her flag,—­as is the right of the first boat off the Banks,—­up-anchored, and began to move.  Disko pretended that he wished to accomodate folk who had not sent in their mail, and so worked her gracefully in and out among the schooners.  In reality, that was his little triumphant procession, and for the fifth year running it showed what kind of mariner he was.  Dan’s accordion and Tom Platt’s fiddle supplied the music of the magic verse you must not sing till all the salt is wet: 

    “Hih!  Yih!  Yoho!  Send your letters raound! 
    All our salt is wetted, an’ the anchor’s off the graound!

    Bend, oh, bend your mains’l, we’re back to Yankeeland—­
    With fifteen hunder’ quintal,
    An’ fifteen hunder’ quintal,
    ‘Teen hunder’ toppin’ quintal,
    ‘Twix’ old ‘Queereau an’ Grand.”

The last letters pitched on deck wrapped round pieces of coal, and the Gloucester men shouted messages to their wives and womenfolks and owners, while the ‘We’re Here’ finished the musical ride through the Fleet, her headsails quivering like a man’s hand when he raises it to say good-by.

Harvey very soon discovered that the ‘We’re Here’, with her riding-sail, strolling from berth to berth, and the ‘We’re Here’ headed west by south under home canvas, were two very different boats.  There was a bite and kick to the wheel even in “boy’s” weather; he could feel the dead weight in the hold flung forward mightily across the surges, and the streaming line of bubbles overside made his eyes dizzy.

Disko kept them busy fiddling with the sails; and when those were flattened like a racing yacht’s, Dan had to wait on the big topsail, which was put over by hand every time she went about.  In spare moments they pumped, for the packed fish dripped brine, which does not improve a cargo.  But since there was no fishing, Harvey had time to look at the sea from another point of view.  The low-sided schooner was naturally on most intimate terms with her surroundings.  They saw little of the horizon save when she topped a swell; and usually she was elbowing, fidgeting, and coasting her steadfast way through gray, gray-blue, or black hollows laced across and across with streaks of shivering foam; or rubbing herself caressingly along the flank of some bigger water-hill.  It was as if she said:  “You wouldn’t hurt me, surely?  I’m only the little ’We’re Here’.”  Then she would slide away chuckling softly to herself till she was brought up by some fresh obstacle.  The dullest of folk cannot see this kind of thing hour after hour through long days without noticing it; and Harvey, being anything but dull, began to comprehend and enjoy the dry chorus of wave-tops turning over with a sound of incessant tearing; the hurry of the winds working across open spaces and herding the purple-blue cloud-shadows; the splendid upheaval of the red sunrise; the folding and packing away of the morning mists, wall after wall withdrawn across the white floors; the salty glare and blaze of noon; the kiss of rain falling over thousands of dead, flat square miles; the chilly blackening of everything at the day’s end; and the million wrinkles of the sea under the moonlight, when the jib-boom solemnly poked at the low stars, and Harvey went down to get a doughnut from the cook.