“Just hurry up and come alongside here and we’ll show you,” cried Henry Burns, joyfully. “Our ship’s papers are all right, eh, Jack?”
The boys in the canoe needed no urging. A few sharp thrusts with the paddles brought them under the lee of the Viking; a line thrown aboard by Bob White was caught by Harvey and made fast; and the next moment, Bob White and Tom Harris were in the cockpit, mauling Henry Burns with mock ferocity—a proceeding which was received by that young gentleman serenely, but with interest well returned—and shaking hands with the other stalwart young skipper, Jack Harvey.
The bow-line of the canoe was carried astern by Harvey and tied, so that the canoe would tow behind; and the yacht was put on her course again.
“You don’t mind taking a spin for a way in the good ship Viking, do you?” asked Harvey. “I have hardly seen you since we got this yacht, you know, as my folks moved up to Boston the last of the summer.”
“We will go along a little way till we strike the worst of the chop,” replied Tom Harris. “Our canoe will not tow safely through that. That is, we will, if you allow Indians aboard.”
“Yes, and by the way, before anybody else has the chance to apply,” said Bob White, “you don’t want to hire a couple of foremast hands, do you, off and on during the summer? I’d be proud to swab the decks of this boat, and wages of no account.”
“We’ll engage both of you at eighteen sculpins a week,” answered Henry Burns. “But of course you know that the laws against flogging seamen don’t go, aboard here. Harvey there, he is my first mate; and I make it a rule to beat him with a belaying-pin three or four times a day, regular, to keep him up to his work. Of course you forecastle chaps will get it worse.”
Harvey, surveying his more slender companion, saluted with great deference.
“How do you fellows happen to be up here?” he asked. “Haven’t you gone to camping yet?”
“Yes,” replied Bob. “The old tent is down there on the point. We have had it set up for three days. We had an errand that brought us up here.”