There was a laugh from the skipper, but none from Sam. Immediately the fishing-smack pushed out again.
Gosport was a small place, and David knew no one there. He felt in his pocket, and found he had no money to pay his fare to Barmouth. He walked along the waterfront, considering what he should do, and presently came upon a young man, who was starting the engine of a small motor-boat.
“You’re not going anywhere in the neighborhood of Camp Amoussock, are you?” David asked the man in the boat.
The other looked around and surveyed the fellow who had asked the question. “Are you one of the boys from the camp?”
“I was there at dinner.” And in a few words David told the story of what had happened to him during the afternoon.
“Well,” said the man, “that’s a queer yarn. I was just going out for a moonlight spin, and I might as well go up to the camp as anywhere. Jump aboard.”
David accepted with alacrity. The motor-boat chugged out from the landing-stage, and leaving a smooth silver ripple, darted north.
The owner of the motor-boat—he had told David that his name was Henry Payson—said that, although he had only been a month at Gosport, he knew that part of the coast quite well, and had never happened to see any fishermen in the cove that David described. “That fellow Sam was a vindictive chap,” he added musingly. “But you know, it almost seems as if he had some other object than merely showing his spitefulness when he took you off in his boat.”
“That’s what I thought,” agreed David. “But Tom and Lanky were still at the cove. He didn’t lay hands on them.”
“Well,” said Payson, “the cove’s around that next point of land. No use stopping there now, I suppose. Your friends will surely have gone back to camp.”