Rudyard Kipling : The Complete Novels and Stories. Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

to stab a shark with an old bayonet tied to a stick. The grim brute rubbed alongside the dory begging for small fish, and between the three of them it was a mercy they all got off alive.

      At last, after playing blind man’s buff in the fog, there came a morning when Disko shouted down the foc’sle: ‘Hurry, boys! We’re in taown!’

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Chapter 8

      To the end of his days, Harvey will never forget that sight. The sun was just clear of the horizon they had not seen for nearly a week, and his low red light struck into the riding-sails of three fleets of anchored schooners—one to the north, one to the westward, and one to the south. There must have been nearly a hundred of them, of every possible make and build, with, far away, a square-rigged Frenchman, all bowing and curtseying one to the other. From every boat dories were dropping away like bees from a crowded hive; and the clamour of voices, the rattling of ropes and blocks, and the splash of the oars carried for miles across the heaving water. The sails turned all colours, black, pearly-gray, and white, as the sun mounted; and more boats swung up through the mists to the southward.

      The dories gathered in clusters, separated, reformed, and broke again, all heading one way; while men hailed and whistled and cat-called and sang, and the water was speckled with rubbish thrown overboard.

      ‘It’s a town,’ said Harvey. ‘Disko was right. It is a town!’

      ‘I’ve seen smaller,’ said Disko. ‘There’s about a thousand men here; an’ yonder’s the Virgin.’ He pointed to a vacant space of greenish sea where there were no dories.

      The We’re Here skirted round the northern squadron, Disko waving his hand to friend after friend, and anchored as neatly as a racing yacht at the end of the season. The Bank fleet pass good seamanship in silence; but a bungler is jeered all along the line.

      ‘Jest in time fer the caplin,’ cried the Mary Chilton.

      ‘Salt ’most wet?’ asked the King Philip.

      ‘Hey, Tom Platt! Come t’ supper to-night?’ said the Henry Clay; and so questions and answers flew back and forth. Men had met one another before, dory-fishing in the fog, and there is no place for gossip like the Bank fleet. They all seemed to know about Harvey’s rescue, and asked if he were worth his salt yet. The young bloods jested with Dan, who had a lively tongue of his own, and inquired after their health by the town-nicknames they least liked. Manuel’s countrymen jabbered at him in their own language; and even the silent cook was seen riding the jib-boom and shouting Gaelic to a friend as black as himself. After they had buoyed the cable—all around the Virgin is rocky bottom, and carelessness means chafed ground-tackle and danger from drifting—after they had buoyed the cable, their dories went forth to join the mob of boats anchored about a mile away. The schooners rocked and dipped at a safe distance, like mother ducks watching their brood, while the dories behaved like mannerless ducklings.

      As they drove into the confusion, boat banging boat, Harvey’s ears tingled at the comments on his rowing. Every dialect from Labrador to Long Island, with Portuguese, Neapolitan, Lingua Franca, French, and Gaelic, with songs and shoutings and new oaths, rattled round him, and he seemed to be the butt of it all. For the first time in his life he felt shy—perhaps that came from living so long with only the We’re Heres—among the scores of wild faces that rose and fell with the reeling small craft. A gentle, breathing swell, three furlongs from trough to barrel, would quietly shoulder up a string of variously painted dories. They hung for an instant, a wonderful frieze against the sky-line, and their men pointed and hailed. Next moment the open mouths, waving arms, and bare chests disappeared, while on another swell came up an entirely new line of characters like paper figures in a toy theatre. So Harvey stared. ‘Watch out!’ said Dan, flourishing a dip-net. ‘When I tell you dip, you dip. The caplin’ ’ll school any time from naow on. Where’ll we lay, Tom Platt?’

      Pushing, shoving, and hauling, greeting old friends here and warning old enemies there, Commodore Tom Platt led his little fleet well to leeward of the general crowd, and immediately three or four men began to haul on their anchors with intent to lee-bow the We’re Heres. But a yell of laughter went up as a dory shot from her station with exceeding speed, its occupant pulling madly on the roding.

      ‘Give her slack!’ roared twenty voices. ‘Let him shake it out.’

      ‘What’s the matter?’ said Harvey, as the boat flashed away to the southward. ‘He’s anchored, isn’t he?’

      ‘Anchored, sure enough, but his graound-tackle’s kinder shifty,’ said Dan, laughing. ‘Whale’s fouled it…. Dip, Harve! Here they come!’

      The sea round them clouded and darkened, and then frizzed up in showers of tiny silver fish, and over a space of five or six acres the cod began to leap like trout in May; while behind the cod, three or four broad gray-black backs broke the water into boils.

      Then everybody shouted and tried to haul up his anchor to get among the school, and fouled his neighbour’s line and said what was in his heart, and dipped furiously with his dip-net, and shrieked cautions and advice to his companions, while the deep fizzed like freshly-opened soda-water, and cod, men, and whales together flung in upon the luckless bait. Harvey was nearly knocked overboard by the handle of Dan’s net. But in all the wild tumult he noticed, and never forgot, the wicked, set little eye—something like a circus-elephant’s eye—of a whale that drove along almost level with the water, and, so he said, winked at him. Three boats found their rodings fouled by these reckless mid-sea hunters, and were towed half a mile ere their horses shook the line free.

      Then the caplin moved off, and five minutes later there was no sound except the splash of the sinkers overside, the flapping of the cod, and the whack of the muckles as the men stunned them. It was wonderful fishing. Harvey could see the glimmering cod below, swimming slowly in droves, biting as steadily as they swam. Bank law strictly forbids more than one hook on one line when the dories are on the Virgin or the Eastern Shoals; but so close lay the boats that even single hooks snarled, and Harvey found himself in hot argument with a gentle, hairy Newfoundlander on one side and a howling Portuguese on the other.

      it was wonderful fishing. harvey could see the glimmering cod below, … biting as steadily as they swam…. but so close lay the boats that even single hooks snarled.

      Worse than any tangle of fishing-lines was the confusion of the dory-rodings below water. Each man had anchored where it seemed good to him, drifting and rowing round his fixed point. As the fish struck on less quickly, each man wanted to haul up and get to better ground; but every third man found himself intimately connected with some four or five neighbours. To cut another’s roding is crime unspeakable on the Banks; yet it was done, and done without detection, three or four times that day. Tom Platt caught a Maine man in the black act and knocked him over the gunwale with an oar, and Manuel served a fellow-countryman in the same way. But Harvey’s anchor-line was cut, and so was Penn’s, and they were turned into relief-boats to carry fish to the We’re Here as the dories filled. The caplin schooled once more at twilight, when the mad clamour was repeated; and at dusk they rowed back to dress down by the light of kerosene lamps on the edge of the pen.

      It was a huge pile, and they went to sleep while they were dressing. Next day several boats fished right above the cap of the Virgin; and Harvey, with them, looked down on the very weed of that lonely rock, which rises to within twenty feet of the surface. The cod were there in legions, marching solemnly over the leathery kelp. When they bit, they bit all together, and so when they stopped. There was a slack time at noon, and the dories began to search for amusement. It was Dan who sighted the Hope of Prague just coming up, and as her boats joined the company they were greeted with the question: ‘Who’s the meanest man in the fleet?’

      Three hundred voices answered cheerily: ‘Nick Bra-ady.’ It sounded like an organ chant.

      ‘Who