The sea was a bit rough, and the boat moved up and down on the long swells, like the pendulum of a slowly ticking clock, but in the opposite direction.
“This is fun!” thought Teddy to himself. He was glad he did not feel seasick, as many persons might have felt with that slow, heaving motion. Ted was a pretty good little sailor.
“Here, boy—what’s your name—you’d better wrap this around you,” said one of the fishermen, handing Ted a piece of an old yellow oilskin coat. “It will keep you dry, and you won’t get so dirty from the fish. We have to dump them in anyhow at first, and they flop all over the seats and everywhere.”
“Thank you,” responded Teddy politely. “My name is Ted Martin, and my nickname is Curlytop.”
“That’s a good name,” said the fisherman, with a laugh. “My name is Sven Jensen, and my nickname is Hungry Sven,” and he laughed again, his companions joining in.
Ted also laughed, and was beginning to feel more jolly. It was a great adventure to be thus taken out in a fishing boat. He knew his mother would not worry for long, and Ted thought that some of the people on shore would take care of Janet and Trouble.
So he wrapped about him the torn piece of the oilskin coat. It was used, at times, to put over the motor when there was a heavy rain. It was not very clean—this oilskin—but it would keep some of the fish slime off Ted’s clothes.
“Well, here we are!” shouted Captain Oleson. “Now to see what we have in the nets!”
The motor boat began to slow down. It was entering into what seemed to Ted to be a tangle of nets suspended on poles going deep down into the water. But to the fishermen what seemed a tangle was nothing of the sort.
“Hi! Look there! A big one!” suddenly shouted the Swede who had said his nickname was “Hungry Sven.”