“Oh, no; on the contrary, a mild shock of electricity is a fine thing for the system. But,” and Frank smiled, “don’t take an overdose.”
“Oh, y’er laughin’ at us, are yer? Waal, maybe ther laugh ’ull be on the other side of yer face nex’ time we meet.”
All this time the elder Daniels had remained silent, gathering up his scattered lobster pots. Evidently he did not meditate a second assault on the fence. Now he turned the overboiling vials of his wrath on his son.
“Pick up them pots, consarn ye!” he rumbled throatily, “and git out ’er this.”
Zeb obeyed, and then, with what dignity they could muster, the two shuffled back down the beach to their dory. Then they shoved off and began pulling for Woody Island. Frank Chester watched them in silence. But they did not look his way once during the swift row. When they landed on the distant islet, he saw Zeb turn and shake his fist in the direction of Brig Island with vicious emphasis. The elder fisherman, however, simply strode off along the beach of the adjacent island without turning.
“Well, the fence certainly served its purpose,” said Frank to himself, as he turned away; “it proved as effectual as it did that night we used the same sort of contrivance to put to rout the rascals who wanted to wreck the old Golden Eagle. Sorry I had to give those fellows such a severe lesson, though. They liked us little enough before. They’ll have still less use for us now.”
He was about to retrace his steps up the path when his attention was arrested by a sudden sound—the sharp “put-put-put!” of a motor boat.
“I’ll bet that’s Harry, Billy and Pudge coming now!” he exclaimed. “I’ll go round to the hulk and meet them.”
So saying, he started off along the beach. In a few seconds he rounded a wooded promontory and passed out of sight. Right here, perhaps, is a good place to give those readers who have not already formed their acquaintance, some further idea of who Frank Chester and his companions are, and how the quartet came to be on Brig Island, off the coast of Maine, in the island-dotted Casco Bay region.
The first volume of this series related the adventures of Frank and Harry Chester, two bright, inventive New York lads of seventeen and sixteen, in the turbulent Central American Republic of Nicaragua. In this book was set down the part that their aëroplane, The Golden Eagle, played in the drama of revolution, and followed also the tempestuous career of their chum Billy Barnes, a young reporter whom they met in the tropics. Mr. Chester, a New York man of affairs, owned a plantation in Nicaragua, and the boys and their aëroplane were the means of saving this from the depredations of the revolutionaries. But in an electric storm in which she was driven out to sea the Golden Eagle was lost. By means of the wireless apparatus with which she was equipped, the lads, however, managed to communicate with a steamer which picked them up and saved their lives.