s youth slipped up almost under
the counter, smacked it with his open palm, and yelled: "Gid up, Buck!"

The cook emptied a pan of ashes on him, and he replied with cod-heads.
The bark's crew fired small coal from the galley, and the dories
threatened to come aboard and "razee" her. They would have warned her
at once had she been in real peril; but, seeing her well clear of the
Virgin, they made the most of their chances. The fun was spoilt when
the rock spoke again, a half-mile to windward, and the tormented bark
set everything that would draw and went her ways; but the dories felt
that the honours lay with them.

All that night the Virgin roared hoarsely; and next morning, over an
angry, white-headed sea, Harvey saw the Fleet with flickering masts
waiting for a lead. Not a dory was hove out till ten o'clock, when the
two Jeraulds of the Day's Eye, imagining a lull which did not exist,
set the example. In a minute half the boats were out and bobbing in the
cockly swells, but Troop kept the _We're Heres_ at work dressing down.
He saw no sense in "dares"; and as the storm grew that evening they had
the pleasure of receiving wet strangers only too glad to make any
refuge in the gale. The boys stood by the dory-tackles with lanterns,
the men ready to haul, one eye cocked for the sweeping wave that would
make them drop everything and hold on for dear life. Out of the dark
would come a yell of "Dory, dory!" They would hook up and haul in a
drenched man and a half-sunk boat, till their decks were littered down
with nests of dories and the bunks were full. Five times in their watch
did Harvey, with Dan, jump at the foregaff where it lay lashed on the
boom, and cling with arms, legs, and teeth to rope and spar and sodden
canvas as a big wave filled the decks. One dory was smashed to pieces,
and the sea pitched the man head first on to the decks, cutting his
forehead open; and about dawn, when the racing seas glimmered white all
along their cold edges, another man, blue and ghastly, crawled in with
a broken hand, asking news of his brother. Seven extra mouths sat down
to breakfast: A Swede; a Chatham skipper; a boy from Hancock, Maine;
one Duxbury, and three Provincetown men.

There was a general sorting out among the Fleet next day; and though no
one said anything, all ate with better appetites when boat after boat
reported full crews aboard. Only a couple of Portuguese and an old man
from Gloucester were drowned, but many we