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course, prevented from going over by the mainstay. They lowered
the wreck in awful silence, and Harvey spent his leisure hours for
the next few days under Torn Platt's lee, learning to use a needle
and palm. Dan hooted with joy, for, as he said, he had made the
very same blunder himself in his early days.

Boylike, Harvey imitated all the men by turns, till he had
combined Disko's peculiar stoop at the wheel, Long Jack's swinging
overhand when the lines were hauled, Manuel's round-shouldered but
effective stroke in a dory, and Tom Platt's generous Ohio stride
along the deck.

"'Tis beautiful to see how he takes to ut," said Long Jack, when
Harvey was looking out by the windlass one thick noon. "I'll lay
my wage an' share 'tis more'n half play-actin' to him, an' he
consates himself he's a bowld mariner. 'Watch his little bit av a
back now!"

"That's the way we all begin," said Tom Platt. "The boys they make
believe all the time till they've cheated 'emselves into bein'
men, an' so till they die - pretendin' an' pretendin'. I done it
on the old Ohio, I know. Stood my first watch - harbor-watch -
feelin' finer'n Farragut. Dan's full o' the same kind o' notions.
See 'em now, actin' to be genewine moss-backs - every hair a rope-
yarn an' blood Stockholm tar." He spoke down the cabin stairs.
"'Guess you're mistook in your judgments fer once, Disko. What in
Rome made ye tell us all here the kid was crazy?"

"He wuz," Disko replied. "Crazy ez a loon when he come aboard; but
I'll say he's sobered up consid'ble sence. I cured him."

"He yarns good," said Tom Platt. "T'other night he told us abaout
a kid of his own size steerin' a cunnin' little rig an' four
ponies up an' down Toledo, Ohio, I think 'twas, an' givin' suppers
to a crowd o' sim'lar kids. Cur'us kind o' fairy-tale, but blame
interestin'. He knows scores of 'em."

"'Guess he strikes 'em outen his own head," Disko called from the
cabin, where he was busy with the log-book. "'Stands to reason
that sort is all made up. It don't take in no one but Dan, an' he
laughs at it. I've heard him, behind my back."

"Y'ever hear what Sim'on Peter Ca'houn said when they whacked up a
match 'twix' his sister Hitty an' Lorin' Jerauld, an' the boys put
up that joke on him daown to Georges?" drawled Uncle Salters, who
was dripping peaceably under the lee of the starboard dory-nest.

Tom Platt puffed at his pipe in scornful silence: he was a Cape
Cod man, and had not known that tale more than twenty years. Uncle
Salters went on with a rasping chuckle:

"Sim'on Peter Ca'houn he said, an' he was jest right, abaout
Lorin', 'Ha'af on the taown,' he said, 'an' t'other ha'af blame
fool; an' they told me she's married a 'ich man.' Sim'on Peter
Ca'houn he hedn't no roof to his mouth, an' talked that way."

"He didn't talk any Pennsylvania Dutch," Tom Platt replied. "You'd
better leave a Cape man to tell that tale. The Ca'houns was

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