“Don’t tech ’em.  Slat ’em off.  Don’t—­”

The warning came too late.  Harvey had picked them from the hook, and was admiring them.

“Ouch!” he cried, for his fingers throbbed as though he had grasped many nettles.

“Now ye know what strawberry-bottom means.  Nothin’ ‘cep’ fish should be teched with the naked fingers, Dad says.  Slat ’em off agin the guunel, an’ bait up, Harve.  Lookin’ won’t help any.  It’s all in the wages.”

Harvey smiled at the thought of his ten and a half dollars a month, and wondered what his mother would say if she could see him hanging over the edge of a fishing-dory in mid-ocean.  She suffered agonies whenever he went out on Saranac Lake; and, by the way, Harvey remembered distinctly that he used to laugh at her anxieties.  Suddenly the line flashed through his hand, stinging even through the “nippers,” the woolen circlets supposed to protect it.

“He’s a logy.  Give him room accordin’ to his strength,” cried Dan.  “I’ll help ye.”

“No, you won’t,” Harvey snapped, as he hung on to the line.  “It’s my first fish.  I—­is it a whale?”

“Halibut, mebbe.”  Dan peered down into the water alongside, and flourished the big “muckle,” ready for all chances.  Something white and oval flickered and fluttered through the green.  “I’ll lay my wage an’ share he’s over a hundred.  Are you so everlastin’ anxious to land him alone?”

Harvey’s knuckles were raw and bleeding where they had been hanged against the gunwale; his face was purple-blue between excitement and exertion; he dripped with sweat, and was half-blinded from staring at the circling sunlit ripples about the swiftly moving line.  The boys were tired long ere the halibut, who took charge of them and the dory for the next twenty minutes.  But the big flat fish was gaffed and hauled in at last.

“Beginner’s luck,” said Dan, wiping his forehead.  “He’s all of a hundred.”

Harvey looked at the huge gray-and-mottled creature with unspeakable pride.  He had seen halibut many times on marble slabs ashore, but it had never occurred to him to ask how they came inland.  Now he knew; and every inch of his body ached with fatigue.

“Ef Dad was along,” said Dan, hauling up, “he’d read the signs plain’s print.  The fish are runnin’ smaller an’ smaller, an’ you’ve took ’baout as logy a halibut’s we’re apt to find this trip.  Yesterday’s catch—­did ye notice it?—­was all big fish an’ no halibut.  Dad he’d read them signs right off.  Dad says everythin’ on the Banks is signs, an’ can be read wrong er right.  Dad’s deeper’n the Whale-hole.”

Even as he spoke some one fired a pistol on the ‘We’re Here’, and a potato-basket was run up in the fore-rigging.

“What did I say, naow?  That’s the call fer the whole crowd.  Dad’s onter something, er he’d never break fishin’ this time o’ day.  Reel up, Harve, an’ we’ll pull back.”

They were to windward of the schooner, just ready to flirt the dory over the still sea, when sounds of woe half a mile off led them to Penn, who was careering around a fixed point for all the world like a gigantic water-bug.  The little man backed away and came down again with enormous energy, but at the end of each maneuver his dory swung round and snubbed herself on her rope.