IV

every stick he hez to carry bad news. Says we’re in fer a shift o’ wind. He’s in fer worse. Abishai! Abi‑ shai !” He waved his arm up and down with the gesture of a man at the pumps, and pointed forward. The crew mocked him and laughed.

“Jounce ye, an’ strip ye an’ trip ye!” yelled Uncle Abishai. “A livin’ gale⁠—a livin’ gale. Yab! Cast up fer your last trip, all you Gloucester haddocks. You won’t see Gloucester no more, no more!”

“Crazy full⁠—as usual,” said Tom Platt. “Wish he hadn’t spied us, though.”

She drifted out of hearing while the gray-head yelled something about a dance at the Bay of Bulls and a dead man in the foc’sle. Harvey shuddered. He had seen the sloven tilled decks and the savage-eyed crew.

“An’ that’s a fine little floatin’ hell fer her draught,” said Long Jack. “I wondher what mischief he’s been at ashore.”

“He’s a trawler,” Dan explained to Harvey, “an’ he runs in fer bait all along the coast. Oh, no, not home, he don’t go. He deals along the south an’ east shore up yonder.” He nodded in the direction of the pitiless Newfoundland beaches. “Dad won’t never take me ashore there. They’re a mighty tough crowd⁠—an’ Abishai’s the toughest. You saw his boat? Well, she’s nigh seventy year old, they say; the last o’ the old Marblehead heel-tappers. They don’t make them quarterdecks any more. Abishai don’t use Marblehead, though. He ain’t wanted there. He jes’ drif’s araound, in debt, trawlin’ an’ cussin’ like you’ve heard. Bin a Jonah fer years an’ years, he hez. ’Gits liquor frum the Feecamp boats fer makin’ spells an’ selling winds an’ such truck. Crazy, I guess.”

“ ’Twon’t be any use underrunnin’ the trawl tonight,” said Tom Platt, with quiet despair. “He come alongside special to cuss us. I’d give my wage an’ share to see him at the gangway o’ the old Ohio ’fore we quit floggin’. Jest abaout six dozen, an’ Sam Mocatta layin’ ’em on crisscross!”