exertion; he dripped with sweat, and was half-blinded from staring at
the circling sunlit ripples about the swiftly moving line. The boys
were tired long ere the halibut, who took charge of them and the dory
for the next twenty minutes. But the big flat fish was gaffed and
hauled in at last.

"Beginner's luck," said Dan, wiping his forehead. "He's all of a
hundred."

Harvey looked at the huge gray-and-mottled creature with unspeakable
pride. He had seen halibut many times on marble slabs ashore, but it
had never occurred to him to ask how they came inland. Now he knew; and
every inch of his body ached with fatigue.

"Ef Dad was along," said Dan, hauling up, "he'd read the signs plain's
print. The fish are runnin' smaller an' smaller, an' you've took 'baout
as logy a halibut's we're apt to find this trip. Yesterday's catch--did
ye notice it?--was all big fish an' no halibut. Dad he'd read them
signs right off. Dad says everythin' on the Banks is signs, an' can be
read wrong er right. Dad's deeper'n the Whale-hole."

Even as he spoke some one fired a pistol on the _We're Here_, and a
potato-basket was run up in the fore-rigging.

"What did I say, naow? That's the call fer the whole crowd. Dad's onter
something, er he'd never break fishin' this time o' day. Reel up,
Harve, an' we'll pull back."

They were to windward of the schooner, just ready to flirt the dory
over the still sea, when sounds of woe half a mile off led them to
Penn, who was careering around a fixed point for all the world like a
gigantic water-bug. The little man backed away and came down again with
enormous energy, but at the end of each maneuver his dory swung round
and snubbed herself on her rope.

"We'll hev to help him, else he'll root an' seed here," said Dan.

"What's the matter?" said Harvey. This was a new world, where he could
not lay down the law to his elders, but had to ask questions humbly.
And the sea was horribly big and unexcited.

"Anchor's fouled. Penn's always losing 'em. Lost two this trip
a'ready--on sandy bottom too--an' Dad says next one he loses, sure's
fishin', he'll give him the kelleg. That 'u'd break Penn's heart."

"What's a 'kelleg'?" said Harvey, who had a vague idea it might be some
kind of marine torture, like keel-hauling in the storybooks.

"Big stone instid of an anchor. You kin see a kelleg ridin' in the bows
fur's you can see a dory, an' all the fleet knows what it means. They'd
guy him dreadful. Penn