"I want to send something that'll please him," he thought. "He hasn't had much satisfaction, so far, out of me."
Finally, after mature deliberation, he indited the following:
| Dear Dad,—I'm sticking. Your affectionate son, Percy. |
The Three Musketeers gathered dust on the wooden shelf. Percy had faced squarely the fact of his college conditions, and had determined that they must be made up at the opening of the fall term; so his spare time went into Virgil and Cæsar and algebra and geometry, instead of being spent on Dumas. He rarely asked for assistance from the others; they had little leisure, and it was his own fight. He buckled down manfully.
Another task that he set before himself was the establishment of cordial relations with the other members of the party. He realized that his own fault had made this necessary. It had been an easy matter to get on good terms with Jim, Budge, and Throppy. With Filippo it was a little harder; but soon he, too, thawed out when he found that Percy treated him courteously and was willing to do his share of the camp work. Even Nemo wagged his tail when Percy appeared, and the crow grew tame enough to eat fish out of his hand.
One afternoon, when the fog had lifted sufficiently to make it possible to see a few hundred feet from the island, a motor-boat unexpectedly appeared from the north and swung round Brimstone Point into the cove. She ran up alongside the Barracouta, where the boys were baiting their trawl.
"I'm the warden," said one of the two newcomers, a gray-mustached, keen-eyed man. "I've come to look over your car."
Jim took his dip-net and stepped into the motor-boat, and they ran up to the lobster-car. A few minutes' investigation of its contents satisfied the official that it contained no "shorts."
"Glad to be able to give you a clean bill of health," said he as he set Jim back on board the sloop. "I wish some other people I know of did business as clean and aboveboard as you young fellows."
A quarter-hour later the sound of his exhaust had died away in the fog to the northward.