He stared at the shore some time, then walked up toward the bow. Sam had reappeared from the cabin with fishing-tackle and was angling over the side. There was a line for David, and so, there being nothing better to do, David also set to fishing.
Fish were not biting on that particular afternoon, however. Presently Sam hauled in his line. “The pesky things never come when you want them,” he said morosely. “I suppose there are lots of them swimming around everywhere except where I cast my hook.”
“You’re not a real fisherman,” said David. “There’s a knack to catching fish.”
“No, I’m not; and I don’t want to be,” was the man’s answer. “Of all the stupid jobs, I think fishing takes the cake.”
David was about to argue this point when another man came out from the cabin and joined them. At once David, wise in the look of sailormen from his acquaintance with them on the docks of Barmouth, decided that this was the skipper. The new arrival stretched his arms and yawned prodigiously. “Golly, I’m only half-awake yet,” he declared. “Sam, where’d you pick up this fellow?”
“He wanted to have a look at the boat,” said Sam. “In fact he was so set on having a look at her that I just had to invite him aboard.”
He said this with a sly glance at David, but if he had expected to get an angry denial he was disappointed, for David, leaning his arms on the rail, appeared to be in such a deep study of the shore as to allow for no interruption.
“The others gone ashore?” asked the skipper, evidently regarding the reason for David’s presence on the boat as a matter of small importance.
“Yes,” said Sam. He pulled a large watch from the upper pocket of his coat and looked at it. “And it’s about time they were coming back.”
There was no sign of them, however; and the sun began to slant toward the west, and then to dip behind the trees, and still there was no boat to be seen coming out from the cove. David, strolling up and down the deck, noticed that Sam was becoming impatient. After a while there was a fragrant odor of cooking, and David, putting his head in at the cabin door, saw that the skipper was getting supper in the galley.