“Now,” said Harvey, as the Surprise neared the landing at Bellport, “I want to get out of this town just as quick as I step foot in it. I don’t intend to stay here and have those chaps and those girls laugh at me. They’ve got altogether too good a chance. You fellows have got to stay here and take the Surprise up to Billy Coombs’s marine railway. She’ll have to be hauled out for a day and the ballast come out of her around that centreboard box. Tell him to put a new iron in, and you can pay for it, Joe, and I’ll pay you when you come back to camp.”
“But where are you going?” asked the others.
“I am going to foot it down the road for seven miles to Hackett’s Cove, and wait for Jeff Hackett to come down,” answered Harvey. “Then I’ll go across to the foot of the island with him in his sloop. I’d walk farther than that to get clear of the crowd that will be ashore here soon; but, for that matter, I want to get back to the island to-night, anyway. There’s a dance in the old town hall at Carter’s Harbour, and I’ll get there in time for that.”
“He’s all cut up over Willie Grimes’s beating him,” said Joe Hinman, as Harvey sprang out on the landing and walked rapidly away. “He won’t get over it for a week. Well, we shall have to catch it for him when the boats come in. However, we didn’t sail the boat. That’s one comfort.”
Late that afternoon, Jack Harvey, hot and dusty with his long walk, waited impatiently, seated on a pile of timber by the shore, for the arrival of Jeff Hackett’s sloop. Five o’clock came, and then six, and no sloop in sight. Harvey strolled up to the village store and bought some crackers and cheese for his supper.
“So you’re waiting for Jeff Hackett’s sloop to take you across to the island, are you?” said the storekeeper. “Well, you’ll wait till morning now, I reckon. Wish I’d known you wanted to go over sooner. You see, Jeff engaged Tom Crosby to make his trip this afternoon for him, and he’s been gone an hour now. You must have seen Tom’s boat off there.”
“I did,” replied Harvey, shortly, “but I had no idea he was going across. What can I do, now?”
“Nothing that I see,” said the storekeeper, “except to take it comfortable here to-night, and go over with Jeff in the morning.”
Harvey strode angrily out and walked down to the shore again.
A rod or two out a fisherman was rowing in a small boat.