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Page 26
Disko did something to the wheel that checked the schooner's way,
while Manuel, with Harvey to help (and a proud boy was Harvey),
let down the jib in a lump on the boom. The lead sung a deep
droning song as Tom Platt whirled it round and round.
"Go ahead, man," said Long Jack, impatiently. "We're not drawin'
twenty-five fut off Fire Island in a fog. There's no trick to ut."
"Don't be jealous, Galway." The released lead plopped into the sea
far ahead as the schooner surged slowly forward.
"Soundin' is a trick, though," said Dan, "when your dipsey lead's all
the eye you're like to hev for a week. What d'you make it, Dad?"
Disko's face relaxed. His skill and honour were involved in the
march he had stolen on the rest of the Fleet, and he had his
reputation as a master artist who knew the Banks blindfold. "Sixty,
mebbe--ef I'm any judge," he replied, with a glance at the tiny
compass in the window of the house.
"Sixty," sung out Tom Platt, hauling in great wet coils.
The schooner gathered way once more. "Heave!" said Disko, after
a quarter of an hour.
"What d'you make it?" Dan whispered, and he looked at Harvey
proudly. But Harvey was too proud of his own performances to be
impressed just then.
"Fifty," said the father. "I mistrust we're right over the nick o'
Green Bank on old Sixty-Fifty."
"Fifty!" roared Tom Platt. They could scarcely see him through the
fog. "She's bust within a yard--like the shells at Fort Macon."
"Bait up, Harve," said Dan, diving for a line on the reel.
The schooner seemed to be straying promiscuously through the
smother, her headsail banging wildly. The men waited and looked
at the boys who began fishing.
"Heugh!" Dan's lines twitched on the scored and scarred rail. "Now
haow in thunder did Dad know? Help us here, Harve. It's a big un.
Poke-hooked, too." They hauled together, and landed a
goggle-eyed twenty-pound cod. He had taken the bait right into his
stomach.
"Why, he's all covered with little crabs," cried Harvey, turning him
over.
"By the great hook-block, they're lousy already," said Long Jack.
"Disko, ye kape your spare eyes under the keel."
Splash went the anchor, and they all heaved over the lines, each
man taking his own place at the bulwarks.
"Are they good to eat?" Harvey panted, as he lugged in another
crab-covered cod.
"Sure. When they're lousy it's a sign they've all been herdin'
together by the thousand, and when they take the bait that way
they're hungry. Never mind how the bait sets. They'll bite on the
bare hook."
"Say, this is great!" Harvey cried, as the fish came in gasping and
splashing--nearly all poke-hooked, as Dan had said. "Why can't we
always fish from the boat instead of from the dories?"
"Allus can, till we begin to dress daown. Efter thet, the heads and
offals 'u'd scare the fish to Fundy. Boatfishin' ain't reckoned
progressive, though, unless ye know as much as dad knows. Guess
we'll run aout aour trawl to-night. Harder on the back, this, than
frum the dory, ain't it?"
It was rather back-breaking work, for in a dory the weight of a cod
is water-borne till the last minute, and you are, so to speak, abreast
of him; but the few feet of a schooner's freeboard make so much
extra dead-hauling, and stooping over the bulwarks cramps the
stomach. But it was wild and furious sport so long as it lasted; and
a big pile lay aboard when the fish ceased biting.
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