That night Throppy played his violin and the boys sang. They passed a pleasant hour before going to bed.
"I'd like to go out with you to the trawls, Jim, to-morrow morning," said Percy.
"Glad to have you," responded Spurling, heartily.
Two hours before light they were gliding out of the cove in the Barracouta, bound for Medrick Shoal, four miles to the eastward.
"Percy," said Jim as the sloop rolled rhythmically on the long Atlantic swells, "I want to tell you something. I was awake the other night when you left camp. I watched you row north and come back; and I saw the hard fight you had round Brimstone. I'm glad you made a clean breast of the whole thing, even when you thought nobody knew anything about it. It showed me you intended to turn over a new leaf and play fair. You'll find that we'll meet you half-way, and more."
Percy was silent for a moment.
"Glad I didn't know you heard me go out," he remarked. "If I had I might not have had the courage to come back. Well, I've learned my lesson. From now on I'll try not to give you fellows any reason to find fault with me."
Medrick Shoal yielded a good harvest. About eighteen hundred pounds of hake lay in the pens on the Barracouta when they started for home at ten o'clock. As they took the last of their gear aboard, a schooner with auxiliary power, apparently a fisherman, approached from the eastward.
"The Cassie J.," read Spurling, deciphering the letters on the bow. "Somehow she looks natural, but I don't remember ever hearing that name before. Probably from Gloucester. Wonder what she wants of us."
The vessel slowed down and changed her course until she was running straight toward the Barracouta. One of her crew stood in the bow, near the starboard anchor; another held the wheel; but nobody else was visible.