"This knife's gum-blunt, Dan." "Ef stickin' out cable don't wake ye, guess you'd better hire a boy o' your own," said Dan, muddling about in the dusk over the tubs full of trawl-line lashed to windward of the house.

"Oh, Harve, don't ye want to slip down an' git's bait ?" "Bait ez we are," said Disko.

"I mistrust shag-fishin' will pay better, ez things go." That meant the boys would bait with selected offal of the cod as the fish were cleaned--an improvement on paddling barehanded in the little bait-barrels below.

The tubs were full of neatly coiled line carrying a big hook each few feet; and the testing and baiting of every single hook, with the stowage of the baited line so that it should run clear when shot from the dory, was a scientific business.

Dan managed it in the dark without looking, while Harvey caught his fingers on the barbs and bewailed his fate.