“What luck, Dannie?” called his father. “I see you wasn’t the last one in.”
“Had a bully day, dad. Struck a fresh bed off West P’int, and got a jim-dandy load. Goin’ to send any to market to-night?” Then, casting back to his father’s allusion to his beating the other boats, he added dryly: “Oh, yes, there’s some go in the old Victorine yet. Them fellers make me tired with their talk about beatin’ her.”
“Just as soon as we c’n git the Agnes T. loaded, Dan, I want you to start for the market. Dolan telegraphed me to-day they wanted all I could send ’em, and as soon as I could get ’em off.”
As the boy had stepped aboard the sloop by this time, the captain added, in a whisper: “You know that Voorhees note falls due day after to-morrow, and I need the money to meet it.”
Dan nodded his head, and some of the gravity that had settled down again on his father’s face was reflected on his own. Then he started in on the heavy task of transferring his day’s catch from the deck of the Victorine to the hold of the market boat.
While he and the three men who made up the working crew were hard at this, the remaining boats of the fleet were coming up, one by one, and ranging themselves on either side of the market boat. With jibs hauled down, and mainsails slatting in the breeze, they all lay head to the wind, while their crews passed basket after basket down into the hold of the Agnes T., to the accompaniment of loud interchanges of talk and chaff.
Before the sun had vanished in the west, the loading was accomplished, the sloops had pushed off, one by one, and worked away to their anchorages for the night, and Young Dan and Jim Humphreys, who comprised his crew, had hoisted the mainsail on the Agnes T.
His father hauled his skiff alongside as Young Dan and Humphreys went forward to get in the anchor, and, as the pawls clinked against the ratchets, with that sound which is so musical to a seaman’s ears, Cap’n Dan picked up the oars and started to pull toward the shore.
“Be careful, Dannie,” he called across the water. It was the usual warning and farewell. “Don’t carry that tops’l after dark. It begins to look squally off to wind’ard.”
“All right, father!” yelled Young Dan, as the anchor broke from the ground and he ran aft to the wheel. “We’ve got to get these clams to market, you know.”