right. 'Well, we're usin' ten
sou'westers here,' says Andie, 'and one or two of 'em leaks,' and that
was all the satisfaction I got."

"Yes," said Eddie Parsons, "the seine-boat was sure wallerin' then.
The skipper had only just told Jimmie Gunn to quit his growling.
'You'll be wanting hot-water bags to your feet next, I suppose,' says
the skipper."

"I was thinking of the boat--afraid she'd be so logy with the water in
her that we couldn't drive her when the time came," bristled up Jimmie
Gunn to that.

"Y-yah!" snorted Eddie, "if you weren't scared, then I never saw a man
scared. Logy? I notice we made her hop along all right after we cast
off from the vessel. Man, but she fair hurdled some of them seas--some
of the little ones, I mean. Didn't she, Steve? We thought we'd lost
Joe and you, Mel, in the dory, didn't we, fellows?"

"You did, hey? Well, you didn't, nor nowheres near it," broke in Mel.
"We were right there with the goods when they hove the seine, warn't
we, Joey?"

And so it went on through all that day, while the men worked,
dressing, salting, and putting all in pickle. It was a drive all
through without any quitting by anybody, except when it was time to
relieve lookouts at the mast-head. In the middle of it all, had the
call of "School-O!" been heard from aloft, we would have been only too
glad to drop everything, jump into the boat and dory, get after the
mackerel, and do the same thing over--split, gibb and pack away--for
all of the next night, and the night after that--for a week if
necessary.

Not until well into the afternoon, when the last mackerel was
flattened out in its barrel, did any of us feel that we could step
back in our own time, straighten ourselves out, and take a look over
our work. Then we counted the oozing barrels with great satisfaction,
you may be sure, even while we were massaging our swollen wrists with
our aching fingers. It was a good bit of work that, well and quickly
done, and it was fine to get a rest after it, although it might be
only for a little while. Even though we had to do it all over
again--to stay half-drowned and chilled through in the seine-boat or
dory for half the night and then dress down for eighteen or twenty
hours on top of it--what did a little hard work matter? "Think of the
hundred-dollar bill, maybe, to be carried home and laid in the wife's
lap," said Long Steve.

"Or the roaring night ashore when a fellow's not a family man--m-m--!"
said