“You mean you’ll have to work to-morrow, then?”

“I told Troop I would.  I’m on the scales.  I’ve brought the tallies with me.”  He looked at the greasy notebook with an air of importance that made his father choke.  “There isn’t but three—­ no-two ninety-four or five quintal more by my reckoning.”

“Hire a substitute,” suggested Cheyne, to see what Harvey would say.

“Can’t, sir.  I’m tally-man for the schooner.  Troop says I’ve a better head for figures than Dan.  Troop’s a mighty just man.”

“Well, suppose I don’t move the ‘Constance’ to-night, how’ll you fix it?”

Harvey looked at the clock, which marked twenty past eleven.

“Then I’ll sleep here till three and catch the four o’clock freight.  They let us men from the Fleet ride free as a rule.”

“That’s a notion.  But I think we can get the ‘Constance’ around about as soon as your men’s freight.  Better go to bed now.”

Harvey spread himself on the sofa, kicked off his boots, and was asleep before his father could shade the electrics.  Cheyne sat watching the young face under the shadow of the arm thrown over the forehead, and among many things that occurred to him was the notion that he might perhaps have been neglectful as a father.

“One never knows when one’s taking one’s biggest risks,” he said.  “It might have been worse than drowning; but I don’t think it has—­I don’t think it has.  If it hasn’t, I haven’t enough to pay Troop, that’s all; and I don’t think it has.”

Morning brought a fresh sea breeze through the windows, the “Constance” was side-tracked among freight-cars at Gloucester, and Harvey had gone to his business.

“Then he’ll fall overboard again and be drowned,” the mother said bitterly.

“We’ll go and look, ready to throw him a rope in case.  You’ve never seen him working for his bread,” said the father.

“What nonsense!  As if any one expected—­”

“Well, the man that hired him did.  He’s about right, too.”

They went down between the stores full of fishermen’s oilskins to Wouverman’s wharf where the ‘We’re Here’ rode high, her Bank flag still flying, all hands busy as beavers in the glorious morning light.  Disko stood by the main hatch superintending Manuel, Penn, and Uncle Salters at the tackle.  Dan was swinging the loaded baskets inboard as Long Jack and Tom Platt filled them, and Harvey, with a notebook, represented the skipper’s interests before the clerk of the scales on the salt-sprinkled wharf-edge.

“Ready!” cried the voices below.  “Haul!” cried Disko.  “Hi!” said Manuel.  “Here!” said Dan, swinging the basket.  Then they heard Harvey’s voice, clear and fresh, checking the weights.

The last of the fish had been whipped out, and Harvey leaped from the string-piece six feet to a ratline, as the shortest way to hand Disko the tally, shouting, “Two ninety-seven, and an empty hold!”