"Fisherman Gale's in," said the captain.
The hoarse roar, which shattered the silence of the harbor, and reverberated along the water-front of gray shanties, came from a grizzled fisherman sculling a boat shoreward. Bending to his sweep, straddling a thwart smeared with blood and scales, a filthy giant in the bright sun, he stared up at the schooner's company, with black eyes shining fiery from an obscene tangle of gray elf-locks.
"The Good Lord bless ye," he croaked with a voice of despair. "May He keep ye all, bretherin. Haddick?"
The boat, rocking past, left a wake of ripples and a smell of fish stealing over the pale, hot surface of the harbor; the fisherman, bellowing to the empty street ahead, shot his offal-smeared craft under the Rapscallion's bowsprit, and made fast beside a rickety stair that mounted from the water into a patch of dusty burdocks. The men on the schooner left their host, the captain, and dispersed slowly, each one rising, stretching, clambering to the foot of the shrouds for a
