“Huh!” retorted the captain. “Maybe you will be some day. Most of the fish you got this morning were hooked so that they couldn’t have got off the hook. There’s a big difference between catching a fish that way, and getting one with just a hook through his lip. It takes some skill then.”
“All right, captain, just as you say. You show us the right ground and we’ll do the rest.”
“Maybe you will and maybe you won’t,” retorted the captain as he turned away to prepare dinner for himself and his mate.
When afternoon came, the Gadabout took the two skiffs once more in tow and swiftly carried them seven miles farther, where the wonderful ground described by the captain was located.
As soon as the anchor was dropped, the skiffs, arranged as in the morning, sought the place where the marvelous fishing was to be had.
Apparently the words of the captain were in a measure fulfilled for so busy were the four young fishermen that not one of them was aware of the increasing distance between the boat in which he was fishing and the one which carried his comrades.
It was late in the afternoon when Fred suddenly looked up and said, “It’s getting late, Jack. We ought to be going back to the boat. I don’t see it anywhere, do you?”
“You mean the skiff in which Grant and George are fishing?”
“Yes.”
“No, I don’t see them,” said John slowly, after he had glanced all about him. “I don’t see the Gadabout either.”