“I’ve never seen the sea from so low down,” said Harvey. “It’s fine.”
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 half-shut eyes. “Manuel hain’t room fer another fish. Low ez a lily-pad in still water, ain’t he?”
“Which is Manuel? I don’t see how you can tell ’em ’way off, as you do.”
“Last boat to the south’ard. He f’und you last night,” said Dan, pointing. “Manuel rows Portugoosey; ye can’t mistake him. East o’ him—he’s a heap better’n he rows—is Pennsylvania. Loaded with saleratus, by the looks of him. East o’ him—see how pretty they string out all along—with 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 yonder—you’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 sings, but he has fair fishin’ luck. There! What did I tell you?”
A melodious bellow stole across the water from the northern dory. Harvey heard something about somebody’s hands and feet being cold, and then:
“Bring forth the chart, the doleful chart,
See where them mountings meet!
The clouds are thick around their heads,
The mists around their feet.”
“Full boat,” said Dan, with a chuckle. “If he give us ‘O Captain’ it’s toppin’ too!”
The bellow continued:
“And naow to thee, O Capting,
Most earnestly I pray,
That they shall never bury me
In church or cloister gray.”
“Double game for Tom Platt. He’ll tell you all about the old Ohio to-morrow. ’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 to-day—an’ he’s stung up good.”
“What’ll sting him?” said Harvey, getting interested.
“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 a-holt 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 kinder awful, don’t it?”
“I’m going to try to work, anyway,” Harvey replied stoutly. “Only it’s all dead new.”
“Lay a-holt o’ that tackle, then. Behind ye!”
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 “topping-lift,” as Manuel drew alongside in his loaded dory. The Portuguese smiled a brilliant smile that Harvey learned to know well later, and with a short-handled fork began to throw fish into the pen on deck. “Two hundred and thirty-one,” 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 stern-becket, 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 cross-trees!” Dan laughed; and Harvey held on, for the boat lay in the air above his head.
“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. Thet was right smart fer a passenger. There’s more trick to it in a sea-way.”
“Ah ha!” said Manuel, holding out a brown hand. “You are some pretty well now? This time last night the fish they fish for you. Now you fish for fish. Eh, wha-at?”
“I’m—I’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 might have made would cover him with hot, uneasy blushes in his bunk.
“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, wha-at? Ouh! Auh!” He bent backward and forward stiffly from the hips to get the kinks out of himself.
“I have not cleaned boat to-day. 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 good-will. “Hike out the foot-boards; they slide in them grooves,” said Dan. “Swab ’em an’ lay ’em down. Never let a foot-board jam. Ye may want her bad some day. Here’s Long Jack.”
A stream of glittering fish flew into the pen from a dory alongside.
“Manuel, you take the tackle. I’ll fix the tables. Harvey, clear Manuel’s boat. Long Jack’s nestin’ on the top of her.”
Harvey looked up from his swabbing at the bottom of another dory just above his head.
“Jest like the Injian puzzle-boxes, 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 grizzly-chinned, long-lipped Galway man, bending to and fro exactly as Manuel had done. Disko in the cabin growled up the hatchway, and they could hear him suck his pencil.
“Wan hunder an’ forty-nine an’ a half—bad luck to ye, Discobolus!” said Long Jack. “I’m murderin’ meself to fill your pockuts. Slate ut for a bad catch. The Portugee has bate me.”
Whack came another dory alongside, and more fish shot into the pen.
“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 mouth.
Not knowing what else to do, Harvey swabbed each dory as it came down, pulled out the foot-boards, and laid them in the bottom of the boat.
“He’s caught on good,” said the scarred man, who was Tom Platt, watching him critically. “There are two ways o’ doin’ everything. One’s fisher-fashion—any end first an’ a slippery hitch over all—an’ the other’s——”
“What we did on the old Ohio!” Dan interrupted, brushing into the knot of men with a long board on legs. “Get out o’ here, Tom Platt, an’ leave me fix the tables.”
He jammed one end of the board into two nicks in the bulwarks, kicked out the leg, and ducked just in time to avoid a swinging blow from the man-o’-war’s man.
“An’ they did that on the Ohio, too, Danny. See?” said Tom Platt, laughing.
“Guess they was swivel-eyed, then, fer it didn’t git home, and I know who’ll find his boots on the main-truck ef he don’t leave us alone. Haul ahead! I’m busy, can’t ye see?”
“Danny, ye lie on the cable an’ sleep all day,” said Long Jack. “You’re the hoight av impidence, an’ I’m persuaded ye’ll corrupt our supercargo in a week.”
“His name’s Harvey,” said Dan, waving two strangely shaped knives, “an’ he’ll be worth five of any Sou’ Boston clam-digger ’fore long.” He laid the knives tastefully on the table, cocked his head on one side, and admired the effect.
“I think it’s forty-two,” 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 forty-five, though I be stung outer all shape.”
“Forty-two or forty-five. I’ve lost count,�
�� the small voice said.
“It’s Penn an’ Uncle Salters caountin’ catch. This beats the circus any day,” said Dan. “Jest look at ’em!”
“Come in—come in!” roared Long Jack. “It’s wet out yondher, children.”
“Forty-two, ye said.” This was Uncle Salters.
“I’ll count again, then,” the voice replied meekly.
The two dories swung together and bunted into the schooner’s side.
“Patience o’ Jerusalem!” snapped Uncle Salters, backing water with a splash. “What possest a farmer like you to set foot in a boat beats me. You’ve nigh stove me all up.”
“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 man. “You’re comin’ down on me agin. Did ye say forty-two or forty-five?”
“I’ve forgotten, Mr. Salters. Let’s count.”
“Don’t see as it could be forty-five. I’m forty-five,” 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 authority.
“Don’t spile the catch, Dad,” Dan murmured. “Them two are on’y jest beginnin’.”
“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 after-tackle, and, leaning far overside, slipped the hook into the sternrope as Manuel made her fast forward. The others pulled gallantly and swung the boat in—man, fish, and all.
“One, two, four—nine,” said Tom Platt, counting with a practised eye. “Forty-seven. Penn, you’re it!” Dan let the after-tackle 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.”
“Forty-one,” 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.”
His thick hands were puffy and mottled purply white.
“Some folks will find strawberry-bottom,” said Dan, addressing the newly risen moon, “ef they heve to dive fer it, seems to me.”
“An’ others,” said Uncle Salters, “eats the fat o’ the land in sloth, an’ mocks their own blood-kin.”
“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 deep-sea reel and the tangled cod-lines; Manuel lay down full length on the deck, and Dan dropped into the hold, where Harvey heard him banging casks with a hammer.
“Salt,” he said, returning. “Soon as we’re through supper we git to dressing-down. 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’ Penn—the youth an’ beauty o’ the boat.”
“What’s the good of that?” said Harvey. “I’m hungry.”
“They’ll be through in a minute. Snff! She smells good tonight. Dad ships a good cook ef he do suffer with his brother. It’s a full catch to-day, ain’t it?” He pointed at the pens piled high with cod. “What water did ye hev, Manuel?”
“Twenty-fife father,” said the Portuguese, sleepily. “They strike on good an’ queek. Some day I show you, Harvey.”
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 he felt.
“’Most full, but there’s just room for another piece.”
The cook was a huge, jet-black negro, and, unlike all the negroes Harvey had met, did not talk, contenting himself with smiles and dumb-show invitations to eat more.
“See, Harvey,” said Dan, rapping with his fork on the table, “it’s jest as I said. The young an’ handsome men—like me an’ Pennsy an’ you an’ Manuel—we’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, which they don’t deserve. Ain’t that so, doctor?”
The cook nodded.
“Can’t he talk?” said Harvey in a whisper.
“’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 farmers—all huffy-chuffy.”
“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’ fish—eh?”
“Does your father just let them say how many they’ve caught without checking them?” said Harvey.
“Why, yes. Where’s the sense of a man lyin’ fer a few old cod?”
“Was a man once lied for his catch,” Manuel put in. “Lied every day. Fife, ten, twenty-fife more fish than come he say there was.”
“Where was that?” said Dan. “None o’ aour folk.”
“Frenchman of Anguille.”
“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.
“Always more and never less,
Every time we come to dress,”
Long Jack roared down the hatch, and the “second ha’af” scrambled up at once.
The shadow of the masts and rigging, with the never-furled riding-sail, 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 salt-bins. Dan passed Harvey a pitchfork, and led him to the inboard end of the rough table, where Uncle Salters was drumming impatiently with a knife-haft. A tub of salt water lay at his feet.
“You pitch to Dan an’ Tom Platt down the hatch, an’ take keer Uncle Salters don’t cut yer eye out,” said Dan, swinging himself into the hold. “I’ll pass salt below.”
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 knife-blade 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 wa
ter 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 wondering at the miraculous dexterity of it all, his tub was full.
“Pitch!” grunted Uncle Salters, without turning his head, and Harvey pitched the fish by twos and threes down the hatch.
“Hi! Pitch ’em bunchy,” shouted Dan. “Don’t scatter! Uncle Salters is the best splitter in the fleet. Watch him mind his book!”
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 boats despise the Frenchmen.
Down below, the rasping sound of rough salt rubbed on rough flesh sounded like the whirring of a grindstone—a steady undertune to the “click-nick” 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 of wet, open bodies falling into the tub.
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 shadow, collected a mass of backbones and heads, and retreated.
Captains Courageous (Bantam Classic) Page 3