“Nonsense!” spoke the captain. “It’s your property, of course, Sam. Only I wouldn’t advise you to let it stay here very long. This isn’t good keeping weather for dead whales.”
“Couple of days will do me,” the sailor said with a laugh. “There, now, sonny,” turning to Noddy. “Maybe you’ll believe the captain.”
Seeing that the game had gone against him, Noddy made his way out of the crowd without speaking. But the looks he cast at the sailor and the three chums were anything but kind.
“Wonder how he got here?” asked Jerry.
“Seems as if he followed us,” spoke Ned.
They learned afterward that Noddy’s father had, at his son’s urging, taken a cottage at Glen Cove, the next summer resort on the coast below Harmon Beach.
“Now, friends,” went on Sam to the crowd, “you’re welcome to look at this whale as long as you like, until I get a tent over it. Then it’ll be ten cents to see it. Part of the money I’m going to give to the hospital here.”
Sam’s spirit, so different from Noddy’s mean and selfish one, met with quick response on the part of the assemblage.
“We’ll all come and see it when you’ve got it under a tent,” one man called out, and there was a chorus of assents.
Sam got some sailor friends to help him, and with a couple of horses, hauled the whale higher up on the beach. Then he put a tent over the big creature and did a thriving business, exhibiting the monster. The three chums assisted him, and acted as lecturers to the curious, telling over and over again their part in the capture and harpooning.