“Now, see here,” said John Hart, wrathfully, shaking a rough fist at the boys. “What you have just got is like a fly lighting on you compared to what you’ll get the next time, if you lay another hand on that boat.”
“We won’t,” blubbered Little Tim.
And he meant it.
“Ouch!” groaned Allan Harding, as he tried to rub a dozen places at once with only one pair of hands. “You got us into a nice mess; that’s what you did, Tim.”
“Yes,” wailed Little Tim. “But, o-o-h, it’s over now. And,” he added, sniffling and chuckling at the same time, “the boat stays, doesn’t it? You knew we’d catch it, so what’s the use blaming me?”
“I didn’t think it would be such a dose,” said Joe Hinman. “But I’ll stand it all right, if Jack only gets here in time. Let’s have something to eat. We’ll feel better.”
The yacht Surprise did, sure enough, stay. They had done their part well. Try as best they could, the workers could not fasten her up again before sundown. They finished the job, however, by the aid of a lantern-light, and, taking no more chances, got some pieces of old spars for rollers and dragged the yacht down into the water, where they moored her close to land, a few rods away from the Seagull.
There was no sleep for the boys that night. They were stiff and sore, for one thing. But it was the last chance for rescue. It was the seventh day since the Viking had sailed away. They took turns watching, away down on the point of the little island, an eighth of a mile below where the Seagull and the Surprise lay. Nor did they watch in vain. Along about eleven o’clock, Little Tim saw the moonlight shining on a familiar sail away down the Thoroughfare.
With the return of daylight, following their narrow escape, Henry Burns and his friends, wide awake, had begun fishing early. It proved a record morning for them. They filled their baskets with cod, and piled the cockpit deep with them, and only hauled in their lines finally, about the middle of the forenoon, when they had exhausted the supply of herring which they had purchased for bait of the trader. They had about six dollars’ worth of fish when they weighed in their catch at the trader’s dock.
It had been a satisfactory trip, on the whole, and had showed them what they could do. Deducting the money they had paid out for bait and for some provisions, they had netted nearly eighteen dollars, having fished a part of five days. The division of this gave six dollars to Tom and Bob and left twelve dollars to the two owners of the Viking. True, they would have a new anchor and some new line to buy out of this; but that was, in a way, an incidental of yachting, and might have happened in some other manner.