"Captains Courageous". Rudyard 1865-1936 Kipling

over his tin cup and demanded of Harvey how he felt.

      "'Most full, but there's just room for another piece."

      The cook was a huge, jet-black negro, and, unlike all the negroes Harvey had met, did not talk, contenting himself with smiles and dumb-show invitations to eat more.

      "See, Harvey," said Dan, rapping with his fork on the table, "it's jest as I said. The young an' handsome men—like me an' Pennsy an' you an' Manuel—we 're second ha'af, an' we eats when the first ha'af are through. They're the old fish; and they're mean an' humpy, an' their stummicks has to be humoured; so they come first, which they don't deserve. Ain't that so, doctor?"

      The cook nodded.

      "Can't he talk?" said Harvey, in a whisper.

      "'Nough to git along. Not much o' anything we know. His natural tongue's kinder curious. Comes from the in'ards of Cape Breton, he does, where the farmers speak home-made Scotch. Cape Breton's full o' niggers whose folk run in there durin' aour war, an' they talk like the farmers—all huffy-chuffy."

      "That is not Scotch," said "Pennsylvania."

      "That is Gaelic. So I read in a book."

      "Penn reads a heap. Most of what he says is so—'cep' when it comes to a caount o' fish—eh?"

      "Does your father just let them say how many they've caught without checking them?" said Harvey.

      "Why, yes. Where's the sense of a man lyin' fer a few old cod?"

      "Was a man once lied for his catch," Manuel put in. "Lied every day. Fife, ten, twenty-fife more fish than come he say there was."

      "Where was that?" said Dan. "None o' aour folk."

      "Frenchman of Anguille."

      "Ah! Them West Shore Frenchmen don't caount, anyway. Stands to reason they can't caount. Ef you run acrost any of their soft hooks, Harvey, you'll know why," said Dan, with an awful contempt.