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Page 14
"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.
"There is no to be thankful for to me!" said Manuel. "How shall I
leave you dreeft, dreeft all around the Banks? Now you are a
fisherman eh, wha-at? Ouh! Auh!" He bent backward and forward
stiffly from the hips to get the kinks out of himself.
"I have not cleaned boat to-day. Too busy. They struck on queek.
Danny, my son, clean for me."
Harvey moved forward at once. Here was something he could do
for the man who had saved his life.
Dan threw him a swab, and he leaned over the dory, mopping up the
slime clumsily, but with great good-will. "Hike out the foot-boards;
they slide in them grooves," said Dan. "Swab 'em an' lay
'em down. Never let a foot-board jam. Ye may want her bad some
day. Here's Long Jack."
A stream of glittering fish flew into the pen from a dory alongside.
"Manuel, you take the tackle. I'll fix the tables. Harvey, clear
Manuel's boat. Long Jack's nestin' on the top of her."
Harvey looked up from his swabbing at the bottom of another dory
just above his head.
"Jest like the Injian puzzle-boxes, ain't they?" said Dan, as the one
boat dropped into the other.
"Takes to ut like a duck to water," said Long Jack, a
grizzly-chinned, long-lipped Galway man, bending to and fro
exactly as Manuel had done. Disko in the cabin growled up the
hatchway, and they could hear him suck his pencil.
"Wan hunder an' forty-nine an' a half-bad luck to ye, Discobolus!"
said Long Jack. "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 impidence, an' I'm persuaded ye'll corrupt
our supercargo in a week."
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