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Page 38
It thrilled through him when he first felt the keel answer to his
band on the spokes and slide over the long hollows as the foresail
scythed back and forth against the blue sky. That was magnificent,
in spite of Disko saying that it would break a snake's back to
follow his wake. But, as usual, pride ran before a fall. They were
sailing on the wind with the staysail--an old one, luckily--set, and
Harvey jammed her right into it to show Dan how completely he
had mastered the art. The foresail went over with a bang, and the
foregaff stabbed and ripped through the staysail, which was, of
course, prevented from going over by the mainstay. They lowered
the wreck in awful silence, and Harvey spent his leisure hours for
the next few days under Tom Platt's lee, learning to use a needle
and palm. Dan hooted with joy, for, as he said, he had made the
very same blunder himself in his early days.
Boylike, Harvey imitated all the men by turns, till he had
combined Disko's peculiar stoop at the wheel, Long Jack's
swinging overhand when the lines were hauled, Manuel's
round-shouldered but effective stroke in a dory, and Tom Platt's
generous Ohio stride along the deck.
"'Tis beautiful to see how he takes to ut," said Long Jack, when
Harvey was looking out by the windlass one thick noon. "I'll lay
my wage an' share 'tis more'n half play-actin' to him, an' he
consates himself he's a bowld mariner. Watch his little bit av a
back now!"
"That's the way we all begin," said Tom Platt. "The boys they make
believe all the time till they've cheated 'emselves into bein' men,
an' so till they die--pretendin' an' pretendin'. I done it on the old
Ohio, I know. Stood my first watch--harbor-watch--feelin' finer'n
Farragut. Dan's full o' the same kind o' notions. See 'em now,
actin' to be genewine moss-backs--very hair a rope-yarn an' blood
Stockholm tar." He spoke down the cabin stairs. "Guess you're
mistook in your judgments fer once, Disko. What in Rome made
ye tell us all here the kid was crazy?"
"He wuz," Disko replied. "Crazy ez a loon when he come aboard;
but I'll say he's sobered up consid'ble sence. I cured him."
"He yarns good," said Tom Platt. "T'other night he told us abaout a
kid of his own size steerin' a cunnin' little rig an' four ponies up an'
down Toledo, Ohio, I think 'twas, an' givin' suppers to a crowd o'
sim'lar kids. Cur'us kind o' fairy-tale, but blame interestin'. He
knows scores of 'em."
"Guess he strikes 'em outen his own head," Disko called from the
cabin, where he was busy with the logbook. "Stands to reason that
sort is all made up. It don't take in no one but Dan, an' he laughs at
it. I've heard him, behind my back."
"Yever hear what Sim'on Peter Ca'houn said when they whacked
up a match 'twix' his sister Hitty an' Lorin' Jerauld, an' the boys put
up that joke on him daown to Georges?" drawled Uncle Salters,
who was dripping peaceably under the lee of the starboard
dory-nest.
Tom Platt puffed at his pipe in scornful silence: he was a Cape
Cod man, and had not known that tale more than twenty years.
Uncle Salters went on with a rasping chuckie:
"Sim'on Peter Ca'houn he said, an' he was jest right, abaout Lorin',
'Ha'af on the taown,' he said, 'an' t'other ha'af blame fool; an' they
told me she's married a 'ich man.' Sim'on Peter Ca'houn he hedn't
no roof to his mouth, an' talked that way."
"He didn't talk any Pennsylvania Dutch," Tom Platt replied. "You'd
better leave a Cape man to tell that tale. The Ca'houns was gypsies
frum 'way back."
"Wal, I don't profess to be any elocutionist," Salters said. "I'm
comin' to the moral o' things. That's jest abaout what aour Harve
be! Ha'af on the taown, an' t'other ha'af blame fool; an' there's
some'll believe he's a rich man. Yah!"
"Did ye ever think how sweet 'twould be to sail wid a full crew o'
Salterses?" said Long Jack. "Ha'af in the furrer an' other ha'af in the
muck-heap, as Ca'houn did not say, an' makes out he's a
fisherman!"
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