Budd Boyd's Triumph; or, The Boy-Firm of Fox Island

by William P. Chipman

[CHAPTER XVI.--JUDD MAKES AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.]

An hour or so after Budd had sailed away from Fox Island to meet Mr. Wilson at the village and go on the prearranged trip, Judd got into the yawl and started down the bay to visit the fish-pounds. Some impulse came to him, as he rowed along, to first visit (though it was contrary to their usual way of doing) the pound over on the shore of Conanicut Island. Just before reaching it he happened to glance up the bay, and saw the Sea Witch tacking down toward him.

"Budd will get down along here before I leave the pound," he remarked to himself, "and I'll hail him and find out what time he expects to get back to-night."

Then he rowed leisurely on to the pound and began his work. It was no easy job to handle the seine alone; and for those readers who are not familiar with this fish-trap, so common to the New England coast, we will accompany Judd in his task.

It is low tide, and thus the very best time for the work, as the net is now fully exposed to view, and can therefore be the more readily examined for any breaks, and all foreign substances that have collected in its meshes can be the more easily discovered and removed. The various times of day, then, at which the young firm have heretofore been represented as visiting the pounds were not a mere matter of choice on their part, but were the times that the ebbing tide had made it best to do so, and it is the same reason that has brought Judd here just at this hour.

He rows in to the first stake, just a few feet below low-water mark, where his leader begins. Slowly along this he works his way toward the pound, five hundred feet off shore. He sees that every stake is still firm, and that the net is stretched tautly between the posts; that the sinkers are still holding its lower edge down to the bottom of the bay, and that its upper edge is properly attached to the top of each stake.

Here and there he pulls away a bunch of seaweed, or some floating log or plank that the tide has brought up against the net, and which, if allowed to remain there, might under a heavy sea do great damage to the leader. By and by he has reached the great circular pound or trap, which, like a tremendous basin, rounds out each way from his lead-line; and now the hard work begins. Round and round the basin he goes, pulling here and pulling there, all the while drawing the great purse into a smaller circumference, and nearer to the surface. The splashing and boiling water within, here and there the flash of a fin, and then a tremendous surge to the right or the left, as the case may be, tell of the fish imprisoned in the seine.

More than once Judd wishes for his partner's strong arm to help him; more than once the struggling mass of fish pull back into the deep all the slack seine, compelling the lad to do his work over again; but at last he is successful, and the fish are bagged into a corner of the net, and held there so firmly that there is no possible escape. The scoop-net is now brought into play, and rapidly the fish are dipped up and emptied down into the bottom of the yawl. When the last one has been removed the great purse-net is again lowered into the water, and the openings at each side of the leader, wide at the outer edge, but extremely narrow at the inner, are properly adjusted, and the work for that day is over--unless, indeed, some huge rent in the meshes of the seine compel it to be loosened from its stakes and carried ashore for extensive repairs.

This time there is no rent, and Judd has about got the net into its place, when, glancing up, he sees that the next tack of the Sea Witch will bring her down near him. Adjusting the net here and there, he waits for her approach. Ten minutes later she is evidently as near to him as she is coming, for her tiller is thrown about, and slowly she swings around for the next tack. He raises his hands to his mouth, like a trumpet, and is about to utter a prolonged whoop, to attract Budd's attention; but no sound issues from his lips. Instead, he drops his hands, catches hold of the net, pulls his yawl rapidly around to the leader, and then works along it toward the shore.

Why is this sudden change? Because, as the sail of the Sea Witch swung slowly around for the reverse tack, he saw Budd was not on board. Nor was this all. In three of those passengers he recognized Bagsley and his two companions when at Fox Island eight or ten days before, and like a flash it comes to him that Budd is a prisoner, and the robbers are running away with the sloop.