Little Penn’s jaw dropped. “ ’Tweren’t none o’ his fault,” snapped Uncle Salters. “Penn’s deef.”
“Checkers, weren’t it?” said Dan, as Harvey staggered aft with the steaming coffee in a tin pail. “That lets us out o’ cleanin’ up tonight. Dad’s a jest man. They’ll have to do it.”
“An’ two young fellers I know’ll bait up a tub or so o’ trawl, while they’re cleanin’,” said Disko, lashing the wheel to his taste.
“Um! Guess I’d ruther clean up, Dad.”
“Don’t doubt it. Ye wun’t, though. Dress daown! Dress daown! Penn’ll pitch while you two bait up.”
“Why in thunder didn’t them blame boys tell us you’d struck on?” said Uncle Salters, shuffling to his place at the table. “This knife’s gum-blunt, Dan.”
“Ef stickin’ out cable don’t wake ye, guess you’d better hire a boy o’ your own,” said Dan, muddling about in the dusk over the tubs full of trawl-line lashed to windward of the house. “Oh, Harve, don’t ye want to slip down an’ git ’s bait?”
“Bait ez we are,” said Disko. “I mistrust shag-fishin’ will pay better, ez things go.”
That meant the boys would bait with selected offal of the cod as the fish were cleaned—an improvement on paddling barehanded in the little bait-barrels below. The tubs were full of neatly coiled line carrying a big hook each few feet; and the testing and baiting of every single hook, with the stowage of the baited line so that it should run clear when shot from the dory, was a scientific business. Dan managed it in the dark, without looking, while Harvey caught his fingers on the barbs and bewailed his fate. But the hooks flew through Dan’s fingers like tatting on an old