over of the fog we got a little
school--the same school we thought and on the exact spot where the
cutter was lying when she ordered us off. Didn't we cackle though when
we bailed it in? Oh, no! It was not much of a school--only twenty
barrels--but it made us all feel fine. Not alone did we feel that we
had got the better of the English cutter, but also that luck was
coming to us again. We justified ourselves by saying that we honestly
believed we were outside the three-mile limit, and that our judgment
was as good as theirs.

That night the forec's'le of the Johnnie Duncan presented one of the
most beatific scenes I ever saw. Everybody was in the temper of an
angel. There was nothing doing--no whist at the table, no reading out
of upper bunks, no love song from the peak, and no fierce argument on
the lockers. We were discussing the cutters and the talk was very
soothing. The cook, as usual, was finishing up a batch of dough. You
might have thought he was the only man who had been working in a week,
were it not for the wet oil-clothes hanging up to dry, and the
overhauling of second suits of oil-clothes by some of the gang. Every
man, except the cook, who never smoked while at work, was puffing away
as if he misdoubted he would ever get another chance for a pipeful in
his life. "Harmony most ex-quis-ite," said somebody, and that's what
must have been that hung over the forec's'le, and it seemed to be
merely in keeping with the heavenly order of things that the
atmosphere showed pale blue wherever the rays of the lamp could get a
chance to strike through.

When Clancy dropped down for his usual mug-up before going to the
mast-head for the night of course, he wasn't going to let that get by
without having a word to say about it. He leaned against the foremast
and took a look around. "My soul, but it's as if the blessed angels
were fanning their wings over this forehold. There's Brian Boru and
Lord Salisbury there double-banked on the same locker, and nothing
doing on any Irish question. There's the lad that sleeps in the peak
and not a single hallelujah of praise for his darling Lucille. The
other one--the wild man that sings the Bobbie Burns songs--not a
shriek out of him. And Bill and John no longer spoiling their eyesight
on bad print. I expect it's that little school of fish--the first in
two weeks or more. The prospect must be making you all pleased. Well,
it ought. A few hundred barrels of that kind of mackerel--a