In despair he turned to his chart itself. Bed after bed he examined, still without success. Then he came to Hardy's bed. Why hadn't he thought of it before, he asked himself. There must be oysters there. If what he had read about oysters was true, there must be oysters in Hardy's bed. There must be quantities of them. Hardy had had plenty of shells down. Alec knew about the shells. He didn't know whether Hardy had planted many oysters or not. But if the shells were there, even if Hardy hadn't planted any seed, the bed must be loaded with oysters, Alec felt sure. Alec had examined the water in the bed. He knew it was swarming with spat. There must be oysters there. For the bed had lain untouched since Hardy went to prison. During the hard times that had come upon the oyster business these few years, almost nobody had bought oyster-beds or wanted to buy any. And when they did buy, they wanted to secure grounds from shippers known as careful oystermen, men like Captain Rumford, who took care of their grounds and worked them; not men like Captain Hardy, who was known to be reckless and careless, and who never took care of his beds. So there they had lain, untouched through all these months. There Alec could find oysters. There he must find them. For if he could not get them there, he could not get them at all. It was Hardy's bed or nothing.
Now he got out his bank-book and counted to the last cent the money he had on deposit, in his clothes, and owing him. Then he got his shell records. His shell boy kept track of the number of bushels he gathered from day to day, and each week Alec posted the record in his shell book. So he knew almost to a basket what he had. The season was well along, his pile of shells was large, though not so huge as it would have been in a good year. But it was large enough. The shells in it were worth hundreds of dollars.
Next day, his shell book in his hand, Alec went to the bank where the captain had his account. He was well known there. He often made deposits for the shipper, or drew the pay-roll for him. He was listened to attentively. He wanted the bank to lend him a sum equal to the present value of the shells. The bank could have the shell pile as security. The pile would grow larger day by day.
"What do you want of the money?" the cashier asked him.
"I know where there is an unworked oyster-bed that I believe has oysters in it. I want to lease it and work it."
"Suppose there are no oysters in it. What then?"
"But there are."
"How do you know? Have you been dredging in it?"
"No, sir; but I know. I've been studying the waters of the oyster grounds for three years. I know every bed in the Cove. I know every slick and swirl and eddy. I know where the oyster larvæ are thick and where they are few. I know where you will get rich yields of oysters by shelling and where you will get hardly any. And I know there are oysters in this bed."