bust within a yard--like the shells at Fort Macon."

"Bait up, Harve," said Dan, diving for a line on the reel.

The schooner seemed to be straying promiscuously through the smother,
her headsail banging wildly. The men waited and looked at the boys who
began fishing.

"Heugh!" Dan's lines twitched on the scored and scarred rail. "Now haow
in thunder did Dad know? Help us here, Harve. It's a big un.
Poke-hooked, too." They hauled together, and landed a goggle-eyed
twenty-pound cod. He had taken the bait right into his stomach.

"Why, he's all covered with little crabs," cried Harvey, turning him
over.

"By the great hook-block, they're lousy already," said Long Jack.
"Disko, ye kape your spare eyes under the keel."

Splash went the anchor, and they all heaved over the lines, each man
taking his own place at the bulwarks.

"Are they good to eat?" Harvey panted, as he lugged in another
crab-covered cod.

"Sure. When they're lousy it's a sign they've all been herdin' together
by the thousand, and when they take the bait that way they're hungry.
Never mind how the bait sets. They'll bite on the bare hook."

"Say, this is great!" Harvey cried, as the fish came in gasping and
splashing--nearly all poke-hooked, as Dan had said. "Why can't we
always fish from the boat instead of from the dories?"

"Allus can, till we begin to dress daown. Efter thet, the heads and
offals 'u'd scare the fish to Fundy. Boatfishin' ain't reckoned
progressive, though, unless ye know as much as dad knows. Guess we'll
run aout aour trawl to-night. Harder on the back, this, than frum the
dory, ain't it?"

It was rather back-breaking work, for in a dory the weight of a cod is
water-borne till the last minute, and you are, so to speak, abreast of
him; but the few feet of a schooner's freeboard make so much extra
dead-hauling, and stooping over the bulwarks cramps the stomach. But it
was wild and furious sport so long as it lasted; and a big pile lay
aboard when the fish ceased biting.

"Where's Penn and Uncle Salters?" Harvey asked, slapping the slime off
his oilskins, and reeling up the line in careful imitation of the
others.

"Git 's coffee and see."

Under the yellow glare of the lamp on the pawl-post, the foc'sle table
down and opened, utterly unconscious of fish or weather, sat the two
men, a checker-board between them, Uncle Salters snarling at Penn's
every move.

"What's the matter naow?" said the former, as Harvey, one hand