Her father and Mr. Neckart went down to the mouth of the Inlet, where some fishermen were patching a boat which they had drawn up on a heap of mussel-shells. One or two crabbers, standing on the bow of their little skiffs and poling them along the edge of the water by the handles of their nets, had stopped to watch the job, which was being done with rusty nails and a bit of barnacle-moulded iron from a wreck instead of a hammer. When the iron and nails broke they all sat down and talked the matter over, with any other subject which happened to be lying loosely about on the fallow fields of their minds. When Captain Swendon came up they shook hands gravely with him, and made room for him on the bottom of an up-turned, worm-eaten scow. They were all captains as well as he, and he was hail, fellow! well met! with them as with everybody.
Mr. Neckart, who was formally introduced, nodded curtly, but did not sit down.
"A good day for the perch, Sutphen," said the captain, handing round a bundle of cigars.
"Yaas."
"But you ought to have been on the banks by daylight." Mr. Neckart's sharp, irritable voice jarred somehow on the quiet sunshine.
"Yaas. But I lent my boat last week, and this here one's out of repair.—Give me more of them nails, David."
"The boat could have been mended at night, and ready for use," in the tone which a teacher might use to idle boys.—"It is singular, Captain Swendon," turning his back on the men as on so many mud-turtles, "that the sea-air begets improvident habits in all coast-people. You cannot account for it rationally, but it is a fact. Along the whole immediate shore-line of Europe you find the same traits. Unreadiness, torpor of mind and body.—Ah! Captain Swendon and I wish to hire a boat for the day," turning to the fishermen again. "Can any of you men furnish us with one?"
Sutphen lighted his cigar leisurely: "We always manage to provide Captain Swendon with a boat when he wants it. We kin obleege him," with a slight stress on the pronoun.
"At what rates?" sharply.
"Waal, we kin talk of rates when the day's over. The captain and us won't disagree, I reckon."