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"

The creature thrashed up, wore round with a clatter and rattle,
and lay head to wind within ear-shot.

A greybeard wagged over the bulwark, and a thick voice yelled
something Harvey could not understand. But Disko's face darkened.
"He'd resk every stick he hez to carry bad news. Says we're in fer
a shift o' wind. He's in fer worse. Abishai! Abishai!" He waved
his arm up and down with the gesture of a man at the pumps, and
pointed forward. The crew mocked him and laughed.

"Jounce ye, an' strip ye, an' trip ye!" yelled Uncle Abishai. "A
livin' gale - a livin' gale. Yah! Cast up fer your last trip, all
you Gloucester haddocks. You won't see Gloucester no more, no
more!"

"Crazy full - as usual," said Tom Platt. "Wish he hadn't spied us,
though."

She drifted out of hearing while the greyhead yelled something
about a dance at the Bay of Bulls and a dead man in the fo'c'sle.
Harvey shuddered. He had seen the sloven tilled decks and the
savage-eyed crew.

"An' that's a fine little floatin' hell fer her draught," said
Long Jack. "I wondher what mischief he's been at ashore."

"He's a trawler," Dan explained to Harvey, "an' he runs in fer
bait all along the coast. Oh, no, not home, he don't go. He deals
along the south an' east shore up yonder." He nodded in the
direction of the pitiless Newfoundland beaches. "Dad won't never
take me ashore there. They're a mighty tough crowd - an' Abishai's
the toughest. You saw his boat? Well, she's nigh seventy year old,
they say; the last o' the old Marblehead heel-tappers. They don't
make them quarter-decks any more. Abishai don't use Marblehead,
though. He ain't wanted there. He jes' drif's araound, in debt,
trawlin' an' cussin' like you've heard. Bin a Jonah fer years an'
years, he hez. 'Gits liquor frum the Feecamp boats fer makin'
spells an' selling winds an' such truck. Crazy, I guess."

"Twon't be any use underrunnin' the trawl to-night," said Tom
Platt, with quiet despair. "He come alongside special to cuss us.
I'd give my wage an' share to see him at the gangway o' the old
Ohio 'fore we quit floggin'. Jest abaout six dozen, an' Sam
Mocatta layin' 'em on crisscross!"

The dishevelled "heel-tapper" danced drunkenly down wind, and all
eyes followed her. Suddenly the cook cried in his phonograph
voice: "It wass his own death made him speak so! He iss fey - fey,
I tell you! Look!" She sailed into a patch of watery sunshine
three or four miles distant. The patch dulled and faded out, and
even as the light passed so did the schooner. She dropped into a
hollow and - was not.

"Run under, by the great hook-block!" shouted Disko, jumping aft.
"Drunk or sober, we've got to help 'em. Heave short and break her
out! Smart!"

Harvey was thrown on the deck by the shock that followed the
setting of the jib and foresail, for they hove short on the cable,
and to save time, jerked the anchor bodily from the bottom,
heaving in as they moved away.

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