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Page 12
"Well, I--I'm here to take things back," said Harvey very quickly.
"When a man's saved from drowning---" he gulped.
"Ey? 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
jedgment, he'd sooner dip his colours to the British than change it.
I'm glad it's settled right eend up. Dad's right when he says
he can't take you back. It's all the livin' we make here--fishin'.
The men'll be back like sharks after a dead whale in
ha'af an hour."
"What for?" said Harvey.
"Supper, o' course. Don't your stummick tell you? You've a heap to
learn."
"Guess I have," said Harvey, dolefully, looking at the tangle of
ropes and blocks overhead.
"She's a daisy," said Dan, enthusiastically, misunderstanding the
look. "Wait till our mainsail's bent, an' she walks home with all her
salt wet. There's some work first, though." He pointed down into
the darkness of the open main-hatch between the two masts.
"What's that for? It's all empty," said Harvey.
"You an' me an' a few more hev got to fill it," said Dan. "That's
where the fish goes."
"Alive?" said Harvey.
"Well, no. They're so's to be ruther dead--an' flat--an' salt. There's a
hundred hogshead o' salt in the bins, an' we hain't more'n covered
our dunnage to now."
"Where are the fish, though?"
"'In the sea they say, in the boats we pray,'" said Dan, quoting a
fisherman's proverb. "You come in last night with 'baout forty of
'em."
He pointed to a sort of wooden pen just in front of the
quarter-deck.
"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.
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