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. Aeneid 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 dad 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 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 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 — 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.
“Blood-ends for breakfast an’ head-chowder,” said Long Jack, smacking his lips.
“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.
“Scuttle-butt’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 brass-bound 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.
CHAPTER 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 top-gallant 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 main-mast-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 time? There’s the Prince Leboo; she’s a Chat-ham 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 Chat-ham. 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 ‘ll hold her. . . . When the smoke puffs up in little rings like that, Dad’s studyin’ the fish. Ef we speak to him now, he’ll git mad. Las’ time I did, he jest took an’ hove a boot at me.”
Disko Troop stared forward, the pipe between his teeth, with eyes that saw nothing. As his son said, he was studying the fish — pitting 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, food-supplies, and other domestic arrangements, from the point of view of a twenty-pound cod; was, in fact, for an hour a cod himself, and looked remarkably like one. Then he removed the pipe from his teeth.
“Dad,” said Dan, “we’ve done our chores. Can’t we go overside a piece? It’s good catchin’ weather.”
“Not in that cherry-coloured rig ner them ha’af baked brown shoes. Give him suthin’ fit to wear.”
“Dad’s pleased — that 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 sou’wester.
“Naow ye look somethin’ like,” said Dan. “Hurry!”
“Keep nigh an’ handy,” said Troop “an’ don’t go visitin’ raound the Fleet. If any one asks you what I’m cal’latin’ to do, speak the truth — fer ye don’t know.”
A little red dory, labelled Hattie S., lay astern of the schooner. Dan hauled in the painter, and dropped lightly on to the bottom boards, while Harvey tumbled clumsily after.
“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 learn to meet her.”
Dan fitted the thole-pins, took the forward thwart and watched Harvey’s work. The boy had rowed, in a lady-like fashion, on the Adirondack ponds; but there is a difference between squeaking pins and well-balanced ruflocks — light sculls and stubby, eight-foot sea-oars. They stuck in the gentle swell, and Harvey grunted.
“Short! Row short!” said Dan. “Ef you cramp your oar in any kind o’ sea you’re liable to turn her over. Ain’t she a daisy? Mine, too.”
The little dory was specklessly clean. In her bows lay a tiny anchor, two jugs of water, and some seventy fathoms of thin, brown dory-roding. A tin dinner-horn rested in cleats just under Harvey’s right hand, beside an ugly-looking maul, a short gaff, and a shorter wooden stick. A couple of lines, with very heavy leads and double cod-hooks, 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 owned her?”
“Well, I guess my father might give me one or two if I asked ‘em,” Harvey replied. He had been too busy to think much of his family till then.
“That’s so. I forgot your dad’s a millionaire. You don’t act millionary 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 fer — fer a pet like?”
“Shouldn’t wonder. It would be ‘most the only thing I haven’t stuck him for yet.”
“Must be an expensive kinder kid to home. Don’t slitheroo thet way, H
arve. Short’s the trick, because no sea’s ever dead still, an’ the swells ‘ll — ”
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 schoolin’.”
Harvey regained his seat with aching jaws and a frown.
“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. Manuel ‘ll give us the water.”
The “Portugee” was rocking fully a mile away, but when Dan up-ended an oar he waved his left arm three times.
“Thirty fathom,” said Dan, stringing a salt clam on to the hook. “Over with the doughboys. Bait same’s I do, Harvey, an’ don’t snarl your reel.”
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 kicked alongside. “Muckle, Harvey, muckle! Under your hand! Quick!”
Evidently “muckle” could not be the dinner-horn, 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 a “gob-stick.” Then Harvey felt a tug, and pulled up zealously.
“Why, these are strawberries!” he shouted. “Look!”
The hook had fouled among a bunch of strawberries, red on one side and white on the other — perfect reproductions of the land fruit, except that there were no leaves, and the stem was all pipy and slimy.
“Don’t tech ‘em. Slat ‘em off. Don’t — ”
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.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 51