With Bill and Steve in the cabin slept Oliver and the skipper. Most sword-fishermen carry an auxiliary engine to hustle after the fish in calm summer weather. The rest of us bunked in the forec's'le. She was a little creature, the _Henriette_, and it was pretty close sleeping for'ard on a hot night. To abate the heat nights, we rigged up a wind-sail which came down the air-port forward of the foremast; which was all right till the vessel tacked. When she did, her jumbo-boom would sweep across the deck and swipe our wind-sail over the rail. When we fellows bunking forward talked of how hot it was for'ard, the cabin gang would only say: "Hot? You want to come aft and soak in the gas off the engine for a few nights!" We cruised four days off Block Island without seeing a sword-fin. Plenty of big sharks were loafing under the surface there, but sharks don't bring anything on the market. We stood easterly. Off Nantucket light-ship we picked up Bob Johnson of Nantucket and Bill Jackson of Maine, Bill Rice and Tom O'Brien of Gloucester, the _Master_ and the _Norma_ also of Gloucester, a Boston schooner, the _Alarm_, and a big, black brute of a sloop which nobody could name. Tom Haile was there, too--in the _Esther Ray_. No fish in sight that afternoon; but even so the skipper took his station in the pulpit. John, Shorty, and I went aloft. John was topmost, and swung in his chair just under the truck. Shorty and I were just under John. When we got tired of swinging in our chairs we could stand up, one cross-line in the small of our backs, another against our chests, and balance ourselves. When the vessel dove we could wrap our arms around the topmast and hang on. There was a swell on this morning--no crested seas, but a long, smooth, black swell, enough to send the vessel's bowsprit under every little while; and sometimes to send the pulpit atop of the bowsprit under, too. "But this skipper--he don't mind gettin' wet," explained Shorty. "I've seen him go divin' till it was over his head in the pulpit an' he still hangin' on waitin' for fish." Bill did not stand watch at the masthead. His eyesight was good enough, but Bill's three hundred pounds climbing up the rigging four or five times a day to the masthead--the skipper said he guessed he'd take pity on the rigging. So Bill stayed on deck to go in the dory, when a fish would be ironed. Also he took the pulpit when the skipper came inboard to eat. The first time John saw Bill go into the pulpit, he let a yell of mock terror out of him from aloft. "Skipper, skipper, he's puttin' her down by the head, and Lard knows she was down by the head enough before. Let she go into a good head sea, she'll never come up an' we'll be lost, all hands!" Which made Bill turn and glare up at John; and when he did that, John hove one of the cook's bright-blue dumplings down at Bill.