lying on a pile of half-dead fish, looking at a broad human back clothed in a blue jersey.
“It’s no good,” thought the boy. “I’m dead, sure enough, and this thing is in charge.”
He groaned, and the figure turned its head, showing a pair of little gold rings half hidden in curly black hair.
“Aha! You feel some pretty well now?” it said. “Lie still so: we trim better.”
With a swift jerk he sculled the flickering boat-head on to a foamless sea that lifted her twenty full feet, only to slide her into a glassy pit beyond. But this mountain-climbing did not interrupt blue-jersey’s talk.
“Fine good job, I say, that I catch you. Eh, wha‑at? Better good job, I say, your boat not catch me. How you come to fall out?”
“I was sick,” said Harvey; “sick, and couldn’t help it.”
“Just in time I blow my horn, and your boat she yaw a little. Then I see you come all down. Eh, wha‑at? I think you are cut into baits by the screw, but you dreeft—dreeft to me, and I make a big fish of you. So you shall not die this time.”
“Where am I?” said Harvey, who could not see that life was particularly safe where he lay.
“You are with me in the dory—Manuel my name, and I come from schooner We’re Here of Gloucester. I live to Gloucester. By-and-by we get supper. Eh, wha‑at?”
He seemed to have two pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs stand up