“Shrimp! Gloucester shrimp! Git aout,
you Novy!”
To call a Gloucester man a Nova Scotian is not well
received. Dan answered in kind.
“Novy yourself, ye Scrabble-towners! ye Chatham
wreckers! Git aout with your brick in your stockin’!”
And the forces separated, but Chatharn had the worst
of it.
“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 heard the crack-crack-crack
of a huge muzzle-loading revolver aboard her.
“Gory, glory, hallelujah!” sung Dan.
“Here she comes, Dad; butt-end first, walkin’
in her sleep same’s she done on ’Queereau.”
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 riding-sail, 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 boat, at the mercy of
a raking broadside of Bank chaff.
“Good evenin’,” said Disko, raising
his head-gear, “an’ haow does your garden
grow?”
“Go to Ohio an’ hire a mule,” said
Uncle Salters. “We don’t want no
farmers here.”
“Will I lend you my dory-anchor?”
cried Long Jack.
“Unship your rudder an’ stick it in the
mud,” bawled Tom Platt.
“Say!” Dan’s voice rose shrill and
high, as he stood on the wheel-box. “Sa-ay!
Is there a strike in the o-ver-all factory; or hev
they hired girls, ye Shackamaxons?”
“Veer out the tiller-lines,” cried Harvey,
“and nail ’em to the bottom!” That
was a salt-flavoured 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 discomfited Carrie.
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 exchanged news.
