"Come on, lad, and lend a hand. Toby and I needs help to haul the boats up. Work's a wonderful fine medicin' for folks that's feelin' homesick. Lend Toby and me a hand, and you'll be forgettin' all about this fix you're in. I were thinkin' we'd taken all the kinks out o' that fix, and that we made out 'twere no fix at all."
"I guess I would like to help, if you'll let me," Charley admitted. "It isn't much fun standing around and doing nothing. What can I do?"
"We'll pull this un up first, she's heaviest," and Skipper Zeb indicated one of two boats that were moored at the landing. "You take the port side of un along with Toby, and I'll take the starb'rd side, and when I bawls 'Heave ho!' we'll all heave on her together."
Charley did as he was directed, and while he did not believe that he was lending much assistance, he did his best with each "heave ho!" boomed by Skipper Zeb, and in due time the two boats were removed to a desirable distance from high tide level. Timbers were now placed under them to elevate them from the ground, and a roofing of heavy planking built over them.
It was all novel and interesting to Charley. He lent a hand here and there, and as they worked Skipper Zeb and Toby talked of the fishing season just ended, and of the winter hunting and trapping, and of journeys on snowshoes and with dogs and sledge, and related many exciting adventures, until Charley quite forgot that he was marooned in a strange land among strangers.
Before candles were lighted that evening, Charley had placed Skipper Zeb and Toby in the category of the heroes of his favourite books of adventure. Here he was in a wilderness as remote as any of which he had ever read, and here he was with folk who were living the life and doing the deeds and meeting the adventures of which he had often read with breathless interest. When he went to sleep that night in a bunk with Toby he would have been glad that the mail boat had not returned for him, had it not been for the regret he felt for the grief he knew that his mother and father would suffer when Mr. Wise would report to them that he had been lost.
They ate breakfast by candle-light the following morning, and daybreak was still two hours away when Charley embarked with Skipper Zeb and the family for the voyage to Double Up Cove.
Skipper Zeb and Toby hoisted leg-o'-mutton sails on the foremast and mainmast under the lee of the land though the sails did not fill to Skipper Zeb's satisfaction, and he and Toby each shipped a big oar and pulled for a little until they were in the open bay and beyond the shelter of the hills. Then they stowed the oars, and Skipper Zeb took the tiller.
A good breeze now bellied the sails, and almost immediately the morning darkness swallowed up the outline of the cabins. No star, no light, no land was to be seen, and Charley was only conscious of the swishing waters that surrounded them. He wondered how Skipper Zeb could know the direction with no landmarks to guide him. How vast and mysterious this new world was! How far away and unreal the land from which he had come! He tried to visualize home, and the city streets with crowded traffic and jostling people; and crouching down in the boat a thought of the luxury and comfort of his snug bed, in which he would now have been cozily tucked were he there, came to him, and he drew the collar of his ulster more closely around his ears, and thrust his hands into its deep pockets.
For a long time no one spoke, and a sense of great loneliness was stealing upon him, when Skipper Zeb, lighting his pipe, remarked: