ble to swim as soon as they
could walk; rowed and sailed boats before they could guide a plow; could
give the location of every bank, the sort of fish that frequented it, and
the season for taking them. They could name every rope and clew, every
brace and stay on a pink or Chebacco boat before they reached words of two
syllables in Webster's blue-backed spelling-book; the mysteries of trawls
and handlines, of baits and hooks were unraveled to them while still in
the nursery, and the songs that lulled them to sleep were often doleful
ditties of castaways on George's Bank. Often they were shipped as early as
their tenth year, going as a rule in schooners owned or commanded by
relatives. It was no easy life that the youngster entered upon when first
he attained the dignity of being a "cut-tail," but such as it was, it was
the life he had looked forward to ever since he was old enough to consider
the future. He lived in a little forecastle, heated by a stuffy stove,
which it was his business to keep supplied with fuel. The bunks on either
side held rough men, not over nice of language or of act, smoking and
playing cards through most of their hours of leisure. From time immemorial
it has been a maxim of the forecastle that the way to educate a boy is to
"harden" him, and the hardening process has usually taken the form of
persistent brutality of usage--the rope's end, the heavy hand, the
hard-flung boot followed swift upon transgression of the laws or customs
of ship or forecastle. The "cut-tail" was everybody's drudge, yet gloried
in it, and a boy of Gloucester or Marblehead, who had lived his twelve
years without at least one voyage to his credit, was in as sorry a state
among his fellow urchins as a "Little Lord Fauntleroy" would be in the
company of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

The intimacies of the village streets were continued on the ocean. Fish
supplanted marbles as objects of prime importance in the urchin's mind.
The smallest fishing village would have two or three boats out on the
banks, and the larger town several hundred. Between the crews of these
vessels existed always the keenest rivalry, which had abundant opportunity
for its exhibition, since the conditions of the fishery were such that the
schooners cruised for weeks, perhaps, in fleets of several hundred. Every
maneuver was made under the eyes of the whole fleet, and each captain and
sailor felt that among the critics were probably some of his near
n