“I’ve got it. But tell him we’ll give him two dollars now and two dollars when he lands us in the cove. I don’t trust the old reprobate, Jack.”
Bill agreed to those terms and in five minutes the boys were seated in the old dory and the Corsair was made fast behind it. Bill took up the oars and the journey began. “A gasoline boat,” observed Bill presently, “is a mighty uncertain thing, I cal’ate. There was a fellow by name of Sam Purley used to have one around here about ten years ago. ’Twant as handsome to look at as that one be, but it was a pretty good just the same. Well, one day Sam was out in her over by Tinker Ledge fishin’. Just such another day as this, it was, mates. An’ all of a twinkle—poof!—that there boat just bust into flames, Sam said. First thing he knowed she was scatterin’ gasoline all over the place an’ Sam he got his share. Only thing he could do was jump overboard, which he did. No one ever seed anything of the boat afterwards, but Sam he was picked up by a coal-barge and taken down to Portsmouth. Pretty badly burned he was, too.” Bill turned and looked speculatively at the Corsair, bobbing along behind. “All of ’em’s likely to act the same way, I cal’ate. Uncertain, they be.”
Later Bill reverted to the subject of the oars. “Did I understand ye to say that your oars had been stolen?” he asked.
“They certainly were,” replied Hal belligerently.
“Sho!” Bill’s countenance expressed concern and innocence. The boys afterward agreed that an angel could have looked no more guileless than Bill Glass at that time. “Left ’em in the boat, did ye?”
“Yes, they were in one of the long lockers,” replied Jack. “We think someone took them night before last.”
“Also a boat-hook and a compass and a fog-horn and two lanterns and sixty feet of new rope!” added Hal angrily. “And I guess I know who got them, too,” he added meaningly.
Bill met his gaze unflinchingly. “I want to know! Compass an’ fog-horn an’ boat-hook, too! Well, well! I’m surprised, I be. ’Tain’t often anything’s stolen around these parts. We be pretty honest, we Greenhaven folks. But them Portigees, you can’t trust ’em, mates. They’d steal the wig off a bald-headed schoolmar’m. They’ll take most anything, they will. If I was you I’d keep things locked up. It’s pretty lonesome around Nobody’s an’ them Portigee fellows is forever sneakin’ around lookin’ for something to steal.”
“We’re going to keep things locked after this,” said Jack, “but that doesn’t help bring the other things back.”
“Well, you said you knowed who’d taken ’em. Cal’ate you might get ’em back, mate. If I was you I’d go straight up to ’em and say I knowed they had ’em. Like as not they’d give up.”