He was angrily driving some of the swimmers away from his fishing location at that moment. It was plain the members of the moving picture company used the hermit as a butt for their jokes.
While one fellow was taking up the hermit’s attention in front, another bather rose silently behind him and reached into the bottom of the skiff. What this second fellow did Tom and Ruth could not see.
“The old chap can’t swim a stroke,” explained one of the laughing bathers to the visitors. “He’s as afraid of water as a cat. Now you watch.”
But Tom and Ruth saw nothing to watch. They went on to the tip of the Point and Tom prepared the fishing tackle and baited the hooks. Just as Ruth made her first cast there sounded a scream from the direction of the lone fisherman.
“What is it?” she gasped, dropping her pole.
The bathers had deserted the old man in the skiff, and were now at some distance. He was anchored in probably twenty feet of water.
To the amazement of Ruth and her companion, the skiff had sunk until its gunwales were scarcely visible. The hermit had wrenched away his umbrella and was now balanced upon the chair on his feet, in danger of sinking. His fear of this catastrophe was being expressed in unstinted terms.