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Page 57
"Hih! Yih! Yoho! Send your letters raound!
All our salt is wetted, an' the anchor's off the graound!
Bend, oh, bend your mains'l, we're back to Yankeeland--
With fifteen hunder' quintal,
An' fifteen hunder' quintal,
'Teen hunder' toppin' quintal,
'Twix' old 'Queereau an' Grand."
The last letters pitched on deck wrapped round pieces of coal, and
the Gloucester men shouted messages to their wives and
womenfolks and owners, while the 'We're Here' finished the
musical ride through the Fleet, her headsails quivering like a man's
hand when he raises it to say good-by.
Harvey very soon discovered that the 'We're Here', with her
riding-sail, strolling from berth to berth, and the 'We're Here'
headed west by south under home canvas, were two very different
boats. There was a bite and kick to the wheel even in "boy's"
weather; he could feel the dead weight in the hold flung forward
mightily across the surges, and the streaming line of bubbles
overside made his eyes dizzy.
Disko kept them busy fiddling with the sails; and when those were
flattened like a racing yacht's, Dan had to wait on the big topsail,
which was put over by hand every time she went about. In spare
moments they pumped, for the packed fish dripped brine, which
does not improve a cargo. But since there was no fishing, Harvey
had time to look at the sea from another point of view. The
low-sided schooner was naturally on most intimate terms with her
surroundings. They saw little of the horizon save when she topped
a swell; and usually she was elbowing, fidgeting, and coasting
her steadfast way through gray, gray-blue, or black hollows
laced across and across with streaks of shivering foam; or
rubbing herself caressingly along the flank of some bigger
water-hill. It was as if she said: "You wouldn't hurt me, surely?
I'm only the little 'We're Here'." Then she would slide away
chuckling softly to herself till she was brought up by some
fresh obstacle. The dullest of folk cannot see this kind of thing
hour after hour through long days without noticing it; and Harvey,
being anything but dull, began to comprehend and enjoy the dry
chorus of wave-tops turning over with a sound of incessant
tearing; the hurry of the winds working across open spaces and
herding the purple-blue cloud-shadows; the splendid upheaval of
the red sunrise; the folding and packing away of the morning
mists, wall after wall withdrawn across the white floors; the salty
glare and blaze of noon; the kiss of rain falling over thousands of
dead, flat square miles; the chilly blackening of everything at the
day's end; and the million wrinkles of the sea under the moonlight,
when the jib-boom solemnly poked at the low stars, and Harvey
went down to get a doughnut from the cook.
But the best fun was when the boys were put on the wheel
together, Tom Platt within hail, and she cuddled her lee-rail down
to the crashing blue, and kept a little home-made rainbow arching
unbroken over her windlass. Then the jaws of the booms whined
against the masts, and the sheets creaked, and the sails filled with
roaring; and when she slid into a hollow she trampled like a
woman tripped in her own silk dress, and came out, her jib wet
half-way up, yearning and peering for the tall twin-lights of
Thatcher's Island.
They left the cold gray of the Bank sea, saw the lumber-ships
making for Quebec by the Straits of St. Lawrence, with the Jersey
salt-brigs from Spain and Sicily; found a friendly northeaster off
Artimon Bank that drove them within view of the East light of
Sable Island,--a sight Disko did not linger over,--and stayed with
them past Western and Le Have, to the northern fringe of George's.
From there they picked up the deeper water, and let her go merrily.
"Hattie's pulling on the string," Dan confided to Harvey. "Hattie an'
Ma. Next Sunday you'll be hirin' a boy to throw water on the
windows to make ye go to sleep. 'Guess you'll keep with us till
your folks come. Do you know the best of gettin' ashore again?"
"Hot bath?" said Harvey. His eyebrows were all white with dried
spray.
"That's good, but a night-shirt's better. I've been dreamin' o'
night-shirts ever since we bent our mainsail. Ye can wiggle your
toes then. Ma'll hev a new one fer me, all washed soft. It's home,
Harve. It's home! Ye can sense it in the air. We're runnin' into the
aidge of a hot wave naow, an' I can smell the bayberries. Wonder
if we'll get in fer supper. Port a trifle."
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