“Run under, by the Great Hook-Block!” shouted Disko, jumping aft.  “Drunk or sober, we’ve got to help ’em.  Heave short and break her out!  Smart!”

Harvey was thrown on the deck by the shock that followed the setting of the jib and foresail, for they hove short on the cable, and to save time, jerked the anchor bodily from the bottom, heaving in as they moved away.  This is a bit of brute force seldom resorted to except in matters of life and death, and the little ‘We’re Here’ complained like a human.  They ran down to where Abishal’s craft had vanished; found two or three trawl-tubs, a gin-bottle, and a stove-in dory, but nothing more.  “Let ’em go,” said Disko, though no one had hinted at picking them up.  “I wouldn’t hev a match that belonged to Abishai aboard.  Guess she run clear under.  Must ha’ been spewin’ her oakum fer a week, an’ they never thought to pump her.  That’s one more boat gone along o’ leavin’ port all hands drunk.”

“Glory be!” said Long Jack.  “We’d ha’ been obliged to help ’em if they was top o’ water.”

“‘Thinkin’ o’ that myself,” said Tom Platt.

“Fey!  Fey!” said the cook, rolling his eyes.  “He haas taken his own luck with him.”

“Ver’ good thing, I think, to tell the Fleet when we see.  Eh, wha-at?” said Manuel.  “If you runna that way before the ’wind, and she work open her seams—­” He threw out his hands with an indescribable gesture, while Penn sat down on the house and sobbed at the sheer horror and pity of it all.  Harvey could not realize that he had seen death on the open waters, but he felt very sick.  Then Dan went up the cross-trees, and Disko steered them back to within sight of their own trawl-buoys just before the fog blanketed the sea once again.

“We go mighty quick hereabouts when we do go,” was all he said to Harvey.  “You think on that fer a spell, young feller.  That was liquor.”

“After dinner it was calm enough to fish from the decks,—­Penn and Uncle Salters were very zealous this time,—­and the catch was large and large fish.

“Abishal has shorely took his luck with him,” said Salters.  “The wind hain’t backed ner riz ner nothin’.  How abaout the trawl?  I despise superstition, anyway.”

Tom Platt insisted that they had much better haul the thing and make a new berth.  But the cook said:  “The luck iss in two pieces.  You will find it so when you look.  I know.”  This so tickled Long Jack that he overbore Tom Platt and the two went out together.

Underrunning a trawl means pulling it in on one side of the dory, picking off the fish, rebaiting the hooks, and passing them back to the sea again—­something like pinning and unpinning linen on a wash-line.  It is a lengthy business and rather dangerous, for the long, sagging line may twitch a boat under in a flash.  But when they heard, “And naow to thee, 0 Capting,” booming out of the fog, the crew of the ‘We’re Here’ took heart.  The dory swirled alongside well loaded, Tom Platt yelling for Manuel to act as relief-boat.