, Dad says. Fine weather's good sleepin', an'
'fore you know, mebbe, you're cut in two by a liner, an' seventeen
brass-bound officers, all gen'elmen, lift their hand to it that your
lights was aout an' there was a thick fog. Harve, I've kinder took to
you, but ef you nod onct more I'll lay into you with a rope's end."

The moon, who sees many strange things on the Banks, looked down on a
slim youth in knickerbockers and a red jersey, staggering around the
cluttered decks of a seventy-ton schooner, while behind him, waving a
knotted rope, walked, after the manner of an executioner, a boy who
yawned and nodded between the blows he dealt.

The lashed wheel groaned and kicked softly, the riding-sail slatted a
little in the shifts of the light wind, the windlass creaked, and the
miserable procession continued. Harvey expostulated, threatened,
whimpered, and at last wept outright, while Dan, the words clotting on
his tongue, spoke of the beauty of watchfulness and slashed away with
the rope's end, punishing the dories as often as he hit Harvey. At last
the clock in the cabin struck ten, and upon the tenth stroke little
Penn crept on deck. He found two boys in two tumbled heaps side by side
on the main hatch, so deeply asleep that he actually rolled them to
their berths.

CHAPTER III

It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart,
and sends you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin dish of
juicy fragments of fish--the blood-ends the cook had collected
overnight. They cleaned up the plates and pans of the elder mess, who
were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal, swabbed down the
foc'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook, and
investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores were stacked. It
was another perfect day--soft, mild, and clear; and Harvey breathed to
the very bottom of his lungs.

More schooners had crept up in the night, and the long blue seas were
full of sails and dories. Far away on the horizon, the smoke of some
liner, her hull invisible, smudged the blue, and to eastward a big
ship's top-gallant sails, just lifting, made a square nick in it. Disko
Troop was smoking by the roof of the cabin--one eye on the craft
around, and the other on the little fly at the main-mast-head.

"When Dad kerflummoxes that way," said Dan in a whisper, "he's doin'
some high-line thinkin' fer all hands. I'll lay my wage an' share we'll
make berth soon. Dad he kno