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Page 19
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
two tumbled heaps side by side on the main hatch, so deeply
asleep that he actually rolled them to their berths.
CHAPTER III
It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and
heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin
dish of juicy fragments of fish--the blood-ends the cook had
collected overnight. They cleaned up the plates and pans of the
elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal,
swabbed down the foc'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water
for the cook, and investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores
were stacked. It was another perfect day--soft, mild, and clear; and
Harvey breathed to the very bottom of his lungs.
More schooners had crept up in the night, and the long blue seas
were full of sails and dories. Far away on the horizon, the smoke of
some liner, her hull invisible, smudged the blue, and to eastward a
big ship's top-gallant sails, just lifting, made a square nick in it.
Disko Troop was smoking by the roof of the cabin--one eye on the
craft around, and the other on the little fly at the main-mast-head.
"When Dad kerfiummoxes that way," said Dan in a whisper, "he's
doin' some high-line thinkin' fer all hands. I'll lay my wage an'
share we'll make berth soon. Dad he knows the cod, an' the Fleet
they know Dad knows. 'See 'em comm' up one by one, lookin' fer
nothin' in particular, o' course, but scrowgin' on us all the time?
There's the Prince Leboo; she's a Chat-ham boat. She's crep' up
sence last night. An' see that big one with a patch in her foresail an'
a new jib? She's the Carrie Pitman from West Chat-ham. She won't
keep her canvas long onless her luck's changed since last season.
She don't do much 'cep' drift. There ain't an anchor made 'll hold
her. . . . When the smoke puffs up in little rings like that, Dad's
studyin' the fish. Ef we speak to him now, he'll git mad. Las' time I
did, he jest took an' hove a boot at me."
Disko Troop stared forward, the pipe between his teeth, with eyes
that saw nothing. As his son said, he was studying the fish--pitting
his knowledge and experience on the Banks against the roving cod
in his own sea. He accepted the presence of the inquisitive
schooners on the horizon as a compliment to his powers. But now
that it was paid, he wished to draw away and make his berth alone,
till it was time to go up to the Virgin and fish in the streets of that
roaring town upon the waters. So Disko Troop thought of recent
weather, and gales, currents, food-supplies, and other domestic
arrangements, from the point of view of a twenty-pound cod; was,
in fact, for an hour a cod himself, and looked remarkably like one.
Then he removed the pipe from his teeth.
"Dad," said Dan, "we've done our chores. Can't we go overside a
piece? It's good 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.
"Naow ye look somethin' like," said Dan. "Hurry!"
"Keep nigh an' handy," said Troop "an' don't go visitin' racund the
Fleet. If any one asks you what I'm cal'latin' to do, speak the
truth--fer ye don't know."
A little red dory, labelled Hattie S., lay astern of the schooner. Dan
hauled in the painter, and dropped lightly on to the bottom boards,
while Harvey tumbled clumsily after.
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