The boys did not find the boatman in a very kindly frame of mind. He greeted them rather sulkily as they approached:
“What do you lads mean by scaring off my customers?” he asked.
“We didn’t scare him off,” answered Frank sturdily.
“What do you call it then? Wasn’t he coming here to hire a sailboat off me, and didn’t you chase after him, and make him leave on the car? Now he’ll likely go to Hank Weston at Edgemere, and hire a boat off him. I lose the trade.”
“We’re sorry,” explained Frank, “but if you noticed that man you saw that he ran as soon as he saw us. We didn’t say a word to him. He just turned tail and sprinted.”
“So I see,” grumbled Mr. Hedson, “but I thought maybe you flew some kind of a distress signal.”
“We were only too anxious to talk to him,” put in Andy. “But he’s afraid of us.”
“Afraid; why?”
“Well, there’s some mystery about him,” went on Frank, “and we’d like to discover it. It’s connected with a boy whom we saved from a gale.” And he told about Paul, and how the man had hastened away that day on the beach. “Do you know anything about him?” finished the elder Racer lad.
“Only this,” spoke the boatman, not quite so angry now. “He come to see me yist’day, and asked if I had a sailboat I could hire out for a few days. He said he wanted to go cruising out to sea to bring in a boat of his that was disabled.”