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Page 52
"Who biled the salt bait fer soup?" This was an unknown backbiter
a quarter of a mile away.
Again the joyful chorus. Now, Brady was not especially mean,
but he had that reputation, and the Fleet made the most of it.
Then they discovered a man from a Truro boat who, six years
before, had been convicted of using a tackle with five or six
hooks--a "scrowger," they call it--in the Shoals. Naturally, he had
been christened "Scrowger Jim"; and though he had hidden
himself on the Georges ever since, he found his honours waiting for
him full blown. They took it up in a sort of firecracker chorus:
"Jim! 0 Jim! Jim! 0 Jim! Sssscrowger Jim!" That pleased
everybody. And when a poetical Beverly man--he had been making
it up all day, and talked about it for weeks--sang, "The Carrie
Pitman's anchor doesn't hold her for a cent" the dories felt that they
were indeed fortunate. Then they had to ask that Beverly man how
he was off for beans, because even poets must not have things all
their own way. Every schooner and nearly every man got it in turn.
Was there a careless or dirty cook anywhere? The dories sang
about him and his food. Was a schooner badly found? The Fleet
was told at full length. Had a man hooked tobacco from a
mess-mate? He was named in meeting; the name tossed from roller
to roller. Disko's infallible judgments, Long Jack's market-boat that
he had sold years ago, Dan's sweetheart (oh, but Dan was an angry
boy!), Penn's bad luck with dory-anchors, Salter's views on
manure, Manuel's little slips from virtue ashore, and Harvey's
ladylike handling of the oar--all were laid before the public; and as
the fog fell around them in silvery sheets beneath the sun, the
voices sounded like a bench of invisible judges pronouncing
sentence.
The dories roved and fished and squabbled till a swell underran the
sea. Then they drew more apart to save their sides, and some one
called that if the swell continued the Virgin would break. A
reckless Galway man with his nephew denied this, hauled up
anchor, and rowed over the very rock itself. Many voices called
them to come away, while others dared them to hold on. As the
smooth-backed rollers passed to the southward, they hove the dory
high and high into the mist, and dropped her in ugly, sucking,
dimpled water, where she spun round her anchor, within a foot or
two of the hidden rock. It was playing with death for mere
bravado; and the boats looked on in uneasy silence till Long
Jack rowed up behind his countrymen and quietly cut their roding.
"Can't ye hear ut knockin'?" he cried. "Pull for you miserable
lives! Pull!"
The men swore and tried to argue as the boat drifted; but the next
swell checked a little, like a man tripping on a carpet. There was a
deep sob and a gathering roar, and the Virgin flung up a couple of
acres of foaming water, white, furious, and ghastly over the shoal
sea. Then all the boats greatly applauded Long Jack, and the
Galway men held their tongue.
"Ain't it elegant?" said Dan, bobbing like a young seal at home.
"She'll break about once every ha'af hour now, 'les the swell piles
up good. What's her reg'lar time when she's at work, Tom Platt?"
"Once ivry fifteen minutes, to the tick. Harve, you've seen the
greatest thing on the Banks; an' but for Long Jack you'd seen some
dead men too."
There came a sound of merriment where the fog lay thicker and
the schooners were ringing their bells. A big bark nosed cautiously
out of the mist, and was received with shouts and cries of, "Come
along, darlin'," from the Irishry.
"Another Frenchman?" said Harvey.
"Hain't you eyes? She's a Baltimore boat; goin' in fear an'
tremblin'," said Dan. "We'll guy the very sticks out of her. Guess
it's the fust time her skipper ever met up with the Fleet this way."
She was a black, buxom, eight-hundred-ton craft. Her mainsail was
looped up, and her topsail flapped undecidedly in what little wind
was moving. Now a bark is feminine beyond all other daughters of
the sea, and this tall, hesitating creature, with her white and gilt
figurehead, looked just like a bewildered woman half lifting her
skirts to cross a muddy street under the jeers of bad little boys.
That was very much her situation. She knew she was somewhere
in the neighbourhood of the Virgin, had caught the roar of it, and
was, therefore, asking her way. This is a small part of what she
heard from the dancing dories:
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