Will Adams smiled.
“Perhaps I put it a little bit strong,” he said. “I don’t really think there would be very much fight about it. Haley is a coward, I’ll venture to say, if it comes to a pinch. Most bull-dozing men like that are. We won’t give him a chance to fight, if we can help it; just take him of a sudden, and he’ll give up.”
“Don’t you worry about us, Cousin Ed,” said George Warren. “We are old enough to take care of ourselves. We don’t mind running some risk, if we can only get Jack out of his scrape.”
“Well,” replied Edward Warren, “you fit up the Mollie, Will, and wait till I get back from Baltimore before you start off anywhere. Then we’ll see.”
“I wish we could start to-night,” said Henry Burns.
It was surprising, the change that had come over this usually coolest and most deliberate of the boys. He and Jack Harvey had not always been friends; but now that circumstances had brought them together, and they had cemented their friendship by a summer together and a partnership in a fishing enterprise, they were loyal comrades. Henry Burns would have set out on the moment, for Solomon’s Island and the sloop Mollie, and have worked all night to get her ready, if Will Adams had only said the word.
But there was, plainly, nothing to be done until morning; and so, with a hearty handshake all round, the boys and Edward Warren left the big house on Drum Point and headed homeward across the river in the canoe.
There was no time lost, on the following morning, however. They were up and across the river at an early hour; and, taking Will Adams into the canoe, they all went along by the shore into the creek where the Mollie lay at her mooring. She was stripped of her sails and some of her rigging, out of commission for the winter season.
The young yachtsmen recognized her for what she was, a smart sea boat; and they went to work with a will to assist in getting her ready for cruising. From a loft on Solomon’s Island they carried down the big main-sail and the jibs and a single topsail. They lugged the big anchor-rode and two anchors, including a spare one, carried for emergency, down to the shore, and rowed the stuff out aboard. They assisted in bending on the sails; lacing them to boom and gaff; in reeving rigging; splicing a rope here and there; trying the pump and putting on a fresh leather to the sucker rod; greasing the foot of the mast, where the hoops chafed; putting aboard water jugs and spare rigging—in short, the score and more things that went to make the craft fit and safe for winter cruising.
By early afternoon, the sloop, Mollie, was spick and clean and ship-shape, with a brand new main-sheet and topping-lift, that would stand a winter’s squall; her ballast stowed in, as some of it had been taken ashore. Everything was in readiness for the cruise, even to the starboard and port lights, for use at night, and some charts of the bay provided by Will Adams. They locked the cabin, and went back in the canoe, first to Will Adams’s landing and then across to the other shore. George Warren held the tiller, in the absence of Edward Warren, who had remained at home, preparing for his trip to Baltimore the following morning.