on one line when the dories are on the Virgin or the
Eastern Shoals; but so close lay the boats that even single hooks
snarled, and Harvey found himself in hot argument with a gentle, hairy
Newfoundlander on one side and a howling Portuguese on the other.

Worse than any tangle of fishing-lines was the confusion of the
dory-rodings below water. Each man had anchored where it seemed good to
him, drifting and rowing round his fixed point. As the fish struck on
less quickly, each man wanted to haul up and get to better ground; but
every third man found himself intimately connected with some four or
five neighbours. To cut another's roding is crime unspeakable on the
Banks; yet it was done, and done without detection, three or four times
that day. Tom Platt caught a Maine man in the black act and knocked him
over the gunwale with an oar, and Manuel served a fellow-countryman in
the same way. But Harvey's anchor-line was cut, and so was Penn's, and
they were turned into relief-boats to carry fish to the _We're Here_ as
the dories filled. The caplin schooled once more at twilight, when the
mad clamour was repeated; and at dusk they rowed back to dress down by
the light of kerosene-lamps on the edge of the pen.

It was a huge pile, and they went to sleep while they were dressing.
Next day several boats fished right above the cap of the Virgin; and
Harvey, with them, looked down on the very weed of that lonely rock,
which rises to within twenty feet of the surface. The cod were there in
legions, marching solemnly over the leathery kelp. When they bit, they
bit all together; and so when they stopped. There was a slack time at
noon, and the dories began to search for amusement. It was Dan who
sighted the Hope Of Prague just coming up, and as her boats joined the
company they were greeted with the question: "Who's the meanest man in
the Fleet?"

Three hundred voices answered cheerily: "Nick Bra-ady." It sounded like
an organ chant.

"Who stole the lampwicks?" That was Dan's contribution.

"Nick Bra-ady," sang the boats.

"Who biled the salt bait fer soup?" This was an unknown backbiter a
quarter of a mile away.

Again the joyful chorus. Now, Brady was not especially mean, but he had
that reputation, and the Fleet made the most of it. Then they
discovered a man from a Truro boat who, six years before, had been
convicted of using a tackle with five or six hooks--a "scrowger," they
call it--in the Shoals. Naturally, he had b