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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 thet 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 fo'c'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 topgallantsails, 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
mainmast-head.

"When dad kerflummoxes that way," said Dan, in a whisper, "he's

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