All that night the Virgin roared hoarsely; and next morning, over an angry, white-headed sea, Harvey saw the Fleet with flickering masts waiting for a lead.  Not a dory was hove out till ten o’clock, when the two Jeraulds of the Day’s Eye, imagining a lull which did not exist, set the example.  In a minute half the boats were out and bobbing in the cockly swells, but Troop kept the ‘We’re Heres’ at work dressing down.  He saw no sense in “dares”; and as the storm grew that evening they had the pleasure of receiving wet strangers only too glad to make any refuge in the gale.  The boys stood by the dory-tackles with lanterns, the men ready to haul, one eye cocked for the sweeping wave that would make them drop everything and hold on for dear life.  Out of the dark would come a yell of “Dory, dory!” They would hook up and haul in a drenched man and a half-sunk boat, till their decks were littered down with nests of dories and the bunks were full.  Five times in their watch did Harvey, with Dan, jump at the foregaff where it lay lashed on the boom, and cling with arms, legs, and teeth to rope and spar and sodden canvas as a big wave filled the decks.  One dory was smashed to pieces, and the sea pitched the man head first on to the decks, cutting his forehead open; and about dawn, when the racing seas glimmered white all along their cold edges, another man, blue and ghastly, crawled in with a broken hand, asking news of his brother.  Seven extra mouths sat down to breakfast:  A Swede; a Chatham skipper; a boy from Hancock, Maine; one Duxbury, and three Provincetown men.

There was a general sorting out among the Fleet next day; and though no one said anything, all ate with better appetites when boat after boat reported full crews aboard.  Only a couple of Portuguese and an old man from Gloucester were drowned, but many were cut or bruised; and two schooners had parted their tackle and been blown to the southward, three days’ sail.  A man died on a Frenchman—­it was the same bark that had traded tobacco with the ‘We’re Heres’.  She slipped away quite quietly one wet, white morning, moved to a patch of deep water, her sails all hanging anyhow, and Harvey saw the funeral through Disko’s spy-glass.  It was only an oblong bundle slid overside.  They did not seem to have any form of service, but in the night, at anchor, Harvey heard them across the star-powdered black water, singing something that sounded like a hymn. it went to a very slow tune.

    “La brigantine
    Qui va tourner,
    Roule et s’incline
    Pour m’entrainer. 
    Oh, Vierge Marie,
    Pour moi priez Dieu! 
    Adieu, patrie;
    Quebec, adieu!”