“Once I was in the Lucy Holmes ,” said Manuel, in his gentle voice. “They not want any of her feesh in Gloucester. Eh, wha‑at? Give us no price. So we go across the water, and think to sell to some Fayal man. Then it blow fresh, and we cannot see well. Eh, wha‑at? Then it blow some more fresh, and we go down below and drive very fast—no one know where. By and by we see a land, and it get some hot. Then come two, three nigger in a brick. Eh, wha‑at? We ask where we are, and they say—now, what you all think?”
“Grand Canary,” said Disko, after a moment. Manuel shook his head, smiling.
“Blanco,” said Tom Platt.
“No. Worse than that. We was below Bezagos, and the brick she was from Liberia! So we sell our feesh there ! Not bad, so? Eh, wha‑at?”
“Can a schooner like this go right across to Africa?” said Harvey.
“Go araound the Horn ef there’s anythin’ worth goin’ fer, and the grub holds aout,” said Disko. “My father he run his packet, an’ she was a kind o’ pinkey, abaout fifty ton, I guess—the Rupert —he run her over to Greenland’s icy mountains the year ha’af our fleet was tryin’ after cod there. An’ what’s more, he took my mother along with him—to show her haow the money was earned, I presoom—an’ they was all iced up, an’ I was born at Disko. Don’t remember nothin’ abaout it, o’ course. We come back when the ice eased in the spring, but they named me fer the place. Kinder mean trick to put up on a baby, but we’re all baound to make mistakes in aour lives.”
“Sure! Sure!” said Salters, wagging his head. “All baound to make mistakes, an’ I tell you two boys here thet after you’ve made a mistake—ye don’t make fewer’n a hundred a day—the next best thing’s to own up to it like men.”