d to lose weight, while his heels
wavered in the breeze. He was fainting from seasickness, and a roll of
the ship tilted him over the rail on to the smooth lip of the
turtle-back. Then a low, gray mother-wave swung out of the fog, tucked
Harvey under one arm, so to speak, and pulled him off and away to
leeward; the great green closed over him, and he went quietly to sleep.

He was roused by the sound of a dinner-horn such as they used to blow
at a summer-school he had once attended in the Adirondacks. Slowly he
remembered that he was Harvey Cheyne, drowned and dead in mid-ocean,
but was too weak to fit things together. A new smell filled his
nostrils; wet and clammy chills ran down his back, and he was
helplessly full of salt water. When he opened his eyes, he perceived
that he was still on the top of the sea, for it was running round him
in silver-coloured hills, and he was lying on a pile of half-dead fish,
looking at a broad human back clothed in a blue jersey.

"It's no good," thought the boy. "I'm dead, sure enough, and this thing
is in charge."

He groaned, and the figure turned its head, showing a pair of little
gold rings half hidden in curly black hair.

"Aha! You feel some pretty well now?" it said. "Lie still so: we trim
better."

With a swift jerk he sculled the flickering boat-head on to a foamless
sea that lifted her twenty full feet, only to slide her into a glassy
pit beyond. But this mountain-climbing did not interrupt blue-jersey's
talk. "Fine good job, I say, that I catch you. Eh, wha-at? Better good
job, I say, your boat not catch me. How you come to fall out?"

"I was sick," said Harvey; "sick, and couldn't help it."

"Just in time I blow my horn, and your boat she yaw a little. Then I
see you come all down. Eh, wha-at? I think you are cut into baits by
the screw, but you dreeft--dreeft to me, and I make a big fish of you.
So you shall not die this time."

"Where am I?" said Harvey, who could not see that life was particularly
safe where he lay.

"You are with me in the dory--Manuel my name, and I come from schooner
_We're Here_ of Gloucester. I live to Gloucester. By-and-by we get
supper. Eh, wha-at?"

He seemed to have two pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not
content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs stand up
to it, swaying with the sway of the flat-bottomed dory, and send a
grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. How long this
entertainment lasted