"I'd had the misfortune to drop one," Bascom said. "It busted, and I was lookin' after the pieces."
The boss clapped Bascom on the shoulder. "You're the man I've been hunting for down here," he declared. "Don't you want to come up and help me run the farm?"
Bascom looked over at the little Mystery, the deep blue of the bay, and the tree fringe on Deer Island, beyond which lay the Gulf.
"I reckon they'd have to be a mighty long calm," he answered; "wouldn't they, Cap'n Tony?"
"They suah would," the Captain agreed. "In sailin' weathah me an' Bascom mostly sails."
They counted the melons as they loaded them on board the Mystery, agreed on a rate of salvage and a price, and arranged for future dealings as the crop went on. The schooner-men finished their work, and Bascom paid off the overseers generously; then the Mystery raced the Luna May to the bridge, and passed through first.
"Well," sighed Bascom, when they had left the figs at the canning-factory, and their faces were turned toward the welcome reaches between Potosi and New Orleans, "if it hadn't a-been for that honey of a tide I'd be up in them dumb ole trees a-studyin' 'bout pickin' dem figs."