“No,” answered Dan promptly, “it’s great; nice and salty.”
“Then I asked the old idiot in the store if he knew of a broken-down wharf around there; said I’d left my boat at it and couldn’t find it. He looked at me as though he thought I was crazy and said most of the wharves around there were broken down, but maybe the one I meant was the second one to the north. So I tried again and found it right away. I didn’t know what time it was, because I didn’t have my watch and I’d forgotten to ask. I tried to remember the direction the fellow on the coal barge had pointed, but I guess I got it wrong, for after I’d rowed a long time without finding anything except a log of wood I wasn’t near any land at all, as far as I could make out. I couldn’t see anything and I couldn’t hear anything except little sounds way off. I took a rest then, for I was dead tired and beastly hungry. I guess the tender floated out with the tide, for the first thing I knew I was looking up at three fellows leaning over the bow of a big sailing vessel.
“‘Hello, kid,’ says one of them. ‘Hello,’ says I, looking kind of surprised, I guess. ‘Was you looking for any one?’ he asked. I told him yes, I was looking for the Vagabond. ‘Oh, he means you, Gus,’ says the first fellow, and the three of them laughed and had a fine time about it. So I explained that the Vagabond was a launch and that she was lying off the steamboat wharf. ‘Oh, that’s it, eh?’ says one of the sailors. ‘Well, you want to strike right across there, kiddie,’ and he pointed behind him. But I didn’t like the grin on his face and suspected he was having fun with me. So I told him I hoped he’d choke and started off in the opposite direction. I think now,” Tom went on to an accompaniment of laughter from the others, “that maybe he told the truth. Anyhow, the way I went didn’t take me to any steamboat wharf!”
“I rowed for a long while; I don’t know how long it was; it’s mighty hard to tell out there in the fog. And pretty soon I saw something off to the left and made for it. It was a stone pier with a ladder down it. I thought then that I’d got across the harbor at last and I decided I’d tie the boat up and try to find you fellows on foot. Well, I walked a minute or two and came to a back door. I could see that it was the door of a little store of some sort, so I went in. And where do you suppose I was?”
“Give it up,” said Bob.
“I was in the same little old dive where I’d bought the butter. The old codger looked at me sort of suspicious and I made believe I’d come back on purpose. He wanted to know if I’d found my boat and I told him yes. Then I asked if he had any crackers and cheese. He had crackers but his cheese was all gone, he said. So I bought a nickel’s worth of crackers—stale old things they were, too—and a box of sardines. I’ll bet those sardines had been there ten years! But I ate them. Wish I hadn’t. I asked the man how to get to the steamboat wharf and he tried to tell me. Said if I started out from where my boat was and kept a little north of east I’d get there. I asked a fellow outside a place where they sold oilskins and he said about the same thing. So I hunted up my boat, starting from the back door of the grocery, you know, and found it all right. Then——”
“Maybe you pull on one oar harder than the other, Tommy,” suggested Dan. “Do you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I do. I suppose that would account for my getting back to that old grocery shop. Well, off I went again. And you can bet that by that time my arms were aching!” Tom rubbed and stretched them now as though in proof of the assertion. “I rowed about ten minutes, I guess, and came to a beach. Well, that was a new one to me. I didn’t know where the dickens I was, and I don’t yet.”
“I do,” said Bob, who had spread the chart out on the corner of the table. “You were here somewhere.”