seams—” He threw out his hands with an indescribable gesture, while Penn sat down on the house and sobbed at the sheer horror and pity of it all. Harvey could not realize that he had seen death on the open waters, but he felt very sick. Then Dan went up the crosstrees, and Disko steered them back to within sight of their own trawl-buoys just before the fog blanketed the sea once again.
“We go mighty quick hereabouts when we do go,” was all he said to Harvey. “You think on that fer a spell, young feller. That was liquor.”
“After dinner it was calm enough to fish from the decks—Penn and Uncle Salters were very zealous this time—and the catch was large and large fish.
“Abishai has shorely took his luck with him,” said Salters. “The wind hain’t backed ner riz ner nothin’. How abaout the trawl? I despise superstition, anyway.”
Tom Platt insisted that they had much better haul the thing and make a new berth. But the cook said: “The luck iss in two pieces. You will find it so when you look. I know.” This so tickled Long Jack that he overbore Tom Platt and the two went out together.
Underrunning a trawl means pulling it in on one side of the dory, picking off the fish, rebaiting the hooks, and passing them back to the sea again—something like pinning and unpinning linen on a wash-line. It is a lengthy business and rather dangerous, for the long, sagging line may twitch a boat under in a flash. But when they heard, “And naow to thee, O Capting,” booming out of the fog, the crew of the We’re Here took heart. The dory swirled alongside well loaded, Tom Platt yelling for Manuel to act as relief-boat.
“The luck’s cut square in two pieces,” said Long Jack, forking in the fish, while Harvey stood open-mouthed at the skill with which the plunging