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Page 28
"We'll be back," said Long Jack, "an' in case you'll not be lookin'
for us, we'll lay into you both if the trawl's snarled."
The dory surged up on the crest of a wave, and just when it seemed
impossible that she could avoid smashing against the schooner's
side, slid over the ridge, and was swallowed up in the damp dusk.
"Take ahold here, an' keep ringin' steady," said Dan, passing
Harvey the lanyard of a bell that hung just behind the windlass.
Harvey rang lustily, for he felt two lives depended on him. But
Disko in the cabin, scrawling in the log-book, did not look like a
murderer, and when he went to supper he even smiled dryly at the
anxious Harvey.
"This ain't no weather," said Dan. "Why, you an' me could set thet
trawl! They've only gone out jest far 'nough so's not to foul our
cable. They don't need no bell reelly."
"Clang! clang! clang!" Harvey kept it up, varied with occasional
rub-a-dubs, for another half-hour. There was a bellow and a bump
alongside. Manuel and Dan raced to the hooks of the dory-tackle;
Long Jack and Tom Platt arrived on deck together, it seemed, one
half the North Atlantic at their backs, and the dory followed them
in the air, landing with a clatter.
"Nary snarl," said Tom Platt as he dripped. "Danny, you'll do yet."
"The pleasure av your comp'ny to the banquit," said Long Jack,
squelching the water from his boots as he capered like an elephant
and stuck an oil-skinned arm into Harvey's face. "We do be
condescending to honour the second half wid our presence." And
off they all four rolled to supper, where Harvey stuffed himself to
the brim on fish-chowder and fried pies, and fell fast asleep just as
Manuel produced from a locker a lovely two-foot model of the
Lucy Holmes, his first boat, and was going to show Harvey the
ropes. Harvey never even twiddled his fingers as Penn pushed him
into his bunk.
"It must be a sad thing--a very sad thing," said Penn, watching the
boy's face, "for his mother and his father, who think he is dead. To
lose a child--to lose a man-child!"
"Git out o' this, Penn," said Dan. "Go aft and finish your game
with Uncle Salters. Tell Dad I'll stand Harve's watch ef he don't
keer. He's played aout."
"Ver' good boy," said Manuel, slipping out of his boots and
disappearing into the black shadows of the lower bunk. "Expec' he
make good man, Danny. I no see he is any so mad as your parpa he
says. Eh, wha-at?"
Dan chuckled, but the chuckle ended in a snore.
It was thick weather outside, with a rising wind, and the elder men
stretched their watches. The hour struck clear in the cabin; the
nosing bows slapped and scuffed with the seas; the foc'sle
stove-pipe hissed and sputtered as the spray caught it; and the boys
slept on, while Disko, Long Jack, Tom Platt, and Uncle Salters,
each in turn, stumped aft to look at the wheel, forward to see that
the anchor held, or to veer out a little more cable against chafing,
with a glance at the dim anchor-light between each round.
CHAPTER IV
Harvey waked to find the "first half" at breakfast, the foc'sle door
drawn to a crack, and every square inch of the schooner singing its
own tune. The black bulk of the cook balanced behind the tiny
galley over the glare of the stove, and the pots and pans in the
pierced wooden board before it jarred and racketed to each plunge.
Up and up the foc'sle climbed, yearning and surging and quivering,
and then, with a clear, sickle-like swoop, came down into the seas.
He could hear the flaring bows cut and squelch, and there was a
pause ere the divided waters came down on the deck above, like a
volley of buckshot. Followed the woolly sound of the cable in the
hawse-hole; and a grunt and squeal of the windlass; a yaw, a punt,
and a kick, and the 'We're Here' gathered herself together to repeat
the motions.
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