“He has, sure,” said Harvey, who was meditating an early revenge.

“He’ll be mad clear through.  Dad jest hates to be mistook in his jedgments.”  Dan lay back and slapped his thigh.  “Oh, Harvey, don’t you spile the catch by lettin’ on.”

“I don’t want to be knocked down again.  I’ll get even with him, though.”

“Never heard any man ever got even with dad.  But he’d knock ye down again sure.  The more he was mistook the more he’d do it.  But gold-mines and pistols —­”

“I never said a word about pistols,” Harvey cut in, for he was on his oath.

“Thet’s so; no more you did.  Two private cars, then, one named fer you an’ one fer her; an’ two hundred dollars a month pocket-money, all knocked into the scuppers fer not workin’ fer ten an’ a ha’af a month!  It’s the top haul o’ the season.”  He exploded with noiseless chuckles.

“Then I was right?” said Harvey, who thought he had found a sympathiser.

“You was wrong; the wrongest kind o’ wrong!  You take right hold an’ pitch in ‘longside o’ me, or you’ll catch it, an’ I’ll catch it fer backin’ you up.  Dad always gives me double helps ’cause I’m his son, an’ he hates favourin’ folk.  ’Guess you’re kinder mad at dad.  I’ve been that way time an’ again.  But dad’s a mighty jest man; all the fleet says so.”

“Looks like justice, this, don’t it?” Harvey pointed to his outraged nose.

“Thet’s nothin’.  Lets the shore blood outer you.  Dad did it for yer health.  Say, though, I can’t have dealin’s with a man that thinks me or dad or any one on the ‘We’re Here’s’ a thief.  We ain’t any common wharf-end crowd by any manner o’ means.  We’re fishermen, an’ we’ve shipped together for six years an’ more.  Don’t you make any mistake on that!  I told ye dad don’t let me swear.  He calls ’em vain oaths, and pounds me; but ef I could say what you said ‘baout your pap an’ his fixin’s, I’d say that ’baout your dollars.  I dunno what was in your pockets when I dried your kit, fer I didn’t look to see; but I’d say, using the very same words ez you used jest now, neither me nor dad —­ an’ we was the only two that teched you after you was brought aboard —­ knows anythin’ ’baout the money.  Thet’s my say.  Naow?”

The bloodletting had certainly cleared Harvey’s brain, and maybe the loneliness of the sea had something to do with it.  “That’s all right,” he said.  Then he looked down confusedly. “’Seems to me that for a fellow just saved from drowning I haven’t been over and above grateful, Dan.”

“Well, you was shook up and silly,” said Dan.  “Anyway, there was only dad an’ me aboard to see it.  The cook he don’t count.”

“I might have thought about losing the bills that way,” Harvey said, half to himself, “instead of calling everybody in sight a thief.  Where’s your father?”

“In the cabin.  What d’ you want o’ him again?”

“You’ll see,” said Harvey, and he stepped, rather groggily, for his head was still singing, to the cabin steps where the little ship’s clock hung in plain sight of the wheel.  Troop, in the chocolate-and-yellow painted cabin, was busy with a note-book and an enormous black pencil which he sucked hard from time to time.