“You won’t leave me, Judy—promise you’ll take me out with you!” pleaded Blossom, eagerly.
“I’ll have to,” Judith responded briefly. “There isn’t time to carry you home—I don’t dare take time.”
She made her plans as she went in, and put out again with the clumsy heap of netting towering at her feet. The thing she meant to do was stupendous for a girl to attempt alone, but she was going to attempt it. The shabby old net had lain in its corner, useless, for two years. Now it should be used—she, Judith Lynn would use it! She was glad as she pulled seaward again that she had thrown in two scoops—perhaps when the time came Blossom could make out to use one a little.
The net was like a long—a very long—fence, with its lower edge weighted heavily and its upper edge provided with wooden floats, to insure its standing erect under water. When in position properly it surrounded the school of fish, completely fencing in the darting, glimmering, silver fellows. Then the circle could be gradually narrowed and the fish brought together in a mass, when scoops could be used to dip them up into the boat.
The school once located, Judith began to circle slowly round it, “paying out” her fence of netting with no small difficulty, but gradually surrounding the unsuspected fish, until at length she had them penned.
“What did I tell you! I told you I’d be the—the mastif, Judy!” Blossom chattered. “I told you you’d say how thankful you was you brought that child!”
“How thankful I am!” chattered Judy. Then, launched into the thick of the arduous work, they both fell into breathless silence and only worked. It was not much Blossom could do, but she did her little splendidly. And Judith toiled with all her strength.
They stopped at last, not because there were no more of the glistening, silver fellows about them, but because the old black dory was weighted almost to the water’s edge. They had to stop. And then began Judith’s terrible hour. For the heavy boat must somehow be worked back, a weary little at a time, to the distant shore. Judith set herself to this new task gallantly, but it was almost too much for her. Over and over again it seemed to her she must give it up and toss overboard part, at least, of her silver freight, to lighten her load. But over and over again she nerved herself to another spurt of strength.
She must do it! She could not give up! She would shut her eyes, like this, and row ten more strokes—just ten more. Then she would row ten with her eyes open. Ten, shut—ten, open. Perhaps that would help. She tried it. She tried other poor little devices—calling the strokes “eenie, meenie, minie, mo,” the way she and Jemmy Three had “counted out” for tag when they were little—brown—things. Her strength—was surely—giving out—it shouldn’t give out!
Blossom, watching silently from her weary perch, grew frightened at Judy’s tense, set face and began to sob. And then Judy must find breath enough to laugh reassuringly and to nod over her shoulder at the child.