Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and
heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin
dish of juicy fragments of fish - the blood-ends the cook had
collected overnight. They cleaned up the plates and pans of the
elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal,
swabbed down the fo'c'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water
for the cook, and investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's
stores were stacked. It was another perfect day - soft, mild, and
clear; and Harvey breathed to the very bottom of his lungs.

More schooners had crept up in the night, and the long blue seas
were full of sails and dories. Far away on the horizon, the smoke
of some liner, her hull invisible, smudged the blue, and to
eastward a big ship's topgallantsails, just lifting, made a square
nick in it. Disko Troop was smoking by the roof of the cabin - one
eye on the craft around, and the other on the little fly at the
mainmast-head.

"When dad kerflummoxes that way," said Dan, in a whisper, "he's
doin' some high-line thinkin' fer all hands. I'll lay my wage an'
share we'll make berth soon. Dad he knows the cod, an' the fleet
they know dad knows. 'See 'em comin' up one by one, lookin' fer
nothin' in particular, o' course, but scrowgin' on us all the
time? There's the Prince Leboa; she's a Chat-ham boat. She's crep'
up sence last night. An' see that big one with a patch in her
foresail an' a new jib? She's the Carrie Pitman from West Chat-
ham. She won't keep her canvas long on less her luck's changed
since last season. She don't do much 'cep' drift. There ain't an
anchor made'll hold her. . . . When the smoke puffs up in little
rings like that, dad's studyin' the fish. Ef we speak to him now,
he'll git mad. Las' time I did, he jest took an' hove a boot at
me."

Disko Troop stared forward, the pipe between his teeth, with eyes
that saw nothing. As his son said, he was studying the fish -
pitting his knowledge and experience on the Banks against the
roving cod in his own sea. He accepted the presence of the
inquisitive schooners on the horizon as a compliment to his
powers. But now that it was paid, he wished to draw away and make
his berth alone, till it was time to go up to the Virgin and fish
in the streets of that roaring town upon the waters. So Disko
Troop thought of recent weather, and gales, currents, food-
supplies, and other domestic arrangements, from the point of view
of a twenty-pound cod; was, in fact, for an hour a cod himself,
and looked remarkably like one. Then he removed the pipe from his
teeth.

"Dad," said Dan, "we've done our chores. Can't we go overside a
piece? It's good catch-in' weather."