That is the general idea of the men who are known as wreckers. The cat-boat with these four men in it ran on into the inlet for quite a distance while they were talking about Kroom and the Goshawk and the tug-boats.
The place at which they had anchored was very near the bay side of the long sandbar island whose front was toward the ocean. Here they were entirely hidden, but at the same time they were unable to keep any watch upon the Elephant and the possible doings of her crew. This was not exactly what they intended, and before long the steersman arose and remarked to his mates:
"This won't do. You'd better put me ashore. I'll go over to the ocean beach and keep an eye on 'em. Glad I brought my glass along. 'Tisn't only old Kroom. Some o' the tug-boat fellers may have come back."
A pretty spirited debate followed, and all the while the weakfish and flounders were biting freely. They therefore were having pretty good luck in their ordinary character of fishermen.
In spite of that, however, they all seemed to feel very much as did their steersman, and the entire four at last decided to go ashore on the bar and walk over to watch Kroom. They left their boat, pulled all the way out of water, at the bay end of the inlet, and there was not another craft of any kind in sight when they began to trudge across the sand.
In the Elephant, slowly sailing along from its place of danger too near the surf, the course of affairs had been very interesting to its crew.
"Pete," said Sam, at the moment when the wrecker boat tacked away and the big sea-bass lay floundering fiercely on the bottom, "that's the largest fish I ever saw caught."
"Biggest kind!" responded Pete. "You or I couldn't have done anything with him. They generally catch 'em off shore, with a bass-rod and a reel. Tire 'em out, you know, before they try to pull 'em in. It's science!"
Sam had heard of such things, and it made a proud boy of him to find himself right in among what seemed to him the greatest fishing in all the world—unless, he thought, it might be fishing for sharks or whales. Captain Kroom himself had been a whaler, and Pete had been out shark-fishing. Sam was beginning to feel a good deal of respect for Pete, and he whispered to him:
"Why don't you try on that blue suit? It's as dry as a bone. See if it fits."