“Knife oh!” repeated Uncle Salters, waving the flat, curved splitter’s weapon.
“Look by your foot, Harve,” cried Dan below.
Harvey saw half a dozen knives stuck in a cleat in the hatch combing. He dealt these around, taking over the dulled ones.
“Water!” said Disko Troop.
“Scuttlebutt’s for’ard an’ the dipper’s alongside. Hurry, Harve,” said Dan.
He was back in a minute with a big dipperful of stale brown water which tasted like nectar, and loosed the jaws of Disko and Tom Platt.
“These are cod,” said Disko. “They ain’t Damarskus figs, Tom Platt, nor yet silver bars. I’ve told you that ever single time since we’ve sailed together.”
“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 aft 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 duty to help clean.”
“ ’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 gurry-butt ’fore you sleep. Kin you keep awake that long?”
Penn took up the heavy basket of fish-livers, emptied them into a cask with a hinged top lashed by the foc’sle; then he too dropped out of sight in the cabin.
“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 knife-blades through a wad of oakum, and began to sharpen them on a tiny grindstone, as Harvey threw offal and backbones overboard under his direction.
At the first splash a silvery-white ghost rose bolt upright from the oily water and sighed a weird whistling sigh. Harvey started back with a shout, but Dan only laughed.
“Grampus,” said he. “Beggin’ fer fish-heads. They up‑eend 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 up‑eend 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?”
“Dead sleepy,” said Harvey, nodding forward.
“Mustn’t sleep on watch. Rouse up an’ see ef our anchor-light’s bright an’ shinin’. You’re on watch now, Harve.”
“Pshaw! What’s to hurt us? Bright’s day. Sn‑orrr!”
“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 onct more I’ll lay into you with a rope’s end.”
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 seventy-ton schooner, while behind him, waving a knotted rope, walked, after the manner of an executioner, a boy who yawned and nodded between the blows he dealt.
The lashed wheel groaned and kicked softly, the riding-sail 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.
III
It was the forty-fathom 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 fish—the blood-ends 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 fore-hold, where the boat’s stores were stacked. It was another perfect day—soft, mild, and clear; and Harvey breathed to the very bottom of his lungs.
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—one eye on the craft around, and the other on the little fly at the mainmast-head.
“When Dad kerflummoxes that way,” said Dan in a whisper, “he’s doin’ some high-line 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
