an' Manuel an' Penn--the youth an' beauty o' the boat."

"What's the good of that?" said Harvey. "I'm hungry."

"They'll be through in a minute. Suff! She smells good to-night. Dad
ships a good cook ef he do suffer with his brother. It's a full catch
today, Aeneid it?" He pointed at the pens piled high with cod. "What
water did ye hev, Manuel?"

"Twenty-fife father," said the Portuguese, sleepily. "They strike on
good an' queek. Some day I show you, Harvey."

The moon was beginning to walk on the still sea before the elder men
came aft. The cook had no need to cry "second half." Dan and Manuel
were down the hatch and at table ere Tom Platt, last and most
deliberate of the elders, had finished wiping his mouth with the back
of his hand. Harvey followed Penn, and sat down before a tin pan of
cod's tongues and sounds, mixed with scraps of pork and fried potato, a
loaf of hot bread, and some black and powerful coffee. Hungry as they
were, they waited while "Pennsylvania" solemnly asked a blessing. Then
they stoked in silence till Dan drew a breath over his tin cup and
demanded of Harvey how he felt.

"'Most full, but there's just room for another piece."

The cook was a huge, jet-black negro, and, unlike all the negroes
Harvey had met, did not talk, contenting himself with smiles and
dumb-show invitations to eat more.

"See, Harvey," said Dan, rapping with his fork on the table, "it's jest
as I said. The young an' handsome men--like me an' Pennsy an' you an'
Manuel--we're second ha'af, an' we eats when the first ha'af are
through. They're the old fish; an' they're mean an' humpy, an' their
stummicks has to be humoured; so they come first, which they don't
deserve. Aeneid that so, doctor?"

The cook nodded.

"Can't he talk?" said Harvey in a whisper.

"'Nough to get along. Not much o' anything we know. His natural
tongue's kinder curious. Comes from the innards of Cape Breton, he
does, where the farmers speak homemade Scotch. Cape Breton's full o'
niggers whose folk run in there durin' aour war, an' they talk like
farmers--all huffy-chuffy."

"That is not Scotch," said "Pennsylvania." "That is Gaelic. So I read
in a book."

"Penn reads a heap. Most of what he says is so--'cep' when it comes to
a caount o' fish--eh?"

"Does your father just let them say how many they've caught without
checking them?" said Harvey.

"Why, yes. Where's the sense of a man lyin' fer a few old cod?"

"Was a man once lied for h