“What a grand boy!” Johnny thought. And after that, “What a perfect brick of a girl she is!”
“Mac,” he said a moment later, “there are twenty thousand fine big red salmon up forward. I stepped around a hatchway far enough to see.”
“Twenty thousand,” the old man murmured. “Our boys get fourteen cents apiece just for catchin’ ’em. Twenty-eight hundred dollars. A grand livin’ for two happy families. And that’s the first haul. There’ll be many another unless someone stops ’em.
“And we won’t stop ’em,” he added with a touch of sadness. “Not just yet. But you wait!” he sprang to his feet. “We’ll get a break yet.”
CHAPTER XVIII
FIVE ROUNDS AND A FRIEND
It may seem a little strange that MacGregor and his young companions accepted the whole situation so calmly. Yet the old man had lived long and in many places. He was wise in the ways of the world. He realized that they had already seen too much to be released at once. How long would they be detained? To this question he could form no answer. Perhaps until the end of the legal fishing season, twenty or more days away. Perhaps longer. They might even be taken to the Orient. After that some fantastic story might be told of their being picked up adrift on the high seas.
Johnny was thinking along these same lines. But he, unlike MacGregor, was already laying plans for escape. For the present, however, he was willing to bide his time.
Dinner was brought to them by a smiling little brown man. It was not a bad meal, as meals go on the sea—boiled rice, baked salmon and tea.
When it was over, MacGregor slipped out into the gathering night. While he was gone not a word was spoken. Johnny was busy with his own thoughts. So, he supposed, was the girl who now looked so very much like a boy.
He was thinking, “I wonder if there were shadows passing us in the fog. Or did we imagine them?” Certainly he had seen nothing resembling a shadow here. And this girl. Would she forgive him? Well enough he knew that in trying times such as these people were either drawn closer together or driven farther apart. He could only wait and see.