Out upon the quietly heaving waters sounded voices—then the pop of a launch engine.
“Come on!” urged Neale’s voice. “They’re getting the boat ready, girls.”
“But we’re not going out to the banks in the Nimble Shanks—surely!” cried Agnes.
“No. But we’re going down the cove in her to catch the Hattie G. Skipper Joline sent up a rocket for us half an hour ago. The tide’s going out. He won’t wait long, I assure you.”
“It would be lots more comfortable to go all the way in the motorboat—wouldn’t it?” asked Ruth, stepping into the skiff after Agnes and the dog.
“Skipper Joline would have a fit,” laughed Joe Eldred. “A motorboat engine would scare every swordfish within a league of the Banks—so he says. He declares that is what makes them so hard to catch the last few seasons. These motorboats running about the sea are a greater nuisance than the motor cars ashore—so he declares.”
“I suppose the swordfish shy at the motorboats just like the horses shy at automobiles!” giggled Agnes, as Neale and Joe pushed off and seized the oars.
“Yep,” grunted Neale O’Neil. “And the motorboats have frightened all the horse-mackerel away. That’s a joke. I’ll tell the Skipper that.”
Several shadowy figures—being those of the other boys and Mr. and Mrs. Stryver, who were members of the swordfishing party, too—were spied about the deck and cockpit of the Nimble Shanks. The boys shot the skiff in beside the motorboat and helped the girls aboard. Then they moored the skiff to the motorboat’s buoy and soon the Nimble Shanks was away, down the cove.
It was past two o’clock—the darkest minutes of a summer’s morning. Seaward, a light haze hung over the water—seemingly a veil of mist let down from the sky to shut out the view of all distant objects from the out-sailing mariners.