After an evening with Sherlock Holmes at the movies the three went down to the _Barracouta_ and turned in. The next morning the fog was not so thick. They started at sunrise, and reached the island before eleven o'clock. At noon Stevens and the Italian came in with a good catch of lobsters. And now came some of the most enjoyable weeks of the summer. The five boys were thoroughly acquainted and on the best of terms. Their work had been reduced to a frictionless routine that left them more leisure than at first. Lane was treasurer and bookkeeper for the concern, and his reports, made every Saturday night, showed that returns, both from the fish and from the lobsters, were running ahead of their estimates at the beginning of the season. Percy, in particular, was learning to enjoy the free, out-of-door life, so different from anything to which he had been accustomed. At the close of pleasant afternoons, when a land breeze had driven the fog to sea and the work of the day was finished, he liked to take his Caesar or Virgil up to the beacon on Brimstone, and lie at ease on the cushion of wiry grass, while he followed the great general through his Gallic campaigns or traced the wanderings of pious AEneas over a sea that could have been no bluer or more sparkling than that which surrounded the island. Sometimes it pleased him to explore the sheep-paths through the scrubby evergreens with gray wool-tags clinging to the branch ends, and to emerge at last from the tangle of dwarfed, twisted trunks on the northeast point. There he would throw himself at full length on the summit of the bluff, with the surf in his ears and the cool, salt breeze on his face, and watch the sun flashing from the brown glass toggles near the white lobster-buoys; or, lifting his gaze to the horizon beyond the purple deep, he would trace the low, rolling humps of the mainland hills, the cleft range of Isle au Haut, or the heights of Mount Desert. But no studies or scenery caused him to forget his daily trip with sweater and rockweed. The glades on the southern edge of the woods were overgrown with raspberry-bushes. When Filippo's daily stint about the camp was finished, he visited these spots with his pail; and while the season lasted, heaping bowls of red, dead-ripe fruit or saucers of sweet preserve varied their customary fare. There were blueberries, too, in abundance, and these also made a welcome addition to their table. "Boys," said Lane, one morning, "I'm meat hungry. I can still taste that beefsteak we got the other night at Rockland. Think of the ton or so of mutton chops running loose on top of this island, while we poor Crusoes are starving to death on the beach!" "No need of waiting until you're in the last stages, Budge," observed Jim. "Uncle Tom told me we could have a lamb whenever we wanted one. All we've got to do is to kill it." A silence settled over the camp. The boys looked at one another. Nobody hankered for the job.