“I’m going to try to work, anyway,” Harvey replied stoutly.  “Only it’s all dead new.”

“Lay a-holt o’ that tackle, then.  Behind ye!”

Harvey grabbed at a rope and long iron hook dangling from one of the stays of the mainmast, while Dan pulled down another that ran from something he called a “topping-lift,” as Manuel drew alongside in his loaded dory.  The Portuguese smiled a brilliant smile that Harvey learned to know well later, and with a short-handled fork began to throw fish into the pen on deck.  “Two hundred and thirty-one,” he shouted.

“Give him the hook,” said Dan, and Harvey ran it into Manuel’s hands.  He slipped it through a loop of rope at the dory’s bow, caught Dan’s tackle, hooked it to the stern-becket, and clambered into the schooner.

“Pull!” shouted Dan, and Harvey pulled, astonished to find how easily the dory rose.

“Hold on, she don’t nest in the crosstrees!” Dan laughed; and Harvey held on, for the boat lay in the air above his head.

“Lower away,” Dan shouted, and as Harvey lowered, Dan swayed the light boat with one hand till it landed softly just behind the mainmast.  “They don’t weigh nothin’ empty.  Thet was right smart fer a passenger.  There’s more trick to it in a sea-way.”

“Ah ha!” said Manuel, holding out a brown hand.  “You are some pretty well now?  This time last night the fish they fish for you.  Now you fish for fish.  Eh, wha-at?”

“I’m—­I’m ever so grateful,” Harvey stammered, and his unfortunate hand stole to his pocket once more, but he remembered that he had no money to offer.  When he knew Manuel better the mere thought of the mistake he might have made would cover him with hot, uneasy blushes in his bunk.

“There is no to be thankful for to me!” said Manuel.  “How shall I leave you dreeft, dreeft all around the Banks?  Now you are a fisherman eh, wha-at?  Ouh!  Auh!” He bent backward and forward stiffly from the hips to get the kinks out of himself.

“I have not cleaned boat to-day.  Too busy.  They struck on queek.  Danny, my son, clean for me.”

Harvey moved forward at once.  Here was something he could do for the man who had saved his life.

Dan threw him a swab, and he leaned over the dory, mopping up the slime clumsily, but with great good-will.  “Hike out the foot-boards; they slide in them grooves,” said Dan.  “Swab ’em an’ lay ’em down.  Never let a foot-board jam.  Ye may want her bad some day.  Here’s Long Jack.”

A stream of glittering fish flew into the pen from a dory alongside.

“Manuel, you take the tackle.  I’ll fix the tables.  Harvey, clear Manuel’s boat.  Long Jack’s nestin’ on the top of her.”

Harvey looked up from his swabbing at the bottom of another dory just above his head.

“Jest like the Injian puzzle-boxes, ain’t they?” said Dan, as the one boat dropped into the other.

“Takes to ut like a duck to water,” said Long Jack, a grizzly-chinned, long-lipped Galway man, bending to and fro exactly as Manuel had done.  Disko in the cabin growled up the hatchway, and they could hear him suck his pencil.