“Say get off! But they won't let us settle on the main. Looks like they wanted us to go up in balloons. But we hain't got no balloons. Got to move, though.”
“I never heard of such a thing!”
“Nor I, neither,” admitted this man, with a sort of calm numbness of discouragement. “But that ain't anyways surprising. We don't hear much about anything on Hue and Cry till they come and tell us. Speaking for myself, I ain't so awful much fussed up. I've got a house-bo't to take my wife and young ones on, and we'll keep on digging clams for trawlers—sixty cents a bucket, shucked, and we can dig and shuck a bucket a day, all hands turning to. We won't starve. But I pity the poor critters that 'ain't got a house-bo't. Looks like they'd need wings. I ain't worrying a mite, I say. I had the best house on the island, and the state has allowed a hundred and fifty dollars for it. I consider I'm well fixed.”
The plutocrat of the unhappy tribe of Hue and Cry rose and stretched with a comfortable grunt.
“If it ain't one thing it's another,” he said, as he started off. “We've got to have about so much trouble, anyway, and it might just as well be this as anything else.” %
“Why, that's an awful thing to happen to those people!” declared the girl. “I must say, he takes it calmly.”
“He is a fair sample of some of the human jellyfish I have found hidden away in odd corners on this coast,” stated Captain Mayo. “Not enough mind or spirit left to fight for his own protection. But this thing is almost unbelievable. It can't be possible that the state is gunning an affair like this! I'll find somebody who knows more about it than that clam-digging machine!”
A little later a man strolled past, hands behind his back. He was placidly smoking a cigar, and, though the dusk had deepened, Mayo could perceive that he was attired with some pretensions to city smartness.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” called the young man. “But do you know anything about the inwardness of this business on Hue and Cry Island?”
“I can tell you all about it,” stated the person who had been hailed. He sauntered up and sat down on the edge of the porch. He showed the air of a man who was killing time. “I'm in charge of it.”