Instantly fishing was suspended to answer him, and he heard many curious facts about his boat and her next port of call.

They asked him if he were insured; and whence he had stolen his anchor, because, they said, it belonged to the Carrie Pitman; they called his boat a mud-scow, and accused him of dumping garbage to frighten the fish; they offered to tow him and charge it to his wife; and one audacious youth slipped almost under the counter, smacked it with his open palm, and yelled: "Gid up, Buck!" The cook emptied a pan of ashes on him, and he replied with cod-heads.
The bark's crew fired small coal from the galley, and the dories threatened to come aboard and "razee" her.

They would have warned her at once had she been in real peril; but, seeing her well clear of the Virgin, they made the most of their chances.

The fun was spoilt when the rock spoke again, a half-mile to windward, and the tormented bark set everything that would draw and went her ways; but the dories felt that the honours lay with them.
All that night the Virgin roared hoarsely and next morning, over an angry, white-headed sea, Harvey saw the Fleet with flickering masts waiting for a lead.

Not a dory was hove out till ten o'clock, when the two Jeraulds of the Day's Eye, imagining a lull which did not exist, set the example.