Captains Courageous ..........................................................................................................................................1

Rudyard Kipling......................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I .............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER II ............................................................................................................................................9

CHAPTER III.......................................................................................................................................19

CHAPTER IV........................................................................................................................................31

CHAPTER V.........................................................................................................................................40

CHAPTER VI........................................................................................................................................47

CHAPTER VII .......................................................................................................................................52

CHAPTER VIII.....................................................................................................................................56

CHAPTER IX........................................................................................................................................67

CHAPTER X.........................................................................................................................................81

The weather door of the smokingroom had been left open to the North Atlantic fog, as the big liner rolled

"That Cheyne boy's the biggest nuisance aboard," said a man in a frieze overcoat, shutting the door with a

A whitehaired German reached for a sandwich, and grunted between bites: "I know der breed. Ameriga is

full of dot kind. I dell you you should imbort ropes' ends free under your dariff."

"Pshaw! There isn't any real harm to him. He's more to be pitied than anything," a man from New York

drawled, as he lay at full length along the cushions under the wet skylight. "They've dragged him around

from hotel to hotel ever since he was a kid. I was talking to his mother this morning. She's a lovely lady, but

"Education isn't begun yet." This was a Philadelphian, curled up in a corner. "That boy gets two hundred a

"Yep. That and mines and lumber and shipping. Built one place at San Diego, the old man has; another at Los

Angeles; owns half a dozen railroads, half the lumber on the Pacific slope, and lets his wife spend the

money," the Philadelphian went on lazily. "The West don't suit her, she says. She just tracks around with the

boy and her nerves, trying to find out what'll amuse him, I guess. Florida, Adirondacks, Lakewood, Hot

Springs, New York, and round again. He isn't much more than a secondhand hotel clerk now. When he's

"What's the matter with the old man attending to him personally?" said a voice from the frieze ulster.

"Old man's piling up the rocks. 'Don't want to be disturbed, I guess. He'll find out his error a few years from

Once more the door banged, and a slight, slimbuilt boy perhaps fifteen years old, a hallsmoked cigarette

hanging from one corner of his mouth, leaned in over the high footway. His pasty yellow complexion did not

show well on a person of his years, and his look was a mixture of irresolution, bravado, and very cheap

smartness. He was dressed in a cherrycoloured blazer, knickerbockers, red stockings, and bicycle shoes,

with a red flannel cap at the back of the head. After whistling between his teeth, as he eyed the company, he

said in a loud, high voice: "Say, it's thick outside. You can hear the fishboats squawking all around us. Say,

"Shut the door, Harvey," said the New Yorker. "Shut the door and stay outside. You're not wanted here."

"Who'll stop me?" he answered, deliberately. "Did you pay for my passage, Mister Martin? 'Guess I've as

He picked up some dice from a checkerboard and began throwing, right hand against left.

"Say, gen'elmen, this is deader'n mud. Can't we make a game of poker between us?"

There was no answer, and he puffed his cigarette, swung his legs, and drummed on the table with rather dirty

"In her stateroom, I guess. She's 'most always sick on the ocean. I'm going to give the stewardess fifteen

dollars for looking after her. I don't go down more 'n I can avoid. It makes me feel mysterious to pass that

"Who's apologizing? This is the first time I've crossed the ocean, gen'elmen, and, except the first day, I

haven't been sick one little bit. No, sir!" He brought down his fist with a triumphant bang, wetted his finger,

"Oh, you're a highgrade machine, with the writing in plain sight," the Philadelphian yawned. "You'll

"I know it. I'm an Americanfirst, last, and all the time. I'll show 'em that when I strike Europe. Piff! My cig's

out. I can't smoke the truck the steward sells. Any gen'elman got a real Turkish cig on him?"

The chief engineer entered for a moment, red, smiling, and wet. "Say, Mac," cried Harvey cheerfully, "how

"Vara much in the ordinary way," was the grave reply. "The young are as polite as ever to their elders, an'

A low chuckle came from a corner. The German opened his cigarcase and handed a shiny black cigar to

"Dot is der broper apparatus to smoke, my young friendt," he said. "You vill dry it? Yes? Den you vill be efer

Harvey lit the unlovely thing with a flourish: he felt that he was getting on in grownup society.

"It would take more 'n this to keel me over," he said, ignorant that he was lighting that terrible article, a

"Dot we shall bresently see," said the German. "Where are we now, Mr. Mactonal'?"

"Just there or thereabouts, Mr. Schaefer," said the engineer. "We'll be on the Grand Bank tonight; but in a

general way o' speaking', we're all among the fishingfleet now. We've shaved three dories an' near scalped

"You like my cigar, eh?" the German asked, for Harvey's eyes were full of tears.

"Guess we've slowed down a little, haven't we? I'll skip out and see what the log says."

Harvey staggered over the wet decks to the nearest rail. He was very unhappy; but he saw the decksteward

lashing chairs together, and, since he had boasted before the man that he was never seasick, his pride made

him go aft to the secondsaloon deck at the stern, which was finished in a turtleback. The deck was

deserted, and he crawled to the extreme end of it, near the flagpole. There he doubled up in limp agony, for

the Wheeling "stag" joined with the surge and jar of the screw to sieve out his soul. His head swelled; sparks

of fire danced before his eyes; his body seemed to lose weight, while his heels wavered in the breeze. He was

fainting from seasickness, and a roll of the ship tilted him over the rail on to the smooth lip of the turtleback.

Then a low, gray motherwave swung out of the fog, tucked Harvey under one arm, so to speak, and pulled

him off and away to leeward; the great green closed over him, and he went quietly to sleep.

He was roused by the sound of a dinnerhorn such as they used to blow at a summerschool he had once

attended in the Adirondacks. Slowly he remembered that he was Harvey Cheyne, drowned and dead in

midocean, but was too weak to fit things together. A new smell filled his nostrils; wet and clammy chills ran

down his back, and he was helplessly full of salt water. When he opened his eyes, he perceived that he was

still on the top of the sea, for it was running round him in silvercoloured hills, and he was lying on a pile of

"It's no good," thought the boy. "I'm dead, sure enough, and this thing is in charge."

He groaned, and the figure turned its head, showing a pair of little gold rings half hidden in curly black hair.

With a swift jerk he sculled the flickering boathead on to a foamless sea that lifted her twenty full feet, only

to slide her into a glassy pit beyond. But this mountainclimbing did not interrupt bluejersey's talk. "Fine

good job, I say, that I catch you. Eh, whaat? Better good job, I say, your boat not catch me. How you come

"Just in time I blow my horn, and your boat she yaw a little. Then I see you come all down. Eh, whaat? I

think you are cut into baits by the screw, but you dreeftdreeft to me, and I make a big fish of you. So you

"Where am I?" said Harvey, who could not see that life was particularly safe where he lay.

"You are with me in the doryManuel my name, and I come from schooner We're Here of Gloucester. I live

He seemed to have two pairs of bands and a head of castiron, for, not content with blowing through a big

conchshell, he must needs stand up to it, swaying with the sway of the flatbottomed dory, and send a

grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. How long this entertainment lasted, Harvey could not remember,

for he lay back terrified at the sight of the smoking swells. He fancied he heard a gun and a horn and

shouting. Something bigger than the dory, but quite as lively, loomed alongside. Several voices talked at

once; he was dropped into a dark, heaving hole, where men in oilskins gave him a hot drink and took off his

When he waked he listened for the first breakfastbell on the steamer, wondering why his stateroom had

grown so small. Turning, he looked into a narrow, triangular cave, lit by a lamp hung against a huge square

beam. A threecornered table within arm's reach ran from the angle of the bows to the foremast. At the after

end, behind a wellused Plymouth stove, sat a boy about his own age, with a flat red face and a pair of

twinkling gray eyes. He was dressed in a blue jersey and high rubber boots. Several pairs of the same sort of

footwear, an old cap, and some wornout woollen socks lay on the floor, and black and yellow oilskins

swayed to and fro beside the bunks. The place was packed as full of smells as a bale is of cotton. The oilskins

had a peculiarly thick flavor of their own which made a sort of background to the smells of fried fish, burnt

grease, paint, pepper, and stale tobacco; but these, again, were all hooped together by one encircling smell of

ship and salt water. Harvey saw with disgust that there were no sheets on his bedplace. He was lying on a

piece of dingy ticking full of lumps and nubbles. Then, too, the boat's motion was not that of a steamer. She

was neither sliding nor rolling, but rather wriggling herself about in a silly, aimless way, like a colt at the end

of a halter. Waternoises ran by close to his ear, and beams creaked and whined about him. All these things

"Feelin' better?" said the boy, with a grin. ".Hev some coffee?" He brought a tin cup full and sweetened it

"Isn't there milk?" said Harvey, looking round the dark double tier of bunks as if he expected to find a cow

"Well, no," said the boy. "Ner there ain't likely to be till 'baout midSeptember. 'Tain't bad coffee. I made it.',

Harvey drank in silence, and the boy handed him a plate full of pieces of crisp fried pork, which he ate

"I've dried your clothes. Guess they've shrunk some," said the boy. "They ain't our style muchnone of 'em.

"That's good," the boy said heartily. "Fix yerself an' go on deck. Dad wants to see you. I'm his son,Dan, they

call me,an' I'm cook's helper an' everything else aboard that's too dirty for the men. There ain't no boy here

'cep' me sence Otto went overboardan' he was only a Dutchy, an' twenty year old at that. How d'you come to

"'Twasn't a calm," said Harvey, sulkily. "It was a gale, and I was seasick. Guess I must have rolled over the

"There was a little common swell yes'day an' last night," said the boy. "But ef thet's your notion of a

gale" He whistled. "You'll know more 'fore you're through. Hurry! Dad's waitin'."

Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all his life received a direct ordernever, at

least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of. obedience and the reasons for

the request. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself

walked on the edge of nervous prostration. He could not see why he should be expected to hurry for any

man's pleasure, and said so. "Your dad can come down here. if he's so anxious to talk to me. I want him to

Dan opened his eyes as the size and beauty of this joke dawned on him. "Say, Dad!" he shouted up the foc'sle

hatch, "he says you kin slip down an' see him ef you're anxious that way. 'Hear, Dad?"

The answer came back in the deepest voice Harvey had ever heard from a human chest: "Quit foolin', Dan,

Dan sniggered, and threw Harvey his warped bicycle shoes. There was something in the tones on the deck

that made the boy dissemble his extreme rage and console himself with the thought of gradually unfolding

the tale of his own and his father's wealth on the voyage home. This rescue would certainly make him a hero

among his friends for life. He hoisted himself on deck up a perpendicular ladder, and stumbled aft, over a

score of obstructions, to where a small, thickset, cleanshaven man with gray eyebrows sat on a step that

led up to the quarterdeck. The swell had passed in the night, leaving a long, oily sea, dotted round the

horizon with the sails of a dozen fishingboats. Between them lay little black specks, showing where the

dories were out fishing. The schooner, with a triangular ridingsail on the mainmast, played easily at anchor,

"Mornin'Good afternoon, I should say. You've nigh slep' the clock round, young feller," was the greeting.

"Mornin'," said Harvey. He did not like being called "young feller"; and, as one rescued from drowning,

expected sympathy. His mother suffered agonies whenever he got his feet wet; but this mariner did not seem

"Naow let's hear all abaout it. It's quite providential, first an' last, fer all concerned. What might be your

name? Where from (we mistrust it's Noo York), an' where baound (we mistrust it's Europe)?"

Harvey gave his name, the name of the steamer, and a short history of the accident, winding up with a

demand to be taken back immediately to New York, where his father would pay anything any one chose to

"H'm," said the shaven man, quite unmoved by the end of Harvey's speech. "I can't say we think special of

any man, or boy even, that falls overboard from that kind o' packet in a flat ca'am. Least of all when his

"Excuse!" cried Harvey. "D'you suppose I'd fall overboard into your dirty little boat for fun?"

"Not knowin' what your notions o' fun may be, I can't rightly say, young feller. But if I was you, I wouldn't

call the boat which, under Providence, was the means o' savin' ye, names. In the first place, it's blame

irreligious. In the second, it's annoyin' to my feelin'san' I'm Disko Troop o' the We're Here o' Gloucester,

"I don't know and I don't care," said Harvey. "I'm grateful enough for being saved and all that, of course! but

I want you to understand that the sooner you take me back to New York the better it'll pay you."

"Meanin'haow?" Troop raised one shaggy eyebrow over a suspiciously mild blue eye.

"Dollars and cents," said Harvey, delighted to think that he was making an impression. "Cold dollars and

cents." He thrust a hand into a pocket, and threw out his stomach a little, which was his way of being grand.

"You've done the best day's work you ever did in your life when you pulled me in. I'm all the son Harvey

"And if you don't know who Harvey Cheyne is, you don't know muchthat's all. Now turn her around and

Harvey had a notion that the greater part of America was filled with people discussing and envying his

"Mebbe I do, an' mebbe I don't. Take a reef in your stummick, young feller. It's full o' my vittles."

Harvey heard a chuckle from Dan, who was pretending to be busy by the stumpforemast, and blood rushed

to his face. "We'll pay for that too," he said. "When do you suppose we shall get to New York?"

"I don't use Noo York any. Ner Boston. We may see Eastern Point about September; an' your paI'm real

sorry I hain't heerd tell of himmay give me ten dollars efter all your talk. Then o' course he mayn't."

"Ten dollars! Why, see here, I" Harvey dived into his pocket for the wad of bills. All he brought up was a

"Not lawful currency; an' bad for the lungs. Heave 'em overboard, young feller, and try agin."

"A hundred and thirtyfour dollarsall stolen," said Harvey, hunting wildly through his pockets. "Give them

A curious change flitted across old Troop's hard face. "What might you have been doin' at your time o' life

"It was part of my pocketmoneyfor a month." This Harvey thought would be a knockdown blow, and it

"Oh! One hundred and thirtyfour dollars is only part of his pocket moneyfor one month only! You don't

remember hittin' anything when you fell over, do you? Crack agin a stanchion, le's say. Old man Hasken o'

the East Wind"Troop seemed to be talking to himself"he tripped on a hatch an' butted the mainmast

with his headhardish. 'Baout three weeks afterwards, old man Hasken he would hev it that the East Wind

was a commercedestroyin' man o'war, an' so he declared war on Sable Island because it was Bridish, an'

the shoals run aout too far. They sewed him up in a bedbag, his head an' feet appearin', fer the rest o' the

Harvey choked with rage, but Troop went on consolingly: "We're sorry fer you. We're very sorry fer youan'

"Suit yourself. We stole it ef it's any comfort to you. Naow, abaout goin' back. Allowin' we could do it, which

we can't, you ain't in no fit state to go back to your home, an' we've jest come on to the Banks, workin' fer our

bread. We don't see the ha'af of a hundred dollars a month, let alone pocketmoney; an' with good luck we'll

"Butbut it's May now, and I can't stay here doin' nothing just because you want to fish. I can't, I tell you!"

"Right an' jest; jest an' right. No one asks you to do nothin'. There's a heap as you can do, for Otto he went

overboard on Le Have. I mistrust he lost his grip in a gale we fund there. Anyways, he never come back to

deny it. You've turned up, plain, plumb providential for all concerned. I mistrust, though, there's ruther few

"I can make it lively for you and your crowd when we get ashore," said Harvey, with a vicious nod,

"Excep' talk. I'd forgot that. You ain't asked to talk more'n you've a mind to aboard the We're Here. Keep

your eyes open, an' help Dan to do ez he's bid, an' sechlike, an' I'll give youyou ain't wuth it, but I'll

giveten an' a ha'af a month; say thirtyfive at the end o' the trip. A little work will ease up your head, and

"She's on the steamer," said Harvey, his eyes flling with tears. "Take me to New York at once."

"Poor womanpoor woman! When she has you back she'll forgit it all, though. There's eight of us on the!

We're Here, an' ef we went back naowit's more'n a thousand milewe'd lose the season. The men they

"He'd try. I don't doubt he'd try," said Troop; "but a whole season's catch is eight men's bread; an' you'll be

better in your health when you see him in the fall. Go forward an' help Dan. It's ten an' a ha'af a month, e I

"I won't! My father will give you enough to buy this dirty little fishkettle"Harvey stamped on the

deck"ten times over, if you take me to New York safe; andandyou're in a hundred and thirty by me,

"How? You know how, well enough. On top of all that, you want me to do menial work"Harvey was very

Troop regarded the top of the mainmast with deep interest for a while, as Harvey harangued fiercely all

"Hsh!" he said at last. "I'm figurin' out my responsibilities in my own mind. It's a matter o' jedgment."

Dan stole up and plucked Harvey by the elbow. "Don't go to tamperin' with Dad any more," he pleaded.

"You've called him a thief two or three times over, an' he don't take that from any livin' bein'."

"I won't!" Harvey almost shrieked, disregarding the advice, and still Troop meditated.

"Seems kinder unneighbourly," he said at last, his eye travelling down to Harvey. "I don't blame you, not a

mite, young feeler, nor you won't blame me when the bile's out o' your systim. Be sure you sense what I say?

Ten an' a ha'af fer second boy on the schooneran' all foundfer to teach you an' fer the sake o' your health.

He did not exactly remember what followed. He was lying in the scuppers, holding on to a nose that bled

"Dan," he said to his son, "I was sot agin this young feeler when I first saw him on account o' hasty

jedgments. Never you be led astray by hasty jedgments, Dan. Naow I'm sorry for him, because he's clear

distracted in his upper works. He ain't responsible fer the names he's give me, nor fer his other

statementsnor fer jumpin' overboard, which I'm abaout ha'af convinced he did. You he gentle with him,

Dan, 'r I'll give you twice what I've give him. Them hemmeridges clears the head. Let him sluice it off!"

Troop went down solemnly into the cabin, where he and the older men bunked, leaving Dan to comfort the

"I warned ye," said Dan, as the drops fell thick and fast on the dark, oiled planking. "Dad ain't noways hasty,

but you fair earned it. Pshaw! there's no sense takin' on so." Harvey's shoulders were rising and falling in

spasms of dry sobbing. "I know the feelin'. First time Dad laid me out was the lastand that was my first trip.

"It does," moaned Harvey. "That man's either crazy or drunk, andand I can't do anything."

"Don't say that to Dad," whispered Dan. "He's set agin all liquor, an'well, he told me you was the madman.

Harvey sat up, mopped his nose, and told the story of the missing wad of bills. "I'm not crazy," he wound up.

"Onlyyour father has never seen more than a fivedollar bill at a time, and my father could buy up this boat

"You don't know what the We're Here's worth. Your dad must hev a pile o' money. How did he git it? Dad

"I've read o' that kind o' business. Out West, too? Does he go around with a pistol on a trickpony, same ez

the circus? They call that the Wild West, and I've heard that their spurs an' bridles was solid silver."

"You are a chump!" said Harvey, amused in spite of himself. "My father hasn't any use for ponies. When he

"No. His own private car, of course. You've seen a private car some time in your life?"

"Slatin Beeman he hez one," said Dan, cautiously. "I saw her at the Union Depot in Boston, with three

niggers hoggin' her run.', (Dan meant cleaning the windows.) "But Slatin Beeman he owns 'baout every

railroad on Long Island, they say, an' they say he's bought 'baout ha'af Noo Hampshire an' run a line fence

around her, an' filled her up with lions an' tigers an' bears an' buffalo an' crocodiles an' such all. Slatin

"Well, my father's what they call a multimillionaire, and he has two private cars. One's named for me, the

"Hold on," said Dan. "Dad don't ever let me swear, but I guess you can. 'Fore we go ahead, I want you to say

"Hope I may die right here," said Harvey, "if every word I've spoken isn't the cold truth."

"Hundred an' thirtyfour dollars an' all?" said Dan. "I heard ye talkin' to Dad, an' I ha'af looked you'd be

Harvey protested himself red in the face. Dan was a shrewd young person along his own lines, and ten

minutes' questioning convinced him that Harvey was not lyingmuch. Besides, he had hound himself by the

most terrible oath known to boyhood, and yet he sat, alive, with a redended nose, in the scuppers,

"Gosh!" said Dan at last from the very bottom of his soul when Harvey had completed an inventory of the car

named in his honour. Then a grin of mischievous delight overspread his broad face. "I believe you, Harvey.

"He'll be mad clear through. Dad jest hates to be mistook in his jedgments." Dan lay back and slapped his

thigh. "Oh, Harvey, don't you spile the catch by lettin' on." do with it. "That's all right," he said. Then he

looked down confusedly. "Seems to me that for a fellow just saved from drowning I haven't been over and

"Well, you was shook up and silly," said Dan. "Anyway there was only Dad an' me aboard to see it. The cook

"I might have thought about losing the bills that way," Harvey said, half to himself, "instead of calling

"You'll see," said Harvey, and he stepped, rather groggily, for his head was still singing, to the cabin steps

where the little ship's clock hung in plain sight of the wheel. Troop, in the chocolateandyellow painted

cabin, was busy with a notebook and an enormous black pencil which he sucked hard from time to time.

"Well, II'm here to take things back," said Harvey very quickly. "When a man's saved from drowning"

Troop heaved himself slowly off the locker he was sitting on and held out an eleveninch hand. "I mistrusted

'twould do you sights o' good; an' this shows I weren't mistook in my jedgments." A smothered chuckle on

deck caught his ear. "I am very seldom mistook in my jedgments." The eleveninch hand closed on Harvey's,

numbing it to the elbow. "We'll put a little more gristle to that 'fore we've done with you, young feller; an' I

don't think any worse of ye fer anythin' the's gone by. You wasn't fairly responsible. Go right abaout your

"You're white," said Dan, as Harvey regained the deck, flushed to the tips of his ears.

"I didn't mean that way. I heard what Dad said. When Dad allows he don't think the worse of any man, Dad's

give himself away. He hates to be mistook in his jedgments too. Ho! ho! Onct Dad has a jedgment, he'd

sooner dip his colours to the British than change it. I'm glad it's settled right eend up. Dad's right when he

says he can't take you back. It's all the livin' we make herefishin'. The men'll be back like sharks after a dead

"Guess I have," said Harvey, dolefully, looking at the tangle of ropes and blocks overhead.

"She's a daisy," said Dan, enthusiastically, misunderstanding the look. "Wait till our mainsail's bent, an' she

walks home with all her salt wet. There's some work first, though." He pointed down into the darkness of the

"You an' me an' a few more hev got to fill it," said Dan. "That's where the fish goes."

"Well, no. They're so's to be ruther deadan' flatan' salt. There's a hundred hogshead o' salt in the bins, an'

"In the sea they say, in the boats we pray," said Dan, quoting a fisherman's proverb. "You come in last night

"You an' me we'll sluice that out when they're through. 'Send we'll hev full pens tonight! I've seen her down

ha'af a foot with fish waitin' to clean, an' we stood to the tables till we was splittin' ourselves instid o' them,

we was so sleepy. Yes, they're comm' in naow." Dan looked over the low bulwarks at half a dozen dories

The low sun made the water all purple and pinkish, with golden lights on the barrels of the long swells, and

blue and green mackerel shades in the hollows. Each schooner in sight seemed to be pulling her dories

towards her by invisible strings, and the little black figures in the tiny boats pulled like clockwork toys.

"They've struck on good," said Dan, between his halfshut eyes. "Manuel hain't room fer another fish. Low

"Last boat to the south'ard. He fund you last night," said Dan, pointing. "Manuel rows Portugoosey; ye can't

mistake him. East o' himhe's a heap better'n he rowsis Pennsylvania. Loaded with saleratus, by the looks of

him. East o' himsee how pretty they string out all alongwith the humpy shoulders, is Long Jack. He's a

Galway man inhabitin' South Boston, where they all live mostly, an' mostly them Galway men are good in a

boat. North, away yonderyou'll hear him tune up in a minute is Tom Platt. Man o'war's man he was on

the old Ohio first of our navy, he says, to go araound the Horn. He never talks of much else, 'cept when he

A melodious bellow stole across the water from the northern dory. Harvey heard something about

"Bring forth the chart, the doleful chart, See where them mountings meet! The clouds are thick around their

"Full boat," said Dan, with a chuckle. "II he give us '0 Captain' it's topping' too!"

"And naow to thee, 0 Capting, Most earnestly I pray, That they shall never bury me In church or cloister

"Double game for Tom Platt. He'll tell you all about the old Ohio tomorrow. 'See that blue dory behind him?

He's my uncle,Dad's own brother,an' ef there's any bad luck loose on the Banks she'll fetch up agin Uncle

Salters, sure. Look how tender he's rowin'. I'll lay my wage and share he's the only man stung up todayan'

"Strawberries, mostly. Pumpkins, sometimes, an' sometimes lemons an' cucumbers. Yes, he's stung up from

his elbows down. That man's luck's perfectly paralyzin'. Naow we'll take abolt o' the tackles an' hist 'em in.

Is it true what you told me jest now, that you never done a hand's turn o' work in all your born life? Must feel

"I'm going to try to work, anyway," Harvey replied stoutly. "Only it's all dead new."

Harvey grabbed at a rope and long iron hook dangling from one of the stays of the mainmast, while Dan

pulled down another that ran from something he called a 'toppinglift," as Manuel drew alongside in his

loaded dory. The Portuguese smiled a brilliant smile that Harvey learned to know well later, and with a

shorthandled fork began to throw fish into the pen on deck. "Two hundred and thirtyone," he shouted.

"Give him the hook," said Dan, and Harvey ran it into Manuel's hands. He slipped it through a loop of rope at

the dory's bow, caught Dan's tackle, hooked it to the sternbecket, and clambered into the schooner.

"Pull!" shouted Dan, and Harvey pulled, astonished to find how easily the dory rose.

"Hold on, she don't nest in the crosstrees!" Dan laughed; and Harvey held on, for the boat lay in the air above

"Lower away," Dan shouted, and as Harvey lowered, Dan swayed the light boat with one hand till it landed

softly just behind the mainmast. "They don't weigh nothin' empty. The was right smart fer a passenger.

"Ah ha!" said Manuel, holding out a brown hand. "You are some pretty well now? This time last night the

"I'mI'm ever so grateful," Harvey stammered, and his unfortunate hand stole to his pocket once more, but he

remembered that he had no money to offer. When he knew Manuel better the mere thought of the mistake he

"There is no to be thankful for to me!" said Manuel. "How shall I leave you dreeft, dreeft all around the

Banks? Now you are a fisherman eh, whaat? Ouh! Auh!" He bent backward and forward stiffly from the

"I have not cleaned boat today. Too busy. They struck on queek. Danny, my son, clean for me."

Harvey moved forward at once. Here was something he could do for the man who had saved his life.

Dan threw him a swab, and he leaned over the dory, mopping up the slime clumsily, but with great

goodwill. "Hike out the footboards; they slide in them grooves," said Dan. "Swab 'em an' lay 'em down.

"Manuel, you take the tackle. I'll fix the tables. Harvey, clear Manuel's boat. Long Jack's nestin' on the top of

Harvey looked up from his swabbing at the bottom of another dory just above his head.

"Jest like the Injian puzzleboxes, ain't they?" said Dan, as the one boat dropped into the other.

"Takes to ut like a duck to water," said Long Jack, a grizzlychinned, longlipped Galway man, bending to

and fro exactly as Manuel had done. Disko in the cabin growled up the hatchway, and they could hear him

"Wan hunder an' fortynine an' a halfbad luck to ye, Discobolus!" said Long Jack. "I'm murderin' meself to

"Two hundred and three. let's look at the passenger!" The speaker was even larger than the Galway man, and

his face was made curious by a purple Cut running slantways from his left eye to the right corner of his

Not knowing what else to do, Harvey swabbed each dory as it came down, pulled out the footboards, and

"He's caught on good," said the scarred man, who was Toni Platt, watching him critically. "There are two

ways o' doin' everything. One's fisherfashionany end first an, a slippery hitch over allan' the other's

"What we did on the old Ohio!" Dan interrupted, brushing into the knot of men with a long board on legs.

He jammed one end of the board into two nicks in the bulwarks, kicked out the leg, and ducked just in time to

"Guess they was swiveleyed, then, fer it didn't git home, and I know who'll find his boots on the maintruck

"Danny, ye lie on the cable an' sleep all day," said Long Jack. "You're the hoight av impidence, an' I'm

"His name's Harvey," said Dan, waving two strangely shaped knives, "an' he'll be worth five of any Sou'

Boston clamdigger 'fore long." He laid the knives tastefully on the table, cocked his head on one side, and

"I think it's fortytwo," said a small voice overside, and there was a roar of laughter as another voice

answered, "Then my luck's turned fer onct, 'caze I'm fortyfive, though I be stung outer all shape."

"It's Penn an' Uncle Salters caountin' catch. This beats the circus any day," said Dan. "Jest look at 'em!"

"I'll count again, then," the voice replied meekly. The two dories swung together and bunted into the

"Patience o' Jerusalem!" snapped Uncle Salters, backing water with a splash. "What possest a farmer like you

"I am sorry, Mr. Salters. I came to sea on account of nervous dyspepsia. You advised me, I think."

"You an' your nervis dyspepsy be drowned in the Whalehole," roared Uncle Salters, a fat and tubby little

"Don't see as it could be fortyfive. I'm fortyfive," said Uncle Salters. "You count keerful, Penn."

Disko Troop came out of the cabin. "Salters, you pitch your fish in naow at once," he said in the tone of

"Mother av delight! He's forkin' them wan by wan," howled Long Jack, as Uncle Salters got to work

laboriously; the little man in the other dory counting a line of notches on the gunwale.

"That was last week's catch," he said, looking up plaintively, his forefinger where he had left off.

Manuel nudged Dan, who darted to the aftertackle, and, leaning far overside, slipped the hook into the

sternrope as Manuel made her fast forward. The others pulled gallantly and swung the boat inman, fish,

"One, two, fournine," said Tom Platt, counting with a practised eye. "Fortyseven. Penn, you're it!" Dan let

the aftertackle run, and slid him out of the stern on to the deck amid a torrent of his own fish.

"Hold on!" roared Uncle Salters, bobbing by the waist. "Hold on, I'm a bit mixed in my caount."

He had no time to protest, but was hove inboard and treated like "Pennsylvania."

"Fortyone," said Tom Platt. "Beat by a farmer, Salters. An' you sech a sailor, too!"

"'Tweren't fair caount," said he, stumbling out of the pen; "an' I'm stung up all to pieces."

"Some folks will find strawberrybottom," said Dan, addressing the newly risen moon, "ef they hev to dive

"An' others," said Uncle Salters, "eats the fat o' the land in sloth, an' mocks their own bloodkin."

"Seat ye! Seat ye!" a voice Harvey had not heard called from the foc'sle. Disko Troop, Tom Platt, Long Jack,

and Salters went forward on the word. Little Penn bent above his square deepsea reel and the tangled

codlines; Manuel lay down full length on the deck, and Dan dropped into the hold, where Harvey heard him

"Salt," he said, returning. "Soon as we're through supper we git to dressingdown. You'll pitch to Dad. Tom

Platt an' Dad they stow together, an' you'll hear 'em arguin'. We're second ha'af, you an' me an' Manuel an'

"They'll be through in a minute. Suff! She smells good tonight. Dad ships a good cook ef he do suffer with

his brother. It's a full catch today, Aeneid it?" He pointed at the pens piled high with cod. "What water did ye

"Twentyfife father," said the Portuguese, sleepily. "They strike on good an' queek. Some day I show you,

The moon was beginning to walk on the still sea before the elder men came aft. The cook had no need to cry

"second half." Dan and Manuel were down the hatch and at table ere Tom Platt, last and most deliberate of

the elders, had finished wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Harvey followed Penn, and sat down

before a tin pan of cod's tongues and sounds, mixed with scraps of pork and fried potato, a loaf of hot bread,

and some black and powerful coffee. Hungry as they were, they waited while "Pennsylvania" solemnly asked

a blessing. Then they stoked in silence till Dan drew a breath over his tin cup and demanded of Harvey how

The cook was a huge, jetblack negro, and, unlike all the negroes Harvey had met, did not talk, contenting

"See, Harvey," said Dan, rapping with his fork on the table, "it's jest as I said. The young an' handsome

menlike me an' Pennsy an' you an' Manuelwe're second ha'af, an' we eats when the first ha'af are through.

They're the old fish; an' they're mean an' humpy, an' their stummicks has to be humoured; so they come first,

"'Nough to get along. Not much o' anything we know. His natural tongue's kinder curious. Comes from the

innards of Cape Breton, he does, where the farmers speak homemade Scotch. Cape Breton's full o' niggers

whose folk run in there durin' aour war, an' they talk like farmersall huffychuffy."

"That is not Scotch," said "Pennsylvania." "That is Gaelic. So I read in a book."

"Penn reads a heap. Most of what he says is so'cep' when it comes to a caount o' fisheh?"

"Does your father just let them say how many they've caught without checking them?" said Harvey.

"Was a man once lied for his catch," Manuel put in. "Lied every day. Fife, ten, twentyfife more fish than

"Ah! Them West Shore Frenchmen don't caount anyway. Stands to reason they can't caount Ef you run acrost

any of their soft hooks, Harvey, you'll know why," said Dan, with an awful contempt.

The shadow of the masts and rigging, with the neverfurled ridingsail, rolled to and fro on the heaving deck

in the moonlight; and the pile of fish by the stern shone like a dump of fluid silver. In the hold there were

tramplings and rumblings where Disko Troop and Tom Platt moved among the saltbins. Dan passed Harvey

a pitchfork, and led him to the inboard end of the rough table, where Uncle Salters was drumming impatiently

"You pitch to Dan an' Tom Platt down the hatch, an' take keer Uncle Salters don't cut yer eye out," said Dan,

Penn and Manuel stood knee deep among cod in the pen, flourishing drawn knives. Long Jack, a basket at his

feet and mittens on his hands, faced Uncle Salters at the table, and Harvey stared at the pitchfork and the tub.

"Hi!" shouted Manuel, stooping to the fish, and bringing one up with a finger under its gill and a finger in its

eyes. He laid it on the edge of the pen; the knifeblade glimmered with a sound of tearing, and the fish, slit

from throat to vent, with a nick on either side of the neck, dropped at Long Jack's feet.

"Hi!" said Long Jack, with a scoop of his mittened hand. The cod's liver dropped in the basket. Another

wrench and scoop sent the head and offal flying, and the empty fish slid across to Uncle Salters, who snorted

fiercely. There was another sound of tearing, the backbone flew over the bulwarks, and the fish, headless,

gutted, and open, splashed in the tub, sending the salt water into Harvey's astonished mouth. After the first

yell, the men were silent. The cod moved along as though they were alive, and long ere Harvey had ceased

"Pitch!" grunted Uncle Salters, without turning his head, and Harvey pitched the fish by twos and threes

Indeed, it looked a little as though the round uncle were cutting magazine pages against time. Manuel's body,

cramped over from the hips, stayed like a statue; but his long arms grabbed the fish without ceasing. Little

Penn toiled valiantly, but it was easy to see he was weak. Once or twice Manuel found time to help him

without breaking the chain of supplies, and once Manuel howled because he had caught his finger in a

Frenchman's hook. These hooks are made of soft metal, to be rebent after use; but the cod very often get

away with them and are hooked again elsewhere; and that is one of the many reasons why the Gloucester

Down below, the rasping sound of rough salt rubbed on rough flesh sounded like the whirring of a

grindstonesteady undertune to the "clicknick" of knives in the pen; the wrench and shloop of torn heads,

dropped liver, and flying offal; the "caraaah" of Uncle Salters's knife scooping away backbones; and the flap

At the end of an hour Harvey would have given the world to rest; for fresh, wet cod weigh more than you

would think, and his back ached with the steady pitching. But he felt for the first time in his life that he was

one of the working gang of men, took pride in the thought, and held on sullenly.

"Knife oh!" shouted Uncle Salters at last. Penn doubled up, gasping among the fish, Manuel bowed back and

forth to supple himself, and Long Jack leaned over the bulwarks. The cook appeared, noiseless as a black

Harvey saw half a dozen knives stuck in a cleat in the hatch combing. He dealt these around, taking over the

He was back in a minute with a big dipperful of stale brown water which tasted like nectar, and loosed the

"These are cod," said Disko. "They ain't Damarskus figs, Tom Platt, nor yet silver bars. I've told you that ever

"A matter o' seven seasons," returned Tom Platt coolly. "Good stowin's good stowin' all the same, an' there's

a right an' a wrong way o' stowin' ballast even. If you'd ever seen four hundred ton o' iron set into the~"

"Hi!" With a yell from Manuel the work began again, and never stopped till the pen was empty. The instant

the last fish was down, Disko Troop rolled alt to the cabin with his brother; Manuel and Long Jack went

forward; Tom Platt only waited long enough to slide home the hatch ere he too disappeared. In half a minute

Harvey heard deep snores in the cabin, and he was staring blankly at Dan and Penn.

"I did a little better that time, Danny," said Penn, whose eyelids were heavy with sleep. "But I think it is my

"'Wouldn't hev your conscience fer a thousand quintal," said Dan. "Turn in, Penn. You've no call to do boy's

work. Draw a bucket, Harvey. Oh, Penn, dump these in the gurrybutt 'fore you sleep. Kin you keep awake

Penn took up the heavy basket of fishlivers, emptied them into a cask with a hinged top lashed by the

"Boys clean up after dressin' down an' first watch in ca'am weather is boy's watch on the We're Here." Dan

sluiced the pen energetically, unshipped the table, set it up to dry in the moonlight, ran the red knifeblades

through a wad of oakum, and began to sharpen them on a tiny grindstone, as Harvey threw offal and

At the first splash a silverywhite ghost rose bolt upright from the oily water and sighed a weird whistling

"Grampus," said he. "Beggin' fer fishheads. They upeend the way when they're hungry. Breath on him like

the doleful tombs, hain't he?" A horrible stench of decayed fish filled the air as the pillar of white sank, and

the water bubbled oilily. "Hain't ye never seen a grampus upeend before? You'll see 'em by hundreds 'fore

ye're through. Say, it's good to hev a boy aboard again. Otto was too old, an' a Dutchy at that. Him an' me we

fought consid'ble. 'Wouldn't ha' keered fer that ef he'd hed a Christian tongue in his head. Sleepy?"

"Mustn't sleep on watch. Rouse up an' see ef our anchorlight's bright an' shinin'. You're on watch now,

"Jest when things happen, Dad says. Fine weather's good sleepin', an' 'fore you know, mebbe, you're cut in

two by a liner, an' seventeen brassbound officers, all gen'elmen, lift their hand to it that your lights was aout

an' there was a thick fog. Harve, I've kinder took to you, but ef you nod onet more I'll lay into you with a

The moon, who sees many strange things on the Banks, looked down on a slim youth in knickerbockers and a

red jersey, staggering around the cluttered decks of a seventyton schooner, while behind him, waving a

knotted rope, walked, after the manner of an executioner, a boy who yawned and nodded between the blows

The lashed wheel groaned and kicked softly, the ridingsail slatted a little in the shifts of the light wind, the

windlass creaked, and the miserable procession continued. Harvey expostulated, threatened, whimpered, and

at last wept outright, while Dan, the words clotting on his tongue, spoke of the beauty of watchfulness and

slashed away with the rope's end, punishing the dories as often as he hit Harvey. At last the clock in the cabin

struck ten, and upon the tenth stroke little Penn crept on deck. He found two boys in two tumbled heaps side

by side on the main hatch, so deeply asleep that he actually rolled them to their berths.

It was the fortyfathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening.

They emptied a big tin dish of juicy fragments of fishthe bloodends the cook had collected overnight. They

cleaned up the plates and pans of the elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal,

swabbed down the foc'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook, and investigated the forehold,

where the boat's stores were stacked. It was another perfect daysoft, mild, and clear; and Harvey breathed to

More schooners had crept up in the night, and the long blue seas were full of sails and dories. Far away on the

horizon, the smoke of some liner, her hull invisible, smudged the blue, and to eastward a big ship's

topgallant sails, just lifting, made a square nick in it. Disko Troop was smoking by the roof of the cabin~ne

"When Dad kerfiummoxes that way," said Dan in a whisper, "he's doin' some highline thinkin' fer all hands.

I'll lay my wage an' share we'll make berth soon. Dad he knows the cod, an' the Fleet they know Dad knows.

'See 'em comm' up one by one, lookin' fer nothin' in particular, o' course, but scrowgin' on us all the time?

There's the Prince Leboo; she's a Chatham boat. She's crep' up sence last night. An' see that big one with a

patch in her foresail an' a new jib? She's the Carrie Pitman from West Chatham. She won't keep her canvas

long onless her luck's changed since last season. She don't do much 'cep' drift. There ain't an anchor made 'II

hold her. . . . When the smoke puffs up in little rings like that, Dad's studyin' the fish. Ef we speak to him

Disko Troop stared forward, the pipe between his teeth, with eyes that saw nothing. As his son said, he was

studying the fishpitting his knowledge and experience on the Banks against the roving cod in his own sea.

He accepted the presence of the inquisitive schooners on the horizon as a compliment to his powers. But now

that it was paid, he wished to draw away and make his berth alone, till it was time to go up to the Virgin and

fish in the streets of that roaring town upon the waters. So Disko Troop thought of recent weather, and gales,

currents, foodsupplies, and other domestic arrangements, from the point of view of a twentypound cod;

was, in fact, for an hour a cod himself, and looked remarkably like one. Then he removed the pipe from his

"Dad," said Dan, "we've done our chores. Can't we go overside a piece? It's good catchin' weather."

"Not in that cherrycoloured rig ner them ha'af baked brown shoes. Give him suthin' fit to wear."

"Dad's pleasedthat settles it," said Dan, delightedly, dragging Harvey into the cabin, while Troop pitched a

key down the steps. "Dad keeps my spare rig where he kin overhaul it, 'cause Ma sez I'm keerless." He

rummaged through a locker, and in less than three minutes Harvey was adorned with fisherman's rubber

boots that came half up his thigh, a heavy blue jersey well darned at the elbows, a pair of nippers, and a

"Keep nigh an' handy," said Troop "an' don't go visitin' racund the Fleet. If any one asks you what I'm

A little red dory, labelled Hattie S., lay astern of the schooner. Dan hauled in the painter, and dropped lightly

"That's no way o' gettin' into a boat," said Dan. "Ef there was any sea you'd go to the bottom, sure. You got to

Dan fitted the tholepins, took the forward thwart and watched Harvey's work. The boy had rowed, in a

ladylike fashion, on the Adirondack ponds; but there is a difference between squeaking pins and

wellbalanced ruflockslight sculls and stubby, eightfoot seaoars. They stuck in the gentle swell, and

"Short! Row short!" said Dan. "Ef you cramp your oar in any kind o' sea you're liable to turn her over. Ain't

The little dory was specklessly clean. In her bows lay a tiny anchor, two jugs of water, and some seventy

fathoms of thin, brown doryroding. A tin dinnerhorn rested in cleats just under Harvey's right hand, beside

an uglylooking maul, a short gaff, and a shorter wooden stick. A couple of lin~, with very heavy leads and

double codhooks, all neatly coiled on square reels, were stuck in their place by the gunwale.

"Where's the sail and mast?" said Harvey, for his hands were beginning to blister.

Dan chuckled. "Ye don't sail fishin'dories much. Ye pull; but ye needn't pull so hard. Don't you wish you

"Well, I gtiess my father might give me one or two if I asked 'em," Harvey replied. He had been too busy to

"That's so. I forgot your dad's a millionaire. You don't act rnillionary any, naow. But a dory an' craft an'

gear"Dan spoke as though she were a whaleboat "costs a heap. Think your dad 'u'd give you one ferfer a

"Shouldn't wonder. It would be 'most the ouly thing I haven't stuck him for yet."

'Must be an expensive kinder kid to home. Don't slitheroo thet way, Harve. Short's the trick, because no sea's

Crack! The loom of the oar kicked Harvey under the chin and knocked him backwards.

"That was what I was goin' to say. I hed to learn too, but I wasn't more than eight years old when I got my

"No good gettin' mad at things, Dad says. It's our own fault ef we can't handle 'em, he says. Le's try here.

The "Portugee" was rocking fully a mile away, but when Dan upended an oar he waved his left arm three

"Thirty fathom," said Dan, stringing a salt clam on to the hook. "Over with the doughboys. Bait same's I do,

Dan's line was out long before Harvey had mastered the mystery of baiting and heaving out the leads. The

dory drifted along easily. It was not worth while to anchor till they were sure of good ground.

"Here we come!" Dan shouted, and a shower of spray rattled on Harvey's shoulders as a big cod flapped and

Evidently "muckle" could not be the dinnerhorn, so Harvey passed over the maul, and Dan scientifically

stunned the fish before he pulled it inboard, and wrenched out the hook with the short wooden stick he called

The hook had fouled among a bunch of strawberries, red on one side and white on the otherperfect

reproductions of the land fruit, except that there were no leaves, and the stem was all pipy and slimy.

The warning came too late. Harvey had picked them from the hook, and was admiring them.

"Ouch!" he cried, for his fingers throbbed as though he had grasped many nettles.

"Nnow ye know what strawberrybottom means. Nothin' 'cep' fish should be teched with the naked fingers,

Dad says. Slat 'em off agin the guunel, an' bait up, Harve. Lookin' won't help any. It's all in the wages."

Harvey smiled at the thought of his ten and a half dollars a month, and wondered what his mother would say

if she could see him hanging over the edge of a fishingdory in midocean. She suffered agonies whenever

he went out on Saranac Lake; and, by the way, Harvey remembered distinctly that he used to laugh at her

annieties. Suddenly the line flashed through his hand, stinging even through the "nippers," the woolen cirdets

"He's a logy. Give him room accordin' to his strength," cried Dan. "I'll help ye."

"No, you won't," Harvey snapped, as he hung on to the line. "It's my first fish. I~is it a whale?"

"Halibut, mebbe." Dan peered down into the water alongside, and flourished the big "muckle," ready for all

chances. Something white and oval flickered and fluttered through the green. "I'll lay my wage an' share he's

Harvey's knuckles were raw and bleeding where they had been hanged against the gunwale; his face was

purpleblue between excitement and exertion; he dripped with sweat, and was halfblinded from staring at

the circling sunlit ripples about the swiftly moving line. The boys were tired long ere the halibut, who took

charge of them and the dory for the next twenty minutes. But the big flat fish was gaffed and hauled in at last.

Harvey looked at the huge grayandmottled creature with unspeakable pride. He had seen halibut many

times on marble slabs ashore, but it had never occurred to him to ask how they came inland. Now he knew;

"Ef Dad was along," said Dan, hauling up, "he'd read the signs plain's print. The fish are runnin' smaller an'

smaller, an' you've took 'baout as logy a halibut's we're apt to find this trip. Yesterday's catchdid ye notice

it?was all big fish an' no halibut. Dad he'd read them signs right off. Dad says everythin' on the Banks is

Even as he spoke some one fired a pistol on the We're Here, and a potatobasket was run up in the

"What did I say, naow? That's the call fer the whole crowd. Dad's onter something, er he'd never break fishin'

They were to windward of the schooner, just ready to flirt the dory over the still sea, when sounds of woe half

a mile off led them to Penn, who was careering around a fixed point for all the world like a gigantic

waterbug. The little man backed away and came down again with enormous energy, but at the end of each

"What's the matter?" said Harvey. This was a new world, where he could not lay down the law to his elders,

"Anchor's fouled. Penn's always losing 'em. Lost two this trip a'readyon sandy bottom tooan' Dad says next

one he loses, sure's fishin', he'll give him the kelleg. That 'u'd break Penn's heart."

"What's a 'kelleg'?" said Harvey, who had a vague idea it might be some kind of marine torture, like

"Big stone instid of an anchor. You kin see a kelleg ridin' in the bows fur's you can see a dory, an' all the fleet

knows what it means. They'd guy him dreadful. Penn couldn't stand that no more'n a dog with a dipper to his

tail. He's so everlastin' sensitive. Hello, Penn! Stuck again? Don't try any more o' your patents. Come up on

"It doesn't move," said the little man, panting. "It doesn't move at all, and instead I tried everything."

"What's all this hurrah'snest for'ard?" said Dan, pointing to a wild tangle of spare oars and doryroding, all

"Oh, that," said Penn proudly, "is a Spanish windlass. Mr. Salters showed me how to make it; but even that

Dan bent low over the gunwale to hide a smile, twitched once or twice on the roding, and, behold, the anchor

They left him regarding the weedhung flukes of the little anchor with big, pathetic blue eyes, and thanking

"Oh, say, while I think of it, Harve," said Dan when they were out of earshot, "Penn ain't quite all caulked.

Harvey asked as he bent to his oars. He felt he was learning to handle them more easily.

No, he ain't thet exactly, so much ez a harmless ijut. It was this way (you're rowin' quite so, Harve), an' I tell

you 'cause it's right you orter know. He was a Moravian preacher once. Jacob Boiler wuz his name, Dad told

me, an' he lived with his wife an' four children somewheres out Pennsylvania way. Well, Penn he took his

folks along to a Moravian meetin'campmeetin' most likean' they stayed over jest one night in Johns town.

Harvey considered. "Yes, I have. But I don't know why. It sticks in my head same as Ashtabula."

"Both was big accidentsthet's why, Harve. Well, that one single night Penn and his folks was to the hotel

Johnstown was wiped out. 'Dam bust an' flooded her, an' the houses struck adrift an' bumped into each other

an' sunk. I've seen the pictures, an' they're dretful.Penn he saw his folk drowned all'n a heap 'fore he rightly

knew what was comin'. His mind give out from that on. He mistrusted somethin' hed happened up to

Johnstown, but for the poor life of him he couldn't remember what, an' he jest drifted araound smilin' an'

wonderin'. He didn't know what he was, nor yit what he hed bin, an' thet way he run agin Uncle Salters, who

was visitin' 'n Allegheny City. Ha'af my mother's folks they live scattered inside o' Pennsylvania, an' Uncle

Salters he visits araound winters. Uncle Salters he kinder adopted Penn, well knowin' what his trouble wuz;

an' he brought him East, an' he give him work on his farm.', "Why, I heard him calling Penn a farmer last

"Farmer!" shouted Dan. "There ain't water enough 'tween here an' Hatt'rus to wash the furrermold off'n his

boots. He's jest everlastin' farmer. Why, Harve, I've seen thet man hitch up a bucket, long towards sundown,

an' set twiddlin' the spigot to the scuttlebutt same's ef 'twas a cow's bag. He's thet much farmer. Well, Penn

an' he they ran the farmup Exeter way 'twur. Uncle Salters he sold it this spring to a jay from Boston as

wanted to build a summerhaouse, an' he got a heap for it. Well, them two loonies scratched along till, one

day, Penn's church he'd belonged t~the Moravians found out where he wuz drifted an' layin', an' wrote to

Uncle Salters. 'Never heerd what they said exactly; but Uncle Salters was mad. He's a 'piscopolian

mostlybut he jest let 'em hev it both sides o' the bow, 's if he was a Baptist; an' sez he warn't goin' to give up

Penn to any blame Moravian connection in Pennsylvania or anywheres else. Then he come to Dad, towin'

Penn,thet was two trips back,an' sez he an' Penn must fish a trip fer their health. 'Guess he thought the

Moravians wouldn't hunt the Banks fer Jacob Boiler. Dad was agreeable, fer Uncle Salters he'd been fishin'

off an' on fer thirty years, when he warn't inventin' patent manures, an' he took quartershare in the We're

Here; an' the trip done Penn so much good, Dad made a habit o' takin' him. Some day, Dad sez, he'll

remember his wife an' kids an' Johnstown, an' then, like as not, he'll die, Dad sez. Don't ye talk abaout

"Poor Penn!" murmured Harvey. "I shouldn't ever have thought Uncle Salters cared for him by the look of

"I like Penn, though; we all do," said Dan. "We ought to ha' give him a tow, but I wanted to tell ye first."

"You needn't heave in the dories till after dinner," said Troop from the deck. "We'll dress daown right off. Fix

"Deeper'n the Whaledeep," said Dan, with a wink, as he set the gear for dressing down. "Look at them boats

"They are all alike to me." And indeed to a landsman, the nodding schooners around seemed run from the

"They ain't, though. That yaller, dirty packet with her bowsprit steeved that way, she's the Hope of Prague.

Nick Brady's her skipper, the meanest man on the Banks. We'll tell him so when we strike the Main Ledge.

'Way off yonder's the Day's Eye. The two Jeraulds own her. She's from Harwich; fastish, too, an' hez good

luck; but Dad he'd find fish in a graveyard. Them other three, side along, they're the Margie Smith, Rose, and

Edith S. Walen, all from home. 'Guess we'll see the Abbie M. Deering tomorrer, Dad, won't we? They're all

"You won't see many boats tomorrow, Danny." When Troop called his son Danny, it was a sign that the old

man was pleased. "Boys, we're too crowded," he went on, addressing the crew as they clambered inboard.

"We'll leave 'em to bait big an' catch small." He looked at the catch in the pen, and it was curious to see how

little and level the fish ran. Save for Harvey's halibut, there was nothing over fifteen pounds on dec~

"Ye'll have to make it yourself, Disko, for there's no sign I can see," said Long Jack, sweeping the clear

And yet, half an hour later, as they were dressing down, the Bank fog dropped on them, "between fish and

fish," as they say. It drove steadily and in wreaths, curling and smoking along the colourless water. The men

stopped dressingdown without a word. Long Jack and Uncle Salters slipped the windlass brakes into their

sockets, and began to heave up the anchor; the windlass jarring as the wet hempen cable strained on the

barrel. Manuel and Tom Platt gave a hand at the last. The anchor came up with a sob, and the ridingsail

"Slip 'em in the smother," shouted Long Jack, making fast the jibsheet, while the others raised the clacking,

rattling rings of the foresail; and the for~boom creaked as the We're Here looked up into the wind and dived

It was wonderful beyond words to Harvey; and the most wonderful part was that he heard no orders except an

'Never seen anchor weighed before?" said Tom Platt, to Harvey gaping at the damp canvas of the foresail.

"Fish and make berth, as you'll find out 'fore you've been a week aboard. It's all new to you, but we never

"It's better than fourteen dollars a month an' a bullet in your belly," said Troop, from the wheel. "Ease your

"Dollars an' cents better," returned the man~ war S man, doing something to a big jib with a wooden spar

tied to it. "But we didn't think o' that when we manned the windlassbrakes on the Miss Jim Buck, 1 outside

Beaufort Harbor, with Fort Macon heavin' hot shot at our stern, an' a livin' gale atop of all. Where was you

"Jest here, or hereabouts," Disko replied, "earnin' my bread on the deep waters, an' dodgin' Reb privateers.

Sorry I can't accommodate you with redhot shot, Tom Platt; but I guess we'll come aout all right on wind

There was an incessant slapping and chatter at the bows now, varied by a solid thud and a little spout of spray

that clattered down on the foc'sle. The rigging dripped clammy drops, and the men lounged along the lee of

the houseall save Uncle Salters, who sat stiffly on the mainhatch nursing his stung hands.

'Guess she wouldn't to any sorter profit. What's the sense o' wastin' canvas?" the farmersailor replied.

The wheel twitched almost imperceptibly in Disko's hands. A few seconds later a hissing wavetop slashed

diagonally across the boat, smote Uncle Salters between the shoulders, and drenched him from head to foot.

"See Dad chase him all around the deck," said Dan. "Uncle Salters he thinks his quarter share's our canvas.

Dad's put this duckin' act up on him two trips runnin'. Hi! That found him where he feeds." Uncle Salters had

taken refuge by the foremast, but a wave slapped him over the knees. Disko's face was as blank as the circle

"Guess she'd lie easier under stays'l, Salters," said Disko, as though he had seen nothing.

"Set your old kite, then," roared the victim through a cloud of spray; "only don't lay it to me lf anything

happens. Penn, you go below right off an' git your coffee. You ought to hev more sense than to bum araound

"Now they'll swill coffee an' play checkers till the cows come home," said Dan, as Uncle Salters hustled Penn

into the forecabin. " 'Looks to me like's if we'd all be doin' so fer a spell. There's nothin' in creation

"I'm glad ye spoke, Danny," cried Long Jack, who had been casting round in search of amusement. "I'd dean

forgot we'd a passenger under that Twharf hat. There's no idleness for thim that don't know their ropes. Pass

"'Tain't my trick this time," grinned Dan. "You've got to go it alone. Dad learned me with a rope's end."

For an hour Long Jack walked his prey up and down, teaching, as he said, "things at the sea that ivry man

must know, blind, dhrunk, or asleep." There is not much gear to a seventyton schooner with a

stumpforemast, but Long Jack had a gift of expression. When he wished to draw Harvey's attention to the

peakhalyards, he dug his knuckles into the back of the boy's neck and kept him at gaze for half a minute. He

emphasized the difference between fore and aft generally by rubbing Harvey's nose along a few feet of the

boom, and the lead of each rope was fixed in Harvey's mind by the end of the rope itself.

The lesson would have been easier had the deck been at all free; but there appeared to be a place on it for

everything and anything except a man. Forward lay the windlass and its tackle, with the chain and hemp

cables, all very unpleasant to trip over; the foc'sle stovepipe, and the gurrybutts by the foc'sle hatch to hold

the fishlivers. Aft of these the foreboom and booby of the mainhatch took all the space that was not needed

for the pumps and dressingpens. Then came the nests of dories lashed to ringbolts by the quarterdeck; the

house, with tubs and oddments lashed all around it; and, last, the sixtyfoot mainboom in its crutch,

Tom Platt, of course, could not keep his oar out of the business, but ranged alongside with enormous and

"Niver mind fwhat he says; attind to me, Innocince. Tom Platt, this ballyhoo's not the Ohio, an' you're

"He'll be ruined for life, beginnin' on a forean'after this way," Tom Platt pleaded. "Give him a chance to

know a few leadin' principles. Sailin's an art, Harvey, as I'd show you if I had ye in the foretop o' the"

"I know ut. Ye'd talk him dead an' cowld. Silince, Tom Platt! Now, after all I've said, how'd you reef the

"Oh, it's the reefpennant. I'd hook the tackle on to the reefpennant, and then let down"

"Lower the throat and peak halyards," Harvey went on. Those names stuck in his head.

Harvey obeyed. "Lower till that ropeloopon the afterleachkrisno, it's cringletill the cringle was down

on the boom. Then I'd tie her up the way you said, and then I'd hoist up the peak and throat halyards again."

"You've forgot to pass the tackearing, but wid time and help ye'll larn. There's good and just reason for ivry

rope aboard, or else 'twould be overboard. D'ye follow me? 'Tis dollars an' cents rm puttin' into your pocket,

ye skinny little supercargo, so that fwhin ye've filled out ye can ship from Boston to Cuba an' tell thim Long

Jack larned you. Now I'll chase ye around a piece, callin' the ropes, an' you'll lay your hand on thim as I call."

He began, and Harvey, who was feeling rather tired, walked slowly to the rope named. A rope's end licked

"When you own a boat," said Tom Platt, with severe. eyes, "you can walk. Till then, take all orders at the run.

Harvey was in a glow with the exercise, and this last cut warmed him thoroughly. Now he was a singularly

smart boy, the son of a very clever man and a very sensitive woman, with a fine resolute temper that

systematic spoiling had nearly turned to mulish obstinacy. He looked at the other men, and saw that even Dan

did not smile. It was evidently all in the day's work, though it hurt abominably; so he swallowed the hint with

a gulp and a gasp and a grin. The same smartness that led him to take such advantage of his mother made him

very sure that no one on the boat, except, maybe, Penn, would stand the least nonsense. One learns a great

deal from a mere tone. Long Jack called over half a dozen ropes, and Harvey danced over the deck like an eel

"Ver' good. Ver' good don," said Manuel. "After supper I show you a little schooner I make, with all her

"Fustclass fera passenger," said Dan. "Dad he's jest allowed you'll be wuth your salt maybe 'fore you're

"Taller!" grunted Disko, peering through the fog as it smoked over the bows. There was nothing to be seen

ten feet beyond the surging jibboom, while alongside rolled the endless procession of solemn, pale waves

"Now I'll learn you something Long Jack can't," shouted Tom Platt, as from a locker by the stern he produced

a battered deepsea lead hollowed at one end, smeared the hollow from a saucer full of mutton tallow, and

Disko did something to the wheel that checked the schooner's way, while Manuel, with Harvey to help (and a

proud boy was Harvey), let down the jib in a lump on the boom. The lead sung a deep droning song as Tom

"Go ahead, man," said Long Jack, impatiently. "We're not drawin' twentyfive fut off Fire Island in a fog.

"Don't be jealous, Galway." The released lead plopped into the sea far ahead as the schooner surged slowly

"Soundin' is a trick, though," said Dan, "when your dipsey lead's all the eye you're like to hev for a week.

Disko's face relaxed. His skill and honour were involved in the march he had stolen on the rest of the Fleet,

and he had his reputation as a master artist who knew the Banks blindfold. "Sixty, mebbeef I'm any judge,"

The schooner gathered way once more. "Heave!" said Disko, after a quarter of an hour.

"What d'you make it?" Dan whispered, and he looked at Harvey proudly. But Harvey was too proud of his

"Fifty," said the father. "I mistrust we're right over the nick o' Green Bank on old SixtyFifty."

"Fifty!" roared Tom Platt. They could scarcely see him through the fog. "She's bust within a yardlike the

The schooner seemed to be straying promiscuously through the smother, her headsail banging wildly. The

"Heugh!" Dan's lines twitched on the scored and scarred rail. "Now haow in thunder did Dad know? Help us

here, Harve. It's a big un. Pokehooked, too." They hauled together, and landed a goggleeyed twentypound

"By the great hookblock, they're lousy already," said Long Jack. "Disko, ye kape your spare eyes under the

Splash went the anchor, and they all heaved over the lines, each man taking his own place at the bulwarks.

"Sure. When they're lousy it's a sign they've all been herdin' together by the thousand, and when they take the

bait that way they're hungry. Never mind how the bait sets. They'll bite on the bare hook."

"Say, this is great!" Harvey cried, as the fish came in gasping and splashingnearly all pokehooked, as Dan

"Allus can, till we begin to dress daown. Efter thet, the heads and offals 'u'd scare the fish to Fundy.

Boatfishin' ain't reckoned progressive, though, unless ye know as much as dad knows. Guess we'll run aout

It was rather backbreaking work, for in a dory the weight of a cod is waterborne till the last minute, and

you are, so to speak, abreast of him; but the few feet of a schooner's freeboard make so much extra

deadhauling, and stooping over the bulwarks cramps the stomach. But it was wild and furious sport so long

"Where's Penn and Uncle Salters?" Harvey asked, slapping the slime off his oilskins, and reeling up the line

Under the yellow glare of the lamp on the pawlpost, the foc'sle table down and opened, utterly unconscious

of fish or weather, sat the two men, a checkerboard between them, Uncle Salters snarling at Penn's every

"What's the matter naow?" said the former, as Harvey, one hand in the leather loop at the head of the ladder,

"Big fish and lousyheaps and heaps," Harvey replied, quoting Long Jack. "How's the game?"

Little Penn's jaw dropped. " 'Tweren't none o' his fault," snapped Uncle Salters. "Penn's deef."

"Checkers, weren't it?" said Dan, as Harvey staggered aft with the steaming coffee in a tin pail. "That lets us

"An' two young fellers I know'll bait up a tub or so o' trawl, while they're cleanin'," said Disko, lashing the

"Don't doubt it. Ye wun't, though. Dress daown! Dress daown! Penn'll pitch while you two bait up."

"Why in thunder didn't them blame boys tell us you'd struck on?" said Uncle Salters, shuffling to his place at

"Ef stickin' out cable don't wake ye, guess you'd better hire a boy o' your own," said Dan, muddling about in

the dusk over the tubs full of trawlline lashed to windward of the house. "Oh, Harve, don't ye want to slip

"Bait ez we are," said Disko. "I mistrust shagfishin' will pay better, ez things go."

That meant the boys would bait with selected offal of the cod as the fish were cleanedan improvement on

paddling barehanded in the little baitbarrels below. The tubs were full of neatly coiled line carrying a big

hook each few feet; and the testing and baiting of every single hook, with the stowage of the baited line so

that it should run clear when shot from the dory, was a scientific business. Dan managed it in the dark,

without looking, while Harvey caught his fingers on the barbs and bewailed his fate. But the hooks flew

through Dan's fingers like tatting on an old maid's lap. "I helped bait up trawl ashore 'fore I could well walk,"

he said. "But it's a putterin' job all the same. Oh, Dad!" This shouted towards the hatch, where Disko and

"There's three hundred fathom to each tub," Dan explained; "more'n enough to lay out tonight. Ouch!

'Slipped up there, I did." He stuck his finger in his mouth. "I tell you, Harve, there ain't money in Gloucester

'u'd hire me to ship on a reg'lar trawler. It may be progressive, but, barrin' that, it's the putterin'est,

"I don't know what this is, if 'tisn't regular trawling," said Harvey sulkily. "My fingers are all cut to frazzles."

"Pshaw! This is just one o' Dad's blame experirnents. He don't trawl 'less there's mighty good reason fer it.

Dad knows. Thet's why he's baitin' ez he is. We'll hev her saggin' full when we take her up er we won't see a

Penn and Uncle Salters cleaned up as Disko had ordained, but the boys profited little. No sooner were the

tubs furnished than Tom Platt and Long Jack, who had been exploring the inside of a dory with a lantern,

snatched them away, loaded up the tubs and some small, painted trawlbuoys, and hove the boat overboard

into what Harvey regarded as an exceedingly rough sea. "They'll be drowned. Why, the dory's loaded like a

"We'll be back," said Long Jack, "an' in case you'll not be lookin' for us, we'll lay into you both if the trawl's

The dory surged up on the crest of a wave, and just when it seemed impossible that she could avoid smashing

against the schooner's side, slid over the ridge, and was swallowed up in the damp dusk.

"Take ahold here, an' keep ringin' steady," said Dan, passing Harvey the lanyard of a bell that hung just

Harvey rang lustily, for he felt two lives depended on him. But Disko in the cabin, scrawling in the logbook,

did not look like a murderer, and when he went to supper he even smiled dryly at the anxious Harvey.

"This ain't no weather," said Dan. "Why, you an' me could set thet trawl! They've only gone out jest far

"Clang! clang! clang!" Harvey kept it up, varied with occasional rubadubs, for another halfhour. There

was a bellow and a bump alongside. Manuel and Dan raced to the hooks of the dorytackle; Long Jack and

Tom Platt arrived on deck together, it seemed, one half the North Atlantic at their backs, and the dory

"The pleasure av your comp'ny to the banquit," said Long Jack, squelching the water from his boots as he

capered like an elephant and stuck an oilskinned arm into Harvey's face. "We do be condescending to

honour the second half wid our presence." And off they all four rolled to supper, where Harvey stuffed

himself to the brim on fishchowder and fried pies, and fell fast asleep just as Manuel produced from a locker

a lovely twofoot model of the Lucy Holmes, his first boat, and was going to show Harvey the ropes. Harvey

"It must be a sad thinga very sad thing," said Penn, watching the boy's face, "for his mother and his father,

"Git out o' this, Penn," said Dan. "Go aft and finish your game with Uncle Salters. Tell Dad I'll stand Harve's

"Ver' good boy," said Manuel, slipping out of his boots and disappearing into the black shadows of the lower

bunk. "Expec' he make good man, Danny. I no see he is any so mad as your parpa he says. Eh, whaat?"

It was thick weather outside, with a rising wind, and the elder men stretched their watches. The hour struck

clear in the cabin; the nosing bows slapped and scuffed with the seas; the foc'sle stovepipe hissed and

sputtered as the spray caught it; and the boys slept on, while Disko, Long Jack, Tom Platt, and Uncle Salters,

each in turn, stumped alt to look at the wheel, forward to see that the anchor held, or to veer out a little more

Harvey waked to find the "first half" at breakfast, the foc'sle door drawn to a crack, and every square inch of

the schooner singing its own tune. The black bulk of the cook balanced behind the tiny galley over the glare

of the stove, and the pots and pans in the pierced wooden board before it jarred and racketed to each plunge.

Up and up the foc'sle climbed, yearning and surging and quivering, and then, with a clear, sicklelike swoop,

came down into the seas. He could hear the flaring bows cut and squelch, and there was a pause ere the

divided waters came down on the deck above, like a volley of buckshot. Followed the woolly sound of the

cable in the hawsehole; and a grunt and squeal of the windlass; a yaw, a punt, and a kick, and the We're

"Now, ashore," he heard Long Jack saying, "ye've chores, an' ye must do thim in any weather. Here we're

well clear of the fleet, an' we've no choresan' that's a blessin'. Good night, all." He passed like a big snake

from the table to his bunk, and began to smoke. Tom Platt followed his example; Uncle Salters, with Penn,

fought his way up the ladder to stand his watch, and the cook set for the "second half."

It came out of its bunks as the others had entered theirs, with a shake and a yawn. It ate till it could eat no

more; and then Manuel filled his pipe with some terrible tobacco, crotched himself between the pawlpost

and a forward bunk, cocked his feet up on the table, and smiled tender and indolent smiles at the smoke. Dan

lay at length in his bunk, wrestling with a gaudy, giltstopped accordion, whose tunes went up and down

with the pitching of the We're Here. The cook, his shoulders against the locker where he kept the fried pies

([)an was fond of fried pies), peeled potatoes, with one eye on the stove in event of too much water finding its

Harvey considered affairs, wondered that he was not deathly sick, and crawled into his bunk again, as the

softest and safest place, while Dan struck up, "I don't want to play in your yard," as accurately as the wild

"Till she get a little quiet, and we can row to trawl. Perhaps tonight. Perhaps two days more. You do not

"I should have been crazy sick a week ago, but it doesn't seem to upset me nowmuch."

"That is because we make you fisherman, these days. If I was you, when I come to Gloucester I would give

"To be surethe Virgin of our Church on the Hill. She is very good to fishermen all the time. That is why so

"I am a Madeira man. I am not a Porto Pico boy. Shall I be Baptist, then? Eh, whaat? I always give

candlestwo, three more when I come to Gloucester. The good Virgin she never forgets me, Manuel."

"I don't sense it that way," Tom Platt put in from his bunk, his scarred face lit up by the glare of a match as he

sucked at his pipe. "It stands to reason the sea's the sea; and you'll get jest about what's goin', candles or

"'Tis a mighty good thing," said Long Jack, "to have a find at coort, though. I'm o' Manuel's way o' thinkin'

About tin years back I was crew to a Sou' Boston marketboat. We was off Minot's Ledge wid a northeaster,

butt first, atop of us, thicker'n burgoo. The ould man was dhrunk, his chin waggin' on the tiller, an' I sez to

myself, 'If iver I stick my boathuk into Twharf again, I'll show the saints fwhat manner o' craft they saved

me out av.' Now, I'm here, as ye can well sec, an' the model of the dhirty ould Kathleen, that took me a month

to make, I gave ut to the priest, an' he hung ut up forninst the altar. There's more sense in givin' a model that's

by way o' bein' a work av art than any candle. Ye can buy candles at store, but a model shows the good saints

"Waal, Enoch Fuller he made a model o' the old Ohio, and she's to Calem museum now. Mighty pretty

model, too, but I guess Enoch he never done it fer no sacrifice; an' the way I take it is~"

There were the makings of an hourlong discussion of the kind that fishermen love, where the talk runs in

shouting circles and no one proves anything at the end, had not Dan struck up this cheerful rhyme:

"Up jumped the mackerel with his stripe'd back. Reef in the mainsail, and haul on the tack; For it's windy

Dan went on, with a cautious look at Tom Platt, holding the accordion low in the bunk:

"Up jumped the cod with his chucklehead, Went to the mainchains to heave at the lead; For it's windy

Tom Platt seemed to be hunting for sometliing. Dan crouched lower, but sang louder:

"Up jumped the flounder that swims to the ground. Chucklehead! Chucklehead! Mind where ye sound!"

Tom Platt's huge rubber boot whirled across the foc'sle and caught Dan's uplifted arm. There was war

between the man and the boy ever since Dan had discovered that the mere whistling of that tune would make

"Thought I'd fetch yer," said Dan, returning the gift with precision. "Ef you don't like my music, git out your

fiddle. I ain't goin' to lie here all day an' listen to you an' Long Jack arguin' 'baout candles. Fiddle, Tom Platt;

Tom Platt leaned down to a locker and brought up an old white fiddle. Manuel's eye glistened, and from

somewhere behind the pawlpost he drew out a tiny, guitarlike thing with wire strings, which he called a

'Tis a concert," said Long Jack, beaming through the smoke. "A reg'lar Boston concert."

There was a burst of spray as the hatch opened, and Disko, in yellow oilskins, descended.

"Jest this!" He dropped on to the lockers with the push and heave of the We're Here.

"We're singin' to kape our breakfasts down. Ye'll lead, av course, Disko," said Long Jack.

"Guess there ain't more'n 'baout two old songs I know, an' ye've heerd them both."

His excuses were cut short by Tom Platt launching into a most dolorous tune, like unto the moaning of winds

and the creaking of masts. With his eyes fixed on the beams above, Disko began this ancient, ancient ditty,

"There is a crack packetcrack packet o' fame, She hails from Noo York, an' the Dreadnought's her name.

Youmay talk o' your fliersSwallowtail and Black Ball But the Dreadnought's the packet that can beat them

"Now the Dreadnought she lies in the River Mersey, Because of the tugboat to take her to sea;

Where the water's all shallow and the bottom's all sand. Sez all the little fishes that swim to and fro:

There were scores of verses, for he worked the Dreadnought every mile of the way between Liverpool and

New York as conscientiously as though he were on her deck, and the accordion pumped and the fiddle

squeaked beside him. Tom Platt followed with something about "the rough and tough McGinn, who would

pilot the vessel in." Then they called on Harvey, who felt very flattered, to contribute to the entertainment;

but all that he could remember were some pieces of "Skipper Ireson's Ride" that he had been taught at the

campschool in the Adirondacks. It seemed that they might be appropriate to the time and place, but he had

no more than mentioned the title when Disko brought down one foot with a bang, and cried, "Don't go on,

young feller. That's a mistaken jedgmentone o' the worst kind, too, becaze it's catchin' to the ear."

"All you're goin' to say," said Disko. "All dead wrong from start to finish, an' Whittier he's to blame. I have

no special call to right any Marblehead man, but 'tweren't no fault o' Ireson's. My father he told me the tale

"Ben Ireson he was skipper o' the Betty, young feller, comin' home frum the Banksthat was before the war

of 1812, but jestice is jestice at all times. They fund the Active o' Portland, an' Gibbons o' that town he was

her skipper; they fund her leakin' off Cape Cod Light. There was a terr'ble gale on, an' they was gettin' the

Betty home's fast as they could craowd her. Well, Ireson he said there warn't any sense to reskin' a boat in

that sea; the men they wouldn't hev it; and he laid it before them to stay by the Active till the sea run daown a

piece. They wouldn't hev that either, hangin' aracund the Cape in any sech weather, leak or no leak. They jest

up stays'l an' quit, nat'rally takin' Ireson with 'em. Folks to Marblehead was mad at him not runnin' the risk,

and becaze nex' day, when the sea was ca'am (they never stopped to think o' that), some of the Active's folks

was took off by a Truro man. They come into Marblehead with their own tale to tell, sayin' how Ireson had

shamed his town, an' so forth an' so on, an' Ireson's men they was scared, seein' public feelin' agin' 'em, an'

they went back on Ireson, an' swore he was respons'ble for the hull act. 'Tweren't the women neither that

tarred and feathered himMarblehead women don't act that way'twas a passel o' men an' boys, an' they

carted him aranund town in an old dory till the bottom fell aout, and Ireson he told 'em they'd be sorry for it

some day. Well, the facts come aout later, same's they usually do, too late to be any ways useful to an honest

man; an' Whittier he come along an' picked up the slack eend of a lyin' tale, an' tarred and feathered Ben

Ireson all over onct more after he was dead. 'Twas the only tune Whittier ever slipped up, an' 'tweren't fair. I

whaled Dan good when he brought that piece back from school. You don't know no better, o' course; but I've

give you the facts, hereafter an' evermore to be remembered. Ben Ireson weren't no sech kind o' man as

Whittier makes aout; my father he knew him well, before an' after that business, an' you beware o' hasty

Harvey had never heard Disko talk so long, and collapsed with burning cheeks; but, as Dan said promptly, a

boy could ouly learn what he was taught at school, and life was too short to keep track of every lie along the

Then Manuel touched the jangling, jarring little machette to a queer tune, and sang something in Portuguese

about "Nina, innocente!" ending with a fullhanded sweep that brought the song up with a jerk. Then Disko

obliged with his second song, to an oldfashioned creaky tune, and all joined in the chorus. This is one

"Now Aprile is over and melted the snow, And outer Noo Bedford we shortly must tow; Yes, out o' Noo

Bedford we shortly must clear, We're the whalers that never see wheat in the ear.'t

"Wheatintheear, my truelove's posy blowin, Wheatintheear, we're goin' off to sea;

Wheatintheear, I left you fit for sowin, When I come back a loaf o' bread you'll be!"

That made Harvey almost weep, though he could not tell why. But it was much worse when the cook dropped

the potatoes and held out his hands for the fiddle. Still leaning against the locker door, he struck into a tune

that was like something very bad but sure to happen whatever you did. After a little he sang, in an unknown

tongue, his big chin down on the fiddletail, his white eyeballs glaring in the lam~light. Harvey swung out of

his bunk to hear better; and amid the straining of the timbers and the wash of the waters the tune crooned and

"Jimmy Christmas! Thet gives me the blue creevles," said Dan. "What in thunder is it?"

"The song of Fin McCoul," said the cook, "when he wass going to Norway." His English was not thick, but

"Faith, I've been to Norway, but I didn't make that unwholesim noise. 'Tis like some of the old songs,

"Don't let's hev another 'thout somethin' between," said Dan; and the accordion struck up a rattling, catchy

"It's six an' twenty Sundays sence las' we saw the land, With fifteen hunder quintal, An' fifteen hunder

"Hold on!" roared Tom Platt. "D'ye want to nail the trip, Dan? That's Jonah sure, 'less you sing it after all our

"No, 'tain't Is it, Dad? Not unless you sing the very las' verse. You can't learn me anything on Jonahs!"

"A Jonah's anything that spoils the luck. Sometimes it's a mansometimes it's a boyor a bucket. I've known

a splittin'knife Jonah two trips till we was on to her," said Tom Platt. "There's all sorts o' Jonahs. Jim Bourke

was one till he was drowned on Georges. I'd never ship with Jim Bourke, not if I was starin'. There wuz a

green dory on the Ezra Flood. Thet was a Jonah, too, the worst sort o' Jonah. Drowned four men, she did, an'

"And you believe that?" said Harvey, remembering what Tom Platt had said about candles and models.

A mutter of dissent ran round the bunks. "Outboard, yes; inboard, things can happen," said Disko. "Don't you

"Well, Harve ain't no Jonah. Day after we catched him," Dan cut in, "we had a toppin' good catch."

The cook threw up his head and laughed suddenlya queer, thin laugh. He was a most disconcerting nigger.

"What's wrong?" said Dan. "Ain't he our mascot, and didn't they strike on good after we'd struck him?"

"He ain't goin' to do us any harm," said Dan, hotly. "Where are ye hintin' an' edgin' to? He's all right"

"I do not know, but so it will be." He dropped his head, and went on peeling the potatoes, and not another

"Well," said Dan, "a heap o' things'll hev to come abaout 'fore Harve's any master o' mine; but I'm glad the

doctor ain't choosen to mark him for a Jonah. Now, I mistrust Uncle Salters fer the Jonerest Jonah in the Fleet

regardin' his own special luck. Dunno ef it's spreadin' same's smallpox. He ought to be on the Carrie Pitman.

That boat's her own Jonah, surecrews an' gear made no differ to her driftin'. Jiminy Christmas! She'll etch

"We're well clear o' the Fleet, anyway," said Disko. "Carrie Pitman an' all." There was a rapping on the deck.

"It's blown clear," Disko cried, and all the foc'sle tumbled up for a bit of fresh air. The fog had gone, but a

sullen sea ran in great rollers behind it. The We're Here slid, as it were, into long, sunk avenues and ditches

which felt quite sheltered and homelike if they would only stay still; but they changed without rest or mercy,

and flung up the schooner to crown one peak of a thousand gray hills, while the wind hooted through her

rigging as she zigzagged down the slopes. Far away a sea would burst into a sheet of foam, and the others

would follow suit as at a signal, till Harvey's eyes swam with the vision of interlacing whites and grays. Four

Carey's chickens stormed round in circles, shrieking as they swept past the bows. A rainsquall or two

strayed aimlessly over the hopeless waste, ran down 'wind and back again, and melted away.

"Seerns to me I saw somethin' flicker jest naow over yonder," said Uncle Salters, pointing to the northeast.

"Can't be any of the fleet," said Disko, peering under his eyebrows, a hand on the foc'sle gangway as the solid

bows hatcheted into the troughs. "Sea's oilin' over dretful fast. Danny, don't you want to skip up a piece an'

Danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than climbed up the main rigging (this consumed Harvey with envy),

hitched himself around the reeling crosstrees, and let his eye rove till it caught the tiny black buoyflag on

"She's all right," he hailed. "Sail 0! Dead to the no'th'ard, corain' down like smoke! Schooner she be, too.',.

They waited yet another halfhour, il~e sky clearing in patches, with a flicker of sickly sun from time to time

that made patches of olivegreen water. Then a stumpforemast lifted, ducked, and disappeared, to. be

followed on the next wave by a high stern with oldfashioned wooden snail'shorn davits. The snails were

'That's no French," said Disko. "Salters, your blame luck holds tighter'n a screw in a keghead."

"The headking of all Jonahs," groaned Tom Platt. "Oh, Salters, Salters, why wasn't you abed an' asleep?"

She might have been the very Flying Dutchman, so foul, draggled, and unkempt was every rope and stick

aboard. Her oldstyle quarterdeck was some or five feet high, and her rigging flew knotted and tangled like

weed at a wharfend. She was running before the windyawing frightfullyher staysail let down to act as a

sort of extra foresail,"scandalized," they call it,and her foreboom guyed out over the side. Her bowsprit

cocked up like an oldfashioned frigate's; her jibboom had been fished and s~iced and nailed and clamped

beyond further repair; and as she hove herself forward, and sat down on her broad tail, she looked for all the

"That's Abishal," said Salters. "Full o' gin an' Judique men, an' the judgments o' Providence layin' fer him an'

"Not he, 'r he'd'a done it long ago," Disko replied. "Looks 's if he cal'lated to run us under. Ain't she daown by

"Ef it's his style o' loadin' her she ain't safe," said the sailor slowly. "Ef she's spewed her oakum he'd better git

The creature threshed up, wore round with a clatter and raffle, and lay head to wind within earshot.

A graybeard wagged over the bulwark, and a thick voice yelled something Harvey could not understand.

But Disko's face darkened. "He'd resk every stick he hez to carry bad news. Says we're in fer a shift o' wind.

He's in fer worse. Abishai! Abishai!" He waved his arm up and down with the gesture of a man at the

"Jounce ye, an' strip ye an' trip ye!" yelled Uncle Abishal. "A livin' galea livin' gale. Yab! Cast up fer your

last trip, all you Gloucester haddocks. You won't see Gloucester no more, no more!"

She drifted out of hearing while the grayhead yelled something about a dance at the Bay of Bulls and a dead

man in the foc'sle. Harvey shuddered. He had seen the sloven tilled decks and the savageeyed crew.

"An' that's a fine little floatin' hell fer her draught," said Long Jack. "I wondher what mischief he's been at

"He's a trawler," Dan explained to Harvey, "an' he runs in fer bait all along the coast. Oh, no, not home, he

don't go. He deals along the south an' east shore up yonder." He nodded in the direction of the pitiless

Newfoundland beaches. "Dad won't never take me ashore there. They're a mighty tough crowdan' Abishal's

the toughest. You saw his boat? Well, she's nigh seventy year old, they say; the last o' the old Marblehead

heeltappers. They don't make them quarterdecks any more. Abishal don't use Marblehead, though. He ain't

wanted there. He jes' drif's araound, in debt, trawlin' an' cussin' like you've heard. Bin a Jonah fer years an,

years, he hez. 'Gits liquor frum the Feecamp boats fer makin' spells an' selling winds an' such truck. Crazy, I

'Twon't be any use underrunnin' the trawl tonight," said Tom Platt, with quiet despair. "He come alongside

special to cuss us. l'd give my wage an' share to see him at the gangway o' the old Ohio 'fore we quit fioggin'.

The disheveled "heeltapper" danced drunkenly down wind, and all eyes followed her. Suddenly the cook

cried in his phonograph voice: "It wass his own death made him speak so! He iss feyfey, I tell you! Look!"

She sailed into a patch of watery sunshine three or four miles distant. The patch dulled and faded out, and

even as the light passed so did the schooner. She dropped into a hollow andwas not.

"Run under, by the Great HookBlock!" shouted Disko, jumping aft. "Drunk or sober, we've got to help 'em.

Harvey was thrown on the deck by the shock that followed the setting of the jib and foresail, for they hove

short on the cable, and to save time, jerked the anchor bodily from the bottom, heaving in~as they moved

away. This is a bit of brute force seldom resorted to except in matters of life and death, and the little We're

Here complained like a human. They ran down to where Abishal's craft had vanished; found two or three

trawltubs, a ginbottle, and a stovein dory, but nothing more. "Let 'em go," said Disko, though no one had

hinted at picking them up. "I wouldn't hev a match that belonged to Abishai aboard. Guess she run clear

under. Must ha' been spewin' her oakum fer a week, an' they never thought to pump her. That's one more boat

"Glory be!" said Long Jack. "We'd ha' been obliged to help 'em if they was top o' water."

"Fey! Fey!" said the cook, rolling his eyes. "He haas taken his own luck with him."

"Ver' good thing, I think, to tell the Fleet when we see. Eh, whaat?" said Manuel. "If you runna that way

before the 'wind, and she work open her seams" He threw out his hands with an indescribable gesture, while

Penn sat down on the house and sobbed at the sheer horror and pity of it all. Harvey could not realize that he

had seen death on the open waters, but he felt very sick. p Then Dan went up the crosstrees, and Disko

steered them back to within sight of their own trawlbuoys just before the fog blanketed the sea once again.

"We go mighty quick hereabouts when we do go," was all he said to Harvey. "You think on that fer a spell,

"After dinner it was calm enough to fish from the decks,Penn and Uncle Salters were very zealous this

"Abishal has shorely took his luck with him," said Salters. "The wind hain't backed ner riz ner nothin'. How

Tom Platt insisted that they had much better haul the thing and make a new berth. But the cook said: "The

luck iss in two pieces. You will find it so when you look. I know." This so tickied Long Jack that he overbore

Underrunning a trawl means pulling it in on one side of the dory, picking off the fish, rebaiting the hooks,

and passing them back to the sea againsomething like pinning and unpinning linen on a washline. It is a

lengthy business and rather dangerous, for the long, sagging line may twitch a boat under in a flash. But when

they heard, "And naow to thee, 0 Capting," booming out of the fog, the crew of the We're Here took heart.

The dory swirled alongside well loaded, Tom Platt yelling for Manuel to act as reliefboat.

"The luck's cut square in two pieces," said long Jack, forking in the fish, while Harvey stood openmouthed

at the skill with which the plunging dory was saved from destruction. "One half was jest punkins. Tom Platt

wanted to haul her an' ha' done wid Ut; but I said, "I'll back the doctor that has the second sight, an' the other

half come up sagging full o' big uns. Hurry, Man'nle, an' bring's a tub o' bait. There's luck afloat tonight."

The fish bit at the newly baited hooks from which their brethren had just been taken, and Tom Platt and Long

Jack moved methodically up and down the length of the trawl, the boat's nose surging under the wet line of

hooks, stripping the seacucumbers that they called pumpkins, slatting off the freshcaught cod against the

"I'll take no risks," said Disko then"not with him floatin' around so near. Abishal won't sink fer a week.

That was a mighty dressingdown, attended by three or four blowing grampuses. It lasted till nine o'clock,

and Disko was thrice heard to chuckle as Harvey pitched the split fish into the hold.

"Say, you're haulin' ahead dretful fast," said Dan, when they ground the knives after the men had turned m.

"There's somethin' of a sea tonight, an' I hain't heard you make no remarks on it."

"Too busy," Harvey replied, testing a blade's edge. "Come to think of it, she is a highkicker."

The little schooner was gambolling all around her anchor among the silvertipped waves. Backing with a

start of affected surprise at the sight of the strained cable, she pounced on it like a kitten, while the spray of

her descent burst through the hawseholes with the report of a gun. Shaking her head, she would say: "Well,

I'm sorry I can't stay any longer with you. I'm going North," and would sidle off, halting suddenly with a

dramatic rattle of her rigging. "As I was just going to observe," she would begin, as gravely as a drunken man

addressing a lamppost. The rest of the sentence (she acted her words in dumbshow, of course) was lost in a

fit of the fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy chewing a string, a clumsy woman in a sidesaddle, a hen

with her head cut off, or a cow stung by a hornet, exactly as the whims of the sea took her.

She swung sideways on a roller, and gesticulated with her jib~boom from port to starboard.

Wop! She sat down in the moonpath on the water, courtesying with a flourish of pride impressive enough

"She's as stiddy as a haouse an' as dry as a herrin'," said Dan enthusiastically, as he was slung across the deck

in a batter of spray. "Fends 'em off an' fends 'em off, an' 'Don't ye come anigh me,' she sez. Look at herjest

look at her! Sakes! You should see one o' them toothpicks histin' up her anchor on her spike outer

"Them new haddockers an' herrin'boats. Fine's a yacht forward, with yacht sterns to 'em, an' spike

bowsprits, an' a haouse that 'u'd take our hold. I've heard that Burgess himself he made the models fer three or

four of 'em. Dad's sot agin 'em on account o' their pitchin' an' joltin', but there's heaps o' money in 'em. Dad

can find fish, but he ain't no ways progressivehe don't go with the march o' the times. They're chockfull o'

laboursavin' ' ech all. 'Ever seed the Elector o' Gloucester? She's a daisy, ef she is a toothpick."

"Hills o' dollars. Fifteen thousand, p'haps; more, mebbe. There's goldleaf an' everything you kin think of."

That was the first of many talks with Dan, who told Harvey why he would transfer his dory's name to the

imaginary Burgessmodelled haddocker. Harvey heard a good deal about the real Hattie at Gloucester; saw a

lock of her hairwhich Dan, finding fair words of no avail, had "hooked" as she sat in front of him at school

that winterand a photograph. Hattie was about fourteen years old, with an awful contempt for boys, and had

been trampling on Dan's heart through the winter. All this was revealed under oath of solemn secrecy on

moonlit decks, in the dead dark, or in choking fog; the whining wheel behind them, the climbing deck before,

and without, the unresting, clamorous sea. Once, of course, as the boys came to know each other, there was a

fight, which raged from bow to stern till Penn came up and separated them, but promised not to tell Disko,

who thought fighting on watch rather worse than sleeping. Harvey was no match for Dan physically, but it

says a great deal for his new training that he took his defeat and did not try to get even with his conqueror by

That was after he had been cured of a string of boils between his elbows and wrists, where the wet jersey and

oilskins cut into the flesh. The salt water stung them unpleasantly, but when they were ripe Dan treated them

with Disko's razor, and assured Harvey that now he was a "blooded Banker"; the affliction of gurrysores

Since he was a boy and very busy, he did not bother his head with too much thinking. He was exceedingly

sorry for his mother, and often longed to see her and above all to tell her of this wonderful new life, and how

brilliantly he was acquitting himself in it. Otherwise he preferred not to wonder too much how she was

bearing the shock of his supposed death. But one day, as he stood on the foc'sle ladder, guying the cook, who

had accused him and Dan of hooking fried pies, it occurred to him that this was a vast improvement on being

He was a recognized part of the scheme of things on the We're Here; had his place at the table and among the

bunks; and could hold his own in the long talks on stormy days, when the others were always ready to listen

to what they called his "fairytales" of his life ashore. It did not take him more than two days and a quarter to

feel that if he spoke of his own lifeit seemed very far awayno one except Dan (and even Dan's belief was

sorely tried) credited him. So he invented a friend, a boy he had heard of, who drove a miniature fourpony

drag in Toledo, Ohio, and ordered five suits of clothes at a time and led things called "germans" at parties

where the oldest girl was not quite fifteen, but all the presents were solid silver. Salters protested that this

kind of yarn was desperately wicked, if not indeed positively blasphemous, but he listened as greedily as the

others; and their criticisms at the end gave Harvey entirely new notions on "germans," clothes, cigarettes with

goldleaf tips, rings, watches, scent, small dinnerparties, champagne, cardplaying, and hotel

accommodation. Little by little he changed his tone when speaking of his "friend," whom long Jack had

christened "the Crazy Kid," "the Giltedged Baby," "the Suckin' Vanderpoop," and other pet names; and with

his seabooted feet cocked up on the table would even invent histories about silk pajamas and specially

imported neckwear, to the "friend's" discredit. Harvey was a very adaptable person, with a keen eye and ear

Before long he knew where Disko kept the old greencrusted quadrant that they called the "hogyoke"under

the bedbag in his bunk. When he took the sun, and with the help of "The Old Farmer's" almanac found the

latitude, Harvey would jump down into the cabin and scratch the reckoning and date with a nail on the rust of

the stovepipe. Now, the chief engineer of the liner could have done no more, and no engineer of thirty years'

service could have assumed one half of the ancientmariner air with which Harvey, first careful to spit over

the side, made public the schooner's position for that day, and then and not till then relieved Disko of the

The said "hogyoke," an Eldridge chart, the farming almanac, Blunt's "Coast Pilot," and Bowditch's

"Navigator" were all the weapons Disko needed to guide him, except the deepsea lead that was his spare

eye. Harvey nearly slew Penn with it when Tom Platt taught him first how to "fly the blue pigeon"; and,

though his strength was not equal to continuous sounding in any sort of a sea, for calm weather with a

'Tain't soundin's dad wants. It's samples. Grease her up good, Harve." Harvey would tallow the cup at the

~end, and carefully bring the sand, shell, sludge, or whatever it might be, to Disko, who fingered and smelt it

and gave judgment As has been said, when Disko thought of cod he thought as a cod; and by some

longtested mixture of instinct and experience, moved the We~re Here from berth to berth, always with the

But Disko's board was the Grand Banka triangle two hundred and fifty miles on each sidea waste of

wallowing sea, cloaked with dank fog, vexed with gales, harried with drifting ice, scored by the tracks of the

For days they worked in fogHarvey at the belltill, grown familiar with the thick airs, he went out with Tom

Platt, his heart rather in his mouth. But the fog would not lift, and the fish were biting, and no one can stay

helplessly afraid for six hours at a time. Harvey devoted himself to his lines and the gaff or gobstick as Tom

Platt called for them; and they rowed back to the schooner guided by the bell and Tom's instinct; Manuel's

conch sounding thin and faint beside them. But it was an unearthly experience, and, for the first time in a

month, Harvey dreamed of the shifting, smoking floors of water round the dory, the lines that strayed away

into nothing, and the air above that melted on the sea below ten feet from his straining eyes. A few days later

he was out with Manuel on what should have been fortyfathom bottom, but the whole length of the roding

ran out, and still the anchor found nothing, and Harvey grew mortally afraid, for that his last touch with earth

was lost. "Whalehole," said Manuel, hauling m. "That is good joke on Disko. Come!" and he rowed to the

schooner to find Tom Platt and the others jeering at the skipper because, for once, he had led them to the edge

of the barren Whaledeep, the blank hole of the Grand Bank. They made another berth through the fog, and

that time the hair of Harvey's head stood up when he went out in Manuel's dory. A whiteness moved in the

whiteness of the fog with a breath like the breath of the grave, and there was a roaring, a plunging, and

spouting. It was his first introduction to the dread summer berg of the Banks, and he cowered in the bottom of

the boat while Manuel laughed. There were days, though, clear and soft and warm, when it seemed a sin to do

anything but loaf over the handlines and spank the drifting "sunscalds" with an oar; and there were days of

light airs, when Harvey was taught how to steer the schooner from one berth to another.

It thrilled through him when he first felt the keel answer to his band on the spokes and slide over the long

hollows as the foresail scythed back and forth against the blue sky. That was magnificent, in spite of Disko

saying that it would break a snake's back to follow his wake. But, as usual, pride ran before a fall. They were

sailing on the wind with the staysailan old one, luckilyset, and Harvey jammed her right into it to show

Dan how completely he had mastered the art. The foresail went over with a bang, and the foregaff stabbed

and ripped through the staysail, which was, of course, prevented from going over by the mainstay. They

lowered the wreck in awful silence, and Harvey spent his leisure hours for the next few days under Tom

Platt's lee, learning to use a needle and palm. Dan hooted with joy, for, as he said, he had made the very same

Boylike, Harvey imitated all the men by turns, till he had combined Disko's peculiar stoop at the wheel, Long

Jack's swinging overhand when the lines were hauled, Manuel's roundshouldered but effective stroke in a

'Tis beautiful to see how he takes to ut," said Long Jack, when Harvey was looking out by the windlass one

thick noon. "I'll lay my wage an' share 'tis more'n half playactin' to him, an' he consates himself he's a bowld

"That's the way we all begin," said Tom Platt. "The boys they make believe all the time till they've cheated

'emselves into bein' men, an' so till they diepretendin' an' pretendin'. I done it on the old Ohio, I know. Stood

my first watchharborwatchfeelin' finer'n Farragut. Dan's full o' the same kind o' notions. See 'em now,

actin' to be genewine mossbacksvery hair a ropeyarn an' blood Stockholm tar." He spoke down the cabin

stairs. "Guess you're mistook in your judgments fer once, Disko. What in Rome made ye tell us all here the

"He wuz," Disko replied. "Crazy ez a loon when he come aboard; but I'll say he's sobered up consid'ble

"He yarns good," said Tom Platt. "T'other night he told us abaout a kid of his own size steerin' a cunnin' little

rig an' four ponies up an' down Toledo, Ohio, I think 'twas, an' givin' suppers to a crowd o' sim'lar kids.

"Guess he strikes 'em outen his own head," Disko called from the cabin, where he was busy with the logbook.

"Stands to reason that sort is all made up. It don't take in no one but Dan, an' he laughs at it. I've heard him,

"Yever hear what Sim'on Peter Ca'honn said when they whacked up a match 'twix' his sister Hitty an' Lorin'

Jerauld, an' the boys put up that joke on him daown to Georges?" drawled Uncle Salters, who was dripping

Tom Platt puffed at his pipe in scornful silence: he was a Cape Cod man, and had not known that tale more

"Sim'on Peter Ca'honn he said, an' he was jest right, abaout Lorin', 'Ha'af on the taown,' he said, 'an' t'other

ha'af blame fool; an' they told me she's married a 'ich man.' Sim'on Peter Ca'honn he hedn't no roof to his

"He didn't talk any Pennsylvania Dutch," Tom Platt replied. "You'd better leave a Cape man to tell that tale.

"Wal, I don't profess to be any elocutionist," Salters said. "I'm comin' to the moral o' things. That's jest abaout

what aour Harve be! Ha'af on the taown, an' t'other ha'af blame fool; an' there's some'll believe he's a rich

"Did ye ever think how sweet 'twould be to sail wid a full crew o' Salterses?" said Long Jack. "Ha'af in the

furrer an' other ha'af in the muckheap, as Ca'houn did not say, an' makes out he's a fisherman!"

Disko held his tongue, and wrought over the logbook that he kept in a hatchetfaced, square hand; this was

"July 17. This day thick fog and few fish. Made berth to northward. So ends this day.

"July 19. This day comes in with light breeze from N.E. and fine weather. Made a berth to eastward. Caught

"July 20. This, the Sabbath, comes in with fog and light winds. So ends this day. Total fish caught this week,

They never worked on Sundays, but shaved, and washed themselves if it were fine, and Pennsylvania sang

hymns. Once or twice he suggested that, if ft was not an impertinence, he thought he could preach a little.

Uncle Salters nearly jumped down his throat at the mere notion, reminding him that he was not a preacher

and mustn't think of such things. "We'd hev him rememberin' Johnstown next," Salters explained, "an' what

would happen then?" so they compromised on his reading aloud from a book called "Josephus." It was an old

leatherbound volume, smelling of a hundred voyages, very solid and very like the Bible, but enlivened with

accounts of battles and sieges; and they read it nearly from cover to cover. Otherwise Penn was a silent little

body. He would not utter a word for three days on end sometimes, though he played checkers, listened to the

songs, and laughed at the stories. When they tried to stir him up, he would answer: "I don't wish to seem

unneighbourly, but it is because I have nothing to say. My head feels quite empty. I've almost forgotten my

"Nonever," Penn would say, shutting his lips firmly. "Pennsylvania Pratt, of course," he would repeat over

and over. Sometimes it was Uncle Salters who forgot, and told him he was Haskins or Rich or McVitty; but

He was always very tender with Harvey, whom he pitied both as a lost child and as a lunatic; and when

Salters saw that Penn liked the boy, he relaxed, too. Salters was not an amiable person (He esteemed it his

business to keep the boys in order); and the first time Harvey, in fear and trembling, on a still day, managed

to shin up to the maintruck (')an was behind him ready to help), he esteemed it his duty to hang Salters's big

seaboots up therea sight of shame and derision to the nearest schooner. With Disko, Harvey took no

liberties; not even when the old man dropped direct orders, and treated him, like the rest of the crew, to

"Don't you want to do so and so?" and "Guess you'd better," and so forth. There was something about the

cleanshaven lips and the puckered corners of the eyes that was mightily sobering to young blood.

Disko showed him the meaning of the thumbed and pricked chart, which, he said, laid over any government

publication whatsoever; led him, pencil in hand, from berth to berth over the whole string of banksLe Have,

Western, Banquereau, St. Pierre, Green, and Grand talking "cod" meantime. Taught him, too, the principle

In this Harvey excelled Dan, for he had inherited a head for figures, and the notion of stealing information

from one glimpse of the sullen Bank sun appealed to all his keen wits. For other seamatters his age

handicapped him. As Disko said, he should have begun when he was ten. Dan could bait up trawl or lay his

hand on any rope in the dark; and at a pinch, when Uncle Salters had a gurryscore on his palm, could dress

down by sense of touch. He could steer in anything short of half a gale from the feel of the wind on his face,

humouring the We're Here just when she needed it These things he did as automatically as he skipped about

the rigging, or made his dory a part of his own will and body. But he could not communicate his knowledge

Still there was a good deal of general information flying about the schooner on stormy days, when they lay up

in the foc'sle or sat on the cabin lockers, while spare eyebolts, leads, and rings rolled and rattled in the

pauses of the talk. Disko spoke of whaling voyages in the Fifties; of great shewhales slain beside their

young; of death agonies on the black tossing seas, and blood that spurted forty feet in the air; of boats

smashed to splinters; of patent rockets that went off wrongendfirst and bombarded the trembling crews; of

cuttingin and boilingdown, and that terrible "nip" of '71, when twelve hundred men were made homeless

on the ice in three dayswonderful tales, all true. But more wonderful still were his stories of the cod, and

how they argued and reasoned on their private businesses deep down below the keel.

Long Jack's tastes ran more to the supernatural. He held them silent with ghastly stories of the "Yohoes" on

Monomoy Beach, that mock and terrify lonely clamdiggers; of sandwalkers and dunehaunters 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 oldfashioned boat, whistlingnot calling, hut whistlingfor the soul of the man who broke their

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 countryhouses with hardwood floors

and Vantine portires. He laughed at the ghosttales,not as much as he would have done a month before,but

Tom Platt dealt with his interminable trip round the Horn on the old Ohio in flogging days, with a navy more

extinct than the dodothe navy that passed away in the great war. He told them how redhot 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 shipboys of the Miss Jim Buck hove water over them and shouted to the fort to try

again. And he told tales of blockadelong 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 sailingships); of gales and

cold~ld that kept two hundred men, night and day, pounding and chopping at the ice on cable, blocks, and

rigging, when the galley was as redhot 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

Manuel's talk was slow and gentleall 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 baitingports 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

The cook naturally did not loin 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

mallcarrying in the 'winter up Cape Breton way, of the dogtrain that goes to Coudray, and of the

ramsteamer 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 palmtrees 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

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 silverygray kenches of

wellpressed fish mounted higher and higher in the hold. No one day's work was out of common, but the

Naturally, a man of Disko's reputation was closely watched"scrowged upon," Dan called itby his

neighbours, but he had a very pretty knack of giving them the slip through the curdling, glidy fogbanks.

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 mamly

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

"Ain't it?" said Harvey, who was drawing water (he had learned just how to wiggle the bucket), after an

unusually long dressingdown. "Shouldn't mind striking some poor ground for a change, then."

"All the graound I want to seedon't want to strike heris Eastern Point," said Dan. "Say, Dad, it looks's if we

wouldn't hev to lay more'n two weeks on the Shoals. You'll meet all the comp'ny you want then, Harve.

That's the time we begin to work. No reg'lar meals fer no one then. 'Mugup when ye're hungry, an' sleep

when ye can't keep awake. Good job you wasn't picked up a month later than you was, or we'd never ha' had

Harvey understood from the Eldridge chart that the Old Virgin and a nest of curiously named shoals were the

turningpoint of the cruise, and that with good luck they would wet the balance of their salt there. But seeing

the size of the Virgin (it was one tiny dot), he wondered how even Disko with the hogyoke and the lead

could find her. He learned later that Disko was entirely equal to that and any other business and could even

help others. A big fourbyfive blackboard hung in the cabin, and Harvey never understood the need of it

till, after some blinding thick days, they heard the unmelodious tooting of a footpower foghorna machine

They were making a short berth, towing the anchor under their foot to save trouble. "Squarerigger bellowin'

fer his latitude," said Long Jack. The dripping red headsails of a bark glided out of the fog, and the We're

"Frenchman," said Uncle Salters, scornfully. "Miquelon boat from St. Malo." The farmer had a weatherly

"Same here," said Tom Platt. "Hi! Backez vousbackez vous! Standez awayez, you buttended muchobono!

"Ah, ha! Mucho bono! Oui! oui! Clos PouletSt. Malo! St. Pierre et Miquelon," cried the other crowd,

"Bring up the board, Danny. Beats me how them Frenchmen fetch anywheres, exceptin' America's fairish

broadly. Fortysix fortynine's good enough fer them; an' I guess it's abaout right, too"

Dan chalked the figures on the board, and they hung it in the mainrigging to a chorus of mercis from the

"Seems kinder uneighbourly to let 'em swedge off like this," Salters suggested, feeling in his pockets

"Hev ye learned French then sence last trip?" said Disko. "I don't want no more stoneballast hove at us 'long

"Harmon Rush he said that was the way to rise 'em. Plain United States is good enough fer me. We're all

"Oh, yes," said Harvey valiantly; and he bawled: "Hi! Say! Arretez vous! Attendez! Nous sommes venant

"That hit 'em. Let's heave a dory over, anyway," said Tom Platt. "I don't exactly hold no certificates on

French, but I know another lingo that goes, I guess. Come on, Harve, an' interpret."

The raffle and confusion when he and Harvey were hauled up the bark's black side was indescribable. Her

cabin was all stuck round with glaring coloured prints of the Virginthe Virgin of Newfoundland, they called

her. Harvey found his French of no recognized Bank brand, and his conversation was limited to nods and

grins. But Tom Platt waved his arms and got along swimmingly. The captain gave him a drink of

unspeakable gin, and the operacomique crew, with their hairy throats, red caps, and long knives, greeted

him as a brother. Then the trade began. They had tobacco, plenty of itAmerican, that had never paid duty to

France. They wanted chocolate and crackers. Harvey rowed back to arrange with the cook and Disko, who

owned the stores, and on his return the cocoatins and crackerbags were counted out by the Frenchman's

wheel. It looked like a piratical division of loot; but Tom Platt came out of it roped with black pigtail and

stuffed with cakes of chewing and smoking tobacco. Then those jovial mariners swung off into the mist, and

"Par derriere chez ma tante, fly a un bois joli, Et le rossignol y chante Et le jour et la nuit....

Que donneriez vous, belle, Qui 1'arnenerait ici? Je donneral Quebec, Sorel et Saint Denis."

"How was it my French didn't go, and your signtalk did?" Harvey demanded when the batter had been

"Signtalk!" Platt guffawed. "Well, yes, 'twas signtalk, but a heap older'n your French, Harve. Them French

"Looks that way, don't it?" said the mano'war's man, stuffing his pipe; and Harvey had another mystery of

The thing that struck him most was the exceedingly casual way in which some craft loafed about the broad

Atlantic. Fishingboats, as Dan said, were naturally dependent on the courtesy and wisdom of their

neighbours; but one expected better things of steamers. That was alter another interesting interview, when

they had been chased for three miles by a big lumbering old cattleboat, all boarded over on the upper deck,

that smelt like a thousand cattlepens. A very excited officer yelled at them through a speakingtrumpet, 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 beeh? Ye don't deserve to be anywheres. You barnyard

tramps go hoggin' the road on the high seas with no blame consideration fer your neighbours, an' your eyes in

At this the skipper danced on the bridge and said something about Disko's own eyes. "We haven't had an

"Waal, I can," Disko retorted. "What's come to your lead? Et it? Can't ye smell bottom, or are them cattle

"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'

"Thunder!" said a cattleman in a red jersey as he looked over the side. "What asylum did they let His

"Young feller," Salters began, standing up in the forerigging, "let me tell yeou 'fore we go any further that

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 seagreen barnacle 'with

"Naow you've made a show o' me, Salters," said Disko, angrily. He could not stand up to that particular sort

"Well, that's a boatload of lunatics, sure," said the skipper, as he rang up the engineroom and tossed a

"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 cattleboat was practically a barn on blue water, and

Disko insisting that, even if this were the case, decency and fisherpride 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

"They'll tell that tale agin us fer yearsthat's all," said Disko. "Oilcake sprinkled!"

"With salt, o' course," said Salters, Impenitent, reading the farming reports from a weekold New York

"Can't see Ut that way," said Long Jack, the peacemaker "Look at here, Disko! Is there another packet afloat

this day in this weather cud ha' met a tramp an, over an' above givin' her her reckonin', over an' above that, I

say,cud ha' discoorsed wid her quite intelligent on the management av steers an' such at sea? Forgit ut! Av

coorse they will not. 'Twas the most compenjus conversation that iver accrued. Double game an' twice

runnin'all to us." Dan kicked Harvey under the table, and Harvey choked in his cup.

"Well," said Salters, who felt that his honour had been somewhat plastered, "I said I didn't know as 'twuz any

"An' right there," said Tom Platt, experienced in discipline and etiquette "right there, I take it, Disko, you

should ha' asked him to stop ef the conversation wuz likely, in your jedgment, to be anywayswhat it

'Dunno but that's so," said Disko, who saw his way to an honourable retreat from a fit of the dignities.

"Why, o' course it was so," said Salters, "you bein' skipper here; an' I'd cheerful hev stopped on a hintnot

from any leadin' or conviction, but fer the sake o' bearin' an example to these two blame boys of aours."

"Didn't I tell you, Harve, 'twould come araound to us 'fore we'd done? Always those blame boys. But I

"Still, things should ha' been kep' sep'rate," said Disko, and the light of new argument lit in Salters's eye as he

"There's a power av vartue in keepin' things sep'rate," said Long Jack, intent on stilling the storm. "That's

fwhat Steyning of Steyning and Hare's f'und when he sent Counahan fer skipper on the Manila D. Kuhn,

instid o' Cap. Newton that was took with inflam'try rheumatism an' couldn't go. Counahan the Navigator we

"Nick Counahan he never went aboard fer a night 'thout a pond o' rum somewheres in the manifest," said

Tom Platt, playing up to the lead. "He used to bum araound the c'mission houses to Boston lookin' fer the

Lord to make him captain of a towboat on his merits. Sam Coy, up to Atlantic Avenoo, give him his board

"Seventeen, I guess. He died the year the Caspar McVeagh was built; but he could niver keep things sep'rate.

Steyning tuk him fer the reason the thief tuk the hot stovebekaze there was nothin' else that season. The men

was all to the Banks, and Counahan he whacked up an iverlastin' hard crowd fer crew. Rum! Ye cud ha'

floated the Manila, insurance an' all, in fwhat they stowed aboard her. They lef' Boston Harbour for the great

Grand Bank wid a roarin' nor'wester behind 'em an' all hands full to the bung. An' the hivens looked after

thim, for divil a watch did they set, an' divil a rope did they lay hand to, till they'd seen the bottom av a

fifteengallon cask o' bugjuice. That was about wan week, so far as Counahan remembered. (If I cud only

tell the tale as he told ut!) All that whoile the wind blew like ould glory, an' the Marilla'twas summer, and

they'd give her a foretopmaststruck her gait and kept ut. Then Counahan tuk the hogyoke an' thrembled

over it for a whoile, an' made out, betwix' that an' the chart an' the singin' in his head, that they was to the

south'ard o' Sable Island, gettin' along glorious, but speakin' nothin'. Then they broached another keg, an' quit

speculatin' about anythin' fer another spell. The Marilla she lay down whin she dropped Boston Light, and

she never lufted her leerail up to that timehustlin' on one an' the same slant. But they saw no weed, nor

gulls, nor schooners; an' prisintiy they obsarved they'd bin out a matter o' fourteen days and they mistrusted

the Bank has suspinded payment. So they sounded, an' got sixty fathom. 'That's me,' sez Counahan. 'That's me

iv'ry time! I've run her slat on the Bank fer you, an' when we get thirty fathom we'll turn in like little men.

"Nex' cast they got ninety. Sez Counahan: 'Either the leadline's tuk to stretchin' or else the Bank's sunk.'

"They hauled ut up, bein' just about in that state when ut seemed right an' reasonable, and sat down on the

deck countin' the knots, an' gettin' her snarled up hijjus. The Marilla she'd struck her gait, an' she hild ut, an'

'Aah! go shake yerseif,' sez Counahan. 'Fwhat have I to do wid the Irish coast?'

'Sufferin' Christianity!' sez Counahan (he always said that whin his pumps sucked an' he was not feelin'

'Thirtyfive mile westsou'west o' Cape Clear,' sez the tramp, 'if that's any consolation to you.'

'Consolation!' sez he, bould as brass. 'D'ye take me fer a dialect? Thirtyfive mile from Cape Clear, an'

fourteen days from Boston Light. Sufferin' Christianity, 'tis a record, an' by the same token I've a mother to

Skibbereen!' Think av ut! The gall av um! But ye see he could niver keep things sep'rate.

"The crew was mostly Cork an' Kerry men, barrin' one Marylander that wanted to go back, but they called

him a mutineer, an' they ran the ould Marilla into Skibbereen, an' they had an illigant time visitin' around with

frinds on the ould sod fer a week. Thin they wint back, an' it cost 'em two an' thirty days to beat to the Banks

again. 'Twas gettin' on towards fall, and grub was low, so Counahan ran her back to Boston, wid no more

"Fwhat could they? The fish was on the Banks, an' Counahan was at. Twharf talkin' av his record trip east!

They tuk their satisfaction out av that, an' ut all came av not keepin' the crew and the rum sep'rate in the first

place; an' confusin' Skibbereen wid 'Queereau, in the second. Counahan the Navigator, rest his sowi! He was

"Once I was in the Lucy Holmes," said Manuel, in his gentle voice. "They not want any of her feesh in

Gloucester. Eh, whaat? Give us no price. So we go across the water, and think to sell to some Fayal man.

Then it blow fresh, and we cannot see well. Eh, whaat? Then it blow some mQre fresh, and we go down

below and drive very fastno one know where. By and by we see a land, and it get some hot. Then come two,

three nigger in a brick. Eh, whaat? We ask where we are, and they saynow, what you all think?"

"No. Worse than that. We was below Bezagos, and the brick she was from Liberia! So we sell our feesh

"Go araound the Horn ef there's anythin' worth goin' fer, and the grub holds aout," said Disko. "My father he

run his packet, an' she was a kind o' pinkey, abaout fifty ton, I guess,the Rupert,he run her over to

Greenland's icy mountains the year ha'af our fleet was tryin' alter cod there. An' what's more, he took my

mother along with him,to show her haow the money was earned, I presoom,an' they was all iced up, an' I

was born at Disko. Don't remember nothin' abaout it, o' course. We come back when the ice eased in the

spring, but they named me fer the place. Kinder mean trick to put up on a baby, but we're all baound to make

"Sure! Sure!" said Salters, wagging his head. "All baound to make mistakes, an' I tell you two boys here thet

alter you've made a mistakeye don't make fewer'n a hundred a daythe next best thing's to own up to it like

Long Jack winked one tremendous wink that embraced all hands except Disko and Salters, and the incident

Then they made berth alter berth to the northward, the dories out almost every day, running along the east

It was here Harvey first met the squid, who is one of the best codbaits, but uncertain in his moods. They

were waked out of their bunks one black night by yells of "Squid 0!" from Salters, and for an hour and a half

every soul aboard hung over his squidjiga piece of lead painted red and armed at the lower end with a

circle of pins bent backward like halfopened umbrella ribs. The squidfor some unknown reasonlikes, and

wraps himself round, this thing, and is hauled up ere he can escape from the pins. But as he leaves his home

he squirts first water and next ink into his captor's face; and it was curious to see the men weaving their heads

from side to side to dodge the shot. They were as black as sweeps when the flurry ended; but a pile of fresh

squid lay on the deck, and the large cod thinks very well of a little shiny piece of squid tentacle at the tip of a

clambaited hook. Next day they caught many fish, and met the Carrie Pitman, to whom they shouted their

luck, and she wanted to tradeseven cod for one fairsized squid; but Disko would not agree at the price, and

the Carrie dropped sullenly to leeward and anchored half a mile away, in the hope of striking on to some for

Disco said nothing till after supper, when he sent Dan and Manuel out to buoy the We're Here's cable and

announced his intention of turning in with the broadaxe. Dan naturally repeated these remarks to the dory

from the Carrie, who wanted to know why they were buoying their cable, since they were not on rocky

"Dad sez he wouldn't trust a ferryboat within five mile o' you," Dan howled cheerfully.

"'Cause you've jest the same ex leebowed him, an' he don't take that from any boat, not to speak o' sech a

"She ain't driftin' any this trip," said the man angrily, for the Carrie Pitman had an unsavory reputation for

"Then haow d'you make berths?" said Dan. "It's her best p'int o' sailin'. An' ef she's quit driftin', what in

"Hey, you Portugoosy organgrinder, take your monkey back to Gloucester. Go back to school, Dan Troop,"

"0veralls! 0veralls!" yelled Dan, who knew that one of the Carrie's crew had worked in an overall

To call a Gloucester man a Nova Scotian is not well received. Dan answered in kind.

"Novy yourself, ye Scrabbletowners! ye Chatham wreckers! Git aout with your brick in your stockin'!" And

"I knew haow 'twould be," said Disko. "She's drawed the wind raound already. Some one oughter put a

deesist on thet packet. She'll snore till midnight, an' jest when we're gettin' our sleep she'll strike adrift. Good

job we ain't crowded with craft hereaways. But I ain't goin' to up anchor fer Chatham. She may hold."

The wind, which had hauled round, rose at sundown and blew steadily. There was not enough sea, though, to

disturb even a dory's tackle, but the Carrie Pitman was a law unto herself. At the end of the boys' watch they

"Gory, glory, hallelujah!" sung Dan. "Here she comes, Dad; buttend first, walkin' in her sleep same's she

Had she been any other boat Disko would have taken his chances, but now he cut the cable as the Carrie

Pitman, with all the North Atlantic to play in, lurched down directly upon them. The We're Here, under jib

and ridingsail, gave her no more room than was absolutely necessary,Disko did not wish to spend a week

hunting for his cable,but scuttled up into the wind as the Carrie passed within easy hail, a silent and angry

"Good evenin'," said Disko, raising his headgear, "an' haow does your garden grow?"

"Go to Ohio an' hire a mule," said Uncle Salters. "We don't want no farmers here."

"Say!" Dan's voice rose shrill and high, as he stood on the wheelbox. "Saay! Is there a strike in the

"Veer out the tillerlines," cried Harvey, "and nail 'em to the bottom~' That was a saltflavoured jest he had

been put up to by Tom Platt. Manuel leaned over the stern and yelled: "Johanna Morgan play the organ!

Ahaaaa!" He flourished his broad thumb with a gesture of unspeakable contempt and derision, while little

Penn covered himself with glory by piping up: "Gee a little! Hssh! Come here. Haw!"

They rode on their chain for the rest of the night, a short, snappy, uneasy motion, as Harvey found, and

wasted half the forenoon recovering the cable. But the boys agreed the trouble was cheap at the price of

triumph and glory, and they thought with grief over all the beautiful things that they might have said to the

Next day they fell in with more sails, all circling slowly from the east northerly towards the west. But just

when they expected to make the shoals by the Virgin the fog shut down, and they anchored, surrounded by

the tinklings of invisible bells. There was not much fishing, but occasionally dory met dory in the fog and

That night, a little before dawn, Dan and Harvey, who had been sleeping most of the day, tumbled out to

"hook" fried pies. There was no reason why they should not have taken them openly; but they tasted better so,

and it made the cook angry. The heat and smell below drove them on deck with their plunder, and they found

"Keep her goin'," said he. "I mistrust I hear somethin'. Ef it's anything, I'm best where I am so's to get at

It was a forlorn little jingle; the thick air seemed to pinch it off, and in the pauses Harvey heard the muffled

shriek of a liner's siren, and he knew enough of the Banks to know what that meant. It came to him, with

horrible distinctness, how a boy in a cherrycoloured jerseyhe despised fancy blazers now with all a

fisherman's contempthow an ignorant, rowdy boy had once said it would be "great" if a steamer ran down

a fishingboat. That boy had a stateroom with a hot and cold bath, and spent ten minutes each morning

picking over a giltedged bill of fare. And that same boyno, his very much older brother was up at four of

the dim dawn in streaming, crackling oilskins, hammering, literally for the dear life, on a bell smaller than the

steward's breakfastbell, while somewhere close at hand a thirtyfoot steel stem was storming along at

twenty miles an hour! The bitterest thought of all was that there were folks asleep in dry, upholstered cabins

who would never learn that. they had massacred a boat before breakfast. So Harvey rang the bell.

"Yes, they slow daown one turn o' their blame propeller," said Dan, applying himself to Manuel's conch, "fer

to keep inside the law, an' that's consolin' when we're all at the bottom. Hark to her! She's a humper!"

"Aooowhoowhupp!" went the siren. "Wingletingletink," went the belL "Graaaouch!" went the conch,

while sea and sky were all mrned up in milky fog. Then Harvey fek that he was near a moving body, and

found himself looking up and up at the wet edge of a clifflike bow, leaping, it seemed, directly over the

schooner. A jaunty little feather of water curled in front of it, and as it lifted it showed a long ladder of

Roman numeralsXV., XVI., XVII., XVIII., and sd forthon a salmoncoloured gleaming side. It tilted

forward and downward with a heartstilling "Ssssooo"; the ladder disappeared; a line of brassrimmed

portholes flashed past; a jet of steam puffed in Harvey's helplessly uplifted hands; a spout of hot water

roared along the rail of the We're Here, and the little schooner staggered and shook in a rush of screwtorn

water, as a liner's stern vanished in the fog. Harvey got ready to faint or be sick, or both, when he heard a

crack like a trunk thrown on a sidewalk, and, all small in his ear, a faraway telephone voice drawling:

In half a minute all except Harvey, Penn, and the cook were overside and away. Presently a schooner's

stumpforemast, snapped clean across, drifted past the bows. Then an empty green dory came by, knocking

on the We're Here's side, as though she wished to be taken in. Then followed something, face down, in a blue

jersey, butit was not the whole of a man. Penn changed colour and caught his breath with a click. Harvey

93 might be sunk at any minute, and he jumped at Dan's hail as the crew came back.

"The Jennie Cushman," said Dan, hysterically, "cut clean in halfgraound up an' trompled on at that! Not a

quarter of a mile away. Dad's got the old man. There ain't any one else, andthere was his son, too. Oh,

Harve, Harve, I can't stand it! I've seen" He dropped his head on his arms and sobbed while the others

"What did you pick me up for?" the stranger groaned. "Disko, what did you pick me up for?"

Disko dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder, for the man's eyes were wild and his lips trembled as he stared

at the silent crew. Then up and spoke Pennsylvania Pratt, who was also Haskins or Rich or MeVitty when

Uncle Salters forgot; and his face was changed on him from the face of a fool to the countenance of an old,

wise man, and he said in a strong voice: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name

"Oh, you be, be you?" said the man. "Then pray my son back to me! Pray back a ninethousanddollar boat

an' a thousand quintal of fish. If you'd left me alone my widow could ha' gone on to the Provident an' worked

"There ain't notbin' to say," said Disko. "Better lie down a piece, Jason Olley."

When a man has lost his only son, his summer's work, and his means of livelihood, in thirty counted seconds,

"All Gloucester men, wasn't they?" said Tom Platt, fiddling helplessly with a dorybecket.

"Oh, that don't make no odds," said Jason, wringing the wet from his beard. "I'll be rowin' summer boarders

"Come with me. Come below!" said Penn, as though he had a right to give orders. Their eyes met and fought

"I dunno who you be, but I'll come," said Jason submissively. "Mebbe I'll get back some o' thesome o'

thenine thousand dollars." Penn led him into the cabin and slid the door behind.

"That ain't Penn," cried Uncle Salters. "It's Jacob Boiler, an'he's remembered Johnstown! I never seed stich

They could hear Penn's voice and Jason's together. Then Penn's went on alone, and Salters slipped off his hat,

for Penn was praying. Presently the little man came up the steps, huge drops of sweat on his face, and looked

"He don't know us," Salters groaned. "It's all to do over again, checkers and everythingan' what'll he say to

Penn spoke; they could hear that it was to strangers. "I have prayed," said he. "Our people believe in prayer. I

have prayed for the life of this ma~'s son. Mine were drowned before my eyesshe and my eldest andthe

others. Shall a man be more wise than his Maker? I prayed never for their lives, but I have prayed for this

"Pshaw, Penn! You weren't never mad," Salters began "Only a little distracted like."

"I saw the houses strike the bridge before the fires broke out. I do not remember any more. How long ago is

"I can't stand it! I can't stand it!" cried Dan, and Harvey whimpered in sympathy.

"Then I have been a charge on some one for every day of that time. Who was the man?"

"Ye hain'tye hain't!" cried the seafarmer, twisting his hands together. "Ye've more'n earned your keep

twicetold; an' there's money owm' you, Penn, besides ha'af o' my quartershare in the boat, which is yours

"Mother av Mercy," whispered Long Jack, "an' he's been wid us~all these trips! He's clean bewitched."

A schooner's bell struck up alongside, and a voice hailed through the fog: "0 Disko! 'Heard abaout the Jennie

"They have found his son," cried Penn. "Stand you still and see the salvation of the Lord!"

"Got Jason aboard here," Disko answered, but his voice quavered. "Therewarn't any one else?"

"We've fund one, though. 'Run acrost him snarled up in a mess o' lumber thet might ha' bin a foc'sle. His

Penn raised his hands and said something in German. Harvey could have sworn that a bright sun was shining

upon his lifted face; but the drawl went on: "Saay! You fellers guyed us consid'rable t'other night."

"I know it; but to tell the honest truth we was kinderkinder driftin' when we run agin young Olley."

It was the irrepressible Carrie Pitman, and a roar of unsteady laughter went up from the deck of the We're

"Hedn't you 'baout's well send the old man aboard? We're runnin' in fer more bait an' graoundtackle. Guess

you won't want him, anyway, an' this blame windlass work makes us shorthanded. We'll take care of him.

"Don't want nothin', 'less, mebbe, an anchor that'll hold. Say! Young Olley's gittin' kinder baulky an' excited.

Penn waked him from his stupor of despair, and Tom Platt rowed him over. He went away without a word

96 Rudyard Kipling of thanks, not knowing what was to come; and the fog closed over all.

"And now," said Penn, drawing a deep breath as though about to preach. "And now"the erect body sank like

a sword driven home into the scabbard; the light faded from the overbright eyes; the voice returned to its

usual pitiful little titter "and now," said Pennsylvania Pratt, "do you think it's too early for a little game of

"The very thingthe very thing I was goin' to say myself," cried Salters promptly. "It beats all, Penn, how ye

"Up anchor! Hurry! Let's quit these crazy waters," shouted Disko, and never was he more swiftly obeyed.

"Now what in creation d'ye suppose is the meanin' o' that all?" said Long Jack, when they were working

"The way I sense it," said Disko, at the wheel, "is this: The Jennie Cushman business comin' on an empty

"An' that, o' course, kinder hove him outer water, julluk runnin' a craft ashore; hove him right aout, I take it,

to rememberin' Johnstown an' Jacob Boiler an' suchlike reminiscences. Well, consolin' Jason there held him

up a piece, same's shorin' up a boat. Then, bein' weak, them props slipped an' slipped, an' he slided down the

'Twould ha' bruk Salters all up," said Long Jack, "if Penn had stayed Jacob Bollerin'. Did ye see his face

"Asleepdead asleep. Turned in like a child," Salters replied, tiptoeing alt. "There won't be no grub till he

wakes, natural. Did ye ever see sech a gift in prayer? He everlastin'ly hiked young Olley outer the ocean.

Thet's my belief. Jason was tur'ble praoud of his boy, an' I mistrusted all along 'twas a jedgment on

"That's dif runt," Salters retorted quickly. "Penn's not all caulked, an' I ain't only but doin' my duty by him."

They waited, those hungry men, three hours, till Penn reappeared with a smooth face and a blank mini He

said he believed that he had been dreaming. Then he wanted to know why they were so silent, and they could

Disko worked all hands mercilessly for the next three or four days; and when they could not go out, turned

them into the hold to stack the ship's stores into smaller compass, to make more room for the fish. The packed

mass ran from the cabin partition to the sliding door behind the foc'sle stove; and Disko showed how there is

great art in stowing cargo so as to bring a schooner to her best draft. The crew were thus kept lively till they

recovered their spirits; and Harvey was tickled with a rope's end by Long Jack for being, as the Galway man

said, "sorrowful as a sick cat over fwhat couldn't be helped." He did a great deal of thinking in those weary

days, and told Dan what he thought, and Dan agreed with himeven to the extent of asking for fried pies

But a week later the two nearly upset the Haitie S. in a wild attempt to stab a shark with an old bayonet tied

to a stick. The grim brute rubbed alongside the dory begging for small fish, and between the three of them it

At last, after playing blindman'sbuff in the fog, there came a morning when Disko shouted down the foc'sle:

To the end of his days, Harvey will never forget that sight. The sun was just clear of the horizon they had not

seen for nearly a week, and his low red light struck into the ridingsails of three fleets of anchored

schoonersone to the north, one to the westward, and one to the south. There must have been nearly a

hundred of them, of every possible make and build, with, far away, a squarerigged Frenchman, all bowing

and courtesying one to the other. From every boat dories were dropping away like bees from a crowded hive,

and the clamour of voices, the rattling of ropes and blocks, and the splash of the oars carried for miles across

the heaving water. The sails turned all colours, black, pearlygray, and white, as the sun mounted; and more

The dories gathered in clusters, separated, reformed, and broke again, all heading one way; while men hailed

and whistled and catcalled and sang, and the water was speckled with rubbish thrown overboard.

"I've seen smaller," said Disko. "There's about a thousand men here; an' yonder's the Virgin." He pointed to a

The We're Here skirted round the northern squadron, Disko waving his hand to friend after friend, and

anchored as nearly as a racing yacht at the end of the season. The Bank fleet pass good seamanship in silence;

"Hey, Tom Platt! Come t' supper t0night?" said the Henry Clay; and so questions and answers flew back

and forth. Men had met one another before, doryfishing in the fog, and there is no place for gossip like the

Bank fleet. They all seemed to know about Harvey's rescue, and asked if be were worth his salt yet. The

young bloods jested with Dan, who had a lively tongue of his own, and inquired alter their health by the

townnicknames they least liked. Manuel's countrymen jabbered at him in their own language; and even the

silent cook was seen riding the jibboom and shouting Gaelic to a friend as black as himself. After they had

buoyed the cableall around the Virgin is rocky bottom, and carelessness means chafed groundtackle and

danger from driftingafter they had buoyed the cable, their dories went forth to join the mob of boats

anchored about a mile away. The schooners rocked and dipped at a safe distance, like mother ducks watching

As they drove into the confusion, boat banging boat, Harvey's ears tingled at the comments on his rowing.

Every dialect from Labrador to Long Island, with Portuguese, Neapolitan, Lingua Franca, French, and Gaelic,

with songs and shoutings and new oaths, rattled round him, and he seemed to be the butt of it all. For the first

time in his life he felt shyperhaps that came from living so long with only the We're Heresamong the

scores of wild faces that rose and fell with the reeling small craft. A gentle, breathing swell, three furlongs

from trough to barrel, would quietly shoulder up a string of variously painted dories. They hung for an

instant, a wonderful frieze against the skyline, and their men pointed and hailed. Next moment the open

mouths, waving arms, and bare chests disappeared, while on another swell came up an entirely new line of

characters like paper figures in a toy theatre. So Harvey stared. "Watch out!" said Dan, flourishing a dipnet

"When I tell you dip, you dip. The caplin'll school any time from naow on. Where'll we lay, Tom Platt?"

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 le~bow the We're Heres. But a yell of laughter went up as a dory shot from her

"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 graoundtackle's kinder shifty," said Dan, laughing. "Whale's fouled it. . . .

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

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 dipnet, and shrieked cautions and advice

to his companions, while the deep fizzed like freshly opened sodawater, 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 eyesomething like a circus elephant's

eyeof a whale that drove along almost level with the water, and, so be ~aid, winked at him. Three boats

found their rodings fouled by these reckless midsea hunters, and were towed half a mile ere their horses

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 genfle, hairy Newfoundlander on one side and a howling Portuguese on the other.

Worse than any tangle of fishinglines was the confusion of the doryrodings 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 anchorline was cut, and so was Penn's, and they were turned into reliefboats 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 kerosenelamps on the edge

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 Braady." It sounded like an organ chant.

"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 hooksa "scrowger," they call it~n 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 manhe had been making it up all

day, and talked about it for weekssang, "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 messmate? He was named in

meeting; the name tossed from roller to roller. Disko's infallible judgments, Long Jack's marketboat that he

had sold years ago, Dan's sweetheart (oh, but Dan was an angry boy!), Penn's bad luck with doryanchors,

Salter's views on manure, Manuel's little slips from virtue ashore, and Harvey's ladylike handling of the

oarall were laid before the public; and as the fog fell around them in silvery sheets beneath the sun, the

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 smoothbacked 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

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

"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

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

"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, eighthundredton 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:

Half a dozen voices together, in a most tuneful chorus, as her stern went down with a roll and a bubble into

Here the skipper lost his temper and said things. instantly fishing was suspended to answer him, and he heard

many curious facts about his boat and her next port of call. They asked him if he were insured; and whence

he had stolen his anchor, because, they said' it belonged to the Carrie Pitman; they called his boat a

mudscow, and accused him of dumping garbage to frighten the fish; they offered to tow him and charge it to

his wife; and one audacious youth slipped up almost under the counter, smacked it with his open palm, and

The cook emptied a pan of ashes on him, and he replied with codheads. The bark's crew fired small coal

from the galley, and the dories threatened to come aboard and "razee" her. They would have warned her at

once had she been in real peril; but, seeing her well clear of the Virgin, they made the most of their chances.

The fun was spoilt when the rock spoke again, a halfmile to windward, and the tormented bark set

everything that would draw and went her ways; but the dories felt that the honours lay with them.

All that night the Virgin roared hoarsely; and next morning, over an angry, whiteheaded sea, Harvey saw

the Fleet with flickering masts waiting for a lead. Not a dory was hove out till ten o'clock, when the two

Jeraulds of the Day's Eye, imagining a lull which did not exist, set the example. In a minute half the boats

were out and bobbing in the cockly swells, but Troop kept the We're Heres at work dressing down. He saw no

sense in "dares"; and as the storm grew that evening they had the pleasure of receiving wet strangers only too

glad to make any refuge in the gale. The boys stood by the dorytackles with lanterns, the men ready to haul,

one eye cocked for the sweeping wave that would make them drop everything and hold on for dear life. Out

of the dark would come a yell of "Dory, dory!" They would hook up and haul in a drenched man and a

halfsunk boat, till their decks were littered down with nests of dories and the bunks were full. Five times in

their watch did Harvey, with Dan, jump at the foregaff where it lay lashed on the boom, and cling with arms,

legs, and teeth to rope and spar and sodden canvas as a big wave filled the decks. One dory was smashed to

pieces, and the sea pitched the man head first on to the decks, cutting his forehead open; and about dawn,

when the racing seas glimmered white all along their cold edges, another man, blue and ghastly, crawled in

with a broken hand, asking news of his brother. Seven extra mouths sat down to breakfast: A Swede; a

Chatham skipper; a boy from Hancock, Maine; one Duxbury, and three Provincetown men.

There was a general sorting out among the Fleet next day; and though no one said anything, all ate with better

appetites when boat after boat reported full crews aboard. Only a couple of Portuguese and an old man from

Gloucester were drowned, but many were cut or bruised; and two schooners had parted their tackle and been

blown to the southward, three days' sail. A man died on a Frenchmanit was the same bark that had traded

tobacco with the We're Heres. She slipped away quite quietly one wet, white morning, moved to a patch of

deep water, her sails all hanging anyhow, and Harvey saw the funeral through Disko's spyglass. It was only

an oblong bundle slid overside. They did not seem to have any form of service, but in the night, at anchor,

Harvey heard them across the starpowdered black water, singing something that sounded like a hymn. it

"La brigantine Qui va tourner, Roule et s'incline Pour m'entrainer. Oh, Vierge Marie, Pour moi priez Dieul

Tom Platt visited her, because, he said, the dead man was his brother as a Freemason. It came out that a wave

had doubled the poor fellow over the heel of the bowsprit and broken his back. The news spread like a flash,

for, contrary to general custom, the Frenchman held an auction of the dead man's kit,he had no friends at St

Malo or Miquelon,and everything was spread out on the top of the house, from his red knitted cap to the

leather belt with the sheathknife at the back. Dan and Harvey were out on twentyfathom water in the

Hattie S., and naturally rowed over to join the crowd. It was a long pull, and they stayed some little time

while Dan bought the knife, which had a curious brass handle. When they dropped overside and pushed off

into a drizzle of rain and a lop of sea, it occurred to them that they might get into trouble for neglecting the

"Guess 'twon't hurt us any to be warmed up," said Dan, shivering under his oilskins, and they rowed on into

"There's too much blame tide hereabouts to trust to your instinks," he said. "Heave over the anchor, Harve,

and we'll fish a piece till the thing lifts. Bend on your biggest lead. Three pound ain't any too much in this

There was quite a little bubble at the bows, where some irresponsible Bank current held the dory full stretch

on her rope; but they could not see a boat's length in any direction. Harvey turned up his collar and bunched

himself over his reel with the air of a wearied navigator. Fog had no special terrors for him now. They fished

a while in silence, and found the cod struck on well. Then Dan drew the sheathknife and tested the edge of it

"On account o' their blame Cath'lic superstitions," said Dan, jabbing with the bright blade. "They don't fancy

takin' iron from off a dead man, so to speak. 'See them Arichat Frenchmen step back when I bid?"

"We know it ain't, but there's no goin' in the teeth o' superstition. That's one o' the advantages o' livin' in a

"Oh, Double Thatcher, how are you? Now Eastern Point comes inter view. The girls an' boys we soon shall

"Why didn't that Eastport man bid, then? He bought his boots. Ain't Maine progressive?"

"Maine? Pshaw! They don't know enough, or they hain't got money enough, to paint their haouses in Maine.

I've seen 'em. The Eastport man he told me that the knife had been usedso the French captain told himused

"Cut a man? Heave's the muckle." Harvey hauled in his fish, rebaited, and threw over.

"Christmas! I didn't know it," said Harvey, turning round. "I'll give you a dollar for it when Iget my wages.

"Honest? D'you like it as much as all that?" said Dan, flushing. "Well, to tell the truth, I kinder got it for

youto give; but I didn't let on till I saw how you'd take it. It's yours and welcome, Harve, because we're

"Take it. 'Tain't no use to me. I wish you to hev it." The temptation was irresistible. "Dan, you're a white

"That's good hearin'," said Dan, with a pleasant laugh; and then, anxious to change the subject: " 'Look's if

"Fouled, I guess," said Harve, tugging. Before he pulled up he fastened the belt round him, and with deep

delight heard the tip of the sheath click on the thwart. "Concern the thing!" he cried. "She acts as though she

Dan reached over and gave a judgmatic tweak. "Hollbut'll act that way 'f he's sulky. Thet's no

strawberrybottom. Yank her once or twice. She gives, sure. Guess we'd better haul up an' make certain."

They pulled together, making fast at each turn on the cleats, and the hidden weight rose sluggishly.

"Prize, oh! Haul!" shouted Dan, but the shout ended in a shrill, double shriek of horror, for out of the sea

cam~the body of the dead Frenchman buried two days before! The hook had caught him under the right

armpit, and he swayed, erect and horrible, head and shoulders above water. His arms were tied to his side,

andhe had no face. The boys fell over each other in a heap at the bottom of the dory, and there they lay

"The tidethe tide brought him!" said Harvey with quivering lips, as he fumbled at the clasp of the belt.

"Oh, Lord! Oh, Harve!" groaned Dan, "be quick. He's come for it. Let him have it. Take it off."

Harvey sat up to unfasten the belt, facing the head that had no face under its streaming hair. "He's fast still,"

he whispered to Dan, who slipped out his knife and cut the line, as Harvey flung the belt far overside. The

body shot down with a plop, and Dan cautiously rose to his knees, whiter than the fog.

"He come for it. He come for it. I've seen a stale one hauled up on a trawl and I didn't much care, but he come

"Dunno as thet would ba' made any differ. We're both scared out o' ten years' growth. Oh, Harve, did ye see

"Did I? I'll never forget it. But look at here, Dan; it couldn't have been meant. It was only the tide."

"Tide! He come for it, Harve. Why, they sunk him six miles to south'ard o' the Fleet, an' we're two miles from

where she's lyin' now. They told me he was weighted with a fathom an' a half o' chaincable."

"Something bad. 'Guess he's bound to take k with him to the Judgment, an' so What are you doin' with the

"I don't care. I had to look at his face while I was takin' the belt off. You can keep your catch if you like. I've

"Guess ifs best to be on the safe side," he murmured at last. "I'd give a month's pay if this fog 'u'd lift. Things

go abaout in a fog that ye don't see in clear weather yohoes an' hollerers and such like. I'm sorter relieved

"Do~n't, Dan! We're right on top of him now. 'Wish I was safe aboard, hem' pounded by Uncle Saltem."

"They'll be lookin' fer us in a little. Gimme the tooter." Dan took the tin dinnerhorn, but paused before he

"Question is, haow he'd take it. There was a man frurn down the coast told me once he was in a schooner

where they darsen't ever blow a horn to the dories, becaze the skippernot the man he was with, but a captain

that had run her five years beforehe'd drowned a boy alongside in a drunk fit; an' ever after, that boy he'd

"Dory! dory!" a muffled voice cried through the fog. They cowered again, and the horn dropped from Dan's

"Dunno what made me think o' thet fool tale, either," said Dan. "It's the doctor, sure enough."

"We're here," sung both boys together. They heard oars, but could see nothing till the cook, shining and

"Thet's what we want. Thet's what we're sufferin' for" said Dan. "Anything homey's good enough fer us.

We've had kinder depressin' company." As the cook passed. them a line, Dan told him the tale.

Never had the little rocking We're Here looked so deliciously homelike as when the cook, born and bred in

fogs, rowed them back to her. There was a warm glow of light from the cabin and a satisfying smell of food

forward, and it was heavenly to hear Disko and the others, all quite alive and solid, leaning over the rail and

promising them a firstclass pounding. But the cook was a black. master of strategy. He did not get the dories

aboard till he had given the more striking points of the tale, explaining as he backed and bumped round the

counter how Harvey was the mascot to destroy any possible bad luck. So the boys came override as rather

uncanny heroes, and every one asked them questions instead of pounding them for making trouble. Little

Penn delivered quite a speech on the folly of superstitions; but public opinion was against him and in favour

of Long Jack, who told the most excruciating ghoststories, till nearly midnight. Under that influence no one

except Salters and Penn said anything about "idolatry," when the cook put a lighted candle, a cake of flour

and water, and a pinch of salt on a shingle, and floated them out astern to keep the Frenchman quiet in case

he was still restless. Dan lit the candle because he had bought the belt, and the cook grunted and muttered

"Huh! I guess I'm as enlightened and progressive as the next man, but when it comes to a dead St Malo

deckhand scarin' a couple o' pore boys stiff fer the sake of a thirtycent knife, why, then, the cook can take

Next morning all, except the cook, were rather ashamed of the ceremonies, and went to work double tides,

The We're Here was racing neck and neck for her last few loads against the Parry Norman; and so close was

the struggle that the Fleet took side and betted tobacco. All hands worked at the lines or dressingdown till

they fell asleep where they stoodbeginning before dawn and ending when it was too dark to see. They even

used the cook as pitcher, and turned Harvey into the hold to pass salt, while Dan helped to dress down.

Luckily a Parry Norman man sprained his ankle falling down the foc'sle, and the We're Heres gained. Harvey

could not see how one more fish could be crammed into her, but Disko and Tom Platt stowed and stowed,

and planked the mass down with big stones from the ballast, and there was always "jest another day's work."

Disko did not tell them when all the salt was wetted. He rolled to the lazarette aft the cabin and began hauling

out the big mainsail. This was at ten in the morning. The ridingsail was down and the main and topsail

were up by noon, and dories came alongside with letters for home, envying their good fortune. At last she

cleared decks, hoisted her flag,as is the right of the first boat off the Banks,up~anchored, and began to

move. Disko pretended that he wished to accommodate folk who had not sent in their mail, and so worked

her gracefully in and out among the schooners. In reality, that was his little triumphant procession, and for the

fifth year running it showed what kind of mariner he was. Dan's accordion and Tom Platt's fiddle supplied the

"Hih! Yih'. Yoho! Send your letters raound! All our salt is wetted, an' the anchor's off the graound!

Bend, oh, bend your mains'1, we're back to Yankeeland With fifteen hunder' quintal, An' fifteen hunder'

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,

Harvey very soon discovered that the We're Here, with her ridingsail, 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, lowsided 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 coa'ing her steadfast way through gray, grayblue, or black hollows

l aced across and across with streaks of shivering foam; or rubbing herself caressingly along the flank of

some bigger waterhill. It was as if she said: "You wouldn't hurt me, surely? I'm ouly 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 wavetops turning over with a

tearing; the hurry of the winds working across open spaces and herding the purpleblue cloudshadows; 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 jibboom solemnly poked at the low stars, and Harvey went down to get a

But the best fun was when the boys were put on the wheel together, Tom Platt within hail, and she cuddled

her leerail down to the crashing blue, and kept a little homemade 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 halfway up, yearning and peering for the tall twinlights of Thatcher's Island.

They left the cold gray of the Bank sea, saw the lumberships making for Quebec by the Straits of St.

Lawrence, with the Jersey saltbrigs 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

"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

"That's good, but a nightshirt's better. I've been dreamin' o' nightshirts 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 riurnin' into the aidge of a hot wave naow, an' I can smell the bayberries. Wonder if

The hesitating sails flapped and lurched in the close air as the deep smoothed out, blue and oily, round them.

When they whistled for a wind only the rain came in spiky rods, bubbling and drumming, and behind the rain

the thunder and the lightning of midAugust. They lay on the deck with bare feet and arms, telling one

another what they would order at their first meal ashore; for now the land was in plain sight. A Gloucester

swordfishboat drifted alongside, a man in the little pulpit on the bowsprit flourished his harpoon, his bare

head plastered down with the wet. "And all's well!" he sang cheerily, as though he were watch on a big liner.

Disko shouted it and passed on, while the wild summer storm pounded overhead and the lightning flickered

along the capes from four different quarters at once. It gave the low circle of hills round Gloucester Harbor,

Ten Pound Island, the fishsheds, with the broken line of houseroofs, and each spar and buoy on the water,

in blinding photographs that came and went a dozen times to the minute as the We're Here crawled in on

halfflood, and the whistlingbuoy moaned and mourned behind her. Then the storm died out in long,

separated, vicious dags of bluewhite flame, followed by a single roar like the roar of a mortarbattery, and

"Mary pity her!" said Long Jack, and lowered the little flag halfmast for the sake of Otto, swept overboard

Disko wiped the wet from his eyes and led the We're Here to Wouverman's wharf, giving his orders in

whispers, while she swung round moored tugs and nightwatchmen hailed her from the ends of inkyblack

piers. Over and above the darkness and the mystery of the procession, Harvey could feel the land close round

him once more, with all its thousands of people asleep, and the smell of earth after rain, and the familiar noise

of a switchingengine coughing to herself in a freightyard; and all those things made his heart beat and his

throat dry up as he stood by the foresheet. They heard the anchorwatch snoring on a lighthousetug, nosed

into a pocket of darkness where a lantern glimmered on either side; somebody waked with a grunt, threw

them a rope, and they made fast to a silent wharf flanked with great ironroofed sheds fall of warm

Then Harvey sat down by the wheel, and sobbed and sobbed as though his heart would break, and a tall

woman who had been sitting on a weighscale dropped down into the schooner and kissed Dan once on the

cheek; for she was his mother, and she had seen the We~re Here by the lightning flashes. She took no notice

of Harvey till he had recovered himself a little and Disko had told her his story. Then they went to Disko's

house together as the dawn was breaking; and until the telegraph office was open and he could wire his folk,

Harvey Cheyne was perhaps the loneliest boy in all America. But the curious thing was that Disko and Dan

Wouverman was not ready for Disko's prices till Disko, sure that the We're Here was at least a week ahead of

any other Gloucester boat, had given him a few days to swallow them; so all hands played about the streets,

and Long Jack stopped the Rocky Neck trolley, on principle, as be said, till the conductor let him ride free.

But Dan went about with his freckled nose in the air, bungfull of mystery and most haughty to his family.

"Dan, I'll hev to lay inter you ef you act this way," said Troop, pensively. "Sence we've come ashore this time

"I'd lay into him naow ef he was mine," said Uncle Salters, sourly. He and Penn boarded with the Troops.

"Oho!" said Dan, shuffling with the accordion round the backyard, ready to leap the fence if the enemy

advanced. "Dan, you're welcome to your own judgment, but remember I've warned ye. Your own flesh an'

blood ha' warned ye! 'Tain't any o' my fault ef you're mistook, but I'll be on deck to watch ye An' ez fer yeou,

Uncle Salters, Pharaoh's chief butler ain't in it 'longside o' you! You watch aout an' wak. You'll be plowed

under like your own blamed clover; but meDan TroopI'll flourish like a green baytree because I warn't

Disko was smoking in all his shore dignity and a pair of beautiful carpetslippers. "You're gettin' ez crazy as

poor Harve. You two go araound gigglin' an' squinchin' an' kickin' each other under the table till there's no

"There's goin' to be a heap lessfer some folks," Dan replied. "You wait an' see."

He and Harvey went out on the trolley to East Gloucester, where they tramped through the bayberry bushes to

the lighthouse, and lay down on the big red boulders and laughed themselves hungry. Harvey had shown Dan

"Harve's folk?" said Dan, with an unruffled face after supper. "Well, I guess they don't amount to much of

anything, or we'd ha' heard from 'em by naow. His pop keeps a kind o' store out West. Maybe he'll give you 's

Whatever his private sorrows may be, a multimillionaire, like any other workingman, should keep abreast of

his business. Harvey Cheyne, senior, had gone East late in June to meet a woman broken down, hall mad,

who dreamed day and night of her son drowning in the gray seas. He had surrounded her 'with doctors,

trained nurses, massagewomen, and even faithcure companions, but they were useless. Mrs. Cheyne lay

still and moaned, or talked of her boy by the hour together to any one who would listen. Hope she had none,

and who could offer it? All she needed was assurance that drowning did not hurt; and her husband watched to

guard lest she should make the experiment. Of his own sorrow he spoke littlehardly realized the depth of it

till he caught himself ask'ng the calendar on his writingdesk, "What's the use of going on?"

There had always lain a pleasant notion at the back of his head that, some day, when he had rounded off

everything and the boy had left college, he would take his son to his heart and lead him into his possessions.

Then that boy, he argued, as busy fathers do, would instantly become his companion, partner, and ally, and

there would follow splendid years of great works carried out togetherthe old head backing the young fire.

Now his boy was deadlost at sea, as it might have been a Swede sailor from one of Cheyne's big teaships;

the wife dying, or worse; he himself was trodden down by platoons of women and doctors and maids and

attendants; worried almost beyond endurance by the shift and change of her poor restless whims; hopeless,

He had taken the wife to his raw new palace in San Diego, where she and her people occupied a wing of great

price, and Cheyne, in a verandaroom, between a secretary and a typewriter, who was also a telegraphist,

toiled along wearily from day to day. There was a war of rates among four Western railroads in which he was

supposed to be interested; a devastating strike had developed in his lumber camps in Oregon, and the

legislature of the State of California, which has no love for its makers, was preparing open war against him.

Ordinarily he would have accepted battle ere it was offered, and have waged a pleasant and unscrupulous

campaign. But now he sat limply, his soft black hat pushed forward on to his nose, his big body shrunk inside

his loose clothes, staring at his boots or the Chinese junks in the bay, and assenting absently to the secretary's

Cheyne was wondering how much it would cost to drop everything and pull out. He carried huge insurances,

could buy himself royal annuities, and between one of his places in Colorado and a little society (that would

do the wife good), say in Washington and the South Carolina islands, a man might forget plans that had come

The click of the typewriter stopped; the girl was looking at the secretary, who had turned white.

Picked up by fishing schooner We're Here having fallen off boat great times on Banks fishing all well waiting

Gloucester Mass care Disko Troop for money or orders wire what shall do and how is Mama Harvey N.

The father let it fall, laid his head down on the rollertop of the shut desk, and breathed heavily. The

'~Whatwhat d' you think of it? Is it possible? Is there any meaning to it? I can't quite make it out," he cried.

"I can," said the doctor. "I lose seven thousand a yearthat's all." He thought of the struggling New York

practice he had dropped at Cheyne's imperious bidding, and returned the telegram with a sigh.

"What's the motive?" said the doctor, coolly. "Detection's too certain. It's the boy sure enough."

Enter a French maid, impudently, as an indispensable one who is kept on only by large wages.

The master of thirty millions bowed his head meekly and followed Suzanne; and a thin, high voice on the

upper landing of the great whitewood square staircase cried: "What is it? What has happened?"

No doors could keep out the shriek that rang through the echoing house a moment later, when her husband

"And that's all right," said the doctor, serenely, to the typewriter. "About the only medical statement in novels

"I know it; but we've a heap to do first." Miss Kinzey was from Milwaukee, somewhat direct of speech; and

as her fancy leaned towards the secretary, she divined there was work in hand. He was looking earnestly at

"Milsom, we're going right across. Private carstraight throughBoston. Fix the connections," shouted

The secretary turned to the typewriter, and their eyes met (out of that was born a storynothing to do with

this story). She looked inquiringly, doubtful of his resources. He signed to her to move to the Morse as a

general brings brigades into action. Then he swept his hand musicianwise through his hair, regarded the

ceiling, and set to work, while Miss Kinzey's white fingers called up the Continent of America.

"K. H. Wade, Los Angeles The 'Constance' is at Los Angeles, isn't she, Miss Kinzey?"

"Ready? Send 'Constance,' private car, here, and arrange for special to leave here Sunday in time to connect

"Not on those grades. That gives 'em sixty hours from here to Chicago. They won't gain anything by taking a

special east of that. Ready? Also arrange with Lake Shore and Michigan Southern to take 'Constance' on New

York Central and Hudson River Buffalo to Albany, and B. and A. the same Albany to Boston. Indispensable I

should reach Boston Wednesday evening. Be sure nothing prevents. Have also wired Canniff, Toucey, and

"Now then. Canniff, Toucey, and Barnes, of course. Ready? Canniff, Chicago. Please take my private car

'Constance' from Santa Fe' at Sixteenth Street next Tuesday p. m. on N. Y. Limited through to Buffalo and

deliver N. Y. C. for Albany.Ever bin to N' York, Miss Kinzey? We'll go some day.Ready? Take car

"Beg pardon. Now, Boston and Albany, Barnes, same instructions from Albany through to Boston. Leave

threefive P. M. (you needn't wire that); arrive ninefive P. M. Wednesday. That covers everything Wade

"It's great," said Miss Kinzey, with a look of admiration. This was the kind of man she understood and

'Tisn't bad," said Milsom, modestly. "Now, any one but me would have lost thirty hours and spent a week

working out the run, instead of handing him over to the Santa Fe' straight through to Chicago."

"But see here, about that Noo York Limited. Chauncey Depew himself couldn't hitch his car to her," Miss

When he returned with the father's message bidding Harvey meet them in Boston at an appointed hour, he

found Miss Kinzey laughing over the keys. Then Milsom laughed too, for the frantic clicks from Los Angeles

Ten minutes later Chicago appealed to Miss Kinzey in these words: ~'lf crime of century is maturing please

This was capped by a message from Topeka (and wherein Topeka was concerned even Milsom could not

Cheyne smiled grimly at the consternation of his enemies when the telegrams were laid before him. "They

think we're on the warpath. Tell 'em we don't feel like fighting just now, Milsom. Tell 'em what we're going

for. I guess you and Miss Kinsey had better come along, though it isn't likely I shall do any business on the

So the truth was told. Miss Kinzey clicked in the sentiment while the secretary added the memorable

quotation, "Let us have peace," and in board rooms two thousand miles away the representatives of

sixtythree million dollars' worth of variously manipulated railroad interests breathed more freely. Cheyne

was flying to meet the only son, so miraculously restored to him. The bear was seeking his cub, not the bulls.

Hard men who had their knives drawn to fight for their financial lives put away the weapons and wished him

Godspeed, while half a dozen panicsmitten tinpot roads perked up their heads and spoke of the wonderful

It was a busy weekend among the wires; for now that their anxiety was removed, men and cities hastened to

accommodate. Los Angeles called to San Diego and Barstow that the Southern California engineers might

know and be ready in their lonely roundhouses; Barstow passed the word to the Atlantic and Pacific; and

Albuquerque flung it the whole length of the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe management, even into

Chicago. An engine, combinationcar with crew, and the great and gilded "Constance" private car were to be

"expedited" over those two thousand three hundred and fifty miles. The train would take precedence of one

hundred and seventyseven others meeting and passing; despatchers and crews of every one of those said

trains must be notified. Sixteen locomotives, sixteen engineers, and sixteen firemen would be neededeach

and every one the best available. Two and one half minutes would be allowed for changing engines, three for

watering, and two for coaling. "Warn the men, and arrange tanks and chutes accordingly; for Harvey Cheyne

is in a hurry, a hurrya hurry," sang the wires. "Forty miles an hour will be expected, and division

superintendents will accompany this special over their respective divisions. From San Diego to Sixteenth

"It will be hot," said Cheyne, as they rolled out of San Diego in the dawn of Sunday. "We're going to hurry,

Mama, just as fast as ever we can; but I really don't think there's any good of your putting on your bonnet and

gloves yet. You'd much better lie down and take your medicine. I'd play you a game of dominoes, but it's

"I'll be good. Oh, I will be good. Onlytaking off my bonnet makes me feel as if we'd never get there."

The sixfoot drivers were hammering their way to San Bernardino and the Mohave wastes, but this was no

grade for speed. That would come later. The heat of the desert followed the heat of the hills as they turned

east to the Needles and the Colorado River. The car cracked in the utter drouth and glare, and they put

crushed ice to Mrs. Cheyne's neck, and toiled up the long, long grades, past Ash Fork, towards Flagstaff,

where the forests and quarries are, under the dry, remote skies. The needle of the speedindicator flicked and

wagged to and fro; the cinders rattled on the roof, and a whirl of dust sucked after the whirling wheels. The

crew of the combination sat on their bunks, panting in their shirtsleeves, and Cheyne found himself among

them shouting old, old stories of the railroad that every trainman knows, above the roar of the car. He told

them about his son, and how the sea had given up its dead, and they nodded and spat and rejoiced with him;

asked after "her, back there," and whether she could stand it if the engineer "let her out a piece," and Cheyne

thought she could. Accordingly, the great firehorse was "let~ut" from Flagstaff to Winslow, till a division

But Mrs. Cheyne, in the boudoir stateroom, where the French maid, sallowwhite with fear, clung to the

silver doorhandle, only moaned a little and begged her husband to bid them "hurry." And so they dropped

the dry sands and moonstruck rocks of Arizona behind them, and grilled on till the crash of the couplings

and the wheeze of the brakehose told them they were at Coolidge by the Continental Divide.

Three bold and experienced mencool, confident, and dry when they began; white, quivering, and wet when

they finished their trick at those terrible wheelsswung her over the great lift from Albuquerque to Glorietta

and beyond Springer, up and up to the Raton Tunnel on the State line, whence they dropped rocking into La

Junta, had sight of the Arkansaw, and tore down the long slope to Dodge City, where Cheyne took comfort

There was very little talk in the car. The secretary and typewriter sat together on the stamped Spanishleather

cushions by the plateglass observationwindow at the rear end, watching the surge and ripple of the ties

crowded back behind them, and, it is believed, making notes of the scenery. Cheyne moved nervously

between his own extravagant gorgeousness and the naked necessity of the combination, an unlit cigar in his

teeth, till the pitying crews forgot that he was their tribal enemy, and did their best to entertain him.

At night the bunched electrics lit up that distressful palace of all the luxuries, and they fared sumptuously,

Now they heard the swish of a watertank, and the guttural voice of a Chinaman, the clickclink of hammers

that tested the Krupp steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear platform; now the solid crash

of coal shot into the tender; and now a beating back of noises as they flew past a waiting train. Now they

looked out into great abysses, a trestle purring beneath their tread, or up to rocks that barred out half the stars.

Now scaur and ravine changed and rolled back to jagged mountains on the horizon's edge, and now broke

At Dodge City an unknown hand threw in a copy of a Kansas paper containing some sort of an interview with

Harvey, who had evidently fallen in with an enterprising reporter, telegraphed on from Boston. The joyful

journalese revealed that it was beyond question their boy, and it soothed Mrs. Cheyne for a while. Her one

word "hurry" was conveyed by the crews to the engineers at Nickerson, Topeka, and Marceline, where the

grades are easy, and they brushed the Continent behind them. Towns and villages were close together now,

"The very best we can, Mama. There's no sense in getting in before the Limited. We'd only have to wait."

Cheyne sat down and read the dial for her (there were some miles which stand for records to this day), but the

seventyfoot car never changed its long steamerlike roll, moving through the heat with the hum of a giant

bee. Yet the speed was not enough for Mrs. Cheyne; and the heat, the remorseless August heat, was making

her giddy; the clockhands would not move, and when, oh, when would they be in Chicago?

It is not true that, as they changed engines at Fort Madison, Cheyne passed over to the Amalgamated

Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers an endowment sufficient to enable them to fight him and his fellows

on equal terms for evermore. He paid his obligations to engineers and firemen as he believed they deserved,

and only his bank knows what he gave the crews who had sympathized with him. It is on record that the last

crew took entire charge of switching operations at Sixteenth Street, because "she" was in a doze at last, and

Now the highly paid specialist who conveys the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Limited from Chicago to

Elkhart is something of an autocrat, and he does not approve of being told how to back up to a car. None the

less he handled the "Constance" as if she might have been a load of dynamite, and when the crew rebuked

"Pshaw!" said the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe men, discussing life later, "we weren't runnin' for a

record. Harvey Cheyne's wife, she were sick back, an' we didn't want to jounce her. 'Come to think of it, our

runnin' time from San~Diego to Chicago was 57.54. You can tell that to them Eastern waytrains. When

To the Western man (though this would not please either city) Chicago and Boston are cheek by jowl, and

some railroads encourage the delusion. The Limited whirled the "Constance" into Buffalo and the arms of the

New York Central and Hudson River (illustrious magnates with white whiskers and gold charms on their

watchchains boarded her here to talk a little business to Cheyne), who slid her gracefully into Albany,

where the Boston and Albany completed the run from tidewater to tide watertotal time, eightyseven

hours and thirtyfive minutes, or three days, fifteen hours and one half. Harvey was waiting for them.

Alter violent emotion most people and all boys demand food. They feasted the returned prodigal behind

drawn curtains, cut off in their great happiness, while the trains roared in and out around them. Harvey ate,

drank, and enlarged on his adventures all in one breath, and when he had a hand free his mother fondled it.

His voice was thickened with living in the open, salt air; his palms were rough and hard, his wrists dotted

with marks of gurrysores; and a fine full flavour of codfish hung round rubber boots and blue jersey.

The father, well used to judging men, looked at him keenly. He did not know what enduring harm the boy

might have taken. Indeed, he caught himself thinking that he knew very little whatever of his son; but he

distinctly remembered an unsatisfied, doughfaced youth who took delight in "calling down the old man,"

and reducing his mother to tearssuch a person as adds to the gaiety of public rooms and hotel piazzas, where

the ingenuous young of the wealthy play with or revile the bellboys. But this well setup fisheryouth did

not wriggle, looked at him with eyes steady, clear, and unflinching, and spoke in a tone distinctly, even

startlingly, respectful. There was that in his voice, too, which seemed to promise that the change might be

"Some one's been coercing him," thought Cheyne. "Now Constance would never have allowed that. Don't see

"But why didn't you tell this man, Troop, who you were?" the mother repeated, when Harvey had expanded

"Disko Troop, dear. The best man that ever walked a deck. I don't care who the next is."

"Why didn't you tell him to put you ashore? You know Papa would have made it up to him ten times over."

"I know it; but he thought I was crazy. I'm afraid I called him a thief because I couldn't find the bills in my

"That explains it, then. I don't blame Troop any. I just said I wouldn't workon a Banker, tooand of course

Cheyne slapped his leg and chuckled. This was going to be a boy after his own hungry heart. He had never

"And the old man gave me ten and a half a month; he's paid me half now; and I took hold with Dan and

pitched right in. I can't do a man's work yet. But I can handle a dory 'most as well as Dan, and I don't get

rattled in a fogmuch; and I can take my trick in light windsthat's steering, dearand I can 'most bait up a

trawl, and I know my ropes, of course; and I can pitch fish till the cows come home, and I'm great on old

Josephus, and I'll show you how I can clear coffee with a piece of fishskin, andI think I'll have another

cup, please. Say, you've no notion what a heap of work there is in ten and a half a month!"

"You never asked, Harve. I'll tell you about it some day, if you care to listen. Try a stuffed olive."

"Troop says the most interesting thing in the world is to find out how the next man gets his vittles. It's great to

have a trimmedup meal again. W e were well fed, though. But mug on the Banks. Disko fed us firstclass.

He's a great man.And Danthat's his sonDan's my partner. And there's Uncle Salters and his manures, an' he

reads Josephus. He's sure I'm crazy yet. And there's poor little Penn, and he is crazy. You mustn't talk to him

And, oh, you must know Tom Platt and Long Jack and Manuel. Manuel saved my life. I'm sorry he's a

Portuguee. He can't talk much, but he's an everlasting musk ian. He found me struck adrift and drifting, and

"What for, Mama? I worked like a horse and I ate like a hog and I slept like a dead man."

That was too much for Mrs. Cheyne, who began to think of her visions of a corpse rocking on the salty seas.

She went to her stateroom, and Harvey curled up beside his father, explaining his indebteeiness.

"You can depend upon me to do everything I can for the crowd, Harve. They seem to be good men on your

"Best in the Fleet, sir. Ask at Gloucester," said Harvey. "But Disko believes still he's cured me of being crazy.

Dan's the only one I've let on to about you, and our private cars and all the rest of it, and I'm not quite sure

Dan believes. I want to paralyze 'em tomorrow. Say, can't they run the 'Constance' over to Gloucester?

Mama don't look fit to be moved, anyway, and we're bound to finish cleaning out by tomorrow. Wouverman

takes our fish. You see, we're the first off the Banks this season, and it's four twentyfive a quintal. We held

"I told Troop I would. I'm on the scales. I've brought the tallies with me." He looked at the greasy notebook

with an air of importance that made his father choke. "There isn't but three notwo ninetyfour or five

"Can't, sir. I'm tallyman for the schooner. Troop says I've a better head for figures than Dan. Troop's a

"Then I'll sleep here till three and catch the four o'clock freight. They let us men from the Fleet ride free as a

"That's a notion. But I think we can get the 'Constance' around about as soon as your men's freight. Better go

Harvey spread himself on the sofa, kicked off his boots, and was asleep before his father could shade the

electrics. Cheyne sat watching the young face under the shadow of the arm thrown over the forehead, and

among many things that occurred to him was the notion that he might perhaps have been neglectful as a

"One never knows when one's taking one's biggest risks," he said. "It might have been worse than drowning;

but I don't think it hasI don't think it has. If it hasn't, I haven't enough to pay Troop, that's all; and I don't

Morning brought a fresh sea breeze through the windows, the "Constance" was sidetracked among

"We'll go and look, ready to throw him a rope m case. You've never seen him working for his bread," said the

They went down between the stores full of fishermen's oilskins to Wouverman's wharf where the We're Here

rode high, her Bank flag still flying, all hands busy as beavers in the glorious morning light. Disko stood by

the main hatch superintending Manuel, Penn, and Uncle Salters at the tackle. Dan was swinging the loaded

baskets inboard as Long Jack and Tom Platt filled them, and Harvey, with a notebook, represented the

skipper's interests before the clerk of the scales on the saltsprinkled wharfedge.

"Ready!" cried the voices below. "Haul!" cried Disko. "Hi!" said Manuel. "Here!" said Dan, swinging the

The last of the fish had been whipped out, and Harvey leaped from the stringpiece six feet to a ratline, as the

shortest way to hand Disko the tally, shouting, "Two ninetyseven, and an empty hold!"

"Eight sixtyfive. Three thousand six hundred and seventysix dollars and a quarter. 'Wish I'd share as well

"Well, I won't go so far as to say you hevn't deserved it, Harve. Don't you want to slip up to Wouverman's

"Who's that boy?" said Cheyne to Dan, well used to all manner of questions from those idle imbeciles called

"Well, he's kind o' supercargo," was the answer. "We picked him up struck adrift on the Banks. Fell

overboard from a liner, he sez. He was a passenger. He's by way o' hem' a fisherman now."

"Yeep. Dad, this man wants to know ef Harve's worth his keep. Say, would you like to go aboard? We'll fix

"I should very much, indeed. 'Twon't hurt you, Mama, and you'll be able to see for yourself."

The woman who could not lift her head a week ago scrambled down the ladder, and stood aghast amid the

"He's a good boy, an' ketches right hold jest as he's bid. You've heard haow we found him? He was sufferin'

from nervous prostration, I guess, 'r else his head had hit somethin', when we hauled him aboard. He's all over

that naow. Yes, this is the cabin. 'Tain't in order, but you're quite welcome to look araound. Those are his

"Did he sleep here?" said Mrs. Cheyne, sitting on a yellow locker and surveying the disorderly bunks.

"No. He berthed forward, madam, an' only fer him an' my boy hookin' fried pies an muggin' up when they

"There weren't nothin' wrong with Harve," said Uncle Salters, descending the steps. "He hung my boots on

the maintruck, and he ain't over an' above respectful to such as knows more'n he do, specially about farmin';

Dan in the meantime, profiting by dark hints from Harvey early that morning, was executing a wardance on

deck. "Tom, Tom!" he whispered down the hatch. "His folks has come, an' Dad hain't caught on yet, an'

they're powwowin' in the cabin. She's a daisy, an' he's all Harve claimed he was, by the looks of him."

"Howly Smoke!" said Long Jack, climbing out covered with salt and fishskin. "D'ye belave his tale av the

They came delightedly, just in time to hear Cheyne say: "I'm glad he has a good character, becausehe's my

Disko's jaw fell,Long Jack always vowed that he heard the click of it,and he stared alternately at the man

"There was a tale he told us av drivin' four little ponies in a rig av his own," said Long Jack. "Was that thrue

"I wuzI am mistook in my jedgmentsworse'n the men o' Marblehead," said Disko, as though the words

were being windlassed out of him. "I don't mind ownin' to you, Mr. Cheyne, as I mistrusted the boy to he

"Did he tell ye anything else? 'Cause I pounded him once." This with a somewhat anxious glance at Mrs.

"Oh, yes," Cheyne replied. "I should say it probably did him more good than anything else in the world."

"I jedged 'twuz necessary, er I wouldn't ha' done it. I don't want you to think we abuse our boys any on this

Mrs. Cheyne had been looking at the facesDisko's ivoryyellow, hairless, iron countenance; Uncle Salters's,

with its rim of agricultural hair; Penn's bewildered simplicity; Manuel's quiet smile; Long Jack's grin of

delight, and Tom Platt's scar. Rough, by her standards, they certainly were; but she had a mother's wits in her

"Oh, tell me, which is who?" said she, half sobbing. "I want to thank you and bless youall of you."

Disko introduced them all in due form. The captain of an oldtime Chinaman could have done no better, and

Mrs. Cheyne babbled incoherently. She nearly threw herself into Manuel's arms when she understood that he

"But how shall I leave him dreeft?" said poor Manuel. "What do you yourself if you find him so? Eh,

whaat? We are in one good boy, and I am ever so pleased he come to be your son."

"And he told me Dan was his partner!" she cried. Dan was already sufficiently pink, but he turned a rich

crimson when Mrs. Cheyne kissed him on both cheeks before the assembly. Then they led her forward to

show her the foc'sle, at which she wept again, and must needs go down to see Harvey's identical bunk, and

there she found the nigger cook cleaning up the stove, and he nodded as though she were some one he had

expected to meet for years. They tried, two at a time, to explain the boat's daily life to her, and she sat by the

pawlpost, her gloved hands on the greasy table, laughing with trembling lips and crying with dancing eyes.

"And who's ever to use the We're Here after this?" said Long Jack to Tom Platt. "I feel as if she'd made a

"Cathedral!" sneered Tom Platt. "Oh, if it had bin even the Fish C'mmission boat instid of this ballyhoo o'

blazes. If we only hed some decency an' order an' sideboys when she goes over! She'll have to climb that

"It must be terrible to be mad. Except to lose your child, I do not know anything more terrible. But your child

"I wuz mistook, Harve. I wuz mistook," said Disko, swiftly, holding up a hand. "I wuz mistook in my

"Well, not without the balance of my wages, 'less you want to have the We're Here attached."

"Thet's so; I'd clean forgot"; and he counted out the remaining dollars. "You done all you contracted to do,

Harve; and you done it 'baout's well as if you'd been brought up" Here Disko brought himself up. He did not

Cheyne stayed to talk with Disko, but the others made a procession to the depot, with Mrs. Cheyne at the

head. The French maid shrieked at the invasion; and Harvey laid the glories of the "Constance" before them

without a word. They took them in in equal silencestamped leather, silver doorhandles and rails, cut velvet,

plateglass, nickel, bronze, hammered iron, and the rare woods of the continent inlaid.

"I told you," said Harvey; "I told you." This was his crowning revenge, and a most ample one.

Mrs. Cheyne decreed a meal, and that nothing might be lacking to the tale Long Jack told afterwards in his

boardinghouse, she waited on them herself. Men who are accustomed to eat at tiny tables in howling gales

have curiously neat and finished manners; but Mrs. Cheyne, who did not know this, was surprised. She

longed to have Manuel for a butler; so silently and easily did he comport himself among the frail glassware

and dainty silver. Tom Platt remembered the great days on the Ohio and the manners of foreign potentates

who dined with the officers; and Long Jack, being Irish, supplied the small talk till all were at their ease.

In the We're Here's cabin the fathers took stock of each other behind their cigars. Cheyne knew well enough

when he dealt with a man to whom he could not offer money; equally well he knew that no money could pay

"I hevn't done anything to your boy or fer your boy excep' make him work a piece an' learn him how to

"By the way," Cheyne answered casually, "what d'you calculate to make of your boy?"

Disko removed his cigar and waved it comprehensively round the cabin. "Dan's jest plain boy, an' he don't

allow me to do any of his thinkin'. He'll hev this able little packet when I'm laid by. He ain't noways anxious

'Bin's fer ez Noo York once in a boat. I've no use for railroads. No more hez Dan. Salt water's good enough

"Haow's that? I thought you wuz a kinder railroad king. Harve told me so whenI was mistook in my

"We're all apt to be mistaken. I fancied perhaps you might know I own a line of teaclippers~an Francisco to

"Blame that boy! He never told. I'd ha' listened to that, instid o' his truck abaout railroads an' ponycarriages."

"No, I only capttook hold of the 'Blue M.' freighters Morgan and McQuade's old lin~this summer." Disko

"Great Caesar Almighty! I mistrust I've been fooled from one end to the other. Why, Phil Airheart he went

from this very town six year backno, sevenan' he's mate on the San Jose nowtwentysix days was her

time out. His sister she's livin' here yet, an' she reads his letters to my woman. An' you own the 'Blue M.'

"If I'd known that I'd ha' jerked the We're Here back to port all standin', on the word."

"If I'd only known! If he'd only said about the cussed Line, I'd ha' understood! I'll never stand on my own

"I'm glad to have a recommend from that quarter. Airheart's skipper of the San Jose now. What I was getting

at is to know whether you'd lend me Dan for a year or two, and we'll see if we can't make a mate of him.

"That's diff'runt. Look at here naow, I ain't recommendin' Dan special because he's my own flesh an' blood. I

know Bank ways ain't clipper ways, but he hain't much to learn. Steer he canno boy better, if I say itan' the

rest's in our blood an' get; but I could wish he warn't so cussed weak on navigation."

"Airheart will attend to that. He'll ship as boy for a voyage or two, and then we can put him in the way of

doing better. Suppose you take him in hand this winter, and I'll send for him early in the spring. I know the

"Pshaw! We Troops, livin' an' dead, are all around the earth an' the seas thereof."

"But I want you to understandand I mean thisany time you think you'd like to see him, tell me, and I'll

"If you'll walk a piece with me, we'll go to my house an' talk this to my woman. I've bin so crazy mistook in

They went bluetrimmed of nasturtiums over to Troop's eighteenhundreddollar, white house, with a retired

dory full in the front yard and a shuttered parlour which was a museum of oversea plunder. There sat a large

woman, silent and grave, with the dim eyes of those who look long to sea for the return of their beloved.

"We lose one hundred a year from Gloucester only, Mr. Cheyne," she said"one hundred boys an' men; and

I've come so's to hate the sea as if 'twuz alive an' listenin'. God never made it fer humans to anchor on. These

"As straight as the winds let 'em, and I give a bonus for record passages. Tea don't improve by being at sea."

"When he wuz little he used to play at keeping store, an' I had hopes he might follow that up. But soon's he

"They're squareriggers, Mother; ironbuilt an' well found. Remember what Phil's sister reads you when she

"I've never known as Phil told lies, but he's too venturesome (like most of 'em that use the sea). If Dan sees

"She jest despises the ocean," Disko explained, "an' II dunno haow to act polite, I guess, er I'd thank you

"My fathermy own eldest brothertwo nephewsan' my second sister's man," she said, dropping her head on

Cheyne was relieved when Dan turned up and accepted with more delight than he was able to put into words.

Indeed, the offer meant a plain and sure road to all desirable things; but Dan thought most of commanding

Mrs. Cheyne had spoken privately to the unaccountable Manuel in the matter of Harvey's rescue. He seemed

to have no desire for money. Pressed hard, he said that he would take five dollars, because he wanted to buy

something for a girl. Otherwise"How shall I take money when I make so easy my eats and smokes? You

will giva some if I like or no? Eh, whaat?. Then you shall giva me money, but not that way. You shall giva

all you can think." He introduced her to a snuffy Portuguese priest with a list of semidestitute widows as

long as his cassock. As a strict Unitarian, Mrs. Cheyne could not sympathize with the creed, but she ended by

Manuel, faithful son of the Church, appropriated all the blessings showered on her for her charity. "That letta

me out," said he. "I have now ver' good absolutions for six months"; and he strolled forth to get a

handkerchief for the girl of the hour and to break the hearts of all the others.

Salters went West for a season with Penn, and left no address behind. He had a dread that these mlllionary

people, with wasteful private cars, might take undue interest in his companion. It was better to visit inland

relatives till the coast was clear. "Never you be adopted by rich folk, Penn," he said in the cars, "or I'll take 'n'

break this checkerboard over your head. Ef you forgif your name aginwhich is Prattyou remember you

belong with Salters Troop, an' set down right where you are till I come fer you. Don't go taggin' araound after

But it was otherwise with the We're Here's silent cook, for he came up, his kit in a handkerchief, and boarded

the "Constance." Pay was no particular object, and he did not in the least care where he slept. His business, as

revealed to him in dreams, was to follow Harvey for the rest of his days. They tried argument and, at last,

persuasion; but there is a difference between one Cape Breton and two Alabama negroes, and the matter was

referred to Cheyne by the cook and porter. The millionaire only laughed. He presumed Harvey might need a

bodyservant some day or other, and was sure that one volunteer was worth five hirelings. Let the man stay,

therefore; even though he called himself MacDonald and swore in Gaelic. The car could go back to Boston,

With the "Constance," which in his heart of hearts he loathed, departed the last remnant of Cheyne's

millionairedom, and he gave himself up to an energetic idleness. This Gloucester was a new town in a new

land, and he purposed to "take it in," as of old he had taken in all the cities from Snohomish to San Diego of

that world whence he hailed. They made money along the crooked street which was half wharf and half ship's

store: as a leading professional he wished to learn how the noble game was played. Men said that four out of

every five fishballs served at New England's Sunday breakfast came from Gloucester, and overwhelmed

him with figures in proofstatistics of boats, gear, wharffrontage, capital invested, salting, packing,

factories, insurance, wages, repairs, and profits. He talked with the owners of the large fleets whose skippers

were little more than hired men, and whose crews were almost all Swedes or Portuguese. Then he conferred

with Disko, one of the few who owned their craft, and compared notes in his vast head. He coiled himself

away on chaincables in marine junkshops, asking questions with cheerful, unslaked Western curiosity, till

all the waterfront wanted to know "what in thunder that man was after, anyhow." He prowled into the

Mutual Insurance rooms, and demanded explanations of the mysterious remarks chalked up on the

blackboard day by day; and that brought down upon him secretaries of every Fisherman's Widow and Orphan

Aid Society within the city limits. They begged shamelessly, each man anxious to beat the other institution's

She was resting in a boardinghouse near Eastern Pointa strange establishment, managed, apparently, by the

boarders, where the tablecloths were redandwhitecheckered and the population, who seemed to have

known one another intimately for years, rose up at midnight to make Welsh rarebits if it felt hungry. On the

second morning of her stay Mrs. Cheyne put away her diamond solitaires before she came down to breakfast.

"They're most delightful people," she confided to her husband; "so friendly and simple, too, though they are

"That isn't simpleness, Mama," he said, looking across the boulders behind the appletrees where the

"It can't be," said Mrs. Cheyne quietly. "There isn't a woman here owns a dress that cost a hundred dollars.

"I know it, dear. We have~f course we have. I guess it's only the style they wear East. Are you having a good

"I don't see very much of Harvey; he's always with you; but I ain't near as nervous as I was."

'7 haven't had such a good time since Willie died. I never rightly understood that I had a son before this.

you, dear? 'Cushion under your head? Well, we'll go down to the wharf again and look around."

Harvey was his father's shadow in those days, and the two strolled along side by side, Cheyne using the

grades as an excuse for laying his hand on the boy's square shoulder. It was then that Harvey noticed and

admired what had never struck him beforehis father's curious power of getting at the heart of new matters as

"How d'you make 'em tell you everything without opening your head?" demanded the son, as they came out

"I've dealt with quite a few men In my time, Harve, and one sizes 'em up somehow, I guess. I know

something about myself, too." Then, after a pause, as they sat down on a wharfedge: "Men can 'most always

tell when a man has handled things for himself, and then they treat him as one of themselves."

"Same as they treat me down at Wouverman's wharf. I'm one of the crowd now. Disko has told every one I've

earned my pay." Harvey spread out his hands and rubbed the palms together. "They're all soft again," he said

"Keep 'em that way for the next few years, while you're getting your education. You can harden 'em up after."

"It rests with you, Harve. You can take cover behind your mama, of course, and put her on to fussing about

His father turned where he sat and thrust out a long hand. "You know as well as I do that I can't make

anything of you if you don't act straight by me. I can handle you alone if you'll stay alone, but I don't pretend

"I guess it was my fault a good deal; but if you want the truth, you haven't been much of anything up to date.

"Umm! Disko thinks . . . Say, what d'you reckon it's cost you to raise me from the startfirst, last and all

Cheyne smiled. "I've never kept track, but I should estimate, in dollars and cents, nearer fifty than forty

thousand; maybe sixty. The young generation comes high. It has to have things, and it tires of 'em, andthe

Harvey whistled, but at heart he was rather pleased to think that his upbringing had cost so much. "And all

"Making it only thirty thousand, the thirty I've earned is about ten cents on the hundred. That's a mighty poor

"Disko has got a heap more than that out of Dan since he was ten; and Dan's at school half the year, too."

"No. I'm not after anything. I'm not stuck on myself any just nowthat's all. . . . I ought to be kicked."

"Then I'd have remembered it to the last day I livedand never forgiven you," said Harvey, his chin on his

"I see. The fault's with me and no one else. All the samey, something's got to be done about it."

Cheyne drew a cigar from his vestpocket, bit off the end, and fell to smoking. Father and son were very

much alike; for the beard hid Cheyne's mouth, and Harvey had his father's slightly aquiline nose, closeset

black eyes, and narrow, high cheekbones. With a touch of brown paint he would have made up very

"Now you can go on from here," said Cheyne, slowly, "costing me between six or eight thousand a year till

you're a voter. Well, we'll call you a man then. You can go right on from that, living on me to the tune of

forty or fitty thousand, besides what your mother will give you, with a valet and a yacht or a fancyranch

where you can pretend to raise trottingstock and play cards with your own crowd."

"Yep; or the two De Vitre boys or old man McQuade's son. California's full of 'em, and here's an Eastern

pinkandwhitestriped awnings puffed up the harbour, flying the burgee of some New York club. Two

young men in what they conceived to be sea costumes were playing cards by the saloon skylight; and a

"Shouldn't care to be caught out in her in any sort of a breeze. No beam," said Harvey, critically, as the yacht

"They're having what stands them for a good time. I can give you that, and twice as much as that, Harve.

"Caesar! That's no way to get a dinghy overside," said Harvey, still intent on the yacht. "If I couldn't slip a

"Yacht and ranch and live on 'the old man,' andget behind Mama where there's trouble," said Harvey, with a

"Not a cent more until you're worth it, and you won't begin to touch that for a few years."

"I'd sooner begin sweeping out the officeisn't that how the big bugs start?and touch something now than .

"I know it; we all feel that way. But I guess we can hire any sweeping we need. I made the same mistake

Cheyne pulled his beard and smiled as he looked over the still water, and spoke away from Harvey, who

presently began to be aware that his father was telling the story of his life. He talked in a low, even voice,

without gesture and without expression; and it was a history for which a dozen leading journals would

cheerfully have paid many dollarsthe story of forty years that was at the same time the story of the New

It began with a kinless boy turned loose in Texas, and went on fantastically through a hundred changes and

chops of life, the scenes shifting from State after Western State, from cities that sprang up m a month and in

a season utterly withered away, to wild ventures in wilder camps that are now laborious, paved

municipalities. It covered the building of three railroads and the deliberate wreck of a fourth. It told of

steamers, townships, forests, and mines, and the men of every nation under heaven, manning, creating,

hewing, and digging these. It touched on chances of gigantic wealth flung before eyes that could not see, or

missed by the merest accident of time and travel; and through the mad shift of things, sometimes on

horseback, more often afoot, now rich, now poor, in and out, and back and forth, deckhand, trainhand,

contractor, boardinghouse keeper, journalist, engineer, drummer, realestate agent, politician, deadbeat,

rumseller, mine~owner, speculator, cattleman, or tramp, moved Harvey Cheyne, alert and quiet, seeking

He told of the faith that never deserted him even when he hung on the ragged edge of despairthe faith that

comes of knowing men and things. He enlarged, as though he were talking to himself, on his very great

courage and resource at all times. The thing was so evident in the man's mind that he never even changed his

tone. He described how he had bested his enemies, or forgiven them, exactly as they had bested or forgiven

him in those careless days; how he had entreated, cajoled, and bullied towns, companies, and syndicates, all

for their enduring good; crawled round, through, or under mountains and ravines, dragging a string and

hoopiron railroad after him, and in the end, how he had sat still while promiscuous communities tore the last

The tale held Harvey almost breathless, his head a little cocked to one side, his eyes fixed on his father's face,

as the twilight deepened and the red cigarend lit up the furrowed cheeks and heavy eyebrows. It seemed to

him like watching a locomotive storming across country in the darka mile between each glare of the open

firedoor: but this locomotive could talk, and the words shook and stirred the boy to the core of his soul. At

last Cheyne pitched away the cigarbutt, and the two sat in the dark over the lapping water.

"That's what I got. Now I'm coming to what I didn't get. It won't sound much of anything to you, but I don't

wish you to be as old as I am before you find out. I can handle men, of course, and I'm no fool along my own

lines, butbutI can't compete with the man who has been taught! I've picked up as I went along, and I guess

"You will, though, Harve. You willjust as soon as you're through college. Don't I know it? Don't I know the

look on men's faces when they think me aa 'mucker,' as they call it out here? I can break them to little

piecesyesbut I can't get back at 'em to hurt 'em where they live. I don't say they're 'way 'way up, but I feel

I'm 'way, 'way, 'way off, somehow. Now you've got your chance. You've got to soak up all the learning that's

around, and you'll live with a crowd that are doing the same thing. They'll be doing it for a few thousand

dollars a year at most; but remember you'll be doing it for millions. You'll learn law enough to look after your

own property when I'm out o' the light, and you'll have to be solid with the best men in the market (they are

useful later); and above all, you'll have to stow away the plain, common, sitdownwithyour chinon

yourelbows booklearning. Nothing pays like that, Harve, and it's bound to pay more and more each year in

"There's no sugar in my end of the deal," said Harvey. "Four years at college! 'Wish I'd chosen the valet and

"Never mind, my son," Cheyne insisted. "You're investing your capital where it'll bring in the best returns;

and I guess you won't find our property shrunk any when you're ready to take hold. Think it over, and let me

As this was a business talk, there was no need for Harvey to tell his mother about it; and Cheyne naturally

took the same point of view. But Mrs. Cheyne saw and feared, and was a little jealous. Her boy, who rode

roughshod over her, was gone, and in his stead reigned a keenfaced youth, abnormally silent, who

addressed most of his conversation to his father. She understood it was business, and therefore a matter

beyond her premises. If she had any doubts, they were resolved when Cheyne went to Boston and brought

"What have you two been doing now?" she said, with a weak little smile, as she turned it in the light.

There was not. The boy had made a treaty on his own account. Railroads, he explained gravely, interested

him as little as lumber, real estate, or mining. What his soul yearned alter was control of his father's newly

purchased sailingship. If that could be promised him within what he conceived to be a reasonable time, he,

for his part, guaranteed diligence and sobriety at college for four or five years. In vacation he was to be

allowed full access to all details connected with the lin~he had not asked more than two thousand questions

about it,from his father's most private papers in the safe to the tug in San Francisco harbour.

"It's a deal," said Cheyne at the last. "You'll alter your mind twenty times before you leave college, o' course;

but if you take hold of it in proper shape, and if you don't tie it up before you're twentythree, I'll make the

"Nope; never pays to split up a going concern. There's too much competition in the world anyway, and Disko

says 'bloodkin hev to stick together.' His crowd never go back on him. That's one reason, he says, why they

make such big fares. Say, the We're Here goes off to the Georges on Monday. They don't stay long ashore, do

"Well, we ought to be going, too, I guess. I've left my business hung up at loose ends between two oceans,

and it's time to connect again. I just hate to do it, though; haven't had a holiday like this for twenty years."

"We can't go without seeing Disko off," said Harvey; "and Monday's Memorial Day. Let's stay over that,

"What is this memorial business? They were talking about it at the boardinghouse," said Cheyne weakly.

"Well, as far as I can make out, this business is a sort of songanddance act, whacked up for the summer

boarders. Disko don't think much of it, he says, because they take up a collection for the widows and orphans.

"The summer convention is. They read out the names of the fellows drowned or gone astray since last time,

and they make speeches, and recite, and all. Then, Disko says, the secretaries of the Aid Societies go into the

back yard and fight over the catch. The real show, he says, is in the spring. The ministers all take a hand then,

"I see," said Cheyne, with the brilliant and perfect comprehension of one born into and bred up to city pride.

"Guess I'll go down to Disko's and make him bring his crowd up before they sail. I'll have to stand with them,

"Oh, that's it, is it," said Cheyne. "I'm only a poor summer boarder, and you're"

"A Bankerfullblooded Banker," Harvey called back as he boarded a trolley, and Cheyne Went on with his

Disko had no use for public functions where appeals were made for charity, but Harvey pleaded that the glory

of the day would be lost, so far as he was concerned, if the We're Heres absented themselves. Then Disko

made conditions. He had heardit was astonishing how all the world knew all the world's business along the

waterfronthe had heard that a "Philadelphia actresswoman" was going to take part in the exercises; and

he mistrusted that she would deliver "Skipper Ireson's Ride." Personally, he had as little use for actresses as

for summer boarders; but justice was justice, and though he himself (here Dan giggled) had once slipped up

on a matter of judgment, this thing must not be. So Harvey came back to East Gloucester, and spent half a

day explaining to an amused actress with a royal reputation on two seaboards the inwardness of the mistake

Cheyne knew by old experience what would happen; but anything of the nature of a public palaver as meat

and drink to the man's soul. He saw the trolleys hurrying west, in the hot, hazy morning, full of women in

light summer dresses, and whitefaced strawhatted men fresh from Boston desks; the stack of bicycles

outside the post~office; the comeandgo of busy officials, greeting one another; the slow flick and swash of

bunting in the heavy air; and the important man with a hose sluicing the brick sidewalk.

"Mother," he said suddenly, "don't you rememberafter Seattle was burned outand they got her going

Mrs. Cheyne nodded, and looked critically down the crooked street Like her husband, she understood these

gatherings, all the West over, and compared them one against another. The fishermen began to mingle with

the crowd about the townhall doorsblue jowled Portuguese, their women bareheaded or shawled for the

most part; cleareyed Nova Scotians, and men of the Maritime Provinces; French, Italians, Swedes, and

Danes, with outside crews of coasting schooners; and everywhere women in black, who saluted one another

with gloomy pride, for this was their day of great days. And there were ministers of many creeds ,pastors of

great, giltedged congregations, at the seaside for a rest, with shepherds of the regular work,from the priests

of the Church on the Hill to bushbearded exsailor Lutherans, hailfellow with the men of a score of boats.

There were owners of lines of schooners, large contributors to the societies, and small men, their few craft

pawned to the mastheads, with bankers and marineinsurance agents, captains of tugs and waterboats,

riggers, fitters, lumpers, salters, boatbuilders, and coopers, and all the mixed population of the waterfront.

They drifted along the line of seats made gay with the dresses of the summer boarders, and one of the town

officials patrolled and perspired till he shone all over with pure civic pride. Cheyne had met him for five

"Well, Mr. Cheyne, and what d'you think of our city? Yes, madam, you can sit anywhere you please.You

"That's so, of course. You ought to have been at the exercises when we celebrated our two hundred and

"So I heard. It pays, too. What's the matter with the town that it don't have a firstclass hotel, though?"

"Bight over there to the left, Pedro. Heaps o' room for you and your crowd.Why, that's what I tell 'em all

the time, Mr. Cheyne. There's big money in it, but I presume that don't affect you any. What we want is

A heavy hand fell on his broadcloth shoulder, and the flushed skipper of a Portland coalandice coaster

spun him half round. "What in thunder do you fellows mean by clappin' the law on the town when all decent

men are at sea this way? Heh? Town's dry as a bone, an' smells a sight worse sence I quit. 'Might ha' left us

"Don't seem to have hindered your nourishment this morning, Carsen. I'll go into the politics of it later. Sit

"What good is arguments to me? In Miquelon champagne's eighteen dollars a case and" The skipper

'Cost us four thousand dollars, too. We'll have to get back to highlicense next year to pay for it. I wasn't

going to let the ministers have all the religion at their convention. Those are some of our orphans standing up

to sing. My wife taught 'em. See you again later, Mr. Cheyne. I'm wanted on the platform."

High, clear, and true, children's voices bore down the last noise of those settling into their places.

" O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him for ever!"

The women throughout the hall leaned forward to look as the reiterated cadences filled the air. Mrs. Cheyne,

with some others, began to breathe short; she had hardly imagined there were so many widows in the world;

and instinctively searched for Harvey. He had found the We're Heres at the back of the audience, and was

standing, as by right, between Dan and Disko. Uncle Salters, returned the night before with Penn, from

"Hain't your folk gone yet?" he grunted. "What are you doin' here, young feller?"

"0 ye Seas and Floods, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever!"

"Shut your head, Salters," said Disko. "Your bile's gone back on you. Stay right where ye are, Harve."

Then up and spoke the orator of the occasion, another pillar of the municipality, bidding the world welcome

to Gloucester, and incidentally pointing out wherein Gloucester excelled the rest of the world. Then he turned

to the seawealth of the city, and spoke of the price that must be paid for the yearly harvest. They would hear

later the names of their lost dead one hundred and seventeen of them. (The widows stared a little, and looked

at one another here.) Gloucester could not boast any overwhelming mills or factories. Her sons worked for

such wage as the sea gave; and they all knew that neither Georges nor the Banks were cowpastures. The

utmost that folk ashore could accomplish was to help the widows and the orphans, and after a few general

remarks he took this opportunity of thanking, in the name of the city, those who had so publicspiritedly

"I jest despise the beggin' pieces in it," growled Disko. "It don't give folk a fair notion of us."

"Ef folk won't be forehanded an' put by when they've the chance," returned Salters, "it stands in the nature o'

things they hev to be 'shamed. You take warnin' by that, young feller. Riches endureth but for a season, ef

"But to lose everything, everything," said Penn. "What can you do then? Once I"the watery blue eyes stared

up and down as if looking for something to steady them"once I readin a book, I think~f a boat where

"Shucks!" said Salters, cutting in. "You read a little less an' take more int'rust in your vittles, and you'll come

Harvey, jammed among the fishermen, felt a creepy, crawly, tingling thrill that began in the back of his neck

'That the actress from Philadelphia?" said Disko Troop, scowling at the platform. "You've fixed it about old

It was not "Ireson's Ride" that the woman delivered, but some sort of poem about a fishingport called

Brixham and a fleet of trawlers beating in against storm by night, while the women made a guiding fire at the

"They took the grandma's blanket, Who shivered and bade them go; They took the baby's cradle, Who could

"Whew!" said Dan, peering over Long Jack's shoulder. "That's great! Must ha' bin expensive, though."

"And knew not all the while If they were lighting a bonfire Or only a funeral pile."

The wonderful voice took hold of people by their heartstrings; and when she told how the drenched crews

were flung ashore, living and dead, and they carried the bodies to the glare of the fires, asking: "Child, is this

your father?" or "Wife, is this your man?" you could hear hard breathing all over the benches.

"And when the boats of Brixham Go out to face the gales, Think of the love that travels Like light upon their

There was very little applause when she finished. The women were looking for their handkerchiefs, and many

"H'm," said Salters; "that 'u'd cost ye a dollar to hear at any theatremaybe two. Some folk, I presoom, can

afford it. 'Seems downright waste to me. . . . Naow, how in Jerusalem did Cap. Bart Edwardes strike adrift

"No keepin' him under," said an Eastport man behind. "He's a poet, an' he's baound to say his piece. 'Comes

He did not say that Captain B. Edwardes had striven for five consecutive years to be allowed to recite a piece

of his own composition on Gloucester Memorial Day. An amused and exhausted cornmittee had at last given

him his desire. The simplicity and utter happiness of the old man, as he stood up in his very best Sunday

clothes, won the audience ere he opened his mouth. They sat unmurmuring through sevenandthirty

hatchetmade verses describing at fullest length the loss of the schooner Joan Hasken off the Georges in the

A farsighted Boston reporter slid away for a full copy of the epic and an interview with the author; so that

earth had nothing more to offer Captain Bart Edwardes, exwhaler, shipwright, masterfisherman, and poet,

"Naow, I call that sensible," said the Eastport man. "I've bin over that graound with his writin', jest as he read

"If Dan here couldn't do better'n that with one hand before breakfast, he ought to be switched," said Salters,

upholding the honor of Massachusetts on general principles. "Not but what I'm free to own he's considerable

"Guess Uncle Salters's goin' to die this trip. Fust compliment he's ever paid me," Dan sniggered. "What's

"Don't know what's the matter with me," Harvey implied." 'Seems if my insides were too big for my outsides.

"Dispepsy? Pshawtoo bad. We'll wait for the readin', an' then we'll quit, an' catch the tide."

The widowsthey were nearly all of that season's makingbraced themselves rigidly like people going to be

shot in cold blood, for they knew what was coming. The summerboarder girls in pink and blue shirtwaists

stopped tittering over Captain Edwardes's wonderful poem, and looked back to see why all was silent. The

fishermen pressed forward a~ that town official who had talked to Cheyne bobbed up on the platform and

began to read the year's list of losses, dividing them into months. Last September's casualties were mostly

single men and strangers, but his voice rang very loud in the stillness of the hall.

"September 9th.Schooner Florrie Anderson lost, with all aboard, off the Georges.

That shot went home, for one of the widows flinched where she sat, clasping and unclasping her hands. Mrs.

Cheyne, who had been listening with wideopened eyes, threw up her head and choked. Dan's mother, a few

seats to the right, saw and heard and quickly moved to her side. The reading went on. By the time they

reached the January and February wrecks the shots were falling thick and fast, and the widows drew breath

between their teeth. "February l4th.Schooner Harry Randolph dismasted on the way home from

"February 23d.Schooner Gilbert Hope; went astray in dory, Robert Beavon, 29, married, native of Pubnico,

But his wife was in the hall. They heard a low cry, as though a little animal had been hit. It was stifled at

once, and a girl staggered out of the hall. She had been hoping against hope for months, because some who

have gone adrift in dories have been miraculously picked up by deepsea sailingships. Now she had her

certainty, and Harvey could see the policeman on the sidewalk hailing a hack for her. "It's fifty cents to the

depot"the driver began, but the policeman held up his hand"but I'm goin' there anyway. Jump right in.

The sidedoor closed on the patch of bright sunshine, and Harvey's eyes turned again to the reader and his

And so on, and so on. Great lumps were rising in Harvey's throat, and his stomach reminded him of the day

"May l0th.Schooner We're Here [the blood tingled all over hi~. Otto Svendson, 20, single, City, lost

"She shouldn't ha' come. She shouldn't ha' come," said Long Jack, with a cluck of pity.

"Don't scrowge, Harve," grunted Dan. Harvey heard that much, but the rest was all darkness spotted with

fiery wheels. Disko leaned forward and spoke to his wife, where she sat with one arm round Mrs. Cheyne,

"I caan't! I dodon't! Oh, let me" Mrs. Cheyne did not at all know what she said.

"You must," Mrs. Troop repeated. "Your boy's jest fainted dead away. They do that some when they're gettin'

their growth. 'Wish to tend to him? We can git aout this side. Quite quiet. You come right along with me.

The We're Heres promptly went through the crowd as a bodyguard, and it was a very white and shaken

"Favours his ma," was Mrs. Troop's ouly comment, as the mother bent over her boy.

"How d'you suppose he could ever stand it?" she cried indignantly to Cheyne, who had said nothing at all. "It

was horriblehorrible! We shouldn't have come. It's wrong and wicked! Itit isn't right! Whywhy couldn't

they put these things in the papers, where they belong? Are you better, darling?"

That made Harvey very properly ashamed. "Oh, I'm all right, I guess," he said, struggling to his feet, with a

"Coffee; perhaps," said Cheyne, whose face was all in hard lines, as though it had been cut out of bronze.

"Guess 'twould be 'baout's well to git daown to the wharf," said Disko. "It's close in along with them Dagoes,

Harvey announced that he never felt better in his life; but it was not till he saw the We're Here, fresh from the

lumper's hands, at Wouverman's wharf, that he lost his alloverish feelings in a queer mixture of pride and

sorrowfulness. Other people summer boarders and suchlikeplayed about in catboats or looked at the sea

from pierheads; but he understood things from the inside more things than he could begin to think about

None the less, he could have sat down and howled because the little schooner was going off. Mrs. Cheyne

simply cried and cried every step of the way and said most extraordinary things to Mrs. Troop, who "babied"

And so the old crowdHarvey felt like the most ancient of mariners dropped into the old schooner among the

battered dories, while Harvey slipped the sternfast from the pierhead, and they slid her along the

wharfside with their hands. Every one wanted to say so much that no one said anything in particular. Harvey

bade Dan take care of Uncle Salters's seaboots and Penn's doryanchor, and Long Jack entreated Harvey to

remember his lessons in seamanship; but the jokes fell flat in the presence of the two women, and it is hard to

"Up jib and fores'l!" shouted Disko, getting to the wheel, as the wind took her. " 'See you later, Harve. Dunno

Then she glided beyond earshot, and they sat down to watch her up the harbour, And still Mrs. Cheyne

"Pshaw, my dear," said Mrs. Troop: "we're both women, I guess. Like's not it'll ease your heart to hey your

cry aout. God He knows it never done me a mite o' good, but then He knows I've had something to cry fer!"

Now it was a few years later, and upon the other edge of America, that a young man came through the

clammy sea fog up a windy street which is flanked with most expensive houses built of wood to imitate

stone. To him, as he was standing by a hammered iron gate, entered on horsebackand the horse would have

"Well, I'm so's to be that kind o' animal called second mate this trip. Ain't you most through with that triple

"Getting that way. I tell you, the Leland Stanford Junior, isn't a circumstance to the old We're Here; but I'm

"Nothing else. You just wait till I get my knife into you, Dan. I'm going to make the old line lie down and cry

"I'll resk it," said Dan, with a brotherly grin, as Harvey dismounted and asked whether he were coming in.

"That's what I took the cable fer; but, say, is the doctor anywheres aranund? I'll draown that crazy rigger

There was a low, triumphant chuckle, as the excook of the We're Here came out of the fog to take the

horse's bridle. He allowed no one but himself to attend to any of Harvey's wants.

But the coalblack Celt with the secondsight did not see fit to reply till he had tapped Dan on the shoulder,

"Masterman. Manmaster," said he. "You remember, Dan Troop, what I said? On the We're Here?"

"Well, I won't go so far as to deny that it do look like it as things stand at present," said Dan. "She was a