There was something dreadful in the very idea of it, and Annie Foster turned pale enough when she thought of the gay little yacht, and her brother out on the broad Atlantic in it, with no better crew than Dab Kinzer and Dick Lee. Samantha and her sisters were hardly as steady about it as their mother, but they were careful to conceal their misgivings from their neighbors, which was very kindly, indeed, in the circumstances.
There was little use in trying to think or talk of anything else besides the boys, however, with the sound of the "high wind" in the trees out by the road-side, and a very anxious circle was that, up to the late hour at which the members of it separated for the night.
But there were other troubled hearts in that vicinity. Old Bill Lee himself had been out fishing, all day, with very poor luck; but he forgot all about that when he learned that Dick and his young white friends had not returned. He even pulled back to the mouth of the inlet, to see if the gathering darkness would yield him any signs of his boy. He did not know it; but, while he was gone, Dick's mother, after discussing her anxieties with some of her dark-skinned neighbors, half weepingly unlocked her one "clothes-press," and took out the suit which had been the pride of her absent son. She had never admired them half as much before, but they seemed to need a red neck-tie to set them off; and so the gorgeous result of Dick's fishing and trading came out of its hiding-place, and was arranged on the white coverlet of her own bed with the rest of his best garments.
"Jus' de t'ing for a handsome young feller like Dick," she muttered to herself:
"Wot for'd an ole woman like me want to put on any sech fool finery. He's de bestest boy in de worl', he is. Dat is, onless dar aint not'in' happened to 'im."
But if the folks on shore were uneasy about the "Swallow" and her crew, how was it with the latter themselves, as the darkness closed around them, out there upon the tossing water?
Very cool, indeed, had been Captain Dab Kinzer, and he had encouraged the others to go on with their blue-fishing, even when it was pretty tough work to keep the "Swallow" from "scudding." He was anxious not to get too far from shore, for there was no telling what sort of weather might be coming. It was curious, too, what very remarkable luck they had, or rather, Ford and Dick; for Dab would not leave the tiller a moment. Splendid fellows were those blue-fish, and work it was to pull in the heaviest of them. That's just the sort of weather they bite best in; but it is not often such young fishermen venture to take advantage of it. Only the stanchest and best-seasoned old salts of Montauk or New London would have felt altogether at home, that afternoon, in the "Swallow."
"Don't fish any more," said Dabney, at last. "You've caught ten times as many as we ever thought of catching. Whoppers, too, some of 'em."
"Biggest fishing ever I did," remarked Ford, as if that meant a great deal.
"Or mos' anybody else out dis yer way," added Dick. "I isn't 'shamed to show dem fish anywhar."