The sun was only half-awake when Ramsay got up, breakfasted and went back to the place where they cleaned their fish. Everything that could be was packed and the grounds were clean, but yesterday they had ripped a ragged gash in the seine and now that needed repair. Ramsay, assisted by Hans, set to work with a ball of linen twine. He lost himself in what he was doing. The important thing, if they wanted fish, was to get the net into the water and use it. Even one half-hour must not be wasted.
Ramsay was jerked out of his absorption in the net by two shrill blasts. He sat up, and sprang to his feet as the blasts were repeated. Looking in the direction of the pier, he saw the Jackson, her wheel churning up a path of foam, nosing toward the mooring place. Pieter appeared, and Marta. All four raced to the pier, and they reached it before the approaching steamer did. Ramsay and Hans secured mooring lines which a deck hand threw to them, and Captain Williamson of the Jackson came down a short ladder.
He was a bustling little man who wore a blue-and-gold uniform which, Ramsay thought, would have graced an admiral in any navy. But he was efficient and he knew the lake. For eleven years he had been running the Jackson between Three Points and Chicago without getting her into or even near trouble.
Captain Williamson took a white sheet and a wallet from an inner pocket, and he read from the sheet, "Twenty-four thousand pounds of whitefish you gave me. It brought five cents a pound, or twelve hundred dollars, less a cent a pound for the hauling. Here you are, nine hundred and twenty dollars."
From the wallet he extracted a sheaf of bills and handed them to Hans. Ramsay looked questioningly at him. "The sturgeon?" he asked.
"Ha!" Captain Williamson snorted. "There's enough sturgeon layin' on the Chicago pier to run the whole city for the next six weeks. Nobody's buying it but, since I hauled, I have to be paid. See you later, gentlemen."
Captain Williamson scrambled back up his ladder, which was hauled in after him. Snorting like an overworked draft horse, the Jackson backed away from her mooring, made a wide circle into the lake, and puffed on toward Three Points. Ramsay looked incredulously at the money in Hans' fist, slow to realize that, even if they split it among the four of them, it would be more than half a year's wages for each and they had earned it in less than two weeks. Then he looked at Marta's face and burst out laughing.
From the first, Marta had been with them only half-heartedly and only because Pieter could not be swayed from fishing. Now, seeing enough money to buy a farm, and with tangible evidence that fishing paid well, she had swung completely to their side. Pieter and Hans joined in Ramsay's laughter while Marta looked puzzled. She was, as Hans had declared, a good Dutch girl. Definitely she was not avaricious, but no good Dutch girl could fail to be impressed by the sight of so much money. Hans clasped the bills firmly and looked at his partners. "What do you say?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" Ramsay inquired.
"Pound nets we need, pound boats. Men to help us set them. More salt and more barrels. We owe Baptiste. Or shall we divide what we have and keep on fishing with the seine?"