“Sounds good to me,” said Dan. “Let’s ask Whiskers, the clerk, about a sailboat.”
The gentleman so disrespectfully alluded to by Dan had rather hazy ideas on the subject of boat hiring, but finally advised them to “take the straight road down to the Point and ask about.”
Maybe they got off the straight road; at any rate they never found “the Point.” Instead they came out on the side of a little cove where a ramshackle boathouse, a thirty-foot sloop at anchor, and a few boats hauled up on the beach were the principal objects in sight. But as they drew nearer there came a sound of hammering from the shanty, and when they reached the door they found it inhabited by a man and a boy. The man looked like a fisherman, and the boy—well, the boy looked like a ninny. But, perhaps, that was largely because from the time the Four darkened the door until they went out he held his mouth open every moment.
“How do you do?” said Bob. “We want to get across to Peconic this afternoon. There are four of us and we’ll pay a fair price. Can you take us over?”
The man looked up momentarily from the lobster pot he was mending and shook his head.
“No, I guess not,” he replied calmly.
Bob waited, but apparently nothing more was forthcoming.
“It would be worth two dollars to us,” he hazarded.
“’Twould be worth three to me,” answered the man.
“Well, call it three,” said Bob.