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Page 20
"That's no way o' gettin' into a boat," said Dan. "Ef there was any
sea you'd go to the bottom, sure. You got to learn to meet her."
Dan fitted the thole-pins, took the forward thwart and watched
Harvey's work. The boy had rowed, in a lady-like fashion, on the
Adirondack ponds; but there is a difference between squeaking
pins and well-balanced ruflocks--light sculls and stubby, eight-foot
sea-oars. They stuck in the gentle swell, and Harvey grunted.
"Short! Row short!" said Dan. "Ef you cramp your oar in any kind
o' sea you're liable to turn her over. Ain't she a daisy? Mine, too."
The little dory was specklessly clean. In her bows lay a tiny
anchor, two jugs of water, and some seventy fathoms of thin,
brown dory-roding. A tin dinner-horn rested in cleats just under
Harvey's right hand, beside an ugly-looking maul, a short gaff, and
a shorter wooden stick. A couple of lines, with very heavy leads
and double cod-hooks, all neatly coiled on square reels, were stuck
in their place by the gunwale.
"Where's the sail and mast?" said Harvey, for his hands were
beginning to blister.
Dan chuckled. "Ye don't sail fishin'-dories much. Ye pull; but ye
needn't pull so hard. Don't you wish you owned her?"
"Well, I guess 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
millionary 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 'll--"
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."
Dan's line was out long before Harvey had mastered the mystery of
baiting and heaving out the leads. The dory drifted along easily. It
was not worth while to anchor till they were sure of good ground.
"Here we come!" Dan shouted, and a shower of spray rattled on
Harvey's shoulders as a big cod flapped and kicked alongside.
"Muckie, Harvey, muckle! Under your hand! Onick!"
Evidently "muckle" could not be the dinner-horn, so Harvey passed
over the maul, and Dan scientifically stunned the fish before he
pulled it inboard, and wrenched out the hook with the short
wooden stick he called a "gob-stick." Then Harvey felt a tug, and
pulled up zealously.
"Why, these are strawberries!" he shouted. "Look!"
The hook had fouled among a bunch of strawberries, red on one
side and white on the other--perfect reproductions of the land fruit,
except that there were no leaves, and the stem was all pipy and
slimy.
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