“Why, o’ course she knows I was only a-funnin’. This young lady has good sense, I can see that.” Pete clapped one huge hand down on Ann’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t go for to hurt her feelings.” He looked into Ann’s eyes. “Jo’s a good boy and a first-class skipper. You couldn’t have picked a better captain among us.”
Jo visibly swelled under the compliment after Pete had left them, and Ann was happy to see him so pleased.
“It was nice of Pete to say that about you,” she said softly.
“You bet it was,” said Jo. “He is a close-mouthed old fellow but he sure knows how to handle a boat. And his bark is a good deal worse than his bite. He has been awfully kind to me. He taught me just about everything I know, what with father being so busy often when I needed help. But Pete never said anything to make me think he was pleased with the way I was sailing the boat. I can remember when I was very small and came down here to watch the men; Pete used to pull a pair of oars in his boat and make a straight trip of over twenty miles a day and think nothing of it.”
“You said twenty miles?” asked Ben incredulously.
“All of that,” asserted Jo. “He was the first fisherman to buy a motor for his dory, when everybody thought he was a fool to do it. He used to sit here on the beach for hours reading over the book of instructions that came with the engine, and finally he put the parts together and made the thing work without any help from anybody. It has made a heap of difference, having engines in the boats. A man can take care of pretty nigh eighty pots if he has a motor boat, when he used to be held down to twenty, pulling oars.”
Ann had peeped into a shack where a lantern glowed. It was stacked with barrels of salt and open kegs of steeping fishbait; nets were festooned on the walls, coiled ropes were thrown here and there, and a yellow goblin was preparing for his morning’s voyage out to sea. The air was filled with the pungent smell of tar.
Jo opened the padlock of his own shack, reached into the darkness, and pulled out a pair of oars. Then he shut the door after him, leaving the lock dangling from the hinge.
“We don’t clasp it,” he explained, “while we are out on the water; otherwise our neighbors would think we didn’t trust our tackle open to them.”
“Why are you taking oars, if it is a motor boat that you use?” asked Ann.