“Let’s take him along, anyhow,” Ned put in. “He’ll know a lot about the ocean, and we can ask him about the lighthouses and the rocks, even if we don’t see him kill a whale.”
In a few minutes the old man came back again. On his head he carried a tub, while over his shoulder was a long pole. He ran down to the dock with a speed surprising in so old a person.
“There she is!” he cried, as he reached the boat. “There’s the iron that sent many a good whale, and some bad ones, too, maybe, to the boiling kettles. There she is!”
It was a harpoon that he had; an old implement, and one that had seen service, to judge by the look of it. It was rusty, and the wooden handle was full of notches.
“Them’s the number of whales she’s been into,” said Salt Water Sam, proudly, pointing to the cuts. “I did every one myself. And this tub and line—well they’ve seen service, just the same as their owner. They’re old but you can depend on ’em.”
While he was speaking he had boarded the boat, and was arranging the tub, with its coil of line in the bottom, at the bow. Then he sat down near Ned, and, taking out a file, began sharpening the barb of the harpoon.
“Let her go, skipper,” said Sam, to Jerry, and, at a nod from the latter, Bob cranked the engine, and the Dartaway was steered out toward the open sea.
“Any danger of a storm?” asked Ned, of the old sailor. He did not want to get caught as they had been before.
“Clear as a bell, and it’ll stay so ’till dog watch,” the sailor replied, not looking up from the delicate operation of putting a finer point on his weapon.
“I’m afraid we’ll see very little of the whale,” remarked Bob. “All the other boats are ahead of us, and they’ll scare him off so we’ll miss him.”