Not all on the _White Wings_ were merry. Jack Diamond was silent, and not once did a smile cross his face. Paula tried to cheer him up, but she did not succeed at all, and so she finally gave up in despair, again turning to Browning. An hour after luncheon was over, Bruce and Frank set the girls and Miss Gale ashore, carrying their luggage up to the hotel, where accommodations were obtained. "We will leave here to-morrow, if you get enough of the place in that time," said Frank, having seen them to their rooms. He went down into the office of the hotel, where several rough-looking men were listening to the yarn of a red-headed, red-bearded man in rubber boots. Bruce seemed to be listening to the story, and, when Frank said something about going out, he grunted: "Wait a minute." "Yes, sir," said the red-headed man, squirting a stream of tobacco juice at the stove, which was well plastered with it already, "I have seen the critter, and I know, by huck, it ain't no lie. He's right there on the island, and if he ain't the Old Devil hisself, he's clost relation to him." "Now, I pull my traps right down past there every day," said an old lobster fisherman, "and I swanny I ain't never seen northing of this here pesky critter. Ef Jeb warn't sech a dinged liar," with a jerk of his thumb toward the red-headed man, "I'd jest go down there myself and spend some time a-huntin' this critter with horns an' hoofs an' glarin' eyes. I'd find out what sort of a critter it was." "Oh, yes!" returned the one who had been derisively designated as a liar, "ef you wasn't sech a darn coward, you might do something of the kind, Sile; but you are the biggest coward this side of Long Islan', so the critter down on Devil Island won't git bothered by you none to mention." This was said with the utmost calmness, the speaker not seeming in the least excited by being called a liar, nor did the man he had designated as a coward do anything more than grunt derisively and remark: "That's all right, Jeb. Don't nobody take no stock in what you say, and, though this yarn about a critter on Devil Island has been goin' abaout a year, I don't know a mortal bein' whose word is wu'th a cod line that ever said he saw the varmint. Whut you're looking for is notyrietiveness, an' that's why ye're tellin' such stuff."