"Also the most oily-tongued," Marta added. Nonetheless she was pleased. "I suppose, when we are all wealthy from fishing, you will hire a cook for me?"
"Not I!" Hans said. "Never I! Hiring anyone but you to do our cooking would be as out of place as hiring Joe Mannis instead of a preacher to do our praying! No, Marta! Not elsewhere in Wisconsin is there one who equals your skill with cookery!"
Pieter, who often tried to beguile his wife but seldom succeeded, laughed. Marta blushed. While Hans devoured what he had already taken, then served himself to three more eggs, Ramsay ate almost feverishly. Today was the big day, the time all of them had been waiting for, because today they went fishing. Ramsay finished and waited with ill-concealed impatience while Pieter and Hans mopped their plates with crusts of bread. All three went outside.
Squawking and chuckling, as though at some huge joke, Captain Klaus winged down from the rooftop to alight on his master's shoulder. He tilted, flapping his wings to balance himself, and caressed Hans' cheek with his hard, cold bill, even while he kept up a running fire of sea gull chatter. Hans reached up to stroke his pet.
Ramsay looked down at the beach, and saw two structures which had not been there yesterday. Hans must have built them this morning. They were windlasses, made of peeled logs, and about eight hundred feet apart. One was the conventional windlass—a drum mounted on two uprights and with a crank that could be turned by hand. The spindle of the other—all these lake men could work miracles with logs or anything else at their command—was set vertically in a stone and log foundation and it had a long, stout shaft protruding from its center. Ramsay looked questioningly at Hans.
The Dutch fisherman shrugged. "It is simple," he explained. "We have but one horse. Therefore, we men work the one while the horse turns the other. Marta can lead it."
Ramsay was incredulous. "You mean we'll take so many fish that a horse will be needed to drag them in?"
Hans' throaty chuckle sounded. "If we do not," he said, "from now on forever you may say that Hans Van Doorst is not a fisherman. Say that he is just a little boy who plays at fishing."
With a fisherman's skill, Hans was coiling a rope. He settled it carefully in the bottom of the boat, so that it wouldn't kink or snarl when paid out, and was alert to avoid stepping on or tangling it in anyway. Folded exactly as Hans wanted it, with all the floats on one side and all the sinkers on the other, the net was overhauled on the stern of the boat. Another coil of rope lay on the net, and Hans tied one end of that to the spindle of the horse-powered windlass.
Then he looked happily at Pieter and Ramsay. "Now," he said, "I need an oarsman."