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Page 16
"Seat ye! Seat ye!" a voice Harvey had not heard called from the
foc'sle. Disko Troop, Tom Platt, Long Jack, and Salters went
forward on the word. Little Penn bent above his square deep-sea
reel and the tangled cod-lines; Manuel lay down full length on the
deck, and Dan dropped into the hold, where Harvey heard him
banging casks with a hammer.
"Salt," he said, returning. "Soon as we're through supper we git to
dressing-down. You'll pitch to Dad. Tom Platt an' Dad they stow
together, an' you'll hear 'em arguin'. We're second ha'af, you an' me
an' Manuel an' Penn--the youth an' beauty o' the boat."
"What's the good of that?" said Harvey. "I'm hungry."
"They'll be through in a minute. Suff! She smells good to-night.
Dad ships a good cook ef he do suffer with his brother. It's a full
catch today, Aeneid it?" He pointed at the pens piled high with
cod. "What water did ye hev, Manuel?"
"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 Breton,
he does, where the farmers speak homemade Scotch. Cape
Breton's full o' niggers whose folk run in there durin' aour war, an'
they talk like farmers--all huffy-chuffy."
"That is not Scotch," said "Pennsylvania." "That is Gaelic. So I
read in a book."
"Penn reads a heap. Most of what he says is so--'cep' when it comes
to a caount o' fish--eh?"
"Does your father just let them say how many they've caught
without checking them?" said Harvey.
"Why, yes. Where's the sense of a man lyin' fer a few old cod?"
"Was a man once lied for his catch," Manuel put in. "Lied every
day. Fife, ten, twenty-fife more fish than come he say there was."
"Where was that?" said Dan. "None o' aour folk."
"Frenchman of Anguille."
"Ah! Them West Shore Frenchmen don't caount anyway. Stands to
reason they can't caount Ef you run acrost any of their soft hooks,
Harvey, you'll know why," said Dan, with an awful contempt.
"Always more and never less,
Every time we come to dress,"
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