“And there’s one thing you’ve got to look out for,” added Captain Sam. “Of course the men around this coast will be fair to you and won’t bother. But there’s a rough crowd that comes up from the eastward. They may not take kindly to a pack of boys coming in on the fishing-grounds. Just keep your weather eye out; that’s all.”
The boys went about their preparations eagerly. Already they had begun removing the fine fittings from the cabin of the Viking, carrying them up to the Warren cottage, and putting the yacht in condition for rougher usage. They worked hard all day. At night, however, an unexpected event occurred, which delayed their fishing-trip until the next week.
George Warren came down to the shore that evening with another letter for Jack Harvey, much to the latter’s amazement.
“Hang it!” he exclaimed, as George Warren handed the letter over. “They say troubles never come singly. I wonder if here’s more. I hope things are no worse at home—Hello, it isn’t from Boston. It’s from Benton. Who can have written me from there?”
He tore open the envelope hastily. The letter, badly written in an uncouth scrawl, read thus:
“Dear Jack:—You remember you told us fellows last year that we could come down to the island again this year and live in the tent, the same as we did before you got the boat, and you would see that we got along all right. Me and George Baker have got the money to pay our fares on the boat, and Tim and Allan will work part of their passage. Dan Davis, who’s on the boat, told us you was down there. So we’ll be along pretty soon if you don’t write and stop us.
“So long, “Joe Hinman.”
“Well, here’s a mess,” said Harvey, ruefully, and looking sorely puzzled. “I’d clean forgotten that promise I made to the crew last year, that they could come down, and I’d take care of them. You see, I thought I was going to have plenty of money; but I don’t know just what to do now. Would you write and tell them not to come?”
“No, let them come,” said Henry Burns. “They’ll get along somehow. We will help them out, and they’ll have your tent to live in.”
“All right,” said Harvey. “I hate to disappoint them. They don’t get much fun at home. I’ll send them word to come, as long as you are willing.”
So it happened that a few days later there disembarked from the river steamer a grinning quartette of boys. The youngest, Tim Reardon by name, was barefoot; and the others, namely, Joe Hinman, George Baker, and Allan Harding, were not vastly the better off in the matter of dress. This was Harvey’s “crew,” who had sailed the bay with him for several years, in the yacht Surprise, and had camped with him on a point that formed one of the boundaries of a little cove, some three-quarters of a mile down the island from where Tom and Bob were encamped.