“No, I can’t,” returned Frank; “I’m bound hand and foot.”
“What! Say, you be’ant one of them movin’ picter fellers makin’ a fillum be yer?”
Captain Carney’s rugged face held a look full of suspicion. Once not long before his boat had been boarded by a beauteous maiden, apparently fleeing from a band of desperadoes. The gallant captain had fished her out of the dory in which she was rowing from her pursuers and had threatened the apparent rascals with all sorts of dire things. Then to his chagrin a voice had hailed him:
“Hey, you old mossback! You’ve spoiled a grind!”
A “grind” being moving picture language for a film.
“I certainly am not,” returned Frank indignantly; “no moving pictures about this, I can tell you. This is the real thing.”
“Waal, as I don’t see no camera about I reckon it’s all right. Put her head round, Eph, and we’ll pick him up, but ‘once bitten twice shy,’ you know.”
Eph, the helmsman, brought the bow of the Two Sisters round and slowed up the engine. A minute later the fishing boat’s side was scraping the barrel, and Captain Carney’s muscular arms lifted Frank out of his floating prison as if he had been an infant.
“Waal, I’ll be double decked consarned!” he roared, as he saw the ropes that confined the boy’s limbs. “Who done this?”
“Some rascals who had good cause to wish me harm,” said Frank. “I suppose they thought they could get rid of me while they made their escape.”