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That's haow
I sense it."

They decided that Disko was entirely correct.

"'Twould ha' bruk Salters all up," said Long Jack, "if Penn had
stayed Jacob Bollerin'. Did ye see his face when Penn asked who
he'd been charged on all these years'? How is ut, Salters?"

"Asleep - dead asleep. Turned in like a child," Salters replied,
tiptoeing aft. "There won't be no grub till he wakes, natural. Did
ye ever see sech a gift in prayer? He everlastin'ly hiked young
Olley outer the ocean. Thet's my belief. Jason was tur'ble praoud
of his boy, an' I mistrusted all along 'twas a jedgment on
worshippin' vain idols."

"There's others jest as sot," said Disko.

"That's dif'runt," Salters retorted quickly. "Penn's not all
caulked, an' I ain't only but doin' my duty by him."

They waited, those hungry men, three hours, till Penn reappeared
with a smooth face and a blank mind. He said he believed that he
had been dreaming. Then he wanted to know why they were so silent,
and they could not tell him.

Disko worked all hands mercilessly for the next three or four
days; and when they could not go out, turned them into the hold to
stack the ship's stores into smaller compass, to make more room
for the fish. The packed mass ran from the cabin partition to the
sliding door behind the fo'c'sle stove; and Disko showed how there
is great art in stowing cargo so as to bring a schooner to her
best draft. The crew were thus kept lively till they recovered
their spirits; and Harvey was tickled with a rope's end by Long
Jack for being, as the Galway man said, "sorrowful as a sick cat
over fwhat couldn't be helped." He did a great deal of thinking in
those dreary days; and told Dan what he thought, and Dan agreed
with him - even to the extent of asking for fried pies instead of
hooking them.

But a week later the two nearly upset the Hattie S. in a wild
attempt to stab a shark with an old bayonet tied to a stick. The
grim brute rubbed alongside the dory begging for small fish, and
between the three of them it was a mercy they all got off alive.

At last, after playing blindman's-buff in the fog, there came a
morning when Disko shouted down the fo'c'sle: "Hurry, boys! We're
in taown!"


CHAPTER VIII

To the end of his days, Harvey will never forget that sight. The
sun was just clear of the horizon they had not seen for nearly a
week, and his low red light struck into the riding-sails of three
fleets of anchored schooners - one to the north, one to the
westward, and one to the south. There must have been nearly a
hundred of them, of every possible make and build, with, far away,
a square-rigged Frenchman, all bowing and courtesying one to the
other. From every boat dories were dropping away like bees from a
crowded hive; and the clamour of voices, the rattling of ropes and
blocks, and the splash of the oars carried for miles across the
heaving water. The sails turned all colours, black, pearly-grey,

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