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Page 42
"Par derriere chez ma tante, il'y a un bois joli,
Et le rossignol y chante
Et le jour et la nuit....
Que donneriez vous, belle,
Qui l'arnenerait ici?
Je donnerai Quebec,
Sorel et Saint Denis."
"How was it my French didn't go, and your sign-talk did?" Harvey
demanded when the barter had been distributed among the We're
Heres.
"Sign-talk!" Platt guffawed. "Well, yes, 'twas sign-talk, but a heap
older'n your French, Harve. Them French boats are chockfull o'
Freemasons, an' that's why."
"Are you a Freemason, then?"
"Looks that way, don't it?" said the man-o'-war's man, stuffing his
pipe; and Harvey had another mystery of the deep sea to brood
upon.
CHAPTER VI
The thing that struck him most was the exceedingly casual way in
which some craft loafed about the broad Atlantic. Fishing-boats, as
Dan said, were naturally dependent on the courtesy and wisdom of
their neighbours; but one expected better things of steamers. That
was after another interesting interview, when they had been chased
for three miles by a big lumbering old cattle-boat, all boarded over
on the upper deck, that smelt like a thousand cattle-pens. A very
excited officer yelled at them through a speaking-trumpet, and she
lay and lollopped helplessly on the water while Disko ran the
'We're Here' under her lee and gave the skipper a piece of his mind.
"Where might ye be--eh? Ye don't deserve to be anywheres. You
barn-yard tramps go hoggin' the road on the high seas with no
blame consideration fer your neighbours, an' your eyes in your
coffee-cups instid o' in your silly heads."
At this the skipper danced on the bridge and said something about
Disko's own eyes. "We haven't had an observation for three days.
D'you suppose we can run her blind?" he shouted.
"Wa-al, I can," Disko retorted. "What's come to your lead? Et it?
Can't ye smell bottom, or are them cattle too rank?"
"What d' ye feed 'em?" said Uncle Salters with intense seriousness,
for the smell of the pens woke all the farmer in him. "They say
they fall off dretful on a v'yage. Dunno as it's any o' my business,
but I've a kind o' notion that oil-cake broke small an' sprinkled--"
"Thunder!" said a cattle-man in a red jersey as he looked over the
side. "What asylum did they let His Whiskers out of?"
"Young feller," Salters began, standing up in the fore-rigging, "let
me tell yeou 'fore we go any further that I've--"
The officer on the bridge took off his cap with immense
politeness. "Excuse me," he said, "but I've asked for my reckoning.
If the agricultural person with the hair will kindly shut his head,
the sea-green barnacle 'with the wall-eye may per-haps condescend
to enlighten us."
"Naow you've made a show o' me, Salters," said Disko, angrily. He
could not stand up to that particular sort of talk, and snapped out
the latitude and longitude without more lectures.
"Well, that's a boat-load of lunatics, sure," said the skipper, as he
rang up the engine-room and tossed a bundle of newspapers into
the schooner.
"Of all the blamed fools, next to you, Salters, him an' his crowd are
abaout the likeliest I've ever seen," said Disko as the 'We're Here'
slid away. "I was jest givin' him my jedgment on lullsikin' round
these waters like a lost child, an' you must cut in with your fool
farmin'. Can't ye never keep things sep'rate?"
Harvey, Dan, and the others stood back, winking one to the other
and full of joy; but Disko and Salters wrangled seriously till
evening, Salters arguing that a cattle-boat was practically a barn on
blue water, and Disko insisting that, even if this were the case,
decency and fisher-pride demanded that he should have kept
"things sep'rate." Long Jack stood it in silence for a time,--an angry
skipper makes an unhappy crew,--and then he spoke across the
table after supper:
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