What sport followed! Up and down through that school, and it was an immense one, the sloop went, the lines trolling behind. In and out were the lines drawn and thrown until the boys' arms ached, and their backs felt like breaking. Larger and larger grew the pile of great mackerel on the bottom of the sloop, until the lads could literally fish no longer.
"Enough!" Budd cried. "I'm satisfied. Let us quit."
His comrade was not loath to follow his suggestion. A counting revealed the astonishing fact that over three hundred mackerel had been caught, and they were sold that afternoon in the city of Newport, where the lads carried them, for twenty-five dollars.
But just about the time the summer hotels were opening a circumstance happened that put the young partners in a position to do a larger work than even their ambitions had anticipated.
A few days after the surprising capture of mackerel the lads had taken a fishing-party down to Beaver Tail. On the return, late in the afternoon, and just as the sloop passed Dutch Island, Budd called his chum's attention to another sloop just ahead of them that had suddenly luffed up into the wind and nearly capsized. A moment later she fell off before the wind, her sail flapped loosely at the mast, and then it was seen that the man at the tiller had disappeared.
"Has the man fallen overboard?" was Budd's startling question.
"No," replied Judd, putting up his helm and running down toward the other sloop. "That is Ben Taylor's boat, and he is subject to fits. He has fallen into one, and that has let the vessel fall off before the wind."
A few minutes later the Sea Witch ran alongside of the drifting sloop; and, as Judd had said, her owner was lying in her bottom, unconscious. After a little consultation, Budd and one of the fishing-party boarded the craft, and carrying the man into the cabin and laying him in a berth, they put the boat before the wind and followed the Sea Witch up the bay to Wickford, where the unfortunate man belonged.
He was then taken to his home and a doctor summoned, who pronounced the man alive, and under skillfully-applied restoratives he soon began to recover. Budd waited just long enough to know the man was out of danger; then he joined Judd at the wharf, and together they sailed off to their island home.
Three or four mornings later they were surprised by a visit from Mr. Taylor himself. After thanking the lads for the part they had taken in his rescue, he said: