It was dreadfully hot on the sea-shore, and the boys couldn't find much fun in digging in the sand, so they sauntered slowly down the scorching beach to the old wreck, intending to sit upon its shady side and try to keep cool. It was deserted when they arrived, and they had a pretty good time by themselves for about an hour, when who should turn up but old Captain Jack, pulling away as usual upon his pipe! They could always tell without much trouble when the Captain was approaching, he used such very strong tobacco, and blew the smoke on ahead of him in great clouds, which announced his coming some fifteen or twenty seconds before he arrived.
"Hullo!" said he, as he sat down alongside of the boys. "You here? I sort of thought you'd be up at the hotel sitting in a bath-tub full of ice-water a sizzling day like this."
"It is pretty hot, isn't it?" said Tommie. "The thermometer's at eighty-nine up in the hotel office."
"I don't doubt it," said Captain Jack. "But that don't signify much. Everything's high at the hotel. They charged me a quarter for ten cents' worth o' smokin'-tobaccy last week—so I ain't surprised that the mercury's riz to pretty high heights there. What takes me all of a heap is the heat out there on the ocean. It's fearful. I 'ain't seen anything like it since '69, and even then it warn't half as hot."
The boys giggled, and Captain Jack went on. "I been out blue-fishin' all the morning, and I tell you if it's a-sizzlin' in here it's simply a-sozzlin' out there. The boat's all covered with blisters, and her name, where I painted it last week, has just regularly peeled right off; and worst of all, I've teetotally forgot what the name was, so I've got to christen her clean over again."
"She was called the Polly Ann, wasn't she?" asked Bob.
"That used to be her name," said the Captain; "but it hasn't been this summer. It was something like Amber-Jack or Sarah Toodles this year, and I can't remember which. Fact was, she leaked so last summer when she was known as the Polly Ann that people wouldn't hire her to go fishin' in; so, seeing as how I couldn't afford to buy a new boat, I gave her a new name, so's the fishin' folks wouldn't know she was the old Polly Ann; and now this here heat has gone and het her name right off, and I can't remember what it was. Kind of hard luck, I think."
"Very," said the boys. "But why don't you call her the Sarah Toodles anyhow?"
"I'm afeered to. The summer before last she had some such name as that, and she leaked then, bad as ever, and it may be some folks will remember it. I guess I'll call her Fido. Fido's as good a name for a boat as a dog, and it'll give funny fellers a chance to speak of my bark bein' on the seas, and say she's a regular old sea-dog."
"Good idea," said Bob. "Did you catch any fish this morning?"