with your grub bill sure and your
money counted out at the end of every month," answered somebody else.

I was sizing up the two gangs myself, I being in the dory with Clancy,
and I guess that nearly everyone of us was doing the same thing and
keeping an eye out for fish at the same time, when all at once a
school popped up the other side of the porgyman's boat. Perhaps, half
a mile it was and, for a wonder, not going like a streak.

We saw it first and got to going first, but the Aurora's boat and the
steamer's boat were nearer, and so when we were all under good headway
there were two lengths or so that we had to make up on each. Well,
that was all right. Two lengths weren't so many, and we drove her. It
was something to see the fellows lay out to it then--doubled-banked,
two men to each wide seat and each man with a long oar, which he had
picked out and trimmed to suit himself, and every man in his own
particular place as if in a racing crew.

And now every man was bending to it. A big fellow, named Rory
McKinnon, was setting the stroke. There was a kick and a heave to
every stroke, and the men encouraging each other. "Now--now--give it
to her," was all that I could hear coming out of him. All this time we
in the dory were coming on behind, Clancy and I having to beat their
dory just as our boat had to beat their boat. And we were driving,
too, you may be sure. Clancy was making his oars bend like whips.
"Blast 'em! There's no stiffness to 'em," he was complaining. And
then, "Sock it to her," he would call out to our fellows in the
seine-boat. "We've got the porgy crew licked--that's the stuff," came
from the skipper. From on top of the seine he was watching the fish,
watching the gang, watching the other boats, watching us in the
dory--watching everything. Whoever made a slip then would hear from it
afterwards, we knew. And clip, clip, clip it was, with the swash just
curling nicely under the bow of the other boat, and I suppose our own,
too, if we could have seen.

Our boat was gaining on the Aurora's and the skipper was warming up.
The fish was going the same way we were, still a quarter of a mile
ahead.

"Drive her," said the skipper. "Drive her--drive her--another length
and you got 'em. And, Kenney, it's the best of ash you've got. Don't
be afraid of breaking it. And, Dan Burns, didn't y'ever learn to keep
stroke in the Bay of Islands with nine more men beside you rowing? And
drive her--hit her up now--he