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Page 40
Long Jack's tastes ran more to the supernatural. He held them
silent with ghastly stories of the "Yo-hoes" on Monomoy Beach,
that mock and terrify lonely clam-diggers; of sand-walkers and
dune-haunters who were never properly buried; of hidden treasure
on Fire Island guarded by the spirits of Kidd's men; of ships that
sailed in the fog straight over Truro township; of that harbor in
Maine where no one but a stranger will lie at anchor twice in a
certain place because of a dead crew who row alongside at
midnight with the anchor in the bow of their old-fashioned boat,
whistling--not calling, but whistling--for the soul of the man who
broke their rest.
Harvey had a notion that the east coast of his native land, from
Mount Desert south, was populated chiefly by people who took
their horses there in the summer and entertained in country-houses
with hardwood floors and Vantine portires. He laughed at the
ghost-tales,--not as much as he would have done a month
before,--but ended by sitting still and shuddering.
Tom Platt dealt with his interminable trip round the Horn on the
old Ohio in flogging days, with a navy more extinct than the
dodo--the navy that passed away in the great war. He told them how
red-hot shot are dropped into a cannon, a wad of wet clay between
them and the cartridge; how they sizzle and reek when they strike
wood, and how the little ship-boys of the Miss Jim Buck hove
water over them and shouted to the fort to try again. And he told
tales of blockade--long weeks of swaying at anchor, varied only by
the departure and return of steamers that had used up their coal
(there was no chance for the sailing-ships); of gales and cold
that kept two hundred men, night and day, pounding and chopping
at the ice on cable, blocks, and rigging, when the galley was as
red-hot as the fort's shot, and men drank cocoa by the bucket. Tom
Platt had no use for steam. His service closed when that thing was
comparatively new. He admitted that it was a specious invention in
time of peace, but looked hopefully for the day when sails should
come back again on ten-thousand-ton frigates with
hundred-and-ninety-foot booms.
Manuel's talk was slow and gentle--all about pretty girls in Madeira
washing clothes in the dry beds of streams, by moonlight, under
waving bananas; legends of saints, and tales of queer dances or
fights away in the cold Newfoundland baiting-ports Salters was
mainly agricultural; for, though he read "Josephus" and expounded
it, his mission in life was to prove the value of green manures, and
specially of clover, against every form of phosphate whatsoever.
He grew libellous about phosphates; he dragged greasy "Orange
Judd" books from his bunk and intoned them, wagging his finger at
Harvey, to whom it was all Greek. Little Penn was so genuinely
pained when Harvey made fun of Salters's lectures that the boy
gave it up, and suffered in polite silence. That was very good for
Harvey.
The cook naturally did not join in these conversations. As a rule,
he spoke only when it was absolutely necessary; but at times a
queer gift of speech descended on him, and he held forth, half in
Gaelic, half in broken English, an hour at a time. He was
especially communicative with the boys, and he never withdrew
his prophecy that one day Harvey would be Dan's master, and that
he would see it. He told them of mail-carrying in the winter up
Cape Breton way, of the dog-train that goes to Coudray, and of the
ram-steamer Arctic, that breaks the ice between the mainland and
Prince Edward Island. Then he told them stories that his mother
had told him, of life far to the southward, where water never froze;
and he said that when he died his soul would go to lie down on a
warm white beach of sand with palm-trees waving above. That
seemed to the boys a very odd idea for a man who had never seen a
palm in his life. Then, too, regularly at each meal, he would ask
Harvey, and Harvey alone, whether the cooking was to his taste;
and this always made the "second half" laugh. Yet they had a great
respect for the cook's judgment, and in their hearts considered
Harvey something of a mascot by consequence.
And while Harvey was taking in knowledge of new things at each
pore and hard health with every gulp of the good air, the We're
Here went her ways and did her business on the Bank, and the
silvery-gray kenches of well-pressed fish mounted higher and
higher in the hold. No one day's work was out of common, but the
average days were many and close together.
Naturally, a man of Disko's reputation was closely
watched--"scrowged upon," Dan called it--by his neighbours, but he
had a very pretty knack of giving them the slip through the
curdling, glidy fog-banks. Disko avoided company for two reasons.
He wished to make his own experirnents, in the first place; and in
the second, he objected to the mixed gatherings of a fleet of all
nations. The bulk of them were mainly Gloucester boats,
with a scattering from Provincetown, Harwich, Chatham, and
some of the Maine ports, but the crews drew from goodness knows
where. Risk breeds recklessness, and when greed is added there
are fine chances for every kind of accident in the crowded fleet,
which, like a mob of sheep, is huddled round some unrecognized
leader. "Let the two Jeraulds lead 'em," said Disko. "We're baound
to lay among 'em for a spell on the Eastern Shoals; though ef luck
holds, we won't hev to lay long. Where we are naow, Harve, ain't
considered noways good graound."
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