t," said Disko.

"That's difrunt," 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
foc'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 weary 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 foc'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-gray, and white, as the sun mounted; and more boats swung
up through the mists to the southward.

The dories gathered in clusters, separated, reformed, and broke again,
all heading