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Page 51
Pushing, shoving, and hauling, greeting old friends here and warning
old enemies there, Commodore Tom Platt led his little fleet well to
leeward of the general crowd, and immediately three or four men
began to haul on their anchors with intent to lee-bow the 'We're
Heres'. But a yell of laughter went up as a dory shot from her
station with exceeding speed, its occupant pulling madly on the
roding.
"Give her slack!" roared twenty voices. "Let him shake it out."
"What's the matter?" said Harvey, as the boat flashed away to
the southward. "He's anchored, isn't he?"
"Anchored, sure enough, but his graound-tackle's kinder shifty,"
said Dan, laughing. "Whale's fouled it. . . . Dip Harve! Here they
come!"
The sea round them clouded and darkened, and then frizzed up in
showers of tiny silver fish, and over a space of five or six acres the
cod began to leap like trout in May; while behind the cod three or
four broad gray-backs broke the water into boils.
Then everybody shouted and tried to haul up his anchor to get
among the school, and fouled his neighbour's line and said what
was in his heart, and dipped furiously with his dip-net, and shrieked
cautions and advice to his companions, while the deep fizzed like
freshly opened soda-water, and cod, men, and whales together
flung in upon the luckless bait. Harvey was nearly knocked
overboard by the handle of Dan's net. But in all the wild tumult he
noticed, and never forgot, the wicked, set little eye--something like
a circus elephant's eye--of a whale that drove along almost level with
the water, and, so he said, winked at him. Three boats found their
rodings fouled by these reckless mid-sea hunters, and were towed
half a mile ere their horses shook the line free.
Then the caplin moved off, and five minutes later there was no
sound except the splash of the sinkers overside, the flapping of the
cod, and the whack of the muckles as the men stunned them. It
was wonderful fishing. Harvey could see the glimmering cod
below, swimming slowly in droves, biting as steadily as they
swam. Bank law strictly forbids more than one hook on one line
when the dories are on the Virgin or the Eastern Shoals; but so
close lay the boats that even single hooks snarled, and Harvey
found himself in hot argument with a gentle, hairy Newfoundlander
on one side and a howling Portuguese on the other.
Worse than any tangle of fishing-lines was the confusion of the
dory-rodings below water. Each man had anchored where it
seemed good to him, drifting and rowing round his fixed point. As
the fish struck on less quickly, each man wanted to haul up and get
to better ground; but every third man found himself intimately
connected with some four or five neighbours. To cut another's
roding is crime unspeakable on the Banks; yet it was done, and
done without detection, three or four times that day. Tom Platt
caught a Maine man in the black act and knocked him over the
gunwale with an oar, and Manuel served a fellow-countryman in
the same way. But Harvey's anchor-line was cut, and so was
Penn's, and they were turned into relief-boats to carry fish to the
'We're Here' as the dories filled. The caplin schooled once more at
twilight, when the mad clamour was repeated; and at dusk they
rowed back to dress down by the light of kerosene-lamps on the
edge of the pen.
It was a huge pile, and they went to sleep while they were dressing.
Next day several boats fished right above the cap of the Virgin;
and Harvey, with them, looked down on the very weed of that
lonely rock, which rises to within twenty feet of the surface. The
cod were there in legions, marching solemnly over the leathery
kelp. When they bit, they bit all together; and so when they
stopped. There was a slack time at noon, and the dories began to
search for amusement. It was Dan who sighted the Hope Of Prague
just coming up, and as her boats joined the company they were
greeted with the question: "Who's the meanest man in the Fleet?"
Three hundred voices answered cheerily: "Nick Bra-ady." It
sounded like an organ chant.
"Who stole the lampwicks?" That was Dan's contribution.
"Nick Bra-ady," sang the boats.
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