she’s a Chat-ham boat.  She’s crep’ up sence last night.  An’ see that big one with a patch in her foresail an’ a new jib?  She’s the Carrie Pitman from West Chat-ham.  She won’t keep her canvas long onless her luck’s changed since last season.  She don’t do much ‘cep’ drift.  There ain’t an anchor made ’ll hold her. . . .  When the smoke puffs up in little rings like that, Dad’s studyin’ the fish.  Ef we speak to him now, he’ll git mad.  Las’ time I did, he jest took an’ hove a boot at me.”

Disko Troop stared forward, the pipe between his teeth, with eyes that saw nothing.  As his son said, he was studying the fish—­pitting his knowledge and experience on the Banks against the roving cod in his own sea.  He accepted the presence of the inquisitive schooners on the horizon as a compliment to his powers.  But now that it was paid, he wished to draw away and make his berth alone, till it was time to go up to the Virgin and fish in the streets of that roaring town upon the waters.  So Disko Troop thought of recent weather, and gales, currents, food-supplies, and other domestic arrangements, from the point of view of a twenty-pound cod; was, in fact, for an hour a cod himself, and looked remarkably like one.  Then he removed the pipe from his teeth.

“Dad,” said Dan, “we’ve done our chores.  Can’t we go overside a piece?  It’s good catchin’ weather.”

“Not in that cherry-coloured rig ner them ha’af baked brown shoes.  Give him suthin’ fit to wear.”

“Dad’s pleased—­that settles it,” said Dan, delightedly, dragging Harvey into the cabin, while Troop pitched a key down the steps.  “Dad keeps my spare rig where he kin overhaul it, ’cause Ma sez I’m keerless.”  He rummaged through a locker, and in less than three minutes Harvey was adorned with fisherman’s rubber boots that came half up his thigh, a heavy blue jersey well darned at the elbows, a pair of nippers, and a sou’wester.

“Naow ye look somethin’ like,” said Dan.  “Hurry!”

“Keep nigh an’ handy,” said Troop “an’ don’t go visitin’ racund the Fleet.  If any one asks you what I’m cal’latin’ to do, speak the truth—­fer ye don’t know.”

A little red dory, labelled Hattie S., lay astern of the schooner.  Dan hauled in the painter, and dropped lightly on to the bottom boards, while Harvey tumbled clumsily after.

“That’s no way o’ gettin’ into a boat,” said Dan.  “Ef there was any sea you’d go to the bottom, sure.  You got to learn to meet her.”

Dan fitted the thole-pins, took the forward thwart and watched Harvey’s work.  The boy had rowed, in a lady-like fashion, on the Adirondack ponds; but there is a difference between squeaking pins and well-balanced ruflocks—­light sculls and stubby, eight-foot sea-oars.  They stuck in the gentle swell, and Harvey grunted.

“Short!  Row short!” said Dan.  “Ef you cramp your oar in any kind o’ sea you’re liable to turn her over.  Ain’t she a daisy?  Mine, too.”