gear made no differ to her driftin'. Jiminy
Christmas! She'll etch loose in a flat ca'am."

"We're well clear o' the Fleet, anyway," said Disko. "_Carrie Pitman_ an'
all." There was a rapping on the deck.

"Uncle Salters has catched his luck," said Dan as his father departed.

"It's blown clear," Disko cried, and all the foc'sle tumbled up for a
bit of fresh air. The fog had gone, but a sullen sea ran in great
rollers behind it. The _We're Here_ slid, as it were, into long, sunk
avenues and ditches which felt quite sheltered and homelike if they
would only stay still; but they changed without rest or mercy, and
flung up the schooner to crown one peak of a thousand gray hills, while
the wind hooted through her rigging as she zigzagged down the slopes.
Far away a sea would burst into a sheet of foam, and the others would
follow suit as at a signal, till Harvey's eyes swam with the vision of
interlacing whites and grays. Four or five Mother Carey's chickens
stormed round in circles, shrieking as they swept past the bows. A
rain-squall or two strayed aimlessly over the hopeless waste, ran down
'wind and back again, and melted away.

"Seems to me I saw somethin' flicker jest naow over yonder," said Uncle
Salters, pointing to the northeast.

"Can't be any of the fleet," said Disko, peering under his eyebrows, a
hand on the foc'sle gangway as the solid bows hatcheted into the
troughs. "Sea's oilin' over dretful fast. Danny, don't you want to skip
up a piece an' see how aour trawl-buoy lays?"

Danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than climbed up the main
rigging (this consumed Harvey with envy), hitched himself around the
reeling cross-trees, and let his eye rove till it caught the tiny black
buoy-flag on the shoulder of a mile-away swell.

"She's all right," he hailed. "Sail O! Dead to the no'th'ard, comin'
down like smoke! Schooner she be, too."

They waited yet another half-hour, the sky clearing in patches, with a
flicker of sickly sun from time to time that made patches of
olive-green water. Then a stump-foremast lifted, ducked, and
disappeared, to be followed on the next wave by a high stern with
old-fashioned wooden snail's-horn davits. The snails were red-tanned.

"Frenchmen!" shouted Dan. "No, 'tain't, neither. Da-ad!"

"That's no French," said Disko. "Salters, your blame luck holds
tighter'n a screw in a keg-head."

"I've eyes. It's Uncle Abishai."

"You can't nowise tell fer sure."

"The head-king