tand the least nonsense. One
learns a great deal from a mere tone. Long Jack called over half a
dozen ropes, and Harvey danced over the deck like an eel at ebb-tide,
one eye on Tom Platt.

"Ver' good. Ver' good don," said Manuel. "After supper I show you a
little schooner I make, with all her ropes. So we shall learn."

"Fust-class fer--a passenger," said Dan. "Dad he's jest allowed you'll
be wuth your salt maybe 'fore you're draownded. Thet's a heap fer Dad.
I'll learn you more our next watch together."

"Taller!" grunted Disko, peering through the fog as it smoked over the
bows. There was nothing to be seen ten feet beyond the surging
jib-boom, while alongside rolled the endless procession of solemn, pale
waves whispering and lipping one to the other.

"Now I'll learn you something Long Jack can't," shouted Tom Platt, as
from a locker by the stern he produced a battered deep-sea lead
hollowed at one end, smeared the hollow from a saucer full of mutton
tallow, and went forward. "I'll learn you how to fly the Blue Pigeon.
Shooo!"

Disko did something to the wheel that checked the schooner's way, while
Manuel, with Harvey to help (and a proud boy was Harvey), let down the
jib in a lump on the boom. The lead sung a deep droning song as Tom
Platt whirled it round and round.

"Go ahead, man," said Long Jack, impatiently. "We're not drawin'
twenty-five fut off Fire Island in a fog. There's no trick to ut."

"Don't be jealous, Galway." The released lead plopped into the sea far
ahead as the schooner surged slowly forward.

"Soundin' is a trick, though," said Dan, "when your dipsey lead's all
the eye you're like to hev for a week. What d'you make it, Dad?"

Disko's face relaxed. His skill and honour were involved in the march
he had stolen on the rest of the Fleet, and he had his reputation as a
master artist who knew the Banks blindfold. "Sixty, mebbe--ef I'm any
judge," he replied, with a glance at the tiny compass in the window of
the house.

"Sixty," sung out Tom Platt, hauling in great wet coils.

The schooner gathered way once more. "Heave!" said Disko, after a
quarter of an hour.

"What d'you make it?" Dan whispered, and he looked at Harvey proudly.
But Harvey was too proud of his own performances to be impressed just
then.

"Fifty," said the father. "I mistrust we're right over the nick o'
Green Bank on old Sixty-Fifty."

"Fifty!" roared Tom Platt. They could scarcely see him through the fog.
"She's