For a short distance, however, Henry Burns and Harvey held their own. Then the skill of the other two, and their long practice of paddling together, began to tell, and their canoe forged ahead.
“It’s no use, Henry,” said Harvey, good-naturedly. “I can’t handle a paddle with Tom Harris. They have kept a straight line, but I can’t keep this craft up to her course.”
They slowed down, accordingly, and the other canoe left them considerably astern. Then Tom, turning and discovering that the others had fallen back, spoke to Bob, and they waited for the second canoe to come up.
It was at this very moment that Mr. Carleton, hatchet in hand, had smashed the lock.
“Hark! what was that?” exclaimed Bob White. “Did you hear it? That was out aboard the Viking.”
“It sounded like it, sure enough,” said Tom. “Say, fellows,” he cried as the other canoe came near, “did you leave anybody aboard the yacht? We just heard somebody out there.”
“No, we didn’t,” replied Harvey. “Come on, let’s get up to her quick.”
If Tom and Bob had beaten them before, they could not do it now. Harvey’s paddle went into the water with a strength that was well-nigh doubled with excitement. Moreover, if there had been any possible doubt in their minds as to whether there was really anybody aboard the Viking, that doubt was dispelled by a faint gleam of light showing from out the cabin door.
“How can that be?” exclaimed Harvey. “I sprung that lock, myself.”
They were alongside, next moment, and aboard, with the light lines that held the canoes quickly made fast.
Rushing to the companionway, Harvey cried, angrily:
“Here! Who’s that down there? What are you doing?”
The man, springing up, and holding the lantern in one hand, disclosed the features of their friend, Mr. Carleton.
“Hello!” he said. “Say, this is too bad.”
“You bet it’s too bad!” cried Harvey, interrupting him. “What do you mean by breaking in here?”
Mr. Carleton, setting down the lantern, emerged from the cabin.
“I really must apologize,” he said, coolly. “I simply couldn’t wait—”
“Yes, but you could wait!” Harvey broke in, hotly, and advancing toward Mr. Carleton. “It’s no way to do, to sneak out here in the night and smash our things.”
“See here, young man,” exclaimed Mr. Carleton, himself warming a little, though his voice was calm and modulated, “I wouldn’t try to threaten me, if I was you, don’t you know. I might get angry, too. I—”
“Do it!” cried Harvey, excitedly. “Get angry. I’d just like to have you. Just give us a chance and see what happens.”
“And what might that be?” demanded Mr. Carleton, sharply.
“I’ll tell you,” replied Harvey. “We’ll throw you overboard. Say, fellows, won’t we?”
“We certainly will,” answered Henry Burns, calmly.
“Say the word, Jack,” said Bob.
The four boys approached Mr. Carleton. He eyed them for a moment threateningly. They were certainly sturdy opponents. And that his intended threat had been without avail, and that they were thoroughly fearless and ready to act, there could be no doubt. Mr. Carleton’s demeanour altered.
“Good! I like your pluck,” he laughed. “Really, I think I’d do the same thing if I were in your place. I don’t blame you, and I was sorry I was so hasty, the moment I had done it. You see, I’ve lost a very valuable ruby scarf-pin somewhere—a keepsake, too, don’t you know. I’ve worried myself just about frantic over it. Now I thought it must have fallen out when I was aboard here. So, when I found your cabin locked up, I simply couldn’t stand it any longer.
“But I’ll make any amends in my power,” he added. “I’ll come out to-morrow, and I’ll bring the best lock that money will buy over in Bellport. I’ll send over for it first thing.”
“Hadn’t you better go ashore now?” suggested Henry Burns.
“Why, yes,—good night,—I will,” replied Mr. Carleton. “Good night—I’m sorry it happened—I’ll fix it all right, though.”
And, stepping into his boat alongside, he put out his oars and rowed away.
“Never mind about that lock,” Henry Burns called out.
“What!” exclaimed Mr. Carleton, pausing for a moment.
“I say, never mind the lock,” repeated Henry Burns. “We’ll attend to that, ourselves. We’d just as lieves you would keep away from the Viking after this.”
Mr. Carleton made no reply as he rowed away.
“I wonder if we were too rough on him,” said Jack Harvey to his companion, a little later, as they were undressing, preparatory to turning in for the night.
“I don’t see why,” answered Henry Burns. “That’s a pretty high-handed proceeding, to come aboard here and smash into our cabin.”
“Well, perhaps he was worried about that pin,” said Harvey. “Some persons do lose their heads just that way.”
“Yes, but he isn’t one of the kind that lose their heads,” said Henry Burns. “And for my part, I can’t recall for the life of me ever seeing him wear any such kind of a pin.”
Squire Brackett, having received sufficient encouragement from Mr. Carleton to warrant action on his part, hitched up his horse one afternoon and drove around the road back of the cove, turning off at length at the pasture lane that led in to Billy Cook’s farmhouse. Billy, barefoot, as usual, was busy hoeing in a small garden patch at a little distance from the house.
“How d’ye do, Billy,” said the squire, sauntering out, with his hands tucked under his coat-tails.
“Afternoon, squire,” responded Billy; and added, to himself, “Wonder what he’s up to.”
“Quite a stranger, squire,” said he. “What brings you way ’round here?”
“Oh, nothing,” replied Squire Brackett, seating himself on the handle of the wheelbarrow that was loaded with garden-truck. “I was driving by and thought I’d just drop in and say good day.”
“Humph! guess not,” thought Billy to himself. He knew the squire was not in the habit of making social visits.
“Well, glad to see you, squire,” he declared, cordially. “Nice summer we’re having. Wouldn’t like to take home a couple dozen fresh eggs, would you? Hens doing right well lately. I can spare you some, I reckon, store price.”
“Why, yes, I should,” answered the squire. “Those hens of yours do lay the finest eggs I know of.”
The squire, watching Billy at his work, discoursed of this and that; of the weather, the fishing, politics, and the prospect of the hay crop.
“Wonder what he’s driving at,” was Billy’s inward reflection.
“Have a smoke, Billy?” asked the squire, proffering the other one of Rob Dakin’s best and biggest five-cent affairs.
“Don’t care if I do,” replied Billy, and made a further mental observation that something was coming now, sure.
“By the way, Billy,” remarked the squire, presently, “how do we stand on that mortgage on the island down yonder?”
He said it in an offhand way, just as though he didn’t know, even to the fraction of a cent, the amount of principal and interest due to that very hour.
“Why, I guess you know better than I do, the amount of interest up to date,” replied Billy. “But it ain’t due just yet, eh, squire?”
“Why, no, it isn’t,” replied Squire Brackett; “and I was thinking perhaps we might fix it up between us so there wouldn’t be anything due, and so that you would have something in your own pocket, besides. How would you like that?”
“P’r’aps,” said Billy.
“Well, now,” continued the squire, “there’s two hundred dollars and interest due. Seems to me, if I remember right, you offered to sell the island to me, a year ago or so, for twelve hundred dollars. That’s a pretty big price, but I’ve been thinking it over some lately, and I reckon I’ll come pretty near that figure, if you’d like to make the trade.”
A year ago, Billy Cook would have jumped at the offer. But Billy, boots or no boots, had a vein of Yankee shrewdness in him.
“There’s something in the wind,” he thought. “The squire told me I was crazy when I offered it to him for that, last year.”
“Well, squire, I’ll tell you,” he replied. “Guess I did name something like that as a figure, a year ago. But I dunno about letting it go for that now, when things are looking up so. They tell me some of them New York and Boston real estate fellers have been down here lately, looking over land. However, I’ll just talk it over with the old lady, and let you know in a day or two.”
The squire was taken aback.
“Well,” said he, rising to go, “of course I don’t leave that offer open. That’s a whole lot of money for the land. But I’ve got a little money just come due, and I thought I might put it into that. Maybe I won’t have it to spare by the time you get ready.”
“Well, I reckon the land won’t blow away, squire,” chuckled Billy. “It’s anchored pretty reasonably firm, I guess. I’ll just go in and get those eggs.”
It did not take Billy Cook long, following the squire’s departure, to come to a conclusion regarding the true inwardness of the affair. There was only one man, at present, in the village, who would be likely to be offering anything like that amount of money for the island; and that man was Mr. Carleton. So Billy lost no time in hunting the gentleman up.
But, when he had found Mr. Carleton and suggested the matter to him, he was surprised to meet with a curt denial. Mr. Carleton, being in a bad humour, and having, moreover, as much an intention of purchasing the land as he had of buying the bay, replied, very shortly, in the negative.
“Hm! p’r’aps I guessed wrong,” commented Billy. “But there’s something up. That’s sure. I’ll just jump the squire on the price, anyway. I may catch him.”
With which resolve, Billy visited the squire the following day, offered him the land at an advance of three hundred dollars, and, much to his own surprise, got it.
“It’s a fearful price, fifteen hundred dollars for that land,” exclaimed the squire, after he had tried in vain to beat down the figure. “I’ll never get a cent out of it; but I’m just fool enough to do it.”
“P’r’aps you be,” thought Billy.
“I don’t like to part with that island, squire,” he said. “If you want it, you’d better draw up the papers, right away to-day, and we’ll go over to Mayville and have everything filed straight and regular. Else I might get sorry and back out.”
“All right,” said Squire Brackett.
“We can’t do it any too soon to suit me,” he thought.
So Uncle Billy and Squire Brackett went to Mayville, and the squire generously paid the fares.
“Guess I can stand it, at a thousand dollars profit,” said the squire to himself.
Henry Burns and Jack Harvey, arising on the morning following their adventure with Mr. Carleton, proceeded at once to restore the yacht to its former condition, by purchasing at Rob Dakin’s a strong lock for the cabin. It was heavier and clumsier than the one that had been broken, but, as Henry Burns remarked, it was good enough for fishermen.
Then they sailed down alongshore to where the crew had made their lobster-pots, went to work, and, in a few days, completed the making of the remainder to the extent of their material. This proved easier fishing, too, in a way, than the outside cod and hake fishing, and involved, of course, no danger, as the pots were set near shore. And, as they had got their lath-pots practically without expense, it was likely to prove even more profitable, while it lasted.
The car that they had made, to keep the lobsters alive in, was a big, square boxlike affair, with the slats nailed on just far enough apart so the lobsters could not escape, but affording a flow of sea-water through the car almost as free as the sea itself. The two trap-doors in the roof of the car, through which the lobsters were put in and taken out, were fastened with heavy padlocks. The car was moored in a sheltered nook alongshore, a little distance above the area of water covered by the lath-pots.
They learned how to pack the live lobsters for shipping, too, and sent lots, now and then, by steamer, over to the Bellport and Mayville markets, and to Stoneland. They learned how to stow them into a flour-barrel with their tails curled snugly under, and their backs uppermost, so they could not move; and that a barrel would hold just fifty-five, by actual count, stowed in that way, allowing for ice at the top, and all covered securely with a piece of coarse sacking. They received as much as twelve and fifteen cents a pound for these, shipped so that they would arrive alive at market, and began to feel quite prosperous.
They listened to many a learned discussion, in Rob Dakin’s cracker and sugar-barrel forum, over the habits of the lobster; how it was generally conceded by the local fisherman that the lobster took the bait better at night; but that other wise men among the catchers argued stoutly that flood-tide, whether it served by night or day, was the more favourable time; and how both the ebb and flow of the tides doubtless carried the lobsters back and forth across the feeding-grounds.
They heard discussed, too, the relative merits of flounder and sculpin and cod’s heads as the more attractive baits, and whether these, fresh or old, were the more enticing.
Billy Cook had a theory that a lobster has as keen a scent as a hound, and that a fish of somewhat gamy odour was the better lure; while Long Dave Benson “allowed” that a lobster has an eye like a fish-hawk, and that what was needed was a fish with a gleam of white showing at a distance, like the flounder.
In all, there was a greater and more varied amount of natural philosophy and fish-lore dispensed, free, within the walls of Rob Dakin’s grocery store, than one might hear in a lifetime at any university.
Be it recorded, however, that the suggestion made by young Joe Warren, at one of these discussions, that the lobster regarded one of these lath-pots as some sort of a summer-house, thoughtfully provided for homeless wanderers of the sea, was received with merited and unanimous contempt.
They saw little of Mr. Carleton, these days. He had, at first, attempted to retain the favour of Harvey’s crew, but they would have nought to do with him, following the example of their recognized leader. So it came about that Mr. Carleton, left much to himself, and not caring, seemingly, to cultivate the friendship of the elder persons among the summer arrivals, spent the greater part of his time in driving about the island, and in hiring Captain Sam’s sailboat, for short cruises about the bay.
He took Harry Brackett out with him occasionally, and, being a man of shrewd observation, startled that young man one day not a little, by bursting suddenly into laughter when the yacht Viking sailed past, at a little distance.
“I see your two beauty-spots on the sail,” he said, laughing heartily, and pointing to the places where the sail had been neatly mended. “That was a clever trick. Ha! ha! How did you happen to think of that little dodge of tying up the reef-points? Guess you know more about a sailboat than some folks seem to think, eh?”
Harry Brackett, taken by surprise, made a feeble attempt at denial, but Mr. Carleton wouldn’t listen to it. He had an assertive, positive way, that Harry Brackett could not withstand. So the boy ended by admitting the act, vastly relieved to find that a man like Mr. Carleton, of whom his father spoke so highly, regarded it as a really good joke.
“Makes me feel like a boy again, for all the world,” chuckled Mr. Carleton. “Count me in on the next one. I’m a good deal of a boy, myself.”
Also, did the astute Mr. Carleton feign to regard as a joke an incident that occurred some days later, of a more serious nature, and which he discovered quite by chance.
It had come on foggy, with a lazy wind from the southeast, and for several days the island and the bay had been obscured by thick banks of fog, so that one could not see a boat’s length ahead. The steamers came in cautiously, sounding their whistles, to note, if they were near land, how quick the echo, or an answering fog-bell, came back to them.
There was no sailing, and the boys remained ashore, mostly up at the comfortable Warren cottage, or within the tents. They tended the lobster-pots when the fog did not roll in too thick; but for two entire days it was too heavy for them to find the buoys, and they did no fishing.
It happened on one of these days that, finding it dull in the town, Mr. Carleton invested in a suit of oilskins and rowed down along the shore, where he dropped a line off the ledges and fished for cunners. He was a smart fisherman, and caught a good mess in a short running of the flood-tide.
“I’ll get the captain to clean them, and have Mrs. Curtis make me one of those fine chowders for supper,” he said, as he pushed the basket of fish under the seat, put the oars into the oar-locks and proceeded to row in.
But Mr. Carleton miscalculated a little, in the fog, and rowed some distance down the shore before he discovered his mistake. He was turning to row back, when the sound of some one else rowing attracted his attention. He was close to shore, out of sight.
Presently the boat came dimly into view through the fog, and Mr. Carleton made out the occupant to be Harry Brackett. He was about to hail him, when the rower turned his boat inshore and stepped out. Then Mr. Carleton observed that the object at which Harry Brackett had arrived was the lobster-car owned by the campers. Mr. Carleton quietly stepped out of his own boat, and walked up into the bushes.
Harry Brackett reached for the line with which the car was moored, and drew the car in to shore. Then, taking from his pocket a ring on which several keys dangled, he proceeded to try them, one by one, in the padlock of one of the trap-doors. A certain key finally answered his purpose, and the next moment Mr. Carleton saw the door lifted. Harry Brackett, using a short-handled net, lifted out half a dozen lobsters, dropped them into his boat, and, relocking the trap-door, got into his boat, and started to row away.
But he nearly fell over in his seat with fright, when the sound of laughter close on shore greeted him. The next moment, Mr. Carleton stepped into view.
“Ha! ha!” laughed Mr. Carleton. “Oh, you’re a sly dog. I see what you’re up to. Little bake going on among some of you island chaps, eh? No reason why our friends should not contribute something to the fun. Oh, I’ve been a boy, myself. Look out they don’t catch you, though. Heavy fine, you know, for that sort of thing.”
Harry Brackett, terrified, rowed ashore to where Mr. Carleton was standing. He must explain. He had no idea of stealing the lobsters—which was met with derisive laughter from Mr. Carleton, and the assurance that he was a bold young chap.
From which effort at dissimulation, Harry Brackett came, at length, to beg and implore Mr. Carleton that he would say nothing about it.
Now, if Mr. Carleton had had any notion that young Harry Brackett might at some time be useful to him, he certainly went about the manner of gaining an ascendency over him most admirably. For didn’t Mr. Carleton promise that he would say nothing about the affair? And didn’t he feign to treat it as a huge joke? He certainly did. But how cunningly, also, in all his making light of it, did he convey to young Harry Brackett’s mind the fact that he knew it was a criminal thing; and that it would meet with heavy punishment, if discovered. And how cunningly did he play upon first the one, and then the other idea; the idea of a practical joke, and the idea of the penalty for it, if it should be known; until young Harry Brackett would gladly have promised to do anything in all the world that Mr. Carleton might ask, to buy his silence.
“Then you won’t let on about it?” urged Harry Brackett, apprehensively, for the tenth time or more, as he started to row away.
“Never a word from me,” said Mr. Carleton. “Ho, you rascal—I’ve been a youngster, too. But you’re taking pretty big chances of getting into trouble. Look out for yourself. Ho! ho!”
“I’ll never take another chance like it,” whined Harry Brackett.
For the remainder of Mr. Carleton’s stay on the island, there was one more youth that avoided him now, though for a different reason than that of the others. This was young Harry Brackett. He was ashamed to look Mr. Carleton in the face. Perhaps, on the other hand, it was rather Mr. Carleton who avoided meeting the young yachtsman. And perhaps he, too, was ashamed of what he had done.
However, this newly developed modesty on Harry Brackett’s part did not prevent Mr. Carleton, driving along the road an afternoon or two later, from overtaking him and insisting that he get in and ride.
“Glad to see you,” said Mr. Carleton, as affably as he knew how. “Haven’t seen you around much for a day or two. Lobsters didn’t make you chaps sick, did they? Ha! ha!”
Harry Brackett flushed, and felt decidedly uncomfortable.
But he tried to laugh it off, and said he was feeling first rate.
“Well,” said Mr. Carleton, “you’re all right. I like to see a boy of spirit. I’m glad to have met you. I’m going to leave, to-morrow, by the way.”
Harry Brackett wouldn’t, for the world, have said how glad he was to hear of it. On the contrary, he said he was sorry; and added, that his father, the squire, would be sorry, too.
“I’ll be sorry to lose the squire’s company,” replied Mr. Carleton. “But don’t say anything to him about my going. That’s a peculiarity of mine; I don’t like to say good-bye to people. Sort of distresses me, don’t you know. That is, don’t say anything about it until after I am gone. Like as not, I shall not speak of it to anybody but you. Captain Sam, even, won’t know of it until I settle up with him, to-morrow.”
“How about Harvey and Henry Burns and that crowd?” inquired Harry Brackett.
“Why, the fact is,” replied Mr. Carleton, “we have had a little falling out. I’m sorry about it, too. They’re not such bad young chaps—except that Burns boy. He’s too notional—don’t you think so?”
“Yes,” said Harry Brackett, decidedly.
“Well, I broke a lock on their cabin door,” continued Mr. Carleton, “because I was desperately worried about the loss of a pin that was worth most as much as their boat—to say nothing of a cheap lock. Of course I was going to get them another, and a better one. They wouldn’t have made much fuss, either, I think, if it hadn’t been for young Burns. Harvey was hot-headed about it, but he would have got over it. The other young chap, he was cool as ice; but I could see he was the one I couldn’t make friends with again, so I gave it up.”
“Humph!” exclaimed Harry Brackett—“and after all you have done for them, too.”
“That’s it,” said Mr. Carleton; “though I don’t care anything about that. I was glad to give them a good time.”
“Say,” he exclaimed, suddenly, as though an idea had just come to his mind, “I tell you what you do. I’m going over to Bellport for a few days, and then down the coast somewhere. But I’ll leave word at Bellport for my letters to be forwarded. I want you to write to me once a week or so. Let me know where the Viking is, and what the boys are doing, and what you are doing. If we get a chance, you and I will play a little joke on them, just to show them they’re not so smart—might just tie in a few more reef-points, or something of that sort, eh?”
Mr. Carleton laughed as he spoke.
“I’ll do it,” said Harry Brackett. “Are you in earnest, though?”
“Yes, sir, honour bright,” replied Mr. Carleton. “You keep me informed, and we’ll have a joke on them yet.”
“Well, good-bye,” said Harry Brackett, getting down from the wagon and shaking hands with Mr. Carleton.
“Good-bye,” said the other. “And if any one inquires about me, after I am gone, just tell them you heard me say I was going back to Boston.”
“‘JUST TELL THEM THAT YOU HEARD ME SAY I WAS GOING BACK TO BOSTON.’”
“Harry,” said Squire Brackett, the second evening following this, “I want you to go over to Captain Sam’s and take this note to Mr. Carleton. It’s about a little business transaction, so be careful and don’t lose it. You’re pretty careless sometimes.”
“Why, he’s gone away,” answered Harry Brackett. “No use taking that over to Captain Sam’s.”
“Gone away!” shouted the squire, seizing his son by the collar. “Gone away! When did he go?”
“Captain Sam says he went yesterday.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about it before?” cried Squire Brackett, shaking his son vigorously.
“Why, how did I know anything about it?” whined Harry Brackett. “How did I know you wanted to see him before he went? You’re always blaming me for things. I’m not to blame.”
On second thought, Squire Brackett came to the same conclusion. Still, it being his habit of mind invariably to blame somebody else for his own misfortunes, he had to vent his irritation on his son.
“Well, clear out of here!” he cried. “You never know anything except at the wrong time.”
Harry Brackett disappeared.
One would have thought that the squire had lost his dearest friend on earth, in the departure of Mr. Carleton, judging by the deep and profound melancholy that fell upon him, for a fortnight. Or, on the other hand, one might have thought that Mr. Carleton was his bitterest foe, if any one had seen him rage and fume in secret, whenever he thought of Mr. Carleton or pronounced his name. Mrs. Brackett overheard him mutter, on one or two occasions, “Fifteen hundred dollars tied up in an island!” But, when she inquired what he meant, she received a reply that was both incommunicative and not wholly courteous.
As for Billy Cook, the squire wouldn’t speak to him, when next they met—nor for half the summer.
“Never mind,” said Uncle Billy to himself, “I’ll buy a new pair of Sunday boots, and I’ll pay as much as two dollars and a half for ’em.”
“Where are you fellows going?” asked George Warren, from a comfortable seat on the Warren veranda, of Henry Burns and Jack Harvey, as they were passing the cottage of an afternoon. The two yachtsmen were carrying, between them, a big basket of clams, which they had just dug on the flats at the head of the cove.
“Going fishing, down the shore a way,” replied Henry Burns. “We’ve just got the bait. We have to keep our lobsters fat and contented, you know, so they’ll look pleasant when they get to market.”
“Don’t you think you humour them too much?” asked George Warren, quizzically. “You’ll spoil them with overfeeding, the way Colonel Witham did his boarders.”
“No, we feed them the same way he did,” answered Henry Burns; “give them lots of fish, because they are cheap. And we hope they’ll get tired of fish, by and by, the way Witham’s boarders used to, and not eat so much. Then we’ll take it easy. Come on, though, and help us catch some. We’ve got bait enough for the whole crowd.”
“All right,” responded George. “You go ahead, and we’ll take our boat and come out and join you.”
The three Warren boys, launching their boat in the cove, rowed down to the point and joined the party, consisting of Henry Burns and Harvey and Tom and Bob, who were just putting off in the Viking’s tender. When they had rowed down the shore a way, they were met by Harvey’s crew, and all proceeded in the three boats a short distance farther, a half-mile or more below the crew’s camp. They baited up their hooks and threw out.
“This looks nice and social,” said George Warren, surveying the three boats, with their eleven occupants. “It’s the first time we have all been out here together this year. We ought to make this a prize contest.”
“Good!” exclaimed Harvey. “What do you say to one of those new dollar yachting-caps at the store, for the one that catches the most fish? We’ll each put in nine cents to pay for it. Got any money, fellows?”
“Lots of it,” replied young Tim. “We’re in for it.”
“They’re regular millionaires, nowadays, since they made those lobster-pots,” remarked Henry Burns.
“There’ll be one cent left over,” said young Joe Warren. “What do we do with that?”
“That goes with the hat,” said Henry Burns. “You can buy peanuts with it, if you win, Joe.”
“Well, I’ve got the first fish, anyway,” cried young Joe, who had felt a tremendous yank on his line.
Up came a big flounder, which was skittering about, the next moment, in the bottom of the boat.
“I’ve got a bigger one,” cried Joe Hinman, excitedly; but, when he began to haul in, nothing came of it.
Little Tim Reardon, who had given a sly tug at Joe’s line when the other wasn’t looking, snickered.
“That would have beaten Joe’s, if you’d got him,” he said, grinning.
“I’ll beat you, if you try that trick again,” exclaimed Joe Hinman, eying Tim sharply.
The fish began coming in lively, from little harbour pollock to sculpins with monster heads and attenuated bodies, and cunners, that stole the bait almost as fast as the boys could throw overboard.
“Everything counts,” said Henry Burns, as he drew in a huge skate; and added, as he took the hook out of the fish’s capacious mouth, “Wonder how Old Witham would have liked him for a boarder.”
“Hello!” exclaimed Harvey, “here comes another boat; and it looks like Squire Brackett in the stern.”
“Yes, and it’s young Harry, rowing,” said Arthur Warren. “First time I’ve seen him working, this summer.”
The squire and his son were, indeed, coming out to the fishing-grounds.
“Something new for the squire to be doing his own fishing,” remarked Arthur Warren. “He must be saving money.”
“Well, we ought to salute him, anyway,” said Henry Burns. “Say, fellows, one, two, three, all together, ‘How d’ye do, squire,’ just as he comes abreast.”
The chorus that greeted Squire Brackett made him jump up in his seat.
He didn’t reply to the salutation, but glared at the boys, angrily.
“Always up to their monkey-shines!” he muttered. “I’ll teach ’em to have respect for me, some day yet.”
“Better stop and drop in a line here, squire,” said George Warren, good-naturedly. “We’ve got them tolled around, with so many baits out.”
And he demonstrated his remark by pulling out a big cunner.
“Bah!” ejaculated the squire. “I should think you would scare all the fish between here and the cape, with your confounded racket.”
The squire directed his son, and the latter rowed past the other boats and tied up, at length, at a spar buoy, with red and black horizontal stripes, which marked a ledge in the middle of a channel.
“We’ll get a mess of cunners about these rocks,” the squire remarked, as he and Harry made ready.
Luck in fishing, always capricious, seemed to have deserted the boat in which were Harvey’s crew, although the boys in the other two boats continued to pull in the fish at intervals.
“Let’s give it up,” said Joe Hinman, at length, winding in his line and removing a clam-head. “What do you say to going down now and hauling the lobster-pots? We’ll take down our fish, and some from the other boat, to bait them up with.”
“Guess we might as well,” said George Baker, reluctantly. “We can’t catch up with the other fellows now.”
So they drew up alongside of the Viking’s tender, and the boys threw their catch into the crew’s boat.
“Twenty-six, twenty-seven,” counted Henry Burns, as the last one went over. “Keep that score in mind, George, when we come to reckon up. Tom’s ahead in our boat. He’s caught ten of them. But we want to see which boat wins, too.”
The crew rowed away, down alongshore.
An hour and a half later, the boys in both boats stopped fishing, to reckon up their catch.
“Tom’s got nineteen fish,” called out Henry Burns.
“It’s a tie,” cried young Joe, excitedly. “I’ve got just nineteen.”
“Then we’ll give you each five minutes more,” said Harvey, pulling out a silver watch. “Say when you’re ready to throw overboard, fellows.”
Tom and young Joe baited up for the final effort, and the lines went out together.
They waited expectantly. Two, three, four minutes went by, without a bite.
“Guess they’ll need five minutes more,” said Henry Burns.
But the words were hardly uttered before young Joe gave a whoop, and began hauling in vigorously.
“I’ve won!” he shouted.
“No, you haven’t,” cried Tom, pulling in rapidly, hand over hand.
“You’re just within the time-limit,” said Harvey, as Tom’s fish came in over the gunwale. “It’s another tie; you’ll have to try it over again.”
“All right,” said young Joe. “I got mine first, though—No, hold on here. Hooray! I’ve won, after all.”
Young Joe, who had been in the act of disengaging his bait from the mouth of a sculpin, stopped suddenly, and made a grimace of delight.
“Pull up the anchor, George,” he said to his eldest brother. “Let’s row alongside the other boat, and I’ll prove that I win.”
George Warren looked at Joe’s catch, and laughed.
“I guess you’re right,” he said.
They rowed up to the other boat.
“What did you do—catch two at once, Joe?” asked Tom, as Joe produced his catch.
“That’s what!” exclaimed young Joe.
“I don’t see but one,” said Tom.
“Well, look here,” said young Joe. He reached his fingers cautiously down the throat of the big sculpin, holding the jaws open with a piece of stick. Then, triumphantly, he dragged forth by the tail a smaller fish, that had in fact been swallowed the moment before Joe had caught the larger one.
“The cannibal!” exclaimed Tom Harris. “That’s the meanest trick I ever had played on me by a fish.” But he added, smiling, “I give up, Joe. You’ve won. I wouldn’t catch a fish as mean as that sculpin. And to think that he’d gobble a clam before he had a fish half-swallowed! He’s a regular Squire Brackett.”
Mention of that gentleman called attention to the fact that the squire and his son had ceased fishing also, and were casting off from the buoy, preparatory to rowing in. At the same moment the boys noticed that the crew’s boat was coming in sight from down below, and that the crew were waving for them to wait.
They pulled up anchor, and rowed a little way in the direction of the other boat.
Squire Brackett’s curiosity over the success of the crew was perhaps aroused, for he, too, waited a few moments. Then, when the crew had come up, Harry Brackett rowed near enough for the squire to look into the boat, with the others.
The crew had certainly made a successful haul. There were a score of fine lobsters in the bottom of their boat—a score of good-sized ones, and one other. That one other caught the squire’s watchful eye.
“Want to sell a couple of them?” he asked.
“Yes, certainly,” replied Joe Hinman.
“Well, give me that one,” said Squire Brackett, pointing to one of large size, “and that one, there,” pointing to the small one.
Joe handed them over.
“Those will cost you thirty-five cents, squire,” he said.
“That small one will cost you more than that,” chuckled the squire to himself, as he paid the money.
Then the squire, reaching a hand into his pocket and producing a folding rule, opened it and laid it carefully along the length of the lobster.
“Ha!” he exclaimed, turning in triumph to the boys, “that lobster will cost you just twenty dollars. That’s a short lobster—a half-inch shorter than the law allows. You know the fine for it.”
“Why, you don’t mean that, do you, squire?” asked Joe Hinman, dismayed at seeing the profits of their fishing thus suddenly threatening to vanish. “We haven’t shipped a single short lobster all this summer. But we don’t stop to measure them down here. We wait till we get up to the car. We have a measuring-stick there, and if a lobster is under the law we set him free, near the ledges off the camp. We throw out some old fish around those ledges, to see if we can’t keep them around there, and be able to catch ’em later—perhaps another year, when they’ve got their growth.”
“No, you don’t!” exclaimed the squire. “Can’t fool me that way. There’s the evidence!” And he held up the incriminating lobster, triumphantly.
As matter of fact, the squire well knew that the fishermen around Grand Island, when they wanted a lobster for a dinner, took the first one that came to hand, long or short. They figured out that the law was devised to prevent the indiscriminate and wholesale shipping of lobsters before they had attained a fair growth; and the local custom about the island was to catch and eat a lobster, long or short, whenever anybody wanted one. Nor was the squire an exception to this custom. But the law answered his purpose now.
He and his son rowed up alongshore, the latter grinning derisively back at the chagrined crew.
“Hello, what luck?” bawled a voice, as the crew ruefully pulled in to land and proceeded to stow their catch in the car.
“Mighty bad luck, Captain Sam,” replied Joe Hinman, dolefully, to the figure on shore.
Little Tim, the first to jump from the bow of the boat, narrated their adventure with the squire. Captain Sam snorted.
“Ho, the shrewd old fox!” he exclaimed. “Why, he’s eaten enough short lobsters in the last two years to cost him a thousand dollars. Only trouble is, he’s eaten the proof. We can’t catch him on those. Wait till I see him, though, I’ll give him a piece of my mind about raking up laws that way.”
Perhaps the utterance about law, on Captain Sam’s part, refreshed his memory, however; for, the next moment, he burst into a roar of laughter.
“Oh, yes, it’s funny, I suppose,” said Little Tim; “but you don’t have to pay the fine.”
Captain Sam roared again.
“No, and you won’t, either, I reckon,” he laughed. “See here.”
He whispered something in Little Tim’s ear.
“Don’t let on that I told you, though,” he said. “The squire owes me a grudge already. Ha! ha! I was watching all of you out there fishing. Ho! the old fox!”
Captain Sam walked away, chuckling to himself.
“He will rake up laws just to pay a spite with, eh?” he muttered.
Little Tim was off like a shot.
Twenty minutes later, a barefoot figure, panting and perspiring, accosted Squire Brackett, as the latter, bearing his precious evidence in the shape of the offending lobster, walked up the village street.