d 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-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