“Where’s Penn and Uncle Salters?” Harvey asked, slapping the slime off his oilskins, and reeling up the line in careful imitation of the others.

“Git ’s coffee and see.”

Under the yellow glare of the lamp on the pawl-post, the foc’sle table down and opened, utterly unconscious of fish or weather, sat the two men, a checker-board between them, Uncle Salters snarling at Penn’s every move.

“What’s the matter naow?” said the former, as Harvey, one hand in the leather loop at the head of the ladder, hung shouting to the cook.

“Big fish and lousy—­heaps and heaps,” Harvey replied, quoting Long Jack.  “How’s the game?”

Little Penn’s jaw dropped. “‘Tweren’t none o’ his fault,” snapped Uncle Salters.  “Penn’s deef.”

“Checkers, weren’t it?” said Dan, as Harvey staggered aft with the steaming coffee in a tin pail.  “That lets us out o’ cleanin’ up to-night.  Dad’s a jest man.  They’ll have to do it.”

“An’ two young fellers I know’ll bait up a tub or so o’ trawl, while they’re cleanin’,” said Disko, lashing the wheel to his taste.

“Um!  Guess I’d ruther clean up, Dad.”

“Don’t doubt it.  Ye wun’t, though.  Dress daown!  Dress daown!  Penn’ll pitch while you two bait up.”

“Why in thunder didn’t them blame boys tell us you’d struck on?” said Uncle Salters, shuffling to his place at the table.  “This knife’s gum-blunt, Dan.”

“Ef stickin’ out cable don’t wake ye, guess you’d better hire a boy o’ your own,” said Dan, muddling about in the dusk over the tubs full of trawl-line lashed to windward of the house.  “Oh, Harve, don’t ye want to slip down an’ git ’s bait?”

“Bait ez we are,” said Disko.  “I mistrust shag-fishin’ will pay better, ez things go.”

That meant the boys would bait with selected offal of the cod as the fish were cleaned—­an improvement on paddling bare-handed in the little bait-barrels below.  The tubs were full of neatly coiled line carrying a big hook each few feet; and the testing and baiting of every single hook, with the stowage of the baited line so that it should run clear when shot from the dory, was a scientific business.  Dan managed it in the dark, without looking, while Harvey caught his fingers on the barbs and bewailed his fate.  But the hooks flew through Dan’s fingers like tatting on an old maid’s lap.  “I helped bait up trawl ashore ’fore I could well walk,” he said.  “But it’s a putterin’ job all the same.  Oh, Dad!” This shouted towards the hatch, where Disko and Tom Platt were salting.  “How many skates you reckon we’ll need?”

“’Baout three.  Hurry!”

“There’s three hundred fathom to each tub,” Dan explained; “more’n enough to lay out to-night.  Ouch!  ’Slipped up there, I did.”  He stuck his finger in his mouth.  “I tell you, Harve, there ain’t money in Gloucester ’u’d hire me to ship on a reg’lar trawler.  It may be progressive, but, barrin’ that, it’s the putterin’est, slimjammest business top of earth.”