“It comes up easy,” he said to Joe, as he drew it up slowly to the surface, hand over hand. “Here she comes now. Wait till it lands on the gunwale and then lean over on the other side, so we won’t capsize.” Bob grasped the slats of the big cage and lifted manfully.
The lobster-pot came up all right, as George had explained, till, just at the point where it should have left the water, it stopped suddenly and stuck like a bar of lead. Unluckily, Bob had not counted on that extra weight of stone inside, nor on the loss of the buoyancy of the water. At the same instant, moreover, young Joe, seeing the cage strike the gunwale, shifted over to the other side of the dory. This settled the matter. The pot lodged half-way over one gunwale, hung there for a moment, long enough to careen the crank thing down on its side; Bob and Joe both lost their balance and slid the same way, the dory filled with water, and boys and lobster-pot slumped into the sea.
“BOYS AND LOBSTER-POT SLUMPED INTO THE SEA”
The boys on shore set up a roar at the mishap of their comrades, while long Dave Benson, emerging once more from his cabin door, was heard to chuckle as he strode down to the shore and shoved off his rowboat.
“It’s just like a canoe, exactly,” he muttered, “just like it—only it’s so different.” And he doubled up at the oars and laughed silently.
Bob and Joe, coming to the surface, puffing and blowing water, were pleased to note the sympathy displayed for them in four boyish forms, rolling off the log and holding on to their sides with laughter. Nor did the keenness of this sympathy abate the whole evening long, for every now and then one of them might be heard to repeat the language of Dave Benson, as he glanced significantly at the others, “It’s just like a canoe—only it’s so different.”
However, Bob and Joe, being duly scrubbed down and invested in a change of duck clothing from the locker of the Spray, did not relish any the less the supper that awaited them, of broiled live lobster, cooked over a glowing bed of coals on the beach, and corn that was as sweet as Dave Benson had promised. They took their chaffing as good fellows and comrades are bound to do, only vowing inwardly to bide their time for revenge.
Then, as night was coming on, they set up their fly-tent on a clean, dry part of the beach, well beyond the reach of the tide, spread down their blankets, and Tom and Bob and Henry Burns turned in to sleep there, leaving the little cabin of the Spray for the Warren boys.
“Bob,” said Tom, “did you hear what Dave Benson said as he brought in the capsized dory, with the lobsters, too?”