That was the first of many talks with Dan, who told Harvey why he
would transfer his dory's name to the imaginary Burgess-modelled
haddocker. Harvey heard a good deal about the real Hattie at
Gloucester; saw a lock of her hair-which Dan, finding fair words
of no avail, had "hooked" as she sat in front of him at school that
winter-and 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 underhand methods.
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 gurry-sores being
the mark of the caste that claimed him.
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 snubbed by strangers in the smoking-room
of a hired liner.
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 "fairy-tales" 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 life-it seemed very far
away-no 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 four-pony 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 gold-leaf tips, rings, watches, scent, small dinner-parties,
champagne, card-playing, and hotel accommodation. Little by little
he changed his tone when speaking of his "friend," whom long
Jack had christened "the Crazy Kid," "the Gilt-edged Baby," "the
Suckin' Vanderpoop," and other pet names; and with his
sea-booted 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 for every face and tone about him.
Before long he knew where Disko kept the old greencrusted
quadrant that they called the "hog-yoke"-under the bed-bag 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 stove-pipe. 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 ancient-mariner 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 quadrant. There is an etiquette in all these things.
The said "hog-yoke," 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 deep-sea 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 seven-pound lead on shoal water Disko
used him freely. As Dan said:
'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
long-tested mixture of instinct and experience, moved the We~re
Here from berth to berth, always with the fish, as a blindfolded
chess-player moves on the unseen board.
But Disko's board was the Grand Bank-a triangle two hundred and
fifty miles on each side-a waste of wallowing sea, cloaked with
dank fog, vexed with gales, harried with drifting ice, scored by the
tracks of the reckless liners, and dotted with the sails of the
fishing-fleet.
For days they worked in fog-Harvey at the bell-till, 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 gob-stick 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 forty-fathom 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.
"Whale-hole," 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 Whale-deep, 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 hand-lines and
spank the drifting "sun-scalds" 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 staysail-an old one, luckily-set, 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 blunder himself in his early days.
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
round-shouldered but effective stroke in a dory, and Tom Platt's
generous Ohio stride along the deck.
'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 play-actin' to him, an' he
consates himself he's a bowld mariner. Watch his little bit av a
back now!"
"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 die-pretendin' an' pretendin'. I done it on the old
Ohio, I know. Stood my first watch-harbor-watch-feelin' finer'n
Farragut. Dan's full o' the same kind o' notions. See 'em now,
actin' to be genewine moss-backs-very hair a rope-yarn 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 kid was crazy?"
"He wuz," Disko replied. "Crazy ez a loon when he come aboard;
but I'll say he's sobered up consid'ble sence. I cured him."
"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. Cur'us kind o' fairy-tale, but blame interestin'. He
knows scores of 'em."
"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, behind my back."
"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 peaceably under the lee of the starboard
dory-nest.
Tom Platt puffed at his pipe in scornful silence: he was a Cape
Cod man, and had not known that tale more than twenty years.
Uncle Salters went on with a rasping chuckie:
"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 mouth, an' talked that way."
"He didn't talk any Pennsylvania Dutch," Tom Platt replied. "You'd
better leave a Cape man to tell that tale. The Ca'houns was gypsies
frum 'way back."
"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 man. Yah!"
"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
muck-heap, as Ca'houn did not say, an' makes out he's a
fisherman!"
A little laugh went round at Salters's expense.
Disko held his tongue, and wrought over the log-book that he kept
in a hatchet-faced, square hand; this was the kind of thing that ran
on, page after soiled page:
"July 17. This day thick fog and few fish. Made berth to
northward. So ends this day.
'July 18. This day comes in with thick fog. Caught a few fish.
"July 19. This day comes in with light breeze from N.E. and fine
weather. Made a berth to eastward. Caught plenty fish.
"July 20. This, the Sabbath, comes in with fog and light winds. So
ends this day. Total fish caught this week, 3,478."
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' Johns-town next," Salters explained, "an' what would
happen then?" so they compromised on his reading aloud from a
book called "Josephus." It was an old leather-bound 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 name."
He would turn to Uncle Salters with an expectant smile.
"Why, Pennsylvania Pratt," Salters would shout "You'll fergit me
next!"
"No-never," 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 Penn was equally content-till next
time.
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 main-truck (')an was behind him ready to help), he
esteemed it his duty to hang Salters's big sea-boots up there-a 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 clean-shaven 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 banks-Le Have, Western, Banquereau, St. Pierre, Green, and
Grand -talking "cod" meantime. Taught him, too, the principle on
which the "hog-yoke" was worked.
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
sea-matters 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 gurry-score 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 to Harvey.
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 eye-bolts, leads, and rings rolled and
rattled in the pauses of the talk. Disko spoke of whaling voyages in
the Fifties; of great she-whales 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 wrong-end-first and bombarded the trembling crews; of
cutting-in and boiling-down, and that terrible "nip" of '71, when
twelve hundred men were made homeless on the ice in three
days-wonderful 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 "Yo-hoes" on Monomoy Beach,
that mock and terrify lonely clam-diggers; of sand-walkers and
dune-haunters 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 old-fashioned boat,
whistling-not calling, hut whistling-for the soul of the man who
broke their regt.
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 country-houses
with hardwood floors and Vantine portires. He laughed at the
ghost-tales,-not as much as he would have done a month
before,-but ended by sifting still and shuddering.
Tom Platt dealt with his interminable trip round the Horn on the
old Ohio in flogging days, with a navy more extinct than the
dodo-the navy that passed away in the great war. He told them how
red-hot 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 ship-boys of the Miss Jim Buck hove
water over them and shouted to the fort to try again. And he told
tales of blockade-long 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 sailing-ships); 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
red-hot 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 hope-fully for the day when sails should
come back again on ten-thousand-ton frigates with
hundred-and-ninety-foot booms.
Manuel's talk was slow and gentle-all 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 baiting-ports 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 polite silence. That was very good for
Harvey.
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 mall-carrying in the 'winter up
Cape Breton way, of the dog-train that goes to Coudray, and of the
ram-steamer 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 palm-trees 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 considered
Harvey something of a mascot by consequence.
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
silvery-gray kenches of well-pressed fish mounted higher and
higher in the hold. No one day's work was out of common, but the
average days were many and close together.
Naturally, a man of Disko's reputation was closely
watched-"scrowged upon," Dan called it-by his neighbours, but he
had a very pretty knack of giving them the slip through the
curdling, glidy fog-banks. 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
considered noways good graound."
"Ain't it?" said Harvey, who was drawing water (he had learned
just how to wiggle the bucket), after an unusually long
dressing-down. "Shouldn't mind striking some poor ground for a
change, then."
"All the graound I want to see-don't want to strike her-is 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. 'Mug-up 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 you dressed in shape fer the
Old Virgin."
Harvey understood from the Eldridge chart that the Old Virgin and
a nest of curiously named shoals were the turning-point 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 hog-yoke 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 four-by-five
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 foot-power fog-horn-a machine whose
note is as that of a consumptive elephant.
They were making a short berth, towing the anchor under their
foot to save trouble. "Square-rigger bellowin' fer his latitude," said
Long Jack. The dripping red head-sails of a bark glided out of the
fog, and the 'We're Here' rang her bell thrice, using sea shorthand.
The larger boat backed her topsail with shrieks and shoutings.
"Frenchman," said Uncle Salters, scornfully. "Miquelon boat from
St. Malo." The farmer had a weatherly sea-eye. "I'm 'most outer
'baccy, too, Disko."
"Same here," said Tom Platt. "Hi! Backez vous-backez vous!
Standez awayez, you butt-ended mucho-bono! Where you from-
St. Malo, eh?"
"Ah, ha! Mucho bono! Oui! oui! Clos Poulet--St. Malo! St. Pierre
et Miquelon," cried the other crowd, waving woollen caps and
laughing. Then all together, "Bord! Bord!"
"Bring up the board, Danny. Beats me how them Frenchmen fetch
anywheres, exceptin' America's fairish broadly. Forty-six
forty-nine'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
main-rigging to a chorus of mercis from the bark.
"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 stone-ballast hove at us 'long 0' your callin'
Miquelon boats 'footy cochins,' same's you did off Le Have."
"Harmon Rush he said that was the way to rise 'em. Plain United
States is good enough fer me. We're all dretful short- on tearakker.
Young feller, don't you speak French?"
"Oh, yes," said Harvey valiantly; and he bawled:
"Hi! Say! Arretez vous! Attendez! Nous sommes venant pour
tabac."
"Ah, tabac, tabac!" they cried, and laughed again.
"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 Virgin-the 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 opera-comique crew,
with their hairy throats, red caps, and long knives, greeted him as a
brother. Then the trade began. They had tobacco, plenty of
it-American, 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
cocoa-tins and cracker-bags 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 the last Harvey heard was a gay chorus:
"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 sign-talk did?" Harvey
demanded when the batter had been distributed among the We're
Heres.
"Sign-talk!" Platt guffawed. "Well, yes, 'twas sign-talk, but a heap
older'n your French, Harve. Them French boats are chockfull o'
Freemasons, an' that's why."
"Are you a Freemason, then?"
"Looks that way, don't it?" said the man-o'-war's man, stuffing his
pipe; and Harvey had another mystery of the deep sea to brood
upon.
