“I haven’t acted quite right,” said Harvey, surprised at his own meekness.

“What’s wrong naow?” said the skipper.  “Walked into Dan, hev ye?”

“No; it’s about you.”

“I’m here to listen.”

“Well, I—­I’m here to take things back,” said Harvey very quickly.  “When a man’s saved from drowning—–­” he gulped.

“Ey?  You’ll make a man yet ef you go on this way.”

“He oughtn’t begin by calling people names.”

“Jest an’ right—­right an’ jest,” said Troop, with the ghost of a dry smile.

“So I’m here to say I’m sorry.”  Another big gulp.

Troop heaved himself slowly off the locker he was sitting on and held out an eleven-inch hand.  “I mistrusted ‘twould do you sights o’ good; an’ this shows I weren’t mistook in my jedgments.”  A smothered chuckle on deck caught his ear.  “I am very seldom mistook in my jedgments.”  The eleven-inch hand closed on Harvey’s, numbing it to the elbow.  “We’ll put a little more gristle to that ‘fore we’ve done with you, young feller; an’ I don’t think any worse of ye fer anythin’ the’s gone by.  You wasn’t fairly responsible.  Go right abaout your business an’ you won’t take no hurt.”

“You’re white,” said Dan, as Harvey regained the deck, flushed to the tips of his ears.

“I don’t feel it,” said he.

“I didn’t mean that way.  I heard what Dad said.  When Dad allows he don’t think the worse of any man, Dad’s give himself away.  He hates to be mistook in his jedgments too.  Ho! ho!  Onct Dad has a jedgment, he’d sooner dip his colours to the British than change it.  I’m glad it’s settled right eend up.  Dad’s right when he says he can’t take you back.  It’s all the livin’ we make here—­fishin’.  The men’ll be back like sharks after a dead whale in ha’af an hour.”

“What for?” said Harvey.

“Supper, o’ course.  Don’t your stummick tell you?  You’ve a heap to learn.”

“Guess I have,” said Harvey, dolefully, looking at the tangle of ropes and blocks overhead.

“She’s a daisy,” said Dan, enthusiastically, misunderstanding the look.  “Wait till our mainsail’s bent, an’ she walks home with all her salt wet.  There’s some work first, though.”  He pointed down into the darkness of the open main-hatch between the two masts.

“What’s that for?  It’s all empty,” said Harvey.

“You an’ me an’ a few more hev got to fill it,” said Dan.  “That’s where the fish goes.”

“Alive?” said Harvey.

“Well, no.  They’re so’s to be ruther dead—­an’ flat—­an’ salt.  There’s a hundred hogshead o’ salt in the bins, an’ we hain’t more’n covered our dunnage to now.”

“Where are the fish, though?”

“‘In the sea they say, in the boats we pray,’” said Dan, quoting a fisherman’s proverb.  “You come in last night with ’baout forty of ’em.”

He pointed to a sort of wooden pen just in front of the quarter-deck.