“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 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.