He wished to make his own experirnents, in the first place; and in the second, he objected to the mixed gatherings of a fleet of all nations. The bulk of them were mamly Gloucester boats, with a scattering from Provincetown, Harwich, Chatham, and some of the Maine ports, but the crews drew from goodness knows where. Risk breeds recklessness, and when greed is added there are fine chances for every kind of accident in the crowded fleet, which, like a mob of sheep, is huddled round some unrecognized leader. "Let the two Jeraulds lead 'em," said Disko. "We're baound to lay among 'em for a spell on the Eastern Shoals; though ef luck holds, we won't hev to lay long. Where we are naow, Harve, ain't considered noways good graound.""Ain't it?" said Harvey, who was drawing water (he had learned just how to wiggle the bucket), after an unusually long dressing-down. "Shouldn't mind striking some poor ground for a change, then.""All the graound I want to see-don't want to strike her-is Eastern Point," said Dan. "Say, Dad, it looks's if we wouldn't hev to lay more'n two weeks on the Shoals. You'll meet all the comp'ny you want then, Harve. That's the time we begin to work. No reg'lar meals fer no one then. 'Mug-up when ye're hungry, an' sleep when ye can't keep awake. Good job you wasn't picked up a month later than you was, or we'd never ha' had you dressed in shape fer the Old Virgin."Harvey understood from the Eldridge chart that the Old Virgin and a nest of curiously named shoals were the turning-point of the cruise, and that with good luck they would wet the balance of their salt there. But seeing the size of the Virgin (it was one tiny dot), he wondered how even Disko with the hog-yoke and the lead could find her. He learned later that Disko was entirely equal to that and any other business and could even help others. A big four-by-five blackboard hung in the cabin, and Harvey never understood the need of it till, after some blinding thick days, they heard the unmelodious tooting of a foot-power fog-horn-a machine whose note is as that of a consumptive elephant.
They were making a short berth, towing the anchor under their foot to save trouble. "Square-rigger bellowin' fer his latitude," said Long Jack. The dripping red head-sails of a bark glided out of the fog, and the We're Here rang her bell thrice, using sea shorthand.
The larger boat backed her topsail with shrieks and shoutings.
"Frenchman," said Uncle Salters, scornfully. "Miquelon boat from St. Malo." The farmer had a weatherly sea-eye. "I'm 'most outer 'baccy, too, Disko.""Same here," said Tom Platt. "Hi! Backez vous-backez vous!
Standez awayez, you butt-ended mucho-bono! Where you from-St. Malo, eh?"
"Ah, ha! Mucho bono! Oui! oui! Clos Poulet--St. Malo! St. Pierre et Miquelon," cried the other crowd, waving woollen caps and laughing. Then all together, "Bord! Bord!""Bring up the board, Danny. Beats me how them Frenchmen fetch anywheres, exceptin' America's fairish broadly. Forty-six forty-nine's good enough fer them; an' I guess it's abaout right, too"Dan chalked the figures on the board, and they hung it in the main-rigging to a chorus of mercis from the bark.
"Seems kinder uneighbourly to let 'em swedge off like this,"Salters suggested, feeling in his pockets "Hev ye learned French then sence last trip?" said Disko. "I don't want no more stone-ballast hove at us 'long 0' your callin'
Miquelon boats 'footy cochins,' same's you did off Le Have.""Harmon Rush he said that was the way to rise 'em. Plain United States is good enough fer me. We're all dretful short- on tearakker.
Young feller, don't you speak French?"
"Oh, yes," said Harvey valiantly; and he bawled:
"Hi! Say! Arretez vous! Attendez! Nous sommes venant pour tabac.""Ah, tabac, tabac!" they cried, and laughed again.
"That hit 'em. Let's heave a dory over, anyway," said Tom Platt. "Idon't exactly hold no certificates on French, but I know another lingo that goes, I guess. Come on, Harve, an' interpret."The raffle and confusion when he and Harvey were hauled up the bark's black side was indescribable. Her cabin was all stuck round with glaring coloured prints of the Virgin-the Virgin of Newfoundland, they called her. Harvey found his French of no recognized Bank brand, and his conversation was limited to nods and grins. But Tom Platt waved his arms and got along swimmingly. The captain gave him a drink of unspeakable gin, and the opera-comique crew, with their hairy throats, red caps, and long knives, greeted him as a brother. Then the trade began. They had tobacco, plenty of it-American, that had never paid duty to France. They wanted chocolate and crackers. Harvey rowed back to arrange with the cook and Disko, who owned the stores, and on his return the cocoa-tins and cracker-bags were counted out by the Frenchman's wheel. It looked like a piratical division of loot; but Tom Platt came out of it roped with black pigtail and stuffed with cakes of chewing and smoking tobacco. Then those jovial mariners swung off into the mist, and the last Harvey heard was a gay chorus:
"Par derriere chez ma tante, fly a un bois joli, Et le rossignol y chante Et le jour et la nuit....
Que donneriez vous, belle, Qui 1'arnenerait ici?
Je donneral Quebec, Sorel et Saint Denis."
"How was it my French didn't go, and your sign-talk did?" Harvey demanded when the batter had been distributed among the We're Heres.
"Sign-talk!" Platt guffawed. "Well, yes, 'twas sign-talk, but a heap older'n your French, Harve. Them French boats are chockfull o'
Freemasons, an' that's why."
"Are you a Freemason, then?"
"Looks that way, don't it?" said the man-o'-war's man, stuffing his pipe; and Harvey had another mystery of the deep sea to brood upon.
