"Oh, I know who he is," said Frank. "Lives in that big house by the pine grove a little way this side of the Point."
"That's the feller," said the captain. "Has a little girl, all kinder crippled up with some disease or other. Comes down to sail with me two or three times a week. Had a son at college who died of fever or something. It was his boat. That's the reason the boat's never used, I guess; old gentleman don't care for it no more."
"Great whippoorwills, but there's our chance!" said Frank. "Jimmy, get over your pessimism and think up some scheme for renting that boat. Why, man," as Jimmy just grinned, "there's millions in it. We'll organize a company."
"I'll be with you on condition that you'll let me steer it," said Jimmy. "You can be captain if you want to."
"All right, my son, you may, and I'll take care of the motor," said Frank. "That's a job for the best man."
"And what am I to be?" said Lewis. "Can't I be skipper, or something like that?"
"You'll be the ballast," said Jimmy, grinning from his perch on the bow-sprit. He had turned over on his back now and was balancing precariously, one toe hooked in a coil of rope at the foot of the mast being his only anchorage from a bath in the cool green sea racing along a couple of feet below him.
"We are talking as if we had the boat in commission already. But 'nothing venture, nothing have,' as the old saying goes. I'm going down to-morrow to see Mr. Simpkins and try my powers of persuasion on him."
"Beware of the dog," warned Jimmy.
"Dog or no dog, I'm going to try."