"In my head, where I can see."
"Haow?" This from all the others at once.
"I do not know, but so it will be." He dropped his head, and went on peeling the potatoes, and not another word could they get out of him.
"Well," said Dan, "a heap o' things'll hev to come abaout 'fore Harve's any master o' mine; but I'm glad the doctor ain't choosen to mark him for a Jonah. Now, I mistrust Uncle Salters fer the Jonerest Jonah in the Fleet regardin' his own special luck. Dunno ef it's spreadin' same's smallpox. He ought to be on the Carrie Pitman. That boat's her own Jonah, sure—crews an' gear made no differ to her driftin'. Jiminy Christmas! She'll etch loose in a flat ca'am."
"We're well clear o' the Fleet, anyway," said Disko. "Carrie Pitman an' all." There was a rapping on the deck.
"Uncle Salters has catched his luck," said Dan as his father departed.
"It's blown clear," Disko cried, and all the foc'sle tumbled up for a bit of fresh air. The fog had gone, but a sullen sea ran in great rollers behind it. The We're Here slid, as it were, into long, sunk avenues and ditches which felt quite sheltered and homelike if they would only stay still; but they changed without rest or mercy, and flung up the schooner to crown one peak of a thousand gray hills, while the wind hooted through her rigging as she zigzagged down the slopes. Far away a sea would burst into a sheet of foam, and the others would follow suit as at a signal, till Harvey's eyes swam with the vision of interlacing whites and grays. Four or five Mother Carey's chickens stormed round in circles, shrieking as they swept past the bows. A rain-squall or two strayed aimlessly over the hopeless waste, ran down 'wind and back again, and melted away.
"Seems to me I saw somethin' flicker jest naow over yonder," said Uncle Salters, pointing to the northeast.
"Can't be any of the fleet," said Disko, peering under his eyebrows, a hand on the foc'sle gangway as the solid bows hatcheted into the troughs. "Sea's oilin' over dretful fast. Danny, don't you want to skip up a piece an' see how aour trawl-buoy lays?"
Danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than climbed up the main rigging (this consumed Harvey with envy), hitched himself around the reeling cross-trees, and let his eye rove till it caught the tiny black buoy-flag on the shoulder of a mile-away swell.