CHAPTER II
Cap'n Mike
Jerry's car was an old sedan that had seen better days, but it could still cover ground at a good speed. The macadam highway unrolled before the bright head lamps at a steady rate while the beams illumined alternate patches of woods and small settlements.
There were no major towns between Whiteside and Seaford, but there were a number of summer beach colonies, most of them in an area about halfway between the two towns. The highway was little used. Most tourists and all through traffic preferred the main trunk highway leading southward from Newark. They saw only two other cars during the short drive.
Many months had passed since Rick's last visit to Seaford. He had gone there on a Sunday afternoon to try his hand at surf casting off Million Dollar Row, a stretch of beach noted for its huge, abandoned hotels. It was a good place to cast for striped bass during the right season.
"Smugglers' Reef," he said aloud. "Funny that a Seaford trawler should go ashore there. It's the best-known reef on the coast."
"Maybe the skipper was a greenhorn," Scotty remarked.
"Not likely," Jerry said. "In Seaford the custom is to pass fishing ships down from father to son. There hasn't been a new fishing family there for the past half century."
"You seem to know a lot about the place," Rick remarked.
"I go down pretty often. Fish makes news in this part of the country."