locker, and in less than three minutes Harvey was adorned with fisherman’s rubber boots that came half up his thigh, a heavy blue jersey well darned at the elbows, a pair of nippers, and a sou’wester.
“Naow ye look somethin’ like,” said Dan. “Hurry!”
“Keep nigh an’ handy,” said Troop, “an’ don’t go visitin’ raound the Fleet. If anyone asks you what I’m cal’latin’ to do, speak the truth—fer ye don’t know.”
A little red dory, labelled Hattie S. , lay astern of the schooner. Dan hauled in the painter, and dropped lightly on to the bottom boards, while Harvey tumbled clumsily after.
“That’s no way o’ gettin’ into a boat,” said Dan. “Ef there was any sea you’d go to the bottom, sure. You got to learn to meet her.”
Dan fitted the tholepins, took the forward thwart and watched Harvey’s work. The boy had rowed, in a ladylike fashion, on the Adirondack ponds; but there is a difference between squeaking pins and well-balanced ruflocks—light sculls and stubby, eight-foot sea-oars. They stuck in the gentle swell, and Harvey grunted.
“Short! Row short!” said Dan. “Ef you cramp your oar in any kind o’ sea you’re liable to turn her over. Ain’t she a daisy? Mine, too.”
The little dory was specklessly clean. In her bows lay a tiny anchor, two jugs of water, and some seventy fathoms of thin, brown dory-roding. A tin dinner-horn rested in cleats just under Harvey’s right hand, beside an ugly-looking maul, a short gaff, and a shorter wooden stick. A couple of lines, with very heavy leads and double cod-hooks, all neatly coiled on square reels, were stuck