Sure enough, Henry Burns was awake next morning by a few minutes after four o’clock; but he was not ahead of Little Tim, this time, who was so excited that he had slept all night with one eye half-open, and who had been up once or twice in the dead of night, thinking it must be near morning. He was over the rail of the Viking, at the first appearance of Henry Burns, and, between them, there was no more sleep for anybody.
It was dead calm over all the bay; and, one thing was certain, there was as yet no news of the mackerel having come in, for there were no boats out.
“We’ve stolen a march on the fishermen for once,” exclaimed Tom, as they ate a hurried breakfast and got the lines ready. “I wonder if the mackerel are looking for breakfast, too.”
They put out, shortly, in the two dories, rowing down a half-mile to where the crew had seen the fish the night before. There was no sign of the water breaking, anywhere, to denote the presence of a school.
“Never mind, we’ll throw out, anyway,” said Harvey. “Sometimes they’re around when they don’t break. They may be feeding deeper.”
Taking a long-handled tin dipper, he filled the bucket of bait nearly to the brim with sea-water, and stirred it vigorously for a moment. Then he took a dipper of the stuff and threw it as far from the boat as he could, scattering it broadly over the surface of the water.
They waited, watching eagerly, but the bits of ground fish sank slowly, undisturbed.
“Don’t seem to be at home,” muttered Harvey. “Row out a little farther, and we’ll try them again.”
They repeated the manœuvre several times, but each time the bait was untaken. It sank slowly, each tiny particle clearly defined in the still water, settling in odd little patches of discoloration.
Then, of a sudden, there was a sharp severance of one of these patches, as though an arrow had been shot through it. The next moment, there was a darting here and there and everywhere. The pieces of fish disappeared in tiny flurries. At the same time, the surface of the water broke into myriads of tiny ripples, as though whipped up by a breeze.