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,
Il'y a un bois joli,
Et le rossignol y chante
Et le jour et la nuit....

Que donneriez vous, belle,
Qui l'amenerait ici?
Je donnerai Quebec,
Sorel et Saint Denis."

"How was it my French didn't go, and your sign-talk did?" Harvey
demanded when the barter 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.

CHAPTER VI

The thing that struck him most was the exceedingly casual way in which
some craft loafed about the broad Atlantic. Fishing-boats, as Dan said,
were naturally dependent on the courtesy and wisdom of their
neighbours; but one expected better things of steamers. That was after
another interesting interview, when they had been chased for three
miles by a big lumbering old cattle-boat, all boarded over on the upper
deck, that smelt like a thousand cattle-pens. A very excited officer
yelled at them through a speaking-trumpet, and she lay and lollopped
helplessly on the water while Disko ran the _We're Here_ under her lee
and gave the skipper a piece of his mind. "Where might ye be--eh? Ye
don't deserve to be anywheres. You barn-yard tramps go hoggin' the road
on the high seas with no blame consideration fer your neighbours, an'
your eyes in your coffee-cups instid o' in your silly heads."

At this the skipper danced on the bridge and said something about
Disko's own eyes. "We haven't had an observation for three days. D'you
suppose we can run her blind?" he shouted.

"Wa-al, I can," Disko retorted. "What's come to your lead? Et it? Can't
ye smell bottom, or are them cattle too rank?"

"What d' ye feed 'em?" said Uncle Salters with intense seriousness, for
the smell of the pens woke all the farmer in him. "They say they fall
off dretful on a v'yage. Dunno as it's any o' my business, but I've a
kind o' notion that oil-cake broke small an' sprinkled--"

"Thunder!" said a cattle-man in a red jersey as he looked over