"I'll make you wish you'd never been born!" Captain Doak cried in a rage, and then, much to Sam's relief of mind, he went into the "Sally D.'s" cabin very quickly, as if he had most important business there.
"Eliakim can bark right smart, but I reckon we needn't have much fear of his bite," Uncle Ben said, as he stood by the bow of the dory waiting for the boys to lend him a hand in launching her.
Five minutes later, the old lobster catcher and his small family were afloat, heading, with Sam and Tom each pulling a pair of oars, toward the nearest tiny buoy which marked the location of the first pot to be hauled.
Now, as a matter of fact, there isn't anything particularly exciting in hauling on a long wet rope until the cage-like lobster-pot is brought to the surface; but Tom was intensely interested in the operation so often repeated before the day's work had come to an end. Perhaps it was because he felt a certain eagerness to know how great a catch would be taken, and, perhaps, he was anxious to master all the details in the shortest possible space of time, so that he might be of real assistance to the old man who was offering him what he never remembered of having before in his life—a home.
When twenty or more pots had been hauled in, the marketable lobsters thrown into the dory, while the small ones were tossed overboard to grow a little more, and the pots baited again with fresh fish, Tom insisted on being allowed to do his full share of the work.
"It ain't more'n loafin' to row from one buoy to another, an' there's no reason why I couldn't bear a hand, now I've seen how it's done," he said eagerly, and after some faint protest, Uncle Ben took up the lad's oars, as he said with a laugh:
"Have your own way, sonny, though the work is a bit heavier than you are counting on. If you two boys are reckonin' on helpin' me build up a family, I allow the sooner you break in at lobsterin' the better. Sammy here knows what little there is to be knowed about it, an' if you get inter the job in good shape there won't be anythin' for me to do 'cept dodder 'round ashore while you earn the livin'."
"I wish that could be the way of it, Uncle Ben!" Sam exclaimed earnestly, and then the conversation came to an end, as Tom made his first effort to catch the mooring rope of a buoy with the short gaff while the dory was gliding swiftly past the small target. It is not strange that he failed at the first attempt, for it requires no little deftness with a gaff to "hook on," and it was necessary for the oarsmen to back the dory here and there until the lad had the rope in his hands.
"Well," he would laugh, "I didn't make any great fist at it that time, for a fact; but it can't take sich a dreadful long time before I get the hang of it, an' when I do, this part of the work shall be my job."
And Tom did "break in" even sooner than Uncle Ben expected. Before he had brought half a dozen pots to the surface it was as if he had had considerable experience in such tasks, and Uncle Ben said approvingly: