“You mean the stolen isotope?” Eddie asked.
“I don’t know much about isotopes,” Cap said, “but I do know that the newspapers have been making your father walk the plank for letting it be stolen.”
“It really wasn’t his fault,” Eddie defended.
“Of course not,” Captain Daniels agreed. “But someone always gets blamed. Just like those missing blueprints I read about in this morning’s paper. Teena’s father probably has nothing to do with guarding them, but when they turn up missing, he’s the one who gets lashed to the mast. The captain of a ship takes the blame for everything that happens aboard. Actually, that’s the way it should be, I suppose.”
Eddie had to agree, but he didn’t like to think about the worry his father and Mr. Ross were going through. He had been trying not to think about it.
Captain Daniels seemed to sense this. He quickly changed the subject.
“Don’t seem to be many fishermen out today,” he said, looking off across the bay. “And there’s one boat out there that could just as well have stayed ashore. Won’t catch anything worth frying out there on top of the sand bar.”
The rowboat had been anchored over the light-blue strip of water which marked the familiar sand bar stretching nearly a half mile across the middle of the bay. The sand bar lay about ten feet beneath the surface of the water. It was marked by three buoys, one at each end and one in the middle. Deep-draft boats avoided the sand bar. Fishermen kept away from it, as the larger fish lay in deeper water.
“Isn’t that the boat with those two men, Eddie?” Teena asked.
“I think so,” Eddie said, squinting through the sunlight.