“Hey, Tom Platt!  Come t’ supper to-night?” said the Henry Clay; and so questions and answers flew back and forth.  Men had met one another before, dory-fishing in the fog, and there is no place for gossip like the Bank fleet.  They all seemed to know about Harvey’s rescue, and asked if be were worth his salt yet.  The young bloods jested with Dan, who had a lively tongue of his own, and inquired after their health by the town-nicknames they least liked.  Manuel’s countrymen jabbered at him in their own language; and even the silent cook was seen riding the jib-boom and shouting Gaelic to a friend as black as himself.  After they had buoyed the cable—­all around the Virgin is rocky bottom, and carelessness means chafed ground-tackle and danger from drifting—­after they had buoyed the cable, their dories went forth to join the mob of boats anchored about a mile away.  The schooners rocked and dipped at a safe distance, like mother ducks watching their brood, while the dories behaved like mannerless ducklings.

As they drove into the confusion, boat banging boat, Harvey’s ears tingled at the comments on his rowing.  Every dialect from Labrador to Long Island, with Portuguese, Neapolitan, Lingua Franca, French, and Gaelic, with songs and shoutings and new oaths, rattled round him, and he seemed to be the butt of it all.  For the first time in his life he felt shy—­perhaps that came from living so long with only the ’We’re Heres’—­among the scores of wild faces that rose and fell with the reeling small craft.  A gentle, breathing swell, three furlongs from trough to barrel, would quietly shoulder up a string of variously painted dories.  They hung for an instant, a wonderful frieze against the sky-line, and their men pointed and hailed.  Next moment the open mouths, waving arms, and bare chests disappeared, while on another swell came up an entirely new line of characters like paper figures in a toy theatre.  So Harvey stared.  “Watch out!” said Dan, flourishing a dip-net “When I tell you dip, you dip.  The caplin’ll school any time from naow on.  Where’ll we lay, Tom Platt?”

Pushing, shoving, and hauling, greeting old friends here and warning old enemies there, Commodore Tom Platt led his little fleet well to leeward of the general crowd, and immediately three or four men began to haul on their anchors with intent to lee-bow the ’We’re Heres’.  But a yell of laughter went up as a dory shot from her station with exceeding speed, its occupant pulling madly on the roding.

“Give her slack!” roared twenty voices.  “Let him shake it out.”

“What’s the matter?” said Harvey, as the boat flashed away to the southward.  “He’s anchored, isn’t he?”

“Anchored, sure enough, but his graound-tackle’s kinder shifty,” said Dan, laughing.  “Whale’s fouled it. . . .  Dip Harve!  Here they come!”

The sea round them clouded and darkened, and then frizzed up in showers of tiny silver fish, and over a space of five or six acres the cod began to leap like trout in May; while behind the cod three or four broad gray-backs broke the water into boils.