“I’m going to Booth Bay on the mail tug. The sea has calmed down quite a bit. If you girls want to have a try at something, deep sea cod, horse mackerel, or even swordfish, why there’s the sloop. Safe enough as long’s you keep in sound of the fog horn or sight of the island. Go ahead.”
Because swordfishing is quite the most thrilling type of fishing on all the coast, and because these huge battlers of the deep bring a marvelous price when caught, Ruth had elected to go swordfishing. And here they were.
There was some fog, but as long as the hoarse Whoo-whooo-oo of the fog horn on Manana sounded in their ears, they were safe. That sound would guide them back.
Dressed as she was in faded knickers and a ragged lumberjack, with a boy’s cap pulled down tight over her unruly locks, one might easily have taken this stalwart girl of the Maine coast for a boy, or, at the distance, even for a man.
“Guess we won’t see any to-day,” she shouted back to Pearl at the wheel.
“Thickening up,” Pearl replied.
“May burn off later.”
“May.”
“We might drop anchor and try for cod,” said Ruth. “There are lines and bait in the forward cabin. We——”
She broke short off to stare away to the right. The next second she gripped her harpoon more securely as she uttered a command almost in a whisper.