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greeted him as a brother. Then the trade began. They had tobacco,
plenty of it - American, that had never paid duty to France. They
wanted chocolate and crackers. Harvey rowed back to arrange with
the cook and Disko, who owned the stores, and on his return the
cocoa-tins and cracker-bags were counted out by the Frenchman's
wheel. It looked like a piratical division of loot; but Tom Platt
came out of it roped with black pigtail and stuffed with cakes of
chewing and smoking tobacco. Then those jovial mariners swung off
into the mist, and the last Harvey heard was a gay chorus:

"Par derriere chez ma tante,
Il y a un bois joli,
Et le rossignol y chante
Et le jour et la nuit...
Que donneriez vous, belle,
Qui I'amènerait ici?
Je donnerai Québec,
Sorel et Saint Denis."

"How was it my French didn't go, and your sign-talk did?" Harvey
demanded when the barter had been distributed among the "We're
Heres".

"Sign-talk!" Platt guffawed. "Well, yes, 'twas sign-talk, but a
heap older'n your French, Harve. Them French boats are chock-full
o' Freemasons, an' that's why."

"Are you a Freemason, then?"

"Looks that way, don't it?" said the man-o'war's man, stuffing his
pipe; and Harvey had another mystery of the deep sea to brood
upon.


CHAPTER VI

The thing that struck him most was the exceedingly casual way in
which some craft loafed about the broad Atlantic. Fishing-boats,
as Dan said, were naturally dependent on the courtesy and wisdom
of their neighbours; but one expected better things of steamers.
That was after another interesting interview, when they had been
chased for three miles by a big lumbering old cattle-boat, all
boarded over on the upper deck, that smelt like a thousand cattle-
pens. A very excited officer yelled at them through a speaking-
trumpet, and she lay and lollopped helplessly on the water while
Disko ran the "We're Here" under her lee and gave the skipper a
piece of his mind. "Where might ye be - eh? Ye don't deserve to be
anywheres. You barn-yard tramps go hoggin' the road on the high
seas with no blame consideration fer your neighbours, an' your
eyes in your coffee-cups instid o' in your silly heads."

At this the skipper danced on the bridge and said something about
Disko's own eyes. "We haven't had an observation for three days.
D'you suppose we can run her blind?" he shouted.

"Wa-al, I can," Disko retorted. "What's come to your lead'? Et
it'? Can't ye smell bottom, or are them cattle too rank?"

"What d'ye feed 'em?" said Uncle Salters with intense seriousness,
for the smell of the pens woke all the farmer in him. "They say
they fall off dretful on a v'yage. Dunno as it's any o' my
business, but I've a kind o' notion that oil-cake broke small an'
sprinkled -"

"Thunder!" said a cattle-man in a red jersey as he looked over the
side. "What asylum did they let His Whiskers out of?"

"Young feller," Salters began, standing up in the fore-rigging,

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