“Matter enough. I suppose that it is years since anyone has tried to go into the bay from this side. Around the other side of the headland, though, there are the boats that belong to the Ives’ place and they get out into the bay here by that rocky channel you see. It’s wide enough, and luckily there is that sort of a long bar of broken rocks that separates their dock from Pirates’ Cove. That is what the smaller bay is called. There is a terrible current or undertow, they say, and the last person that ever went in over there never came back. Folks saw the boat drift in under the rocks and not a scrap of the boat was ever seen again, and the man seemed to be knocked over by the rocks. Nobody ever saw him again, either. He was some sort of a foreigner. It’s funny how many foreigners we get here.”
“Where do they come from?” asked Leslie, who had come to watch the proceedings when the bay was entered.
“I guess that some of them come over from Canada,” replied Tom. “They don’t stay very long, as a rule, though there is one family of Russians that has been here for several years. They seem to have a lot of relatives that visit them, especially in the summer. Bill Ritter, too, always has a lot working for him that can’t speak good English or don’t speak English at all. They may come from the fisheries down the coast. Bill’s Swiss, they say.”
“What does he do?” idly asked Leslie, watching the waves.
“He fishes; and I think that he supplies the Steeple Rocks folks with fish and lobster. He’s always going there. You’ve probably seen him. There he is now in a rowboat.”
Dalton looked in the direction to which Tom nodded and saw the darkly red, sunburned features of the man who had spoken to him in his own woods. “Yes, I’ve seen him before. And that is the boat from which somebody waved to me, when I was over by Pirates’ Cove. It was probably Bill that pointed out the buoy with the danger sign. When he saw me row to it and read it, he rowed away. He must have been rowing towards me before. I’m much obliged to Bill. Look at him, Leslie. That is the man I was telling you about.”
Leslie, with a quick, understanding look at her brother, gazed in the direction of the rowboat to which they were now nearer. But its occupant, after a glance in their direction, rowed farther away and seemed to be making preparations to cast his line.
Sarita now came from where she had been leaning over to look at the depths and asked what Tom thought of Dalton’s boat and its engine.
“They’re all right. That engine is almost new. Keep her oiled and you can go to Europe with her.”
“We’ll go to Europe in a larger boat, I think,” laughed Leslie. “Honestly, though, could we put out to sea in this boat?”