A little laugh went round at Salters’s expense.

Disko held his tongue, and wrought over the log-book that he kept in a hatchet-faced, square hand; this was the kind of thing that ran on, page after soiled page: 

“July 17.  This day thick fog and few fish.  Made berth to northward.  So ends this day.

“July 18.  This day comes in with thick fog.  Caught a few fish.

“July 19.  This day comes in with light breeze from N.E. and fine weather.  Made a berth to eastward.  Caught plenty fish.

“July 20.  This, the Sabbath, comes in with fog and light winds.  So ends this day.  Total fish caught this week, 3,478.”

They never worked on Sundays, but shaved, and washed themselves if it were fine, and Pennsylvania sang hymns.  Once or twice he suggested that, if ft was not an impertinence, he thought he could preach a little.  Uncle Salters nearly jumped down his throat at the mere notion, reminding him that he was not a preacher and mustn’t think of such things.  “We’d hev him rememberin’ Johns-town next,” Salters explained, “an’ what would happen then?” so they compromised on his reading aloud from a book called “Josephus.”  It was an old leather-bound volume, smelling of a hundred voyages, very solid and very like the Bible, but enlivened with accounts of battles and sieges; and they read it nearly from cover to cover.  Otherwise Penn was a silent little body.  He would not utter a word for three days on end sometimes, though he played checkers, listened to the songs, and laughed at the stories.  When they tried to stir him up, he would answer:  “I don’t wish to seem unneighbourly, but it is because I have nothing to say.  My head feels quite empty.  I’ve almost forgotten my name.”  He would turn to Uncle Salters with an expectant smile.

“Why, Pennsylvania Pratt,” Salters would shout “You’ll fergit me next!”

“No—­never,” Penn would say, shutting his lips firmly.  “Pennsylvania Pratt, of course,” he would repeat over and over.  Sometimes it was Uncle Salters who forgot, and told him he was Haskins or Rich or McVitty; but Penn was equally content—­till next time.

He was always very tender with Harvey, whom he pitied both as a lost child and as a lunatic; and when Salters saw that Penn liked the boy, he relaxed, too.  Salters was not an amiable person (He esteemed it his business to keep the boys in order); and the first time Harvey, in fear and trembling, on a still day, managed to shin up to the main-truck (Dan was behind him ready to help), he esteemed it his duty to hang Salters’s big sea-boots up there—­a sight of shame and derision to the nearest schooner.  With Disko, Harvey took no liberties; not even when the old man dropped direct orders, and treated him, like the rest of the crew, to “Don’t you want to do so and so?” and “Guess you’d better,” and so forth.  There was something about the clean-shaven lips and the puckered corners of the eyes that was mightily sobering to young blood.