And by and by Jack came. "They're castin' doubt on Dan Magee," declared Tom to his dorymate. "Tell him about the time he licked th' seven p'licemen in Saint Johns or about that time in Soorey."
Jack glanced at the clock.
"There might be time for the Soorey fight. We were chasing mackerel," said Ferris, "on the Cape shore this time, and a lively southeaster coming on one day, the skipper said he guessed he'd run into Soorey to let it blow by. And as we'd been up three nights owling, after we dropped anchor all hands turned in for a good sleep.
"Late in the afternoon somebody sings out, 'Supper!' and I woke up. Looking across the cabin, I saw Dan awake, too, sitting on the locker, with his slipshods to one side and his rubber boots to the other. He was casting an eye now to one and now to the other, when he looks up and sees me. 'What d'y'say, Jackie boy?' says Dan. 'Will we slide into our slipshods and go for'ard for supper, or will we haul on our rubber boots and go ashore and eat like a pair of tourists and look the place over? What d'y'say?'
"We hadn't much of a cook that summer. He'd come off a yacht and was everlastingly making potted mackerel, which he could make good; but a pity nobody'd ever told him fishermen don't go ketching fish to be always eating 'em. And so I said: 'Me for ashore.'
"So we got into our rubber boots, hoist a dory over the side, and we're shoving off when the skipper, who we thought we'd left asleep, sticks his head up the cabin companionway and sings out: 'Where you two bound?'
"'We thought,' says Dan, 'we'd be rowing a few miles out to sea and back by way of limbering up our slack muscles.'
"'There's some people I expect'd bust wide open if they wasn't allowed to be smart,' says Captain John. 'I don' know but what I'll go ashore with you,' and he threw a mug of coffee into himself and jumps in and we start off.
"Suddenly Dan stops rowing. 'Isn't this September?' says Dan, and the skipper says yes. 'And a Monday?' asks Dan, and the skipper stops and thinks for a moment and says yes it was. 'And the first Monday?' asks Dan. 'Yes,' says the skipper, 'but what in tarnation of it?' 'Nothing,' says Dan, 'only that if we were home it would be Labor Day.' And the skipper says: 'Well, what o' that?' 'Nothing,' says Dan, 'only it'd be a holiday and all hands celebrating if we were to anchor in some port ashore.'
"'But Labor Day ain't no holiday in this country,' says the skipper.