All was peace and good humor, when a skiff was descried approaching.
The boys glanced only carelessly at it, until Ned exclaimed:
“Say! There comes the South Beaufort gang!”
His words put a damper upon the frolicking. All gazed uneasily, and fidgeted. The rough boys forming what was styled the “South Beaufort gang” were their regular enemies.
“Well, who cares?” demanded Tom Pearce, defiantly.
“That’s what I say,” chimed in Les Porter. “They don’t own the beach.”
“No; but they’ll try to run us off,” asserted Hal. “Those Sullivans are always spoiling for a fight, and they don’t fight fair, either.”
“They chaw raw beef on you, and paste mud at you,” complained Orrie Lukes, the smallest of the party.
“Eight of them,” remarked Sam Dalrymple, who had been counting. “The two Sullivans, and the Conners, and Big Mike Farr, and I don’t know who else.”
“I tell you, fellows,” suggested Ned; “we don’t want any trouble—let’s go down to the breakwater and fool.”