But either planting or digging was preferable to loading a huge cart with the provokingly slippery weeds which his father insisted on gathering for compost each summer.
Therefore, when the patient oxen, after much goading and an unusual amount of noise from their impatient driver, stood knee-deep in the surf contentedly chewing their cuds and enjoying the cool footbath, Tom, instead of beginning his work, sat at the forward part of the cart gazing seaward, thinking, perhaps, how pleasant must be a sailor's life while the ocean was calm and smiling as on this particular day.
So deeply engrossed was he in idleness that his father's stern command from the hillside a short distance away, "to 'tend to his work an' stop moonin'," passed unheeded, and the same ox-goad he had been using might have been applied to his own body but for the fact that just as Farmer Pratt came within striking distance a tiny speck on the water attracted his attention.
"It looks to me as if that might be a lapstreak boat out there, Tommy. Can you see anybody in her?"
"I reckon that's what it is, father, an' she must be adrift."
Farmer Pratt mounted the cart and scrutinized the approaching object until there could no longer be any question as to what it was, when Tom said gleefully,—
"It must be a ship's boat, an' if she hasn't got a crew aboard, we'll make a bigger haul than we could by cartin' seaweed for a week."
"Yes, them kind cost more'n a dory," the farmer replied dreamily, as he mentally calculated the amount of money for which she might be sold. "I reckon we'll take her into Portland an' get a tidy—"
"I can see a feller's head!" Tom interrupted, "an' it shets off our chance of sellin' her."
That the boat had an occupant was evident.