After some persuasion from Captain Jeb, who declared he could trust matey Dan’s navigation now against any wind and tide, Brother Bart consented to Freddy’s morning sail with his sturdy chum.
“Sure I know Dan loves laddie better than his own life,” said the good old man anxiously, as he watched Neb’s ragged sail flitting off with the two young fishermen. “But it’s only a boy he is, after all.”
“Mebby,” said Captain Jeb, briefly. “But thar’s boys wuth half a dozen good-sized men, and matey is that kind. You needn’t scare about any little chap that ships with him. And what’s to hurt him, anyhow, Padre? You’ve got to let all young critters try their legs and wings.”
And Freddy was trying his triumphantly this morning. It was one of Dan’s lucky days, and the lines were drawn in again and again, until the college girls’ breakfast and many more silvery shiners were fluttering and gasping in old Neb’s fish basket. Then Dan proceeded to deliver his wares at neighborly island shores, where summer campers were taking brief holidays. Some of these islands, more sheltered than Killykinick, were fringed with a thick growth of hardy evergreens, hollowed into coves and inlets, where the waves, broken in their wild, free sweep, lapped low-shelving shores and invited gentle adventure.
On one of these pleasant outposts was the college camp; and half a dozen pretty girl graduates, in “middies” and khaki skirts, came down to meet Dan. One of them led a big, tawny dog, who made a sudden break for the boat, nearly overturning Freddy in his leap, and crouching by Dan’s side, whining and shivering.
“Oh, he’s yours! We said he was yours!” went up the girlish chorus. “Then take him away, please. And don’t let him come back; for he howled all night, and nearly set us crazy. Nellie Morris says dogs never howl that way unless somebody is dead or dying; and she left her mother sick, and is almost frantic. Please take him away, and don’t ever bring him near us again!”
“But—but he isn’t mine at all,” replied Dan, staring at the big dog, who, shivering and wretched as he seemed, awoke some vague memory.
“Then whose is he?” asked a pretty spokesman, severely. “He could not have dropped from the clouds, and yours was the only boat that came here yesterday.”
“Oh, I know,—I know, Dan!” broke in Freddy, eagerly. “He belongs to that big man who came with us on the steamboat. He had two dogs in leashes, and this is one of them, I know, because I saw his brown spot on his head when I gave him a cracker.”
“Mr. Wirt?” Dan’s vague memory leaped into vivid light: Mr. John Wirt’s big, tawny dog indeed, who perhaps, with some dim dog-sense, remembered Freddy. “I do know him now,” said Dan. “He belongs to a gentleman named Wirt—”