Platt had said
about candles and models. "Haven't we all
got to take what's served?"

A mutter of dissent ran round the bunks.
"Outboard, yes; inboard, things can
happen," said Disko. "Don't you go makin'
a mock of Jonahs, young feller."

"Well, Harve ain't no Jonah. Day after we
catched him," Dan cut in, "we had a toppin'
good catch."

The cook threw up his head and laughed
suddenly-a queer, thin laugh. He was a
most disconcerting nigger.

"Murder!" said Long Jack. "Don't do that
again, doctor. We ain't used to ut"

"What's wrong?" said Dan. "Ain't he our
mascot, and didn't they strike on good after
we'd struck him?"

"Oh! yess," said the cook. "I know that, but
the catch iss not finish yet."

-35-

"Uncle Salters has catched his luck," said
Dan as his father departed.

"It's blown clear," Disko cried, and all the
foc'sle tumbled up for a bit of fresh air. The
fog had gone, but a sullen sea ran in great
rollers behind it. The We're Here slid, as it
were, into long, sunk avenues and ditches
which felt quite sheltered and homelike if
they would only stay still; but they changed
without rest or mercy, and flung up the
schooner to crown one peak of a thousand
gray hills, while the wind hooted through her
rigging as she zigzagged down the slopes.
Far away a sea would burst into a sheet of
foam, and the others would follow suit as at
a signal, till Harvey's eyes swam with the
vision of interlacing whites and grays. Four
or five Mother

Carey's chickens stormed round in circles,
shrieking as they swept past the bows. A
rain-squall or two strayed aimlessly over the
hopeless waste, ran down 'wind and back
again, and melted away.

"Seerns to me I saw somethin' flicker jest
naow over yonder," said Uncle Salters,
pointing to the northeast.

"Can't be any of the fleet," said Disko,
peering under his eyebrows, a hand on the
foc'sle gangway as the solid bows
hatcheted into the troughs. "Sea's oilin' over
dretful fast. Danny, don't you want to skip up
a piece an' see how aour trawl-buoy lays?"

Danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than
climbed up the main rigging (this consumed
Harvey with envy), hitched himself around
the reeling 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. "Sail 0! Dead to
the no'th'ard, corain' down like smoke!

-36-

girl.

"That's Abishal," said Salters. "Full o' gin
an' Judique men, an' the judgments o'
Providence layin' fer him an' never takin'
good holt He's run in to bait, Miquelon way."

"He'll run her under," said Long Jack.
"That's no rig fer this weather."

"Not he, 'r he'd'a done it long ago," Disko
replied. "Looks 's if he cal'lated to run us
under. Ain't she daown by the head more 'n
natural, Tom Platt?"

"Ef it's his style o' loadin' her she ain't
safe," said the sailor slowly. "Ef she's
spewed her oakum he'd better git to his
pumps mighty quick."

The creature threshed up, wore round with a
clatter and raffle, and lay head to wind
within ear-shot.

A gray-beard wagged over the bulwark,
and a thick voice yelled something Harvey
could not understand. But Disko's face
darkened. "He'd resk every stick he hez to
carry bad news. Says we're in fer a shift o'
wind. He's in fer worse. Abishai! Abi-shai!"
He waved his arm up and down with the
gesture of a man at the pumps, and pointed
forward. The crew mocked him and
laughed.

"Jounce ye, an' strip ye an' trip ye!" yelled
Uncle Abishal. "A livin' gale-a livin' gale.
Yab! Cast up fer your last trip, all you
Gloucester haddocks. You won't see
Gloucester no more, no more!"

"Crazy full-as usual," said Tom Platt. "Wish
he hadn't spied us, though."

She drifted out of hearing while the gray-
head yelled something about a dance at the

-37-

"Run under, by the Great Hook-Block!"
shouted Disko, jumping aft. "Drunk or
sober, we've got to help 'em. Heave short
and break her out! Smart!"

Harvey was thrown on the deck by the shock
that followed the setting of the jib and
foresail, for they hove short on the cable,
and to save time, jerked the anchor bodily
from the bottom, heaving in~as they moved
away. This is a bit of brute force seldom
resorted to except in matters of life and
death, and the little We're Here complained
like a human. They ran down to where
Abishal's craft had vanished; found two or
three trawl-tubs, a gin-bottle, and a stove-
in dory, but nothing more. "Let 'em go," said
Disko, though no one had hinted at picking
them up. "I wouldn't hev a match that
belonged to Abishai aboard. Guess she run
clear under. Must ha' been spewin' her
oakum fer a week, an' they never thought to
pump her. That's one more boat gone along
o' leavin' port all hands drunk."

"Glory be!" said Long Jack. "We'd ha' been
obliged to help 'em if they was top o'
water."

"'Thinkin' o' that myself," said Tom Platt.

"Fey! Fey!" said the cook, rolling his eyes.
"He haas taken his own luck with him."

"Ver' good thing, I think, to tell the Fleet
when we see. Eh, wha-at?" said Manuel. "If
you runna that way before the 'wind, and
she work open her seams-" He threw out
his hands with an indescribable gesture,
while Penn sat down on the house and
sobbed at the sheer horror and pity of it all.
Harvey could not realize that he had seen
death on the open waters, but he felt very
sick. p Then Dan went up the cross-trees,
and Disko steered them back to within sight
of their own trawl-buoys just before the fog

-38-

Man'nle, an' bring's a tub o' bait. There's
luck afloat to-night."

The fish bit at the newly baited hooks from
which their brethren had just been taken,
and Tom Platt and Long Jack moved
methodically up and down the length of the
trawl, the boat's nose surging under the wet
line of hooks, stripping the sea-cucumbers
that they called pumpkins, slatting off the
fresh-caught cod against the gunwale,
rebaiting, and loading Manuel's dory till
dusk.

"I'll take no risks," said Disko then-"not with
him floatin' around so near. Abishal won't
sink fer a week. Heave in the dories an'
we'll dress daown after supper."

That was a mighty dressing-down,
attended by three or four blowing
grampuses. It lasted till nine o'clock, and
Disko was thrice heard to chuckle as
Harvey pitched the split fish into the hold.

"Say, you're haulin' ahead dretful fast," said
Dan, when they ground the knives after the
men had turned m. "There's somethin' of a
sea to-night, an' I hain't heard you make no
remarks on it."

"Too busy," Harvey replied, testing a
blade's edge. "Come to think of it, she is a
high-kicker."

The little schooner was gambolling all
around her anchor among the silver-tipped
waves. Backing with a start of affected
surprise at the sight of the strained cable,
she pounced on it like a kitten, while the
spray of her descent burst through the
hawse-holes with the report of a gun.
Shaking her head, she would say: "Well, I'm
sorry I can't stay any longer with you. I'm
going North," and would sidle off, halting
suddenly with a dramatic rattle of her

-39-

o' their pitchin' an' joltin', but there's heaps
o' money in 'em. Dad can find fish, but he
ain't no ways progressive-he don't go with
the march o' the times. They're chock-full o'
labour-savin' ' ech all. 'Ever seed the
Elector o' Gloucester? She's a daisy, ef
she is a toothpick."

"What do they cost, Dan?"

"Hills o' dollars. Fifteen thousand, p'haps;
more, mebbe. There's gold-leaf an'
everything you kin think of." Then to himself,
half under his breath, "Guess I'd call her
Hattie S., too."

Chapter V

That was the first of many talks with Dan,
who told Harvey why he would transfer his
dory's name to the imaginary Burgess-
modelled haddocker. Harvey heard a good
deal about the real Hattie at Gloucester;
saw a lock of her hair-which Dan, finding
fair words of no avail, had "hooked" as she
sat in front of him at school that winter-and
a photograph. Hattie was about fourteen
years old, with an awful contempt for boys,
and had been trampling on Dan's heart
through the winter. All this was revealed
under oath of solemn secrecy on moonlit
decks, in the dead dark, or in choking fog;
the whining wheel behind them, the
climbing deck before, and without, the
unresting, clamorous sea. Once, of course,
as the boys came to know each other, there
was a fight, which raged from bow to stern
till Penn came up and separated them, but
promised not to tell Disko, who thought
fighting on watch rather worse than
sleeping. Harvey was no match for Dan
physically, but it says a great deal for his
new training that he took his defeat and did
not try to get even with his conqueror by
underhand methods.

-40-

listened as greedily as the others; and their
criticisms at the end gave Harvey entirely
new notions on "germans," clothes,
cigarettes with gold-leaf tips, rings,
watches, scent, small dinner-parties,
champagne, card-playing, and hotel
accommodation. Little by little he changed
his tone when speaking of his "friend,"
whom long Jack had christened "the Crazy
Kid," "the Gilt-edged Baby," "the Suckin'
Vanderpoop," and other pet names; and
with his sea-booted feet cocked up on the
table would even invent histories about silk
pajamas and specially imported neckwear,
to the "friend's" discredit. Harvey was a very
adaptable person, with a keen eye and ear
for every face and tone about him.

Before long he knew where Disko kept the
old greencrusted quadrant that they called
the "hog-yoke"-under the bed-bag in his
bunk. When he took the sun, and with the
help of "The Old Farmer's" almanac found
the latitude, Harvey would jump down into
the cabin and scratch the reckoning and
date with a nail on the rust of the stove-pipe.
Now, the chief engineer of the liner could
have done no more, and no engineer of
thirty years' service could have assumed
one half of the ancient-mariner air with
which Harvey, first careful to spit over the
side, made public the schooner's position
for that day, and then and not till then
relieved Disko of the quadrant. There is an
etiquette in all these things.

The said "hog-yoke," an Eldridge chart, the
farming almanac, Blunt's "Coast Pilot," and
Bowditch's "Navigator" were all the
weapons Disko needed to guide him,
except the deep-sea lead that was his
spare eye. Harvey nearly slew Penn with it
when Tom Platt taught him first how to "fly
the blue pigeon"; and, though his strength
was not equal to continuous sounding in any
sort of a sea, for calm weather with a

-41-

mortally afraid, for that his last touch with
earth was lost. "Whale-hole," said Manuel,
hauling m. "That is good joke on Disko.
Come!" and he rowed to the schooner to
find Tom Platt and the others jeering at the
skipper because, for once, he had led them
to the edge of the barren Whale-deep, the
blank hole of the Grand Bank. They made
another berth through the fog, and that time
the hair of Harvey's head stood up when he
went out in Manuel's dory. A whiteness
moved in the whiteness of the fog with a
breath like the breath of the grave, and there
was a roaring, a plunging, and spouting. It
was his first introduction to the dread
summer berg of the Banks, and he cowered
in the bottom of the boat while Manuel
laughed. There were days, though, clear
and soft and warm, when it seemed a sin to
do anything but loaf over the hand-lines and
spank the drifting "sun-scalds" with an oar;
and there were days of light airs, when
Harvey was taught how to steer the
schooner from one berth to another.

It thrilled through him when he first felt the
keel answer to his band on the spokes and
slide over the long hollows as the foresail
scythed back and forth against the blue sky.
That was magnificent, in spite of Disko
saying that it would break a snake's back to
follow his wake. But, as usual, pride ran
before a fall. They were sailing on the wind
with the staysail-an old one, luckily-set, and
Harvey jammed her right into it to show Dan
how completely he had mastered the art.
The foresail went over with a bang, and the
foregaff stabbed and ripped through the
staysail, 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 hooted with
joy, for, as he said, he had made the very
same blunder himself in his early days.

-42-

that sort is all made up. It don't take in no
one but Dan, an' he laughs at it. I've heard
him, behind my back."

"Yever hear what Sim'on Peter Ca'honn
said when they whacked up a match 'twix'
his sister Hitty an' Lorin' Jerauld, an' the
boys put up that joke on him daown to
Georges?" drawled Uncle Salters, who was
dripping peaceably under the lee of the
starboard dory-nest.

Tom Platt puffed at his pipe in scornful
silence: he was a Cape Cod man, and had
not known that tale more than twenty years.
Uncle Salters went on with a rasping
chuckie:

"Sim'on Peter Ca'honn he said, an' he was
jest right, abaout Lorin', 'Ha'af on the
taown,' he said, 'an' t'other ha'af blame
fool; an' they told me she's married a 'ich
man.' Sim'on Peter Ca'honn he hedn't no
roof to his mouth, an' talked that way."

"He didn't talk any Pennsylvania Dutch,"
Tom Platt replied. "You'd better leave a
Cape man to tell that tale. The Ca'houns
was gypsies frum 'way back."

"Wal, I don't profess to be any elocutionist,"
Salters said. "I'm comin' to the moral o'
things. That's jest abaout what aour Harve
be! Ha'af on the taown, an' t'other ha'af
blame fool; an' there's some'll believe he's
a rich man. Yah!"

"Did ye ever think how sweet 'twould be to
sail wid a full crew o' Salterses?" said Long
Jack. "Ha'af in the furrer an' other ha'af in
the muck-heap, as Ca'houn did not say, an'
makes out he's a fisherman!"

A little laugh went round at Salters's
expense.

-43-

smile.

"Why, Pennsylvania Pratt," Salters would
shout "You'll fergit me next!"

"No-never," Penn would say, shutting his
lips firmly. "Pennsylvania Pratt, of course,"
he would repeat over and over. Sometimes
it was Uncle Salters who forgot, and told
him he was Haskins or Rich or McVitty; but
Penn was equally content-till next time.

He was always very tender with Harvey,
whom he pitied both as a lost child and as a
lunatic; and when Salters saw that Penn
liked the boy, he relaxed, too. Salters was
not an amiable person (He esteemed it his
business to keep the boys in order); and the
first time Harvey, in fear and trembling, on a
still day, managed to shin up to the main-
truck (')an was behind him ready to help),
he esteemed it his duty to hang Salters's
big sea-boots up there-a sight of shame
and derision to the nearest schooner. With
Disko, Harvey took no liberties; not even
when the old man dropped direct orders,
and treated him, like the rest of the crew, to
"Don't you want to do so and so?" and
"Guess you'd better," and so forth. There
was something about the clean-shaven lips
and the puckered corners of the eyes that
was mightily sobering to young blood.

Disko showed him the meaning of the
thumbed and pricked chart, which, he said,
laid over any government publication
whatsoever; led him, pencil in hand, from
berth to berth over the whole string of
banks-Le Have, Western, Banquereau, St.
Pierre, Green, and Grand -talking "cod"
meantime. Taught him, too, the principle on
which the "hog-yoke" was worked.

In this Harvey excelled Dan, for he had
inherited a head for figures, and the notion
of stealing information from one glimpse of

-44-

Truro 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, hut
whistling-for the soul of the man who broke
their regt.

Harvey had a notion that the east coast of
his native land, from Mount Desert south,
was populated chiefly by people who took
their horses there in the summer and
entertained in country-houses with
hardwood floors and Vantine portires. He
laughed at the ghost-tales,-not as much as
he would have done a month before,-but
ended by sifting still and shuddering.

Tom Platt dealt with his interminable trip
round the Horn on the old Ohio in flogging
days, with a navy more extinct than the
dodo-the navy that passed away in the
great war. He told them how red-hot shot
are dropped into a cannon, a wad of wet
clay between them and the cartridge; how
they sizzle and reek when they strike wood,
and how the little ship-boys of the Miss Jim
Buck hove water over them and shouted to
the fort to try again. And he told tales of
blockade-long weeks of swaying at
anchor, varied only by the departure and
return of steamers that had used up their
coal (there was no chance for the sailing-
ships); of gales and cold~ld that kept two
hundred men, night and day, pounding and
chopping at the ice on cable, blocks, and
rigging, when the galley was as red-hot as
the fort's shot, and men drank cocoa by the
bucket Tom Platt had no use for steam. His
service closed when that thing was
comparatively new. He admitted that it was
a specious invention in time of peace, but
looked hope-fully for the day when sails
should come back again on ten-thousand-
ton frigates with hundred-and-ninety-foot

-45-

ask Harvey, and Harvey alone, whether the
cooking was to his taste; and this always
made the "second half' laugh. Yet they had a
great respect for the cook's judgment, and
in their hearts considered Harvey
something of a mascot by consequence.

And while Harvey was taking in knowledge
of new things at each pore and hard health
with every gulp of the good air, the We're
Here went her ways and did her business
on the Bank, and the silvery-gray kenches
of well-pressed fish mounted higher and
higher in the hold. No one day's work was
out of common, but the average days were
many and close together.

Naturally, a man of Disko's reputation was
closely watched-"scrowged upon," Dan
called it-by his neighbours, but he had a
very pretty knack of giving them the slip
through the curdling, glidy fog-banks. Disko
avoided company for two reasons. He
wished to make his own experirnents, 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 mamly
Gloucester boats, with a scattering from
Provincetown, Harwich, Chatham, and
some of the Maine ports, but the crews
drew from goodness knows where. Risk
breeds recklessness, and when greed is
added there are fine chances for every kind
of accident in the crowded fleet, which, like
a mob of sheep, is huddled round some
unrecognized leader. "Let the two Jeraulds
lead 'em," said Disko. "We're baound to lay
among 'em for a spell on the Eastern
Shoals; though ef luck holds, we won't hev
to lay long. Where we are naow, Harve, ain't
considered noways good graound."

"Ain't it?" said Harvey, who was drawing
water (he had learned just how to wiggle
the bucket), after an unusually long
dressing-down. "Shouldn't mind striking

-46-

had a weatherly sea-eye. "I'm 'most outer
'baccy, too, Disko."

"Same here," said Tom Platt. "Hi! Backez
vous-backez vous! Standez awayez, you
butt-ended mucho-bono! Where you from
St. Malo, eh?"

"Ah, ha! Mucho bono! Oui! oui! Clos Poulet-
-St. Malo! St. Pierre et Miquelon," cried the
other crowd, waving woollen caps and
laughing. Then all together, "Bord! Bord!"

"Bring up the board, Danny. Beats me how
them Frenchmen fetch anywheres,
exceptin' America's fairish broadly. Forty-
six forty-nine's good enough fer them; an' I
guess it's abaout right, too"

Dan chalked the figures on the board, and
they hung it in the main-rigging to a chorus
of mercis from the bark.

"Seems kinder uneighbourly to let 'em
swedge off like this," Salters suggested,
feeling in his pockets

"Hev ye learned French then sence last
trip?" said Disko. "I don't want no more
stone-ballast hove at us 'long 0' your callin'
Miquelon boats 'footy cochins,' same's you
did off Le Have."

"Harmon Rush he said that was the way to
rise 'em. Plain United States is good
enough fer me. We're all dretful short on
tearakker. Young feller, don't you speak
French?"

"Oh, yes," said Harvey valiantly; and he
bawled: "Hi! Say! Arretez vous! Attendez!
Nous sommes venant pour tabac."

"Ah, tabac, tabac!" they cried, and laughed
again.

-47-

"Sign-talk!" Platt guffawed. "Well, yes,
'twas sign-talk, but a heap older'n your
French, Harve. Them French boats are
chockfull o' Freemasons, an' that's why."

"Are you a Freemason, then?"

"Looks that way, don't it?" said the man-o'-
war's man, stuffing his pipe; and Harvey
had another mystery of the deep sea to
brood upon.

Chapter VI

The thing that struck him most was the
exceedingly casual way in which some craft
loafed about the broad Atlantic. Fishing-
boats, as Dan said, were naturally
dependent on the courtesy and wisdom of
their neighbours; but one expected better
things of steamers. That was alter another
interesting interview, when they had been
chased for three miles by a big lumbering
old cattle-boat, all boarded over on the
upper deck, that smelt like a thousand
cattle-pens. A very excited officer yelled at
them through a speaking-trumpet, and she
lay and lollopped helplessly on the water
while Disko ran the We're Here under her
lee and gave the skipper a piece of his
mind. "Where might ye be-eh? Ye don't
deserve to be anywheres. You barn-yard
tramps go hoggin' the road on the high seas
with no blame consideration fer your
neighbours, an' your eyes in your coffee-
cups instid o' in your silly heads."

At this the skipper danced on the bridge and
said something about Disko's own eyes.
"We haven't had an observation for three
days. D'you suppose we can run her blind?"
he shouted

"Wa-al, I can," Disko retorted. "What's come
to your lead? Et it? Can't ye smell bottom, or
are them cattle too rank?"

-48-

Disko and Salters wrangled seriously till
evening, Salters arguing that a cattle-boat
was practically a barn on blue water, and
Disko insisting that, even if this were the
case, decency and fisher-pride demanded
that he should have kept "things sep'rate."
Long Jack stood it in silence for a time,-an
angry skipper makes an unhappy crew,-
and then he spoke across the table after
supper:

"Fwhat's the good o' bodderin' fwhat they'll
say?" said he.

"They'll tell that tale agin us fer years-that's
all," said Disko. "Oil-cake sprinkled!"

"With salt, o' course," said Salters,
Impenitent, reading the farming reports
from a week-old New York paper.

"It's plumb mortifyin' to all my feelin's," the
skipper went on.

"Can't see Ut that way," said Long Jack, the
peacemaker "Look at here, Disko! Is there
another packet afloat this day in this
weather cud ha' met a tramp an, over an'
above givin' her her reckonin', -over an'
above that, I say,-cud ha' discoorsed wid
her quite intelligent on the management av
steers an' such at sea? Forgit ut! Av coorse
they will not. 'Twas the most compenjus
conversation that iver accrued. Double
game an' twice runnin'-all to us." Dan
kicked Harvey under the table, and Harvey
choked in his cup.

"Well," said Salters, who felt that his honour
had been somewhat plastered, "I said I
didn't know as 'twuz any business o' mine,
'fore I spoke."

"An' right there," said Tom Platt,
experienced in discipline and etiquette
"right there, I take it, Disko, you should ha'

-49-

"Seventeen, I guess. He died the year the
Caspar McVeagh was built; but he could
niver keep things sep'rate. Steyning tuk him
fer the reason the thief tuk the hot stove-
bekaze there was nothin' else that season.
The men was all to the Banks, and
Counahan he whacked up an iverlastin'
hard crowd fer crew. Rum! Ye cud ha'
floated the Manila, insurance an' all, in
fwhat they stowed aboard her. They lef'
Boston Harbour for the great Grand Bank
wid a roarin' nor'wester behind 'em an' all
hands full to the bung. An' the hivens looked
after thim, for divil a watch did they set, an'
divil a rope did they lay hand to, till they'd
seen the bottom av a fifteen-gallon cask o'
bug-juice. That was about wan week, so
far as Counahan remembered. (If I cud only
tell the tale as he told ut!) All that whoile the
wind blew like ould glory, an' the Marilla-
'twas summer, and they'd give her a
foretopmast-struck her gait and kept ut.
Then Counahan tuk the hog-yoke an'
thrembled over it for a whoile, an' made out,
betwix' that an' the chart an' the singin' in
his head, that they was to the south'ard o'
Sable Island, gettin' along glorious, but
speakin' nothin'. Then they broached
another keg, an' quit speculatin' about
anythin' fer another spell. The Marilla she lay
down whin she dropped Boston Light, and
she never lufted her lee-rail up to that time-
hustlin' on one an' the same slant. But they
saw no weed, nor gulls, nor schooners; an'
prisintiy they obsarved they'd bin out a
matter o' fourteen days and they mis-
trusted the Bank has suspinded payment.
So they sounded, an' got sixty fathom.
'That's me,' sez Counahan. 'That's me iv'ry
time! I've run her slat on the Bank fer you,
an' when we get thirty fathom we'll turn in
like little men. Counahan is the b'y,' sez he.
'Counahan the Navigator!'

"Nex' cast they got ninety. Sez Counahan:
'Either the lead-line's tuk to stretchin' or

-50-

they ran the ould Marilla into Skibbereen,
an' they had an illigant time visitin' around
with frinds on the ould sod fer a week. Thin
they wint back, an' it cost 'em two an' thirty
days to beat to the Banks again. 'Twas
gettin' on towards fall, and grub was low, so
Counahan ran her back to Boston, wid no
more bones to ut."

"And what did the firm say?" Harvey
demanded.

"Fwhat could they? The fish was on the
Banks, an' Counahan was at. T-wharf
talkin' av his record trip east! They tuk their
satisfaction out av that, an' ut all came av
not keepin' the crew and the rum sep'rate in
the first place; an' confusin' Skibbereen
wid 'Queereau, in the second. Counahan
the Navigator, rest his sowi! He was an
imprompju citizen!"

"Once I was in the Lucy Holmes," said
Manuel, in his gentle voice. "They not want
any of her feesh in Gloucester. Eh, wha-at?
Give us no price. So we go across the
water, and think to sell to some Fayal man.
Then it blow fresh, and we cannot see well.
Eh, wha-at? Then it blow some mQre fresh,
and we go down below and drive very fast-
no one know where. By and by we see a
land, and it get some hot. Then come two,
three nigger in a brick. Eh, wha-at? We ask
where we are, and they say-now, what you
all think?"

"Grand Canary," said Disko, alter a
moment. Manuel shook his head, smiling.

"Blanco," said Tom Platt.

"No. Worse than that. We was below
Bezagos, and the brick she was from
Liberia! So we sell our feesh there! Not
bad, so? Eh, wha-at?"

-51-

for an hour and a half every soul aboard
hung over his squid-jig-a piece of lead
painted red and armed at the lower end with
a circle of pins bent backward like half-
opened umbrella ribs. The squid-for some
unknown reason-likes, and wraps himself
round, this thing, and is hauled up ere he
can escape from the pins. But as he leaves
his home he squirts first water and next ink
into his captor's face; and it was curious to
see the men weaving their heads from side
to side to dodge the shot. They were as
black as sweeps when the flurry ended; but
a pile of fresh squid lay on the deck, and the
large cod thinks very well of a little shiny
piece of squid tentacle at the tip of a clam-
baited hook. Next day they caught many
fish, and met the Carrie Pitman, to whom
they shouted their luck, and she wanted to
trade-seven cod for one fair-sized squid;
but Disko would not agree at the price, and
the Carrie dropped sullenly to leeward and
anchored half a mile away, in the hope of
striking on to some for herself.

Disco said nothing till after supper, when he
sent Dan and Manuel out to buoy the We're
Here's cable and announced his intention of
turning in with the broad-axe. Dan naturally
repeated these remarks to the dory from the
Carrie, who wanted to know why they were
buoying their cable, since they were not on
rocky bottom.

"Dad sez he wouldn't trust a ferryboat within
five mile o' you," Dan howled cheerfully.

"Why don't he git out, then? Who's
hinderin'?" said the other.

"'Cause you've jest the same ex lee-
bowed him, an' he don't take that from any
boat, not to speak o' sech a driftin' gurry-
butt as you be."

"She ain't driftin' any this trip," said the man

-52-

"Gory, glory, hallelujah!" sung Dan. "Here
she comes, Dad; butt-end first, walkin' in
her sleep same's she done on 'Queereau."

Had she been any other boat Disko would
have taken his chances, but now he cut the
cable as the Carrie Pitman, with all the
North Atlantic to play in, lurched down
directly upon them. The We're Here, under
jib and riding-sail, gave her no more room
than was absolutely necessary,-Disko did
not wish to spend a week hunting for his
cable,-but scuttled up into the wind as the
Carrie passed within easy hail, a silent and
angry boat, at the mercy of a raking
broadside of Bank chaff.

"Good evenin'," said Disko, raising his
head-gear, "an' haow does your garden
grow?"

"Go to Ohio an' hire a mule," said Uncle
Salters. "We don't want no farmers here."

"Will I lend YOU my dory-anchor?" cried
Long Jack.

"Unship your rudder an' stick it in the mud,"
Bald Tom Platt.

"Say!" Dan's voice rose shrill and high, as
he stood on the wheel-box. "Sa-ay! Is there
a strike in the o-ver-all factory; or hev they
hired girls, ye Shackamaxons?"

"Veer out the tiller-lines," cried Harvey, "and
nail 'em to the bottom~' That was a salt-
flavoured jest he had been put up to by Tom
Platt. Manuel leaned over the stern and
yelled: "Johanna Morgan play the organ!
Ahaaaa!" He flourished his broad thumb
with a gesture of unspeakable contempt
and derision, while little Penn covered
himself with glory by piping up: "Gee a little!
Hssh! Come here. Haw!"

-53-

a hot and cold bath, and spent ten minutes
each morning picking over a gilt-edged bill
of fare. And that same boy-no, his very
much older brother was up at four of the dim
dawn in streaming, crackling oilskins,
hammering, literally for the dear life, on a
bell smaller than the steward's breakfast-
bell, while somewhere close at hand a
thirty-foot steel stem was storming along at
twenty miles an hour! The bitterest thought
of all was that there were folks asleep in
dry, upholstered cabins who would never
learn that. they had massacred a boat
before breakfast. So Harvey rang the bell.

"Yes, they slow daown one turn o' their
blame propeller," said Dan, applying
himself to Manuel's conch, "fer to keep
inside the law, an' that's consolin' when
we're all at the bottom. Hark to her! She's a
humper!"

"Aooo-whoo-whupp!" went the siren.
"Wingle-tingle-tink," went the belL "Graaa-
ouch!" went the conch, while sea and sky
were all mrned up in milky fog. Then Harvey
fek 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 sd forth-on a salmon-coloured
gleaming side. It tilted forward and
downward with a heart-stilling "Ssssooo";
the ladder disappeared; a line of brass-
rimmed port-holes flashed past; a jet of
steam puffed in Harvey's helplessly uplifted
hands; a spout of hot water roared along the
rail of the We're Here, and the little schooner
staggered and shook in a rush of screw-
torn water, as a liner's stern vanished in the
fog. Harvey got ready to faint or be sick, or
both, when he heard a crack like a trunk
thrown on a sidewalk, and, all small in his

-54-

MeVitty when Uncle Salters forgot; and his
face was changed on him from the face of a
fool to the countenance of an old, wise man,
and he said in a strong voice: "The Lord
gave, and the Lord hath taken away;
blessed be the name of the Lord! I was-I am
a minister of the Gospel. Leave him to me."

"Oh, you be, be you?" said the man. "Then
pray my son back to me! Pray back a nine-
thousand-dollar boat an' a thousand quintal
of fish. If you'd left me alone my widow
could ha' gone on to the Provident an'
worked fer her board, an' never known-an'
never known. Now I'll hev to tell her."

"There ain't notbin' to say," said Disko.
"Better lie down a piece, Jason Olley."

When a man has lost his only son, his
summer's work, and his means of
livelihood, in thirty counted seconds, it is
hard to give consolation.

"All Gloucester men, wasn't they?" said
Tom Platt, fiddling helplessly with a dory-
becket.

"Oh, that don't make no odds," said Jason,
wringing the wet from his beard. "I'll be
rowin' summer boarders araound East
Gloucester this fall." He rolled heavily to the
rail, singing:

"Happy birds that sing and fly Round thine
altars, 0 Most High!"

"Come with me. Come below!" said Penn,
as though he had a right to give orders.
Their eyes met and fought for a quarter of a
minute.

"I dunno who you be, but I'll come," said
Jason submissively. "Mebbe I'll get back
some o' the-some o' the-nine thousand
dollars." Penn led him into the cabin and slid

-55-

"Abaout five year," said Disko, in a shaking
voice.

"Then I have been a charge on some one for
every day of that time. Who was the man?"

Disko pointed to Salters.

"Ye hain't-ye hain't!" cried the sea-farmer,
twisting his hands together. "Ye've more'n
earned your keep twice-told; an' there's
money owm' you, Penn, besides ha'af o'
my quarter-share in the boat, which is yours
fer value received."

"You are good men. I can see that in your
faces. But--"

"Mother av Mercy," whispered Long Jack,
"an' he's been wid us~all these trips! He's
clean bewitched."

A schooner's bell struck up alongside, and
a voice hailed through the fog: "0 Disko!
'Heard abaout the Jennie Cushman?"

"They have found his son," cried Penn.
"Stand you still and see the salvation of the
Lord!"

"Got Jason aboard here," Disko answered,
but his voice quavered. "There-warn't any
one else?"

"We've fund one, though. 'Run acrost him
snarled up in a mess o' lumber thet might
ha' bin a foc'sle. His head's cut some."

"Who is he?"

The We're Here's heart-beats answered
one another.

"Guess it's young Olley," the voice drawled.

Penn raised his hands and said something

-56-

it's too early for a little game of checkers,
Mr. Salters?"

"The very thing-the very thing I was goin' to
say myself," cried Salters promptly. "It beats
all, Penn, how ye git on to what's in a man's
mind."

The little fellow blushed and meekly
followed Salters forward.

"Up anchor! Hurry! Let's quit these crazy
waters," shouted Disko, and never was he
more swiftly obeyed.

"Now what in creation d'ye suppose is the
meanin' o' that all?" said Long Jack, when
they were working through the fog once
more, damp, dripping, and bewildered.

"The way I sense it," said Disko, at the
wheel, "is this: The Jennie Cushman
business comin' on an empty stummick--"

"H~we saw one of them go by," sobbed
Harvey.

"An' that, o' course, kinder hove him outer
water, julluk runnin' a craft ashore; hove
him right aout, I take it, to rememberin'
Johnstown an' Jacob Boiler an' such-like
reminiscences. Well, consolin' Jason there
held him up a piece, same's shorin' up a
boat. Then, bein' weak, them props slipped
an' slipped, an' he slided down the ways,
an' naow he's water-borne agin. That's
haow I sense it."

They decided that Disko was entirely
correct

'Twould ha' bruk Salters all up," said Long
Jack, "if Penn had stayed Jacob Bollerin'.
Did ye see his face when Penn asked who
he'd been charged on all these years? How
is ut, Salters?"

-57-

brute rubbed alongside the dory begging for
small fish, and between the three of them it
was a mercy they all got off alive.

At last, after playing blindman's-buff in the
fog, there came a morning when Disko
shouted down the foc'sle: "Hurry, boys!
We're in town!"

Chapter VIII

To the end of his days, Harvey will never
forget that sight. The sun was just clear of
the horizon they had not seen for nearly a
week, and his low red light struck into the
riding-sails of three fleets of anchored
schooners--one to the north, one to the
westward, and one to the south. There must
have been nearly a hundred of them, of
every possible make and build, with, far
away, a square-rigged Frenchman, all
bowing and courtesying one to the other.
From every boat dories were dropping
away like bees from a crowded hive, and
the clamour of voices, the rattling of ropes
and blocks, and the splash of the oars
carried for miles across the heaving water.
The sails turned all colours, black, pearly-
gray, and white, as the sun mounted; and
more boats swung up through the mists to
the southward.

The dories gathered in clusters, separated,
reformed, and broke again, all heading one
way; while men hailed and whistled and cat-
called and sang, and the water was
speckled with rubbish thrown overboard.

"It's a town," said Harvey. "Disko was right.
It U' a town!"

"I've seen smaller," said Disko. "There's
about a thousand men here; an' yonder's
the Virgin." He pointed to a vacant space of
greenish sea, where there were no dories.

-58-

be the butt of it all. For the first time in his life
he felt shy-perhaps that came from living so
long with only the We're Heres-among the
scores of wild faces that rose and fell with
the reeling small craft. A gentle, breathing
swell, three furlongs from trough to barrel,
would quietly shoulder up a string of
variously painted dories. They hung for an
instant, a wonderful frieze against the sky-
line, and their men pointed and hailed. Next
moment the open mouths, waving arms,
and bare chests disappeared, while on
another swell came up an entirely new line
of characters like paper figures in a toy
theatre. So Harvey stared. "Watch out!" said
Dan, flourishing a dip-net "When I tell you
dip, you dip. The caplin'll school any time
from naow on. Where'll we lay, Tom Platt?"

Pushing, shoving, and hauling, greeting old
friends here and warning old enemies
there, Commodore Tom

100 Rudyard Kipling

Platt led his little fleet well to leeward of the
general crowd, and immediately three or
four men began to haul on their anchors with
intent to le~bow the We're Heres. But a yell
of laughter went up as a dory shot from her
station with exceeding speed, its occupant
pulling madly on the roding.

"Give her slack!" roared twenty voices. "Let
him shake it out."

"What's the matter?" said Harvey, as the
boat flashed away to the~southward. "He's
anchored, isn't he?"

"Anchored, sure enough, but his graound-
tackle's kinder shifty," said Dan, laughing.
"Whale's fouled it. . . . Dip Harve! Here they
come!"

The sea round them clouded and darkened,

-59-

round his fixed point As the fish struck on
less quickly, each man wanted to haul up
and get to better ground; but every third man
found himself intimately connected with
some four or five neighbours. To cut
another's roding is crime unspeakable on
the Banks; yet it was done, and done
without detection, three or four times that
day. Tom Platt caught a Maine man in the
black act and knocked him over the
gunwale with an oar, and Manuel served a
fellow countryman in the same way. But
Harvey's anchor-line was cut, and so was
Penn's, and they were turned into relief-
boats to carry fish to the We're Here as the
dories filled. The caplin schooled once
more at twilight, when the mad clamour was
repeated; and at dusk they rowed back to
dress down by the light of kerosene-lamps
on the edge of the pen.

It was a huge pile, and they went to sleep
while they were dressing. Next day several
boats fished right above the cap of the
Virgin; and Harvey, with them, looked down
on the very weed of that lonely rock, which
rises to within twenty feet of the surface.
The cod were there in legions, marching
solemnly over the leathery kelp. When they
bit, they bit all together; and so when they
stopped. There was a slack time at noon,
and the dories began to search for
amusement. It was Dan who sighted the
Hope Of Prague just coming up, and as her
boats joined the company they were
greeted with the question: "Who's the
meanest man in the Fleet?"

Three hundred voices answered cheerily:
"Nick Bra-ady." It sounded like an organ
chant.

"Who stole the lam~wicks?" That was Dan's
contribution.

"Nick Bra-ady," sang the boats.

-60-

The dories roved and fished and squabbled
till a swell underran the sea. Then they drew
more apart to save their sides, and some
one called that if the swell continued the
Virgin would break. A reckless Galway man
with his nephew denied this, hauled up
anchor, and rowed over the very rock itself.
Many voices called them to come away,
while others dared them to hold on. As the
smooth-backed rollers passed to the
southward, they hove the dory high and high
into the mist, and dropped her in ugly,
sucking, dimpled water, where she spun
round her anchor, within a foot or two of the
hidden rock. It was playing with death for
mere bravado; and the boats looked on in
uneasy silence till Long Jack rowed up
behind his countrymen and quietly cut their
roding.

"Can't ye hear ut knockin'?" he cried. "Pull
for you miserable lives! Pull!"

The men swore and tried to argue as the
boat drifted; but the next swell checked a
little, like a man tripping on a carpet. There
was a deep sob and a gathering roar, and
the Virgin flung up a couple of acres of
foaming water, white, furious, and ghastly
over the shoal sea. Then all the boats greatly
applauded Long Jack, and the Galway men
held their tongue.

"Ain't it elegant?" said Dan, bobbing like a
young seal at home. "She'll break about
once every ha'af hour now, 'les the swell
piles up good. What's her reg'lar time when
she's at work, Tom Platt?"

"Once ivry fifteen minutes, to the tick. Harve,
you've seen the greatest thing on the
Banks; an' but for Long Jack you'd seen
some dead men too."

There came a sound of merriment where
the fog lay thicker and the schooners were

-61-

of her now."

"Daown! Hard daown! Let go everything!"

"All hands to the pumps!"

"Daown jib an' pole her!"

Here the skipper lost his temper and said
things. instantly fishing was suspended to
answer him, and he heard many curious
facts about his boat and her next port of call.
They asked him if he were insured; and
whence he had stolen his anchor, because,
they said' it belonged to the Carrie Pitman;
they called his boat a mud-scow, and
accused him of dumping garbage to
frighten the fish; they offered to tow him and
charge it to his wife; and one audacious
youth slipped up almost under the counter,
smacked it with his open palm, and yelled:
"Gid up, Buck!"

The cook emptied a pan of ashes on him,
and he replied with cod-heads. The bark's
crew fired small coal from the galley, and
the dories threatened to come aboard and
"razee" her. They would have warned her at
once had she been in real peril; but, seeing
her well clear of the Virgin, they made the
most of their chances. The fun was spoilt
when the rock spoke again, a half-mile to
windward, and the tormented bark set
everything that would draw and went her
ways; but the dories felt that the honours lay
with them.

All that night the Virgin roared hoarsely; and
next morning, over an angry, white-headed
sea, Harvey saw the Fleet with flickering
masts waiting for a lead. Not a dory was
hove out till ten o'clock, when the two
Jeraulds of the Day's Eye, imagining a lull
which did not exist, set the example. In a
minute half the boats were out and bobbing
in the cockly swells, but Troop kept the

-62-

They did not seem to have any form of
service, but in the night, at anchor, Harvey
heard them across the star-powdered
black water, singing something that
sounded like a hymn. it went to a very slow
tune.

"La brigantine Qui va tourner, Roule et
s'incline Pour m'entrainer. Oh, Vierge
Marie, Pour moi priez Dieul Adieu, patrie;
Ouebec, adjeul"

Tom Platt visited her, because, he said, the
dead man was his brother as a Freemason.
It came out that a wave had doubled the
poor fellow over the heel of the bowsprit
and broken his back. The news spread like
a flash, for, contrary to general custom, the
Frenchman held an auction of the dead
man's kit,-he had no friends at St Malo or
Miquelon,-and everything was spread out
on the top of the house, from his red knitted
cap to the leather belt with the sheath-knife
at the back. Dan and Harvey were out on
twenty-fathom water in the Hattie S., and
naturally rowed over to join the crowd. It
was a long pull, and they stayed some little
time while Dan bought the knife, which had
a curious brass handle. When they dropped
overside and pushed off into a drizzle of
rain and a lop of sea, it occurred to them
that they might get into trouble for neglecting
the lines.

"Guess 'twon't hurt us any to be warmed
up," said Dan, shivering under his oilskins,
and they rowed on into the heart of a white
fog, which, as usual, dropped on them
without warning.

"There's too much blame tide hereabouts to
trust to your instinks," he said. "Heave over
the anchor, Harve, and we'll fish a piece till
the thing lifts. Bend on your biggest lead.
Three pound ain't any too much in this
water. See how she's tightened on her

-63-

"Cut a man? Heave's the muckle." Harvey
hauled in his fish, rebaited, and threw over.

"Killed him! Course, when I heard that I was
keener'n ever to get it."

"Christmas! I didn't know it," said Harvey,
turning round. "I'll give you a dollar for it
when I-get my wages. Say, I'll give you two
dollars."

"Honest? D'you like it as much as all that?"
said Dan, flushing. "Well, to tell the truth, I
kinder got it for you-to give; but I didn't let on
till I saw how you'd take it. It's yours and
welcome, Harve, because we're dory-
mates, and so on and so forth, an' so
followin'. Catch a-holt!"

He held it out, belt and all.

"But look at here. Dan, I don't see-"

"Take it. 'Tain't no use to me. I wish you to
hev it." The temptation was irresistible.
"Dan, you're a white man," said Harvey. "I'll
keep it as long as I live."

"That's good hearin'," said Dan, with a
pleasant laugh; and then, anxious to change
the subject: " 'Look's if your line was fast to
somethin'."

"Fouled, I guess," said Harve, tugging.
Before he pulled up he fastened the belt
round him, and with deep delight heard the
tip of the sheath click on the thwart.
"Concern the thing!" he cried. "She acts as
though she were on strawberry-bottom. It's
all sand here, ain't it?"

Dan reached over and gave a judgmatic
tweak. "Hollbut'll act that way 'f he's sulky.
Thet's no strawberry-bottom. Yank her
once or twice. She gives, sure. Guess we'd
better haul up an' make certain."

-64-

We're both scared out o' ten years' growth.
Oh, Harve, did ye see his head?"

"Did I? I'll never forget it. But look at here,
Dan; it couldn't have been meant. It was
only the tide."

"Tide! He come for it, Harve. Why, they sunk
him six miles to south'ard o' the Fleet, an'
we're two miles from where she's lyin' now.
They told me he was weighted with a
fathom an' a half o' chain-cable."

'Wonder what he did with the knife-up on
the French coast?"

"Something bad. 'Guess he's bound to take
k with him to the Judgment, an' so What are
you doin' with the fish?"

"Heaving 'em overboard," said Harvey.

"What for? We sha'n't eat 'em."

"I don't care. I had to look at his face while I
was takin' the belt off. You can keep your
catch if you like. I've no use for mine."

Dan said nothing, but threw his fish over
again.

"Guess ifs best to be on the safe side," he
murmured at last. "I'd give a month's pay if
this fog 'u'd lift. Things go abaout in a fog
that ye don't see in clear weather -yo-hoes
an' hollerers and such like. I'm sorter
relieved he come the way he did instid o'
walkin'. He might ha' walked."

"Do~n't, Dan! We're right on top of him now.
'Wish I was safe aboard, hem' pounded by
Uncle Saltem."

"They'll be lookin' fer us in a little. Gimme
the tooter." Dan took the tin dinner-horn, but
paused before he blew.

-65-

them back to her. There was a warm glow
of light from the cabin and a satisfying smell
of food forward, and it was heavenly to hear
Disko and the others, all quite alive and
solid, leaning over the rail and promising
them a first-class pounding. But the cook
was a black. master of strategy. He did not
get the dories aboard till he had given the
more striking points of the tale, explaining
as he backed and bumped round the
counter how Harvey was the mascot to
destroy any possible bad luck. So the boys
came override as rather uncanny heroes,
and every one asked them questions
instead of pounding them for making
trouble. Little Penn delivered quite a speech
on the folly of superstitions; but public
opinion was against him and in favour of
Long Jack, who told the most excruciating
ghost-stories, till nearly midnight. Under
that influence no one except Salters and
Penn said anything about "idolatry," when
the cook put a lighted candle, a cake of flour
and water, and a pinch of salt on a shingle,
and floated them out astern to keep the
Frenchman quiet in case he was still
restless. Dan lit the candle because he had
bought the belt, and the cook grunted and
muttered charms as long as be could see
the ducking point of flame.

Said Harvey to Dan, as they turned in after
watch:

"How about progress and Catholic
superstitions?"

"Huh! I guess I'm as enlightened and
progressive as the next man, but when it
comes to a dead St Malo deck-hand
scarin' a couple o' pore boys stiff fer the
sake of a thirty-cent knife, why, then, the
cook can take hold fer all o' me. I mistrust
furriners, livin' or dead."

Next morning all, except the cook, were

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Bend, oh, bend your mains'1, we're back to
Yankeeland With fifteen hunder' quintal, An'
fifteen hunder' quintal, 'Teen hunder'
toppin' quintal,

'Twix' old 'Queereau an' Grand."

The last letters pitched on deck wrapped
round pieces of coal, and the Gloucester
men shouted messages to their wives and
womenfolks and owners, while the We're
Here finished the musical ride through the
Fleet, her headsails quivering like a man's
hand when he raises it to say good-by.

Harvey very soon discovered that the We're
Here, with her riding-sail, strolling from
berth to berth, and the We're Here headed
west by south under home canvas, were
two very different boats. There was a bite
and kick to the wheel even in "boy's"
weather; he could feel the dead weight in
the hold flung forward mightily across the
surges, and the streaming line of bubbles
overside made his eyes dizzy.

Disko kept them busy fiddling with the sails;
and when those were flattened like a racing
yacht's, Dan had to wait on the big topsail,
which was put over by hand every time she
went about. In spare moments they
pumped, for the packed fish dripped brine,
which does not improve a cargo. But since
there was no fishing, Harvey had time to
look at the sea from another point of view.
The, low-sided schooner was naturally on
most intimate terms with her surroundings.
They saw little of the horizon save when she
topped a swell; and usually she was
elbowing, fidgeting, and coa'ing her
steadfast way through gray, gray-blue, or
black hollows l aced across and across with
streaks of shivering foam; or rubbing
herself caressingly along the flank of some
bigger water-hill. It was as if she said: "You
wouldn't hurt me, surely? I'm ouly the little

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brigs from Spain and Sicily; found a friendly
northeaster off Artimon Bank that drove
them within view of the East light of Sable
Island,-a sight Disko did not linger over,-
and stayed with them past Western and Le
Have, to the northern fringe of George's.
From there they picked up the deeper
water, and let her go merrily.

"Hattie's pulling on the string," Dan confided
to Harvey. "Hattie an' Ma. Next Sunday
you'll be hirin' a boy to throw water on the
windows to make ye go to sleep. 'Guess
you'll keep with us till your folks come. Do
you know the best of gettin' ashore again?"

"Hot bath?" said Harvey. His eyebrows
were all white with dried spray.

"That's good, but a night-shirt's better. I've
been dreamin' o' night-shirts ever since we
bent our mainsail. Ye can wiggle your toes
then. Ma'll hev a new one fer me, all washed
soft. It's home, Harve. It's home! Ye can
sense it in the air. We're riurnin' into the
aidge of a hot wave naow, an' I can smell
the bayberries. Wonder if we'll get in fer
supper. Port a trifle."

The hesitating sails flapped and lurched in
the close air as the deep smoothed out,
blue and oily, round them. When they
whistled for a wind only the rain came in
spiky rods, bubbling and drumming, and
behind the rain the thunder and the lightning
of mid-August. They lay on the deck with
bare feet and arms, telling one another what
they would order at their first meal ashore;
for now the land was in plain sight. A
Gloucester swordfish-boat drifted
alongside, a man in the little pulpit on the
bowsprit flourished his harpoon, his bare
head plastered down with the wet. "And
all's well!" he sang cheerily, as though he
were watch on a big liner. "Wouverman's
waiting fer you, Disko. What's the news o'

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more, with all its thousands of people
asleep, and the smell of earth after rain, and
the familiar noise of a switching-engine
coughing to herself in a freight-yard; and all
those things made his heart beat and his
throat dry up as he stood by the foresheet.
They heard the anchor-watch snoring on a
lighthouse-tug, nosed into a pocket of
darkness where a lantern glimmered on
either side; somebody waked with a grunt,
threw them a rope, and they made fast to a
silent wharf flanked with great iron-roofed
sheds fall of warm emptiness, and lay there
without a sound.

Then Harvey sat down by the wheel, and
sobbed and sobbed as though his heart
would break, and a tall woman who had
been sitting on a weigh-scale dropped
down into the schooner and kissed Dan
once on the cheek; for she was his mother,
and she had seen the We~re Here by the
lightning flashes. She took no notice of
Harvey till he had recovered himself a little
and Disko had told her his story. Then they
went to Disko's house together as the dawn
was breaking; and until the telegraph office
was open and he could wire his folk, Harvey
Cheyne was perhaps the loneliest boy in all
America. But the curious thing was that
Disko and Dan seemed to think none the
worse of him for crying.

Wouverman was not ready for Disko's
prices till Disko, sure that the We're Here
was at least a week ahead of any other
Gloucester boat, had given him a few days
to swallow them; so all hands played about
the streets, and Long Jack stopped the
Rocky Neck trolley, on principle, as be said,
till the conductor let him ride free. But Dan
went about with his freckled nose in the air,
bung-full of mystery and most haughty to his
family.

"Dan, I'll hev to lay inter you ef you act this

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's much as five dollars, Dad."

"What did I tell ye?" said Salters. "Don't
sputter over your vittles, Dan."

Chapter IX

Whatever his private sorrows may be, a
multimillionaire, like any other workingman,
should keep abreast of his business.
Harvey Cheyne, senior, had gone East late
in June to meet a woman broken down, hall
mad, who dreamed day and night of her son
drowning in the gray seas. He had
surrounded her 'with doctors, trained
nurses, massage-women, and even faith-
cure companions, but they were useless.
Mrs. Cheyne lay still and moaned, or talked
of her boy by the hour together to any one
who would listen. Hope she had none, and
who could offer it? All she needed was
assurance that drowning did not hurt; and
her husband watched to guard lest she
should make the experiment. Of his own
sorrow he spoke little-hardly realized the
depth of it till he caught himself ask'ng the
calendar on his writing-desk, "What's the
use of going on?"

There had always lain a pleasant notion at
the back of his head that, some day, when
he had rounded off everything and the boy
had left college, he would take his son to his
heart and lead him into his possessions.
Then that boy, he argued, as busy fathers
do, would instantly become his companion,
partner, and ally, and there would follow
splendid years of great works carried out
together-the old head backing the young
fire. Now his boy was dead-lost at sea, as it
might have been a Swede sailor from one
of Cheyne's big teaships; the wife dying, or
worse; he himself was trodden down by
platoons of women and doctors and maids
and attendants; worried almost beyond
endurance by the shift and change of her

-70-

fishing all well waiting Gloucester Mass
care Disko Troop for money or orders wire
what shall do and how is Mama Harvey N.
Cheyne.

The father let it fall, laid his head down on
the roller-top of the shut desk, and breathed
heavily. The secretary ran for Mrs. Cheyne's
doctor who found Cheyne pacing to and fro.

'~What-what d' you think of it? Is it possible?
Is there any meaning to it? I can't quite make
it out," he cried.

"I can," said the doctor. "I lose seven
thousand a year-that's all." He thought of
the struggling New York practice he had
dropped at Cheyne's imperious bidding,
and returned the telegram with a sigh.

"You mean you'd tell her? 'May be a fraud?"

"What's the motive?" said the doctor, coolly.
"Detection's too certain. It's the boy sure
enough."

Enter a French maid, impudently, as an
indispensable one who is kept on only by
large wages.

"Mrs. Cheyne she say you must come at
once. She think you are seek."

The master of thirty millions bowed his head
meekly and followed Suzanne; and a thin,
high voice on the upper landing of the great
white-wood square staircase cried: "What
is it? What has happened?"

No doors could keep out the shriek that rang
through the echoing house a moment later,
when her husband blurted out the news.

"And that's all right," said the doctor,
serenely, to the typewriter. "About the only
medical statement in novels with any truth to

-71-

and Michigan Southern to take 'Constance'
on New York Central and Hudson River
Buffalo to Albany, and B. and A. the same
Albany to Boston. Indispensable I should
reach Boston Wednesday evening. Be sure
nothing prevents. Have also wired Canniff,
Toucey, and Barnes. --Sign, Cheyne."

Miss Kinzey nodded, and the secretary
went on.

"Now then. Canniff, Toucey, and Barnes, of
course. Ready? Canniff, Chicago. Please
take my private car 'Constance' from Santa
Fe' at Sixteenth Street next Tuesday p. m.
on N. Y. Limited through to Buffalo and
deliver N. Y. C. for Albany.-Ever bin to N'
York, Miss Kinzey? We'll go some day.-
Ready? Take car Buffalo to Albany on
Limited Tuesday p. m. That's for Toucey."

"Haven't bin to Noo York, but I know that!"
with a toss of the head.

"Beg pardon. Now, Boston and Albany,
Barnes, same instructions from Albany
through to Boston. Leave three-five P. M.
(you needn't wire that); arrive nine-five P.
M. Wednesday. That covers everything
Wade will do, but it pays to shake up the
managers."

"It's great," said Miss Kinzey, with a look of
admiration. This was the kind of man she
understood and appreciated.

'Tisn't bad," said Milsom, modestly. "Now,
any one but me would have lost thirty hours
and spent a week working out the run,
instead of handing him over to the Santa
Fe' straight through to Chicago."

"But see here, about that Noo York Limited.
Chauncey Depew himself couldn't hitch his
car to her," Miss Kinzey suggested,
recovering herself.

-72-

The bear was seeking his cub, not the bulls.
Hard men who had their knives drawn to
fight for their financial lives put away the
weapons and wished him God-speed,
while half a dozen panic-smitten tin-pot
roads perked up their heads and spoke of
the wonderful things they would have done
had not Cheyne buried the hatchet.

It was a busy week-end among the wires;
for now that their anxiety was removed, men
and cities hastened to accommodate. Los
Angeles called to San Diego and Barstow
that the Southern California engineers
might know and be ready in their lonely
roundhouses; Barstow passed the word to
the Atlantic and Pacific; and Albuquerque
flung it the whole length of the Atchinson,
Topeka, and Santa Fe management, even
into Chicago. An engine, combination-car
with crew, and the great and gilded
"Constance" private car were to be
"expedited" over those two thousand three
hundred and fifty miles. The train would take
precedence of one hundred and seventy-
seven others meeting and passing;
despatchers and crews of every one of
those said trains must be notified. Sixteen
locomotives, sixteen engineers, and
sixteen firemen would be needed-each and
every one the best available. Two and one
half minutes would be allowed for changing
engines, three for watering, and two for
coaling. "Warn the men, and arrange tanks
and chutes accordingly; for Harvey Cheyne
is in a hurry, a hurry-a hurry," sang the wires.
"Forty miles an hour will be expected, and
division superintendents will accompany
this special over their respective divisions.
From San Diego to Sixteenth Street,
Chicago, let the magic carpet be laid down.
Hurry! Oh, hurry!"

"It will be hot," said Cheyne, as they rolled
out of San Diego in the dawn of Sunday.
"We're going to hurry, Mama, just as fast as

-73-

But Mrs. Cheyne, in the boudoir stateroom,
where the French maid, sallow-white with
fear, clung to the silver door-handle, only
moaned a little and begged her husband to
bid them "hurry." And so they dropped the
dry sands and moon-struck rocks of
Arizona behind them, and grilled on till the
crash of the couplings and the wheeze of
the brake-hose told them they were at
Coolidge by the Continental Divide.

Three bold and experienced men-cool,
confident, and dry when they began; white,
quivering, and wet when they finished their
trick at those terrible wheels-swung her
over the great lift from Albuquerque to
Glorietta and beyond Springer, up and up to
the Raton Tunnel on the State line, whence
they dropped rocking into La Junta, had
sight of the Arkansaw, and tore down the
long slope to Dodge City, where Cheyne
took comfort once again from setting his
watch an hour ahead.

There was very little talk in the car. The
secretary and typewriter sat together on the
stamped Spanish-leather cushions by the
plate-glass observation-window at the rear
end, watching the surge and ripple of the
ties crowded back behind them, and, it is
believed, making notes of the scenery.
Cheyne moved nervously between his own
extravagant gorgeousness and the naked
necessity of the combination, an unlit cigar
in his teeth, till the pitying crews forgot that
he was their tribal enemy, and did their best
to entertain him.

At night the bunched electrics lit up that
distressful palace of all the luxuries, and
they fared sumptuously, swinging on
through the emptiness of abject desolation.

124 Rudyard Kipling

Now they heard the swish of a water-tank,

-74-

giant bee. Yet the speed was not enough for
Mrs. Cheyne; and the heat, the remorseless
August heat, was making her giddy; the
clock-hands would not move, and when,
oh, when would they be in Chicago?

It is not true that, as they changed engines at
Fort Madison, Cheyne passed over to the
Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers an endowment sufficient to
enable them to fight him and his fellows on
equal terms for evermore. He paid his
obligations to engineers and firemen as he
believed they deserved, and only his bank
knows what he gave the crews who had
sympathized with him. It is on record that the
last crew took entire charge of switching
operations at Sixteenth Street, because
"she" was in a doze at last, and Heaven was
to help any one who bumped her.

Now the highly paid specialist who conveys
the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern
Limited from Chicago to Elkhart is
something of an autocrat, and he does not
approve of being told how to back up to a
car. None the less he handled the
"Constance" as if she might have been a
load of dynamite, and when the crew
rebuked him, they did it in whispers and
dumb show.

"Pshaw!" said the Atchinson, Topeka, and
Santa Fe men, discussing life later, "we
weren't runnin' for a record. Harvey
Cheyne's wife, she were sick back, an' we
didn't want to jounce her. 'Come to think of
it, our runnin' time from San~Diego to
Chicago was 57.54. You can tell that to them
Eastern way-trains. When we're tryin' for a
record, we'll let you know."

To the Western man (though this would not
please either city) Chicago and Boston are
cheek by jowl, and some railroads
encourage the delusion. The Limited

-75-

"Some one's been coercing him," thought
Cheyne. "Now Constance would never have
allowed that. Don't see as Europe could
have done it any better."

"But why didn't you tell this man, Troop, who
you were?" the mother repeated, when
Harvey had expanded his story at least
twice.

"Disko Troop, dear. The best man that ever
walked a deck. I don't care who the next is."

"Why didn't you tell him to put you ashore?
You know Papa would have made it up to
him ten times over."

"I know it; but he thought I was crazy. I'm
afraid I called him a thief because I couldn't
find the bills in my pocket."

"A sailor found them by the flagstaff that-
that night," sobbed Mrs. Cheyne.

"That explains it, then. I don't blame Troop
any. I just said I wouldn't work-on a Banker,
too--and of course he hit me on the nose,
and oh! I bled like a stuck hog."

"My poor darling! They must have abused
you horribly."

"Dunno quite. Well, after that, I saw a light."

Cheyne slapped his leg and chuckled. This
was going to be a boy after his own hungry
heart. He had never seen precisely that
twinkle in Harvey's eye before.

"And the old man gave me ten and a half a
month; he's paid me half now; and I took
hold with Dan and pitched right in. I can't do
a man's work yet. But I can handle a dory
'most as well as Dan, and I don't get rattled
in a fog-much; and I can take my trick in light
winds-that's steering, dear-and I can 'most

-76-

stateroom, and Harvey curled up beside his
father, explaining his indebteeiness.

"You can depend upon me to do everything I
can for the crowd, Harve. They seem to be
good men on your showing."

"Best in the Fleet, sir. Ask at Gloucester,"
said Harvey. "But Disko believes still he's
cured me of being crazy. Dan's the only one
I've let on to about you, and our private cars
and all the rest of it, and I'm not quite sure
Dan believes. I want to paralyze 'em to-
morrow. Say, can't they run the 'Constance'
over to Gloucester? Mama don't look fit to
be moved, anyway, and we're bound to
finish cleaning out by tomorrow. Wouverman
takes our fish. You see, we're the first off
the Banks this season, and it's four twenty-
five a quintal. We held out till he paid it. They
want it quick."

"You mean you'll have to work to-morrow,
then?"

"I told Troop I would. I'm on the scales. I've
brought the tallies with me." He looked at the
greasy notebook with an air of importance
that made his father choke. "There isn't but
three no-two ninety-four or five quintal
more by my reckoning."

"Hire a substitute," suggested Cheyne, to
see what Harvey would say.

"Can't, sir. I'm tally-man for the schooner.
Troop says I've a better head for figures
than Dan. Troop's a mighty just man."

"Well, suppose I don't move the 'Constance'
to-night, how'll you fix it?"

Harvey looked at the clock, which marked
twenty past eleven.

"Then I'll sleep here till three and catch the

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