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Page 37
That was after he had been cured of a string of boils between his
elbows and wrists, where the wet jersey and oilskins cut into the
flesh. The salt water stung them unpleasantly, but when they were
ripe Dan treated them with Disko's razor, and assured Harvey that
now he was a "blooded Banker"; the affliction of gurry-sores being
the mark of the caste that claimed him.
Since he was a boy and very busy, he did not bother his head with
too much thinking. He was exceedingly sorry for his mother, and
often longed to see her and above all to tell her of this wonderful
new life, and how brilliantly he was acquitting himself in it.
Otherwise he preferred not to wonder too much how she was
bearing the shock of his supposed death. But one day, as he stood
on the foc'sle ladder, guying the cook, who had accused him and
Dan of hooking fried pies, it occurred to him that this was a vast
improvement on being snubbed by strangers in the smoking-room
of a hired liner.
He was a recognized part of the scheme of things on the We're
Here; had his place at the table and among the bunks; and could
hold his own in the long talks on stormy days, when the others
were always ready to listen to what they called his "fairy-tales" of
his life ashore. It did not take him more than two days and a
quarter to feel that if he spoke of his own life--it seemed very far
away--no one except Dan (and even Dan's belief was sorely tried)
credited him. So he invented a friend, a boy he had heard of, who
drove a miniature four-pony drag in Toledo, Ohio, and ordered
five suits of clothes at a time and led things called "germans" at
parties where the oldest girl was not quite fifteen, but all the
presents were solid silver. Salters protested that this kind of yarn
was desperately wicked, if not indeed positively blasphemous, but
he listened as greedily as the others; and their criticisms at the end
gave Harvey entirely new notions on "germans," clothes, cigarettes
with gold-leaf tips, rings, watches, scent, small dinner-parties,
champagne, card-playing, and hotel accommodation. Little by little
he changed his tone when speaking of his "friend," whom Long
Jack had christened "the Crazy Kid," "the Gilt-edged Baby," "the
Suckin' Vanderpoop," and other pet names; and with his
sea-booted feet cocked up on the table would even invent histories
about silk pajamas and specially imported neckwear, to the
"friend's" discredit. Harvey was a very adaptable person, with a
keen eye and ear for every face and tone about him.
Before long he knew where Disko kept the old greencrusted
quadrant that they called the "hog-yoke"--under the bed-bag in his
bunk. When he took the sun, and with the help of "The Old
Farmer's" almanac found the latitude, Harvey would jump down
into the cabin and scratch the reckoning and date with a nail on the
rust of the stove-pipe. Now, the chief engineer of the liner could
have done no more, and no engineer of thirty years' service could
have assumed one half of the ancient-mariner air with which
Harvey, first careful to spit over the side, made public the
schooner's position for that day, and then and not till then relieved
Disko of the quadrant. There is an etiquette in all these things.
The said "hog-yoke," an Eldridge chart, the farming almanac,
Blunt's "Coast Pilot," and Bowditch's "Navigator" were all the
weapons Disko needed to guide him, except the deep-sea lead that
was his spare eye. Harvey nearly slew Penn with it when Tom Platt
taught him first how to "fly the blue pigeon"; and, though his
strength was not equal to continuous sounding in any sort of a sea,
for calm weather with a seven-pound lead on shoal water Disko
used him freely. As Dan said:
"'Tain't soundin's dad wants. It's samples. Grease her up good,
Harve." Harvey would tallow the cup at the end, and carefully
bring the sand, shell, sludge, or whatever it might be, to Disko,
who fingered and smelt it and gave judgment As has been said,
when Disko thought of cod he thought as a cod; and by some
long-tested mixture of instinct and experience, moved the We're
Here from berth to berth, always with the fish, as a blindfolded
chess-player moves on the unseen board.
But Disko's board was the Grand Bank--a triangle two hundred and
fifty miles on each side--a waste of wallowing sea, cloaked with
dank fog, vexed with gales, harried with drifting ice, scored by the
tracks of the reckless liners, and dotted with the sails of the
fishing-fleet.
For days they worked in fog--Harvey at the bell--till, grown familiar
with the thick airs, he went out with Tom Platt, his heart rather in
his mouth. But the fog would not lift, and the fish were biting, and
no one can stay helplessly afraid for six hours at a time. Harvey
devoted himself to his lines and the gaff or gob-stick as Tom Platt
called for them; and they rowed back to the schooner guided by
the bell and Tom's instinct; Manuel's conch sounding thin and faint
beside them. But it was an unearthly experience, and, for the first
time in a month, Harvey dreamed of the shifting, smoking floors of
water round the dory, the lines that strayed away into nothing, and
the air above that melted on the sea below ten feet from his
straining eyes. A few days later he was out with Manuel on what
should have been forty-fathom bottom, but the whole length of the
roding ran out, and still the anchor found nothing, and Harvey
grew mortally afraid, for that his last touch with earth was lost.
"Whale-hole," said Manuel, hauling in. "That is good joke on
Disko. Come!" and he rowed to the schooner to find Tom Platt and
the others jeering at the skipper because, for once, he had led them
to the edge of the barren Whale-deep, the blank hole of the Grand
Bank. They made another berth through the fog, and that time the
hair of Harvey's head stood up when he went out in Manuel's dory.
A whiteness moved in the whiteness of the fog with a breath like
the breath of the grave, and there was a roaring, a plunging, and
spouting. It was his first introduction to the dread summer berg of
the Banks, and he cowered in the bottom of the boat while Manuel
laughed. There were days, though, clear and soft and warm, when
it seemed a sin to do anything but loaf over the hand-lines and
spank the drifting "sun-scalds" with an oar; and there were days of
light airs, when Harvey was taught how to steer the schooner from
one berth to another.
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