IV

rigging as she zigzagged down the slopes. Far away a sea would burst into a sheet of foam, and the others would follow suit as at a signal, till Harvey’s eyes swam with the vision of interlacing whites and grays. Four or five Mother Carey’s chickens stormed round in circles, shrieking as they swept past the bows. A rain-squall or two strayed aimlessly over the hopeless waste, ran down ’wind and back again, and melted away.

“Seems to me I saw somethin’ flicker jest naow over yonder,” said Uncle Salters, pointing to the northeast.

“Can’t be any of the fleet,” said Disko, peering under his eyebrows, a hand on the foc’sle gangway as the solid bows hatcheted into the troughs. “Sea’s oilin’ over dretful fast. Danny, don’t you want to skip up a piece an’ see how aour trawl-buoy lays?”

Danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than climbed up the main rigging (this consumed Harvey with envy), hitched himself around the reeling crosstrees, and let his eye rove till it caught the tiny black buoy-flag on the shoulder of a mile-away swell.

“She’s all right,” he hailed. “Sail O! Dead to the no’th’ard, comin’ down like smoke! Schooner she be, too.”

They waited yet another half-hour, the sky clearing in patches, with a flicker of sickly sun from time to time that made patches of olive-green water. Then a stump-foremast lifted, ducked, and disappeared, to be followed on the next wave by a high stern with old-fashioned wooden snail’s-horn davits. The snails were red-tanned.

“Frenchmen!” shouted Dan. “No, ’tain’t, neither. Da‑ad!”

“That’s no French,” said Disko. “Salters, your blame luck holds tighter’n a screw in a keg-head.”

“I’ve eyes. It’s Uncle Abishai.”